Is Your Workplace Culture Of Niceness Toxic?
“Not being nice may look promising at first, but in the long run it can destroy the very environment it needs for its own success.”
Eric Barker • Barking Up the Wrong Tree: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Success Is (Mostly) Wrong
When bosses are too invested in everyone getting along they also fail to encourage the people on their team to criticize one another other for fear of sowing discord. They create the kind of work environment where being "nice" is prioritized at the expense of critiquing and therefore improving actual performance.
Kim Scott • Kim Scott's Radical Candor | The #1 Book For Better Bosses
civility is the preferred social climate for creative collaboration. In an era of downsizing and underemployment, many workplaces have become angry, anguished, poisonous places where managers are abusive and employees subvert each other. Such an environment isn’t just morally offensive. It is a bad place to do good work.
Patricia Ward Biederman • Organizing Genius: The Secrets of Creative Collaboration
inc.com
inc.com
“Not being nice may look promising at first, but in the long run it can destroy the very environment it needs for its own success.”
Eric Barker • Barking Up the Wrong Tree: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Success Is (Mostly) Wrong
the “tyranny of positivity” dominates most workplaces.
The Atlantic • The Emotion Missing From the Workplace
Care personally + challenge directly = radical candor.
Venkatesh Rao • Venkatesh Rao on Substack
It’s brutally hard to tell people when they are screwing up. You don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings; that’s because you’re not a sadist. You don’t want that person or the rest of the team to think you’re a jerk. Plus, you’ve been told since you learned to talk, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” Now all of a sudd... See more