On my last day at the direct marketing agency where I had worked for two years, I scrolled through my LinkedIn newsfeed and spotted an article that seemed written just for me.
Penned by Jonah Sachs, author of the book, Unsafe Thinking: How to be Nimble and Bold When You Need It Most, this article, “The unintended consequences of a too-nice work culture,” explores the dangers of today’s obsession with “niceness” and how a psychological kink called shared information bias is surreptitiously blowing a hole in organizational performance and employee morale.
Workplace niceness culture explained
Sachs offers the example of eight people who attend a company strategy meeting. While all are aware of the challenges before them, two team members possess new and critical information that no one else in the group does.
Sachs writes:
“In a workplace that values harmony and respect (and nearly all now do), that new information, sadly, will almost certainly get buried. That’s thanks to a pernicious and powerful quirk in group psychology called shared information bias.”
Seduced by the saccharine sweetness of workplace niceness culture, the team sticks to safe topics and territory rather than risk introducing new information that might harsh anyone’s buzz.
“Good as it feels,” Sachs says, “this emphasis on niceness leads to poor decision-making and low levels of creativity by limiting the number of inputs a group will consider and diverting focus away from risk-taking and results.”
I personally call this phenomenon “Workplace Bobblehead Syndrome“ or “B.S.” for short.
“As the heads start nodding and the good feeling starts spreading, critical thinking starts shutting down. Team members who hold contrary or novel information even begin to experience a type of amnesia as the pull of agreeableness focuses their attention on what the group already knows and erases potentially unique contributions from their memory banks. At the end of one of these nice-fests, everyone reports feeling happy, even the person whose perspective was silenced without quite realizing it.”
Performance is the first casualty of this insidious dynamic as employees realize that their employment and advancement are tied just as much to how nice they are and how good they make their co-workers feel as to their actual accomplishments on the job.
Other casualties include fairness and morale, particularly among employees who eventually tire of being silenced.
And the culture rots:
“Nice workplaces thus quickly become tyrannies of conformity and inequality. Perhaps your nice organization is different, but that would make it the rare exception. Once the expectation for harmony is set, very few companies make it clear that it’s acceptable to go against the grain when it’s needed.”
Why workplace conflict is natural and necessary
While Sachs doesn’t say it in the article, conflict is an important and necessary part of a healthy workplace.
Without conflict, what reason does any individual or organization have to learn, grow, improve? Where there is no conflict, there can be little progress. As retired business psychologist Kenneth Kaye said, “If necessity is the mother of invention, conflict is its father.”
Indeed, conflict is a catalyst for creative thinking and spirited conversation which results in the sharing of ideas, the elimination of group-think, and the strengthening of relationships as individuals build understanding and respect for each other’s views.
Thankfully, some organizations still recognize this. I am working with a company right now whose corporate culture promotes honest debate (importantly, they do not force consensus) and “constructive confrontation” to challenge the status quo.
Recently, this company even honored one of its employees with an award for going up against his team members who had chosen a path that was expedient for them but not for the customer.
He stuck his neck out with an opposing view because it was the right thing to do, and the company rewarded him for it.
That’s smart. That’s courageous. That’s intellectually honest, and that’s what it takes for companies and people to keep progressing and improving.
“Life is a contact sport.”
Laziness a factor?
At the risk of sounding cranky, I submit that there is another contributing factor to workplace niceness culture beyond people’s natural aversion to conflict:
Laziness, plain and simple.
It is human nature to take the path of least resistance. Not only is it safer to regurgitate the same old ideas and information that everyone already agrees upon, but it is far easier to skate along on the status quo than it is to think critically and risk uncovering new facts that might inconvenience the group with additional work.
“No pressure, no diamonds.” —Mary Case, indie film screenwriter
The risks of nonconformity
Perhaps the darkest side of workplace niceness culture appears when those who have new information, new methods, or different views dare to speak out.
In some workplaces, God help you if you have an opinion or idea that goes against the grain.
Often, the same pious people who claim to so value mutual respect and harmony will band together to shut out a “disruptive” colleague, ignoring or suppressing his or her contributions until he or she stops contributing—or is pushed out of the group entirely.
Sachs:
“. . . There’s an aggressive nature inherent in workplaces that demand, directly and indirectly, that others will be nice. It says: ‘our comfort and feeling of safety is more important than your intelligence and expression.’”
In other words, don’t rock the boat—or else.
Dangers for creative professionals
In environments infected by workplace niceness culture, the dangers for creative professionals are many. To reduce the risks to our work, health, and happiness, we need to ask:
- Are project kickoff meetings open forums where all attendees are encouraged to share their thoughts and concerns? Or do just one or two people run the show?
- In creative strategy meetings, do differing viewpoints receive equal time and consideration? Is healthy debate considered healthy—or disruptive?
- If a job requester is chronically late with deliverables, is the creative team allowed to adjust its schedules? Or is “the client always right”?
- What happens if a client requests wording within its marketing communications that stretches the truth? Are team members allowed to push back?
- Are individual opinions—about strategy, layout, messaging, color, copy length, photo selection, due dates, approvals, whatever—not only permitted, but welcome?
Now, having said all of that, we creatives need to make sure we don’t fall into the workplace niceness trap ourselves. We need to remind ourselves to stay open to constructive criticism and other ideas. Sometimes the truth hurts—but that is precisely when it can help us the most.
Avoiding the pitfalls of shared information bias
Sachs offers three simple tips for conquering the problem of shared information bias:
- Before meetings, all attendees should make a list of the key points they wish to share.
- Leaders should speak last, allowing time for those whose voices are usually quashed to be heard.
- Everyone in the room gets to speak before the meeting ends.
Done well, all participants will have the opportunity to contribute and all new information can be heard.
The need to redefine “respect”
Finally, to combat the corrosive effects of workplace niceness culture, Sachs suggests it is time for management to redefine what “respect” means to their organizations:
“For the sake of better performance, creativity and equality, it’s time for leaders to confront the nasty effects of niceness culture. We can start by defining ‘respect’ as something different than uninterrupted harmony. We need a shared understanding that respect is shown when we invite and listen to someone’s unvarnished perspective, even when that perspective contradicts or weaken (sic) the positions of others. Even when those perspectives make the group less happy and comfortable.”
This past April, as I looked back on the company I was leaving and my reasons for doing so, I marveled at how easily “nice” companies can become insular hotbeds of hubris, hypocrisy, duplicity, and bullying.
I smiled a wry smile and reached for my box of belongings, feeling a weight lift off my shoulders and excitement for the future.
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