A popular phrase when I was growing up was “Nice guys always finish last!” At the time, that seemed wrong, even kind of mean. As I grew up I realized that it was very, very true.
This came to me after watching the early seasons of American Idol. They would put up a “Worst of” list and show the worst singers in the competition. I wondered who, as a friend or family member, had encouraged them to go on a nation wide TV show only to be publicly embarrassed for 6, 9 months, or even a lifetime.
The issue was that all this time, their family members were being “Nice.”
I had heard it from doctors who were having difficulty with staff members, saying “I am just too nice.” Their staff members weren’t performing… they didn’t have the skill set they needed. So the staff member was frustrated from being in a job they couldn’t perform and the doctor was too “nice” to either set clearer expectations or help them find a job where they succeed and be happy.
I was sitting in church one day and heard about Jesus handling criticism, challenging people, setting boundaries and even turning over tables.
I realized that Jesus was not “Nice”.
Nice comes from a position of weakness. Jesus was powerful.
The distinction between niceness and kindness
“Niceness” comes from a position of weakness. “Kindness” comes from a position of power.
“Nice” avoids conflict, has no boundaries and can’t say no. It can benefit the other party at your own expense… or even theirs.
“Kind” on the other hand comes from a position of power.
Kind also comes from a position of care.
It speaks the truth, it benefits the recipient and doesn’t compromise the giver.
However, it does not compromise their integrity and their strength.
The benefit of kindness.
I’ve had many conversations with hundreds of people about this exact issue. One of the most common scenarios I’ve run into is employers who were struggling with how to deal with an employee who was unable to perform their job well. They’d told me about how they’d tried everything to help their employees become more productive and to improve their performance, but nothing had worked. The person was willing to do the job, but they were not able.
A Lot of times it came down to whether to let this person go. Even though they knew it needed to be done they couldn’t bring themselves to do it. They would say “I guess I am just too nice”I could narrow it down to two reasons:
They didn’t want to seem unkind.
They really did care about their employee, so they genuinely believed that the best way to express this care was to let them keep this position even if they could not do their job.
The thing that was causing them to get stuck was that they had the same misunderstanding that most people have about kindness. They thought that being kind and being nice are exactly the same. In order to be kind, they thought they had to avoid conflict as much as possible. In other words, “be nice”. What I had to explain to them was that by trying to be nice they were actually being unkind. True kindness does what will be best for the person even if at first it may cause conflict or discomfort because it is what will benefit the person in the end.
You see, keeping this employee where they were was actually hurting the employee. The reason is because they were keeping them in a place where they had become stagnant. They couldn’t grow and therefore they couldn’t succeed. This was hurting not only the employer, but also the employee. Even though letting this person go would cause discomfort and maybe even hurt, in the long run it actually pushes the person to find a place better suited for their talents and abilities so that they could grow and thrive.
In the example from American Idol. A Kind friend would not encourage someone to go on national television to be embarrassed. A Kind friend would help them get voice lessons in order to improve their skills. They would speak the truth gently, in a way that would help the other person.
Socrates had a simple way of deciding whether something needed to be said at all. His simple test was to ask himself this:
“Is it true; is it kind, or is it necessary?”
Being Kind is not alway easy. Some things are true, kind and necessary.
