HMN 2024: Being Too Nice Can Result in Stunting Others’ Development

Being kind to others is celebrated everywhere: In kindergarten classrooms, across cultures, across genders, you name it. However, when it comes to leadership, it’s important to note an important truth: Being too nice can have serious drawbacks.

It’s not because kindness is bad—it’s because, devoid of context, kindness can easily turn into people-pleasing. Often, we think of people-pleasers as brown-nosers who try to cozy up to the boss. But believe it or not, the desire to please others does not necessarily depend on hierarchy. Equally common are people-pleasers who project their own preferences and attitudes onto their subordinates.

Meet the subordinate-pleaser

Picture this: You’re in charge of a team. Your calendar is bursting at the seams. There are tasks that should be given to others because of various reasons: Skills, availability, and opportunity cost. Yet you hesitate to assign these tasks to your people.

See, the trouble is that these tasks are very boring. You know this because you think these tasks are boring. And what you think is obviously what others are going to think, right?

And plus, you’re a nice person. “Nice,” according to this analysis, means:

• You will never burden your team
• You’ll never be a “boss from hell”

• You’ll never be the kind of leader who will make your people feel resentful.

So you roll up your sleeves and take on the workload yourself.

Surely this is the right way to inspire loyalty and harmony in your team… right?

Kindness is great, but in measured doses

Not delegating due to kindness often comes from three errors:

1. You assume that what is boring to you is also boring to others
2. You prioritize kindness above all other traits
3. You give into the emotional halo that kindness provides

First, taking others’ perspective accurately is hard. Studies show that people repeatedly fail to understand what others are feeling and thinking. A lot of people simply project their own preferences onto others. The most reliable way to understand others is to directly ask them. Just because something is boring to you does not mean it will be boring to others. As a leader, you have likely developed and upskilled more than your people, and this is the reason why some tasks are boring to you now. This was not the case in the past. Do not rob your people of potential development opportunities by projecting your own distaste for certain tasks onto them.

Second, kindness is indeed very important—it is in fact one of the two most important traits people care about in others. But it is not the only one—competence is the other. Studies show that kindness is a hygiene factor—people want you to be decent, but they are not looking for you to maximize kindness. Competence, on the other hand, is something you should maximize. In people’s eyes, it matters whether you are extremely competent or moderately competent. It matters a lot less if you are extremely nice or moderately nice. Beware of prioritizing your image as a kind person to the exclusion of your image as a competent person.

Third, being kind feels good in the moment. This is great—it makes us act kindly to others. But taken to an extreme it means making decisions based on emotion and trying to win a popularity contest. This is not the goal of leadership. What makes you feel good in the short term is not necessarily what will make you feel that your and your team’s work is meaningful and impactful in the long term.

Delegation = kindness in disguise?

Delegating need not be selfish or lazy. It can be an act of kindness. When you trust someone with an important task, you’re saying: “I believe in your ability to handle this.” This creates space for skill-building, ownership, and innovation on the part of your team.

Here are some tips on how to rethink kindness:

1. Reframe your mindset: Kindness doesn’t mean taking things off other people’s plate. Instead, it’s developing others to be better over time. Give others tasks they can handle or that stretch them appropriately. Take away tasks that are not within reach given their current skillset.
2. Start small: Hand off one task you’ve been clinging to and see how it goes.
3. Explain: Explain the “why” behind the task and what success looks like.
4. Ask: Monitor the situation and ask your people whether they are thriving doing it.
5. Track: See whether task engagement leads your people to develop capabilities and skills that make them more valuable and competent.

A final word

We don’t need to be everyone’s best friend. When we lead, we must focus on organizing people in effective ways to get things done. We must inspire and sometimes push them to be better, for our own and their benefit. Just like exercise, being nice is great in measured doses but counter-productive in extreme quantities.

Instead of asking yourself: “Am I being nice?” try, “Am I being a jerk?” The latter question aligns more closely to how people evaluate you—they care about decency, rather than extreme kindness.