The Four Letter Word

I have always prided myself on being nice. A number of people in my life have said I was one of the nicest people they knew. I suppose I should have known when someone said I was the ‘nicest’ person that something was seriously wrong in the world. I can be nice but I am not always very nice or the nicest, in the least. Was it possible that I had this superlative quality – that I was the ‘-est’ of some adjective? It was only relatively recently that I realized that niceness is not a positive trait in most people’s eyes.

A number of years ago, one of my managers said that an ‘opportunity’ that I needed to work on was ‘not being so nice’. You can probably imagine how aghast I was when she said this to me. I chalked it up to ‘her problem’ and justified it as being more about her than about me. After all, she was a word that rhymed with switch. She probably thought her being a micromanaging, indecisive hypocrite was a ‘strength’, while most everyone really hated all those qualities about her.

The feedback I received directly (and indirectly) from others for that particular review was that I was a positive person who worked well with others and was always collaborating. People also said I knew how to work with each individual’s skills to get the best out of everyone.  I saw these as truly great attributes. I felt stupendous about my propensity towards these characteristics; until the bomb was dropped. After my review, I spent the entire weekend moping around wondering why it was a weakness (Incidentally whenever ‘opportunity’ is used during a review, it is code for ‘weakness’). I always thought being a ‘team player’ was a valued skill. (Heck, isn’t it a prerequisite on most job descriptions?)  It seems pretty obvious to me that I was in possession of that talent. How could it be seen pejoratively? I’ll tell you how.

The extrovert is as American as apple pie and Uncle Sam. The person who points out the obvious vociferously on conference calls is ‘the bread and butter’ of the corporate world. Because I was quiet and reserved and hardly ever pronouncing on calls, I was seen as too kind.  I needed to speak up more - to tell people my ideas. I couldn’t correlate the two. How was being quiet also seen as being nice? Maybe I was just nice and also quiet but they normally are mutually exclusive? I mean she was loud and dumb, do those two go together? Not really, right? Most people wouldn’t agree to that connection.

Years have passed since that review and I’ve learned to live with my weakness. I was fine until one of my friends mentioned that she, too, had been called ‘too nice’ in a recent performance review. Then the ire subconsciously simmering in my gut blew up. Hello! Why is being nice a bad thing? I knew of many people who were rude, selfish and unprofessional. The overwhelming tone when those folks were a topic of conversation (euphemism for gossip here) was seething. They were bottlenecks to any progress and colleagues often dreaded working with them. Granted, I never fully knew what their reviews were like but am sure they didn’t take anger control or aggression as opportunities.  I suppose that I will never truly know why being nice is considered a bad thing in corporate America. However, I am going to exercise my right to be stubborn and say, "I refuse to be change". I will now be difficult, frustrating and close-minded. Thank you, very much.