Yesterday an article came out in Harvard Business Review by Emma Seppälä entitled "The Hard Data on Being A Nice Boss". The title caught my attention. "It brought up the age-old question," as she says, "Is it better to be a 'nice' leader to get your staff to like you? Or to be tough as nails to inspire respect and hard work? Despite the recent enthusiasm for wellness initiatives like compassion and meditation at the office, most people still assume it is better to be tough as nails than to be a likeable boss. The traditional paradigm just seems to work better."
But, what she points out, is that being tough often may get a particular job done, but is putting extra pressure on employees. That extra pressure is stress and stress is detrimental to the work that a company is doing because it works itself out in different ways that do not really show up; yet it affects productivity in various ways – health, leave of absence, etc. Those are almost intangibles in terms of productive structure, but have a bearing ultimately on whether the company is going to do well or not. "So," she says, "a good reason to look at the boss and say: What is the better way to handle people – to be nice or to be tough as nails?"
As I read that article, it took me back to an old fable I had read many years ago that talked about the wind and the sun having a disagreement one day, about who was stronger and then deciding to have a contest to find out who was stronger. So they looked down and saw this man walking with his coat on and decided to see who could get him to take off his coat. They both agreed and the sun asked the wind to go first. The wind began to blow and blow as hard as he could and the man just pulled his coat tighter and tighter around him. Finally the wind gave up and the sun came out. He started giving out warmth and warmth, making the man hotter and hotter till it got too hot to wear a coat. So he took it off.
This brought home the fact that sometimes we polarize situations – we look at a particular thing and wonder if it is the best when really a mix of the two might be the right answer to the situation. But we tend to go with the polarities. Any of you who have been in Chennai know how hot it can get. I lived there for ten years and know that the temperature goes from hot to hotter to hottest (the three seasons that we jokingly talk about). Then you go to a place like Chicago, called the windy city, and we were walking down an avenue with two tall buildings on either side and you had the wind come through. That wind can go through every bit of clothing that you have.
The wind and the sun! Yet, when we look at ourselves, we don't want the extremes. We want a middle balance, where we get the cold breeze coming upon us and we get the sunlight as well. I think that is the middle ground that we ought to be talking about even in our workplaces, not whether we need to be kind or soft people, or to be hard, tough as nails kind of people. But we need to acknowledge that there is a middle ground that we can take.
Interestingly, a survey that was done with Britain's workers said that they valued compassion and recognition over big salaries. Workers today are looking at workplaces and saying, "I need to have a comfortable workplace. It's not really about how much money I take home. But it's the environment that I work in as well, that is important.
Olivia Hill who is head HR at AAT says, "It just goes to show that there's more to work than money, as the common perception can be. People don't want stress in their lives and a great way to stay stress-free is to work in an environment that you find comfortable, with people you like and with a manageable workload.
But as you think about being somebody who is known as nice, is it still possible to get the work done, to get people to respond correctly and well to you.
Jill Geisler, in an article "What Great Bosses Know About The Seven Deadly Sins Of The Too-Nice Boss" says, "There are seven things you need to be aware of, if that's where you are, a nice person etc.
1. Your ideas get overshadowed by others in the organization who are more assertive about making their cases. This is a good checklist. Are your ideas getting overshadowed by others?
2. Workplace problems fester as you postpone dealing with them. Are you refusing to confront conflicts and therefore problems fester.
3. Mediocrity flourishes as you hold back from challenging underperformers. You don't confront people; you don't move them on to work harder, to produce excellent things.
4. Needed change is delayed as you hesitate to nudge people out of their comfort zones.
5. You do other peoples' work when they complain about schedules, shifts or duties.
6. Bullies and bigmouths win.
7. You can lose respect – from your bosses, other managers, your staff – or all of them.
As you look at this, if you begin to recognize some things that are part of your make-up, you realize that you have moved to far into the pendulum of being too nice and you need to find some kind of a middle ground that will help make it better. It's not an either/or situation; it is a both/and situation where we bring in both aspects and say, "While we can be nice and compassionate about some things, we will not compromise on other things. I think that's the balance that we need to have.
You may be listening to the call and thinking that you work for somebody who is either too soft or too nice or too hard, and that's not a good environment. I was reading this article by Srikumar Rao, the author of 'Happiness At Work'. He says, "The biggest obstacle to happiness is simply your belief that you're the prisoner of circumstance, powerless before the things that happen to you. We create our own experience." You can go to the link where he talks about ten things that you can do, very practical things, to help create your own experience. It's both/and and not either/or situation.
In our Holy Scriptures, there's a passage where Jesus is sitting outside and people come, bringing a woman who has been caught in adultery. They say, "The law says to stone her. What do you say?" they are really trying to see whether Jesus will compromise on the law because of compassion. That's always the issue – whether we'll get soft and let the things that ought to stand get thrown by the wayside. Jesus handled this so well. He said, "The one person here who has not done anything wrong can go ahead and throw the first stone." Slowly they begin to walk away. Then he looks at the woman and says, "Is there nobody here who has condemned you?" The woman says, "Nobody." He replies, "Neither do I condemn you. But go and sin no more." He delineates between the person and the act that was wrong.
I think that's what we need to do even in our workplaces. The actions that people do shouldn't determine how we treat them as people. But we deal with the action because that has a bearing on all the processes within the company. We don't bring down the person. Not an either/or situation; it's a both/and situation.
I want to throw that out as a challenge to you. Just look at yourself if you are leading a group of people, then ask the question whether you need to make some changes. Or if you are working in an environment that you are not happy about, look at it and say, "Maybe I can change it? Maybe I can create my own environment." My prayer is that God would help you to do what you need to do.
Let me pray with you. Almighty God. Bless each person on this call. Lord, give us wisdom for the day, to be able to know how to act in our situations, how to deal with people and how to deal with our own environments and make the changes in our own attitudes that will help us to be productive in our workplaces and be stress-free. We ask this in Jesus' precious name. Amen.
• Emma Seppälä, "The Hard Data on Being a Nice Boss." https://hbr.org/2014/11/the-hard-data-on-being-a-nice-boss
• "Britain's workers value companionship and recognition over a big salary." https://www.aat.org.uk/about-aat/press-releases/britains-workers-value-companionship-recognition-over-big-salary
• Srikumar Rao, "Happiness at Work." http://www.forbes.com/pictures/efkk45efii/10-steps-to-happiness-at-work/
• Jill Geisler, "The Seven Deadly Sins of the Too-Nice-Boss." http://www.poynter.org/how-tos/leadership-management/what-great-bosses-know/125251/what-great-bosses-know-about-the-7-deadly-sins-of-the-too-nice-boss/
• Lesson from Jesus, John 8:11-21
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