Is your team nice or kind?

In this episode, I address a prevalent cultural norm found in non-profit and faith-based organizations, where the desire to maintain a positive and polite atmosphere can sometimes hinder progress and growth. While politeness is undoubtedly important, true kindness goes beyond the surface and embraces the courage to engage in difficult conversations and address critical issues.

Watch the video to delve into the significance of shifting from nice to kind. It's only when we make this shift that we can build deeper connections and healthier teams that capably serve the organization's mission and customers even better.

• Read the video transcript

  Today's Two-Minute Tip topic was requested by a client who works for a non-profit organization.

  So this topic is about a cultural norm that often forms in non-profit organizations and faith-based organizations, other organizations as well, but I see it so frequently in non-profits and faith-based organizations. And this cultural norm that I'm talking about is a tendency to not want to create any sort of conflict, to avoid difficult conversations, avoid feedback because there's this commitment to keeping all interactions really positive and warm and polite, not a bad thing. But if we prize this polite and positive and warm over some of the hard things that need to be addressed, we start to see some negative impact.

  We see negative impact on performance within the team. We see a tendency to start to grow feelings of frustration and bitterness because we haven't addressed something that needs to be addressed. And none of this will help drive stronger performance.

  And so the way that I like to think about this is, we tend to prize or to value niceness being nice more than being kind.

  When we are valuing being nice, we do, we stay surface level and we keep everything polite and kind of positive. Kind means yes, I still approach conversations in a caring, thoughtful way, but I'm willing to step into some of the muck, some of the difficult conversations the things that aren't going well, the behaviors that aren't serving the team well. I care enough about the person that I step beyond nice and I enter into kind and have the difficult conversation.

  And so if you work in an organization that tends to value being nice more than being kind, I want to encourage you to do something about it and to start to engage in these kind conversations that address real issues.

  Now, this doesn't mean that we go and we give feedback on every single thing that's bothering us. If there's an issue, I want you to pause and think is this a matter of performance and I really need to address it? Or is it merely a matter of preference? They're just approaching something, doing something in a way that I wouldn't prefer to do it that way, but it's not really a matter of performance. If it's just a matter of preference, you may need to be able to start to just let those things go.

  But if it's a matter of performance, maybe it's a pattern that has continued, maybe it's just something that really truly needs to be addressed, I want to encourage you to step into the kind conversation of actually addressing it, because this will enable you to build deeper, stronger connections with your colleagues and drive better performance.

  Let's move past being just nice and step into genuine kindness that that enables us to wade into the difficult conversations.