How To Be Kind, Not Nice | Ep 214
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What's up guys, welcome back to Build and today I want to talk about the difference between being a nice leader and being a kind leader. I want to read this tweet because this really sums up where my head's been at and what I've been thinking about recently. And the tweet is this: "Niceness is what you do to be liked. Kindness is what you do to be respected. Nice is a social standard. Kind is a moral standard." This has been very top of mind for me because I've had to make a lot of decisions recently that

don't look nice, but are kind. And it's a frame that I've had to keep for myself for a long time because honestly, it's been something that I've struggled with in business. You know, when in my first two years of business, I don't think I understood what being kind versus being nice was. And so I was really nice to people, but I wasn't kind. And being nice is keeping the peace. Being nice often avoids conflict. Being nice means we want to keep status quo.

Being nice doesn't win games. And I don't think I really understood this until my third or fourth year in business that I needed to be kind, not nice. Because nice doesn't win the game. Nice doesn't drive things forward. Nice isn't really honest. Kind is. And so what does it mean to be a nice leader, right? Nice leaders, okay, they are often driven by a desire to be liked.

So they avoid conflict, they always aim to smooth over agreements, and they aim to make everybody happy. Here's the thing. It sounds nice, except there's a hidden cost. What's the cost of being nice? The cost of being nice is that when you're too focused on being nice, you don't focus on making hard decisions. You don't focus on confronting things, and you don't focus on giving constructive feedback to people. A nice leader wants to be liked more than they want to win.

and therefore you will attract people who want to be nice more than they want to win as well. Therefore, you probably won't win as a company. Therefore, you don't attract the people who help you win as a company. The cost of being nice, it feels good short-term, it causes dysfunction long-term. You avoid conflict, you think short-term focused, and you honestly lose respect. Now, why is that?

Well, you avoid conflict because nice leaders tend to shy away from tough conversations. Okay, so they don't give sincere feedback to people because they're scared of upsetting somebody and not being nice.

And so because of that, you rob people of growth. So it's funny because oftentimes nice leaders try to avoid the hard conversations, which means by consequence, they avoid growth. They avoid growing the people beneath them and they avoid growing the company. The second piece is that being nice is short term minded, right? Because nice leaders focus on instant harmony, instant satisfaction, instant peace,

They make decisions that keep people happy today, but they don't keep people happy in the long run. So they sacrifice future performance for present day performance. The best decisions often don't feel great in the moment. The best feedback often doesn't feel great in the moment. But all of these things are necessary to grow without dysfunction. The worst piece to it, right, is that ironically, being overly nice can lose respect from your team.

Because when people see you as overly focused on constantly trying to please everybody and be nice, people see you as inauthentic and they don't trust you. They don't trust you because who trusts a leader who only focuses on being nice? I'm saying this for those of you who are listening to my podcast and you want to be a great leader and you want to build a great company. Being nice doesn't do that. Being kind does.

And so when you avoid conflict, when you focus on the short-term result, you lose respect, you don't grow your company, you don't grow your people. And so you actually are mean. Being nice often results in actually being mean in the long run because you actually sabotage your company and the people in it by being too nice. So instead of being nice, we want to be kind. This is where I focus and you'll see like I constantly weave in the word kind in how I speak. I don't use the word nice.

I say kind. In fact, for myself, I say sharp mind, kind heart, strong will. That's my mantra that I say to myself, and that's the kind of leader I wish to be. I don't want to be known as nice, but I do want to be known as kind, right? Kind is when you're authentic and you exemplify courage. Why? Because when you're kind, you communicate honestly. Kind leaders give feedback that people need to hear, not just what they want to hear.

They value being upfront, even when it's uncomfortable, because what they know is that if they're honest, it will build trust in the long term. It might not feel good today, but it builds trust long term to be honest with people. And so what they can trust is that when you tell them something good versus something bad, at least they know you're being fucking honest. They know you're not avoiding things. They know that you're trying your best to make them better by being honest, even though it's a short-term cost to you. It takes time, it takes attention, it takes effort.

The second is that kind leaders care about their teams, but they do not compromise their values or their mission for the sake of being liked. They keep boundaries with their likeness, with their kindness. They realize that they can care about their teams, but not at the sake of losing. Because here's the thing, if you prioritize being liked and being nice over winning and caring about people and making people better,

then ultimately you're not actually nice. I think the nicest people, quote nice, are actually the people who seem harsh, who seem direct, who seem sometimes a little dry. Now, why is that? Because they're nice enough, they care enough about people to do the hard shit. And this is a shift that I had to make for myself many years ago because I realized that I was not

getting in there, doing the hard shit in the beginning of growing my first business because I was too concerned with being nice and being liked. And it's taken me years to flip that and to understand that sometimes not being nice is a good thing. Being kind is what I aim to do. Kindness is about investing in the long-term success of your team and how you do that by helping people grow. And you help people grow by giving them feedback. And you give them feedback when you push them out of their comfort zone.

And so being kind isn't comfortable. Being kind is actually uncomfortable because you're pushing people to be better. You're pushing yourself to be better and ultimately the organization by prioritizing kindness. Okay, so let's like look at some real examples of how this shows up. Okay, a nice leader might avoid telling an employee that their performance is slipping because they're like, oh, I don't want to hurt their feelings, right? Oh, I don't want to make them feel bad. Oh, I don't want them to be upset today.

But a kind leader would sit down with the person, share the honest feedback, and then offer support to help them improve. It's like we're not on opposite sides of the table. We sit on the same side of the table. I'm here to give you feedback and to help you improve on the feedback I just gave you. I think a lot of the times people who are nice, they'd miss out on improving their teammates because they feel like providing feedback is bad. And it means that you're on opposite sides of the table. It means it's you against them.

No. Feedback is what you do to people you love. Feedback is what you give people that you respect. Feedback is what you do as an investment. Feedback is an investment you make in your team and in talent. It takes time, you have to be intentional, and you have to really think through to figure out how to give effective feedback. That is what courageous, kind leaders do. Nice leaders just avoid talking to you overall. They just smile and say, "Oh, nothing's wrong.

Can any of you relate to that? I'm sure some of you can. Some of you are like, "No, I'm actually kind of harsh." Well then great. So the question is this, right? How do you go from focus on being nice to being kind? Okay. The first is that you prioritize being honest over keeping the peace. Okay. That is the first thing. You need to be honest rather than keep the peace.

The more honest you are with your team, the more that they normalize and they habituate to you being honest. And then one, they actually trust you, ironically, even if the honest news isn't the best news or the news they want to hear. And then two, it is a constructive culture that prioritizes

growing people, growing the organization rather than being liked by people and only concerned with niceties. The second thing you have to do when you transition from being nice to being kind is you have to set boundaries. Okay, you have to tell people when they are out of line. You have to tell people when they're not upholding the standards. You have to tell people when they're not aligned with the values. It's how you respect your company. It's also how you respect the rest of the people on the team.

And so boundaries in business often look like reminding people what the bar is, reminding people of our standards, reminding people of our values, and not apologizing for it. It isn't at-will employment. If they don't like the values, they don't need to stay. If they don't like the standards that you uphold them to, they don't need to stay. If they don't like the metrics that define success for their job, they don't need to take the job.

But you do need to constantly remind people and set these boundaries or set these standards for people rather than letting everybody else dictate what success looks like. That doesn't work. The third thing that you want to do when you transition from being nice to being kind is learn how to lead with empathy. Okay, what does that even mean? It means you understand where your team is coming from, but you do not let your empathy cloud your judgment.

You lead with empathy, not by empathy. You use it as a tool to guide you in how you communicate things, not a tool that allows you to avoid difficult decisions and conversations. You lead with empathy. You don't lead by empathy. This is a very clear distinction that a lot of people cannot make. Okay, I have had so many leaders in the past who are like, well, making that decision seems really not empathetic to people on this team.

I'm like, do you know what that means? Like oftentimes, again, this is prioritized being nice over being kind, which is if we just allow people's feelings to dictate our business, then we go nowhere. We don't build a good business and we don't actually show up like a good leader. And we don't provide people with a vision so big that their vision can sit inside of it. And so actually, when we are led by empathy rather than leading with empathy, we end up screwing everybody in the end.

And so it feels good in the moment to be like, "I'm just an empathetic leader." But ultimately you set people up for failure in the long run. And then the last one is that when you transition from being nice to being kind, you focus on the long term, not the short term. This means that you go from prioritizing short-term comfort to prioritizing long-term function of a business. And you have to remind yourself that being uncomfortable in the short term is often why you grow in the long term.

It's consistently doing the uncomfortable thing day in and day out. And oftentimes, niceness is what we do to avoid doing the hard thing day in and day out. I, the first time, realized that nice leaders often end up ruining teams was about six years ago. And I had a leader who had built what seemed to be one of the best departments in the company. And I ended up getting a message, actually, one day from somebody on that team

And she asked if I could talk. And I was like, okay, sure. Like, seems odd that you're asking me to talk, but like, sure, I'll talk. Just because I hadn't really spoken to her much, just on the team meetings. And so we hopped on a call and she said, I need to resign. And I was like, oh my God, why do you need to resign? She was like, I ethically can't work here. And I was like, oh my God, what are we, what's going on? What do I not know? She's like, no, no, no, I don't have any work. And I was like, wait, what?

She was like, "I joined this because I really believe in this mission, this company, but I can't ethically be paid for doing nothing." And I was like, "Being paid for doing nothing?" I said, "Can you please show me? What do you mean by no work?" She's like, "Look, this week, it's Thursday. I've only responded to four emails." And I was like, "Oh, no." So I went to the leader and I said, "Hey, this is what just happened. I'm just a little confused. What is everybody doing?" And that leader was like, "Oh my gosh,

Don't worry about it. We're going to find work for her all the time. And I was like, wait, wait, wait, find work for her. She's like, yeah, her and everybody else. We're going to find it. And I was like, wait, wait, wait, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Back up. What are you talking about? And she was like, well, you know, yes, we have people on the team who I don't have. They're not fully utilized by our utilization metrics. And I said, well, what is, what does not fully utilize mean? So turns out there were eight people in the department that were answering, you know, two to three emails a week.

And I was like, holy shit. And so, you know, I said, I was like, you know, Susie, we can't just like make up work out of nowhere for people. And what about like what they want to do with their careers? What about why they joined this company? Like, it seems like we overhired. And she said, Layla, I will not work at a company that lays people off because there's no work. And I was like,

Well, fuck, I've never wanted to have a company that laid people off, but I also don't want a company of mediocrity and where we think that having no work is acceptable and where we pay people like we're a charity, where they don't have jobs. Like, what is this? And so I said, what would you do to give them work? And she's like, well, here's what we do. We build this new department. I was like, what? And it was basically fabricating work out of nowhere that didn't add any value to the company. And I said, as hard as this is, I think that we need to let these people go. We need to be honest about it. It was our mistake.

We need to try and do our best to set them up with jobs, give them really good severance, and just accept the fact they're going to hate us." And she said, "I'm not going to do that." And so she quit. It's so funny because what happened was I had to reorganize that whole department. I had to go through the process of laying people off, having the conversations, just dealing with all the aftermath, changing the culture of that department. And everyone looked at me during that time as a bad leader.

And I honestly looked at myself as a bad leader because I was like, wow, I can't believe I had to do that. That was something I never wanted to have to do. And that felt shitty. Everyone just told me how much how terrible I was the entire time. It's like I could do as much as possible when I had to let people go. But they're like, fuck, you die. So it sucked. And what I came to realize after a lot of reflection was I don't want to be a leader that is shook from those situations.

Because those are actually the situations that I have to confront to keep this team and keep this company on track to get where it needs to go, to fulfill the promises that I have made everybody on the team. And so though Susie looked like she was the kind leader, she wasn't. She actually was the mean one.

And I know that sounds crazy to say, but what did she do? She avoided the hard conversations. She avoided making the hard decisions. She avoided owning up to her mistakes. She created a culture of avoidance. And so because of that, we lowered the bar. We created a culture of mediocrity. And then I had to go in and be the quote bad guy because I was doing the right thing. I was doing the thing that was going to set us up for long-term success. And I had to accept the fact that though I did things that I fucking hated doing, and then people said I sucked.

I had to do it anyways. I had to do hard work with no reward that seemed terrible. And I had people throwing rocks at me the whole way in my own company because she had made them think that being nice was more important than being kind. And so I say this because this has been something that I have ever since that moment, whatever, six or seven years ago, I have refused to allow myself to apologize for being kind rather than nice.

because I have seen that niceness is often toxic. People use that word, right? They say toxic and they think it means outwardly mean, outwardly this, outwardly... I think that toxicity actually comes from people who prioritize being nice because what happens? What happened with her? What would have happened? She would have continued

down the road of avoiding the fact that people didn't have work, she would have continued not upholding standards. She would have created an incredibly bloated, diluted department. And then eventually people that are the top performers would start to lose trust in her. They would start to say, I don't really know if I trust her decision-making. I don't really know if she's telling me the truth. I don't really know if this department's being run that well. All because she prioritized being nice over being kind. I say this to all of you because I

I wish that in the first couple of years of my business career, I had known the difference between being nice and being kind and understood that being nice is often what degrades trust. Being nice is often what loses us the game. Being nice is often what drives mediocrity. And at the end of the day, your job as a CEO or founder is to grow the business so that everybody else within it can grow. It is to grow the business so that there's job security for everyone in it.

is to grow the business so that everyone can grow their careers. And if you don't prioritize growing the business because you're too concerned with being nice, then you ultimately fail everybody. And so I ask you to think about that and ask yourself today, what decisions are you not making because you're prioritized being nice over being kind? And with that, I hope you guys have a great rest of your week. This has just been what's super top of mind for me, probably because I am in a season

of making a lot of decisions that don't seem nice, but they are kind.