When I was at school, we were warned against using the word ‘nice’ - a word, we were told, which was milk-and-water, signifying the bland and the inoffensive. Being told to ‘Have a nice day’ was therefore hardly a blessing, which may explain why most English people wish you have a ‘good day’ instead. Nevertheless, niceness is a real and important phenomenon which shapes day-to-day behaviour, particularly in large organisations. The most important part of niceness is an extreme reluctance to say anything which might possibly cause offence to another person, and a corresponding fear of being the subject of complaint by another. Niceness consequently means remaining silent when people do something wrong, refusing to challenge another person’s opinions however wrongheaded they may be, and avoiding any action that might possibly be attributed to you personally.
Niceness is often confused with good manners, but they are different. The core of good manners is consideration and respect for others. This means that you take the opinions of others seriously, disagree where appropriate, but do so in a way that does not humiliate or intimidate. The difference between niceness and manners can be shown in this example. Some time in the 1990s, I was asked to give a presentation at an NHS conference in Birmingham on ageing in society. I was due to speak in the morning session after several other speakers. There were the usual rules in such matters - 15 minutes for each presentation, followed by five minutes for questions. All the speakers kept to these rules until the one before me - a woman who had recently completed a PhD. Her presentation was a description of her research, set out at length, with one tedious detail after another - all spoken in a dull flat voice. Before the talk, she had placed a sheaf of paper copies of her overheads on each seat, and the audience realised after half an hour that she was still less than half way through her intended talk. Despite this, the chairman failed to act until a member of the audience (the local political activist Dave Spilsbury), asked “Mr Chairman - when is this talk going to end? Some of us would like to hear the next speaker”. The chairman, with obvious reluctance, asked the speaker to draw her talk to a close. She droned on with no sign of concluding for another five minutes, until he finally told her to finish. There were of course no questions. It was then my turn. I spoke for ten minutes in as punchy a manner as I could manage. After that, the audience inevitably applauded with great enthusiasm.
As I let the room for lunch, I heard one woman say to another: “That man was so rude”. She meant Dave Spilsbury, not the nice and ineffective chairman, who had failed to exercise the very simple task of keeping a speaker to the allotted time and had therefore shown a lack of respect to the audience and to the next speaker. His behaviour was therefore an example of bad manners combined with niceness.
I had even worse experiences at two other NHS conferences, when the chairmen allowed the speaker before my presentation to drone on for twice their allotted time and then asked me whether I could possibly shorten my talk “because we seem to be running over”. The three ineffective chairmen at these conferences were all senior managers in the NHS, and their niceness may have been a factor in their career success. Niceness was indeed the dominant culture in NHS management and the other public sector organisations in which I have worked, and those who conform to the dominant culture tend to be the most successful.
When I worked in the NHS, one general manager (who later rose to great heights) would look concerned whenever disagreement broke out in a board meeting, and then immediately suggest that the issue should be considered by a subcommittee. This ensured that a nice atmosphere could be preserved at the meeting and that all disagreement (or difficult decisions) could be avoided. One consequence of this tendency is a preference for reacting to events rather than anticipating them. In this way, conflict can be avoided and decisions presented as fait accompli. When I was a member of the same management board, the monthly accounts at the start of the financial year showed a substantial operating deficit. I pointed this out and suggested we start planning how to re-organise services to reduce costs. But this view was dismissed, the deficit accumulated until at the very end of the financial year the general manager announced to staff that the board had reluctantly been ‘forced’ to close a ward.
A second consequence of niceness in organisations is a futile obsession with secrecy. Since criticism is to be avoided at almost all costs, all decisions are inspected for any possible embarrassment they may cause, and a major effort is put into keeping them secret. Keeping things secret is thereby given greater priority than challenging incompetence and dealing with abuse. Staff who abuse patients or clients are therefore quietly re-located instead of being dismissed. The culture of niceness among staff means a lack of respect for those in their care.
See also:The rudeness of strangers
Niceness is often confused with good manners, but they are different. The core of good manners is consideration and respect for others. This means that you take the opinions of others seriously, disagree where appropriate, but do so in a way that does not humiliate or intimidate. The difference between niceness and manners can be shown in this example. Some time in the 1990s, I was asked to give a presentation at an NHS conference in Birmingham on ageing in society. I was due to speak in the morning session after several other speakers. There were the usual rules in such matters - 15 minutes for each presentation, followed by five minutes for questions. All the speakers kept to these rules until the one before me - a woman who had recently completed a PhD. Her presentation was a description of her research, set out at length, with one tedious detail after another - all spoken in a dull flat voice. Before the talk, she had placed a sheaf of paper copies of her overheads on each seat, and the audience realised after half an hour that she was still less than half way through her intended talk. Despite this, the chairman failed to act until a member of the audience (the local political activist Dave Spilsbury), asked “Mr Chairman - when is this talk going to end? Some of us would like to hear the next speaker”. The chairman, with obvious reluctance, asked the speaker to draw her talk to a close. She droned on with no sign of concluding for another five minutes, until he finally told her to finish. There were of course no questions. It was then my turn. I spoke for ten minutes in as punchy a manner as I could manage. After that, the audience inevitably applauded with great enthusiasm.
As I let the room for lunch, I heard one woman say to another: “That man was so rude”. She meant Dave Spilsbury, not the nice and ineffective chairman, who had failed to exercise the very simple task of keeping a speaker to the allotted time and had therefore shown a lack of respect to the audience and to the next speaker. His behaviour was therefore an example of bad manners combined with niceness.
I had even worse experiences at two other NHS conferences, when the chairmen allowed the speaker before my presentation to drone on for twice their allotted time and then asked me whether I could possibly shorten my talk “because we seem to be running over”. The three ineffective chairmen at these conferences were all senior managers in the NHS, and their niceness may have been a factor in their career success. Niceness was indeed the dominant culture in NHS management and the other public sector organisations in which I have worked, and those who conform to the dominant culture tend to be the most successful.
When I worked in the NHS, one general manager (who later rose to great heights) would look concerned whenever disagreement broke out in a board meeting, and then immediately suggest that the issue should be considered by a subcommittee. This ensured that a nice atmosphere could be preserved at the meeting and that all disagreement (or difficult decisions) could be avoided. One consequence of this tendency is a preference for reacting to events rather than anticipating them. In this way, conflict can be avoided and decisions presented as fait accompli. When I was a member of the same management board, the monthly accounts at the start of the financial year showed a substantial operating deficit. I pointed this out and suggested we start planning how to re-organise services to reduce costs. But this view was dismissed, the deficit accumulated until at the very end of the financial year the general manager announced to staff that the board had reluctantly been ‘forced’ to close a ward.
A second consequence of niceness in organisations is a futile obsession with secrecy. Since criticism is to be avoided at almost all costs, all decisions are inspected for any possible embarrassment they may cause, and a major effort is put into keeping them secret. Keeping things secret is thereby given greater priority than challenging incompetence and dealing with abuse. Staff who abuse patients or clients are therefore quietly re-located instead of being dismissed. The culture of niceness among staff means a lack of respect for those in their care.
See also:The rudeness of strangers
