In this post-politically correct era, we hear it all the time - “Be Nice!” Typically what we are encouraging with this advocacy is to avoid being mean, saying things that will hurt others’ feelings, or keeping unhelpful or unwarranted opinions to ourselves. That seems like a good message, in the vein of “Why can’t we all just get along?!”

Let’s drill into this a bit, however, and see what we are actually doing. If you pay attention to the situations in which you are “being nice,” you may see that you are actually taking responsibility for and control of the emotional state of the other person, without his or her permission or even participation! The other person does not get to say what he wants, and you are not fessing up to what you are doing. The impact on the relationship between you and the other guy is enormous.

If you think about it, it is patronizing at the very least to try to predict others’ emotional responses and behaviors so that you can “manage” them. While we portray this activity (superficially) as a beneficial behavior to the other person - “I don’t want to hurt his feelings,” or “I don’t want to make him mad” - we are actually at our self-serving best! We are masking our own genuine and authentic thoughts and feelings and avoiding theirs. We construe this action to be for their comfort, but in fact it is for our own. When we engage in “being nice,” we are making a judgment that the other person can’t handle his own emotional reactions (hurt feelings) or we can’t handle them (making him angry).

Here are a couple of typical workplace examples. An employee works hard on a job but doesn’t do it very well. The project deadline is looming, so you decide that you can fix it quickly yourself. When she asks about it later, you tell her it was “fine.” Even if she never hears more than that, you have “protected” her from learning how to do the job better next time. In addition, if she felt she worked hard, she may feel slighted when she receives no praise about the work, so you probably hurt her feelings after all!

Another example is when you have a co-worker who blows up when challenged. He thinks he has finished a project, but he forgot a critical step. You and others around him are spending time trying to decide how to handle the situation without having to deal with his blow up. Discussions range from making excuses for his blow ups (“he is under a lot of stress”) to cursing the fact that you have to deal with his “affliction.” Days pass. The company has now supported hours of discussion with no action, and someone finally tells him. He blows up, once again. It passes. What a waste of time and effort for everyone!

This behavior on our part is learned. From an early age, our parents, our teachers, our pastors, our friends all teach and reinforce the idea that people getting agitated is a bad thing. We don’t like to see emotional extremes from others - distress, crying, or even hysterical happiness - so we avoid them by “being nice.” The result is that we are judging others, manipulating them, and undermining a true sense of trust between us.

We are lucky, most of us, to find a handful of people in our lives with whom we can share our full spectrum of emotional reactions and have them actually be helpful in that moment. If and when we do find this high-trust relationship, we begin to find out more about ourselves - an incredibly worthwhile endeavor.

Next time you find yourself thinking you want to avoid hurting someone’s feelings or making someone mad, imagine what it would feel like if you knew they were about to control your emotional reactions.

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