Being Nice vs. Being Kind

There's a big difference between being nice and being kind which isn't spoken about enough.

Being nice is avoiding hurting someone's feelings in the moment, keeping things as pleasant as possible. Being kind is being honest in the moment, even if someone's feelings are at stake, so long as the long term benefit is greater than the pain felt in the moment.

A prime example of this is a manager speaking with an underperforming worker. The nice thing is to tell them that their efforts are valued and other members of the team can help to pick up any shortcomings. The kind thing is to have an honest conversation with the worker, making them aware of their shortcomings and planning an improvement process to turn things around.

The difference is easy to see in this example, we can immediately put ourselves in the shoes of the worker and understand how bad that must feel in the moment. But, looked at in the long term the benefit of taking this route is far greater. The worker now has an opportunity, with help from their manager, to improve their working ability and start to provide more value to the company. If they don't improve, they have a prior warning of the next stage of intervention (written warnings/dismissals) and are therefore not blindsided. If the "nice" approach was taken, the team and manager could begin to resent the worker all while the worker may be living completely unaware of their situation. At which point, a conversation raised by the manager, could be seen as a blindsided attack starting with "we've noticed your performance hasn't been at our standard for the past year".

A more day to day example can be seen if you imagine having a meal with a friend before going on to a bar. After the meal, you notice that your friend has some food stuck in their teeth. If you avoid raising an embarrassing conversation and don't mention the food (being "nice") they could spend the remainder of the evening speaking with others all the while each person is thinking "someone should really tell them about that food". Alternatively, you could take the "kind" approach, share the discomfort with them in the moment and then allow them to spend the rest of the evening care free of spinach leaves hanging from their teeth as they speak.

I truly believe the world would be a greater place if people focused more on being Kind and less on being Nice.