Maybe You'll Get Ahead by Being Nicer at Work

being nice. Becca. What's what's it like to be nice? I'm so nice? I can't. You're medium nice. Thank you. That's the right amount of nice. I think. I think that's good nice. Well, the world is getting meaner though, according to researchers, or at least the workplaces. There have been a lot of studies showing that workplaces are becoming morcalus. People are meeting to each other, people are stressed out,

bole don't have any friends at work? What do we think? Yeah, I mean, you have some stats that you gave me five about half of Americans said they had a close friend at work. This is so sad. Then by two thousand four, this was true for only thirty percent of people. Do you think you have a close friend at work? You can't say me. I Oh, I usually take away close friendships from every like one or two close friendships

from every job I've had. I mean, people come and go, so then you go through lulls where you know you don't have like a real homie at work. But that's a hard time. Yeah, So I think I'm in kind of like maybe one of those transitional periods now. But every job I've had, I've I have one token friend at least say that same. I feel that way too. When I read that stat I was surprised. But most

people I know seem to have pretty good working relationships. Yeah, but I wonder if this vibe of workplace is just being meaner in general. Like I wonder if there really is a shift over time that's real, or whether it's just the way we perceive work now that work is so different from what it used to be. Yeah, And some of the articles I've read about lamenting the demise of happiness at work, it seems the metrics they're using

are kind of outdated or unrelatable to me. One of the statistics was that people don't go on vacation with their coworkers anymore. That seems like a really high bar. Yeah right, I don't know. I go on vacation like with my family. That's pretty much it. I don't know. You could see why you wouldn't want to spend your vacation with your coworkers. Are also logistically it's difficult, you know, if you're working in a smaller office, can't take off

at the same time as everybody you work with. I have had really sad jobs where the sort of office environment was so negative or I hate to use this word, but toxic, that even though there were plenty of people I really liked at work, I would avoid any work related event outside of work, like I would avoid an after work happy hour or somebody's birthday party or something, because it was like traumatic for me to be around the people that reminded me of what it was like

to be in the office. And also it often devolved into just a complaint session about work. So maybe that's the reality for more people, I think. I guess the other thing that we've talked about is how connected people are in the office now. I think that your office life and your real life used to be fairly different

zones that were kept very separate and distinct. And now, as you've written about extensively, and you and I have talked about plenty, there are so many ways to stay connected to your colleagues, and we're expected to work longer hours and we're expected to be available to our colleagues for more of our waking hours that I think there are just more opportunities to piss people off. Yeah, I

think it goes both ways. One woman who argued that workplaces are getting miners that used as an example people checking their phones during meetings as a mean thing to do at work, which it's so normal to me that doesn't seem mean, but share that could be rude, right. But on the other side of things, I have a lot of strong relationships that have been formed over a chat and messaging, and I've talked to many people who say that they've formed good friendships that way. So I

totally disaccount those digital experiences. So I think it's important to point out, though, that being nice at work means something different for men and women. Women are often criticized for being too nice to ingratiating like tick saying sorry. For example, we're always hearing about women apologizing too much. We say sorry for things we're not even really sorry for things we didn't do wrong. It's gotten to the

point where it's like the subject of a joke. This is a clip from the television show Inside Amy Schumer that shows the extreme example of what happens when you say sorry too much. Today's panelists are the top innovators in their respective fields. Dr Amy Schmer is one of the lead scientists behind prenatal neural peptides and their effects on memory and learning. Yes, that's correct. Sorry. Professor's Sasha Barron is a Nobel Prize winner in chemistry. Sasha, let's

start with you. I invented a solar paneled water filtration system. Sorry. Um, that's portable and lightweights. Yeah. Sorry, thanks, that'd be great. But if you can't, no worries. Sorry, is this coffee a coffee? You can get some water and this is my pahlon. But any of you ladies like a coffee? I'm sorry, I don't want to go to waste. Yes, I'll take it, Thank you? Nice? Sorry, Sorry, oh god, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I've ruined everything, all right, So

obviously women are guilty of saying sorry. To the point of personal injury, yeah, to death. Yeah. And so this has been the upshot from this popular realization that women are more inclined to say sorry than men, that they

should just do it less. So they should stop apologizing for being themselves or stop apologizing for things that they didn't do wrong, right, like in the clip, how they're apologizing for things that they have no need to apologize for us, So we shouldn't apologize at all, right, And so you're you're kind of disenfranchising yourself by doing that. And I love this clip, and I think it's funny and it highlights a lot of things about like the

way women and men interact. But I I feel like we are also just perpetuating this idea that women are doing something wrong by saying sorry. You know. Lena Dunham wrote an essay in her Lenny Letter newsletter about how she was done saying sorry and she was going to do less of it. And my feeling is there are plenty of moments when it's actually appropriate to say sorry, and just because women say sorry perhaps more than men,

doesn't necessarily mean they're doing it too much. Maybe men aren't saying sorry enough, which I think maybe as another takeaway from that Amy Schumert clip is the man on stage just doing nothing and getting out of a lot. I've been looking great, which is kind of like in the workplace. There are plenty of moments in my professional life where men have not said sorry or have not kind of couched a request with an apology, and I've

noticed it and kind of paganism polite. But at the same time, I understand the instinct as a woman to want to edit yourself so that you're not doing and saying right woman ish things that right to take away your power right. And and there's a popular chrome extension that does just that, that will edit your emails for phrasing like I'm sorry, and just so that your emails are more clear and frankly more masculine and so that

you'll get ahead in the workplace. And doesn't it throw up like little pop ups that say, man, explain to you why you're why your language is hurting you, like people tend to. Yeah, I mean it was a woman to be care but I do think that, yeah, is this a solution to just tell women to act more like men, which is a popular way that women are told that they couldn't get ahead negotiate like a man.

It's like a man, be like a man. But it's this sort of Cheryl Sandberg lean In philosophy of if you just strip away all these behaviors that are associated with women that are holding women back, then you won't have any more obstacles in your way to getting ahead in the workplace. And I think that it's clear that that's not the case because what tends to happen is any behavior that's associated with women, it's wrong because women

do more of it. Right, So if you stop saying sorry and you're too aggressive, then you're perceived in a bad way. Also, I when I was first starting out in my first job, I had a male boss pulled me aside and tell me I was too sour and he told me that I should be, you know, more up and cheerful. And I did that, and I think he was right. It worked. But how infuriating is that? I mean, it's hard to imagine a man being told that. But also there's always some kernel of good advice in there,

like it probably is valuable too. I think I was to take some of the edge off of your For anyone to take some of the edge off of their attitude if they have one, which is exactly what we're gonna be talking about with our guests today. Paul Ford is a writer essayist. He is the co founder of Postlight and co host of the podcast Track Changes, and a little while back, he wrote an essay for Medium on what it means to be a polite person. Welcome, Paul,

Thank you for having me. So let's jump right into your philosophy of niceness. What inspired you to write this essay and kind of explain to people how you get other people to warm to you. So I was, for a brief fall a paid writer for Medium, and I had turned forty the night before, and I woke up and I was just kind of like, what have I done? Not in any specific thing. I hadn't really done anything.

I just felt really like exhausted about being forty. And I had this like sudden wave where I was like, you know, I should write that politeness thing. And it was by far one of the most successful and and

and like well read things I've ever written. But it sort of came out of me in about fifteen minutes, and the basic gest of the piece was that politeness is kind of a power tool in life, and you can get very very far by actually just sort of being very polite and respectful, and that if more people could just chill out and do that, it might be good for them and good for all of us together. I imagine it was so successful because we're used to

hearing the opposite. Yeah, and the opposite is is really easy, right, Like you can tell people you have to be angrier and more assertive, and nobody is really into the idea of like starched collars and and a slight sense of reserve. So you opened the essay with a story from work in which a coworker of your as a woman, calls you a kiss us and I'm just wondering what you could have done? What you did that was so polite

that she was turned off by it. Oh, I was in a lot of meetings at big publishing companies, and she was coming from the world of technology. She was very West Coast, very hard driving, and so I'd be in those means and I'd be sort of like, Okay, well, then tell me what happened, and I was. I just had sort of infinite indulgence for what she saw as just the raw, incredible stupidity of the people across the table, And I didn't see it as stupidity. I just saw them.

You know, I've been a technologist, but I've also worked in publishing for many, many years, and what I've come to learn is that the things that you often interpret as stupidity or bureaucracy or frustration have very good reasons. On the other side. There's actually a logic to them. And if you attack people, they get very defensive and they say, Okay, this person is a monster. Let's get

them out of here as quickly as possible. But if you to sit there and you're like, okay, how you know, sort of like how did it feel to you when they put that website up and it started to disrupt your career? If you ask those questions, people are actually well bad, right. They're like, well, they didn't understand the whole deal with consumer services, and you're like, oh my god, no they didn't. And then you get them to to play that out. You actually you just acknowledge that their

challenges are real. Even though the larger culture goes get with the program, get disrupted, learn new skills, acknowledge that that's really hard for people and often they'll just come right around to your side. And so she's read that as insincerity. Yeah, because she was like, this is taking forever. You know, culture is changing. We gotta get in there. But then she came around and said, but it actually

helped you get things done. It was a strategy. And you write that is how an impolite person gives a compliment, which I gladly accepted. That's right now. I mean it's it's look, my method tends to be if you just let the water drip over the stone and then slowly, like a pattern emerges, you can see you can see the stone get worn away. A lot of people bring out a hammer. There's times when you do bring out

the hammer, no matter what. That's life. But for the most part, I don't necessarily feel that I have to push people like off a cliff into the future in order to get my job done. You sound very tolerant. I think is a word that I might use. I hope other people would see me that way. I hope

people would would think I was a pretty good listener. Well, one thing you say, you spend a lot of time on in the essays talking about your ability to sort of bring people out in any circumstance that you meet them by when they describe what they do, you say you have a phrase with the phrase right, so it's it's my party trick. And um, when people tell you what they do, you can just go that sounds hard

and they go, oh, you have no idea, fantastic. And I were talking about this before you came about how if we said that it would sound so sarcastic and dismissive, like, oh, that sounds really hard. It seems like you could definitely say it wrong. It's true. Now you just I mean, we can, we can play it out. What do you what do you guys do where podcasts? Oh? You know, my god, that must be an unbelievable amount of work, right, do you have to like book all the guests yourself? Yeah,

we do, and it's it's really hard. So you're doing all that, but you're also trying to put the show together. You're like on Google calendar. Yeah, well this does feel so good, Oh my god, but like, how do you even have to How do you have time to make such a great show? So these are always that you

describe of kind of connecting with people. And one thing I thought was interesting about your essay is that it's you frame it as being about politeness, but it's a little bit more about being warm, because I think that you are, you know, being a kind of warm, giving person, because I think you can be perceived as polite and still not be somebody that other people are dying to keep talking to, or someone you talk about in the essay how the woman came around to you because you've

got stuff done. M One thing I want to make sure we touch on is because you don't really mention the aspect of gender anywhere in your essay, but I do think that there is a difference between what it means for a man to be a good listener, which is kind of what you describe a lot of in the essay, is just being good at listening and being genuinely interested in what people are saying. I feel like there's a there's more of an expectation of women that

they'll already be doing that. So it seems almost goes back to am I allowed to participate in this culture? And women are constantly doing that in the workplace right, And maybe that's why we are perceived as the people always saying sorry or the people being extra ingratiating and polite, because again, we're putting up this buffer to prove that we can be here, which I think is I think that's completely real. I think that's a system that women.

Women have all these crazy like cultural technologies that they have to use in order to get through a day. This is like a little too foundational, but it's that was going to end up being a bad pun. But like, makeup is like a weapon, right, Like it's like, Okay, I can actually modify my appearance so that I feel more comfortable and in control of the situation and I won't feel as vulnerable as I go through the day.

Men the vast majority of men just don't have that consideration or don't don't tend to feel that way, and so right like that becomes part of the system. So look, I mean politeness is kind of that. It's like a system, it's a technology. It's a way for you to go in the room and just sort of be like, okay, even if this guy, And especially because I think in particular, women are thrown in positions where their safety is kind of blurry at the edges, right, So it's like, oh,

I'm going to be sexually harassed. Well, if I am super polite with this complete asked, that is just like saying weird stuff about my body or or like trying to touch me or suggesting that I need to sleep with him in order to advance my career. Like the women who, especially like a couple of generations prior, were either really really bad ass or they just like went stone faced and we're like, Okay, I don't think that we've understood ourselves. You know, I don't think I understood

you very clearly. I'm going to get back to you, like and then they would just get out of the room. Those are like weird, bad, dangerous situations, and politeness was a weapon because you didn't have recourse in other ways, So I see it as very It was empowering in

places where people didn't have a lot of power. Do you feel like the same type of polite person now as the guy who co runs the company as you did as a person who was just sort of going through the world with a more regular job, Like, would everybody in your company perceive you as polite in the same way? Right, Because a lot of the thing about being mean is usually put on people who are leaders, and like leaders have to make the hard choices and

be tough to get ahead. When you have people's careers under your direct control, you have to give more clear feedback than you need to give out a party. And when someone is leave in the company for whatever reason, there's all sorts of like, there's all sorts of stuff if that gets outside of this zone that is real, that relates to people's material well being, and I'm responsible for that, And so it shifts from polite, which I think actually remains the baseline. Politeness is one thing, like

active respect is another. Uh, that to me is the because I can't actually always be polite. If I have to tell you what you're doing that I need you to change your fix. I mean, it sounds to me like you're still even in situations where you have to be direct and criticize people, you're still doing it in a polite way, Like you're not abandoning those principles. You're just maybe it's not as warm. It can't be right, like that kind of communication doesn't scale out that way.

You just can't have I can't be a worm mentoring caretaker to forty plus people in a growing organization. But obviously you can still be played, so I can be respectful and I can try to make sure that the culture is set up so that they you know, part of it too is just like is this a good place where parents can work? Is this a good place where you know? Do people feel like their careers are safe here? And I feel if we kind of take care of that, that's that's a greater form of respect

than just like making good, amiable chit chat in the elevator. Well, PAULA Ford, thank you so much for coming in and talking to us. Thank you as a real, real privilege. Thank you, Okay, Becca, So where do we stand on being mean versus being nice? Which is the better career strategy? I think Paul made a really good point that he even modifies his niceness as a boss. So I think it's all pretty situational, like kind of use your best judgment, right, and it depends on your audience or whom you know

you're talking to. Like he even admits, as a se proclaimed polite person who is very kind to most people in his life, that there are moments where he just can't wear that hat right. And I think it's important to not be fake nice, which Paul is not. I think some people wouldn't even call him polite. He's empathetic and understanding and listening, which are all really important characteristic

ristics in the workplace. Right, people can see right through fake politeness, and sometimes politeness is actually passive aggression, especially when you're you're using it just to put a nice bow on something crappy that you're saying to somebody. Nobody likes that. Nope, before we go, I'd like to introduce half bake takes. Half fake takes. Half bag takes are issues that we care about very deeply, but almost nobody else does. Therefore we would never write an article about them.

But we're going to use this podcast for a platform. Here's my half bag take for the day. It's called pizza is a human right. Okay, Um, you can't get behind that already. It's customary and offices to order in pizza as a way to appease people who don't want to be sitting through a long lunch meeting, or to reward people for working late or working on the weekends

or something like that. Pizza in the office is supposed to be this great treat, right, but what always happens is the pizza gets piled up in a conference room, and everybody who sees the people eating the pizza salivates, and there isn't enough pizza for everyone. My philosophy is, if you order pizza, pizza is cheap enough and easy enough to obtain in most cities, that you should order enough for everybody who might see or smell that pizza.

I don't disagree with your half big take, but I think the calculation is a little hard, Like how many people do you know? This is where the problem arises, because if you have like fifteen people in your meeting and then you order, you know, a dozen large pies, you always end up with a little too much. So it's just enough for a few lucky, early desperate scavengers to jump in and get that cold pizza at the end. And by the way, wherever you put pizza after a meeting,

it will all eventually get eaten. Yeah, because also, cold pizzas great, cold pizzas delicious. Do you have a half big take? Okay? So my cause, my office cause is the case for keeping my desk as messy as I want, and the cases that you're lazy and you don't want to clean it up. No, I'm busy doing my job. So I have a notoriously messy desk at the office. There are poh, it's been photographed. There's stacks of books like papers all over it. There's there tends to be well,

there's sometimes perishables. I would say, there's like at the end of the day, a stack of cups and bowls and spins and forks and a salad thing there for the salad greens. So it gets very messy and people make fun of me, which is mean, But you know what, it doesn't bother me. I get my work done. Where am I supposed to put the books? Do you want me to throw things out and be wasteful? We have tables where you can put books you don't want. I

don't know where those are. I know there's a lot of research out there, and I'm sure I could find it about how having a messy desk inspires creativity because I'm using my brain for something besides cleaning up my desk. Well, let me have my messy desk. You tell me to clean my room, Dad, you didn't hire me to be a cleaner. Okay, I'm taking it too far, but I really do. I just I don't care about the cleanoness of my desk and you can't make me. I'm an

adult and I can have ice cream for breakfast. I think you may need to bake that take a little more wow. And this has been half big takes, half baked takes. Thanks for joining us this week on game Plan. For more workplace coverageat over to Bloomberg dot com. Find me on Twitter at at Francesca Today and I'm at Urz Greenfield and our guest this week, Paul Forward, is at f Train. See you next week, see you next week. Just want of you. You know who you are.