I try to be a nice person. That is something important to me. And also sometimes I’m a total jerk. Sometimes I’m a jerk and I don’t even mean to be. But when I am so hung up on being nice it is harder for me to admit the jerkiness. I get defensive. I deny. I blame the person I’m being a jerk to for making me be that way. 

But also, sometimes I do things that don’t feel “nice” to the other person, but I do them because not doing them would be dishonest, or would cause more harm. Like setting a boundary. Or giving someone some difficult feedback that they need to hear. Or calling someone in for doing something harmful or oppressive or unjust. 

Ideally I can admit to myself and to others that I am not always perfectly nice, and even more, I don’t always need to be. “Nice” is a value we have learned in our culture. But sometimes it gets in the way of what is “right.” Sometimes it gets in the way of having honest dialogue. Sometimes nice isn’t even the kindest thing. How can I know when nice is what’s needed versus when it’s not actually going to be helpful?

What is a culture of niceness?

We tend to move toward niceness in our cultural norms out of a sense of propriety. Or a desire to preserve a relationship. Or sometimes a fear that we won’t be able to handle the reaction. Niceness as a norm keeps things contained and supposedly easier. So in a lot of our social contexts, we prioritize politeness and don’t say what we think if it will upset people.

On the surface, it feels pretty good when everyone is nice to each other, at least for people who are relatively comfortable with how things are. But when we equate being a good person with not upsetting people, then there isn’t space for difficult truths. There isn’t really space for equity and belonging. 

The thing is, we tend to treat it as “either or.” Either we promote niceness, or we will spiral into chaos and destruction. But there is this whole area in the middle that is actually a more generative place to be and we can build the skills to hang out there. Not nice at the expense of honesty or justice, and not mean and destructive. Honest. Truthful. Open to learning. Able to sit with discomfort. Able to set boundaries. Willing to hold each other accountable. 

Start with equity-oriented psychological safety

There are a few conditions that we need to be able to hold this balance, and the main one that I like to talk about is equitable psychological safety. To be clear, psychological safety is not about comfort. Sometimes people think that to be psychologically safe, things need to feel comfortable or not upsetting, but actually, it is about everyone being able to bring up problems, ask for what they need, and disagree without getting in trouble. People with more privilege in the world tend to be more able to find this kind of safety, so an equity-focused psychological safety often requires us to remove some of the expectations of comfort and niceness so that people who traditionally don’t get listened to can feel safe enough to bring things up (for more on equitable psychological safety, check out this blog post). 

At the root of an equitable psychological safety, everyone needs to fundamentally trust that they can be honest and that their belonging is not at stake. On the one hand, if someone keeps using the wrong pronouns for me, I need to be able to trust that if I complain and it makes people uncomfortable, that I will be listened to, that I will be protected from further harm, and that I will still belong. Equally, I need to be able to trust that if I am accused of using the wrong pronouns for someone, that I will be expected to learn about my impact, and will be held accountable to make things right again, but that I also will still belong.

Real equity requires these conversations – usually we avoid, shut it down, or escalate – but if we really want to meet our equity goals and it’s not just lip service then we need to be able to talk about what’s not going great.

Conditions for honesty

So what do we need to cultivate to be able to have honest dialogue when it comes to equity or controversial topics? I would suggest three things as a starting point. 

• We need to expand our collective capacity to speak honestly, and listen to understand. 
• We need to be able to feel uncomfortable without automatically equating that with a lack of safety, and be able to tell the difference between something being unsafe and something being just uncomfortable
• We need to be able to engage in conflict and value it as a pathway to change

To be clear – and I will come back to this a few times – more of the responsibility to create conditions for honesty lies with leaders and also with people who have more social power. The people who are owed equity also have a role to play here, but it is smaller and dependent on basic conditions for equity being met. 

Honest conversations rely on relationships

Think about the people in your life who you are most willing to be honest with. For most of us, most of those people will be ones we have some sort of relationship with. That doesn’t always mean we like them. For example, earlier in my career I had a supervisor who I didn’t always love. We had very different political views, and he sometimes said things that I found to be a bit sexist. But we had a respectful relationship for two reasons. 

The first reason was based on our roles. He was my boss, so I was automatically connected to him and had to engage with him many times a week related to our shared work. I liked the job and that meant I had a strong motivation to make things work. This is the bare minimum, but it is still a basis for a relationship. 

The second reason was that in spite of our differences, there was mutual respect, and that respect was based on honesty and trustworthiness. I knew I could tell him when I disagreed with him politically, and I often told him when he did or said something sexist. He generally received it well, and genuinely wanted to understand my perspective. We never got to a place of agreeing on politics, but I also knew that he would continue to treat me fairly and care about my growth and wellbeing as a member of his team, even though I was challenging him. 

Real trusting and authentic relationships are the ones in which we can be honest and trust that our truth will be well received. 

Of course this is not an easy thing to create. It’s really easy to go on social media and hate someone else who has a different political perspective or who says something we think is offensive. Someone we think is too “woke”, or not woke enough. And write a nasty comment or do a call out and then block them and never have to think about them again but when we are in a workplace together, that doesn’t work as well. We are invested in something together. We are in community – in relationship – even when we don’t want to be. 

A dialogue starts with listening to understand

Something that is absolutely essential for remembering the relationship is to cultivate curiosity about what is happening under the surface of a difficult conversation or an issue we are trying to address.

This is about listening to understand. It is not listening to agree, give in, or admit that we are wrong; Neither is it listening to prove a point, find fault, or build a case. At first we need to just really understand what is happening. It’s information gathering. It’s about accepting that there are different perspectives and the more we understand those perspectives, the more options we have for finding potential ways forward. 

And there is often a lot going on under the surface of a conversation. So we use our listening skills and we bring in our curiosity to wonder what might be going on under the surface. And there is always lots going on under the surface:

• How we feel about the other person and the conversation we need to have
• The stories we tell ourselves about what is happening or the other person’s motivations
• What we need on a deeper level to feel ok about the conversation or safe enough to have it
• Past experience (both positive and negative) of similar situations
• The organizational culture and what it has taught us about how people interact
• Power dynamics related to roles, responsibilities, seniority, experience, and identity
• Different identities and experiences of systemic power and/or oppression that we bring in with us or that may be playing out right now in the dynamic

And again, because of all of this stuff going on under the surface, it is especially important to practice that curious listening in situations when we have more power and have less experience in that moment of being owed equity. Instead of trying to defend or escape or excuse or feel victimized by the way someone tells us we are being racist, for example, can we try to understand the experience? Can we try to really truly understand the impact of our actions or inactions? 

(Side note: There should not be an expectation that someone will listen to understand discriminatory behaviour they experienced. In that case, there needs to be intervention, accountability, and then there might eventually be the capacity for a conversation focused on repair, depending on the level of trust in the relationship.)

But listening to understand when upset is very hard to do

Listening and observing to understand the impacts of systemic discrimination is a core part of moving the needle on equity. And it does mean sometimes we won’t like what we hear, and it won’t feel good or comfortable and that is part of equity work. It doesn’t always feel good or comfortable. 

So we also have to build our capacity to be with difficult emotions, both our own and other people’s.

This is a deeply hard thing to do, and we need to be trauma-informed and nervous system aware to understand why people have a hard time in conversations that bring up difficult emotions. 

Our brain is designed to protect us from danger, and it creates patterns based on past experience. Because of this, some of our strategies that have protected us in the past can become habits that activate even in situations that are not really that dangerous. We all have these habitual patterns or survival strategies that we learned because they have worked well for us in some situations where we needed them. And then we rely on those same strategies even when they are not as helpful. 

Imagine that someone tells me that something I said was racist. Maybe I learned at some point in my life that it is bad to be racist, and if I am seen as racist then I will be punished or even kicked out of the group. And so my nervous system raises the alarm and I go on defence. Instead of listening and learning and apologising, I armour up, and deny and maybe even attack. And it gets worse. 

I see danger and I attack the danger. Or I run from it. But what I don’t do is notice the feeling, and ask myself if it’s true, and if the reaction I am having is going to make things better or worse. 

The alternative is emotional agility

Emotional agility is the ability to experience a range of emotional states and move between them as the situation requires. In the moments when we have greater emotional agility, we have more access to a range of possibilities and choices. When we are not as agile (for example in very stressful moments),  this often looks like getting stuck in familiar patterns – reacting in similar ways even if it’s not the response that will be the most helpful in that particular situation.

So one of the most important principles of having these kinds of courageous conversations is to build our capacity to both care for ourselves and challenge ourselves. To notice when we’re feeling reactive and ask ourselves whether we’re unsafe or merely uncomfortable. This is emotional agility.

And we need emotional agility to help us talk about power

One of the things that we need to build our emotional agility around is our ability to speak openly about the role of power and systemic inequality in how we show up for each other and for these conversations. 

We need to be aware that when we humans are experiencing injustice, we don’t always have the capacity to show up and ask nicely for what we need. The feelings that come with experiences of injustice are big and often overwhelming. 

Let me give you a metaphorical example. Imagine I am on the bus wearing sandals, and it’s packed, and someone stands on my foot in their big heavy boots. Maybe the pain makes me feel a sense of urgency so I say, “Hey you’re standing on my foot!”

But maybe they are wrapped up in their own world, scrolling on their phone, or having a conversation, and they don’t hear me, and maybe they even step down a bit harder. So my foot is hurting, and I’m getting a bit panicky. Maybe I’m thinking, what is wrong with this person? They must know they are standing on my foot! So I say, “HEY! GET OFF MY FOOT!” And maybe I even push them to make them move if it’s really hurting. Maybe I even push them pretty hard. And now the person is upset with me, and they feel wronged. They think I am an angry, mean person, because I pushed them. But honestly, that felt like the only power I had to get them off my foot. 

Us humans, we push back harder when we don’t feel powerful. And in the face of systemic injustice – like racism, or sexism, or homophobia or transphobia, or economic inequality – we feel a lack of power for good reasons. 

What if we could accept and expect that sometimes people will express themselves with anger? There is a lot to be mad about right now. 

Most of the work I do around conflict and communication is in workplaces, and a lot of it involves political or ideological differences. I sometimes hear from people about how frustrating they find it when people come to work with really strong opinions about all kinds of things – the climate, housing, what is happening in the Middle East right now –  and they get mad when people disagree with them, and they don’t know how to be “professional” about how and when to raise an issue. On the other hand, some people expect that if they care about something, they should be able to care about it at work too. And if they are enraged by these things, then it is even more enraging when people tell them to leave it at home, or that they are making too big of a deal. 

These are uncomfortable conversations! They make us look at uncomfortable truths. Sometimes the thing that makes us uncomfortable is just people talking about how messed up everything is. But that is the reality that people are increasingly living in, and to pretend it isn’t often feels like indirect harm, or enabling harm.

This is where if we want to really do equity work, we have to notice the ways that we shut down honest dialogue because it comes out in ways that are uncomfortable.  

It’s ok to have boundaries and agreements about how we engage

Of course, prioritizing honesty over niceness does not mean that there can be no boundaries. Real, honest relationships can’t function without a shared understanding of how we want to treat each other, and also accountability when we sometimes don’t respect those shared understandings. 

One example of a boundary might be that while anger is to be expected, using that anger to bully people or publicly condemn them is not ok. 

Another boundary at the other end of the spectrum might be that it’s important to find ways to raise issues or name disagreement even when it’s hard, rather than resorting to gossip or subtle undermining behaviour. 

And of course, every group is different, which means these boundaries need to be figured out together.  

Which brings us back to niceness

So in the end, instead of a culture that prioritizes niceness, we are actually looking to build a culture in which people generally treat each other kindly, as a way to create enough of a sense of safety to support the resilience and necessary skills to be honest, even when that doesn’t feel good. A culture that recognizes that it’s legitimate to express anger, righteousness, and intense disagreement, while also articulating some shared limits about how this expression comes out in our actions. This is not an easy balance to find – it is more like a distant star that you use to constantly reorient than it is like a destination you will arrive at – but the closer you get, the more it is possible to have the conversations that are needed for real and meaningful change.