NICE WORKS

The Plan for the Long Term

The portrait of being a success in business, or a career generally comes with a few stereotypes attached. I mean think about the TV shows across the world, Shark Tank and the UK version Dragons Den both feature people pitching their dream to a group of business people. To get more views, the sharks get ever more over the top in their responses, with Mark Cuban or Kevin O’Leary only too happy to tear into some hopeful entrepreneur.

Of course, you then have the Apprentice featuring Alan Sugar or Donald Trump screaming, “you’re fired,” at someone. Even the film Wolf of Wall Street paints a pretty full on picture of what’s needed to get ahead. A win at all costs mentality; me first, long hours, substance abuse and an early burn out.

If you’ve watched any of these shows and films, you’d be forgiven for thinking we need to go through a Navy Seals style initiation to survive at any job. There are a lot of people who pride themselves that they operate in such a hard-nosed way and it becomes their defining feature, overpowering the quality of their output. The Germans even have a saying for it, which my old boss used to say to me, “Nett ist der kleine Bruder von Scheiße,” which means, nice is the little brother of shit. They don’t mince their words. Therefore, there is no space to be nice to anyone in your career, right?

Well, maybe not. I really wasn’t expecting this, but in talking with various people for this book, I began hearing a lot of talk about how being nice is a much-needed trait. Before long, it became a pretty common theme throughout.

It was Nathan Gallagher who actually brought this up to me first. He reached out via LinkedIn and his words really struck me:

“Being kind is often more important than being right.
More often than not, being right can win the short term game. Being nice is the only way to win the long term game.”

Nathan Gallagher

Having seen him at work, it’s really true. Nathan takes on the form of an entertainer while he works to keep the energy high on set and get everyone relaxed and into a flow. If you have those great relationships, especially in the freelance economy, most people will sacrifice a little quality for someone who is nice to work with. Think about it, on average we spend eight hours a day working, that’s 40 hours a week if not more when we’re younger. Who wants to work with the most talented, but challenging person ever? Not many people. An open, friendly and helpful team player will always win out, especially if you’re building your own business. Being professional is about being kind, not cutthroat or merciless.

It wasn’t only Nathan. Nick, from Girls Are Awesome broke it down very bluntly too.

“Don’t think you’re the shit, nice is what works.”

Having that humility and vulnerability to realize the role that being nice to people can play is huge.

I suppose my skepticism around being nice came from my own biases as through my career I’ve felt that being nice was something that held me back. For a good few years in a row, whenever we have end of year reviews, I’ve had things said to me like, “everyone loves you, you are so nice to everyone. But maybe too nice, you need to be stronger.” For a few years I’d let this get me down, but the older I got the more comfortable I became with this feedback and actually now see it as a positive.

I believe everyone needs time to develop their own leadership style and while some will feel that being hard-nosed is their best route, others feel that being nice and selfless for the team will win out. I’ve remained confident in this approach over my career because of a talk that I heard when I first started at Nike SB when we were lucky enough to have Howard White come talk to us. Before I continue, when this man speaks, you listen. He was the guy who signed Michael Jordan...

“When I was about 10 years old, I was walking down the street with my mother. She stopped to speak to Mr. Lee. I was busy trying to bulls-eye the ‘O’ in the stop sign with a rock. I knew I could see Mr. Lee any old time around the neighborhood, so I didn’t pay any attention to him. After we passed Mr. Lee, my mother stopped me and said something that has stuck with me from that day until now. She said, ‘You let that be the last time you ever walk by somebody and not open up your mouth to speak, because even a dog can wag its tail when it passes you on the street.”

Even a dog can wag its tail. That has stuck with me ever since too.

I’m still so thankful for Mel Strong for bringing him to speak to us. When i think of the greatest leaders I ever had I put her firmly in this bracket of being nice, kind and caring.

Being nice has so many benefits. Besides just feeling better, it can also open doors for you. The old saying, ‘it’s not what you know, it’s who you know’ is where this comes in. So many of the best people I know are those with a wide and diverse con- tacts list. Who no matter what you’re trying to do, they know someone who can help. It’s not only in terms of a career where being nice and working together can be a positive thing, it’s on a much wider scale as the way ahead for a better society is people helping each other, which doesn’t necessarily mean all the best, most high performing people in one place working on the same task.

There is a wonderful Ted talk I urge you to look up, as it’s great for thinking through teams and how groups should work together. It was recommended to me by one of the smartest people I ever had the pleasure to work alongside, Iris Yen. The talk is called Super Chickens by Margaret Heffernan. She explains in very illuminating terms about experiments carried out across two chicken coops. In one, you had the chickens who laid the most eggs and so were identified as the ‘super chickens.’ You would imagine that a highly productive group of chickens would lead to a very healthy and successful community. However, the results were astounding.

This group of super chickens ended up pecking each other to death as they were all continuously trying to be better than the next. Meanwhile, the group of chickens with varying degrees of output were a very successful, long term, viable proposition as a community. They all did their part, but there wasn’t the desire to outdo each other. I think that goes back to Nathan Gallagher’s point of being kind is better than being right. Nathan would be a great chicken, but perhaps not a super chicken.

As we look at the wider implications of being nice outside of the work/school/college environ- ment the importance of being nice is only exacerbated. With the advent of social media and an increased number of contacts, quality personal relationships have suffered along the way. Combine that with how the negative news cycle is damaging our mental state, we have to spend our time wisely, choosing our social interactions carefully, scrutinizing our news sources even deeper.

It’s also not only being nice to the people we know. With more and more mental health issues arising over the last decades I’d say it’s imperative we all pick our heads up from our screens and just smile. Say hi to someone. Next time you’re in a coffee shop strike up a conversation with the barista or even better, another customer – just ask them how their day is. Being nice to them could be the difference between that person having a great day, or just a regular old day. We never really know the impact of our actions on others, so where possible, trying to be nice and help each other out can have so many positive benefits for us personally, but also as a community.

This is an excerpt from the book “The Anti Blueprint Project” containing the stories of 50 inspirational people exploring unconventional routes to happiness and success. You can order below: