The Paradox of Niceness: When Good Intentions Lead to a Toxic Workplace
Do you know the impact you have as a leader?
Everyone wants a supportive and empathetic leader, right? One who listens, with integrity and flexibility. Who supports your ambitions and wants to avoid overloading the team. Wants everyone to work at their best.
But is your good nature and supportive leadership style actually causing more problems?
Is the seemingly benevolent quality of niceness giving rise to a counterintuitive phenomenon: toxic leadership?
The Benefits of Supportive Leadership
Done right, an empathetic and understanding leader can create harmonious work environments, foster strong team dynamics, and encourage open communication. Employees under the leadership of a good egg tend to feel valued, listened to, and motivated to contribute their best efforts.
A good leader creates loyalty in the team, which leads to greater psychological safety. These teams stay together, work better together, are more innovative and are more productive.
However, it’s a common misconception, as we move into a more supportive phase globally in our workplaces, that empathetic leadership, being ‘nice’, is always the right way to go.
Great leadership is a balance of support and challenge. Knowing what an individual, or the team wants, and what they actually need needs, – and being able to provide the right level of both support and challenge to bring out the best in people.
What are the downsides of being a Good Egg?
When niceness is taken to the extreme, it can morph into a breeding ground for toxic leadership.
When leaders and managers aren’t able to bring constructive challenge, it can lead to a culture of mistrust. Not addressing issues properly, or at the right time can lead to managers hinting at challenge, rather than being open and honest.
Here are some ways in which this can happen:
Avoidance of Tough Decisions: Nice leaders often find it difficult to make difficult decisions that might upset others. This can lead to procrastination, lack of accountability, and a reluctance to address conflicts. In the long run, these behaviours undermine the leader's effectiveness and hinder the growth of the team.
Lack of Constructive Feedback: A leader may shy away from giving honest feedback, fearing that it could harm relationships. Without constructive criticism, employees are denied the opportunity to improve and develop professionally, resulting in stagnation and underperformance.
Undermining Authority: When leaders are overly concerned with being liked, they might compromise their own authority to maintain their image as ‘being the good guy / girl’ This can lead to confusion among team members about expectations, roles, and responsibilities, ultimately hindering the achievement of goals.
Favouritism and Inequality: Nice leaders may inadvertently show preferential treatment to those they feel a personal connection with, creating a perception of unfairness and inequality within the team. This can breed resentment and disrupt team cohesion.
Lack of Innovation: Keeping the apple cart stable is easier for ‘good egg’ leaders and they avoid conflict and challenging the status quo at all costs. This stifles creativity and prevents the exploration of new ideas, which are crucial for organizational growth.
Failure to Address Toxic Behaviour: Paradoxically, overly nice leaders might ignore or downplay toxic behaviour within the team, as they are reluctant to confront it directly. This can allow negative attitudes to fester and spread, ultimately poisoning the work environment.
How Do I Know If It’s Toxic In My Team?
It’s difficult to see the impact we have as leaders, without knowing the symptoms. If these are present in your team, it’s time to take action.
1. Siloed Working – this shows the team are keeping their head down, don’t trust each other and are trying to protect their position.
2. Staff Turnover – when you see that many of the middle tier of the team are leaving – it’s time to take note. This group usually have more risk to leaving, if they have mortgages and a family, they will only rock the boat if it’s bad, unlike younger team members.
3. Micromanagement – if you find yourself having to step in more and more, or you spot your managers doing the same, it’s a sign. Ask yourself why you feel the need to step in. Do you want to make sure your team aren’t overloaded? Or don’t you think they will deliver? What opportunities for growth is your micromanagement stopping?
4. Unmotivated or Underperforming Staff – If your team are lacking engagement, don’t speak up in meetings, or producing low-value work, this is one of the first signs that things aren’t good. If they don’t think you care about the quality of work, or have grown to mistrust your lack of feedback, they will disengage, costing more than a drop in productivity. Morale suffers, customer service scores drop and this will directly impact the bottom line.
5. Gossip, Mistrust and Drama – Are the hushed conversations by the coffee machine increasing? Do you spend a lot of your time resolving personal difficulties amongst the team? Failure to challenge problems head on is infectious and your team will be picking up on it
6. Unproductive Meetings – do your meetings go on for ever, and you wonder what the output was? When there is a lack of constructive critique in a team culture, over-collaboration can be a big issue, which results in wasted time, effort and low quality output.
What Can I Do To Fix Toxicity in My Team?
The key to effective leadership lies in striking a balance between support and challenge.
When the balance is met, we call this ‘Liberating Leadership’.
Noone is naturally a liberating leader – we all have to work on it.
Understand Yourself First: Knowing why you lean towards protection will go a long way. Why do you struggle to have difficult conversations? What are you trying to prove? Self awareness allows for intentionality, which breeds greater impact and positive influence
Feedback Is A Gift: Leaders must recognise that making tough decisions, providing honest feedback, and upholding accountability are essential components of their role. You can still be the ‘good egg’, but rather integrating it with qualities like courage, honesty, and the ability to set boundaries.
Improve Team Communication: Modelling open and honest conversations will allow others to do the same
So having those difficult conversations and following the company vision without appeasing the troops is essential to foster a healthy work environment.
If you’d like to understand yourself and your drivers better, or you’d like to help your team to communicate better, get in touch.