Nice Finishes First

Posted November 17, 2006

A commentary by Amanda Stiver

"You can be nice or you can be rich, powerful and successful." Niceness has long been considered a sign of weakness in the popular culture. Like a fork in the road, you have to choose to be nice—or not. Protest, revolution and getting ahead of others exemplify the not-so-niceness of the past several centuries. If you have to be nice, then you can't be tough, and no one listens to nice people—or so the prevailing wisdom went.

This theory is being thrown out on its ear by the recent publication of a business advice book that commends the virtue of niceness in business success. ThePower of Nice: How to Conquer the Business World With Kindness by Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval explains the policy of nice that allowed the authors to successfully build a multimillion dollar advertising agency in the last few years. Their notions of niceness include: smiling more, paying attention, cooperating, listening well, collaborating and being willing to share credit (Andrea Sachs, "Nice Girls Get Even," Time, Nov. 6, 2006).

"Nice," like "interesting," is often overused. Explore a dictionary and you can get the details about nice. Random House Webster's Dictionary lists some fairly straightforward adjectives under nice: pleasant, agreeable, amiable and kind. However, another definition sheds light on the mechanics of nice: "requiring or displaying great skill, tact, or precision." Niceness gets a bad reputation since people assume it is an unstudied skill. In reality, it takes a lot of coordination and wisdom to not only seem nice, but in thought, word and action to be nice.

God in His premier work, the Bible, cornered the market on nice, since—well, since forever. God invented nice. He outlined the ultimate in kindness when He created the Ten Commandments that govern and define an emotionally and spiritually happy life. To better understand the great Ten, request or download the free booklet The Ten Commandments. The familiar Golden Rule summarizes the last six commandments: do to others what you would have them do to you (paraphrase of Matthew 7:12).

Niceness shows respect for others. To practice the skill of niceness, we need to pay attention to those around us and learn how to be tactful in delicate situations. Sometimes nice is misconstrued as false and dishonest, especially when you have to be nice when you don't feel like it. But this is when the Golden Rule comes in. Remember, we want others to treat us well, even on their bad days. Being mean and unkind isn't more genuine; it's just mean and unkind.

Be courageous, think vertically. Try niceness today—even in the face of not-so-nice people. It is gradually and ultimately contagious to those who benefit from its effects. Nice finishes first! VT