Niceness isn't kindness

In modern professional culture, "nice" has become a moral badge, signalling safety, civility and good intent. However, niceness isn't the same as kindness, and treating them as equivalent quietly breaks leadership.

Kindness is a commitment to the good of the other person, even when uncomfortable in the short term. Niceness is often a commitment to comfort, avoiding tension, disappointment and being disliked.

This difference matters a lot, because leadership isn't a comfort-preservation job, instead reality-facing. If you're responsible for a group of people, you're also responsible for clarity, which often brings about temporary discomfort.

When leadership tries to be nice, it stops telling the truth

Niceness tends to create a very specific pattern:

  • Hard conversations get delayed.
  • Standards get softened into "suggestions".
  • Accountability is replaced with vague encouragement.
  • Decisions are avoided then resented.

Indeed, none of this looks evil, and it can even look compassionate, but it results in a workplace where people are forced to guess what's really expected and where the most sensitive or politically skilled people control the emotional climate.

There is brutal irony here - the attempt to be nice does not reduce harm, but redistributes harm into slower, quieter forms.

Ambiguity isn't neutral

When leaders avoid clarity, they rarely notice what replaces it, this being informal power, whisper networks, side agreements and passive resistance. People start managing perception rather than outcomes, and the team becomes a place where energy goes into reading moods and navigating uncertainty instead of doing meaningful work.

So, ambiguity creates three predictable consequences:

  • Resentment, because unspoken expectations still exist.
  • Anxiety, because people can't safely predict the rules.
  • Politics, because influence moves into the shadows.

Niceness often imagines itself as ethical, prolonged ambiguity is a form of negligence, forcing others to pay the cost of your discomfort.

Power always exists, and denying it makes it leak.

One of the most common mistakes in modern leadership language is treating power as inherently suspect, as if the ethical stance is to "not have power" or to pretend you're "just one of the team".

However, power isn't optional. The fact is that, if you influence outcomes, shape priorities, allocate attention, reward behaviour, set standards or signal what matters, you're already exercising power. The only question is whether you do it consciously and cleanly, or unconsciously and messily.

When power is denied, it leaks out sideways:

  • through favourites
  • through silence
  • through mood
  • through inconsistency
  • through the slow punishment of those who challenge the fog

In that sense, acknowledging power isn't cynical, but responsible.

Clarity isn't harshness

Many avoid clarity because they associate it with cruelty - they've seen "direct" leaders who were abrasive, and "honest" leaders who were contemptuous.

Clarity isn't a tone, but a practice. You can communicate a hard truth without humiliation, set a boundary without threat or name a pattern without moralising.

Here is a useful distinction:

  • Harshness adds unnecessary force, aiming to dominate, punish or prove superiority.
  • Clarity removes unnecessary fog, instead aiming to reduce confusion and protect the relationship from decay.

Niceness avoids discomfort by hiding truth, whereas harshness creates discomfort by adding force. Clarity creates a smaller discomfort now to prevent a larger form of harm later on.

The ethical case for early truth

If you wait too long to say what needs to be said, you change the moral shape of the conversation - what could have been a simple, timely correction becomes a longer-lasting grievance. What could have been a clean boundary is now an explosion, and what could have been a quick alignment becomes an atmosphere.

Early truth is one of the most humane leadership habits you can develop, as it respects people enough to treat them as capable of hearing reality.

It also protects you from the slow corrosion of playing a part. People who try to be nice often become quietly bitter, because they keep performing care while swallowing truth (not because the team is terrible).

How to lead without drifting into guru or tyrant

Orion Dialectic isn't interested in bravado. It's also not interested in therapy language dressed up as leadership. The aim is simple - to practise power cleanly. This means:

  • being precise and not cruel
  • being firm and not theatrical
  • being warm and not vague
  • being honest without using "honesty" as a weapon

Niceness is often a way to avoid being disliked, but ethical leadership involves being willing to be experienced accurately, even when it costs you approval.

Start with presence, and not performance

If you want to practise clarity without turning into a different person, start smaller than you think - start with presence.

Ask yourself:

  • How do I want to be experienced when I am at my best?
  • What do I do that already creates that experience?
  • What would it look like to practise one quality 10% more deliberately this week?

This is why Orion’s entry point isn't a doctrine, framework or philosophy lecture. It's a simple practice making your presence legible.

Closing thought

Leadership doesn't fail because people are unkind, but often as a result of people being afraid of clean discomfort. Niceness tries to keep everything smooth, however reality doesn't stay smooth. When leadership refuses to name reality early, reality returns later as conflict.

Choose kindness. Practise clarity and let niceness for niceness' sake go.