P2P: Nice Guys Don't Finish Last

The people who follow nice guys finish last.

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Each week, I receive 10-12 messages from people asking me for advice on how to deal with an ineffective boss.

When asked to describe their boss, you would fully expect them to say they are “abusive,” “unethical,” or some other horrible adjectives.

In reality, 90% of the descriptions begin with, “he’s a nice guy.”

That’s when I tell them something I have been saying for many years:

In business, when someone is first described as “nice,” it is never followed by, “and exceptional at their job.”

There is nothing worse than a nice boss

Years ago I was the Vice President of Sales for a large smart home technology provider, and I was quite happy to stay in that role.

I had taken our ARR from around $20 million to over $70 million in just a few years.

I was paid well and enjoyed the work.

Then, one day while I was visiting one of my offices in Florida, I got a call from the Chief Operating Officer.

“We need you to take over all of Customer Operations.”

I was a bit surprised. While I was never super impressed with our Customer Operations department, I had no idea a change in leadership was coming. And certainly no idea that they would ask me to take on the department.

I told him I’d need to think it over.

After all, he was asking me to take on another 300+ employees, and in functions I had never personally run such as Customer Service, Tech Support, Billing, and more.

“You don’t need to think it over. Just get on a flight back home and we’ll make the change on Monday.”

I always did like that COO. No BS.

The Nicest Leadership Team in the Business

I intended to spend the first several weeks deeply observing and learning before making any changes in the organization.

However, I didn’t really get the chance to do so.

We had issues across the board. Terrible customer satisfaction scores, terrible employee engagement scores, far too many customer cancellations, and more.

And the issue wasn’t with budget. They had overspent in every regard.

The root of their problem was poor leadership.

And that became abundantly clear when, with rare exceptions, the leadership team was always described first as “nice.”

In business, when someone is first described as “nice,” it is never followed by, “and exceptional at their job.”

In fact, when you really dig in, you’ll find that “nice” leaders are typically the worst leaders.

And, because of that, “nice guys” don’t finish last — the people who follow nice guys finish last — right behind the nice guy.

In this case, just to name a few issues:

• Several management positions were unfilled, as the leadership couldn’t decide who to promote.

• Several management positions were filled by people who had relationships with the leaders, but weren’t necessarily good at management.

• The agents lacked what I thought were table stakes tools, as leadership hadn’t effectively advocated for those tools.

• Performance reviews were months late.

• Incentives were lacking and, when they did exist, were usually handled as raffles.

• Regular feedback was non-existent, with leadership using the dreaded Performance Improvement Plans essentially as final documentation before terminating an employee.

• Only metrics which looked good were circulated to C-suite leadership, leaving glaring issues under-resourced and unresolved.

The final straw was when I had a tenured, productive customer service manager ask me why annual raises were not given that year. She wasn’t complaining — she just wanted to know why.

Here’s the thing, though. In reviewing department financial documents, I knew the senior leadership of Customer Operations had all received annual salary increases, months prior.

They just hadn’t gotten around to doing the same for their people.

Enough was enough.

Because I could not see a single area where senior leadership had effectively led their departments, and because I saw clear ways in which they were harming their departments and their people, I terminated the entire senior leadership team.

And we only backfilled one position with an external hire.

For the remaining positions we promoted from within.

In short order we filled all open management positions, awarded salary increases across the board, and freed up frontline managers to do what they felt was best to delight our customers.

We then completely overhauled all aspects of the way the departments were run.

• New KPI’s chosen based on true impact to the business, aligned to the incentives of the team, and made transparent at all times.

• New coaching programs to ensure all agents were being developed on a continual basis.

• Tough conversations with employees who were consistently failing to meet expectations.

• Termination of employees who had behaved unethically, but never before been corrected.

Within 30 days of making these changes, every single critical metric was meeting expectations.

• Customer satisfaction soared

• Employee satisfaction scores soared

• Compensation per employee increased

• Careers began to be developed

• Budgets were met

So, what does this have to do with being nice? Can’t you be nice and still a good leader?

In my experience, no.

Well, at least not until a leader is described first as effective, honest, courageous, competent, bold, intelligent, respectfully candid, and more.

In fact, I always tell people that if I am ever first described as a “nice guy” in business, that will be the day I retire and leave the world to more effective humans.

Nice People vs. Effective Leaders

Do you want to be liked, or do you want to be effective?

In my experience …

Does this mean I advocate for rude, boorish, intimidating leaders?

No. Of course not.

And it’s a fallacy to think that the only choice we have is between being nice and being a jerk.

But you do need to decide who you are going to be as a leader.

As for me, I want to be known as an effective leader, and not a “nice guy.”

After all, personality is cheap and character is expensive.

A real leader is willing to make those expensive investments — many times at great personal risk — in order to have high character and help their people do the same.

Be a real leader.

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