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Does being nice hurt your career?

New research looks at whether niceness really impacts your success.

[Source photo: Rawpixel]

Weā€™ve all heard the saying, ā€œNice guys finish last,ā€ but is it true? WhileĀ past research tended to back up the adage, Rong Su, associate professor of management and entrepreneurship at the University of Iowa Tippie College of Business, decided toĀ retest the concept. She and her fellow researchers discovered there is a nuance to niceness that impacts your success.

ā€œThe assumption is, if youā€™re being nice, youā€™re not competitive, you do not perform well, and you do not advance in your career as much as others,ā€ says Su. ā€œWe set out to challenge this assumption.ā€

THE NUANCES OF NICENESS

Su found that there are different forms of niceness. For example, nice can refer to someone whoā€™s compliant to others and not competitive or assertive. This is a negative type of niceness, and it can harm your career progression.

ā€œThis personality trait is someone who is kind, empathetic, and always complying to the requests of others,ā€ says Su. ā€œTheyā€™re also conflict-avoidant in meetings. This type of niceness is not helpful.ā€

But niceness also can mean being socially motivated, which is having a strong desire to help others.

ā€œWe all have colleagues who are willing to help and step in when a coworker is sick,ā€ says Su. ā€œThey volunteer and want to benefit others through their work. We found having a strong prosocial motivation has benefits across the board for a lot of different types of outcomes for employees.ā€

THE BENEFITS

According to Suā€™s research, people who have a high prosocial motivation (a social science term, coined to mean the opposite of ā€œantisocialā€) are generally happier, they have high psychological well-being, and, most importantly, they have stronger job performance.

ā€œThey have stronger career success in terms of being evaluated,ā€ she says. ā€œAnd they are considered to have more leadership potential by their peers and coworkers, giving them a greater chance to advance to management positions.ā€

However, being prosocially motivated does not mean that you must be altruistic, sacrificing your own workflow or goals to help. ā€œThey donā€™t have to help at the cost of completing their own job tasks because that would cause their performance to decrease,ā€ says Su.

BUILDING PROSOCIAL TRAITS

Being prosocially motivated isnā€™t necessarily something youā€™re born with, says Su. ā€œSome people do have a stronger tendency naturally, but social motivation can be embedded in a work context with specific target beneficiaries,ā€ she says. ā€œFor example, you can be motivated to benefit clients or benefit coworkers. These types of social motivation have the strongest positive impact on someoneā€™s job performance, compared to the global level prosocial motivation where someone wants to be helpful in general.ā€

While it can be a personality tendency, Su says it also can be learned and encouraged at an organizational level. For example, companies can look for the trait when screening job candidates. Su suggests asking scenario-based questions during an interview that reveal the personā€™s values and how they see themselves fitting in at their organization. For example, ā€œTell me about a situation when a coworker needed help. What did you do, and how did you balance your own workload?ā€

Prosocial motivation can be built into a culture. ā€œIt takes a lot of like policies and systems,ā€ says Su. ā€œA company that wants to be overly competitive endorses individual achievement instead of prosocial behavior. In this case, they can reevaluate their values.ā€

Another way to build social motivation into a culture is to bake it into performance reviews, calling out times when an employee helped a coworker or customer. ā€œA lot of companies evaluate employeesā€™ productivity and performance based on individual things like how many sales calls they made,ā€ says Su. ā€œThey can also build into the evaluation someoneā€™s social behavior, such as to what extent this person contributes to the team above and beyond their individual accomplishments and contributions. Giving feedback on how to change and meet those goals is another way to encourage motivation.ā€

Suā€™s study found that gender doesnā€™t impact the positive benefits of being prosocially motivated. ā€œYou often hear stories about [how] women are expected to be prosocial, and if youā€™re prosocial people are not going to appreciate you,ā€ she says. ā€œWe found that men and women benefit equally from the trait. Men and women can leverage the positive performance benefits and the benefits for career success by being prosocial.ā€

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