Nice is Not Enough
I’m in the process of re-reading “Integrity: The Courage to Meet the Demands of Reality” by Dr. Henry Cloud. This is a great book that I highly recommend. I read it last spring and have officially put it on my annual reading list - it’s that good.
This time around I’m reading it from the eyes of my boys - especially Josiah, my 11 year old. This summer he and I will be spending time weekly going through some of the principles Cloud sets forth, as well as some other “good things to be grounded in before hitting middle school.”
In my reading this morning I was struck with a simple, but profound statement that Cloud makes. In talking about building trust through connecting with other people, he says, “Being nice is not enough.”
This is about more than being “nice.” All leadership or success literature will tell you that you have to be nice and not a jerk. People actually do research on topics like that too. They have proven that mean, antagonistic, and adversarial leaders or bosses do not build thriving cultures or people. Imagine that. Who funded that research?
The bigger questions have more to do with why the seemingly “good guys” don’t do well. Why do the “nice couples” get divorced? Why do the “loving parents” have kids that go sideways and join countercultures? Why can’t some really nice leaders capture the hearts of their people? It is sometimes because when it comes to human behavior, being nice is not enough. We have to be connected with, and that is a whole different dimension of character.
For me, at the risk of sounding self-promoting, nice comes easily. I’m a pretty mild-mannered guy that genuinely cares about people. I’m also an introvert at heart. Those two parts of me can, if I’m not careful, work against one another. I can relate to the statement, “Nice is not enough.”
As Cloud puts it: “True listening and understanding occurs only when the other person understands that you understand.” It isn’t enough to simply care, building trust requires the ability to listen to someone in a way that communicates that you care and understand.
I’ve framed that statement on my desk as a reminder to step beyond simply being nice.
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"Thin Places" are rich in Celtic tradition. They are the places in our lives where the divine and the natural worlds come so close together that we can catch a glimpse of God. For the Celtics these places were very real - places within creation where we could physically go. The Thin Places in our own lives are those moments where the space between us & the Kingdom is thin, when we are introduced to a greater glimpse of Who He is through our experiences and through the stories of others.
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Michelle shared their voice on 05.02.2009:
Thank you for posting this. It reminds of something I realized several years ago about Jesus. Jesus isn’t nice. He genuinely loves, and is passionate about all of us. But His passion keeps Him from being “nice” because nice guys don’t look at an entire people group and tell them they are whitewashed tombs. Nice doesn’t look at one of His best friends and say, “Get behind me, Satan.”
Jesus isn’t nice, so why should we be any different?