I do not recommend you bully, steamroll or coerce anyone to advance your career. In fact, some of the kindest and most genuine people I have met happen to be global leaders of large companies. Being mean did not pave their path to the top. Rather, their upward climb was a result of being great at their jobs and having the ability to earn respect.

You may be thinking, “But I am a good person and I like being nice to people.” That’s fine, but I’d like to shift the focus from winning approval through niceness and instead focus on the fact that they were respected.

Here are three ways to stop being “nice” and focus on tactics that will help not only you but benefit everyone around you.

STOP TRYING TO GET EVERYONE TO LIKE YOU

It’s important to point out the difference between kindness and niceness. Kindness grows from self-esteem and earns respect in return. Niceness comes from a desire for approval, which can result in mistreatment or being taken advantage of.

If you spend your workday wondering whether your coworkers like you or how to get them to like you, you are wasting precious time. It really doesn’t matter whether your coworkers like you. It matters that they respect you and that you have a good working relationship with them.

All too often I have seen people fixate on winning someone’s approval as opposed to focusing on their actual work. If you focus your attention on keeping your work top-notch, you will be respected by your peers whether they actually like you or not.

It is important to be respectful of your coworkers, strive to be kind, and always be helpful. If you’re focusing too much on being nice and well-liked, you will notice the opposite effect. It becomes about you, not the work you are doing or how you are treating others.

SPEAK UP IF YOU DISAGREE OR THINK DIFFERENTLY

Actors find, more often than not, that if the rehearsal process focuses too much on everyone being in agreement, trying to be “nice,” and not wanting to step on other people’s toes, the final production is sure to be an absolute disaster.

If the rehearsal process is difficult, in that they’re all challenging each other’s ideas and having engaging conversations about how they envision the final product, they are likely to have a hit.

The same applies to any collaboration or project you are working on. “Rockstar employees are willing to challenge and push their managers when the time comes and they know they’re right,” Cory Martin wrote.

If you are trying too hard to be liked, you will likely be too afraid to share your ideas even when you know they can be useful. For the sake of your team, speak up.

Keep in mind upper-level management cannot know everything. It is their job to collect information and guide those they lead to a common goal or outcome. If you know something needs to be addressed, voice your opinion. New ideas are born and change happens when constructive arguments are had.

STOP TAKING EVERYTHING PERSONALLY

Everyone can have a bad day and sometimes that translates into bad behavior, such as a blast of anger that is commonly misdirected.

For example, I had a client whose fuming boss made a very angry call to him regarding a decision that he had not actually made or even participated in. For years, that client was unable to shake the rotten feeling the phone call had caused him. All this time he was thinking his boss hated him when in reality, the boss just needed a punching bag for their own emotions.

This one instance caused misery at work for years while he attempted to get his boss to like him again. When this client finally got up the nerve to bring it up to him, the boss didn’t even remember the call.

You cannot control the emotions of other people, but you can control your reaction to them. If someone exhibits bad behavior and you know they are in the wrong—let it go. Don’t take it personally. And if you just can’t shake it, address the issue with the person as soon as you can after the storm of emotion has blown over.

The biggest takeaway is that even if someone lashes out at you, it does not necessarily mean they don’t like you. And it’s definitely not worth your time evaluating their (perceived) feelings about you.

What is important is that they respect you for the work that you do and you respect others for the work that they do. If you feel you are not being consistently respected, that is a conversation worth having.

Being nice means you are watching yourself and constantly trying to please others. If you are kind, do great work, and respect others, you will not only be valued, you will be respected.

Vanessa Wasche is the owner and founder of On Point Speaking.

3 ways the pandemic changed your brain when it comes to work

This period hasn’t affected all people in the same way, but we are seeing some common trends.

When you think about it, people’s career paths are also typically fairly constrained. An individual will take on many different jobs over the course of their working life, but they don’t often completely switch fields. (Indeed, many people who do make substantial career switches only do so after experiencing a significant personal loss.) Furthermore, most people in the business world adopted similar work schedules, arriving at an office or job site in the morning and returning home in the evening.

The pandemic has affected many aspects of our working lives—how and where we work, as well as why. Though this transformational period obviously hasn’t affected all people in the same way, there are some important trends that reflect its influence on people’s psychology:

RECONSIDERING CAREER PATHS

Lots has been written recently about the “Great Resignation.” For some people, changing jobs just reflects that as employers start rehiring, it’s possible to take a job similar to the one they already have, but with much better pay.

ADVERTISEMENT

For many people, though, seeing the world change and people get sick led lots of individuals to ask themselves whether they really care about the work they’re doing. Being reminded that life is short provided enough energy for people to consider a bigger career switch than they might have under normal circumstances.

What we don’t know yet is whether this change will be short-lived. If the pandemic situation ever settles down, people may fall back into the old complacency that led them to stay in jobs they didn’t love to begin with. Or, it might give people license to change paths more frequently in search of a job that they can treat as a calling.

RECALIBRATING BASIC NEEDS

A key reason why people work—and why they take on particular careers—is because they want to make a good living that will enable them to buy the things and experiences that they hope will make them happy. And people often overestimate how much joy they will get out of owning new things versus spending money to have peak experiences.

The pandemic changed people’s calculus around what they need. Many people who commuted to work by car now found that they barely drove anywhere when working from home and social distancing. They didn’t need a lot of new clothes either. In fact, a lot of the stuff that people own didn’t get used, even as people stared at the objects in their home day after day.

As a result, a lot of people have started to declutter their homes. Not only did people get rid of a lot, but they didn’t replace it. As a result, many people began to think about how much they really need to own.

FAST COMPANY EVENTS

Fast Company announces details of seventh annual innovation festival

“The Rebuilders” will explore opportunities to reshape business, community, and culture, post-pandemic.

At the same time, the pandemic also threw a lot of people out of work initially. And so, people also began to see the value of having savings. The savings rate jumped in the first year of the pandemic.

Like the willingness to change careers, it will be interesting to see whether the decrease in desire to own a lot of stuff and the willingness to save money persists after the pandemic. The fear of losing a job may stick with people in a way that keeps them wanting to have a buffer to help in tough times. But, it’s also possible that people will feel less need to save when the pandemic subsides.

OPENING UP NEW MODES OF WORK

One permanent change, though, is that many things we didn’t think were possible before have been shown to work just fine. It turns out that, for many jobs anyway, we don’t all need to work in the same place. Remote work isn’t always ideal, but it can be done quite successfully. Video conference tools like Zoom make it pretty easy to meet one-on-one, or with a group, from a distance.

Also, we all knew commuting was horrible, but we all thought it was necessary. Now, we know that isn’t true either. For many people, there is no compelling reason to go to the office that often (if ever). And even those people who do need to go to the office all the time need not arrive between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. and leave between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. So, perhaps morning and evening rush hours aren’t necessary either.

This change will persist for two reasons. First, we found out through experience how well the remote working environment could function, so that is now shared knowledge. Second, because people are taking more flexibility in their work, it creates more opportunities for flexibility for everyone else. The standard work day has the most force when it is standard and everyone does it. As more people have the flexibility to choose their own work hours, there is less social pressure for anyone to conform to one particular schedule.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Art Markman, PhD is a professor of Psychology and Marketing at the University of Texas at Austin and Founding Director of the Program in the Human Dimensions of Organizations. Art is the author of Smart Thinking and Habits of Leadership, Smart Change, Brain Briefs, and, most recently, Bring Your Brain to Work.