Don’t Be a Jerk at Work. (But Don’t Be Too Nice, Either.)

livemint.com:

How nice should you be at work? We’ve supposedly moved on from the era of the militaristic chief executive who barks orders and threats. Most of us agree: We don’t like jerks . Be kind, we implore our kids.

Then we get to the office. We’ve got direct reports to rally, colleagues in other departments to convince and bosses who claim they want honest feedback. Speak with hesitation and you’re ignored.

Handle your team with kid gloves and you’re a pushover, not a force to be reckoned with. “I, personally, think you’re too nice a person to be in the job that you’re in." That’s what Rep. Greg Murphy (R., N.C.) told Katherine Tai, the lead trade negotiator for the U.S., this spring during a hearing.

His comments summed up feedback so many of us, especially women, have heard. We’re too bubbly or kind. We deploy too many apologies or exclamation marks .

Yet when we do too little of all that, we’re overly aggressive. “I want to be a nice person," Sarah Kleinberg, the director of operations at a healthcare consulting firm, told me. She has realized, though, that being nice often makes others feel good, without actually moving a project forward or prompting a team member to improve.

“You have to have the level of confidence to be beyond people-pleasing," she says. ‘Customer-service voice’ Many people, desperate not to offend, resort to what speaking coach Samara Bay calls “customer-service voice." It’s that high-pitched, upspeak-y tone meant to inform the barista, I think you might be out of oat milk? What are we saying when we use that tone? “I’m not powerful, don’t worry," Bay says. Making yourself nonintimidating and as small as possible might work earlier in careers, she adds, making the people in charge feel secure.