The Problem With Being “Too Nice” at Work | Tessa West | TED

Summary

The speaker, a social psychologist, delves into 'anxious niceness' during uncomfortable social interactions. They explore how people tend to be overly polite to manage their anxiety, which can lead to generic feedback and nonverbal cues that signal discomfort. The talk examines the impact of such behavior on recipients, particularly racial minorities and disadvantaged groups, and suggests strategies for giving clear, specific feedback to foster a more constructive communication culture.

Takeaways

• 🧪 The speaker is a social psychologist with over 20 years of experience studying uncomfortable social interactions.
• 🔍 They focus on three main outcomes in their research: verbal behaviors, nonverbal behaviors, and physiological responses.
• 🤝 The study involves people interacting in various settings, such as negotiations and getting acquainted, often requiring feedback exchange.
• 📈 Participants' physiological responses are measured using equipment to capture stress reactions and nonverbal behaviors through video recording.
• 🤔 The audience is encouraged to reflect on their own awkward social interactions to understand the feelings associated with anxiety in social settings.
• 📊 Rapid stress responses, such as increased heart rate and blood pressure, are common within the first 20 seconds of such interactions.
• 👀 Nonverbal cues like fidgeting and avoiding eye contact are early indicators of discomfort in social interactions.
• 💔 'Anxious niceness' often results in generic compliments and can be a barrier to providing constructive feedback.
• 🌐 The impact of anxious niceness is not limited to the giver; it can also affect the receiver, making them more attuned to the anxiety signals.
• 🔄 The study shows that stress responses can be synchronized between individuals in social interactions, potentially affecting the receiver's well-being.
• 💼 In professional settings, the lack of specific feedback can hinder performance and growth, and generic positive feedback can damage one's reputation.
• 🛠️ The speaker suggests strategies to improve feedback, such as understanding the culture of niceness, being specific with feedback, and starting with neutral topics.
• 🔑 Framing feedback with niceness in delivery can make it more constructive and less anxiety-inducing for both the giver and receiver.

Q & A

What is the main focus of the speaker's research?

The speaker's research focuses on the science of uncomfortable social interactions, studying various scenarios such as new roommate relationships, negotiations, feedback with superiors, and doctor-patient interactions.

What are the three main outcomes the speaker examines in their research?

The speaker examines what people say (controllable verbal behaviors), nonverbal behaviors (less controllable cues like fidgeting and avoiding eye contact), and under-the-skin responses (physiological reactions like blood pressure and heart rate).

How does the speaker's research methodology involve participants?

Participants are brought into a lab to interact with each other in different settings, such as negotiating or getting acquainted, while being monitored for physiological responses and videotaped for behavioral analysis.

What is the term used to describe the type of feedback that is often given in uncomfortable social interactions?

The term used is 'anxious niceness,' which involves giving compliments in a general, non-specific way to manage one's own anxiety during social interactions.

Why does the speaker suggest that anxious niceness can be harmful?

Anxious niceness can be harmful because it often lacks specificity and directness, which can hinder performance improvement, damage reputations, and even cause stress to be transmitted between individuals.

What is the effect of anxious niceness on the receiver of the feedback?

The receiver may feel patronized or misunderstood, as the feedback is often generic and not helpful for personal growth or understanding their performance. It can also lead to stress and anxiety in the receiver.

What is the speaker's view on the impact of anxious niceness on reputations?

The speaker believes that generic positive feedback can harm an individual's reputation, as it may come across as insincere or as if the giver doesn't truly know the person well enough to provide meaningful feedback.

What are some of the solutions the speaker suggests to improve feedback in the workplace?

The speaker suggests recognizing the prevalence of a niceness culture, asking for permission to give feedback on multiple dimensions, being specific with both positive and negative feedback, and providing clear alternatives for improvement.

How does the speaker recommend framing negative feedback?

The speaker recommends being specific about the behavior that needs to change and providing clear alternatives or replacement behaviors that the person should adopt instead.

What is the importance of starting with neutral feedback according to the speaker?

Starting with neutral feedback helps to break the cycle of anxious niceness without causing discomfort or defensiveness. It allows for a gradual and less stressful transition towards more direct and constructive feedback.

What role does the speaker believe 'niceness' should play in the delivery of feedback?

The speaker believes that niceness should be incorporated into the delivery of feedback to show engagement, understanding, and alignment with the goals of the person receiving the feedback, making the process less intimidating and more constructive.

Outlines

00:00

🧐 The Paradox of Anxiety and Politeness

The speaker, a social psychologist, delves into the science behind uncomfortable social interactions. They explore why people tend to be overly nice and generic in stressful social situations. The study of social interactions includes examining verbal communication, nonverbal behaviors, and physiological responses. The speaker uses laboratory settings to observe these behaviors in various scenarios, including negotiations and feedback sessions. They also encourage the audience to recall their own awkward experiences to relate to the topic.

05:02

🤝 The Phenomenon of 'Anxious Niceness'

This paragraph discusses the tendency to excessively compliment others in the aftermath of competitive interactions, such as negotiations, even when it's not deserved. The speaker illustrates this with examples of how people mask their true feelings with insincere praise. The focus then shifts to the recipients of such 'anxious niceness,' often racial minorities or members of disadvantaged groups, who may feel the anxiety behind the niceties. The speaker's research reveals that this anxiety can be physiologically contagious, affecting the recipient's stress levels and potentially their health.

10:05

🤔 Rethinking Feedback Culture

The speaker addresses the issue of generic positive feedback and its potential negative impacts on performance and reputation. They argue for a shift in the feedback culture, suggesting that being overly nice can be perceived as lazy or disengaged. The speaker emphasizes the importance of specific, constructive feedback over general praise. They recount a personal anecdote involving a student's experience with unhelpful positive feedback and propose a method to gauge the interest of others in adopting more constructive feedback practices.

15:06

🛠 Strategies for Implementing Constructive Feedback

The speaker outlines strategies for giving effective feedback, starting with assessing the prevalence of the desire for constructive feedback within a group. They advise against directly asking people if they prefer honesty or niceness, as it may not yield genuine responses. Instead, they suggest framing feedback in terms of general versus specific and positive versus areas for improvement. The speaker highlights the importance of providing specific, actionable feedback and emphasizes the need to start with neutral topics to gradually build a culture of constructive criticism.

🌟 Embracing Niceness in Constructive Feedback

In the concluding paragraph, the speaker advocates for maintaining niceness in the delivery of feedback, sharing a personal experience where critical feedback was given in a supportive manner. They stress the importance of showing engagement and alignment with the recipient's goals while providing specific, non-threatening suggestions for improvement. The speaker encourages the audience to take steps towards changing the feedback culture, starting with small, neutral feedback and gradually progressing to more critical areas, all the while maintaining a positive and supportive tone.

Keywords

💡Anxiety

Anxiety refers to a feeling of nervousness or unease, typically accompanied by an increased heart rate and sweating. In the context of the video, it is associated with uncomfortable social interactions where individuals may feel like they want to escape. The speaker describes how anxiety can manifest in physiological responses, such as increased heart rate and blood pressure, within the first 20 seconds of an interaction.

💡Social Awkwardness

Social awkwardness is the feeling of discomfort or embarrassment in social situations due to a lack of social skills or confidence. The video discusses this concept in relation to how people act 'nice' to mask their anxiety, even when they feel awkward. An example from the script is the speaker's request for the audience to recall their last awkward interaction to understand the feeling of social awkwardness.

💡Nonverbal Behaviors

Nonverbal behaviors encompass the body language, facial expressions, and other physical cues that communicate information beyond words. The speaker mentions how these behaviors, such as fidgeting or avoiding eye contact, can be indicators of anxiety and are often harder for individuals to control during social interactions.

💡Physiological Responses

Physiological responses are the automatic bodily reactions to stimuli, such as increased heart rate or blood pressure. The video explains that these responses are often out of our conscious control and can be triggered by anxiety during social interactions. The speaker uses the example of participants in lab studies showing a rise in heart rate and blood pressure as a physiological reaction to stress.

💡Feedback

Feedback in the video refers to the process of giving and receiving information about performance or behavior. The speaker discusses the importance of feedback in social interactions and how it can be influenced by anxiety, leading to 'anxious niceness.' An example is when the speaker talks about people giving generic compliments in negotiations, which is a form of feedback.

💡Anxious Niceness

Anxious niceness is a term coined by the speaker to describe the behavior of being overly nice to others as a way to manage one's own anxiety in social situations. This concept is central to the video's theme, illustrating how people may resort to generic compliments and non-specific praise to avoid conflict or appear prejudiced. The speaker provides examples from negotiations and cross-race interactions where this behavior is observed.

💡Generic Feedback

Generic feedback is non-specific and broad in nature, often lacking detail or depth. The video discusses how generic feedback can be perceived as lazy or unhelpful and may not provide clear guidance for improvement. The speaker contrasts this with specific feedback, which is more useful and actionable, using the example of participants in studies giving overly positive and vague compliments.

💡Specific Feedback

Specific feedback is detailed and targeted, addressing particular behaviors or actions. The video emphasizes the importance of specific feedback for clear communication and personal growth. The speaker suggests that providing specific feedback can help to reduce anxiety associated with giving criticism and can be more effective in improving performance, as illustrated by the suggestion to replace vague advice with concrete suggestions.

💡Patronizing Feedback

Patronizing feedback is condescending or overly complimentary, often masking a lack of genuine engagement or understanding. The video touches on how this type of feedback can be harmful, as it does not provide useful information for the recipient. The speaker warns against the potential negative effects of patronizing feedback on performance and reputation.

💡Plural Ignorance

Plural ignorance is a psychological phenomenon where a majority of people privately disagree with a norm or behavior but assume that others support it. In the video, the speaker uses this concept to describe the workplace culture of 'niceness,' suggesting that many individuals may prefer more constructive feedback but remain silent due to the perceived preference for positive comments.

💡Replacement Behaviors

Replacement behaviors refer to suggesting alternative actions that should be taken instead of the criticized behavior. The video emphasizes the importance of not only pointing out what needs to be improved but also providing guidance on what to do differently. The speaker uses the analogy of giving feedback in a personal relationship to illustrate the importance of offering constructive alternatives to undesirable behaviors.

Highlights

The speaker is a social psychologist with over 20 years of experience studying uncomfortable social interactions.

Three main outcomes are studied: what people say, nonverbal behaviors, and physiological responses.

People often become more 'nice' and generic in uncomfortable situations, despite their anxiety.

In lab studies, participants' stress responses are measured through physiological equipment and video recording.

Anxiety can manifest in nonverbal behaviors, such as fidgeting and avoiding eye contact.

Anxious niceness can lead to generic compliments and a lack of constructive feedback.

The speaker discusses the impact of anxious niceness on racial minorities and disadvantaged groups.

Physiological stress responses can be synchronized between individuals in interaction.

Anxiety in one person can be 'caught' by others, affecting their stress levels.

Vague positive feedback can harm performance and reputation, lacking specificity.

The speaker suggests three solutions to improve feedback clarity and consistency.

Cultural norms around niceness can be challenged by understanding the desire for constructive feedback.

Feedback should be framed in terms of general versus specific, and what to continue versus what to stop.

Negative feedback should be specific and accompanied by suggestions for alternative behaviors.

Starting with neutral, non-threatening feedback can help to break the cycle of anxious niceness.

Niceness should be incorporated in the delivery of feedback to ensure it is well-received.

The speaker concludes by encouraging the audience to change their feedback culture to eliminate anxious niceness.

Transcripts

So why is it the case

that when we are feeling the most anxious, uncomfortable,

socially awkward versions of ourselves,

when our hearts are pounding and our palms are sweating

and we feel like crawling out of our skin,

are we also the most nice and often generic to the people around us?

I'm a social psychologist,

and I've been studying the science of uncomfortable social interactions

for over 20 years.

So everything from new roommate relationships,

negotiations,

upward feedback with your boss to doctor patient-interactions,

those moments where you need to break in and say,

"Yeah, for the last 20 minutes,

I actually have no idea what you were talking about.

Can we maybe rewind a bit?"

And to study these things,

I look at three main outcomes.

First, I look at what people say, the things we can control,

how friendly we are,

how much we complement one another,

how much we give gracious feedback.

Second, I look at the things that are tougher for us to control,

our nonverbal behaviors, things like fidgeting,

avoiding eye contact, playing with our hair,

doodling even,

even our tone of voice.

And then I look at the things that are impossible for us to control

our under-the-skin responses,

our physiology, our cardiovascular reactivity,

things like blood pressure, heart rate,

these types of things

that we often don't even really realize that we're feeling.

And the way I do this is by having people come into the lab

and interact with each other in a bunch of different settings,

and I have them negotiate with each other,

I have them get acquainted with each other.

And often it's the case that in these interactions,

people are required to give some form of feedback to their partner.

Tell them honestly what they're thinking or feeling,

come in with an offer for a negotiation,

tell them what they could have done better next time.

And I think we all kind of know what it feels like

to be in one of these studies.

You might not know what it would really feel like to be in one of my studies.

There's a lot of equipment involved,

but we plug people up to all of these things

to measure these under-the-skin responses.

We videotape them to capture those behaviors that I just mentioned.

Now, to get us all into this mindset of what it's like to feel awkward,

but maybe potentially a little bit nice,

I want you all to think

about what was the last awkward interaction that you had.

OK, so keep this thought in your mind.

You can think about it for a few moments,

because in a couple minutes,

I'm actually going to randomly call on someone based on your seat

to have you come up

and share your story of what that moment felt like.

So before we do that,

I just want you all to kind of get a sense of the typical pattern that we see

when people are engaging in these interactions.

So we bring them into the lab,

we hook them up to all this equipment

and within moments, within the first 20 seconds,

we start to see those stress responses that I mentioned.

Their heart rate goes up, their blood pressure increases.

It doesn't take much to get people to start to feel anxious.

Next, we see it in those nonverbal behaviors.

They start to fidget,

they avoid eye contact,

they pull their chair a couple inches away

from the person who's sitting next to them,

in an effort just to get a little bit more distance.

One of my favorite findings is in doctor-patient interactions,

uncomfortable doctors,

they look down at the chart more,

or they look more at the computer screen

instead of making eye contact with those patients.

So let's all return to your awkward moment.

Does everyone have an awkward moment in mind or thinking about one?

How many of you have increases in your heart rate,

maybe your palms are sweating?

You can start to feel yourself getting a little tingly

just with the mere thought of being called upon today?

Hey, a few of you.

How many people would actually be excited about that opportunity?

Not -- OK, same people.

(Laughter)

How many of you, if I did call on you, would walk up here,

you would grin through gritted teeth like this

and you would do it even though you secretly hated me the whole time?

A few of you.

Don't worry, I'm not going to actually do this.

This was all just a ruse to teach you a lesson

which is, in uncomfortable social interactions,

we often don't have a social script of what to do.

Instead of telling people what we really think, what we really feel,

we do the nice thing that makes us incredibly uncomfortable.

Now one of my favorite findings illustrating this effect

is in the context of negotiations.

I went to a major firm and I brought people together

who were used to working with one another,

and we had them engage in a negotiation.

And at the end of it,

there was a winner and there was a loser.

So we said to the winner,

you know, this is really a study about feedback.

And what we would like you to do is give some constructive feedback

to the person who just lost.

What are some things that they could do better next time?

What are some potential missteps?

How many of you think that that's what they actually did,

they really followed our instructions?

OK, nobody.

[You] can see where this is going.

What we found is that even when we're talking to someone

who just lost a negotiation to us, we tend to bend over backwards.

We say things like,

"The way you made that really early offer and didn't even ask for a counter,

that was amazing."

Or "It was so great how you didn't even ask me anything about my side,

or what I was willing to kind of, you know,

change on or be flexible on."

People layered on the compliments

to someone who they just beat in a negotiation,

telling them how great they are.

So often these kinds of interactions

that take the form of what I’ll call “anxious niceness,”

they involve a lot of compliments,

telling people what they do well in a very general, non-specific way.

But a lot of my work actually looks

at what's it like to be on the receiving end

of these types of interactions.

How do you feel when you interact with someone over and over again

who's giving off these kinds of brittle smiles?

These are typically the kinds of facial expressions

that we actually see from people, kind of sneering,

a little bit of side eye,

you know, arms crossed, these types of things.

After a lifetime of interacting with someone

who engages in anxious niceness,

what we find is that most people on the receiving end

are racial minorities.

They are disadvantaged group members,

they are the type of people

that we are worried about appearing prejudiced in front of,

and that anxiety is regulated

by being over-the-top nice to these folks.

We also find that these individuals tend to be more synchronized to

and attentive to the how-we-say-it piece

than the what-we-say part.

So in one study, we had Black and white Americans

interact with each other in a cross-race interaction,

and we brought them into the lab

and we measured the physiology of both partners.

What this allowed us to do is capture the degree

to which people stress.

Those under-the-skin responses can actually be caught by their partners.

And what we expected to find

is that the Black participants would become more synchronized,

physiologically, to those whites.

They'd be more attuned to those, kind of, nonverbal signals of anxiety.

And that's exactly what we found.

The more anxious those white participants appeared,

the more they fidgeted, the more they avoided eye contact,

even the higher their cortisol reactivity,

indicating some real deep, kind of, under-the-skin stress response,

the more those Black participants became linked up to them over time.

And I think this finding is a little bit terrifying.

I think it means that we often think of our own stress and our own physiology

as independent of the people we interact with,

but our bodies are not always our own,

our physiology is not always our own.

And if you spend a lifetime interacting with people who are so nice to you,

in an effort to control their anxiety,

you could potentially catch that stress.

It could negatively affect your bodies.

Now often what we find is the type of feedback

that people are actually getting

isn't always super direct.

Sometimes it's a little bit patronizing.

So you could probably see where I'm going with this.

Having over-the-top positive nice feedback can harm your performance,

it can make it very difficult for you to climb up,

difficult to kind of know where you stand, what you should do better,

what you should stop doing,

but can also damage people in ways that we often don't think about.

It can affect their reputations outside of the interaction context.

So imagine the case that you're one of these people

who loves giving this general, nice feedback,

and you have someone who works for you,

and a recruiter calls, maybe a past employee,

a recruiter calls you,

or someone asks you for a letter of recommendation,

the kinds of things you're going to put are going to be like,

"They're are real team player."

"They have great energy at work."

Generic things.

Yes, they're nice, but they are not very telling

about what that person is really like.

And what we find is that the readers of these things, at best,

think to themselves,

"Wow, they must not really know this person at all.

I don't even know what this means."

At worst, they think to themselves,

"Well, they probably have some real opinions.

They're just afraid to share them."

So these kinds of general positive feedback

tend to actually harm people's reputation when they're not backed up with real data.

So I think we have to then think

about what is the solution to this problem.

Is it the case that we should all just be meaner to each other

in an effort to be more direct?

I don't think that's the case at all.

I think there are some things we can do,

and I'm going to highlight three of them,

to improve the degree to which we give clear,

consistent feedback to people,

particularly in the workplace.

So first we need to ask ourselves the question,

how many people are on board with this niceness culture, really?

There's a bit of a plural ignorance that goes on

when we think about how nice we are to people at work.

What I've found is that for every one person

who loves this kind of general, generic, nice feedback,

there's another person who feels like it's lazy,

who feels like it's not helpful.

And I actually learned this lesson the hard way

from one of my students recently.

She was giving a practice talk in my lab,

and she spent weeks and weeks preparing it,

probably harder than anyone else I'd ever seen

on preparing a talk like this.

And then she went and gave it, and she came back and I said,

"How did the talk go? Did it go well?"

She said, "It was terrible. It was horrible.

It was the worst experience."

I said, "Well, what happened?"

And she said, "All I got were a bunch of 'Great jobs,'

‘That was interesting’

and then some clap emojis from the people on Zoom.

Not a single person asked a tough question," she said.

And I had this moment where I realized

that positive feedback can come across as lazy feedback.

It can come across as disengaged feedback.

And so if we want to change this culture,

we actually need to first do a quick pulse

of how many people are actually more interested in doing the tougher,

constructive forms of this type of feedback.

So you might be thinking to yourselves,

"Alright, I might be on board with this idea of tough,

yet honest feedback.

So what should I do?

Should I go to people and say, ’Alright, do you want me to be ... nice

or honest and useful?'"

No, do not do this.

You will, by and large, get a lot of people telling you,

"You know, I actually just want to keep it nice.

That just feels a lot more comfortable for me."

What I learned in my work

is that this process I've been talking about,

about giving anxious, nice feedback,

is just as much about the feedback receiver

as it is about the feedback giver.

People get into a bit of a dance with each other.

I give you nice feedback, you kind of know it's BS,

but you smile and say thank you and then, you know, go on your way.

It takes a lot to break that interpersonal cycle.

And to do that,

we have to think about how we actually want

to frame our feedback to other people.

So instead of asking people,

"Should I be nice or honest and useful?"

What I like to do is ask people,

"Can I give you feedback on a couple dimensions?"

Can we think about feedback as general versus specific?

Another dimension would be,

can we think about things that you're doing well

you should keep doing

versus things that "please stop."

And I'll get in a moment

to how we can actually frame that form of negative feedback.

So I think a lot of us are actually pretty decent

at the positive general feedback, right?

"I love how timely you are."

But what does that mean?

It could mean that you're on time for meetings,

it could mean that you turn your work in on time,

it could mean it in a very global way of,

"You sure managed to do a lot in five years."

Or it could mean something so specific,

like, “It’s so helpful that you send in your reports by 5 pm,”

but I don't really want to comment

on all those other kinds of forms of being timely.

And when we do the kind of general feedback that is negative,

the "please stop," we need it to be specific.

So kind of, one of the more common forms of general negative feedback people get

is "You don't take enough initiative here."

How many of you have ever been told, “Please take some more initiative”?

I think most of us at some point in our lives have experienced this.

What does that mean?

Does it mean I should speak up more in meetings?

Does it mean I should be quicker on my email?

Does it mean I should do your job without complaining about doing your job,

which is often what it actually means?

We have to break it down into the specifics,

and that could include things like,

"Don't wait for Tom to ask if you found any errors

before you say, 'Tom, I found some errors.'"

Now an important piece here is what people should do instead.

Often if we get to the stage

where we're comfortable enough telling people,

“I have a specific, critical, negative thing I want to tell you,” --

“Please stop interrupting people,”

you know, not telling Tom about the errors,

showing up five minutes late with coffee

so I know what you were doing during those five minutes --

we don’t tend to replace them with anything,

but we know from our personal lives that replacing negative critical,

"please stop" behaviors is absolutely essential.

So I want to take you out of the workplace for a moment.

And we're going to go to the bedroom.

Yes, I said we're going to the bedroom.

So imagine it's the case that you just had sex with someone for the first time.

OK, we're all there, we've done a lot of mentalizing today.

And you turn to the person and you say,

"Those last three things you just did back there,

no good.

They're all bad.

Didn't like any of them."

They're going to look at you in shock and surprise and say,

"Well, what should I do instead," right?

And until we're ready to actually fire the person

or kick them out of bed

or fire them from our team,

we have to focus on those replacement behaviors,

what they should be doing instead.

And I think as we think through kind of, scaling this type of feedback,

it can be very scary to make these types of change.

What I found is that cultures of anxious, nice feedback are ingrained.

They're systemic,

they are deeply embedded in a community,

in the workplace, in a team,

even in dyadic interpersonal relationships.

And so to break that cycle, you have to start small,

you need to start neutral.

And by neutral I mean things

that are not scary to hear critical feedback on.

You might be thinking to yourself,

what's some neutral feedback that you could give me

at the end of my talk?

How about "I would switch the order of the points on your talk"

or "I would change the font."

These types of feedback are specific, and so they're useful,

but they're not scary to deliver

and they're not actually scary to receive.

And what we find is that when people take these baby steps

to work up to this type of feedback,

they are much less anxious in the delivery.

So those behaviors I opened with of people fidgeting,

engaging in what we call a brittle smile,

avoiding eye contact,

they actually go down

and so do those stress responses

when you know and you're anticipating giving this kind of feedback

that isn't going to sting.

And I think as you work through this,

I don't want to be a proponent of killing niceness entirely.

I think it's actually really important

to put niceness in the delivery of your feedback,

and that can come across in a bunch of different ways.

It can come across as by showing you're engaged, you listened.

You know what the person's actually trying to do,

you're aligned with their goals.

The first time I actually got this type of critical nice feedback

was after a talk I gave

and the person came up to me and she said,

"Can I give you some feedback?"

And immediately my heart started pounding.

I'm like, oh great, here we go.

No one likes hearing, "Can I give you some feedback?"

And she opened with three things that she thought I did well.

"I really liked points one, two and three you made in that talk.

They really resonated with me.

But you have this habit when you're concentrating

of looking up and to the right,

and so you spent half the talk kind of staring at the ceiling

or the exit sign in this case,

instead of making eye contact with the audience.

And it's distracting and it creates a distance."

So I thought a little bit about it

with my eyes probably rolled up inside my head,

and I thought, OK, I can actually make that change.

It doesn't feel super scary.

And so I did.

I made that change, and I thought about how she framed that feedback

through this culture of niceness.

So I want to wish you all luck

on your journey of trying to change culture of feedback,

killing anxious niceness,

and hopefully have some concrete steps to help you move forward.

Thank you.

(Applause)