“He’s a Nice Guy, But …”

Here are the latest musings from my friend No Sweat Kosinski.

I’ll bet most of us work with someone like the guy he describes. If that’s the case, why do leaders tolerate such people?

Mikey,

I had lunch last week with a guy who is board chair of a large arts organization. He was describing an employee in that well-funded not-for-profit, a guy who makes a good buck, reports to the executive director and is responsible for running a big chunk of the business. He wanted to talk about the guy’s performance and began by saying, “He’s a nice guy, but …”

When I heard the word “but,” I knew what was coming next.

That little word negated the compliment that went before it. And the words that preceded it told me loads about that guy, his boss and the overall performance of the organization.

Here’s what I deduced from those five words:

• The “nice guy”: He’s turned appearing to be busy into an art form. Being a nice guy allows him to get away with being a chronic underperformer. If his peers were asked to grade his performance, he’d get no higher than a C-. The lesson they’ve learned from him is that if you’re nice and don’t rock the boat, you’ll have a job for life.
• The nice guy’s boss: Effective leaders have high expectations; that’s not the case of the guy running this organization. The people working for him don’t perform because they don’t have to — he doesn’t hold them accountable. He’s fallen victim to Patrick Lencioni’s Temptation #2: Popularity over accountability. Ironically, his reluctance to hold people accountable actually makes him less popular with his staff. If he had a motto, it would be “Good enough is good enough.”
• The organization: Working there is as mind numbing as working on the assembly line at a Trabant factory in East Germany. There is little or no focus on results, nobody takes the mission seriously, and nobody with an ounce of energy would want to work there.

I know my description is extreme and yet, I’ll give you odds I’ve nailed it. What I’ve said applies to any organization. The fact that the nice guy works for a not-for-profit is incidental. Before I retired, I kept a piece of paper in my desk drawer. On it was written, “C is not a passing grade.” We didn’t tolerate the “nice, buts” and no organization should.