Toxic politeness – I don’t know if you’ve heard this phrase. It’s new to me, and I’m loving it. It’s used to describe environments in which the people managers and leaders are avoiding delivering any feedback to their team or employees because they are afraid of hurting feelings. They just want to be polite, they want to be well-liked, and it’s actually causing a backlash. It’s creating toxicity in the workplace because now the employee or employees who need to receive the feedback and they’re not, they’re not growing personally and professionally, and now we’re missing markers, right?
We’re not hitting goals, we’re losing effectiveness, the organization’s not hitting their revenue targets, and other employees are seeing this. So it causes a backlash. And that’s this phrase, toxic politeness. Let’s pin that over here. I first heard about this phrase while reading an interview with A CEO. He’s the CEO of a small food manufacturing company, and he really wants to avoid this toxic politeness, so he gives brutally honest feedback.
Those are his words – “brutally honest feedback.”
I’m going to say that’s over here on this end of the spectrum. And while I don’t have a lot of context to have heard or seen what he says, there was text, actual dialogue, in how he delivers feedback to his chefs and to his food creators. And again, while I couldn’t see the tone, the article indicated he delivers his message in a calm voice and a good tone. But reading in black and white, the actual words that he speaks, they are definitely brutally honest.
So I want to encourage you to avoid swinging over here to this end of the spectrum, yet avoid coming over here at this end of the spectrum. There is a middle ground in which we can communicate, 100%. People leaders are responsible for delivering feedback, and it does not need to be beautified and masked and covered with all of these really pretty things. No, we do need to deliver that feedback.
In fact, I give a six step process on how to deliver that direct communication, how to have what I call these crucial conversations. We also want to avoid going into any communication with this notion of, I’m just going to be brutally honest – because as much as you believe that your tone and your body language, your facial expressions are communicating it in a different way, that you’re still softening it, you’re not hurting anyone’s feelings.
That state of,” I’m being brutally honest,” is already mentally setting you up to not deliver the message in a way in which the listener is going to receive it. And that ultimately is what we need to happen.
Kudos to the CEO for saying, I’ve got to deliver the feedback. That’s where every manager needs to end up. If you lead people, you need to take action and deliver feedback. So excellent, kudos to the CEO. But once you deliver the feedback as the speaker, as the communicator, the other thing that then needs to happen is that the receiver needs to say, “Okay, I hear it,” and now take action on it.
If we’re communicating that message in such a way that’s either so “pretty” that they can’t see what the real message is, or too brutally honest that they become offended or irritated or don’t take ownership, then what good is delivering the communication, if that receiver isn’t taking the action you desire? So again, I ask you to take a look. Where do you fall in this spectrum?
Are you potentially so polite that you’re avoiding the conversations and you’re actually causing a backlash in many other ways? Or are you too brutally honest that you feel like, yes, I give feedback, but you’re missing the mark that you need them to actually say, “Oh, great, I’m going to go change and do something with this!”
So look at that and evaluate your communication style. Again, our goal is to get the receiver to actually create change and move into action, so we reach the goal that we want.