BREAKING: Research Proves Nice People Make Better Leaders
So let’s elect the nice lady running for president.
“Kamala Harris is a good person. She’s a decent person. Donald Trump is an utterly horrible human being. That should matter too. It really should.” ~ Joe Walsh, Former US Congressman & White Flag Podcast Host
Yes, it should, Joe. Because not only do good, decent people tend to be nice people, they also tend to not commit felonies, assault women, fete dictators or twiddle their Twitter while ringleading an insurrection. And they actually make better leaders.
Let me say that again: They actually make better leaders.
This is not actually “breaking news,” as the research has been around for a while, but it’s important to emphasize the point because we live in a time when being an asshole is not only applauded by base-dwelling Americans, ambitious partisans, and character-bereft cohorts, it compels “sanewashing” from click-hungry media in the form of what can only be called propaganda. For example, note this:
The above screenshot was an actual headline from The New York Times (which has since been rewritten) after Trump, appearing on Hugh Hewitt’s show, claimed that immigrants have “bad genes”: “A murderer — I believe this — it’s in their genes. And we have a lot of bad genes in our country right now,” he babbled like the racist he is.
The Times framing this ugly nonsense as “fascination” rather than, as Mary Trump more accurately put it, “a fascist’s obsession with eugenics and white supremacy,” is the height (depth?) of sanewashing*. Too much of our media, mainstream and otherwise, traffick in this kind of journalistic malpractice.
*Sanewashing: the act of minimizing the perceived radical aspects of a person or idea in order to make them more acceptable to a wider audience.
But let’s get back to how “nice people make better leaders.”
It’s a long-held belief that “niceness” as a trait is not typically associated with tough, effective leadership. There are myriad reasons for this misconception, but I’d suggest a large part of it emanates from the sexist notion that men make better leaders than women — a false assumption (see: New Research: Women More Effective Than Men In All Leadership Measures) — and men, at least those operating under that gender stereotype, do not tend to aspire to “nice.” Tough, yes; dogmatic, direct, even intimidating, sure. But nice? Not so much.
Funny thing though; it turns out Being Nice Pays Off: Why Nice Leaders Are More Effective:
In “Let’s Agree About Nice Leaders,” Andrew Blake, Vivian H. Luu, Oleg Petrenko, William Gardner, Kristie N.J. Moergen, and Maira E. Ezerins offer a counter-narrative to the long-standing assumption that being nice or agreeable is somehow detrimental to effective leadership. […]
Their research examines the multiple ways that being nice can affect leadership processes and outcomes. Their work also serves as an overview of the many gaps in scholarship on agreeableness and leadership. Research on leadership and agreeableness is rather scarce as compared to the attention given to other aspects of leadership, mostly because of the prevailing stereotype that agreeableness equals weakness.
But Blake, Luu, Petrenko, et al. show that being nice should be on everyone’s radar as far as leadership research is concerned. Their study shows that agreeableness is essential to effective leadership and thus the relationship between the two deserves more emphasis. The authors’ research addresses the impact of agreeableness on leadership emergence, leadership effectiveness, and whether it functions differently depending on the gender of the leader.
The article goes into detail on their study, and I urge you to click over to read it in full when you’re done here. The takeaway for me was this:
Overall, being nice was found to have a positive impact on both leadership emergence and effectiveness — being nice helped individuals to be perceived and accepted as leaders, and they were also seen as more effective.
And one more quick reference before I move on to my own editorializing: In the piece, Good Leaders Aren’t Afraid to Be Nice by Joe Panepinto, he concludes his thesis with this gem:
Need proof? For this, you can turn to another new book, Return on Character: The Real Reason Leaders and Their Companies Win … based on a seven-year study of 84 CEOS and 8,000 of their employees. Basically, leaders who display integrity, compassion, the ability to forgive and forget, and accountability — who are what most of us would consider nice — deliver five times the return on assets of their counterparts who never or rarely display those traits.
The inarguable fact is that the Republican nominee for president embodies none of the traits cited in these articles. NONE. In fact, he is the opposite of any and all. He proved that during the entire four-year clusterfuck that was his presidency, and he exhibits it daily with every move and utterance. He is … well, here’s the thesaurus list of “nice” antonyms. They all fit (except for “cool” … how is that an antonym of “nice”?).
But you know who is nice?
That smiling woman pictured above with Newton the Dog. I don’t know who Newton is, but research has proven that dogs (and other animals) can sense the unique chemosignals in human body scents, enough to know who is negative and who is nice.
Have you ever seen Trump with a dog who appeared to like him? Nope. Certainly we all remember the bald eagle attacking him during that infamous photo-shoot. And there’s actually a compilation video called, “Pets Who Hate Donald Trump” which seems to prove that his creepy chemosignals translate even through a television screen.
Kamala Harris, on the other hand, exudes niceness … along with whip-smart intelligence and a stellar resume, a tough-as-nails prosecutorial mien (used to brilliant effect debating Trump and cross-examining lying liar Brett Kavanaugh), and her joyful embrace of the entire cross-section of American culture and experience. Children, young adults, and open-hearted grown people can’t seem to get enough of her (see all rally footage). And Newton the Dog, pictured above wildly snuggling her neck, clearly enjoyed her clearly nice chemosignals.
Who would you rather have running the country?
But… if you’re still undecided about policies and platforms, waffling because of various causes you’ve prioritized; struggling to determine who’s best for the economy or foreign policy (really??), how about this?
Focus on the metric of “nice.”
Because, given research that confirms the higher leadership value and quantifiable currency of “nice,” it should make your decision easier. There is only one person running for president who embodies, lives and breathes, the attribute of nice. So it makes solid sense for any person who hasn’t succumbed to the “sanewashing” of the other guy to joyfully and enthusiastically cast their vote for her. I hope you will.
When this contest culminates on November 5, 2024, let’s hope, pray, affirm, invoke, light candles, dance around a fire, howl at the moon, commune with the spirits, whatever your inclination or proclivities might be along those lines, that this time, in this moment, for the benefit of all people, the nice guy gal finishes first. That Kamala Harris finishes first.
That will be a very nice thing to celebrate.
