“Don’t rock the boat.”
“Don’t stir the pot.”
“If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”
These adages reflect a dominant norm in many cultures, including one I’m familiar with in my own country of Canada. Canadians are known for being polite and nice people—to a fault—and apologizing a lot.
While this norm of not saying anything that might hurt, offend, or make someone uncomfortable is well-intentioned, it devolves into a habit of sidestepping what really matters.
Our politeness and niceness prohibits us from engaging in honest and real dialogue, from exploring differences, from gaining new perspectives, from building trust, from challenging the status quo, from getting innovative ideas out into the open, from asking and answering the questions that really matter, and from connecting with others about what they care most about.
Dodging conflict and hard conversations doesn’t make them go away. They fester and become even more challenging.
Saying what truly matters and cultivating brave spaces for others to do so too is one of the most important responsibilities of a leader. It’s also one of the most transformative.
