In trying to make everyone comfortable, many workplaces have made people miserable. Why we mistake politeness for performance, and how to build healthy high performance instead.
We’re facing a crisis, a societal challenge spreading like a virus in the workplace. As one senior executive I spoke with recently said:
We’re facing an epidemic of agreeableness. In pursuit of happy families and harmony, we’ve created something far worse than conflict. We’ve created a culture of suppression.
The irony? In trying to make everyone comfortable, we’re making the workforce miserable.
Take my conversation with a VP of People just last week: “Our low performers are scoring highest in our engagement scores, and high performers are those least engaged.”
The misery is hard to spot under the facade of fake smiles. But underneath the masks, a deeper dysfunction is emerging: a growing workforce of dissatisfaction, disenfranchisement and, as recent research has suggested, a loneliness epidemic.
Organisations are swinging between two extremes
Humans are hardwired to pursue comfort and avoid conflict. It’s a deeply embedded survival instinct that served us well in prehistoric times. But in today’s workplace, this craving for comfort has evolved into an organisational weakness.
Organisations are oscillating between two polarities. You’re either:
- High performance, win at all costs on one side, or
- Comfort, feel good at all costs on the other.
Both extremes of this pendulum are unhealthy and destructive to sustainable success.
Sometimes they’re merely a zeitgeist strawman argument: narratives framed as a false dichotomy, created as a form of resistance against the tide of change.
Understandably, organisations have been trying to figure out how to move away from the old school mentality of aggression, brutality and immorality. For example, the British sport system has long been moving away from the infamous ‘no compromise’ approach to a methodology grounded in ‘winning well’.
Yet more recently, as seen in US politics and tech firms, leaders and organisations are trying to ‘take back control’ with a more forceful, authoritarian, ‘fit in or f*ck off’ approach (at least that’s the narrative).
The great overcorrection has led to casualties
But like any course correction, it often goes too far and leads to unintended consequences. DEI initiatives are becoming a casualty in this, unfortunately. “The road to hell is paved with good intentions” is so apt.
The true opposition isn’t between winning and inclusion, toxic and comfort. It’s between healthy and unhealthy approaches to excellence.
And I’m here to make the case that, with all this in mind, ‘comfortable’ environments are not the solution.
Businesses have hit the accelerator to create environments where everyone feels heard, valued and included. Yet we’ve arrived at a place where workplaces prioritise comfort over courage, and agreeableness over constructive disagreement.
It’s time we took the foot off the pedal and looked in the rear view mirror to consider the damage that’s been done. One of the most challenging things you can do in life is take a long, honest look at yourself in the mirror. So buckle up!
The workplace has transformed into a damp, cold corridor where no one dares to offer constructive criticism or spark new ideas.
We’re mistaking politeness for performance
We see this in team meetings. ‘Show and tell’ stand ups that focus on feel good optics, where any sign of challenge is seen as not ‘playing nicely’. All the while, colleagues talk about what they really feel in separate team channels, wrapped in cosy comfort blankets, in the luxury of working from home.
Everyone wants to be involved in everything. Collaboration, once seen as fuel for creativity and problem solving, has become an endless parade of calendar invites. It’s reduced to nodding heads while real problems fester beneath a veneer of forced friendliness. No wonder there’s a meeting culture crisis in companies.
Performance reviews become parent teacher evenings, where managers delicately tiptoe around areas for improvement, terrified of triggering an email from HR for being too honest.
The “class troublemakers” who dare to question processes are sent to the principal’s office (HR), while the “teacher’s pets” who keep the peace at all costs get gold stars in the form of promotions.
Too often we’re mistaking politeness for performance, harmony for progress, and silence for success.
Conflict avoidance trades resilience for emotional bubble wrap
Avoiding disagreement at all costs is a detrimental mindset that sanitises the potential of building a meaningful workplace.
I say meaningful because in workplaces where people disagree well, you feel the energy of conviction in brilliant conversation. Healthy debate isn’t just tolerated, it’s encouraged. When your idea is challenged, you don’t recoil into defensiveness; you lean in with curiosity.
I will never forget a mentor saying to me (and it still pierces through my mind):
You will forever be childish until you learn that disagreement isn’t an argument.
If this isn’t a humbling alarm bell in the modern workplace playground, what is? Workplaces really do resemble school playgrounds.
Resilience is being traded for emotional bubble wrap, creating organisations where adults play an elaborate game of “don’t rock the boat” instead of engaging in the compassionate disagreement that drives innovation.
Like children who never learn to resolve their conflicts, these workplace dynamics produce professionals who lack the emotional maturity to handle productive tension. Acas estimates that workplace conflict costs UK employers £28.5 billion a year.
Instead, we’re choosing avoidance. And it’s creating even more dysfunctional environments.
Mediocrity masquerading as cultural success
In this great overcorrection, we’ve steered so far off course that workplace satisfaction has become the destination itself, rather than the by product of meaningful achievement.
The unintended consequence isn’t just the extinguishing of healthy friction. It’s the creation of mediocrity masquerading as cultural success.
We’ve built corporate echo chambers where maintaining harmony trumps pushing boundaries, and where avoiding disagreement matters more than pursuing excellence.
We’ve taken the famous phrase ‘great minds think alike’ literally. In reality, the burning flame of success is when teams kindle the diversity of their differences together. Great minds don’t often think alike.
Of course, whatever approach we take is spirited with good intentions. We should absolutely strive for a great place to work, building workplaces showered in a sense of belonging and deeply trusted relationships.
How to build healthy high performance
We need workplaces that produce satisfaction from the pursuit of excellence rather than the absence of tension.
This instinct to seek comfort, to avoid the discomfort of challenging conversations and shy away from productive tension, might feel rewarding. But it’s stealing growth and fulfilment from the people in your team.
When I think about the high performing teams I’ve been lucky to be part of in multiple sectors, time after time it comes down to how performers consistently show up in the face of discomfort and adversity.
Did they want to do that extra rep, the task that’s not in their job description, or have that tough conversation? No, of course not.
But brilliance, excellence and the pursuit of meaning are found in those moments: the moments of discomfort where all you want to do is avoid it. You still do it, because the short term pain builds immunity for long term health.
The path forward isn’t about swinging back to harsh environments, or seeking comfort. It’s about building healthy high performance that embraces disagreement. Where excellence and care coexist, and where we can feel psychologically safe enough to be uncomfortable together.
I’m on a mission to create healthy, high performance environments. If that’s what you want for your team, I’m always up for a conversation.