‘Tis the season! So, I want to share something with you today from one of my favorite books,
The Leadership Secrets of Santa Claus. There’s a great lesson in there—one of my personal favorites is tip number ten: be good for goodness’ sake.

Now, think about it. We all know how to be good and we all know how to be bad. We know when we’re being good, and we know when we’re being bad. And here’s the thing—it’s a choice. But sometimes, we act like it’s not. We might tell ourselves, “Oh, it’s okay to be bad because someone hurt my feelings.” But what happens next? We end up hurting someone else’s feelings, and then the whole cycle just spirals out of control.

Santa—he had it figured out. All he did was decide to be good for goodness’ sake. Simple, right?

The same applies to us. Stepping up to be the best version of ourselves, whether at work or in life, is a choice. And the great thing is, we already know how to make that choice.

So, why not step up? Make the decision that this next year, you’re going to be the best person you’ve ever been. Be good for goodness’ sake!

I recently surveyed all of our clients, asking them about the challenges they’re facing in their workplace culture that still need to be addressed. One issue that came up was fake niceness.

Fake niceness is when people don’t challenge ideas directly. Instead, they just listen, nod, and maybe even pretend to agree, but then go off and have “meeting after the meeting.” It’s when you disagree with someone but avoid saying it to their face and instead talk about them behind their back.

This kind of disingenuous behavior can drive executives crazy. It’s tricky because on the surface, people seem so nice and agreeable, but there’s something sneaky and underhanded going on underneath.
So, as an executive, it’s your job to address this behavior head-on. You’ve got to make it clear that fake niceness isn’t just unhelpful — it’s actually quite harmful.

In our organization, when we disagree with someone, we don’t dance around it. We challenge the idea, not the person. And we deal with it right then and there — before the day is over. We don’t let disagreements linger. And if we don’t personally like someone, we still treat them with respect and kindness, but we don’t do it with fake niceness. We do it with genuine understanding because we’re all human.

Addressing fake niceness is a key part of transforming your culture. No matter what position you hold within your organization, this is everyone’s responsibility. Don’t wait for someone at the top to fix it, because they might not even see it happening. So, if you notice someone giving you fake niceness, speak up and let them know: “That’s not how we do things here.”

In our company, we tackle issues head-on. We keep things clean and clear. Our motto is simple: We keep it clean. So, good luck dealing with fake niceness — it’s something you need to address, as it’s a core issue that can really undermine any efforts to improve your workplace culture.

Remember, it’s everyone’s job. So, take a look in the mirror — yes, you. It’s your responsibility to tackle this problem.

So here’s the thing: your organization does payroll every few weeks.

And they can afford to do payroll because people pay for themselves within the organization.

Here’s the problem: We must figure out how we pay for ourselves so that every one of us feels like we’re a contributor because we want to be good people. And yet, for most organizations, it’s not clear how we tie to profit. So, I have an idea for you.

What if you went to your boss and said, “I want to rock this job. I want to be so good at what I do that it is impossible to believe that I am here in this organization making this difference. But to do that, I need to understand how I tie to profit. Now, I took my first best guess, and I think these are the critical drivers or the numbers that we should be looking at where I would hit this little low number in terms of mistakes, or this number in terms of volume, or this number of sales, or this many steps along the sales process, or whatever it would be.”

But depending upon what stage you’re at in your organization and what you do in the organization, everybody is tied to profit differently. So recently, we did a study and we asked one thousand people in the workplace, if they perform in the top ten percent and seventy-five percent said they did. Now, you know and I know the math doesn’t work out on that one, and so the reality is most people are guessing about how they tie to profit.

Coming in early and staying late is not the ticket, but moving the right needles is. It’s best to have that conversation with your supervisor to find out how to tie to profit, but don’t go in as a victim. Go in as someone that says, “boss, I want to rock my job. Here’s what where I think I tie into profit. Do you see something more important than this? Is it okay if I report to you every week and let you know how I’m doing?”  Wouldn’t that be great for the manager to know that you’re performing, and wouldn’t that make you noticeable as the next person likely eligible for a promotion when that opportunity comes up?

So step up, figure out how you tie to profit, keep it visible in front of your manager, and decide to be a rock star.

The Dalai Lama says that happiness is a habit.

What if you could be “love on wheels”? What if you could be the person who is always happy, regardless of the circumstances?