Polite, Friendly and Nice are Not All The Same
Telling the difference in business is important.
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In the business world, people are here to do business. The movies make business sound like a cold and calculating profession, but in reality business is built on relationships. You need a lot of relationships in any business to succeed and those relationships take many forms.
People new to business often mis-interpret the signals they get from people based on their personal experience with friends and family. They conflate someone being friendly with someone who has good intentions. Later, they realize the salesperson is friendly with everyone as it’s part of their job and their intention was to make as much money as possible.
One of the best lessons you can learn early in your career is the difference between people who are polite, friendly and nice. These are not the same things.
Polite people are professional in all of your interactions. Sometimes that can seem cold and unfriendly, but be careful about reading too much into it. Some of the most helpful people you might meet are polite and professional in all circumstances. Just because someone is not delivering service with a smile doesn’t mean their intentions are malicious, or that they don’t want to help you. But, then again, sometimes it does.
Friendly people are easy to talk to and make you feel special. That is not the same as being your friend, or even having good intentions! Just look back to our example of a salesperson from before. Some of the most cut-throat people I’ve ever met were also the friendliest. Most people have trouble separating friendliness from intentions, but it’s an important skill.
Nice people want to help you. They might not be friendly or polite, but they have a genuine interest in helping you. Some of the most helpful people I’ve encountered in my career were the least friendly, least polite people but they went above and beyond. Sometimes it was someone in procurement that helped me navigate a buying process, or someone with a lot of experience that delivered some really harsh feedback that I needed to hear. Nice people have good intentions.
Often, people can be more than one of these things. They might be nice and friendly (which is great) or friendly and polite. If you find someone that is all three you hit the jackpot, but due to the incentives of business that won’t happen very often. In fact, whether someone is polite, nice or friendly to you will depend a lot on the circumstances of your interactions.
Don’t be critical of people if your expectations of them are different from reality. If someone is polite but not nice, that might be because they are constrained by the restrictions of their business. If someone is nice but not friendly, it might just be years of dealing with people who are trying to take advantage of them.
We are all doing our best to navigate the business world. I still make mistakes between these different kinds of people after many decades! Do your best and learn from experience, but keep this in mind when you meet someone new.
And then ask yourself, from the other person’s perspective, am I polite, friendly or nice to them?
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