The Steep Price of Nice
Nice Girl Syndrome is a real thing. And costly!
I’ve spent much of the past two weeks unpacking boxes containing all my worldly possessions as I set up my new ‘nest’ in Provence. Several of these contain mementos from my childhood home in Billings, Montana, which my siblings and I cleared out after the death of our mother last year. Atop the cluster of such mementos in one box was the needlepoint masterpiece picture above, which I painstakingly stitched when not much older than 7 or 8.
My memory is fuzzy about what compelled me to craft this message while practicing my new pastime. Perhaps I was in need of an ego boost, and couldn’t think of a higher compliment than ‘nice.’ After all, that’s the era when girls were told they were made of ‘sugar and spice and everything nice.’ My cultural conditioning, from religion (I was raised Catholic) to school to broader society, reinforced this as a highly admirable quality in girls. I absorbed that like “Though Shalt Be Nice” was the 11th commandment. I lived my life hyper vigilant of my impact on others. I was polite, agreeable, eager to please; loathe to cause conflict or disrupt the peace. I took a certain sense of pride in being able to ‘manage’ certain tricky situations by sublimating my own needs and desires in service of someone else’s good or the greater harmony of all.
That worked for me ... until it didn’t.
5 decades later, I’m still unwinding from the damage this mantra has cost me. Being nice meant putting others’ needs before mine, always - to the point that I could barely acknowledge what I needed, or even how to ask for help. Being nice meant not speaking up when something bothered me, for fear of upsetting the other party – to the point that I regularly gaslit myself, second guessing the validity of my opinions. Being nice meant saying yes to things I didn’t really want to do, because I didn’t want to disappoint the asker – to the point that I had virtually no time to pursue my own interests, and practically forgot what those were. Being nice meant downplaying my achievements so I wouldn’t seem braggy – to the point that I was regularly visited by imposter syndrome, and found it hard to talk about myself at all.
By the time I turned 50, my worship at the Altar of Nice came back to bite me. Short story: my body rebelled, relationships ruptured, my entire sense of self shifted. I finally learned to ask for help. I finally learned to look outside of myself and at the systems that had shaped me. I finally started to see that there were other ways to be a healthy, productive contributor in this world, and they didn’t involve shrinking myself into niceness wrap so I’d be palatable to others, even while suffocating myself.
My awakening coincided with my ongoing work as a recruiter for international schools (Search Associates). And it became ever so clear to me that I was far from alone in paying the steep price of nice. Many of the women I encountered through Search who were aspiring to leadership roles seemed also to be afflicted with what I’ve come to understand as ‘nice girl’ or ‘good girl’ syndrome: a belief by many girls and women that we must be overly agreeable, accommodating and nurturing in order to meet societal expectations. (Symptoms include: excessive perfectionism, dependence on external approval, avoidance of conflict, fear of saying ‘no,’ excessive self-demand, emotional exhaustion.) I found this was holding many superbly talented women back from achieving the leadership roles they deserved, or from truly thriving in these roles when there.
Short story: my tenure at Search Associates gave way to me launching Sidecar Counsel, where my not-so-secret mission is to help women leaders escape the confines of nice, so that they can experience and practice the wide range of ways-of-being-female (or, human!) available to them. Nice can be included in that repertoire, as long as it’s not excessive. So can badass.
What moving-beyond-nice has looked like from my sidecar in the past few weeks:
- M was blindsided by an opaque and highly subjective performance review that led to her being non-renewed, with no meaningful opportunity to correct anything before the decision was made. Rather than simply accept the decision and seethe or internalize negatively (nice), she reflected on her strengths and values, stood up for herself, and asked for a review of the process. She got it, along with validation of her negative experience and pledges to ‘fix the process’ while supporting her with greater humanity as she ended her tenure.
- E had years of experience in leadership roles, with aspirations for her first principalship – a role that felt reachable given her background and skillset, and which colleagues had urged her to pursue. In the process of enrolling with a recruitment agency, her representative advised her to lower her expectations, since she hadn’t held this position before. Rather than accepting this assessment or staying quiet (nice), E challenged the rep, who hadn’t even engaged her in conversation before offering this advice.
- S discovered, in casual conversation with a colleague, that her salary was far below this colleague’s, despite parallel roles, years of experience and contributions. She had been told upon first taking her job that salary negotiation wasn’t possible, which she accepted at face value (nice). She learned later that other colleagues had successfully negotiated. The steep price of ‘nice’ for S added up over the years to nearly $200k in lost salary alone. She is petitioning for a substantive raise, and recognition of a flawed process.
- Me, in negotiating the roads and parking garages of Provence. (I forgot I knew so many spicy swear words!)
Let me be clear: there is nothing wrong with being nice - as in pleasant/ kind/ easygoing - as long as the situation calls for that and isn’t simply your default setting for how you show up in the world. Goodness knows the world could use more niceness these days. What’s important is that nice take a seat alongside other modes of behavior, so as to have rich and supportive company when taking on the day-to-day adventures of leadership – and life!
I’m here in my sidecar to help you unwind from default nice and practice other ways of being that might be more productive and healthy.
Meanwhile, I’ll find a frame for my childhood artwork and hang it proudly in my new abode. Because I am nice. And a badass. And lots of other things, depending on the terrain. (Ooh, I feel new needlepoint creations coming on …)
Yours in exploring lands that nice doesn’t reach,
Bridget
TIMELY REMINDER:
Come gather with other women leaders at Sidecar Summits planned for this Fall. We’ll practice ways of pushing beyond nice (we and the communities we lead deserve it), and have fun doing it.
Sidecar Summit Canada: ‘Abundance as Resistance’- October 15-18, 2026. Early birds can save their spots and $$ by registering by June 15. An agreement form and deposit saves your spot.
Sidecar Summit Portugal: ‘Vital Leadership’ - November 20-24, 2026. We’re more than halfway full as of the early bird deadline of May 15. 7 spots left. Get yours while the getting is good!
