Being nice can actually be really cruel. Let me tell you this story. Six years ago, I learned

how destructive nice leadership can be. I had a leader in my company who appeared to have built

a great department, and then one day I got a message from someone on her team asking to resign.

She said, ethically, I can't be here. I am getting paid to do nothing. When I was investigating it, I discovered that most of the

team was underutilized. They were answering just a handful of emails a week. They were barely talking to

customers and they were barely doing their job. To the degree that most of them had about three hours of

work. And this was spread amongst 15 people. When I approached the leader about it, her response

shocked me. She said,

we'll have to find work for them. What she did in that moment was she avoided confronting the real

issue was that she overhired. Her solution was to fabricate work that didn't help the business,

didn't help the team, and didn't help the culture. And so when I suggested, hey, you over-hired, we probably need to figure out what we need to do with these people.

She said, I'm not doing that. I'm not laying people off.

I will not stand and work at a company when people do that.

And then she sent her resignation to me the next morning.

Ultimately, what I had to do was I had to step in.

I had to reorganize the department.

And I did have to let people go.

And to be honest, it was one of the hardest times

that I've ever had in my leadership.

It was one of the hardest decisions I ever had to made.

And I was vilified for it in my company.

But what it taught me is that true leadership

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