EP 63: How Choosing Nice Can Lead to More Harm with Jenny Booth Potter

Uncategorized Oct 14, 2022

There is a difference between nice and kind.

Niceness is appeasing and complacent. Kindness is loving and generous.

Niceness, in IFS terms, can be experienced as a strong protector shielding us from vulnerability and risk by over-accommodating others. True kindness, on the other hand, connects us to our compassion and our values.

We sacrifice our integrity to play nice, to go along to get along. When we lead from niceness, we sugar coat and people please. While this may offer some relief, this posture usually creates more stress and internal dissonance.

To lead with kindness, you need the capacity to receive and navigate the responses of others. Kindness stirs up vulnerability because we do not know how we will be received, how we will be perceived, or how others will respond.

And these fears are especially common when navigating conversations and feedback around race, gender, ability, and so much more.

My guest today helps me dig deep into the intersection of niceness, whiteness, and standing against racism.

Jenny Booth Potter is a creative producer, storyteller, and co-host of The Next Question, a web series about expanding our imagination for racial justice. She has co-led racial justice trainings across the country for churches and organizations, and is a founding partner of HerSelf Media, a company that aims to create stories that empower and bring joy to Black women. Jenny’s first book, Doing Nothing is No Longer An Option:One Woman’s Journey Into Everyday Antiracism will be released October 25, 2022. Jenny and her husband make their home outside of Chicago with their two boys and one wild puppy.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

The connection between niceness and defensiveness, and how it prevents real growth
How niceness inhibits self-reflection and reflecting on the systems we uphold and are a part of
The moment when Jenny realized that doing nothing was not an option
Why white people have to grapple with their roles as oppressors
How perfectionism and supremacy show up when we approach anti-racism work

Learn more about Jenny Booth Potter:

Learn more about Rebecca:

Resources:

Scroll Down for The Full Episode Transcript:

Jenny Booth Potter: I think niceness has really, really thick walls that keep us pretty small and narrow as opposed to pushing and provoking and challenging and imagining and dreaming and getting messy. If we say something mean but we say it in a nice way, somehow [Laughs] it cancels out, and so, I think choosing niceness is an invisible shield and armor that is to insulate and protect us and, ultimately, to serve and center ourselves.

[Inspirational Intro Music]

Rebecca Ching: There are many cultural idiosyncrasies that I recall fondly from growing up in Minnesota, like when the temperature hits 40 degrees, it’s declared “shorts weather,” and how high school hockey tournament season feels like a state holiday. I love how Minnesotans say “pop” instead of “soda,” and, yes, I still say “you betcha.”

Now, I also grew up with the distinct awareness that people were either nice or mean. [Chuckles] Shoot, I spent my formative years (kindergarten through twelfth grade) in the land of ten thousand lakes which is also known for its own flavor of nice called “Minnesota nice” which, in fact, is not so nice all the time. Now, I can recall how Minnesota nice can sometimes be fairly benign where, for example, you're at a grocery store and an extra cash register opens up after lines have been building, and you’d see two people volley back and forth in debate about going to the open cash register lane saying, “You go!” “Oh, no, no. You go!” “Oh, you go!” “No, seriously, you go on,” and this would go on and on until someone else jumps in line or someone acquiesces.

I also remember a time when I was back home visiting for a friend’s wedding. I’d been out of the state for a while, and it was my late 20s. At the reception, a couple of my high school friends’ moms kind of weirdly cornered me outside of the fancy hotel bathroom.

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They were both smiling but kind of like a weird, tight smiling. The vibe was pleasant but distant leaving me feeling awkward 'cause I could not read what the situation was and what was going on, but, you know, I was excited to see them and even more curious on why they’d singled me out to talk. While holding this forced smile and looking me up and down, one of the moms said, “Rebecca… you're… doing so… well.” [Laughs] I’m like, “Yeah, okay,” and after a brief moment of letting them know where I’d been working and how well college went, they went on their merry way.

And as polite and (on-the-surface) flattering this exchange might seem on the outside to someone, it was a classic example of the dark side of Minnesota nice because, if they were really being honest, they’d be like, “Whoa, Rebecca. You were a frickin’ hot mess in high school, and it seemed you could barely keep it together at times, and we’re kinda shocked seeing how well you're doing today,” you know? That may not have felt very nice, but it would have been really honest. It probably would have been more of a fruitful conversation and led to more connection, right?

Now, I see Minnesota tripes abound, but I also remember how this cultural way of communication avoids direct confrontation or conflict with a placating smile or over-the-top politeness. And, as my example that I just shared about my interaction at my friend’s wedding, this kind of nice often serves as a passive-aggressive approach that buries one’s real feelings and beliefs. Now, it took me years to unpack the cost of choosing nice and how nice and kind are distinctly different. For a long time, I thought they were one in the same.

I'm Rebecca Ching, and you're listening to The Unburdened Leader, the show that goes deep with humans who navigate life’s challenges and lead in their own ways.

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Our goal is to learn how they address the burdens they carry, how they heal from them and become better and more impactful leaders of themselves and others.

I continue to rumble with discerning the difference between choosing a nice response or choosing a kind response. My journey started with, first, an intellectual understanding of the difference between nice and kind. I see and experience nice as appeasing and complicit, and I view kind as loving and generous. This breakdown often resonates with those I work with when talking about the difference between the two, but I also find an intellectual understanding of these words can fall flat without a sense of what it feels like to respond from an embodied place of niceness or from an embodied place of kindness. My internal family systems lens helps me see niceness more as a protector that works hard to keep me from feeling vulnerable and to mitigate risk by over-functioning and over-accommodating others. Its job is to protect me from backlash and can often lead to me shrinking from my courage when accountability and transparency are needed instead. Niceness feels like a tightness in my chest and throat and it can feel gross at times. Other times, it feels dissociative and reflexive when fear is high.

Now, I see kindness connected to compassion which is one of the traits IFS calls self or self energy which serves as our true essence and where those parts of us that protect, they experience healing from our inner team, and when I lead with kindness, I feel clear and connected to my values even if there’s a threat to being misunderstood. I’m more focused on the wellbeing of others rather than protecting myself at the expense of others and doing the right thing. You know, I end up sacrificing my integrity by choosing to go along to get along when I choose nice over kind, and I stay silent instead of standing up for the wrongs around me when I choose nice over kind.

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I care more about the opinions and needs of others over my own when I choose nice over kind. Niceness is a powerful insidious protector, and when you respond from niceness, your inner system is telling you (consciously or not) to stay safe or protect regardless of the impact it has around you. Sometimes choosing nice to appease and accommodate feels like the only option when the threat of backlash jeopardizes your safety or your job, and if you live and work in a space that requires you to appease at the expense of living authentically, that sure could take a toll on your wellbeing. When I feel the burden of niceness in my body from living outside my values and truth, you know, the nausea in my stomach and the clenching in my jaw remind me when I default to niceness or I’m the recipient of niceness. [Chuckles] These days, I always feel it when it shows up. It’s a powerful trailhead for me to get curious about what’s happening inside of me and around me.

When you try to discern between whether you're leading from kindness or niceness, getting curious about your inner agendas and motivations will definitely bring you clarity, and if you choose an action with an agenda or how you’re perceived, then you're probably defaulting to nice. On the other hand, if you choose an action that’s rooted in kindness, the focus moves from you to care for the other person, you know? Again, kindness is loving and generous, even when not deserved, which makes it hard for me [Laughs] a lot of the times, especially these days. Kindness honors boundaries and cares more about supporting others than being misunderstood. I’ve learned, for me, I move out of kindness when I’m not externally motivated and I’m more fueled by my courage and my values, and I see how kindness requires a lot of confidence and courage to hold my boundaries, speak truth, and disagree with others.

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When I default and lead from niceness, I end up sugar-coating and people-pleasing and, while this might offer some relief, it doesn't get me off the hook, and this posture usually creates more stress and internal dissonance. When I reflect on the times I default to niceness, I see how niceness is more than just a cultural response but one connected to my capacity for discomfort. Echoes from the traumas of my story often rear up and bring my niceness protector into action, and when I’m around certain personalities or situations, I can feel activated, and the memories my body and nervous system hold rise up and can overwhelm me. A lot of my own personal work leads me to recognize the pattern of protection through placating and appeasing over the years, and it’s not an excuse, it’s just data. Sometimes it was just to stay safe, right? Keeping the peace meant no harm done with words or fists, other times, niceness protected from feeling ashamed or ridiculed.

Now, I know from my work over the years that I’m not alone in being raised to put my own needs aside for others, furthering the belief that I am automatically mean if I don't choose nice. This is such a problematic binary leaving no room for nuance or context. It still takes a lot of work to help the parts of me that want to choose nice to relax, but this is the work in a part of being deeply human. I see my feelings of overwhelm and activation as just data, not my identity, and I have collected a lot of data around how I default to niceness and what it feels like to receive niceness over the years. When I lead with kindness, I feel grounded in my body. It feels scary but makes room for hard conversations, growth, falls, struggles. This is the space where I feel most alive.

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When you lead with kindness, you need the capacity to receive and navigate the responses of others. Kindness stirs up vulnerability because we don't know how we’ll be received, how we’ll be perceived, or how others will respond, and our brains love to dress rehearse potential scenarios and talk us out of staying true to ourselves and others. I believe this is especially common when navigating conversations and feedback around race, gender, ability, and so much more.

Now, my Unburdened Leader guest today helps me dig deep into the intersection of niceness, whiteness, and standing up against racism. Jenny Booth Potter is a creative producer, storyteller, and co-host of The Next Question, a web series about expanding our imagination for racial justice. She has also co-led racial justice trainings across the country for churches and organizations and is a founding partner of HerSelf Media, a company that aims to create stories that empower and bring joy to Black women. Jenny’s first book, Doing Nothing is No Longer an Option: One Woman’s Journey into Everyday Anti-Racism, just released this month (October 2022). Jenny and her husband make their home outside of Chicago with their two boys and one wild puppy.

Now, listen for Jenny’s view on niceness and the role it plays when hard conversations come up. Pay attention to when Jenny shares the pivotal moment when she realizes she can’t do everything but doing nothing was not an option. Notice when Jenny notes the importance and the challenges on getting curious about whether we’re standing with the oppressed or the oppressor. Now, please welcome Jenny Potter to The Unburdened Leader podcast.

Jenny, welcome!

Jenny Booth Potter: Thank you! Thank you so much for having me. I’m really looking forward to this conversation.

Rebecca Ching: I want to kick off by talking about a topic that I can rant about a lot, and I’d like for you to tell me what is choosing nice and how can it lead to more harm?

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Jenny Booth Potter: Ooh! [Laughs] So we’re just taking it real easy. [Laughs] Easy first --

Rebecca Ching: Yeah.

Jenny Booth Potter: Not what we had for breakfast, yeah, no. Choosing nice -- oh. I mean, the first thing that comes to mind is you’re choosing nice over a lot of other things that matter a lot more. You're prioritizing social norms as opposed to imagination for how things could be. I think niceness has really, really thick walls that keep us pretty small and narrow as opposed to pushing and provoking and challenging and imagining and dreaming and getting messy. There is so much safety and comfort in niceness because it’s often what we point to. We say, “Well, I know this terrible thing -- I know I said or did or thought or acted in this terrible way, but people that know me know that I’m really a nice person.” It’s almost this catch-all for any bad behavior if we say something mean but we say it in a nice way somehow [Laughs] it cancels out. So I think choosing niceness is choosing -- you know, Brené Brown talks all the time about this armor, right? And so, I think choosing niceness is an invisible shield and armor that is to insulate and protect us and, ultimately, to serve and center ourselves.

Rebecca Ching: So how does choosing niceness, then, lead to more harm? We’re protecting ourselves, but how does that lead to more harm around us?

Jenny Booth Potter: I mean, when people are on the defensive, I just don't know how we progress, right?

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If we’re constantly trying to dig ourselves out of a trench, how do we ever build anything? How do we ever grow? How do we ever let anything take root? I just don't think it’s sustainable. I don't think it’s a sustainable way. If you actually are in a space where you want to grow, it will halt all growing from occurring.

Rebecca Ching: It will halt all growing from occurring. Yes, you know, it’s interesting. Anyone who knows me or works with me knows that I will say niceness is appeasing and complicit, and kindness is loving and generous where the messy, the hard, but the true and the aligned happens, it’s complicated. But niceness is often violence, being appeasing and complicit. So I’m curious. Can you give me a personal example of when you chose nice over kind?

Jenny Booth Potter: [Laughs] Sorry, I’m like which to choose from.

Rebecca Ching: Right?

Jenny Booth Potter: I have a lot, but I’m gonna go with actually how I open up my book which is I’m being interviewed for a racial justice journey at my college, and in the interview, they ask me, “So, why do you want to go on this? Why do you want to have this experience?” I remember really struggling with that question of, like, why do I want to do this, and what ended up coming out was I said, “I really want to do something beyond just smiling at Black people that I see in the street. I find myself doing this. I find myself smiling and noticing and being extra friendly, but I feel like that isn’t actually doing anything as I read the news and I’m learning in different classes about the disparity in income and disparity in -- just all these things. I don't think my smiling is doing enough.”

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So they let me go on this trip, and I think there was, out of that -- I don't know if it was so much niceness. It was a I get this now, so people will need to listen to me, and so, if I ask you something, if I ask you about this, I’m gonna do it in my nice way but also in the way that says, “Don't you get that I get this,” kind of approach.

Rebecca Ching: Mm.

Jenny Booth Potter: And I think that’s a layer to it, too, of this, “Aren’t you so lucky that I’m here? Aren’t you so lucky that I’m doing this work? I don’t have to be doing this work. I could be doing other things. I could be ignorant like all these other white people, but aren’t you so lucky that I don’t just smile anymore,” you know? And so, there was this really --

Rebecca Ching: Like a self-righteousness almost that came in there.

Jenny Booth Potter: Yeah, and I think it was --

Rebecca Ching: I can't relate at all. [Laughs]

Jenny Booth Potter: [Laughs] And I think there’s a lot of roots in nice. I mean, 'cause I love your definitions of niceness versus kindness. There’s nothing courageous about being nice. It’s a little eye for an eye. There’s, like, an exchange happening where I think kindness fights through that in a totally different way, and I wasn’t being kind. I kept going back to that defensive layer, that, like, “But, wait! I’m being nice,” or, “Wait! I get this. Why don't you see?” Yeah, it’s self-righteous and it’s, ultimately, incredibly self-centered. When we are choosing niceness, I think that we are keeping -- it’s all about how I was perceived or how I behaved or how I felt about myself as opposed to how it’s experienced by anyone else.

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Rebecca Ching: Exactly, and I feel like, for me, when I have those moments where I protect with niceness and it hits me later, I want to go take a shower because I realize I’m so grossed out by the whole situation, but I’m also aware, too, of how quickly I default that because I’m trying to protect myself from harm, but then I am not protecting others from harm.

Jenny Booth Potter: Well, and it’s not just harm. It is our belief about who we are.

Rebecca Ching: Tell me more.

Jenny Booth Potter: If your whole identity or you just think about -- I was about to say grooming which maybe -- [Laughs] grooming, rearing, how you were raised, and especially as a white, Christian, cisgendered woman, what do we have if we don't have our niceness? If we aren’t nice and beautiful and thin, what else is there? So now you’re taking away one of these core markers of my identity, and when that threat starts to unravel, where will it end? Who am I really? ‘Cause we are not unsafe when we’re -- when we’re being nice, are we actually at risk of harm, actual physical harm? Now, I would argue that, yes, ‘cause we’re choosing things that keep us maintaining status quo, maintaining power structures. We’re not at any sort of healing journey. So there is harm happening, but I don’t think it’s the harm that we’re worried about. We’re worried about who we are being called into question and having to grapple with that. That is terrifying for people when it’s been one of your pillars.

Rebecca Ching: Yeah, ‘cause it’s, like -- again, so many of those that identify as female work so hard to not be the recipient of being identified as a bitch, right?

Jenny Booth Potter: [Laughs]

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Rebecca Ching: Totally, but, you know, it’s interesting ‘cause, for me, I’ve got trauma in my story, and so, I’ve noticed even in my own waking-up journey I’ve had to work through my niceness to know I know how to keep the peace. I mean, shoot, I went to become a psychotherapist. I mean, come on.

Jenny Booth Potter: You got some skills.

Rebecca Ching: I got some skills! But I’m noticing then I’m doing the nod or I’m not being authentic, and I’m just kind of deescalating things that I think -- so the more that I’ve done my own work, the more I can help my inner system know this isn’t back in our story 30-40 years ago. We’re okay now. We got this, and I feel like it’s almost this dance of identity like you're talking about, and for those who have to do their own trauma work to sit with the discomfort of not appeasing, of not going along to get along, right?

Jenny Booth Potter: Yes, one of my kind of mentors -- I write about her a little bit in the book. She’s a white woman, and she said to me, “Jenny, the most dangerous people are those who hold harm and privilege in each hand,” (who have been held down by systems and who also uphold those systems) because, at any point, we get to choose if we’re the victim or the victor, right?

Rebecca Ching: We get to choose it.

Jenny Booth Potter: We get to choose it!

Rebecca Ching: We have a choice, yeah.

Jenny Booth Potter: We get to say -- and I don't know your story so I want to be very sensitive, but we get to say, “Oh, I feel like I’m being called out for disparity,” and white people being like, “Well, you know what? I had it hard, too. I had this thing in my past. My life wasn't all easy just because I’m white.”

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So we get to go into that mode of, “No, I’m a victim, too,” and that language is very problematic. Then, we also have this alliance with others that do hold power, and so, we do get to say -- and even beauty standards or affirmative action actually benefits white women more than it does any person of color. It is a dance, like you were talking about, and it’s really -- you're in constant check mode of, yes, I’m on my own healing journey, and, yes, my story matters, and, yes, there are parts that I’m working through, and also, this experience by this other person or this institution that’s harming other people -- to be able to hold that ‘yes and’ space, right? That takes so much grace for yourself, I think.

Rebecca Ching: Well, it was a bit of a brain explosion --

Jenny Booth Potter: Yeah.

Rebecca Ching: -- because it’s the intersection of healing and transforming and then realizing how much I still lean on systems that can protect or how much I was supporting systems that were just as violent, and it’s this weird mind F in trying to detangle and deconstruct it all, and it’s not tidy. Nice likes tidy.

Jenny Booth Potter: There are social norms on this that are so engrained, and you're right. It does not like nuance, and what we are talking about is incredibly nuanced.

Rebecca Ching: And to hold nuance means holding an immense amount of discomfort and the gray which you write a lot about in your book. Before we move off of niceness, I’m wondering if you can articulate any real or potential consequences for you and others when you choose nice?

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Jenny Booth Potter: I think what niceness does is it gives us something to point to other than pointing and looking in the mirror and reflecting on our self.

Rebecca Ching: So true. Oh.

Jenny Booth Potter: The consequences of that are incredibly broad. [Chuckles] You know, I worked in an organization where they talked a lot about people’s blind spots, right? Like, “Oh, you need other people to be able to point out what you’re missing on seeing,” and I would argue that the consequence for choosing niceness is it’s not just like we’re not seeing our blind spots, but we’re not even seeing ourselves accurately, and if we aren't seeing ourselves accurately, how are we looking at the world accurately? How are we looking at the institutions that we’re a part of accurately? We are literally blinded, right? We’re blinded by whiteness. We’re blinded by niceness, and we’re driving cars and piloting airplanes. We’re doing really harmful, dangerous things thinking that we can see or thinking that we can see enough, and niceness shields us from seeing fully.

Rebecca Ching: I’m just thinking of niceness is violence is the archetype of the Karen. And we want to know ourselves, so maybe we’ll take a little quiz or we’ll read a little Brené Brown and watch a video and go, “Yes!” I mean, I’m someone who worked with Brené and her team for ten years, though, so I’m not mocking it at all, but I know there are people that will dive in and speak the language, but to live it, it means that YOU-turn of looking within, and, dear lord, it’s horrible to really see and you can't unsee, and then if your worth is tied up to niceness it’s -- but that needs to be shattered. It’s painful, but it needs to be shattered, yes?

0:26:14

Jenny Booth Potter: A thousand percent. A thousand percent.

Rebecca Ching: I just really believe that it’s violent. It serves a purpose, but at a big, big expense, like you said, to self and to others and to the systems that we’re in.

Jenny Booth Potter: Yeah, I don't think we can talk about it enough.

Rebecca Ching: I don't think so either, and people getting their brains around it, too. It’s disorienting for those that show up in the world like you and I.

So we’ve referenced your book. You wrote a book called Doing Nothing is No Longer an Option, and I’d love for you to take me back to your decision to write this book. Was there a particular moment or experience that catalyzed the idea behind the book?

Jenny Booth Potter: I think it was 2018. I had been working at a church for about seven years at that point, and this is the church that I grew up at and believed in with every ounce of my body that what we were doing was good, important work, and in that spring, our senior pastor was found to be power abusive, sexual harassment charges, just years and years of horrible behavior, and left the church, and I was in the middle of that storm. Then, I’m watching the #MeToo movement, the #ChurchToo movement happening. I’m also watching the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, and I have a -- and Trump is in office. [Chuckles] It’s just like, oh, my gosh, and I’m looking at my family, and I am raising two white boys, and I remember having a moment after one Kavanaugh hearing where I just said to a couple of white male friends, I was like, “Do they all give you a handbook or how am I hearing the same thing over and over again?”