Simon Sinek and Trevor Noah distinguish niceness from kindness: niceness is performative pleasantness, while kindness is uncomfortable action like giving honest feedback. Scandinavian cultures show this difference, appearing less nice but more genuinely kind.
Chapters
How are you defining kindness? Well, the way I break it down is I go first, I go, what is not kindness? Niceness is a good example, right? A lot of people are nice. Yeah. You know, I find a lot of like, for instance, Scandinavian, Swedish people, not very nice, but very kind. And it's a very complicated thing to understand, you know, because niceness is the performance of kindness, but it's not necessarily the action. You know, it is a nice thing to say something to somebody. It is a nice thing to smile at somebody. But kindness is doing something. Do you know what I mean? Giving somebody harsh feedback, hard feedback is kind but not nice. Yes. Not getting somebody feedback is nice but not kind. It is very nice. Yeah. You know, like for instance, this is a small thing, but I'm always thrown when someone has something on their face and no one tells them. It's very nice to not tell them. You have something on your face. Don't tell them. You're being nice. It's better to be kind and be like, hey man, your face. Do you get what I'm saying? And I think it's a very simple example of it, but it's also a very complex idea because one makes everyone feel like everything's going right. The other one is being able to embrace the discomfort of what's not, in a way.