Does hiring "nice" people create a culture of high organizational performance?

Mark, Bob and Wayne: Each of you touched in some way on defining exactly what is a nice employee. That was central to our discussion during the roundtable. Angel Tuccy, who fielded the question, did an excellent job defining it. During the discussion, the concensus was that nice employees do, in fact, support a high performing culture. To your point, Mark, "nice" probably doesn't mean avoiding conflict, and, yes, there are many other factors within organizations that contribute to making it high performing. Wayne did a nice job capturing the same concept that Angel discussed.

Just curious: How do you hire for "nice"? What does that interview look like? What screening questions do you use? I've met a lot of really "nice" people during the interview process that turn out to be the biggest jerks ever met when they get on board. And personality/psychological screening doesn't always get at it. I think this one is a slippery slope. "Nice" isn't a competency I want to spend a lot of time assessing. I want to focus on results: on actual accomplishments and contributions.

Yes, provided they are competent and behave as the job requires.

I presume that nice does not mean avoid conflict at all costs.

Nice people tend to get along together making more cohesive teams. It makes a more pleasant office environment, so that employees enjoy being at work, even if they are less tan thrilled with their job.

Nice people also tend to be less involved in office backbiting and politics which makes for more productivity and less game-playing.

So yes, hiring nice people does create hight organizational performance.

Charlie: Based upon the answers posted here, I think most others agree with you. "Nice" really is an ambiguous term. It just happened to be where we went during the roundtable discussion.

In my hiring experience, the closest I have gotten to "nice" is "fit", which, while not the same thing, is a whole lot more doable.

I don't think hiring "nice" people over "mean" people would create a culture of high organizational performance. I think what you said about being a "fit" is more of a term I'd go with. A company needs to hire a good fit in order to create a culture of high performance. I have yet to meet an organization of "mean" employees; however, hypothetically speaking, if an organization is comprised of less social and more business oriented employees, then hiring a "nice", more social and possibly less business oriented individual would not be a good fit and would not produce a culture of high organizational performance. This is not to say that everyone must have the same personality and traits (that would be boring and unchallenging), but the personalities should mesh well together.

I agreed with Sarah, only being "nice" is not important but a person should have skills and abilities also. With a nice attitude you can only create a pleasant working environment, on the other way if you have appropriate employees with full of energy, skills and nice in attitude also they would contribute in creating a high performance culture within the organization.

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