Is Being Nice Going Out of Fashion?

It has been a challenging few months.

Not in a dramatic sense, but in the quieter way that leaves you replaying events and wondering how things became more complicated than they needed to be.

Because, if I am honest, much of it could have been avoided by something very simple. A phone call.

“Have you got a minute?”

I was recently involved in a situation within a volunteer organisation I care about deeply. Nothing unusual on the surface. A difference of view. A few decisions to be made. The sort of thing that should have been straightforward.

But somewhere along the line, conversation was replaced with assumption.

Positions were taken before questions were asked. Messages became firmer. Tone began to carry more weight than intent. And before long, something that could have been resolved in a calm, two-minute exchange became something altogether more strained.

What stayed with me afterwards was not the disagreement itself. That is part of life, particularly when people are invested and care about what they are doing.

It was how easily it might have been avoided.

A simple call. A quiet word. A chance to say, “I may have this wrong, but can we talk it through?”

Instead, we seemed to default to distance.

And I do not think this is limited to one situation. In my day-to-day work, I spend time around restaurant teams. Good people, working hard, often under pressure. The stories they share are, at times, uncomfortable to hear. Not because they are rare, but because they are becoming familiar.

Customers speaking with impatience from the outset. Conversations beginning at a level that leaves little room for understanding. A sense, occasionally, that courtesy is optional rather than expected. It leaves me wondering whether something has shifted.

Most of us were brought up, in one way or another, to start with basic decency. To ask before assuming. To give the other person a chance to explain themselves. That instinct still exists. But it feels, at times, as though it is being set aside. And when it is, the consequences are predictable.

Small issues become larger ones. Misunderstandings turn into disagreements. In volunteer settings especially, where goodwill is the glue that holds everything together, the effect can be disproportionate.

There is another thought that has been sitting with me.

In the not too distant future, I will be spending more time in Poland. My Polish is, at best, a work in progress (that's being kind). There will be moments where I struggle to find the right words, or worse, misunderstand what is being said to me.

In that situation, I will be relying almost entirely on the patience and goodwill of others. On tone, on body language, on the assumption that neither of us is trying to cause difficulty. And it strikes me as slightly ironic. That we can sometimes show more care and understanding when language is a barrier, than we do when communication should be effortless.

Which brings me back to that simple thought.

Pick up the phone. Ask the question. Assume good intent, at least to begin with. This is not about avoiding difficult conversations. It is about how we choose to have them. Because there is a difference between addressing a problem and amplifying it.

“Being nice” can sound like a soft idea. Perhaps even outdated. But what sits underneath it is not softness. It is discipline. The decision to pause. To listen. To give someone the chance to respond before drawing a conclusion. And those qualities feel more relevant now, not less.

I do not take any pleasure in writing this. It would be far easier to assume these are isolated moments. But I am not convinced they are. So perhaps the question is not whether being nice is going out of fashion. Perhaps it is whether we are choosing to practise it.

Because sometimes, the difference between a problem and a solution is nothing more than a quiet question:

“Have you got a minute?”