Hi Reader,
​
Early in the pandemic, a photo from a Minnesota grocery store started circulating.

I wish I had saved it, because it explained Minnesota better than anything I could write.

The produce section had been picked over almost completely.

Except for one apple.
One head of lettuce.
One zucchini.

Apparently, even in a panic, nobody wanted to be the person who took the last one.

I grew up in Minnesota, where “nice” is less a personality trait and more a social operating system.

We don’t honk.
We don’t interrupt.
And we definitely don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable.

The older I get, the more I realize how often that instinct follows people into organizations.

Especially good ones.

That’s part of what makes this dynamic difficult to recognize.

When tension gets avoided in a toxic culture, it looks dysfunctional.

When tension gets avoided in a nice culture, it often looks collaborative.

Someone softens the feedback.
Someone changes the subject.
Someone says, “I think we’re actually saying the same thing.”

Nobody wants to be the person who takes the last zucchini.

Meanwhile, the real issue survives untouched.

That is the polite tax.

The problem isn't kindness.

If every difficult conversation has to pass a comfort test before it can happen, people spend more energy making the message acceptable than making it useful.
​​
Can we raise this without sounding negative?​
​Can we disagree without seeming unsupportive?​
​Can we say this in a way that nobody experiences as uncomfortable?

Eventually the concern gets raised.

But only after enough cushioning that nobody is entirely sure how serious it actually is.

You see it in decisions that keep getting revisited.
Projects everyone publicly supports but privately questions.
Cross-functional tensions renamed as “alignment work.”

Most organizational problems don't start with conflict.
They start with conversations that never happened.

Strong leadership cultures do not eliminate discomfort.

They stop treating disagreement as damage.

That requires leaders who can disagree without escalation.
Raise concerns without dramatics.
Ask harder questions without making the conversation feel unsafe.

Try this in your next leadership meeting

Notice the exact moment a group collectively moves away from tension.

The joke.
The over-explaining.
The sudden rush toward agreement.

Then calmly say:

“I think we just skipped past something important. Can we go back for a minute?”

Not aggressively.

Just directly enough that the real conversation happens.

Because the polite tax rarely shows up in the moment.

It shows up later.
In slower execution,
Weaker decisions,
And teams that look highly aligned right up until the moment they aren’t.
​
The test of a strong culture is not whether people are comfortable all the time.

It’s whether they trust each other enough to say what the work requires.

That is where niceness becomes something stronger.
​
Warmly,
Angela

P.S. I still may never take the last zucchini. But strong teams cannot afford to leave the hard conversation behind.