The Cost of Being "Nice" (bytesizedchunks.net)

Retired now. I could be pretty blunt and direct, but I was always nice. In hindsight, it was strange to see a group of people who did not like me because I was nice or that other people liked me.

Just be yourself; life is too short for pretending to be someone else

I recently read "Difficult Conversations", a great book. There are ways to communicate with others that will be constructive.

for example, when talking about what happened, there are three stories - your story, their story, and the shared story. If you are a "nice" guy, you might not tell your story. If the other person is afraid of conflict, they might not share their story. You need to both be assertive/curious to get to discussing the this-is-what's-going-on shared story, like from a third person point of view. Then the discussion could get on track.

Conflict arises from differing or unmet expectations.

So the easiest way to eliminate a lot of issues is clearly agree and define expectations up front.

There is a reason a whole branch of project management is called Expectation Management.