Five with Fry
Five with Fry is your go-to podcast for understanding conflict—where it comes from, why it shows up, and how to handle it with clarity and intention. On each episode, Dr. Jen Fry breaks down the moments we avoid, the reactions we default to, and the skills it takes to move through conflict without blowing things up or shutting down.
Five with Fry
49: How Politeness Standards Can Stall Innovation At Work
If your meetings are polite and nothing is changing, that’s not a culture win. It’s a warning sign.
In this episode of Five with Fry, we talk about how “being nice” often becomes a way to avoid telling the truth—especially when power is involved. Politeness gets praised. Discomfort gets labeled a tone problem. And real issues stay safely untouched.
This isn’t about being rude or reckless. Respect still matters. But softening the message to protect comfort slows decisions, blocks accountability, and keeps teams stuck in endless discussion. We break down how tone policing shows up at work, who it actually protects, and why so many leaders mistake calm meetings for progress.
You’ll hear practical ways to say the hard thing without turning it into a personal attack: how to anchor feedback in goals and risk, how to separate what you’re saying from how someone feels about hearing it, and how to stop over-editing your language until the point disappears. For leaders, we talk about what it really takes to invite dissent—and how to respond in the moment when someone is brave enough to use it.
Because clarity is not cruelty. It’s care. And work moves faster when people are allowed to be honest instead of polite.
If your team avoids tension but struggles to ship, start here. What’s the truth you’ve been sanding down that actually needs to be said—plainly—this week?
Friends, welcome to Five with Friday, where five is the magic number. Whether it's five minutes, five questions, or anything that fits in five. I dive into the big topics that matter, sometimes alone and other times with a friend. From navigating sports, conflict, to family dynamics, travel tech, hard-hitting issues, and even politics. Nothing, and I mean nothing's off the table. This is where curiosity meets conversation, and we always sit at an intersection. I'm your host, Dr. Jen Fry of Gen Fry Talks. Let's get into it. Hey friends, welcome to the news episode of Five with Fry. I'm your hostess with the most is Dr. Gen Fry. Today we're going to talk about the idea that politeness kills progress. Let me repeat that again. Politeness kills progress. I tend to see a lot of times, especially in corporate settings, where people are more worried about politeness, everyone being polite, than they are about progress or innovation. And in no way am I saying that you have to deal with someone being rude or disrespectful. That's not what I'm saying. But when you're so worried about everyone being polite that you miss out on the opportunities for the grappling, the figuring out the hard moments. Because politeness is literally a construct. And who gets to decide what polite even means? It's people in power. And many times politeness can mean that you don't push back against the boss's idea. That you don't hold one of your coworkers accountable because it's going to be uncomfortable for them. So many times I will see on social media that someone will say something rude and a person holds them accountable, and then people get mad at the person holding them accountable. We can't do that. We can't silence people who are holding people accountable who are standing up for what's right or people who are willing to engage in hard conversations. I've seen it where whenever people are starting to engage in a hard conversation and someone's uncomfortable with it, they'll start to pick at the words. Well, you could just be more polite in how you said it. You didn't have to say it that way. And many times when they say that, it means that they really wanted it sugar co sugar coated. They wanted icing and honey dripping from those words. They did not want the direct information. So they use this construct of politeness to negate what the person is saying. And we can't do that. We can't be more worried about everyone being polite than we are figuring out what we need to do to get things done or to innovate. We cannot. And if you feel yourself doing that, take a pause and ask what about this is making me so uncomfortable that I'm really trying to split hairs on their words versus taking with what they're saying and moving with it. Because sometimes innovation feedback can't be polite and make sure all the T's are crossed and all of that. Sometimes we just gotta be able to talk about the thing, to fix it, and to move forward faster. So we cannot have politeness killing progress because we want to innovate. We want to build the next things of tomorrow. And with that, sometimes politeness needs to be tossed aside. Well, friends, that's it for this episode of Five with Fry. Your dose of five insights, ideas, and inspiration. If you love what you heard, don't forget to head over to where podcasts are played, subscribe, share, and leave a review. Got a topic you want us to tackle? Drop us a message. We'd love to hear from you. You can come follow me on IG, Twitter, the TikTok at Gen Fry Talks, or join me on LinkedIn. Look for me at Dr. Gen Fry. Until next time, stay curious, stay bold, and keep the conversation going. See you on the next Five with Fry.