We’ve all heard the advice, usually at some low points in our lives, from a well-meaning friend:  just fake it until you make it, Nick!  Meaning, just pin that sh*t-eating grin on your face and go do the job you were hired to do, or the speech you were brought in to give, or the conversation you’ve been needing to have.  And Amy Cuddy popularized the idea of adopting a power pose in the bathroom before you have to go out and wow the audience, or the board, or your teammates.  All of us, as grownups, moreover, learn to put the best face on certain situations in the workplace or at home, making nice with the people we see everyday in order to get along.  A certain amount of playacting is inevitable and essential to the smooth functioning of organizations, or so this argument goes.

Here’s the question:  is this a good idea or a bad idea?  Is there a cost to making nice instead of making waves?

It’s easy to imagine that staying for a long period of time in a job or a relationship that makes you deeply unhappy is not a good thing for mental health.  That’s the stuff of movies, books, and advice manuals.  Just take that job or relationship and shove it!  But what about the shorter term?

Years ago, before I started Public Words, I was hired at a company that had a toxic work culture.  It stemmed from the leader at the top, an obsessive control freak who screamed at employees when they missed minor details he couldn’t let go.  That pattern of behavior worked its way down the levels to my boss, who felt free to sexually harass me one evening when we were both working late.  I was shocked and humiliated, and uncertain about what to do.  I didn’t report it in the end.  Instead, I started spending more and more time on the road, over the next few months, avoiding being in the same room with my boss, only reporting to HQ when absolutely necessary.

I plastered that grin on my face and kept working.

Today, I would advise my younger self to handle it differently, but that’s what I did then.  Fortunately for me and my mental health, before too long, the company started losing money, there was a round of layoffs, and I was handed my cardboard box of personal items and escorted to the door.

Also today, there’s a study of over 2500 employees in various organizations that tells me that faking it over the longer term, anyway, is not the best advice.  The study makes a distinction between what the authors call surface acting and deep acting.  In surface acting, you put that smile on and go to work.  In deep acting, you make a real effort to change your thinking, or underlying emotional attitude, so that your surface affect and your deeper emotions are consistent – and you respond differently to the other actors involved.

Pretending – making nice when you don’t feel it – leads to significantly more stress and emotional distress, the study finds.  Employees who genuinely try to find the good in their fellow workers and figure out how to make the best of the situation have the strongest emotional health.

A third option, just being grumpy or hostile, doesn’t work as well as making a real effort to change yourself and look for the best in the situation.  Because then you end up being the (grumpy) victim.  You’re paying the price for the other people’s bad behavior.

To be clear, I’m not advocating acquiescing to an illegal or immoral workplace condition, employer, or event.  Not at all.  As I said, I now see that I should have handled my own situation differently.  I think the point is the choice that we have in those situations that aren’t illegal or immoral but are emotionally unpleasant or taxing.  The study warns us that just pretending to like a situation – faking it until we make it – can lead to longer-term stress and distress.  The better solution is to work on changing the actors involved – and that begins with ourselves.