Kindness in Leadership

 

by John Keyser

“Unexpected kindness is the most powerful, least costly, and most underrated agent of human change.” –  Bob Kerrey 

Strong leadership and kindness are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they fit together effectively. The most successful leaders treat their team members with kindness. They realize that kindness is motivating.

Motivated team members lead to a winning organizational culture, which leads to people having pride in their work, their team and their company, which leads to outstanding results and superior client service.

In several recent conversations about kindness, people pointed out that what we say and do must be genuine. Yes, definitely. When I say kindness, I do not simply mean making platitudes.

Kindness includes being positive and encouraging. It also includes helping people feel good about themselves. This is a great description of leadership: how we help make someone feel, how we inspire a can do attitude, how we help others gain confidence.

In my work with business leaders, with 360 leadership assessments and developing winning organizational cultures and teamwork, I regularly hear that people want their managers to be honest and make the time to help them learn and succeed. They realize this often means being forthright and leveling with them about areas of professional development. Yet, managers are often too busy to realize their responsibility to give constructive feedback to help their people learn and grow.

It is important to realize that giving constructive feedback, mentoring and coaching our team members and others are also acts of kindness. Everyone wants to do well and be successful. Their learning, growth and success is our responsibility as leaders just as much as it is our team members’ own responsibility.

We can give constructive feedback in a kind manner, letting our people know we genuinely care about them.

Ideally we have these conversations in person, and if we cannot be with them, we pick up the phone and call them.

I recently had a conversation with  Emily Clark, a regional marketing manager at Billy Casper Golf. She is a strong natural leader who is all about the team. Emily made an important point: It is important for us as leaders to take the time to reach out to our people when good things happen, not just when something goes wrong.

“We rise by lifting others.” – Robert Ingersoll

My invitation this week is to think “kindness” in our work and interactions and to notice the difference we make. 

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A post script: Donna Zajonc of The Empowerment Dynamic (TED*), which is a very helpful approach to focus our mindset on our desired outcomes and create the future  we desire, recommends the recently released movie Cinderella as a portrait of kindness throughout this powerful and touching film.