Catching Kindness

I spent last weekend in Taupo enjoying time with my husband's extended family. Getting there wasn’t much fun though, with the amount of roadworks and traffic on the road. It reinforced how much we need kindness for ourselves and others in our daily lives. When you read that sentence, you may interpret it differently than I do. You may have a different idea of what kindness is and how it applies to driving. Kindness is one of those words that we take for granted; we use it in conversation and assume we all have the same understanding of the word. We might think of simple kindness like smiling at strangers, or complex kindness like human rights protests and aid programmes. To create kind workplace cultures we need to dig deep into what kindness is. We can think of kindness as being like a freshly found uncut gemstone, it looks like an ordinary rock until given a good cut and polish to lets its magic shine. It is through kindness that we will change the world. But to do that we must generate a deep understanding of what kindness is and how we cultivate and show it.

Over the next few newsletters, we are going to cut beyond the ordinary surface of kindness to look at the three elements of kindness. Having a framework of skills can help us grow kindness in ourselves and our teams.

It is helpful to think of kindness as not just a trait, ie some people are kind and some are not, but as a set of active skills. We can organise these skills into three key elements - consider, feel and act. These elements are verbs because kindness is not passive rather it is a very active state.

Kindness involves being able to consider others - both as individuals and as an organisation, team or community. It involves having feelings or emotional responses to others’ states or circumstances and understanding others’ feelings or emotional responses. This includes being able to respond to others’ emotions in helpful ways and managing our own emotional states in ways that help us connect positively with others. These skills are learnable and expandable and we can all increase our kindness with a little encouragement and practice.

Stay Kind, Christina

Kia Ora,

I am Christina a psychologist and founder of The Kindness Workshop NZ. I am creating a kind world through developing kind leaders and training organisations to get their values off their walls and into daily actions. I provide

??Leadership Development Coaching for new Team Leaders in Health and Social services.

??In person workshops for teams that want to create a culture of kindness

?? Well-being support for those who struggle with workplace stress and burnout.

?? A free coffee to those who want to meet up and have a yarn about transforming the world through kindness.