Leaders are only as great as they are kind.

We called him the CEO’s apple of the eye. An IIM grad, picked up by the CEO himself from the campus, where he spotted him, while speaking at a seminar. A dashing and likeable young man, he was full of verve, sharp, and genial and he very quickly picked up the essentials about the business. The CEO groomed him for some important assignment when the time was ripe.

Then one day the unthinkable happened. He was working on a business proposal for several days, spending long hours. But the CEO kept asking for changes. On that day he wanted to leave early. He had to go to the airport to escort his mother who was returning home after a four month long trip to US at his brother’s place. He had told the CEO about it in the morning, and the CEO was ok with it. But in the evening when he again brought the proposal, the CEO was in a foul mood. He picked up a red ink pen and, as he read, he scratched out portions of the draft before eventually giving up with a sarcastic comment “Sometimes I wonder how you got through to IIM with such IQ level.”

The young man was getting strung with the delay, and the ridicule proved to be the last straw in the camel’s back. The unexpected remark hurt the young man and he told the CEO that it was an unfair comment, as he worked to the best of his ability. The CEO was offended. One thing led to another and at the end of a brief altercation the young man snapped and said that he would not like to work there anymore. The CEO said fine, he could leave, if he wanted, and that is how the conversation ended and he left the office. He put in his papers the next day. It was a loss for the organisation. On hindsight it appeared as a leadership failure in the loss of a talent. The CEO, if he paid attention, could not have failed to notice how tight the young man was that day, and could have guessed why, could have deescalated the conflict, could have been more kind and humane. There are innumerable ways issues like this are handled successfully without paying a cost.

In organisations, where so many people work together and interact daily, it is but natural for some frictions to occur, arising out of varying moods of people, leading to occasional sparks. In high performing organisations peopled by stars, there could be virtual minefields dealing with inflated egos, waiting to explode at a wrong step. Astute leaders deftly underplay frictions and douse the sparks before they turn into wildfire and thus they are able to keep the herd together. The method they use is simple –they draw from their own humaneness and natural kindness.

In the context of globalisation, an important research program called the GLOBE (Global Leadership and Organisational Behaviour Effectiveness) was started in 1991 to identify the attributes of model leadership in organisations. It became a multi-phase, multi-method, multi sample research project in which investigators spanning the world examined the interrelationships between societal culture, societal effectiveness and organisational leadership. It came up with six global dimensions of culturally endorsed leadership theory (CLT) which included a dimension named as Humane oriented leadership.

Humane-Oriented Leadership has been explained as reflecting supportive and considerate leadership and it includes compassion and generosity. This leadership dimension covers two primary leadership attributes labelled (a) modesty and (b) humane orientation. Humane orientation is being empathetic and inclined to help and support team members in a humane manner by offering resources and other forms of assistance. Modesty reflects leaders who do not boast, are modest and present themselves in an humble and unassuming manner. We find a resonance for the need for kindness in a leader in an article in The Economic Times, (Reincarnation of the humane leader https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/view-point/reincarnation-of-the-humane-leader/articleshow/4849852.cmsr) by Mr. R Gopalakrishnan, Executive Director, Tata Sons, who talked about the need for humaneness in leader in an environment where large sections of employees face uncertainty due to volatility of the business. He quoted Mr. JRD Tata as the leader who could lead with affection.

Two practical questions emerge here: (1) Can kindness be used as a criteria for certain roles and (2) can kindness be developed? In healthcare systems, there is international concern about the lack of compassion, necessitating a valid and reliable tool for measuring compassion. A meta-analysis of the researches on some of the used tools (e.g. Compassion Competence Scale, Compassion Scale, the Compassionate Care Assessment Tool?, and the Schwartz Center Compassionate Care Scale? etc.) revealed significant limitations of each instrument , and thus the need for a psychometrically validated instrument ,that comprehensively measures the construct of compassion, is still unmet. (Measuring Compassion in Healthcare: A Comprehensive and Critical Review. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/310594850_Measuring_Compassion_in_Healthcare_A_Comprehensive_and_Critical_Review [accessed Oct 07 2018].

Contrary to the conventional wisdom that compassion, like athletic and academic skill, are traits a thus unchangeable, researchers have confirmed that compassion can be cultivated with training and practice. The enhancement of compassion through loving kindness meditation creates changes in brain structure linked to increased altruistic behaviour. A new study by researchers at the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at the Waisman Center of the University of Wisconsin-Madison shows that adults can be trained to be more compassionate. The report, published by Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, found that training adults in compassion can result in greater altruistic behaviour and related changes in neural systems underlying compassion (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-athletes-way/201305/compassion-can-be-trained). So reason to feel optimistic.