Leading with kindness isn't a tool in the kit….it's the kit.

I feel as though in every business book I've ever read, there comes the point where the subject matter begins to feel repetitive, and I must decide whether to forge ahead or move on to the next book. Whether it's the second page, the second-to-last, or anywhere in between, there's a point where the author, who to their credit is trying to reinforce points previously made, begins revisiting topics I already know.?

The decision as to whether I move ahead or not is determined, for me at least, by how creatively the subject is being revisited.?I share all this with you because this article you're about to read is on a subject that you already know: Kindness. However, this piece will present the concept of kindness through what I hope is a new and brighter lens: Leading with kindness is the optimal approach to improving the experience of the people around you and unleashing the full impact potential of your organization. This idea is true because there is no more efficient and effective way to enable your best self as an advocate and teammate and supercharge the elements of leadership than through kindness.

Before we dive in, let me first say that this is all part of a journey for me and likely for many others, based on what I've learned throughout my career. It's not often that we see kindness at the forefront of leadership. In fact, it's common for it to be the exact opposite. This juxtaposition is why it's so important that we lead with kindness, not only because it creates a better experience for all involved, but also because it leads to better business outcomes.

Positive intent begets positive intent

More than twenty years ago, the first executive leader I ever had the time to observe, and subsequently try to emulate from a stylistic perspective, was someone who, for our purpose here, I'll call "Deke." Deke was a senior executive for a large and leading publicly traded company. Deke was a retired Navy SEAL with an immaculately minimal office except for one photo on his desk. The framed photo was of himself chopping a coconut in half. With his bare hand. Let that soak in for a moment – it makes a memorable first impression.

Deke was deeply involved in all aspects of our business, knew key metrics for each leader daily, and held leadership calls at six in the morning to review those metrics. While he sounds intense, I should mention that I adore Deke – to this day, he is someone whom I know has a huge heart and a tremendous sense of care and kindness. I know this about him because I got to know him personally over many years of working together.?

However, the initial impression he made on myself and others was of this tough, demanding leader who would challenge the thinking of his team by offering quips like, "Don't give me chicken sh*t and try to sell me it's chicken salad." Deke's leadership approach was the model of success at that organization, and I modeled it almost too well. This model was fueled by the assumption that if you weren't constantly aware of all on-goings, someone on your team would try to deceive you or would be "asleep at the wheel." It was a mentality that only through assuming the worst could you always be prepared for everything to come. If that sounds exhausting, it's because it is – and it was the way I started to view those around me. ?

It wasn't until one day at a teambuilding event when I finally had the opportunity to spend time outside the office getting to know my coworkers that it hit me like a ton of bricks: the people around me are all as caring and hardworking as I am. They cared about their work, their families, and their friends, too. So, why were we treating one another like they were out to "get us", instead of assuming everyone was trying their best? This realization is where the journey to leading with kindness began for me – by starting with always assuming positive intent in others.

Fueled by positive intent, leading with kindness maximizes emotional intelligence (EQ) and allows others to learn by example to assume positive intent themselves. Indra Noori, the legendary former CEO of PepsiCo, attests that leading with kindness is the best advice she has ever received. "We all make mistakes," Noori said in an interview with Fortune Magazine. "However, we hold a double standard – we judge other people's mistakes differently than we judge our own."?

The attribution theory dictates that humans are predisposed to assign causes of what happens in our world, and with that, we are most prone to focus on behaviors as the driving factor of those causes. The double standard of how we view our behavior vs. that of others – which includes the mistakes we make – is heavily biased. Our personal bias enables us to ignore circumstances and look to assign blame. Psychiatrist Carl Jung famously stated, "Although our conscious minds are avoiding our flaws, they still want to deal with them…so we magnify those flaws in others."

The result of preconceived bias means we are prone to error in how we perceive our worlds, particularly in our work. Here's the kicker we make mistakes and often blame the circumstances of the situation, but if they make mistakes, we focus on their role in the mistake.

In reality, most people are not twisting a figurative "bad-guy" mustache, nor are they dumb or lazy. We need to work on managing how these events and encounters are perceived in our minds as leaders. This shift starts with giving people the benefit of the doubt and assuming positive intent, resulting in an environment where everyone believes they can do the same. Your approach becomes one of curiosity and seeking to understand. Your teams are increasingly likely to share more and experiment for the better. Negative intent comes from a place that is angry and seeks blame. Positive intent comes from a place of generosity and kindness.

The impact of this approach isn't just philosophical or psychological. Throughout her time as CEO at PepsiCo, Indra Noori would lead the organization to significant growth, set a strategy to dig into health and product differentiation, and deliver tremendous value to the company and shareholders alike.??

Making the conscious decision to truly attribute positive intent to others and seek to understand your teams is work; it requires practice and demands patience. It's likely that in some cases, you'll find out that the person across the table did, in fact, have negative intent – but the upside of starting from a place of positivity and collaboration far outweighs the unlikely event that is the case. Positive intent means coming from the place of, "we are in this together to do good things," a place that you'll find makes success feel better and mistakes feel rich in learning opportunities for all involved.

Kindness leads to trust, which leads to better business outcomes

Leading with kindness imbues trust, arguably one of the most essential components of any successful team or company. When I think of trust, I recall a story not from my career but in my personal life. The Flaming Lips, a rock band, is known for their heartfelt song lyrics and innovative live performances. Past performances have included everything from lead singer Wayne Coyne performing from a giant plastic bubble being passed around the crowd to putting the entirety of the crowd in their own bubbles as a means to protect during COVID while enabling people to still attend live performances.?

I was at a Flaming Lips show years ago, which featured Coyne opening with remarks about the importance and value of love and mindfulness. The band and their fans that night would witness what happens when nothing goes as planned but leading with kindness is essential.?

On a stage filled with lots of visual effects (which, for the Flaming Lips, are tantamount to the music being performed), the band was playing, and we the fans were enjoying the night. It's important to highlight here that all those visual effects are the work and responsibility of people behind the scenes, not on the stage. A backstage and often unsung group of workers carry the difficult task of making their leaders look and sound good, while feeling as seamless and easy as possible. Does that sound familiar at all to the roles of so many on our teams?

As I previewed earlier, not everything went smoothly that night on the stage. Arlin, a fan and music blogger, recounted the events of the evening:?

"During one song midway through the set, there was a giant painted rainbow prop that was supposed to ascend from beneath the stage being pushed up from below by two stagehands.?In what looked something a bit like an outtake from "This Is…Spinal Tap," the rainbow got stuck partway, and you could see the stagehands furiously trying to set it free. After a good 30 seconds of working with the rainbow, it finally loosened and ascended to its rightful place, framing the song right before the end….in the end of the song, Coyne gave a little impromptu speech about how what we had just witnessed was a metaphor for life… to never give up and to "Never doubt the rainbow…"

While this experience is a great metaphor for life, think about how the team responsible for that stage show – the employees whose job is to support and enable Coyne – feel about their leader. Specifically, about how much they trust him and feel trusted because of how he treats them when things go right and, more importantly, when they go wrong.?

It's been demonstrated that trust – or rather, a lack thereof – is the foundation of team dysfunction (as defined by Patrick Lencioni in "Five Dysfunctions of a Team"). Trust is one of the critical attributes of high-performing teams and a crucial aspect of leadership. Knowing that the people you work and collaborate with will push you is important; knowing that comes from a place of caring about what's best for you and the team is even more so.?Furthermore, trust is proven to be better for people and business: Fortune 50 and Pentagon advisor Paul J. Zak's two decades of research has focused on the neuroscience of trust. Zak cites, "Compared with people at low-trust companies, people at high-trust companies report?74% less stress,?106% more energy at work,?50% higher productivity,?13% fewer sick days,?76% more engagement,?29% more satisfaction with their lives,?40% less burnout."

Getting to trust can come from many different paths, but I'd offer that it's also important to note that trust isn't something you have to wait for, particularly as we understand its ability to unleash so much good for our people and our business. Lencioni offers, "The key ingredient to building trust is not time. It is courage."

The hardest lesson I've ever learned in this regard came when I was working through budgeting and forecasts with my financial business partner at the time, who I'll call "Gill." Upon starting to work with Gill, one of the first things I uncovered was that the numbers in his Excel documents seldom added up correctly. Rather than starting from a position of trust and accountability, I began taking on the role of "exam checker," routinely correcting errors in Gill's spreadsheets or sending him emails on areas that needed to be updated. I assumed that Gill couldn't be trusted and I took the path of fixing the outcomes of his mistakes rather than teaching him and then trusting him to be accountable. The result of this, because the timing and the demands of business sometimes work out this way, was that Gill owed a final copy of a budget before I could review it. The result was $4M missing from a budget that would ultimately require significant cost-cutting measures. While Gill made the mistake in the spreadsheet, it was really my mistake for not investing the time to build trust and connectedness with Gill. Rather than Gill taking ownership and knowing that I was counting on him, it became easier for him to continue to make errors knowing that I would catch them. If I had started from a position of high trust the outcome would have been different.?

A quick sampling of the Trust Equation, a concept introduced more than two decades ago in the book, "The Trusted Advisor," shows that there are four key attributes to building trust: Credibility (the words we speak), Reliability (creating a reputation of dependability through consistent actions), Intimacy (the safety or security that we feel when entrusting someone with something), and Self-Orientation (a person's focus on either others or themselves). Only one of these takes cycles (time) to build: reliability – because, by definition, it requires seeing actions performed over time. The other three (Credibility, Intimacy, and Self-Orientation) are "out of the gate" by their nature, meaning we can practice them inherently. Charles H. Green, co-creator of the Trust Equation, offers that these can be cemented through foundations of being candid and giving straight-talk, not spin, by how we ask questions and focus on others, through a knowing nod, and the recognition of the personal.

"Never doubt the rainbow…the rainbow will come" is a trust statement as much as anything else. Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips may just as have well said: I believe in the people I work with and know that they will do everything they can to support me, our customers (the audience), and each other. Think a bit about how powerful that statement could feel to your teams.?

It's important to take a break here and highlight that leading with kindness doesn't mean seeing the world as "all rainbows."?

Kindness doesn't need to equate to niceness.?

Kindness isn't about carrying around toxic positivity and suppressing any negative emotions or concerns, which, as highlighted in a myriad of studies and articles over the past decade, is bad for your mental and physical well-being and contributes to early mortality. (1)

This sentiment isn't telling someone, "you look great," regardless of how they look, so they feel better. This sentiment is the, "there's spinach in your teeth" skill of the leadership world. This skill requires empathy, authentic caring, and a deep commitment to open two-way communication – because, let's face it, there are times when you have spinach in your teeth, too.

There's a reason for the stigma that somehow being kind equates to being weak – it's because for years we have watched people barrel their way to the top of organizations. These "leaders" are overly vocal about everything from driving operational effectiveness to a host of skill improvement attestations, which leads us to believe that we just need to schedule better, write more effectively, drive more shareholder value – the list goes on. The best way to do that isn't some secret that only the titans of industry hold – it's that if we do it the right way, with kindness and empathy at the forefront, not niceness or being a pushover – that success is the outcome. An organization that communicates thoroughly, works efficiently and without bureaucracy, and runs effectively and dependably, is a leadership choice away. Marcus Aurelius, the creator of stoicism and one of history's most significant leaders, surmised that "Kindness is unconquerable."

Before I jump into a summary and a few parting thoughts, I want to say thank you for sticking with me so far. I will borrow a line from the movie "The Shawshank Redemption," in which one of the characters, Andy Dufresne, in a letter to his friend Red, wrote: "If you're reading this.. and if you've come this far, maybe you're?willing to come a little further." Let's reinforce "Leading with Kindness" and put a pin in it.

The choice is to lead with kindness not as a "tool in the kit" but as the "kit" itself.

Leading with kindness by assuming positive intent improves your employee experience, reduces costly attrition, and fuels speed-to-value enabled by better retention and engagement with work. (2)

Leading with kindness through a culture of trust increases innovation and productivity. (3)

Leading with kindness through empathetic and honest communication creates more value and higher earnings. (4)

This journey can start with one simple step: recognizing that everyone you cross paths with effectively wants and wishes for the same things in life that you and anyone else do: to be seen, feel valued, and have meaningful relationships. Each one of us spends our days effectively telling ourselves two stories. The first story is about how we see ourselves in the world. The second is about how the world sees us.

Leading with kindness includes interactions with everyone from your friends and family to your coworkers and supervisors. Every time we engage with those around us, we will affect both of those stories: we will either improve how we see ourselves and how others see us by being authentic, generous, and kind, or we will infuse more negativity into those stories. Make a point of ensuring that every interaction you have comes from a place of recognizing that each of us wants to feel loved and love one another – while that may sound corny, it will change how kindly you interact with the world and it with you.

The book, "Wonder," by R.J. Palacio centers itself on kindness and offers many thoughts on the subject. The passage that best summarizes my thoughts on the topic of kindness and its impact on us as leaders is: "Courage. Kindness. Friendship. Character. These are the qualities that define us as human beings and propel us, on occasion, to greatness."?

For yourself and for all those around you: Go and be great. Lead from the front and lead with kindness.

References:

1)??????Journal of Psychosomatic Research, "Emotion suppression and mortality risk over a 12-year follow-up." by Chapman, Fiscell, Kawachi, Duberstein, Muennig

2)??????"Insights on 2019 Turnover Trends, Reasons, Costs & Recommendations" from workinstitute.com

3)??????"The Business Case for a High-Trust Culture" a 2016 report from Great Place to Work

4)?????HBR Article" The Most Empathetic Companies, 2016" by?Belinda Parmar