Do Leaders Need to Be Kind? How Kindness Builds Trust and Drives Business
Leading with Kindness: Integrating empathy and kindness strengthens leadership effectiveness and fosters a healthier workplace.
Empathy Wins: Empathizing with team members builds trust and enhances collaboration and morale.
Productivity Spike: A kind approach in leadership can result in higher productivity and better outcomes.
Kindness in leadership? Sounds a bit foofy doesn’t it?
Let me start this by asking you a different question: Why are there leaders who aren’t kind? Partially, it’s because most of us have a stereotyped image of a leader as some superhero who stands and commands his followers with no need to be kind because they will follow anyway. This is an image from another, ancient time.
As an executive coach, I have worked all over the place for the last twenty years and seen the devastating impact of ‘superheroes’ who promote efficiency over humanity. The younger generations flee organizations with this kind of self-centered attitude at the top because they neither feel heard nor respected.
Kindness is a key ingredient to retaining talent, but let me be clear, I’m not referring to fake kindness or calculated acts of kindness. The kindness I’m going to talk about has to be a genuine kindness, one driven by empathy and a desire to help people. And that’s something leaders can work on and improve every day.
Kindness Is A Leadership Concern
When writing my book Leadership Landmarks, I wanted to stick to an analytical – almost scientific – process as well as I could, to protect me from my own biases. I collected my notes from my 20,000+ hours of coaching. I categorized them according to the most frequently shared concerns from leaders.
One of the top six concerns was kindness. So yes, kindness has become a major leadership issue.
To be more explicit, the following are some of the main questions about kindness that I’ve been asked in my leadership coaching sessions.
Kindness towards self
• How can I accept who I am?
• How not to be confined by my emotions?
Kindness towards others
• How can I develop my ‘human’ side?
• How can I develop my emotional intelligence to align with others’ emotions and regulate my own?
Kindness within a team
• How can we create team spirit and a positive mindset?
• How can we share vulnerabilities without judgment?
• How can we know each other better, understand each other better, respect one another and make connections?
• How can I stay positive and not be influenced by negative pressure?
• How can I promote employee wellness?
Kindness in an organization
• How can we shift from a cutthroat culture to an empowering one?
Based on my experience on the ground with CEOs and Executives, I have designed the following approach that can help leaders be more kind and inspired from the people around them.
Mindful Leader-Coach Approach
I realized that leadership skills could be improved a lot by embracing a coaching attitude and a commitment to mindfulness. It’s true for all dimensions of leadership especially when it comes to kindness.
Active listening
Among the eight International Coaching Federation (ICF) core competencies, one stands out: listening actively.
Let me start with a concrete example: Eileen is the new CEO of an entity in a leading group. She wanted to bring her executive committee on board with her appointment and approach.
Overall, the context was very tense and not very friendly. Eileen had informed her executive committee members that she wanted them to be “conscientious, thorough, precise, careful, serious, committed, loyal, creative and able to co-construct concrete proposals.”
What was missing on her side was “active listening”. Engaging in holistic listening - i.e. listening to what is not said as well as what is said - helped her a lot. The executive committee worked on their common three-year plan, their one-year priorities, their individual recommendations and contributions, and their commitment to the collective effort. By listening more, Eileen was perceived as more kind.
The ICF defines active listening as “focusing on what the client is and is not saying to fully understand what is being communicated in the context of the client systems and to support client self-expression.”
As leaders, we should “notice, acknowledge, and explore the employee’s emotions, energy shifts, non-verbal cues or other behaviors” but also “integrate the employee's words, tone of voice, and body language to determine the full meaning of what is being communicated.”
I love a good quote. Here's one that can help you frame how to think about listening.
Listening is not a technique. It’s a way of being. It’s about attention and awareness and genuinely wanting to hear someone else’s story.
In other words, listening is an active process that involves showing kindness and respect to someone you want to understand.
Maintaining presence
Most of the time, we tend to oppose being kind with being demanding. I strongly believe that we could and should be both. And presence can help a lot in this.
Let me share with you another example. Doreen, a performance manager, wanted to improve her team’s performance. What was lacking in her team was… presence. If we’re not present, we can’t deliver properly. When we are present, we are fully perceptive and conscious with others, and above all with ourselves.
Being present within yourself gives permission to others to be present with themselves. This makes it more likely that people will be in the moment, connected to their own sensations, emotions, and thoughts. And the more you are connected to yourself, the more you are connected to others – it’s a paradox.
The fifth competency of the ICF states that a coach - or in our case a leader-coach – has to “maintain presence,” which means the coach/leader “is fully conscious and present with the client (employee), employing a style that is open, flexible, grounded and confident.”
We should remain focused, observant, empathetic, and responsive to people, demonstrating and maintaining curiosity.
In fact, presence is the leadership and coaching competence you need when you face very demanding people. You must be present so as not to miss a sign, a vibe, a word, or a breath. Presence was my success factor within Doreen’s coaching.
Connecting to self
As leaders and coaches, we should be connected to ourselves. Being perceptive about how you feel. For example, whether you are tense, relaxed, nervous, or anxious tells you about yourself in this very specific situation, facing this person.
It also may – or may not – give you an indication of how the person you are talking to is feeling. Empathy helps a lot, too, of course. I believe that you can’t be a great leader or a great coach if you’re not empathetic… at least a bit.
But being mindful is a mindset. Mindfulness is the ability to be fully present, moment-to-moment, and fully aware of what happens inside and outside us. It means being awake and self aware.
When we are mindful, we are not overly reactive to what happens, nor overwhelmed by emotions. We are present in the situation we face, be it pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. Being mindful doesn’t mean, “It’s OK,” but, “I’m here.”
But just like any kind of activity (e.g. playing piano or tennis), mindfulness requires a lot of practice and discipline. Why? Because most of the time, you have so many things on your mind, that you can’t be here with the other person. Even when you take a shower in the morning, most of the time, you are not the only one under it: your boss occupies your mind, your colleague Joanne upsets you, and so on.
Meditation, as well as yoga, can help a lot in this.
Related Read: Want Happier, Healthier Teams? Start with Yourself
Trust makes people feel part of a community
If we want to create the conditions for success, if we want to unite people around a shared vision - in short, if we want to be a good leader, we should lead by example and we should share our vulnerabilities.
Wiser, humbler and, in a way, more visionary than others, great leaders understand that behind each weakness there is a strength, just as behind each tragedy there is an opportunity.
Given that I have had the opportunity to work with international teams coming from all around the world, I decided to conduct a study with 100 teams to see what makes them successful – or not.
So, what leads to success? Trust comes first. This means having confidence in yourself, in your team, and in what you can achieve or deliver together. This doesn’t mean that there is no doubt, but doubt is short-term; trust is long-term, and it makes all the difference.
Why? Because if I trust, I can focus on my work. Life is simpler when we trust. But building trust is not easy.
How can you build trust? By practicing what you preach and walking the talk. If you don’t trust others, they won’t trust you. If you have been betrayed in the past, avoid transferring your frustrating experience to the present – it’s not fair to your new teammates. You can do this by learning from your experience, adjusting your behavior, and giving your new team a chance.
But how can you build trust if there is no kindness? You simply can’t.
To make a long story short, and to draw a parallel with the chart above, listening (coaching attitude), presence (mindfulness state of mind), and trust (leadership skill) are the three pillars of kindness.
As Desmond Tutu, the South African cleric and activist, and 1984 Nobel Peace Prize winner, said: “Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.”
