Leadership kindness is not the same as being nice

Leadership kindness is not the same as being nice

A new book adds to the research that suggests that being kind can bring tangible benefits to businesses

Of all the qualities that business leaders pride themselves on, how many would put kindness high on the list?

A new book supports Threshold’s view that good leaders don’t necessarily need to be cruel to be kind, but they do have to have the courage to be disliked. In her book The Return on Kindness: How kind leadership wins talent, earns loyalty and builds successful companies, Bonnie Hayden Cheng, associate professor at Hong Kong University Business School, and one of the leaders of this approach to people management, explores what being kind in the work environment entails – and what benefits it can bring.

Professor Hayden Cheng’s research adds more evidence to the theory that leadership kindness leads to more engaged and more motivated employees. Shortly after the pandemic, as large numbers of talented, hitherto committed people were leaving their companies in what has been called “the Great Resignation,” she noticed that businesses were responding in different ways to this exodus of talent.

The pandemic and corporate kindness

Some simply looked at the bottom line, maintained their traditional working practices and watched staff go. However, others demonstrated sensitivity to the stress that their employees were experiencing and were flexible. This group fared better. Professor Hayden Cheng argues that kind leaders who build trust with their people create high-trust companies and in these companies, people are not only less stressed and anxious, but they have more energy as well as being more engaged and more productive.

It’s worth noting another piece of relevant research. According to a large-scale ‘Kindness test’ created by researchers from the University of Sussex, which involved surveying over 60,000 people from 144 countries, two-thirds of participants believe the pandemic has made people kinder.

Now, it’s important to stress that kindness is not the same as niceness. You can tell one of your line reports that their work is just fine. But if, in fact, they’re underperforming and they need to improve for their sake and that of the whole team, you’re not being kind.

Being nice versus being kind

The desire to be nice often gets in the way of what people need to do to perform well. For example, we know that employees need honest feedback in order to develop personally and to deliver for their organisations.

In our experience, one of the main obstacles here is a common thinking trap, one that’s recognised by clinical psychologists. It’s called the rigid rule. We’re less effective in a situation when our attitude is too rigid, and we create rules about ourselves. Having these rules is understandable – they help to create the sense of a consistent self, and we like to think of ourselves as consistent.

To achieve this, we make rules for ourselves such as: “I must always be liked”, or “I should always be nice.” As a social species, we’re bound to think of being popular as desirable. The problem arises because these rules can easily become hard baked, and we find it almost impossible to deviate from them.

In our workshops, one of the brightest lightbulbs goes on for the line-managers we train when they realise that their rigid rule – “I must always be liked” – impedes their ability to be honest. So, what do we do? Swing to the other extreme? Take the view that “I don’t care if everyone hates me”? Well, the evidence shows that that is equally counterproductive.

Challenging those rigid rules

What does work is this simple thought experiment. Switch your “rigid rule” to a “flexible preference”. In other words, keep the essence of it, but modify it. You can build in some flexibility by using these formulae:

“I prefer to… but I’m OK if…”

“I prefer to be liked, but I’m OK, if sometimes I’m not.”

It can also help if you add the phrase… “For the sake of…” So, you might say: “I prefer to be liked, but I’m OK if sometimes I’m not for the sake of being clear about my feedback.”

Replace your old rigid rule with your new flexible preference. Try it out. Become aware of how your flexible preference is working. You can still set high standards for your teams and provide them with honest feedback but, along with Professor Hayden Cheng’s work, there’s increasing evidence to show that companies that embraces emotional intelligence and psychological safety for its staff can outperform the competition.

But this environment doesn’t come about by accident. You have to challenge your rigid rules. You also need to invest in developing the emotional intelligence of your employees and in helping them to understand what constitutes psychological safety.

As the research shows, in a world of constant change and disruption, this investment can bring strong returns.

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