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Few would disagree that we live in a world that needs kindness more than ever. However, I believe there are many in the corporate world who still haven’t truly acknowledged the importance of kindness to performance in business. 

In this article we explore why kindness is so important to business success.

What is kindness? 

• “The quality of being friendly, generous, and considerate” (Oxford English Dictionary), 

• “Friendly, deliberately doing good to others” (Middle English kinde, Online Etymology Dictionary) 

You know when someone is being kind to you because you feel it.

What has the Dalai Lama said about kindness? 

“Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.” Exactly. Being kind to others is a choice: you don’t have to be a grump; you may be feeling grumpy, but you can decide to replace this state by choosing to park your mood and smile instead while saying “good morning” like you really mean it!

The Dalai Lama’s dedication to the virtue of kindness is obvious in his way of life: “My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.” 

Being kind is not just personal development, it is a collective growth of humanistic values such as love, compassion, and friendliness. 

A few more thoughts from the Dalai Lama:

• “No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.” 
• “Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate.”

Job seekers are more likely to apply for a job posting that lists kindness as an important value of the company. (July 7, 2023, Forbes, Bryan Robinson PhD.) More than ever, people are looking for the comfort and security of being treated kindly. Many companies are looking to create a psychologically safe environment and kindness is a key ingredient in the recipe.

Finally, this from Nikhil Meshram in MEDIUM: 

• “Being a kind person makes you more empathetic towards others. 
• Others see you as a better human with mutual understanding. 
• You become more appealing to other people. 
• It’s being selfless, caring, compassionate, and unconditionally kind. 
• Like love, it takes practice to understand and feel it. 
• We share love with others through kind acts such as a smile, a nice word, an unexpected deed, or a planned surprise.”

Adrian Bettridge is Managing Partner of Baringa, a global business consulting firm with two thousand staff around the world. His company believes in putting people first and for years has been acknowledged as a ‘Great Place to Work’. Most unusually though is Baringa’s brave adherence to kindness as a core value of the company. They do ongoing research into the topic and the company literature on kindness begins with the heading ‘Does Kindness Pay?’ According to Adrian and his colleagues the answer is Yes! 

I know of no other business which embraces this value so fully and overtly (yet!). Do you?! Maybe Baringa’s espousal of kindness signifies the beginnings of a new movement in business? Let’s hope so.

I’m going to share this rather long quote from Adrian because it contains so much of the rationale for being authentically kind and is based upon his living experience running a global organization. 

“We see kindness as a practice, not a personality trait – which means it can be practiced. Kindness in business pays because it builds trust, productivity, employee retention, resilience, profitability, and brand loyalty.

The pressure for growth ‘at all costs’ over the last thirty years has distracted leaders away from kindness by creating unrealistic demands and unrelenting pressure.  This has led to short-term leadership behaviours that, when we step back and reflect on them, haven’t worked – and, at a human level, haven’t felt good.

Of course, leading with fear or with an ‘iron fist’ can deliver bursts of productivity and short-term results.  But ultimately, those results aren’t sustainable. In such company cultures, we see that people don’t perform at their best, don’t feel safe enough to take risks, and ultimately resort to ‘colouring in between the lines’. Creativity, problem solving, and innovation slowly evaporate. 

What’s left is a transactional and bureaucratic culture that lacks the depth of personal and institutional trust required to act with agility and deliver outstanding results.  Leaders struggle and get replaced more often, increasing attrition of up-and-coming talent, and short-termism prevails.  That’s a fire drill-to-fire drill existence with no room for kindness and leads to poor company performance. 

Kindness is a critical skill for all leaders and is the entry point into EQ. Being smart is important. Being smart and kind is how leaders make the biggest impact on the world. I’ve worked with some very smart consultants and clients, but truly differentiated leaders are clever and kind too. That combination of IQ and EQ makes them stand out.

Seneca, the revered Stoic philosopher of Ancient Rome said, ““Wherever there is a human being there is an opportunity for kindness.” This is so true, especially for leaders. Leadership is about making others perform and feel better because of your influence, even when you aren’t present.

Kindness provides an immediate ‘feel good’ factor and has this lingering influence on the engagement and motivation of a team. Leaders who act with kindness at their core create a psychologically safe culture, maximizing the learning and personal growth of their team.”

So as Baringa clearly emphasizes, kindness requires practice to make it an integrated element of any corporate culture.

How do you practice kindness? 

Here are a few ideas to consider:

As Adrian Bettridge mentions above, kindness “is the entry point into EQ”. Like most other practices it begins with self-awareness. You can choose to edit your communication depending upon the result you desire. However, you need to become adept at managing your emotions so that the style and impact of your communication is appropriate to your desired result.

The trouble is we often decide not to be kind based on our assumptions about the other person. We make judgments such as “he’s boring”, “she’s stupid”, and “I don’t like the way he looks” These types of judgements can cause us to avoid, disconnect and behave coldly towards others. The trick is to recognize the judgment you’re making in your head, suspend that judgment, and sincerely try to go beyond the judgment and, with curiosity and genuine interest, create open and positive relationships. 

Being kind in business does not mean being a ‘softie’, a ‘walkover’. You must still be able to be assertive (also requires practice) and sometimes ‘be cruel to be kind’ as they say. 

Again, you must cultivate a sufficient degree of self-awareness to know when you’re transferring your annoyance onto another person or whether you are being tough and kind because you want to support another’s growth. 

Kind people give others the benefit of the doubt and instead of making quick judgments can delay judgment until they find out about the other person’s story and particular circumstances. 

Being kind can dissolve fear and destroy limiting pre-conceptions. 

A good example of this happened to me a while back.

I was invited to give a talk at a local mosque in California by my cricketing friend Mubarack. I did not know what to expect and must admit I was a bit nervous as I drove down a backstreet in the dark to what I thought would be a grand temple. It was the opposite of that! But what greeted me as I entered the prefabricated building blew my mind.

The elders lined up to shake my hand and welcome me, the women in the kitchen were all smiles as they prepared the meal, and my talk was listened to intently by the Muslim youth. First, I was invited to dinner, and after my talk I was invited to stay for prayers without any expectation to directly participate.

Whatever fear I had was gone and my eyes were opened to the reality of Muslim life and culture. Such kindness and generosity will stay in my heart forever.

Let’s end with some personal reflection.

Remember a time when you were shown great kindness. How did it make you feel? Now, remember a time when someone was especially kind to you at work. How did that make you feel and, most important, what were the ramifications? What shifts or changes occurred because of that kindness?

 

Michael Banks

October 2023

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If you want to know more about PeopleSmart and the services we offer reach out to us for a conversation: contact@peoplesmart.fr

What follows is what they call an ‘Opinion Piece’ in that it represents a personal and grave concern I have about the effects of Artificial Intelligence on human beings. I am not referring to robots taking over the planet, which is of course a real possibility, but rather the effect AI has on the quality of our lives and the creeping dehumanization of society. If we care about this issue then we must be awake to this.

I know I know … ‘Make AI your friend’ and ‘Don’t be afraid of AI’. Maybe we should be more afraid, not of technology, which has massive potential to make our world a better place, but of humans’ ill considered rush to technological supremacy and gazillions of dollars profit.

I actually love the technology that makes my life easier but I know how easy it is to depend upon it. Like most humans, I am lazy. TV gave birth to the expression ‘couch potato’. As a society, we have become more the passive consumer with less and less interaction with the real world. A few decades on fast forward and we have the ever-increasing use of virtual reality in which we are not engaging with reality unless you call interacting with a fake reality real.

Back to the workplace. We were lucky that technology enabled us to carry on during the lockdowns. Nevertheless, most people were delighted to be able to meet in person once again. There is no going back though. “You can’t stop AI”. Ironically the very positives that we so value in the digitization of business mean that it has and will become too easy to communicate in isolation.

The impact of AI is insidious. Isolation, (this includes mental health and well-being), distance, alienation, and disconnection are some of the symptoms of a world dominated by AI. I’ll never forget a few months into the pandemic a senior executive of a global technology firm was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, imprisoned in his house with his wife, children, and mother in law. He told me how he was getting zero support from top management and how emotionally distressed he was.

Again, humans tend to go for the easy option and if we’re not careful we will become subsumed into a world in which it is almost impossible to distinguish between what is and what is not real.

I recently watched a documentary about a town in West Virginia, USA, the poorest part of America. A shocking 50% of young adults never left their houses, used drugs, did not want to work, and spent all their time on social media. A perfect example of passivity and disengagement.

Teenagers can get lost in their own world of social media for hours on end. How many of them are good live, face to face communicators? We are seeing the numbing and dumbing of the younger generations fed on ‘other worldly’ realities. I am generalizing of course but I am concerned about the new generations entering the workforce and their inability to communicate well. We need the younger generations to be in a fit state to train the machines in ethical behavior.

So what is the solution? Let’s first look at some recent developments.

The man often called the godfather of AI, Dr Geoffrey Hinton, recently quit Google citing concerns over the flood of misinformation, (we will not know what is fake and what is real in the future), the likelihood of massive job losses, and the “existential risk” posed by the creation of a true AGI – artificial general intelligence.

Speaking recently via video link to a summit in London, Elon Musk said he expects governments around the world to use AI to develop weapons before anything else. Elon hit out at artificial intelligence (AI), saying it is not “necessary for anything we’re doing”. May 2023

And Mo Gowdat, until recently the former chief business officer for Google X – “My biggest fear is that humans will use that abundant intelligence (AGI) in ways that are not pro-humanity”. He reckons that the drive to develop AI is mostly about shifting power and wealth in a competitive market.

So now we come to the crux of the matter. The experts say there is no stopping AI controlling the world and ultimately rendering human beings superfluous. So how do we humans save ourselves from extinction?

Dr Nathanael Fast, behavioral scientist at the USC Marshall School of Business, has written a very thoughtful piece that gives us a foundation for an approach that includes pros and cons and asks us to consider the long term consequences of developing AI as opposed to being caught up in the instant gratification that investing in and developing AI can often pander to and seduce humans seeking wealth power and control.

Dr. Fast is worth quoting here:
“As AI becomes more powerful, we must invest not only in designing the technology, but also in boosting our own “Technological Intelligence”—our ability to understand and make wise decisions about technology. We need to get better at objectively evaluating the benefits and harms of technology in our lives.”

Going forward, tech leaders need to focus just as much on how human psychology responds to AI as they do on the design of the technology itself. Likewise, managers and companies that employ AI should consider the reactions of their employees and keep them in the loop, instead of implementing new technology abruptly. Building and maintaining trust is essential.

As the development of AI speeds up, the future of humanity lies in the balance. The consequences of our choices and actions are immense. Let us take this responsibility seriously and treat AI as the singular, albeit complicated, puzzle that it is, rather than only looking at “good” or “bad” pieces of the puzzle in isolation. We must increase our technological intelligence to ensure that we build a more positive relationship with AI and, ultimately, a better future.

And finally I recently watched a two hour interview of the brilliant Mo Gowdat by Brian Rose of London Real. This was a mind blowing exposition of how we can get to a state of Utopia by teaching machines to be ethical.

We can debate forever the macro picture, and the future of humankind but let’s focus back on the practicalities of managing machines before it’s too late. Given the inevitability of machines ultimately controlling humans, Mo Gawdat is convinced we have a short time to train robots to behave ethically and not destroy human society. And here the application of Emotional Intelligence will be crucial to the success of this endeavor.

Who would have thought that the espousal of EI in the corporate world would eventually be employed in service of saving humankind from extinction?! Gowdat makes the very insightful point that robots will take their cues from both poor and positive human behavior. In a very real sense how we ‘parent’ our bots will determine their degree of ethical behavior.

Here are three ‘on point’ quotes from Mo Gawdat:

“The moments that define life are moments of human connection”,

“Never make the machine your enemy”

“We can still influence them (the robots) by showing them a side of us we want them to be like”

Ultimately it will be the choices that humans, not machines, make that will create our future. It will be like this until AGI prevails and we have lost complete control. So it is imperative that we start developing our EI skills now!

Michael Banks

August 2023

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If you want to know more about PeopleSmart and the services we offer reach out to us for a conversation: contact@peoplesmart.fr

Belonging is a fundamental part of being human: We need people and this need is hardwired into our brains. It is also irrefutable that employees are more committed, loyal, and productive the more they feel they belong. 

Corporate leaders are always trying to optimize their workforce and if they are successful in generating a culture that values diversity and inclusion their people will feel that sense of belonging. Workers need to feel like they belong to something they value — and that they have the power to bring about change when it’s needed.

So what can you do to facilitate a sense of belonging, especially among new staff? Here are two areas you can focus on:

Be curious. Ask questions to find out about the person, their interests, and what really matters to them. People tend to warm to those who take an interest in them. There is nothing worse than being ignored. A recipe for alienation and isolation. The opposite of belonging.

This is just one aspect of really caring about people and conveying that to others. Bring in to play the whole array of Emotional Intelligence skills to ensure you’re paying attention to whether employees are being and feeling included. This requires a continuous prioritization of the well-being of others, looking and reaching out to them versus leading a self-absorbed work-life existence. 

Create the conditions in which each employee feels valued, trusted, free to express, proud of association, part of an identity.

Create a compelling purpose and vision. To belong to an organization that is trying to make the world a better place is important to many more people than in the past. Research shows that this is especially true of the younger generations. And let’s remember that a department or business unit can have its own purpose and vision within the overall organization.

Other examples of entities that people want to attach themselves to include product pioneers and innovators (think Elon Musk) and radical approaches to organizational structures that challenge orthodox ‘business as usual’ (the ‘no rules’ approach I mentioned in my last article).

At this point, if you haven’t already done so, I’d like you to consider examples, in your own life, of the motivational power of belonging and the converse. What made you feel a powerful sense of belonging, what did you strongly identify with, and what caused you to feel alienated and ‘homeless’? Please recall and reflect on the actual behaviors and circumstances that were key to your experience of belonging or absence thereof.

For example, in my case, I was delighted to belong to a ‘special’ group of companies whose purpose and vision was to transform society through business. This suited my young idealistic ambition 100%!!  In another company, I felt a part of a warm and caring community based on inclusive values and respect for diversity that the owners embodied. Each year we would strengthen the community by gathering for two days in person (some who lived overseas were flown in) to celebrate ourselves in different ways (through poetry, music, stories, games, etc.). It was about more than just about the business and I felt great about that! 

Conversely, I once reported to a Managing Director in London who ignored me in the most icy cold manner for two years! No sense of belonging there!

And how about you? Do you really belong where you are? Are you motivated to give 110% of yourself, heart and soul to the enterprise you’re part of? And, if so, why is that? I’d bet money that at least a piece of your equation is about loving the people you work with and being appreciated and respected by others around you.

Now, finally, we must note that everything potentially has a downside or, as they say, these days, a dark side. Creating a culture and purpose that people can easily belong to is a vital aspect of attracting and retaining talent in these challenging times. But part of your responsibility is to catch yourself and the organization if belonging begins to manifest in ways that ultimately are self-destructive. 

People can be seduced by the comfort and protection afforded by a strong sense of belonging and these dangers can manifest:

In summary, it is important for your business to cultivate a strong sense of belonging in the employee population and that will increase as relations between people get stronger and deeper.

Michael Banks 

May 2023

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If you want to know more about PeopleSmart and the services we offer reach out to us for a conversation: contact@peoplesmart.fr