The case for kindness as a marker for success

When it comes to those who have accomplished great things in their career, words like “ruthless”, “ambitious” and “tenacious” may come to mind.

Kindness probably doesn’t.

And yet, in addition to being something I value, kindness has been a key trait of so many of the extremely successful people I’ve had the pleasure of working with.

I believe that kindness is one of the most important things leaders can have, and here’s why.

People remember how you treated them

Goodwill goes a long way when it comes to building a career. Think of it as building work karma - when you treat people well, help them out and do the occasional favour for them (caveat: not to the detriment of your own work or health), they’re likely to do the same in return.

It comes down to treating the people you work with as humans, really. Listen to them. Ask if they need help. Be supportive.

A little goes a long way.

Kind doesn’t mean nice

Repeat after me: BEING KIND IS NOT THE SAME AS BEING NICE.

Being nice is sugarcoating or not providing honest feedback to someone.

Being kind is sharing the feedback and working together to improve things.

A lot of us are people pleasers who fear conflict, but the truth is that it’s much kinder to be tactfully honest with people than avoiding the truth for the sake of feelings.

Personally, I’ve always been grateful to the colleagues who have told me where I could improve, as it made me aware of my shortcomings and helped me to address them and become better at my job as a result.

As a leader, supporting growth is a big part of your job, so be kind, not nice.

Happy, confident teams perform better

It might seem like a team that are scared of you and do whatever you ask will get better results. And honestly, it might work…but only for a while.

One of my former directors shared this pearl of wisdom with me a couple of years ago: “You can only yell at someone once. After that, it loses any effect.”

Now, I don’t agree with yelling at someone in any setting, especially work, but what that director said is so true. If you’re a nightmare to work with, eventually your bullying will lose its fear factor and any results you initially saw will fade.

However, if you encourage your team, build their confidence and do what you can to make their work lives as happy as they can be, they’ll be loyal and will want to do their best work for you.

I think kindness is hugely underrated as a leadership quality, do you agree? Let me know over on Instagram.