A little act of leadership kindness can make everyone better

With the pressure of the coronavirus accelerating corporate changes in the industry, the crisis also boils up sensible management strategies into leadership clichés in record time. Take human-level emotions such as humanity, empathy, and compassion. By the end of the year 2020, almost any company head would humbly brag about how the pandemic crisis taught them to appreciate stress and failures and how they led their group with a more human touch. It makes one wonder why these ingredients weren’t added into the blender before the pandemic struck.

For a long time, it has been instilled into our minds that to be kind is to be soft, which clearly isn’t the case. It was assumed to have no room in a workplace because a little kindness could hinder the workflow and thought process; it is a war between emotions and intelligence. But kindness, for that matter, is a blend of what you can call emotional intelligence, and it is a crucial piece of the jigsaw puzzle that we’re missing out.

We sure live in a world of disagreement, and in normal opinion, that’s okay. You’ll find people disagree in almost any corner of the planet—in restaurants, malls, schools, meetings, and workplaces, and the list goes on. You can find disputes being unsettled over a bag of chips or at a company meeting that leads to a heated debate, but most of us fail to realize that people can disagree without going all hot-headed.

All disagreements aside, people can still be kind, even if it’s for nothing. And as a pioneer or a leader, kindness can go a long, long way. So as leaders of this fast-growing survival-of-the-fittest world, can sprinkling kindness in our leadership regiment make us more effective?

Well, yes, of course, and here are three ways you can be more successful as leaders by cultivating the kindness habit:

1. Appreciation = Greater Results at Work

Nothing feels more inspiring than having being appreciated for the work that you do. Celebrating the success of employees at work can simply boost up their energies and make them even proactive. Studies have shown that a little appreciation at work can go a long way if you expect good results.

2. Connect with people and generate great ideas.

There’s no doubt that kind people are usually better at socializing and networking—it is only because they care about the people they meet and also care about the connections they make. People who are more empathetic towards their peers are open to sharing and receiving opinions and ideas, even if they may or may not agree with them. That’s kindness—to perceive the opinions and ideas of others whether they agree with you or not.

3. Correcting people in a kind manner can build and improve relationships.

When you correct someone without offending them, it gives them a sense of concern shown from your end. As leaders, it is our responsibility to make sure we correct someone who’s wrong in the most amiable and concerned manner. We all look for areas of growth and improvement, and if we do it the right way, you will always see good results, and in addition to that, relationships are improved.

So, given a choice, why not lead with compassion? All things considered, it should be simpler for people to lead like people than like machines. As Ralph Waldo Emerson may have said it best, “You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.”