When I was interviewing for this job, I shared my personal leadership philosophy with you soon after my start. In it, I listed “kindness” as one of my values. One of my interviewers expressed surprise, saying that kindness wasn’t something she had ever associated with IT. I’d guess that few people ever think of kindness as an important trait in any type of leadership role. However, if you think back on the leaders that you’ve known, I’ll bet the best ones were kind, even though that wouldn’t be the first trait that comes to mind.
Kindness doesn’t mean being wishy-washy or non-confrontational. Leaders aren’t being kind when they don’t confront poor performance or bad behavior. First, that would not be kind to the co-workers who suffer from bad behavior. Second, it’s also not being kind to the person who doesn’t get honest feedback that can help them grow to be the best version of themselves.
Primal Leadership by Goleman, Boyatzis and McKee talks about 6 leadership styles. Better leaders are good at more of these styles and use them at the appropriate time. Affiliative was one of the styles that they cited as powerful and effective. The Affiliative style is that people follow you because they like you. You may have heard people describe someone they particularly liked working for by saying, “I would run through a wall for her” or something like that. Being kind helps build that kind of loyalty and strengthens your ability to lead with the Affiliative style.
Kindness doesn’t take much effort. Keeping in mind the people you are interacting with and treating them with respect is the key. Sometimes when we are dealing with frustrations in or outside of work, we can let that erode our behavior towards others. The foundation of emotional intelligence is self-understanding. We have to know ourselves and be aware of when we are getting angry, frustrated, or discouraged. The next step is then to control those emotions. When we have control of our emotions, we can be kind to others. Our colleagues will respond, and not only will our workplace be more enjoyable, our teams will perform better. I challenge you to build a high-performing team where kindness is part of the culture.