I had a discussion about kindness / niceness with my mentor years ago.He introduced something I never thought about in my management style: fairness. Being fair allows you to add balance in the way you treat people.
I've been through some hard parts of the leadership: firing people, refusing them a promotion or a role change, giving them hard to hear feedback.
Most of the time, you want to be kind to avoid hurting them. And most of the time, it's about adding "I'm sorry", "It's not you but us", and going around in circles to avoid telling things the way they are.
Be direct and fair instead, so you let them time to get over these hard things, and let them leave the room with the impression you didn't bs... them.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts! I think the way you describe being fair is the same way I think about being nice. Be direct, be honest, even if it hurts. That's the fair+kind thing to do. Fairness is a very interesting angle, I'll have to think about that more! :)
Thanks for sharing! I think being kind and nice is our instinct in human interactions. It's also the best/safest option when being a leader.
However, as we get more experienced, there will be more emotions involved. We can be practical, strict, or condescending. If we look at the most successful leaders in the market, they are rarely associated with the idea of kindness. They are mostly visionary, strategic, and skillful. So I think being kind as an experienced leader is challenging. There's not much emphasis on it, but it has value, and it is easier to bring people together with kindness.
Great points! I think it's hard to be kind, and even harder to appear kind. I'm sure if I had to lay off some of my engineers that I would do it in the kindest way that I could, but the person getting laid off isn't going to see it that way. And I think these kinds of decisions only get bigger and broader as you become a more successful leader.
I hope to keep bringing kindness to everything, especially when it's hard.
Thank you for sharing.
I had a discussion about kindness / niceness with my mentor years ago.He introduced something I never thought about in my management style: fairness. Being fair allows you to add balance in the way you treat people.
I've been through some hard parts of the leadership: firing people, refusing them a promotion or a role change, giving them hard to hear feedback.
Most of the time, you want to be kind to avoid hurting them. And most of the time, it's about adding "I'm sorry", "It's not you but us", and going around in circles to avoid telling things the way they are.
Be direct and fair instead, so you let them time to get over these hard things, and let them leave the room with the impression you didn't bs... them.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts! I think the way you describe being fair is the same way I think about being nice. Be direct, be honest, even if it hurts. That's the fair+kind thing to do. Fairness is a very interesting angle, I'll have to think about that more! :)
Thanks for sharing! I think being kind and nice is our instinct in human interactions. It's also the best/safest option when being a leader.
However, as we get more experienced, there will be more emotions involved. We can be practical, strict, or condescending. If we look at the most successful leaders in the market, they are rarely associated with the idea of kindness. They are mostly visionary, strategic, and skillful. So I think being kind as an experienced leader is challenging. There's not much emphasis on it, but it has value, and it is easier to bring people together with kindness.
Great points! I think it's hard to be kind, and even harder to appear kind. I'm sure if I had to lay off some of my engineers that I would do it in the kindest way that I could, but the person getting laid off isn't going to see it that way. And I think these kinds of decisions only get bigger and broader as you become a more successful leader.
I hope to keep bringing kindness to everything, especially when it's hard.