A problematic understanding
There’s an idea that has taken over our understanding of kindness in the workplace. Essentially, it makes kindness a ‘nice to have’ but more of an unrealistic option in professional circles.
For so many years, I bought into this idea too.
I thought it was necessary to grow what I was told, ‘a second skin’, to toughen up. My natural playfulness and smiley-ness were seen as weakness. Imagine a lawyer who smiles! The preference seems to be for the serious lawyer who turns people into pillars of salt by a menacing glare.
The impact of this idea that kindness was flaky made me think that I wasn’t right for leadership in the workplace.
I’m not the only one impacted, though.
Wrong understanding applied
So many of us have been taught and shown that at work, kindness is weakness. Consider some of the conclusions we draw when a leader is a little hesitant when making hard choices. We fail to see that perhaps they’re working through an empathetic process of trying to understand options to make the best one.
Sometimes we equate compassion with softness. When a manager is kind in how they give constructive feedback or when they allow some flexibility, there may be accusations that the manager is being ‘too nice’ and is failing to maintain higher standards.
Oft times, a show of vulnerability by a leader is taken as lacking authority. When a leader attempts to be transparent, humble, or supportive, they are often mistaken as lacking confidence and don’t command respect.
For some strange reason, courtesy is often mistaken for conflict avoidance. Leaders who show respect and use non-aggressive communication are seen as fearful of confrontation or hard conversations.
A show of generosity, patience, or a forgiving nature is seen as a weakness because of the idea that it makes the person exercising these traits susceptible to exploitation or manipulation.
The range of situations in which the understanding of kindness has been wrongly applied is far and wide. I think one of the reasons for this is because the workplace is still reliant on traditional rules, policies and ideas that are somewhat archaic.
Some of the more institutionalized forms of labour and wages emerged about 3000BCE. The rise of the early empires of Mesopotamia, Egypt and Rome, transformed how work was organized and managed by the state or more elitist systems. Interestingly, some core workplace dynamics established here found their way even into the industrial revolution and modern job era (1760 – 1900s).
- Hierarchical management and mid-level bureaucracy. The ancient empires relied on a specialist class of scribes and overseers to manage administrative records. (Source: https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/scribes)
- Shift work. The early Roman military operated around structured timekeeping with night watches and daylight hours. (Source: https://www.unrv.com/articles/how-did-the-romans-organize-their-day-without-modern-clocks.php)
- Performance tracking and metric systems. In Mesopotamia (3100 BCE), accounting records were already being used as part of sophisticated systems of administration and resource management. (Source: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333448733_From_Counting_to_Writing_The_Innovative_Potential_of_Bookkeeping_in_Uruk_Period_Mesopotamia)
- Work specializations and status from titles. As the early empires grew, many industries evolved from special technical abilities like stonemasons, coppersmiths, accountants and scribes. (Source: https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/29658) Each group carried a distinct social standing based on the value of their labour. Later, economists like Adam Smith formalized the division of labour by breaking every act of labour into specialist categories or repeatable tasks and job titles. (Source: https://www.econlib.org/library/Topics/College/divisionoflaborspecialization.html)
- Work weeks and weekends. In 321 CE, Emperor Constantine formally adopted a mandatory rest day within the seven-day work week. (Source: https://zoreayahu.org/history/did-constantine-make-sunday-a-legally-protected-day-of-rest.html) In the industrial and modern era, although workers were initially made to work 6-7 days a week, labour movements fought to reinstate designated days of rest. (Source: https://www.history.com/articles/five-day-work-week-labor-movement)
A global lockdown
Today, we’re working in a world that is so far different from the industrial and ‘modern’ era. The world underwent a pandemic where changes needed to be made at breakneck speed to accommodate how people globally had to work.
The lockdowns over COVID showed us the work didn’t stop even though offices were empty. The workforce continued working from home and learnt patterns of work that fit in with their living needs.
Now in the post-COVID era, many people value remote working highly. Apparently working from home helps with fatigue, burnout and childcare responsibilities. (Source: https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/real-estate/our-insights/americans-are-embracing-flexible-work-and-they-want-more-of-it#/)
The pushback against rigidity
The workforce recognized that their places of work didn’t collapse because the majority of people turned up and performed under these new circumstances.
The pandemic brought about more innovative ways for people to work. There were so many changes that the workforce learnt how flexibility helped them breathe.
The calls for people to return to the office full time haven’t gone down well. There is resistance by the workforce against the push to take things back to what they used to be. Recognizing that people don’t want to be stuck in traffic or that they want time to work around their lives is a direct challenge to the older norms of work.
Empathetic bosses may be called weak for ‘spoiling the market’ but their kindness is in fact helping them adjust to the changes that are taking place.
The digital era
It’s no secret that explosive advancements in technology are significantly changing how work is done. AI is here and the outputs by AI have significantly sped up turnaround times. But therein lies the rub. Employees are human and their capacity doesn’t pick up with every enhancement in the AI models that come out.
In fact, responsible use of AI dictates that there shouldn’t be wholesale acceptance of its outputs and that there needs to be human input. (Source: https://www.oecd.org/en/topics/sub-issues/ai-principles.html)
But if AI is churning things out in minutes, then, even with responsible use of AI, people are producing work much faster than they used to. (Source: https://economics.mit.edu/news/study-finds-chatgpt-boosts-worker-productivity-some-writing-tasks?utm_source=chatgpt.com)
Does leadership recognize this? Is it time that there’s a change in how work is measured? Perhaps the old metric of a day’s work needs to be changed.
How does it work for leaders as they manage their P&Ls and think about their human talent? Do they insist that we keep to ‘a day’s work’ and force people to somehow keep up with AI outputs or do leaders exercise kindness and start speaking up for change? The organizations aren’t being shortchanged. Work conditions are changing.
A lesson about work and marathons
When I started work in the late 90s, we were at the tail-end of the analog-to-digital crossover. I was a litigation lawyer, just starting out and it was imperative I make a name for myself. Friends of mine in different firms talked about late nights and early starts. I attempted the same with the idea of impressing my boss.
However, it was my boss who imparted wisdom to me. He explained that the life of a litigation lawyer was like a marathon. There were going to be times when we needed to burn the midnight oil. But he said that the times we didn’t need to, I should get out of the office and enjoy life.
Intelligent kindness
This act by my boss was a stroke of genius. Whilst he himself spent longer hours in the office, he didn’t insist on me doing the exact same thing.
Kindness here is in working smart. It isn’t invested in rigidity. So, there isn’t just one way of working. It takes into consideration the person, the circumstances, the work and it responds intelligently.
Leaders in the age of technology
As technology enables outputs at a higher level than ever before, leaders have the harder task of deciding whether to increase human workload to fill the traditional eight-hour days, or whether to leave space for their people to use technology responsibly and creatively while carving out space for rest.
Leaders have to decide whether work that can be carried out remotely must be done in person in the name of building up teams. Does intelligent kindness mean that relational development needs to be done differently?
Kindness and strong leadership
The real question isn’t whether kindness makes leaders weak. The more effective question is whether in adopting kindness as a strategy, leaders are able to push against ways of working that no longer serve their people or their organizations.
Kindness doesn’t involve the lowering of standards or expectations. It means showing empathy and intelligence when working out what work requires of us in this day and age. It requires courage to throw out what is no longer serving the people within the organization.
My former boss understood that all those years ago. He didn’t expect me to sprint an entire marathon. He expected me to know when it was time to sprint.
That wasn’t weak leadership. It was intelligent kindness.
Written by:
Anita Stephen
Author of A Cup of Kindness (Penguin Random House SEA)
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