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So anyway, what a great excuse to talk about kindness in today’s coffee chat...

• A. What is it?

• B. Why should we care about it?

• C. How can we practice it? How do I approach it?

A. Define “Kindness”

So what is kindness?

It’s an interpersonal skill.

Are you friendly, generous, and considerate?

Do you lead with warmth in addition to competence?

Are you mindful of others? Do you make an effort to positively impact their well-being and happiness?

If so, chances are, you are a Hobbit kind leader. (with or without a title)

B. Why should we care about kindness in the workplace?

Kindness fosters synergy and builds your influence with others. These are strategic advantages that will help build your reputation as a strong manager.

Influence is a big advantage, and big topic. Something for another day. But, I recently wrote about Synergy. Stephen Covey’s 6th Habit.

Synergy is an outcome. Jedi or not, you can’t just command your team to “synergize”. But through kindness, you can drive that outcome over time.

With Synergy in your team/organization, you can in fact “simply walk into Mordor” (to challenge Boromir’s sentiment…)

In short, your success as a manager depends on your impact.

Your impact depends on synergy and influence.

Synergy and influence comes from kindness.

C. Fine. How can I practice kindness in the workplace?

Let’s be honest, who’s got the time, inclination or energy for this? It’s far easier to just focus on your own responsibilities, and hold others accountable for theirs right? Isn’t corporate just one big RACI matrix?

No, kindness is intentional. But even with the right intentions, how to practice?

What did I do to earn the popular vote for that Random Acts of Kindness award? You are asking for some secrets here.

But since you are a loyal and trusted reader…

I just follow these 5 principles distilled from almost 100 year old advice: Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People”.

1. Show Genuine Interest in Others

“To be interesting, be interested”.

What do you know about those around you? Or, are you busy ensuring they know everything about you? Worse still, are you too busy working to waste time chatting idly with them over coffee?

2. Remember Names and Details

“A person's name is to that person, the sweetest, most important sound in any language.”

Ok I’m terrible at this. There’s guy who’s name I forgot 3 times! I can’t mention his name for obvious reasons - can’t remember it. He wasn’t too impressed. Let’s just hope he’s not reading this. Or 1 less newsletter subscriber.

Still, I do try to use names when I know them.

3. Listen with Intent

If you want to show genuine interest, you have to listen actively, and unlike Michael Scott here:

4. Avoid Criticism

Ok, the jury is out on this one. I am a firm believer in Kim Scott’s (no relation to Michael) Radical Candor: Challenge directly, but also care deeply.

You want to hold people accountable, but in a way that builds them up, not breaking them down.

If the criticism is not constructive, is it necessary?

5. Appreciate others and make them feel important

There’s plenty of acknowledgement that recognizing people makes a difference. I wrote a post about how “people will forget what you said, but they'll never forget how you make them feel.” A popular quote from Maya Angelou.

In a post-covid world, we are increasingly invisible.

We want to be seen and heard.

I have conditioned myself to try (authentically) to make people feel important, seen and heard in as many of my interactions as possible.

In Summary

Being kind is hard.

You need to be intentional about it.

But the payoff is massive in terms of synergy (results) and influence.

Both of these will help you build your reputation and track record as a manager - essential for your career success and advancement.

Well, looks like my ☕️ is out - back to work. Thanks for joining me, and I hope you enjoyed today’s chat.

See you next month!

And be kind…

What’s the mistake?

I’m building in public here, and mistakes will happen. I received my first advertising opportunity!

Sadly, I botched it up - thought is was included in today’s newsletter that went out at the scheduled time, but it didn’t.

So, I’m including it now - think of it as an easter egg, but for me 🤣 

Please consider supporting me by clicking the Ad and checking it out - it’s actually from the newsletter platform I’m using (Beehiiv), and I’m hoping to get my first dollar from this ad. Fingers crossed, and let’s see how it goes.

Catch you next month, friend!

Cheers, Vaugan

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