It’s summer and many of us will be dipping our toes in the joys of holiday adventures with friends and family. With the regeneration of rest and the loving attention of those who matter to us, we can rediscover parts of ourselves that communicate our values and beliefs, more easily accessing loving kindness and the joy of being alive, even the tricky bits.
I’m choosing to give inequality, human suffering and stress a wide birth this month, in favour of a topic that attracts little attention in management development training. Kindness and its relevance to management skill. Many would lump it in with all the other so-called SOFT SKILLS. A term that triggers fury in me when used to refer to interpersonal skills and communication. It seems to hold negative valence, along with nurturing, empathy and care. Is it coincidental that such characteristics are often unconsciously perceived as feminine?
Let’s not go there right now, because I’d like to talk about your innate capacity for kindness or compassion, if you prefer. There are centres in our brains that are activated when we engage in acts of kindness. Neurotransmitters then fire across hemispheres and stimulate experiences of interconnectedness and wellness, operating along the parasympathetic nervous system. This explains why the loving kindness meditation, part of the 8-week mindfulness training programme, helps to alleviate stress and anxiety and regenerate our capacity for effective communication.
So, how might we practise the art of kind management?
Start by scheduling time daily to check in with your colleagues. By meaning it when you ask, how are you? and really pausing to listen to the answer, even offering kind and gentle responses to what you are hearing.
By taking an interest in the person behind the role, by remembering what is important to them, by embodying the truth that how they are is more important that what they will achieve today. By taking enough time to assess how your colleagues are before offering improving feedback, by gauging from their behaviours how you will address a difficult conversation around performance. By explaining your intention before launching into the detail. By leaving enough space in between words for feelings to be processed and expressed. By practising non-judgemental responses to what you are learning. By communicating your understanding of what you are hearing and asking understanding checking questions before moving ahead. These are all ways of engaging with colleagues with skilful kindness, appropriate to your leadership role, aligned with your values and as honest as you can be while maintaining boundaries.
And we can go further of course. We can practise spontaneous acts of kindness as we go about our daily routines. When we perceive a colleague to be struggling in some way, we can actively invite our colleague to take a break, even to offer to help alleviate a heavy workload with a very clear and specific offer of help. Or random acts of kindness, like letting the car ahead of you go first at a junction. Or as simple as bidding ‘good morning’ to someone whom you walk past regularly on your daily commute. Just try it and see how it feels, how it impacts on what happens next. Kindness generates kindness and one day it will come back to you.
In the meantime, consider the value of offering your managers kindness training as part of their management development programme. My approach is very hands on, informed by my expertise as a mindfulness meditation teacher. Research is strengthening around the emotion regulation function of mindfulness training, ie, training people to better manage difficult feelings by learning to become more aware of what is happening, when it is happening. I combine management skills with mindfulness training and take trainees on a mini-journey of self-discovery and a simple ABC of communications skills.
We can be effective and kind. And bear in mind, you will not be remembered for what you say or what you do, but how you made someone feel.
)