His list of points is fine. It’s mostly the servant leadership mentality, which I’m all for. But sometimes to be an effective leader you have to make hard decisions. You’ve got to know your personal boundaries and know when to yield and when to hold them, or other less sweet people are going to steamrolling you, or you’re going to get overloaded by taking on too much, etc. And sometimes you have to be direct and blunt and not so sweet to show true kindness. Confrontation is hard and it’s not something most people really want, but I believe it’s sometimes necessary to embody kindness. For yourself, your teammates, the customer, the organization. Because at the end of the day if you are not effective, that’s going to hurt everyone.
Being kind to a person that behaves as described in the grandparent comment could communicate that you find this kind of behavior helpful. Fine if that's really the case; problematic for everyone if not.
This entire discussion needs to come to a screeching halt while people get together and hammer out some definitions. It's clear we're all working from different and contradictory assumptions about what these words mean.
I think most people would agree Fred Rogers was kind - but I have to imagine he had to fire people from the show over the course of its run.
Listening, being respectful, and being empathetic may drive one person to bite their tongue and silence feedback that someone is performing poorly out of fear of hurting them or the morale of the team. Another may be driven by the very same things into giving candid feedback.
This article does not do a good job of exploring the difference. It just asserts "Being nice is the new punk".
Moreover as an IC there is a lot you can do; most importantly you can quit if you feel the team you're in is being mismanaged.
I've worked in very competent teams and very incompetent teams. There were two types of incompetent teams. The type that always denied making mistakes, and the kind that owned up to their own incompetence. Being kind leads to the latter.
It still sucked being in an incompetent team, but when they admit their weakness, they get out of your way and defer to you. When they don't admit it, you'll face barriers all the way.
If someone is fucking up, they are in the wrong position. People need to work for a living, and shouldn't be under duress constantly. It is up to them and their manager to find a position that is rewarding and engaging for them.
If they don't care, they are also in the wrong position.
It is no reason to not treat them with kindness. You don't have to blow them, but you don't need to be UNkind, as several have said below.
The only people I don't treat with kindness are people who are legitimately trying to hurt me and people I love, or promote hateful ideas with glee. People who are failing at their job need help.
And if they still annoy you, then I think the problem might be in how you view the situation. Compassion helps with anger. Try to think about why you are so angry, and if it really matters or helps to be so angry. Especially if you are not the manager. If you are the manager, consider that maybe the job isn't for you. You shouldn't be pissed at work all day!!
A business is not a charity.
(I don’t know you but you sound like every white male teenager who discovers Ayn Rand.)
If you're a leader with a strategic role, time is your most important and limited resource. You just cannot afford to spend time on something that doesn't further the goals of the business, even if you're a hippie or a communist.
While I believe you should show a baseline level of kindness to people when you first meet them much like you should give people a baseline level of respect, there are actions which can and should lose both.
When I’m kind to people, especially in other departments, they don’t mirror it: they’re stressed, they’re pressured by their boss or it’s just not the culture of that department… even after months of cooperation
It takes less effort, becomes easier, and in time will come naturally to you as well.
My best is: they are saying it is worth taking a step back and making a prioritized list of our values. If we do this, we may place "being kind" over "being productive"
I think their warning here is about: what happens in a situation where being kind is NOT productive? Will you just drop it?
I think I agree with the broad strokes of this. My rebuttal is: the comment above this was just pointing out, for people who do not value kindness over productivity, that they are not in opposition. That you don't have to pick one or the other. You can have both.
We can get mad and turn away from people who do not share our values/priorities. Or we can show them ways that our value systems do not clash and it can be win win
Some persons (me included) suspect that humans rarely if ever act with true altruism; that it's actually a nicely dressed up form of self-serving hedonism.
And so for us, the challenge becomes how to get ourselves to act good / kind despite that. One way is to find ways to intentionally tie kind behavior to our own self-interest.
It's a rather huge theoretical distinction that at least in the West goes all the way back!
In general, one shouldn't confuse ethics itself with the whatever one might think is the most viable ethical system! It isnt a product to market. Utilitarianism is no less silly the anything else, and has its own ridiculous edge cases and all that.
It's been fascinating to read up on something about which my thoughts were only half-formed.
I personally don't believe it's possible to "give out" kindness, compassion, friendship solely from an utilitarian position. It would either be fake, and people feel the difference and the desired effect does not follow, or your utilitarian position is a front, in order to justify being kind to unkind people around you judging you.