Nina’s Nuggets #2: Nice guys finish last?

“Kill them with kindness”. 

This advice was gifted to me in a gentle Yorkshire lilt by one of the most altruistic women I know - a veritable crusader of kindness and a woman who faced more adversity in her younger life than one ever should: my darling mother. In spite of - or indeed because of - the mountains she was forced to scale, she dedicated her entire adult life to helping others in need, using every day as an opportunity to show care and kindness to others. She is the epitome of nice. 

I can’t recall the exact context whereby that advice was warranted and thus issued by my dear mum but I’ve never forgotten those 4 words ‘Kill them with kindness”. Truth be told, they’ve also become somewhat of an incantation throughout my working career. Indeed, over the past 17 years in the workplace, I’ve battled with, been mindful of and deeply questioned the power of kindness. 

Like a pendulum I’ve oscillated between 2 extremes: believing that being kind will either make my career, or break it.

To understand my complex relationship with kindness in the workplace, we need to go back to the beginning. My career commenced 17 years ago in Canary Wharf in the sphere of Finance and big business. A world of towering skyscrapers and unparalleled wealth - an environment that felt at times incomprehensible, inhospitable, unfriendly and yet simultaneously glamorous and enticing.

It was this world that first shaped my impressions of what it takes to be successful, what it takes to a leader. What I observed at that stage of my career was an autocratic or coercive leadership style. The big bosses of the business world - the figureheads with the titles and 8 digit salaries - demanded and compelled their organizations to do whatever they wanted. Omniscient god-like figures, they made all the decisions; praising those who followed them, blaming or shaming those that didn’t perform. This cult of ego was cloaked in charismatic speeches. A veritable Freudian narcissist, this leader was infallible, proud, self-promoting, emotionally isolated, highly distrustful, an invulnerable chief. 

Thus, in these formative years, I believed that to be successful in business, one had to hide any hint of vulnerability or humanity behind a facade - even the act of dressing in a suit somehow equated to donning a shield that hid the real human underneath. It was a world where confidence was competence, where what you said seemingly mattered less than how you said it (the louder the better). And this style was mimicked and rewarded across multiple levels of multiple organizations. If people didn’t follow, they were interchangeable. 

Kindness, in contrast, felt weaponized. It was a flaw, a limit to one’s success. Because I wore my heart on my sleeve I was too nice. I lacked edge. I wasn’t visible. I wasn’t loud enough. I was too emotional. I wasn’t a potential leader. I wouldn’t be successful. 

For a while I tried to conform; I applied a more aggressive and confident front, trying to fit the mold of success to this “boys club”, hiding my feelings - yet returning home to cry once the pressure lid popped. It couldn’t last - silencing my humanity, my emotions was, quite simply, impossible. Even in those days of acting, of playing the part, I could still be found chatting to colleagues in the kitchen about our social lives, exchanging fears and hopes about our work. Consequently, I became a shoulder to cry on, a safe space where teammates could be vulnerable, someone people would ask advice from, someone who was trusted with the dreams and struggles of others. 

I understood at the time this was special. Now I see it as powerful. 

Zoom forward to today and I’ve thankfully seen a significant shift in mindfulness of leadership styles - brought about in part by younger generations demanding more from their leaders and via our exposure to a larger variety of different leadership styles and theorists to look up to and copy (both in and outside of the workplace). 

When Jacinda Ardern, the former Prime Minister of New Zealand announced to the world that she “refuses to believe that you cannot be both compassionate and strong” I - like many female and diverse leaders in my network - gave a collective cheer. We felt heard. This affirmation that you don’t have to just be assertive and aggressive to be a powerful leader, this validation that actually empathy and compassion are skills to be appreciated and fostered in the workplace - that kindness matters - was hugely moving and motivational after years of being taught the opposite.

Thus today, we’re more explicit in recognizing that there is more than one style that can be successful, more than one style that can lead. Diverse rhetorics on leadership are ever more pervasive - it takes little more than 3 scrolls of LinkedIN to find a Harvard Business Review article or a viral Brene Brown, Adam Grant or Simon Sinek quote on different styles of leadership: articles on servant leadership, vulnerability in the workplace, the importance of psychological safety, emotional intelligence, empathy, leading with humility. Wow. I inhale it all. 

Yet at its very core - and don’t get me wrong, I love all these wonderful terms and concepts that help us to navigate, vocalize and normalize talking about emotions in the workplace - for me it essentially comes down to recognizing our own humanity, seeing the humanity of others and letting kindness and respect for the individual prevail. 

If we define success not as being the loudest in the room, but rather by one’s ability to display empathy and understanding, the ability to be vulnerable, the ability to expose our humanity and appreciate it in others, then I believe we can create a much healthier and diverse workplace. We create a workplace where tough issues are fairly and kindly discussed. A workplace where everyone feels they have an equal voice, a workplace which doesn’t fear conflict, a workplace which fuels creativity and innovation, a workplace that celebrates itself. Why? Because it’s an environment of respect, of appreciation, of team spirit. It’s a space where people can thrive because of who they are, not who they pretend - or are told - to be. 

Yet there’s still a long road to travel. Whilst times are changing and new concepts are permeating our consciousness, conversely we’re also seeing a tide of online trolling, a rise in non-human communication channels (slack, slido to name a few) which risk dehumanising our interactions. The shield to humanity is no longer a suit but a computer screen, a keyboard and an avatar. And we still don’t need to look far to see those egotistical leaders who still tell us we won’t make it if we’re too nice, too kind. 

For a meaningful change to happen in the working world, we need to see a consistent change in everyday behaviours. My hope is that if we can all individually lead by example and humanise our conversations at work, share our vulnerabilities, practice active listening, display empathy, be self aware, try to understand the needs of our colleagues and commit to supporting them, call out toxicity and start to identify institutional and societal barriers - then we’re already building towards the transformation. Because if we can be human and kind, we allow others around us to be. 

So let’s go kill them with kindness.

Important call out: I had some great bosses and leaders throughout my career in London - the above speaks more to the wider business world and my perception of the upper echelons of power in Canary Wharf and the City - those people I read about in the financial news and the wider environment.

Subscript: For the avid Shakespeare fans out there, my mother did not mean “Kill them with kindness” in the more literal sense (ie. to actually overwhelm the other), rather she used it as you would the adage: “smile and the world smiles back”. Be kind and others will follow :)