Cultivating a culture of kindness in your workplace

Following World Kindness Day on 13th November, Laura Drury asks how important kindness at work is. And most importantly, how you can cultivate a culture of kindness in your workplace.

Kindness can help your business 

Have you ever listened to someone describing a challenge to you, where they’re stuck, and you’re thinking, well, the solution is obvious to me?

At Laughology, we feel that way about many problems in the working world, and we’ve worked with many, many organisations, schools and universities. 

The solution, by the way, is kindness.

If at this point you look heavenwards, roll your eyes, and decide to stop reading, bear with us because kindness can help businesses:

• Become more inclusive and diverse
• Improve productivity
• Increase engagement
• Reduce stress
• Support mental health and wellbeing
• Feel more fulfilled
• Boost self-esteem
• Improve working relationships
• Levitate loyalty 
• Catalyse creativity etc.
• And most importantly of all, create a happy workplace

*As a by-product of all of these you will probably raise the profits too!

And this list isn’t finite!

As the Random Acts of Kindness and 52 Lives websites show, there’s lots of science to back all this up. 

In our Laughology sessions, we often describe ways to boost your D.O.S.E. of neurotransmitters (Dopamine, Oxytocin, Serotonin, and Endorphins). These all have complex roles within the brain and body, and all play a part in how happy we feel. And as science shows, we can access all of these through kindness.

So, what practical things can you do to be kinder at work?

There are numerous different ways - such as helping people, giving small gifts, paying for someone’s coffee, having hugs, giving compliments and the simplest and easiest of them all, a genuine, heartfelt smile. The aforementioned Random Acts of Kindness website has many more, as well as a page dedicated to business where you can sign a pledge to make your workplace kinder.  

However, as we all know, it’s easy to be kind to people we like, even to people we don’t know. It’s not so easy if it’s people we don’t like, though. Even though it’s somewhat trickier, it’s just as important. 

You may find the smallest of actions require the greatest effort, e.g., not having the last word. What does it really achieve aside from bad feelings? When working with human beings, which most do, it’s about being more human.

Bob Chapman from Barry Wehmiller Manufacturing has recently been rated as the #3 CEO in the world because of his groundbreaking approach to ‘Truly Human Leadership’. About 20 years ago, during a wedding, he describes having a “revelation” that completely reversed the way he had led his people. 

He realised his leadership choices had “a profound impact on their health, marriage and relationship with their kids.” With the new belief that “Our people are our product”, he realised business could be “the most powerful force for good in the world”. During the 2008 recession, this vision paid off as instead of cutting jobs to save £10,000,000, he made every person, at every level, take 4 weeks of unpaid leave. 

His compassion, empathy and kindness protected his people, and in turn, his people worked harder and had increased loyalty. It also boosted morale, and the company doubled its savings to $20,000,000. It turned out that those who could afford to take unpaid leave would take weeks from those who might struggle. It had a ripple effect. 

It’s not all about being kind either

It’s not just those that give and receive kindness that experience its benefits; observing an act of kindness does too, which makes it contagious. Seeing acts of kindness bestowed on someone sparks the desire for you to be kind yourself. In fact, if you’re ever feeling low, one of the quickest ways to help yourself feel better is to do something kind for someone in need. 

Entrepreneur and Good Will Strategist James Rhee describes kindness as a “scalable, collectively owned asset, called goodwill” and tells the story of how he helped to prevent the clothing company Ashley Stewart from going into liquidation by working with employees and customers of the brand, using maths and kindness.

In the workplace, true kindness comes from your values, how you choose to live, and the behaviours that stem from those values. As Bob Chapman has shown, the outcomes are powerful. 

So what are those values and behaviours? They stem from ethical leadership:

Most of the behaviours required to put these into practice stem from positive communication skills, e.g., listening with curiosity but without judgement, asking open questions, and creating a psychologically safe environment.

Kindness starts with you

CEO coach and author of Just Work, Kim Scott, demonstrates kindness through her model “Radical Candour … care personally and challenge directly”. She encourages leaders to use this model as a guide for positive feedback and also to promote “real, human relationships” at work. 

In her TED Talk with Trier Bryant about bias, she says it’s these values and behaviours that promote “shared language” and ways of working together for everyone to raise awareness, disrupt bias and become more inclusive.

One of the hardest people to be kind to is yourself. Sometimes wonky thinking patterns can make you feel bad; other times, feelings of overwhelm get in the way of self-care, or we might put other people first. To lead the way, you have to role model the behaviours yourself. 

Only then can truly kind workplaces exist.

If this blog whets your appetite and you’d like to find out what else can bring happiness to the workplace, why not join our Kerry Leigh in her free webinar ‘Happy Talk – how to be happier at work’ 

Right, to be kind to myself, I’m going to make myself a well-earned cuppa, with an extra chocolatey choccy biccy.