You can’t be a kind person and criticise someone, right?
And you definitely couldn’t sack them, right?
Wrong.
You can be a kind manager and still:
- Give people critical feedback
- Hold people accountable
- Disagree with your colleagues
- Say no to people
- Stick up for yourself
- Fire someone
Take criticising someone as a common example.
Some managers criticise people and they are unkind.
Some managers criticise people and they are still kind.
Kindness lays not so much in what we do (i.e. criticise someone), but in why and how we do it.
The why: We are kind in criticising someone, when we do it because we want to help them. Help them become more self-aware of how their behaviour affects others or holds them back. And help them lift their performance by improving their skills and approach.
The how: We are kind in criticising someone, when we – for example – focus on their behaviours (not their character or personality), when we create psychologically safety so they can hear the feedback, and when we speak with them, not at them.
In fact, withholding critical feedback can be a very unkind thing to do.
Imagine someone is foundering their role. And we can see it. Everyone can see it.
It would be terribly unkind of us to withhold feedback, which might help them lift their performance.
Our people must shine, if our teams are to make an impact on the world.
But as kind people, we should want that for our people in any case.
