A Practical Guide to Creating a Culture of Kindness at Work

Creating a culture of kindness is good for the people and the organization.

The positive effect of kindness is not fluff. It's real!

By giving, receiving and observing acts of kindness we feel happier and more joyful, committed, acknowledged, healed, in life and work. This isn't just a feeling in your head or a subjective perception. Acts of kindness, in the giver, the receiver and the observer, release hormones in our bodies that create the conditions for more love, joy and bond. Overall, therefore, kindness impacts the overall wellbeing of the giver and the receiver.

By creating the conditions for kindness to emerge and thrive at work we are simultaneously creating a corporate culture in which kindness givers and receivers can better manage pain, stress and anxiety, while giving more love, having more joy and building better relationships.

The consequence is evident: a workplace in which the top reasons why people feel engaged and happy are present, thus resulting in higher performance and more productivity.

Kindness, then, is good for the people involved in giving and receiving acts of kindness and also for the organization that promotes it as a pillar of its culture.

Kindness is a powerful way to create stronger organizations and help people, and it matters for a lot of reasons. Here you have six of them:

• To heal pain: Kindness produces endorphins which are natural painkillers. By engaging in kindness you are releasing your own internal healing "drug" to heal emotional and physical pains

• To manage stress: Kind people have less cortisol (the stress hormones) which helps them better control and manage stress, and even perform better under "stressful circumstances"

• To control anxiety: People who consistently perform weekly acts of kindness have an increase in positive moods and satisfaction in their relationships. They are also more socially integrated

• To improve relationships: Kindness gets us emotionally closer to other people as kindness begets kindness. We tend to be kind to those who are kind to us and feel a stronger bond with them

• To promote love: Acts of kindness create a feeling of emotional warmth. This produces oxytocin, the "love hormone", in your body. More oxytocin reduces blood pressure and protects your heart

• To increase joy and happiness: Kindness lights up the giver's brain’s pleasure and reward centers. It is as if the giver was the recipient of the act of kindness. This is called the “helper’s high"

Kindness Explained

Kindness is the act of being compassionate, considerate and caring for other people without the expectation of getting something in return for it.

In the context of work, kindness is about using our talents, resources and leverage to improve other people’s lives by leading with authentic acts of love, generosity, compassion, care and, especially, service. Leading with kindness is inclusive of servant leadership.

Research shows that kindness if an intrinsic human behavior. Unfortunately, as we develop and grow up, we are “educated out” of kindness. In our hypercompetitive, scarcity-mindset society, kindness feels weak or that it doesn’t deliver results.

A culture of kindness creates an environment of trust, safety, belonging and inclusion, all of which are conducive to a great human experience at work, which ultimately translates in increased engagement, productivity, performance and, yes, loyalty. The connection between building a culture of kindness and getting results at work is strong.

For example, leading with kindness’s direct result is creating better conditions for people to be treated with love and respect. As employees feel that there is compassion, consideration and care toward them, they in turn deliver more and better for the organization and the leader.

People who give and receive kindness are less prone to harmful stress (because they create less cortisol), their mood improves which has an impact in potential anxiety, depression levels decrease for them, and blood pressure reduces because of the release of oxytocin. All in all, kindness, philosophically and scientifically, is the way to lead!

The Science of Kindness

In 2019, UCLA opened the world’s first academic research department focused on kindness, the Bedari Institute of Kindness. That same year, a study was published on PubMed.gov titled “A range of kindness activities boost happiness”.

Since then, there have been countless studies on kindness and even more organizations formed focused on promoting kindness. The Random Acts of Kindness Foundation seeks to make kindness the norm. Since 2021, the Berkely Greater Good Science Center has been at the “fore of the scientific movement to explore the roots of happy and compassionate individuals, strong social bonds, and altruistic behavior—the science of a meaningful life”. And in 2021, the American Psychological Association (APA) also published an article titled “The Case for Kindness”, showing that kindness is beneficial to our mental health.

In short, kindness has radically evolved from a “fluffy, touchy, emotional, hippy” thing to a scientific endeavor that relies on data to better understand and promote its benefits.

There has been an upswell in scientific data pointing to the benefits of kindness, and once you review all the data in totality, there is a fairly compelling argument that kindness is good for us – both in expressing kindness and in receiving it.

If you think about kindness through an evolutionary biology lens, then the benefits of kindness seem to make sense. Humans have lived and survived in small interdependent communities for thousands of years. Our basic survival has been dependent upon helping our fellow humans and trusting that we will receive help when we need it.

However, we often fall into the belief system that expressing a need for help is weakness or being too kind will result in getting taken advantage of. But as the APA determines, there is definitely a case for kindness.

Kindness has six key benefits. These are proven by science and research:

Kindness helps your brain release the chemicals of happiness

We can literally get "high" on Kindness!

Our bodies release all sorts of chemicals associated to our emotional state.

The fun thing about kindness is that it releases some of the most powerful chemicals of happiness produced by our own bodies!

The most common are oxytocin, dopamine and serotonin. Most of the research has centered on oxytocin. According to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, oxytocin is sometimes called “the love hormone,” and it “plays a role in forming social bonds and trusting other people. It's the hormone mothers produce when they breastfeed, cementing their bond with their babies. It's tied to making us more trusting, more generous, and friendlier, while also lowering our blood pressure.”

Kindness also releases dopamine which is a chemical messenger in the brain that can give us a feeling of euphoria. Dopamine is released naturally when your brain is expecting a reward and it makes us feel good. The Mayo Clinic reveals in an article from 2020 that “being kind boosts serotonin and dopamine, which are neurotransmitters in the brain that give you feelings of satisfaction and well-being, and cause the pleasure/reward centers in your brain to light up.”

As noted, kindness also releases serotonin, which is a neurotransmitter that helps to regulate mood. Many antidepressant medications focus on increasing serotonin levels in the brain. Research shows that kindness can have a similar effect on our serotonin levels. Studies have shown that receiving, giving and even witnessing acts of kindness can increase serotonin levels in the brain, showing that kindness has powerful impacts on our well-being without the use of external drugs when not necessary.

At work: when people are happier and healthier and with lower levels of stress, depression, anxiety and other mental health work-caused maladies, they are more focused, engaged and satisfied, all of which have an impact in their productivity and performance.

Kindness leads to improvement in your physical health

Kindness has remarkable impacts on our physical health. Research has shown that helping others is believed to increase levels of an endorphin-like chemical in the body called substance P, which can aid in relieving pain. Additionally, an added benefit of oxytocin is that it is good for our hearts.

Dr. David R Hamilton references oxytocin as a “cardioprotective hormone” that provides a variety of benefits to the cardiovascular system, namely lowering blood pressure. It also acts as an antioxidant and anti-inflammatory which can help reduce cholesterol and protects our hearts from free radical damage.

You aren’t going to believe this, but science also shows that kindness can even reduce the likelihood of getting a cold!

In one study, patients who rated their clinicians as showing greater empathy while receiving care showed a reduction in the severity and duration of cold symptoms, as well as increases in immune response levels.

Kindness can increase your lifespan

What?? Yes. It’s true. Christine Carter, author of “Raising Happiness; In Pursuit of Joyful Kids and Happier Parents” wrote the following:

“Giving help to others protects overall health twice as much as aspirin protects against heart disease. People 55 and older who volunteer for two or more organizations have an impressive 44% lower likelihood of dying early, and that’s after sifting out every other contributing factor, including physical health, exercise, gender, habits like smoking, marital status and many more. This is a stronger effect than exercising four times a week or going to church.”

As we reference earlier, oxytocin supports greater cardiovascular health. Since kindness releases oxytocin and oxytocin is an antioxidant and anti-inflammatory, the associated reduction in heart attacks and stroke has a significant increase on lifespan. Additionally, these benefits aid in slowing the physical aging process by reducing wrinkles due to the lower level of free radicals in our bodies. Not only might we live longer, we will also look younger!

Kindness helps you cultivate stronger bonds with others

This one seems like a no-brainer, but it is hard to remember when our culturally shaped neurobiology tells us not to trust one another.

Science shows that we are hard-wired to trust, but having our trust betrayed can re-wire our brains to make it difficult to trust. When people show us kindness after our brains have been re-wired not to trust, we can quickly assume that their motives are negative or they have a hidden agenda. However, when we trust the intentions of the person showing kindness or we seek to show kindness out of genuine care, those behaviors serve to strengthen relationships.

Going back to evolutionary biology, kindness bonds us. The School of Kindness organization focuses on increasing kindness in classrooms. Their research shows that for our ancestors, “the stronger the emotional bonds within groups, the greater were the chances of survival and so ‘kindness genes’ were etched into the human genome. So today, when we are kind to each other, we feel a connection that strengthens our existing relationships and helps us to create new ones”. If we cultivate trust and kindness, we will have healthier connections with others.

At work: one of the most powerful drivers of human happiness is belonging. Belonging is feeling that one is fully accepted and embraced in a tribe, such as the "work tribe". When people feel that they belong they are more likely to be respected and feel respect for others, to help and seek help, to give and receive feedback, and, ultimately, to give their best for their own well-being and that of the tribe. Strong connections are the foundation of belonging, and kindness is an avenue to build those connections.

Kindness improves your mental health

So, we’ve definitely seen that oxytocin is released when we show kindness, receive kindness or even witness it. Oxytocin has a powerful impact on our emotional well-being. The University of British Columbia conducted a study with a group of “highly anxious individuals”. The researchers asked them to perform at least six acts of kindness a week. After one month, the participants reported a significant increase in positive moods, relationship satisfaction and a decrease in social avoidance.

On the flip side of the happy chemicals is cortisol. It’s the chemical that makes us experience stress. Our body has mechanisms in place to reduce cortisol, such as crying. But cortisol can also be reduced by kindness. One study showed that “perpetually kind” people had 23% less cortisol than the general population. A study conducted by Stanford University found that when someone acts with kindness, it has a significant positive effect on their physiology. Instead of being in a state of “fight or flight”, they move into “rest and digest” mode. This can have a strong influence on people who struggle with chronic anxiety.

At work: at a time when most people in developed societies are reporting suffering from mental health issues, embracing kindness becomes a stronger imperative than it ever was. Some mental health issues will require professional help and even medication, but that won't eliminate the root causes at work that make people suffer. Kindness goes to the roots!

Kindness helps you sleep better

Got enough sleep? Probably not, like most people in developed societies, particularly in the United States.

Because of all the happy chemicals, healthier bodies, peaceful relationships and a more peaceful emotional state, kindness ultimately helps improve our sleep. Thrive Global conducted a study on kindness and sleep and found many connections between kindness and healthy sleep, “including how both can help us relax our nervous systems, regulate our emotions, relieve stress, and relate to others with empathy”.

The connection also seems directly tied to kindness towards self, as reflected in a study published by the National Library of Medicine. This study combines nine separate studies that span seven years shows that “this review supports both the correlational and causal relationship between self-compassion and increased subjective sleep quality across diverse operationalization and samples”.

The science of kindness reinforces what we have probably known since early childhood – that when we help one another and accept help from others, we are able to thrive.

9 Ways to Lead with Kindness

Genuineness

You can't fake kindness, or at least you can sustain for too long that you are faking it. Leading with kindness has to come from a place of authenticity and genuineness. As a leader you first have to believe and embrace the idea that kindness is good for your team and you, and that it will deliver results by making their lives better. Do you believe that kindness is effective, not only to make your people's lives better but also to make you a better leader who delivers better results? If your answer is a genuine YES, then you have a strong first principle in place.

The thing about kindness is that people can discover really quickly if it’s not genuine.

If someone is being kind and you have a suspicion that they are out on the road of kindness just to get something in return, the situation sours quickly. If someone offers inauthentic kindness, or kindness for the wrong reasons, or doesn’t follow through, the impact can be more detrimental on the relationship than if the kindness hadn’t been offered to begin with.

So, what does leading with genuine kindness look like in a work setting?

1. Get to know your team members. Use your one-on-one time with them to understand what’s important to them. This allows you to interact with the team on a more personal basis. Once you know what makes them “tick”, then you can more easily identify acts of kindness that will resonate specifically with each person.

2. Tailor your approach. Rather than leveraging a formulaic management style, adjust your approach to the individuals on your team. This is a huge way to show kindness. If you know that it’s important to one of your team members to pick their kids up from school, then make sure that you don’t schedule your weekly check-in with that person right before they have to leave. Here we have to say this: management and leadership techniques are useful, but not effective if the purpose of using them is not to help the team grow and, consequently, get results. This is more effectively done through leading with kindness and compassion. For these last two, it is more about you wanting to make it happen than the techniques.

3. Offer genuine kindness to build trust. Do things for your team just for the heck of it rather than as a means to incentivize or penalize. Once your team members trust that your kindness isn’t tied to a “catch”, then the relationships will deepen. As employees feel safer, studies routinely show that productivity increases and engagement remains consistent.

Support

Your team looks up to you for support, not only about work related stuff but also about other things that may be happening in their lives and have an impact in their performance. Leading with kindness is about being supportive in a non-judgmental way

Showing kindness is about showing genuine support for your employees. The dictionary definition of support is to “bear all or part of the weight, hold up”.

Helping to bear the weight of the team is something that managers and leaders have taken on as a job responsibility for years, but if often comes with stress and frustration. Re-framing these actions as a way to show kindness can support the wellbeing of both the team members and the leaders. Kindness is powerful for the recipient and, without expecting it, for the recipient, in this case, the leader.

What are some ways we can show support to our team members?

1. Pay attention to workload. As workloads evolve and shift with the needs of the business, take stock of how much is assigned to each person. Make sure to look at all elements of the work also, not just volume. Think about the complexity of the work or the emotional load of the project due to internal conflicts or tension. And then stay in communication with each person to ensure that the work is distributed in a manageable way for each person.

2. Know your employees' limits. People experience stress differently and have different points at which they feel overwhelmed. When you begin to learn each person’s limits, you can better show support. If one of your employees takes on too much routinely and then burns out, you can open a dialogue with them about some strategies for mitigating the workload before they hit their threshold, or offering additional support and resources.

3. Focus on work/life blend. Ask them what is important to them outside of work and show support in them achieving those things. We recognize that there may be occasions where a late night seems unavoidable, but it can be devastating to an employee who is a single parent or primary care-giver to an aging and needs to get home to relieve those duties outside of work.

Intentionality

Kindness doesn't just "happen".

Leading with kindness needs more than "random acts of leading with kindness", although we love the idea of just randomly being kind to others. But, randomness is not unintentional. You have to be intentional even to randomly be kind to others with small or big actions.

In the context of work, you have to be intentional and decisive about how you invest your energy in caring for your team and supporting them. Kindness isn’t meant to be an energy drain or an extra box you have to check during the workday, but it IS something that you want to put thought into so that your intentions to lead with kindness are perceived as such.

What are some ways that we can show an intention of kindness?

1. Uphold commitments. If the group sets teambuilding goals and makes commitments, do your part to ensure that they are met. If the team decides that it’s important to end meetings so that there is a five minute break between them, then you are the first person to start wrapping up when it’s nearing that mark. If the team says it’s important to go out to lunch together once a month, then you are the one putting it on the calendar and asking people for restaurant recommendations.

2. Be consistent. Nothing is more disruptive than a leader who is unpredictable. If you lead with kindness one day and then blow your top the next, then the team won’t be able to productively operate without distraction about how you might react, plus, frankly, they won't believe that your kindness is genuine at all. Being consistent with your kindness will allow the team to feel safe and comfortable in their ongoing interactions with you.

3. Advocate for your team. One of the highest and best ways to show kindness to your team is through intentional advocacy. Become their sponsor, mentor and/or coach. Lift them up in front of others. Talk nicely about them behind their backs, give them credit for their work, celebrate their successes, and ensure they feel “seen” by you. It actually takes effort to do this well, and it requires deliberate intention when the opportunity arises to genuinely advocate for your employees. When you do this you are intentionally being kind to them, even if they don't notice right away or directly.

Trust

You may not necessarily be a "confidant" to the people in your team, but they still want to know that they can count on you and that you will keep your word to them. Your relationship with the team and the influence you have on them is based on trust, not power. Building a maintaining trust is key to lead with kindness.

There has been a lot of research done about building trust at work. Frances Frei, of the Harvard Business School, shared her now famous Trust Triangle in a 2018 TED talk that outlines the importance of trust at work. The Trust Triangle explains that you need authenticity, logic and empathy to build and maintain trust. Without these three elements, you create an environment of unpredictability and fear. Employees don’t function from a place of psychological safety and instead begin organizing their work with the intention of “pleasing” rather than with the intention of doing really good, engaged work. Organizations that function without trust don’t succeed. Leading with kindness results in trusting relationships with your team.

Let’s break down the three elements of trust:

1. Authenticity. This includes both being authentic and empowering others to be their most authentic selves. When we are able to show up fully at work without being distracted about hiding certain aspects of ourselves, we have more space in our brains to focus on doing good work. Additionally, having the freedom to bring your authentic self forward often allows for freedom of thought and diversity of innovation that we don’t see when people are functioning from a place of fear. Leaders often believe that they have to exhibit a certain flawless image for their teams where they need to know all the answers and never have a bad day. However, we have found that employees actually align more closely with leaders who acknowledge that they don’t have the answer and transparently express the difficulties they are experiencing in getting a particular project completed. Authenticity wins every time.

2. Empathy. Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another person. In order to develop trust, leaders need to first express genuine empathy for the people on their teams. Expressing empathy can be difficult for some leaders, particularly in our culture of caring more about achieving deadlines than in caring for our employees. But take a moment at the beginning of every one-on-one to ask your team members what they are struggling with currently and really listen. Listen to what they are saying with their words and with their body language. Do they seem concerned to be fully transparent with you? If so, ask questions. And then listen to what’s inside your own head. Do you give more validity to struggles that you understand personally? Are you judging their struggle as silly or irrelevant? Challenge yourself to really understand and share the feelings of your team member in that moment.

3. Logic. We lose people when we don’t come across as credible. Which is why logic is one of the core elements of building trust. One easy way to express this action is by providing context. Leaders who help their teams understand the bigger picture about what is going on in the business that might be contributing to a strategy shift or change end up with higher levels of trust with their teams.

Compassion

Compassion is the willingness to do something to relieve the suffering or pain someone in your team may be going through. It requires awareness, a desire to relieve the suffering, and a willingness to respond. Compassion is fundamental to leading with kindness.

How do leaders express compassion with their teams?

1. Allow people to make mistakes. Some of the most innovative companies have a focus on making mistakes because we learn by making mistakes. When toddlers learn to walk, they keep pulling up and tripping and bonking around until they get it right. Compassion means that we allow for mistakes, celebrate the effort, show empathy when a team member is worried or embarrassed about the mistake, and encourage their learning when they try again.

2. Apologize when you make mistakes. One of the hardest things that leaders can do it apologize when they have made a mistake. But it’s also one of the most compassionate things a leader can do. Because of the influence that leaders have on teams, it can be very difficult for the team to know that a leader has made a mistake but it hasn’t been acknowledged. The team will try to jump through hoops to protect the leader from having to face their own reality. But modeling compassionate behavior of acknowledging the mistake, sharing what you plan to do to make sure it doesn’t happen again, and following through on that can help teams feel a very genuine level of compassion from you – and also help them learn how to lead with kindness in their interactions with their peers and other teams within the business.

3. Express encouragement. When your team members are struggling to complete a project or have a tense relationship with a colleague, really listen to understand the issue. Then, rather than solving the problem for them or telling them what to do, offer ideas and encouragement to help empower them to succeed. Encouragement can also mean helping to remind people of their abilities when they can’t see them. Remind your team member of their strong skills or the professional development they have been pursuing to help them define a path forward.

Respect

Leading with kindness thrives when you treat your team with respect, dignity and integrity. Respect is highly correlated with belonging, which in turn creates more engagement and productivity. To lead with kindness be respectful and it'll create the conditions to get the best results.

1. Be honest. One of the easiest ways to show other respect is to be honest and straightforward with your employees. Provide honest feedback, answer their questions as candidly as you can. Rather than spending your energy always trying to think of how to package information to your team or spin the message so that they see it as positive, try telling the truth directly instead.

2. Be reliable. If you leave a team meeting with all of the to-do’s, then prioritize following up on those to-do’s as soon as you can. Copy the relevant folks from your team on your efforts to follow up so that they know you are working on it. Following through on your commitments shows your team that you respect the priorities you outlined as a team, and you take those commitments seriously.

3. Be inclusive. Spend time getting to know the people on your team personally. One of the easiest ways to show respect is to understand what is important to each person. You will find that each person has a different set of values, cultural norms, and expectations of their manager. Understanding these differences allows you to be a more inclusive and understanding leader.

By exhibiting trust, compassion and respect with your team, you will be laying a strong foundation in leading with kindness.

Gratitude

There is growing evidence that showing gratitude has measurable benefits for almost every aspect of our lives, including our emotional well-being and our physical health. Gratitude is one of the ways we are reminded that we can’t do it all by ourselves – that we really do rely on one another. When we think about what it really means to be a member of a team, we realize that gratitude is a core element that leads to the success of the whole (i.e. cheering from the sidelines!)

How do we consistently express gratitude with our teams?

1. Acknowledge the day-to-day. Work is hard (and boring) sometimes, and the grind of the routine can wear on employees. We all have the tasks that drain our energy and we put off until they HAVE to get done. And this is often the work that goes most unrewarded. Try asking each of your team members what their draining tasks are and then throw a mini-party or send them a hand-written note when those tasks get completed. Sometimes we need to be celebrated for accomplishing the monotony more than we need to be celebrated for completing the shiny project.

2. Notice the small things. Is one of your team members the last one out of the meeting room because they always stay behind to tidy up? Is one of your employees consistently acknowledging the contributions of others during team meetings? Do you have a detail-oriented team member who is great at catching the typos before something gets sent to leadership? Take a minute to say “thank you” to those folks. They are playing to their strengths and your team is better for having them.

3. Say “Thanks”. This one is so often overlooked. We often think we are expressing gratitude, but it’s simply not getting across. You may feel the gratitude and think that your team knows that you feel it – But they actually don’t unless you say it out loud. Period. So, every time you think it, say it out loud or take thirty seconds to type it in a quick email. Or even go the extra mile and copy someone above you on that expression of gratitude so that others can see that you have an awesome person on your team.

Purpose

Leading with kindness to get better work results requires connecting people and their contributions with a "higher purpose". It is about giving them meaning and valuing the work they do, accordingly. Be "purposeful" in the way you design and assign workloads so that your employees find meaning in their work

In recent years, there has been a significant increase in books and resources focused on people finding their purpose. Maybe the pandemic made us question the role work plays in our lives. Maybe we all got collectively jolted by shifting to remote work and we could no longer escape ourselves by going to the office every day. Whatever the cause, there is a lot of existential thought being dedicated to figuring out our purpose. So, let’s just start with the assumption that your employees are grappling with this as well. They may not be quiet quitting or part of the great resignation, but they are more than likely considering their purpose and how their job plays a part in it. Leading with kindness means that you help connect people and their contributions with a "higher purpose". It is about helping them find the meaning and value in their work.

So, how do we help people connect with their purpose?

1. Ask them about their values. People will all define purpose differently based on their backgrounds and what is important to them. Ask probing questions to help them identify the kinds of work that make them feel like they are accomplishing something valuable. Consider questions like:

• When is the last time you felt like your work really mattered (inside or outside of your day job)?

• What kinds of work makes you feel like you are making a difference?

• When is the last time you felt energized by a project? What elements of that work resonated with you most?

2. Deliberately delegate the work. Once you have a good understanding of what kinds of work each person finds meaningful, then you can distribute projects in a way that helps reinforce their purpose.

3. Pay attention. When people on your team start to seem burnt out or stressed, you can help re-direct them to work that you know will help them connect with their sense of purpose. This can serve as a lifeline for people who are overwhelmed or lacking engagement.

Open-mindedness

Kindness makes people's lives better (receiver and giver's lives). That's the direct result. Getting better work results will happen over time. Be open-minded as in believe that leading with kindness will make your team more productive, but this won't happen overnight.

Our world can seem very binary at times, with very stark differences on either side of the coin on any given issue. And even worse, the two sides of the coin are often fighting against one another! It’s amazing that the coin doesn’t simply break.

But through the efforts of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion initiatives and more folks engaging in transparent and psychologically safe conversations about our authentic differences, we are moving the needle away from a binary world and towards a more open-minded society. People who lead with kindness are a huge part of this shift, as open-mindedness is one of the easiest ways to show kindness.

How can we show more open-mindedness at work?

1. Increase your awareness. We all have bias – some we are very aware of and some we are not. The best way to explore your biases is to listen to yourself. There is a little voice going nonstop inside your head. It serves as the constant narrator of your life. This little voice is also a skilled critic. Ironically, you are the favorite subject of your inner critic, but sometimes it gets distracted from telling you how awful and embarrassing you are and decides to direct the judgment at another person in the room. Pay attention to when that’s happening. What are the recurring judgments you hear? Where do they come from? Choose to replace those judgments with kindness.

2. Celebrate differences. One quick win in becoming more open-minded is to serve up a compliment when we notice something that we aren’t used to seeing. If you have a candidate show up with bright green hair, the old you might question their professionalism. The new kindness-inspired you is going to say out loud, “You have great hair! You will really introduce a unique perspective to our team”.

3. See the whole person. We are more than just our work-selves. So, when people are doing or saying things that you don’t understand, stop and consider the whole person. This is someone’s child. This is a human soul. This person has experienced things you will never understand. This person goes home at night and takes their day with them (including your influence on their day). Think about the holistic person in front of you who has equal value in their humanity to you as their leader. Open-mindedness is ultimately about accepting and honoring the beautiful person you are interacting with in that moment.

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