Over the past few decades emotional intelligence has gained recognition for its importance to leadership, but kindness does not receive much attention.
I believe that all practical leadership tasks (decision making, productivity, strategy, etc.) can be done with kindness. Leading with kindness will benefit everyone and create a better workplace.
Kindness and Emotional Intelligence
In a Harvard Business Review article titled ‘What Makes a Leader?’, Daniel Goleman introduced the business world to the idea of Emotional Intelligence (EI). It remains a seminal discussion of the importance of emotional intelligence to leadership.
As I re-read the article recently, I viewed it through the lens of comparing EI to kindness.
Are emotional intelligence and kindness the same thing? Related? Separate?
Emotional Intelligence re-fresher
According to Goleman, EI differentiates strong and weak leaders. He describes intelligence and technical skills as ‘threshold capabilities’.
High potentials and strong performers also display EI. As a leader rises through the ranks, EI becomes more and more important as the leader focuses on influencing activities versus technical tasks.
Although there seems to be an inborn element of EI, Goleman believes it can be learned. It tends to increase with age as people mature and can be learned through targeted development.
Improving EI skills requires breaking old habits and starting new ones, so it takes time and needs a very individualized approach with a lot of feedback.
This aligns with other research findings showing that on-the-job development provides the most effective way to learn leadership skills.
Goleman describes 5 elements of Emotional Intelligence
Self-awareness. Self-awareness means having a deep understanding of your own emotions, strengths, weaknesses, needs and drives. Strong self-awareness results in honesty with yourself and others about how you will react and perform in different situations. You can recognize self-awareness in people who display candor, realistic self-assessments and self-deprecating senses of humor.
Self-regulation. Self-regulation describes the ongoing inner conversation that we use to control our behavior and reactions. People who self-regulate still feel powerful emotions but thoughtfully choose how to react instead of reacting impulsively. This control creates an environment of trust and fairness, because the leader is predictable and reasonable.
Motivation. Effective leaders seek more than titles and higher pay. They have high levels of motivation which drives them to achieve for the sake of achievement. They pursue goals with energy and persistence, demonstrate passion for their work and show optimism and resilience. The commitment and energy of motivated leaders spreads to the people around them.
Empathy. A leader displays empathy when considering the feeling of others when making decisions. Empathetic leaders also understand and appreciate unique needs of other people. This ability allows them to customize their approach to give good feedback and motivate a person in a way that resonates well.
Social Skill. Goleman describes social skill as ‘friendliness with a purpose’ to move people in a direction of your choosing. This element rests on the foundation of the other four. You must display self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation and empathy in order to execute social skill. Leaders with social skills expertly manage relationships in a way that helps them lead teams, persuade others and collaborate. They invest considerable time in building relationships that benefits them later as needed.
Connection between Emotional Intelligence and Kindness
As proposed by Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence spans five critical qualities that support effective leadership. All five of these qualities influence any human interaction – including kindness.
Even so, three of these qualities – empathy, self-regulation and social skill – seem to relate more directly to kindness.
Kindness presents as an action between two or more people. One person extends a kindness action and one or more people receive it. The action reflects kindness when it is done in order to support the welfare of another person as an end in itself (click here for more about the definition of kindness).
Three of the EI qualities focus on the interaction between people and therefore influence kindness.
Empathy and kindness
Empathy, by definition, involves leaders taking the feelings of others into consideration during decisions. If that consideration turns into action, it fits the definition of kindness.
Kindness requires empathy. Empathy should usually result in kindness.
However, an empathetic leader could choose to act out of alignment with the empathetic thoughts and not show kindness in actions.
Remember, empathy and kindness does not mean that leaders must make business decisions that protect feelings and keep employees happy. It simply means that employee needs and feelings have some weight in decision making. As leaders communicate and execute decisions, they can practice kindness in how they do it.
Self-regulation and kindness
As leaders self-regulate, they control their own emotions in order to interact calmly and thoughtfully. Good self-regulation creates the space for kindness. The leader can consider the feelings of other people as they respond and can choose kindness.
Impulsive behavior – the opposite of self-regulation – springs from uncontrolled feelings and emotions. Impulsive reactions occur too quickly for the leader to consider kindness. Other people get blasted by whatever powerful emotion the leader feels and learn to fear or avoid the leader.
Self-regulation helps build an environment of trust that allows employees to participate fully and speak up about issues.
Shock absorbers demonstrate self-regulation and shock amplifiers do not. Read more here about shock absorbers and shock amplifiers at work.
Social skill and kindness
Social skill also involves relationships between people. Leaders with social skills constantly and consistently build relationships that can help them during times when they need support.
Building relationships generally involves kindness. Kindness actions create positive energy between two people and allow for trust to build.
In the workplace, social skill has the potential to slip into negative territory and turn into manipulation.
Consider the positives and negatives of political skill. This article explains ‘What is political skill?’.
Leaders can fall into the trap of being under-political, learn more in ‘The danger of being under-political’.
When leaders become overly-political, they might turn to manipulation. Actions that superficially seem kind might have a negative intent behind them.
Kindness requires positive intent and sincerity, so manipulative actions do not reflect kindness.
Check out this article ‘An overly political star falls’ for one case study of social and political skill gone wrong.
Your Kindness Experiment
In several articles, we have defined kindness and related it to emotional intelligence. Now, you have a chance to apply kindness to your daily work.
Starting soon, Science of Working will host a six-week Kindness Experiment.
Every week, you will receive simple actions that you can try and practice to see how your kindness can improve your life and your workplace.
Use a scientific approach to kindness. Test the actions, evaluate the results and decide whether or not to continue them.
Your Kindness Experiment – starting soon – check back at Science of Working
- Week 1: Common courtesy
- Week 2: Tone and body language
- Week 3: Stop complaining
- Week 4: Be inclusive
- Week 5: Life outside hierarchy
- Week 6: Curb judgmental thinking
