In Defense of Kindness

There’s not a single person on this planet who doesn’t love to feel appreciated.

People might have different ways in which they prefer appreciation shown, but everyone deep down wants to feel valid and included in the world around them — it’s human nature.

Someone making you feel appreciated takes an act of kindness from someone else. It doesn’t happen by accident, it requires intentionality and thinking beyond yourself.

Because it’s easy to forget that the cornerstone of kindness is not “empathy” but compassion — the ability to look at someone and see them as a person, just like you. Someone who likely is facing similar questions and difficulties in their life.

It’s remarkably easy for us all to develop tunnel vision on our own wants and desires and forget the people around us, as well as the effect we have on the people around us too.

When I first joined Etsy in Brooklyn (more than a decade ago now wow), I was amazed at how honestly kind everyone was. People were generally thoughtful of each other’s needs and seemed to try their best to accommodate and welcome all types of folk in order to accomplish the mission together and have fun doing it (have fun was literally written into the company values at one point but they removed it after the IPO).

That was the first time I really witnessed anything like that type of work experience and it changed what I believed was possible.

Sure there can be ways where kindness can be taken advantage of and we should be mindful of that.

However, as I’ve continued to work in this field, I’ve noticed how time and time again kindness (contrary to what some hustle though leaders would have you believe) is always the thing that correlated most to having successful highly functioning teams.

Google showed this with their internal research Project Aristotle, claiming psychological safety as a key element of team success.

And JB Pritzker said it best when he said, “the best way to spot an idiot? look for someone who is cruel.”

See, kindness is actually one of the strongest signals of intelligence (note: it’s not telling people you’re intelligent :wink-face-emoji:).

I’ve been lucky to experience so much of that at Anthropic over the past year and it has solidified my view on this thoroughly.

So I have a challenge for you.

Be an agent of change.

Bring more kindness in your organization and in your life and see what happens.

You can’t change the world, but you can change the world around you, and that’s kinda neat.

I’ve never ceased to be amazed how far you can get by being kind, thoughtful, generous, and loving to the people in your life. You got this bud, I’m rooting for you.