Berkeley Talks: Why kind leaders finish first (according to science)

(Music: “No One Is Perfect” by HoliznaCC0)

Anne Brice (intro): This is Berkeley Talks, a UC Berkeley News podcast from the Office of Communications and Public Affairs that features lectures and conversations at Berkeley. You can follow Berkeley Talks wherever you listen to your podcasts. We’re also on YouTube @BerkeleyNews. New episodes come out every other Friday. You can find all of our podcast episodes, with transcripts and photos, on UC Berkeley News at news.berkeley.edu/podcasts.

(Music fades out)

(Applause)

Kia Afcari: All right, folks. Welcome. How you feeling? Excellent, excellent. I am so glad that you came out on a Monday night after Thanksgiving, so give yourselves a round of applause. All right. Today we’re going to be talking about a topic that maybe isn’t talked about enough these days. It’s the topic of kindness in leadership.

Now for scientists, kindness falls under the umbrella of pro sociality, what we call pro social behaviors. I know that around us, we see lots of unkind leaders, unkind things happening in the world. I want to tell you that there’s another story; that there is a lot of leaders who lead with kindness. It turns out that these leaders actually are very successful. OK?

I’m Kia Afcari. I’m the director of the Greater Good Workplaces here at the Greater Good Science Center. I’m really excited to welcome you here today. We have some incredible speakers who are going to come join us. We are working with a couple of great organizations. First, the Haas Center for Workplace Culture Innovation, so give them a big round of applause. And the Compassionate Leaders Circle, please give them a big round of applause as well.

At the Greater Good, for the last 20 years, we’ve been studying the science of a meaningful life and really teaching skills that help foster this compassionate society. Roughly a million people a month from all over the world come to the Greater Good for our articles, for our podcasts, for events like these, because we want to spread more of this good news.

And so today, we’ll be making an argument about kind leadership, and we’re going to really look at it at three levels. Number one, that kind leadership is good for the leader themselves. Number two, that it’s good for the organization. Number three, that it’s good for society and for the organization’s success.

You’re going to notice that we’re going to have a graphic facilitator up here on stage who’s going to be drawing as our leaders are talking, drawing live using graphic facilitation and graphic recording. We’re going to digitize this and send it out to all of you after this event, so you’ll have a copy of this. No need to take notes.

Today we have some really amazing panelists. What I’d like to do is I’m going to introduce each of them. I asked each of them to give me their song that really riles them up. And so, I’m going to introduce each of them. We’re going to play the song as they come up, and please give them a big round of applause as they come.

First and foremost, I want to introduce a person whose kind of a really big deal in these parts, a celebrity of our own, a kind leader himself, the 12th chancellor of the University of California, Mr. Rich Lyons.

Music: “Sympathy for the Devil” by the Rolling Stones starts playing

Lyrics:

“Please allow me to introduce myself.

I’m a man of wealth and taste.

I’ve been around for a long, long year.

Stole many a man’s soul and faith.

I was ’round when Jesus Christ. Had his moment of doubt and pain … 

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Kia Afcari: Excellent. OK. Next, I’d like to introduce the inspiring CEO of HubSpot, which is, as many of you know, a global leader in customer relationship management. She is a CEO who has proven that kindness and curiosity aren’t just good values, they’re powerful business strategies. Please, give a big round of applause for Yamini Rangan.

Music: “Don’t Stop Me Now” by Queen

Lyrics:

“‘Cause I’m having a good time, having a good time

I’m a shooting star leaping through the sky like a tiger

Defying the laws of gravity

I’m a racing car, passing by like Lady Godiva …”

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Excellent. Great songs, folks. Our next panelist is the trailblazing Chief Human Experience Officer at Workhuman, which is a pioneering technology company that helps organizations create more human-centered workplaces through recognition, gratitude, and meaningful employee connections. She has redefined what it means to be inclusive in high performing workplaces. Please welcome KeyAnna Schmiedl.

Music: “Move On Up” by Curtis Mayfield

Lyrics: “Hush now child …”

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Kia Afcari: Yes. Curtis Mayfield. Can’t go wrong with that. Thank you. OK. We’ve got another rockstar coming up. Our next panelist is a Professor of Accounting at the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business and her rockstar research illuminates how pro social or kind leaders affect profitability in publicly traded companies. Please welcome Professor Weili Ge.

Music: “Higher Love” by Whitney Houston

Lyrics:

“Think about it, there must be a higher love

Down in the heart or hidden in the stars above

Without it, life is …” 

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Kia Afcari: Nice. “Higher Love.” Our next panelist is someone who I have admired for a very long time. She’s the Science Director at UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center. She has led the world’s largest course on happiness with over a million people that signed up from around the world. Her groundbreaking research and compassion, gratitude, and connection has fueled happier lives for countless people and leaders all over this world. Please welcome Emiliana Simon-Thomas.

Music: Instrumental intro to a song by Bob Marley

Kia Afcari: All right. Bob Marley. I love it. Anybody who plays Bob Marley is a friend of mine, so thank you. And last, but definitely not least, Denis is a guy who I’ve been having tea with lately. Every time I have tea with him, it’s like, man, we have these amazing conversations. Denis is the groundbreaking creator of the Whole Foods 365 brand and the former CEO of Ocho Chocolates. Someone who leads with a lot of grace and kindness, please welcome Denis Ring, ladies and gentlemen.

Music: Instrumental music with horns and drums

Kia Afcari: Awesome. Awesome. Well, this is so great to see you all on this stage. It’s something I’ve been dreaming about for a long time. To see all your lovely faces here, it warms my heart and I think it warms everyone else’s heart here. I think folks are really excited to see you today. Let’s jump in.

I want to start with just naming some of the obvious. How many of you have ever heard this kind of idiom, “Nice guys finish last,” or “Nice people finish last”? OK. Well, tonight we’re going to hear a different tale, and we’re going to ground it in stories and science because those two things together can be very powerful.

My first question, I’m going to ask Rich, KeyAnna and Yamini to really weigh in on this. What is important to you personally about kindness and leadership?

Why don’t we start with you, Rich?

Rich Lyons: Well, I know we’re going to talk more about kindness and definitions, but I’ll just roll right into the question. I think for me, I think it’s the kindness that people, the world, institutions have shown to me. I’m just incredibly thankful. I think you know what role that I occupy. I think for me, it’s the most meaningful role on the planet right now.

I got to Berkeley as an 18-year-old. Neither of my parents had a four-year degree. Anyways, I became an academic, not because I could see that. You can’t be what you can’t see. I couldn’t see that. I’m just super thankful. I think at the end of the day, when you feel like you still sort of owe people, and you owe the world, or you owe an institution like Berkeley, that keeps you going on the kindness front.

Kia Afcari: I see. That makes a lot of sense. I just want to say, Rich, Rich and I worked together about a decade ago when I was trying to shift the culture of the administration here at UC Berkeley. Rich was so kind to me in every communication. Everything I needed, he was always on it. I really appreciate you for that, Rich. Thank you.

So Yamini, let’s hear from you. Why is kindness important to you personally?

Yamini Rangan: Well, I’ll say that I grew up in your classroom. I went to Berkeley and I thought that I was for the first time seen at Berkeley as a full person, a full human being. I’m a first-gen immigrant, and I first came to this country as an engineer, and as mostly the only female engineer in the room, not seen.

I think for me, leadership and kindness actually is about being seen, being seen as your full person as who you are. I certainly felt that in Berkeley. I’ll tell you that being in tech, I’ve been in tech now for a better part of 30 years, and most of the time as a woman in tech, you’re not seen enough. For me, it was the first time that I was fully seen, and I wanted to bring that feeling to people that I interact with.

It is meaningful when you are seen. For me, later on in my career, I went on to become a salesperson. I was, again, the only female Asian woman in the room, not seen. And so, those experiences actually made me realize that when I do get a chance to become a leader, I want to be the person that sees others and is present with others. It’s such a important thing that I try to ground myself in.

Kia Afcari: I love that. Thank you, Yamini.

Yamini Rangan: Yeah.

Kia Afcari: How about you, KeyAnna? What’s important to you personally about this topic?

KeyAnna Schmiedl: I think I’m going to go maybe a selfish-sounding route, and say that kind leadership allows you to stress less. Kind leadership allows you to be you in a space at all times. It allows you to consistently show up in the ways that you would naturally show up, and that just makes it easier to do better work. It also makes it easier for you to build authentic relationships with people.

I think the term “code switching” was thrown around a lot about five or so years ago, and it’s the sense of if I don’t have to code switch at work at any point and I can consistently be who I am, I think people have a better experience in partnering with me because they know who I am and how I’m going to show up regardless of who else is in the room.

From a selfish perspective, I think being kind to myself, just allowing myself that space to just be me in a space, but I think by proxy of being a leader, it also gives other people permission to be themselves, to show up with you authentically at all times. You just build deeper relationships and you get the work done faster, or at least you have fun doing it.

Kia Afcari: I love that. I love that. I love that. The benefits to yourself are great, and being able to lead authentically that way, I think makes a huge difference. Thank you, KeyAnna.

Emiliana, you’ve been studying compassion, and kindness, and happiness, these pro social behaviors for over two decades. What do we mean by the word kindness and how is it defined and why do you think it matters?

Emiliana Simon-Thomas: Great question. I think that kindness means taking wellbeing, both your own and that of everyone else around you or in the world, into consideration and acting in the service of promoting wellbeing. Like first and foremost, lots of organizations, and companies, and businesses have so-called KPIs, key performance indicators. It’s profit margins, turnover. I’m not even going to try because there are too many experts over here who would be able to list what those mean, but rarely is wellbeing measured.

Rarely do boardrooms look at a chart that evaluates over time, has there been a period where wellbeing has plummeted or gone up? And if so, what is it about our organization, or the circumstances, or the policies, or the teams that we’re building that is related to and/or contributing to wellbeing?

So yeah, kindness is just making wellbeing a priority. Again, it’s sort of 360 degrees, not just only trying to help everyone else, but also knowing that you have a role in your own wellbeing and the wellbeing of others, and acting to promote it.

Kia Afcari: I see. That makes a lot of sense. So just broadening out to this concept of wellbeing, kindness is about promoting it. I want to ask you, Emiliana, that I think a lot of us see a lot of unkind leaders out in the world and it seems like they are winning.

Biologically, are we wired for being mean or are we wired for kindness? What do you think about that?

Emiliana Simon-Thomas: Yeah. I mean, we’re wired for both, and they do different things and they’re appropriate in different circumstances. Obviously, if you’re facing a threat to your physical welfare, it’s important to launch a response that is defensive and protective of yourself. But it’s absurd to imagine living in that state of readiness throughout your workday, day in and day out. Your body is not equipped for that. That is meant to be temporary, meant to be a quick response to a specific kind of circumstance.

Now, kindness is this slow and enduring way that we fold into relationships with one another. We coordinate our efforts to accomplish collective goals. All of the regular stuff that we need to do to live when we’re not in a moment of immediate threat relies on the pathways, and the systems, and the processes that motivate and inspire, and reward kindness.

So yeah, both matter, but I just think that we, for whatever reason, maybe it’s feeling the sense of time poverty, maybe it’s how much we compare ourselves to each other, how much social media tells us we have to be wealthy and powerful and beautiful, all those things just make it hard to take a breath and be in the moment, and really be attuned to our wellbeing and the wellbeing of people around us.

Kia Afcari: Makes a lot of sense. It seems like as group animals, that we need kindness in order to succeed, is that part of how we have succeeded as a species?

Emiliana Simon-Thomas: Yeah. I mean, we’re an ultra-social species. We don’t define a space and then you’re innate around the perimeter and bite anybody who crosses that. That’s not our thing. We need each other. When we are deprived, when we’re isolated or ostracized, that registers in the nervous system as physical pain, right? That is actually really deleterious to our health and wellbeing to feel unsafe, to feel unseen, to feel like we don’t matter, right? All of those things are actually tantamount to threats at a mental and physical level.

Kia Afcari: Interesting. OK. I love the fact that we have scientists here with CEOs. I’m going to bounce back to some leaders here. Rich, I want to come back to you. You’re the chancellor of the number one public university in the world.

Rich Lyons: Go, Bears.

Kia Afcari: With over 15,000 staff and faculty, a nearly $4 billion budget, it’s a lot of responsibility. I mean, we were talking in the back. That’s a lot of meaning that you have to deal with every day. Two questions for you.

How do you define leadership, and why does kindness matter in your leadership? What does that actually look like?

Rich Lyons: Well, there’s so many different models and definitions of leadership. I think one that I’ve found useful, at least in my own life, is that it’s at least three things, but these three things: one is direction setting, kind of strategic leadership. It’s sort of like, where are we headed? One doesn’t do that on their own, but it’s a really important part of leadership. So strategic leadership.

Another is operational leadership, right? It’s like, how do you get stuff done, whatever direction you’ve set? I mean, how does the organization get it done? No one leader obviously gets everything done on their own. The third one is people leadership. That’s not unrelated to operational or strategic leadership, but it’s really quite a distinctive thing, I think.

And so, maybe one way to think about it as it relates to Berkeley is, Berkeley is what we call a shared governance kind of place. It’s not a command and control place, right? If you ask the faculty, do you report to Rich? They will laugh. OK? That’s in many ways a good thing. I mean, we won’t unpack that, but I think it’s really a lot of where Berkeley’s strength comes from. Its true distinctiveness comes from that shared governance.

That’s a bigger topic that we don’t have time to get into. But the reason I’m bringing this up is, if you said, how do you get this battleship, maybe that’s the bad analogy, but this enormous institution called Berkeley, to move? All right. If you said, “Well, here’s the direction, here’s the decision, here’s the strategy.” I’m going to use an equation, I apologize.

Here’s the strategy on the left-hand side of the equation, and the strategy equals the effectiveness of the strategy. I’ll call that E. E equals Q times A. What’s Q? Q is the quality of the strategy. Effectiveness equals quality times, times is key. Acceptance. Do people buy it, or don’t they buy it? I think kindness, sort of relatability, connectability, people feeling they share some norms, they’re connect … That’s the stuff of acceptance. That’s the stuff of A.

You can’t get stuff done at Berkeley without A, and I don’t think you can get A done without kindness.

Kia Afcari: Beautiful. Beautiful. I think we’re all going to remember that equation, so there’ll be a test afterwards. The idea that in people leadership, you need people to actually accept things, to move forward, to agree with you. The fact that they trust you because you come from a place of kindness makes a difference there. I love that.

Higher ed is one area that we’re talking about. Let’s talk about high-tech. Yamini, let’s go into your world. You lead a very fast-paced high-tech company. It’s a lot of weight to carry on your shoulders, I can imagine. What does kindness look like for you on a day-to-day basis? What are some of the simple, basic things that you do that help you lead with kindness?

Yamini Rangan:

I like this question because it is simple, basic things that you do. I think simple acts of kindness is what you should be thinking about. I do think that when I think about my day, I think about the people and the teams that I meet. For them, it’s their time with a CEO and it’s important for them. One of the things I do is I reset after every meeting.

I could have just come out from a very hard conversation, or a really tough review, or a difficult decision that we are making. I do not want that to impact the next conversation or the next person I meet. And so, I literally have this note which says reset. After every meeting, and we are on Zoom calls most of the time, and after every meeting, I just take a minute to reset and I don’t let my previous meeting impact the next meeting and how I show up for that meeting.

I think that’s really important because I walk in with, this person is probably prepared and waited to get time on my calendar, and I need to be there with full presence. That’s an important simple act of kindness. The other thing is, I prepare. When people send me briefs, when they send me a document or they send me a context, I do show respect by making sure that I’m reading it completely thoroughly. So when I show up with presence and with preparation, it’s an act of kindness, and people should expect that out of me.

What that actually does is also it creates a culture of similar show of simple acts of kindness. Everybody comes in prepared. Everybody knows that they should be there with full presence, not, “I never take my cellphone to a meeting.” Those acts of kindness shows that I care, that I’m right there with them, and their time matters more than anything else.

Kia Afcari: I love that. I love that. Thank you. Yes, please. Yamini, one thing I hear in what you’re saying is, because you said something about like, “I know that that person has prepped a lot to meet with me because I’m the CEO.” What I hear there is you’re putting yourself in their shoes to understand what it’s like for them to come and meet with you.

I’m just curious, do you have any stories about how kindness made a difference in any of the work that you’ve done, in any of the projects that you’ve been involved in?

Yamini Rangan: I mean, I would say both in terms of employees, but also the way we show up with kindness to our customers, right? Part of what we are talking about is how do you create a culture where people treat each other with the respect that we want and with wellbeing in mind? That’s really what we are talking about. It is built into the culture, and-

That’s really what we are talking about. And it is built into the culture and it is built into the norms of what we end up doing. And I would say most of our examples, we have a culture within HubSpot and we call it the HEART. And HEART stands for humility, empathy, adaptability, remarkability and transparency. And those are the values and it stands for how we show up with our customers, with our employees, with each other as we make decisions. And that’s how we expect work to be done. And I’ll give a story. I joined HubSpot in January 2020 and crazy time because two months later the world just got upended and we were all trying to deal with the global pandemic. And that month, March of 2020, we saw a level of churn within the business, people, small, medium businesses leaving that we’ve never seen as a business in our 20 year history.

And that is just incredible. We’re watching customers just drop out like we’ve never seen before, 40% churn in one month. And at that point, the decision was we needed to go to the board and we needed to have a conversation about how we were going to deal with this unprecedented thing that we were all facing. And one of the values of HEART, we basically said, “We’re going to give a $20 million fund for customers that probably are not going to be able to pay for us, our services in the next six months to nine months.” And it came very quickly.

When we went to the board and we presented this idea of creating a customer relief fund and really making that available for small, medium businesses, almost no pushback. And they were like, “Oh, do you think you’re going to get it back?” We were like, “We don’t know, but we know that they need us right now.” And it became such an easy conversation with the leadership team, with the board to be able to do that. And if you don’t have a culture of kindness, if you don’t have a culture of empathy built in, those decisions don’t happen.

Kia Afcari: Absolutely important. The power of culture is so strong. And when the leader themselves is living that culture, because oftentimes we have a set of values and then sometimes our leaders aren’t living those values. And so then people say, “Oh, well, this culture’s not real. It’s vacuous. It’s just words on the wall.” So to hear that you’ve identified this culture code, that you’re actually living it, and then you’re actually acting on it, that’s just so powerful. So I think this is why we focus so much on leaders because they have such an outsized impact on cultures. So I love that. Thank you, Yamini. So I’ve got a question for anybody in the group now. This is kind of an open question. We’ve been talking a lot about kindness, but what about niceness? Are being kind and being nice the same thing? And yeah, let’s just start there.

KeyAnna Schmiedl: I certainly have a take on this. And I think the scientists in the room might have a take as well, and I think they can coexist. So listen, I think one thing for me coming from working in academia to working in businesses, and especially in tech, is this idea of like, how can you quickly kind of cut to the chase, make it simple, make it clear to understand? And so for me, what I’ve done is said, kind leadership means that I care about you. It means that I’m going to tell you what your opportunity areas are and what your gaps are, but also how I can help you and create space for you to think about how you might need some support, where that might come from, et cetera. It also means that I’m going to tell you when you’ve done a good job. Similarly, I’m going to tell you when I haven’t.

I think niceness is I’m going to tell you when you’ve done a good job. I’m going to tell you when you’ve done a good job. I’m going to tell you when you’ve done a good job. And then all of a sudden we’re having a challenging conversation and it feels like it’s come out of nowhere. So I think there’s almost like this practicality and people know what nice, not kind is when they experience it in cultures. It’s that sense of, right, but another shoe is going to drop. And kindness is, no, you can see all the shoes, no shoe is dropping. And it’s just, which shoe are we walking in today? I might have taken that analogy a little too far, but you get it. And so that to me is the difference. Kindness shows a level of care that means I’m going to invest in you getting better that I don’t think exists everywhere. And it’s really special when you find it.

Kia Afcari: Yeah, I love that. So kindness, niceness might be about, it’s not about sort of suppressing critical feedback or enabling poor performance or bad ideas or avoiding conflict, whereas niceness can be about avoiding conflict. So I’m just curious, Emiliana, what do you think? I mean, weigh in here.

Emiliana Simon-Thomas: A little bit of context. We had a preparatory meeting and I said, “Do you want everybody to argue about whether nice or kind mean the same thing or mean something different?” The average person doesn’t really think that they’re that different from each other, but I do really love how you explained it, KeyAnna. And what I think is really important about what you said is the authenticity and the genuine investment in wellbeing. You don’t actually serve a person who is performing poorly by saying nothing or affirming that poor performance. They’re not going to succeed.

Any of you in the room or us up here who have been parents know that you have to be honest and forthright when things are not going well. And it doesn’t mean that you’re cruel. It doesn’t mean that you’re exploitative. It means that you’re genuinely saying the thing or giving the feedback or offering the opportunity that is most likely to promote another person’s wellbeing. So I think we’re on the same page. I just didn’t want to throw nice under the bus. Somebody once said, “Just be nice.” Early on in my academic career. And it made sense to me. And I didn’t read it as like it means I’m going to be fake. So yes, I think we’re on the same page.

KeyAnna Schmiedl: They can coexist.

Denis Ring: I think that Emiliana makes a really important point about most people not differentiating between kindness and being nice, but I think the differentiation point comes when it’s performative instead of authentic, which is, KeyAnna was mentioning this too. If it’s authentic and kindness is executed in a way that respects and promotes the dignity of the person in your company, then what flows from that is warmth of relationship. I think that kindness is a contagion and that when we are kind with others at work, it makes it easier for them to go be kind and to be welcoming of others. If it’s performative, then it lacks authenticity and I think that can backfire.

Kia Afcari: Great point, Denis. Thank you. So Weili, a lot of this actually started when I was doing some research and trying to find out, because I was really torn in my own mind, like, do nice people finish last? Or what about kind leaders? Do they actually perform? And I came across your research. I know that you studied 3,500 CEOs and you explored the connection between prosociality and profitability. Now, you’re a professor of accounting, so you really understand profitability. And so I’m just curious, could you say more about your methodology for identifying which CEOs are kind and then what actually were the results of your research? We’d love to hear more about it.

Mei Ling: Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Kia, for finding our research. I’m so excited to share all of my research with my co-authors, with everyone here. In this line of research about prosocial business leaders, my co-authors, Mei Feng, Zhejia Ling, and Wei Ting Loh and I, our first question is, do prosocial CEOs run their companies differently? Then how do we identify prosocial CEOs for a large sample? So what we did was we track public traded company CEOs, their off-job behavior. Then we look at their involvement in charitable organizations. We label a CEO as a prosocial if they’re involved with a charitable organization, and that is kind of classified by the Internal Revenue Service. And these prosocial CEOs, typically they serve on boards of charitable organizations. Sometimes they’re chairwoman or chairperson. And because these are really, like all people here, these are really busy people. So what they do is a serious commitment suggesting that that’s their priority given their busy schedules.

So we treat that as a strong signal over the prosocial mindset. They care about welfare or wellbeing of others, not just themselves. But for large sample, does this measure really work? So we first need to do some validity test to see how well does this measure capture the underlying prosocial tendency trait. What we did was we look at these prosocial CEO’s communication with outsiders, with investors and analysts. So specifically, we look at this earnings conference call events. These are big public conversations with investors and analysts by CEOs and we look at the language choices. And what is really interesting is that we find when companies perform very well, we find that prosocial CEOs are more likely to share credit with others. And when firms don’t do well, they’re less likely to shift the blame. They’re more likely to take responsibilities. And this is quite different from self-centered CEOs who are more likely to take credit when things go well and shift the blame when things don’t go well.

So we think that is kind of consistent with our understanding of prosocial tendency. So after this validity test, then we move down. Then we started looking at, OK, then how do these prosocial CEOs run their companies? We find that these prosocial CEOs, their companies tend to have lower executive subordinates turnover. They tend to have more employee friendly policies, higher customer satisfaction, and also they engage in more social responsible activities with lots of data work, for sure. And these results in our mind, actually, when we think about it, they’re not surprising. Just from our conversation earlier, you can see that prosocial leaders, they do a better job in building or establishing trust and authentic relationships with their people, especially their subordinates. So it’s not surprising that those executive subordinates who work with these prosocial CEOs, they’re less likely to leave the company.

But then the more important question is, what is implication for this company’s performance? So then we analyze for these firms led by professional CEOs, we look at their performance and firm value. So we find that relative to comparing to firms led by non-prosocial CEOs, these firms led by prosocial CEOs, they tend to have higher firm value, they have higher profitability, and interestingly, they have lower firm risk. And this is something when we presented the research everywhere at lots of conferences and universities, some people suggest this. Then after we look at this, we find these results, we find it interesting, and then we realize it totally makes sense. Why is that? Because having a prosocial leader of a company, it’s almost like having an insurance policy because a prosocial leader has built all these authentic relationships with a wide range of stakeholders, suppliers, customers, employees, and the community.

So when things don’t go well during tough times, then your goodwill is like insurance buffer. Then your stakeholders, they’re more willing to give you benefit of doubt, and they’re more willing to give a chance to turn business around. So we think that totally makes sense. So that’s kind of a gist of summary of our first paper. And then we were thinking because we are accounting professors, so we need to think about accounting, financial reporting, financial disclosures. So then we’re thinking, OK, so then given that prosocial CEOs, they care about wide range of stakeholders. What about financial reports? Are they honest in the financial disclosures? So then we look at their financial disclosures and we find that prosocial CEOs, they’re significantly less likely to manipulate their numbers, meaning they’re less likely to cook their books. OK? Yeah. Yeah. And these results, I don’t have time to dig into all the details, but these results are very robust because we use … There are lots of people who are very skeptical about our findings.

So we do all kinds of research designs, use all kinds of different settings, and we control for lots of other CEO characteristics to make sure that it is a prosocial tendency that is driving our results. So we find these results is really important because this suggests that, well, procedural CEOs, they have impact or their effect spills over into financial integrity. And this matters so much because honest financial reporting protects investors and it’s crucial for the well functioning of the capital market. So that’s our second paper. And then currently we’re working on our third paper. And then in the third paper, I’m also very excited to share a little bit about this research because we kind of flip the perspective. So we’re asking this question. OK, now we know prosocial CEOs, these leaders, they run their companies differently. Then what are the implications for themselves in terms of their own career advancement?

Because exactly, before you look at any data, we can see results that could go both ways. On one hand, as Emiliana mentioned earlier, being prosocial, doing prosocial work, that means, well, you will have better emotional wellbeing, you build job skills and you have stronger networks. All this will help with the effectiveness on the job. But on the other hand, you only have 24 hours a day, so it takes away your time and energy, which could harm your career development. So after doing lots of data analysis, we actually find that procedural behavior helps with career development. We find very strong results that prosocial individuals or prosocial managers, they’re more likely to be promoted to top executive position, including the CEO position, and they also get there faster.

Kia Afcari: So nice people don’t finish last.

Mei Ling: They don’t, yeah. And they get there faster. And also we find these results are stronger when the promotion happens within the firm. It totally makes sense because if you are promoted within the firm and people know about you, there’s more goodwill and trust in your career development. So we are still in the process of revising this paper. But across the three studies, we start to see a kind of consistent message, which is that caring about others’ welfare, wellbeing is not only a moral trait, it is actually like good leadership skills. And overall, we can conclude that these prosocial leaders, they treat their stakeholders better, they run stronger companies. And they’re more honest in their financial disclosures and they end up experience better career outcomes. So in short, doing good and doing well can go hand in hand.

Kia Afcari: Yes. I love it. Wow. OK. This is why I love great researchers.

Rich Lyons: So thanks for coming out tonight.

Kia Afcari: Wow. You just nailed it right there. Thank you so much. And there’s a lot of other research to support what you’re saying. I know researchers Kajackaite and Sliwka looked at over 900 firms and they were looking at managers, so not the top person. So in case you’re not a CEO in the room, managers make a difference. They found that employees exert much more effort under prosocial managers. Martha Crowley found in her review of 263 studies involving nearly 1.4 million employees in 192 firms. She looked at managerial citizenship behaviors and she found that, of course, employees go above and beyond for those kinds of managers, which really relates to higher productivity, profitability, growth, and earnings. And I think although you’ve heard lots of stories of maybe unkind leaders, we want to hear some of these kind leaders.

I’m sure you’ve heard of Yvon Chouinard of Patagonia, who really basically gave his company to the earth. It was a very interesting guy. Jacinda Ardern, the former prime minister of New Zealand who’s had a lot of success leading with kindness, Hamdi Ulukaya of Chobani, who has really led with kindness and has made really a lot of success at Chobani. So lots of good things happening here. So I just want to turn to Emiliana and ask you, why do you think this is happening? Why do you think these kinds of prosocial behaviors are leading to more profitability in companies?

Emiliana Simon-Thomas: Oh, well, so if you are an employee and you’re in an environment that is a culture of kindness, you’re more likely to have a shared sense of purpose, to be connected around core values of benevolence and service and generosity. That fuels your sense of purpose. If you have a sense of purpose, and we talked about rich’s deep and profound meaning drive, that makes you more willing to go the extra mile. You’re going to do that extra favor for a colleague who you care about because you’re both driven towards a similar vision or outcome. So purpose benefits, people’s shared purpose, kindness leads people to just feel more joyful, happier, positive emotions, more readily available when there’s a spirit of kindness. Feeling positive emotions is kind of tantamount to that flow state we all aspire to. Just feeling energized and positive and charged to do the thing that you’re aspiring to do on a given day.

So you’re just more engaged. That’s like the metric everybody wants, to have bigger engagement in your workforce. Well, if you have kindness as your sort of thread of connection, then you’re likely to see more engagement and those positive feelings. When people go through hardship, difficulty, adversity, failure, everything, you need resilience. And part of your resilience just comes from feeling supported, feeling like the people around you care. Even if you’ve really blown it, you know that somebody is going to be there and just remind you of your strengths and your potential and the things that you might do to overcome or transcend this difficulty.

And then social relationships, I think in big analyses of what is the biggest predictor of job satisfaction. One of our classic ideas of, what does it mean to like your job? Well, job satisfaction. Having social connection, having relationships at work is actually the strongest predictor of job satisfaction over even interestingness of your job, way over pay and compensation. So having those warm, supportive, connected relationships. A Gallup survey talked about the importance of having a best friend at work, making it just way more likely that you’re satisfied, way less likely that you’re going to leave or do anything nefarious in your work. So I’ll stop there. All those things.

Kia Afcari: All of those things. Well, it’s great. I mean, I want to turn to you, Denis, because we’ve had so many interesting conversations at Caffe Strada. You started the Whole Foods 365 brand, and then you went off to start your own chocolate company. And I know that you had a unique story about how you were able to connect with all the workers in your chocolate factory. So we’d love to hear more about that.

Denis Ring: I’ve learned by working with this panel that I was a prosocial CEO. I didn’t know beforehand. We started our company in West Oakland, which is an economically depressed, very dangerous neighborhood. And we didn’t start out with the idea that we were going to be prosocial or a kind organization, but it was baked into the DNA of my partner, Scott, who Rich knows who was also undergrad and Haas here. We both shared a very deep reverence for the dignity of the people we worked with. And this is hourly wages, and we wanted to make sure that they recognized that we cared about them. And there are several different ways that we did this.

We set up a policy, for example, that if you could walk or ride your bike to work, we’d give you a job in West Oakland. And when we relocated from our first place to another place where we had more space, we recognized that the women from Thailand used to get in there into work very, very early in the morning and they’d start cooking their soups for lunch on a little coil, a countertop coiled heater. So we bought a range so that they had a stove and an oven. But as this grew and we became more and more familiar with one another, which is what some of the people here have been talking about, the sense of community and respect and joy about working with one another, I ended up developing this little practice where I would go into the factory in the morning and greet the workers by name because I felt that … And most of them, they didn’t speak English. Almost none of them really spoke good English, but I could go and say hello to (foreign language) or to the other people from whatever country they were from.

And then I thought I was speaking Spanish to the Spanish-speaking people and saying, (Spanish language). I thought I’ve left out the people from Thailand and Myanmar in Ethiopia. So I learned how to say hello, good morning in all of the different languages in Thai. So I’d go and say [Thai language) to the Thai. And what it did is it was a sort of a way of bringing familiarity and respect, not just from the CEO, but all the way through the company. And one day I went into the people, I was speaking Spanish to a woman who was from Guatemala, but her native language was Mam. I don’t know if anybody knows about Mam. I didn’t know about it. So I learned how to say good morning to all of you in Mam. I went in one Monday morning and I said (Mam language). And they were squealing with laughter. They were squealing. And then they all responded in Mam. But the point that I think what we recognize in the conversations is that authenticity, respect for dignity, recognition are all components of kindness.

I want to point out also, Rich and I were talking a little bit beforehand, that kindness goes upward, too. And if you’re the CEO or you’re the head of a complex organization, I think it’s important for all of us to take time to be kind to those people because they need to receive kindness from the people that they work with, too. I’ll leave it there, Kia.

Kia Afcari: Yeah, Denis, I want to hear a little more from you because I’m curious if this way of leading led to any personal benefits for you. Because we’ve heard a little bit about benefits for the company, for the organization, but has this made a difference in your life at all?

Denis Ring: Tremendous difference. I’ve worked in organizations where kindness wasn’t predominant, where stress and anxiety were prominent. And I could feel it in the physiology of my own body with heart irregularity and high blood pressure and other things.

But for me, it was the kindness that we were able to share. And look, it was a candy company, right? I mean, it’s easy to feel good about going to work if all you smell is chocolate and caramel. And I mean, that was OK. But it was personally satisfying. Everybody has different points in their personality that are important, some more predominant than others. For me, relationship with the people I worked with was critically important, just critically important. And they were not well-educated, but what I found most beautiful was the reciprocity of the kindness. And when we sold our company, we knew we were going to sell it. I had to stand up one day in front of all of our workers and say, “We have investors and we’re going to have to relocate our production line and almost all of you will be out of a job.” I was weeping. I was weeping. And they knew how difficult this was for me to explain to them what was happening.

But what happened afterward is something I’ll never forget. One of the women, Marcelina, came up to me. She didn’t speak any English. And without saying a word, she came up to me and hugged me and just put her head on my shoulder. And that was all she needed to say. That was her way of being kind and alleviating for me a moment of real suffering for our team. So I found it spiritually, emotionally, and psychologically and physiologically rewarding and satisfying and healthy to have kindness in our workplace.

Kia Afcari: Thank you, Denis. That’s beautiful. It’s beautiful. So the effects go both ways, it sounds.

So KeyAnna, I’d love to hear more from you. You’ve been a chief people officer in a lot of fast-paced companies, and I know as a chief people officer, a lot of the difficult things come to you, right? It’s sort of like you’re a magnet for all the difficult things about-

KeyAnna Schmiedl: So much meaning. So much meaning comes.

Kia Afcari: A lot of meaning. So when people hear kind leadership, they often think of it as something gentle or permissive, but what does kind leadership look like in a high performance environment? What are the leadership behaviors that you think consistently build trust and results?

KeyAnna Schmiedl: I’m stuck on … I don’t know why this quote comes into my head, but Kendrick Lamar in one of his songs says, “I want the credit if I’m losing or I’m winning.” And I feel like you have to have that mindset of, if you’re in a fast-paced environment, you have to think of it as an opportunity to fail fast and fix things, to fail fast and learn fast, to fail fast and share your stories, and then sometimes you’re successful. And if you don’t see it that way, then it can be really challenging. And that’s where you talk about the physiology of feeling like you’re in a stressful environment. I think you can be in a fast-paced environment and still take care of your wellbeing as long as you’re surrounded by leaders or you yourself are a leader who creates that space for somebody to tell you what they learned, so that you give them an opportunity to go out there and try again or try something different.

I think what’s interesting is this word has come up a few times for me when I think about my own personal values and how they resonate into leadership behaviors, authenticity, transparency, and humility. And I take that with me everywhere, right? So I have gone into rooms where I tell my team, “Hey, we actually just had budget reviews and we went forward with three different tech investment proposals. We got one of them, which is great, but the other two we didn’t get.” And I wrote a note to my team saying, “I’m super excited about this one. This is going to be great for us. Honestly, I would love us to take another shot at the other two because I don’t think I set us up for success here. I think we’re missing some inputs from key folks around the business. And I think there were a couple of our own team members who didn’t have a chance to weigh in and that would make this a much stronger proposal.”

And so I think it’s just being willing to admit really quickly when you see an opportunity to do better and then not waiting for permission.

And then the other thing that has come up here quite a bit, and if you know anything about the organization that I represent, then this resonates authentically, is recognition, right? So every single one of our monthly team meetings, so we have a global HX team meeting, human experience team, and we start with the business updates, then we get into what are the topics that we should be digging more into, but we always end with who’s celebrating an anniversary or birthday or some other big announcement, and then what’s our progress and wins? And we end by giving props and then saying, “Now go turn those into recognition moments on the platform.”

And I think we spend so much time, especially if you are in high paced, high performance organizations, talking about what you can do better, that it’s such a missed opportunity to talk about where somebody has done a good job. And I don’t care if it is your job, if you’ve done well at it, you should get to feel like, “I did well at my job today.” And that should not be a special occasion. It should not only happen on certain anniversaries where you get a watch or a gift card. It should happen every day and it should come from a place of, “I’m not forced to do this. I want to acknowledge my colleague, I want to acknowledge a peer, I want to acknowledge a leader.”

I actually, for the first time, I’ve been at this organization for over two and a half years, and only this year did I think, “Oh, I should recognize my boss,” the CEO. “He actually does really well at things like this, and I appreciate this and I want to be specific and I want to let him know, ‘Here’s how I’m learning from you. I see you do these things quite well, and here’s what I take away from that.’” And it was funny in our next check-in, I think he was touched by it in a way that was genuine and sincere because nobody told me that I had to do it, right?

Yamini Rangan: Yes. Yes. Thank you for doing that.

Kia Afcari: CEOs need it too, right?

KeyAnna Schmiedl: And I will recognize you. But I do think it’s this sense of, especially in high performance environments, I think that’s where you need to take care to be incredibly thoughtful. And for me, the only times I ever felt burnt out in those types of environments was when the thoughtfulness wasn’t there, is when you start to feel like, “I’m doing all of this and I’m trying really hard and I’m not sure that it’s needed. I’m certainly certain that it’s not valued in the way that is meaningful to me and I don’t know if I’m being seen at all.” And so I think that those environments can be the perfect storm of let the sugar honey iced tea hit the fan and everybody yell and scream and fuss. And it’s also where I learned that you can swear in corporate. But it’s ripe to be one of those places where a simple thank you, but a specific thank you and recognition of here’s what you did and here’s why that mattered, really carries so much weight.

Kia Afcari: Totally, totally. Yeah, so for those of you that don’t know, Workhuman is this incredible platform that really, the way I think about it, just makes recognition go viral inside of a company, right? It’s like, how do we see more recognition? And so I’m just curious from your vantage point, you collect data on millions of recognition moments, and I’m curious what patterns that data reveals about how that relates to performance, right?

KeyAnna Schmiedl: This is where I’m going to nerd out a little bit and not to the level of eloquence that you all are able to nerd out, but I’m going to do it. So one of the things that was most exciting for me in joining Workhuman and the thing that keeps me excited about being there is the opportunity to be customer zero, to say, not only do we have this product, and of course we recognize the heck out of everybody as well we should, but we also have this conversations tool where you can put a lot of this recognition to work. And I think we had found early on in some research that you could start to notice patterns around people and future success.

But what I was very excited about was the opportunity to pull in those recognition moments into the thing that so many organizations have tried and failed and tried again and just done a lot of manipulation around, which is the performance review process, right? It’s this agonizing, do we do it one year, it’s completely out and all of the modern companies are saying, “We’re not doing that. We’re just going to have radical candor.” And then all of a sudden it’s back because legal said radical candor got us into a lot of trouble. And you ping pong back and forth, but for me, recognition is acknowledgement of work being done in your organization and it’s the only true source of, I haven’t asked you to put this out there, it’s genuinely being given by people of their colleagues saying not only what they have done, but why it matters.

And so for us, it was just a no-brainer to say as part of recognition, you should be pulling that into your performance reviews. It should start to fill in the, not just the what I did, but the why does it matter. I don’t want you spending all of your time writing. I want to get to the conversation as quickly as possible because we should be talking about development and opportunity. We should not be writing the novella of, “Over the last six months, here’s absolutely everything I did.” And I say that while knowing that my boss would stand up here and say, “But you gave me a novella.” And I’m like, “There are lots of parts to my job, however.”

But just getting people into that pattern of let the community speak on your behalf, let that be the validation of the good work that you have done. And now let’s talk about where we’re not necessarily seeing those recognition moments and it’s either a core part of the job or it’s a strategic priority for the organization. So then that means we just need to shift focus a little bit. So it moves away from being this conversation about what didn’t get accomplished to how do we make sure we’re focused on the things that matter the most and keep you laser focused on here’s the type of outcomes that we’re looking for. And so I’ve been excited about that.

I think you also start to get a sense of future leaders, right? You start to see people who are at different levels, whether it’s the person who sits at the front desk, could be an hourly worker, it could be somebody who’s in the call centers. We saw actually where innovation took hold the fastest around AI came out of our call center. And we noticed it in the recognition moments where people were like, “I really appreciated your help with this and building this agent.” And we’re like, “What is this agent? What’s going on? Let’s go find out what’s happening here. Let’s support this.” And it actually ended up becoming an award-winning agent and the team has got to travel around and talk about the work that they did. But that came out of our call center. And so I think it’s these opportunities to identify and see every person in your organization and what they’re contributing on a day in and day out basis to then be able to have a richer platform from which to say, “Here’s how you should be valued and here’s how we’re going to continue to invest in you.”

Kia Afcari: I love it. I love it. Yes. I had an experience once where we were trying to recognize each other in a meeting and I went to this group and I said, “Let’s start the meeting by appreciating the person to your left and just say something genuine specific about the person.” And we went around the room and we got to the third person and the third person got appreciated and she just broke down into tears and she said, “I’ve been working here for nine years. I didn’t know that anybody appreciated me at all. And I didn’t even think you guys liked me.” And I was like, “Oh my gosh, this is such a simple thing.” So the power of recognition as a tool of kindness as one of the things that we have in our belt is huge. And it sounds like it makes a difference in performance and really could relate to how we think about performance. So thank you for that, KeyAnna.

Yamini, I want to turn to you. First, I noticed that you were just like, “Yes, thank you for doing that.” So let’s start there. What was it that KeyAnna said that really struck a nerve with you?

Yamini Rangan:

I think leadership is a lonely journey. And I think a lot of times, we as leaders, we are sitting here thinking, “Are we doing this right? Is this having impact? Does this resonate with people? Is this landing well?” We’re sitting here thinking about this. And so I have a wonderful chief people officer and she does the same thing. She’s like, “When you say this, it actually makes sense.” And I really appreciate her for that because a lot of times we are sitting here wondering. And so I think kindness goes both ways.

Kia Afcari: Absolutely. And leaders need it too, right?

Yamini Rangan: Yeah.

Kia Afcari: We are human beings. We need to fulfill it ourselves. So please, if you’ve got a boss, it can be a very lonely thing.

Yamini Rangan: It is.

Kia Afcari: And so to be appreciated upwards, downwards, all in the organization is huge.

So Yamini, I want to ask you another question, which is, so is it possible to be kind and still provide hard feedback? And have you had to do that in your work?

Yamini Rangan: Absolutely. Absolutely. You can be kind and clear. And in fact, I have a bit of a framework on how I think about this, which is high standards and deep devotion. And the combination of high standards and deep devotion is what drives high performance. And think about this. If the alternate is true, which is low standards and no devotion, basically you’re neglecting that team member. You don’t set high standards. You’re basically not devoted to their development and that means it’s neglect. That box, that lower right-hand box is neglect.

If you have high standards, but no devotion, you’re not in their corner, you are not supporting their growth, and you’re not providing feedback, that is also not good. That’s judgment. Right? So high standards and no devotion or low devotion is actually judgment. You set very high bar for them, but you’re not really going to support them in their journey. And so that’s not good either.

And then the other alternate is really low standards and deep devotion. And maybe as a mom, I do that a little bit. Indulgence, right? That’s just indulgence. You don’t set enough high standards and sometimes I do it with my boys, but they don’t recognize it.

But really, if you think about this, it is high standards, deep devotion is what drives performance. And in order for you to be deeply devoted, your team and certainly your direct reports need to feel it. When I say feel it, they need to feel that when you give them feedback, you are truly in their corner. You truly believe in them. You want them to be successful. You’re rooting for them. And from that stance, you’re giving them useful, actionable, relevant, timely feedback. And that, when you do it over a period of time, then they know where you’re operating from. They know that you are batting for them. They know that the high standards does not just come with something that is impossible to reach, that you are truly there with them.

And so one of the things that I tell anybody who works on my team is that they will never hear anything about their performance from me that they’ve not heard before ever, right? So you’ll never walk into a performance review with me where for the first time they’re going to hear about something. That’s my commitment to them and that’s my commitment to their development journey. And I’ll always say this, you’re going to hear from me very often on things that you’re doing really well and things that you can improve as you go along so that you can see that I’m deeply devoted to your growth and your journey and your accomplishments as a leader.

And so I do think that it is possible. It’s not just possible, that’s the only way to do it, to stand from deep devotion.

Kia Afcari: I love that. OK. Folks, write that down. High standards, deep devotion. That really is such a clear way to think about it. And to me, both of those things are kind. Yeah, to have high standards for somebody is kindness and to have deep devotion for their success. Beautiful. Thank you. This is a really good one I’m personally going to remember.

So Rich, I want to turn to you. In your experience, is it possible to lead with kindness, but also make tough decisions? And can you tell us a story about a time where you had to make a tough call, but you were still able to do it with some kindness?

Rich Lyons: Thanks. A friend of mine years ago was the CEO of a company and he came and gave a talk at Haas. And I remember among many of the things that he said is, “You get into a role like this and all the easy decisions have been taken.” And it’s really true. I mean, the decisions that roll up to you are hard by their nature. Somebody’s not going to like it, even if they understand everything about why you made the decision. Somebody’s going to not be as well off as … Anyway, that’s the nature of hard decisions. So you can’t be in a role like this and not expect to make hard decisions kind of every day, right? So the answer better be yes, or we really don’t have much to go on. And I think that’s part of it is like, that’s when the rubber meets the road. It’s like, do people feel like this was a considered judgment, that you were people-centric, you thought hard. You expressed some empathy when a job disappears, because … If that’s what it is, it could be a lot of different things.

I remember we were making a hard decision … You were asking me a specific situation, but we were making a hard decision at the Haas School, and it actually got into some ethical standards, and somebody on my team said, “We don’t have values to make the easy decisions. We have values to make the hard decisions.” And that was such a powerful phrase, and it just kind of locked all of us. It’s like, “We absolutely can’t do that.” And I thank that person again and again. Anyways, there were people that were worse off because we made that decision, but it was a hard decision. But in any event, I think that having a way to communicate a basis for a hard decision, just it means the world to people. But how you articulate that takes a lot of thought for people to at least, even if they disagree, to understand that you put some heart into it.

Kia Afcari: Yeah. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Please.

KeyAnna Schmiedl: Tack onto that because I think something that I know I have struggled with, and actually it wasn’t until I got home and I had a moment of genius with my teddy bear terror, a seven-year-old, where he was arguing me and I said, “I gave you an answer. You just don’t like the answer that I gave you. It doesn’t mean that that’s going to change, so let’s talk about how we deal with it.” And then I went, “I have to go send an email to a company.”

And so I do think there’s something to the kind leadership is not about everybody is going to be happy with every decision that you make, and it’s not about consensus driven decision-making. And I think sometimes that can be really hard, especially post pandemic where everything was about just do whatever you can to make sure everybody has what they need to be as fine as they can be right now. And I don’t know, there’s probably a question in this and it probably goes to the rest of the panel because I’m here to learn too, but I think there’s something in balancing that I’ve given an answer, I’ve explained it, I’ve been transparent, but if people still don’t like it, and how fair can that be, where do you go from there?

Rich Lyons: Just real quickly, I know others will have a view on this. This is coming up all the time in my life right now, because there is so much complexity in the macro national environment, and I can’t, for legal reasons, explain everything that went into my thinking. And that is as frustrating as anything I’ve ever come across in leadership that I can’t actually explain. In other words, I would like to say, “You don’t have all the information,” and you can’t say that to somebody if you’re not going to provide them the information. But that hurts as a leader to not be able to explain the basis.

Kia Afcari: Well, I mean, I think this is a really good segue into the next question, which is I think most leaders, most people, managers, they have a good intention to lead with kindness, right? But the question is, what kind of gets in the way? What are the things that get … And this is a question for anybody on the panel. I’m just curious for you, most people don’t think like, “Oh, I’m going to go out there and be a mean leader.” But what do you think are some of the things that actually get in the way of this? Anyone?

KeyAnna Schmiedl: I have a thought again. So literally how I wound up at Workhuman was because they picked a topic of mine for me to discuss at their conference and it was called intent versus impact. And I think for me, I don’t want to talk about anybody’s intentions anymore. My baseline is assuming that you have good intentions. What I want to discuss is the impact that you have, and I think that’s what gets in the way, is that when your impact didn’t match what you intended to and hearing that, knowing that you’re a person with good intentions, what you want to do is immediately defend yourself and talk about where you were coming from and why you thought this would work and all of those things. And that’s the least helpful thing to do in that moment. I think it is the hardest thing to let go and just hear the feedback and not try to defend yourself and think, “Yeah, I had the right intentions, but now I’ve got to figure out how I make my intentions match my impact.” And I think that gets in the way for a lot of people.

Kia Afcari: So do you think folks aren’t seeing what their impact is? They’re just blind to it? What’s happening?

KeyAnna Schmiedl: I think it comes from a place of, “I assume this will work.” And I’ve got to tell you, even walking out here on the stage today, I was like, “I have no idea if this is going to work, but we will have a good time.” And I meant it for me, right? My own performance of, “Let’s just see how this goes.” I think it comes from a place of people feeling like they have to think everything through because they don’t want to get into these tricky situations or get into the gray, and then all of a sudden they put so much thought behind something and it doesn’t land in the way that they want.

And that’s hard. And I know I’ve certainly been in that situation where, especially as a head of people, right? You go out there with the best of intentions and you get a lot of instant feedback when your impact was not what you intended. And I think it’s just being able to handle that and also identifying those moments where it’s like, that’s just a lot of emotion that people are feeling right now. It’s not going to be productive to handle right now. Let them have their feelings and then come back when it can be productive.

Kia Afcari: Interesting. Other thoughts about what gets in the way?

Emiliana Simon-Thomas: I think that there’s a history for organizations and business places that is based on a machine model, right? Where you just set everybody up, give everybody their little job on the line. And if somebody’s not doing well, well, you get rid of them and you replace them, they’re a replaceable part. And the leader is really just there to turn the dial so that you can burn the midnight oil or whatever weird metaphors we use still to describe working hard. I think the idea that a leader is someone who’s confident and assertive and forthright is mythical.

And I just read a paper from this year where scholars asked a large sample, “What is a good leader to you? What do you like about leaders?” And by far and away, it was like, “I like someone who’s friendly and authentic and willing to apologize when they’ve made a mistake and supportive of me and passionate about my success, devoted to my success.” But everybody knows that, oh, well, but the ethos out there culturally, historically, this legacy tradition is that, oh, you got to be this tough guy who is willing to fire people and say rude things and exploit everyone for the interest of profit. And it’s just, I don’t know, it’s something we have to melt away because it’s just false.

Kia Afcari: Yeah. It’s a very powerful myth that you have to be a jerk to lead effectively. And so Dennis, I’m curious for you, you and I have talked a lot about the naysayers, right? The folks who say, “All this kindness stuff has nothing to do with performance. I’m looking at my quarterly earnings. I have to focus on these important things. Kindness, that’s a nice to have. Why does this even matter for my leadership?” So how would you answer that question?

Denis Ring: If I may, I want to go back just to this point that was made. When a CEO or any senior manager goes into work on any given day, they’re thinking about what they’ve got to do during the day and then comes this fire hose of problems. It could be supply chain, it could be a board member, it could be people who are sick, it could be any number of different things. And I think that the kindness part of it, I think it takes discipline. Not just mindfulness, but I think it takes discipline. You’ve been mentioning how you keep little notes as reminders. I have found this true in my own experience where, “Oh, I forgot to go be nice to this person.” As far as the naysayers go. The naysayers who say, “Oh, you don’t need to be kind, that’s all a bunch of nonsense. It’s irrelevant.”

But we know through academic research that organizations where kind leadership exists and there’s kindness within the group, perform better. I’ll tell it one quick story. We had an investor who wanted to invest in Ocho and he was asking all of these private equity questions, really coming at me with a machine gun. Man, Scott. We were just sitting there. And at one point he said, “Well, what’s your churn?” I didn’t know what this meant. I was preparing to talk about how we only use clover organic butter. And I looked over to my partner and I said, “Well, Miguel had to go back down to Guadalajara to work with his grandmother.” And he said, “Yeah, but he’s coming back.” And then the guy was saying, “No, no, no. How many times do you have people who quit the company in the course of the last 12 months? How many of your people just quit?” I was like, “Oh. He’s not talking about butter. He’s talking about something else altogether.” And so we thought for a couple of minutes, and the honest answer was not a single person had left the company. Not one.

I’m sure that if he had asked the month before or the month after, there would be any number. But the point here is that you can dismiss the importance of kindness. You can say it doesn’t relate specifically to increased profit and margin, but in this case, he really liked the answer because in these types of jobs, one of the most expensive burdens that a company has to bear is losing people, then posting how do you find new people? How do you train the new people? How do you get them to feel comfortable in an environment where they’ve never worked there before? Apart from everything else we’ve talked about, there’s beauty in feeling good about going to work and there’s profitability to feeling good about going to work. But in this case, the naysayer was silenced because he saw that whatever was happening in our company reflected kindness and dignity to the workforce, which translated to higher profitability.

Kia Afcari: Awesome. Great. Good. So Dennis, just a quick follow up. Do you think that you have to be a leader to lead with kindness, or can anyone in the organization? Think about all the audience members here. Is it just about leadership or how does it affect just employee to employee relationships?

Denis Ring: Oh, I’m going to defer to some of the others here on this panel who are better equipped to answer. But I think the characteristics of leadership develop over time as that person is in a role of leadership. It’s good to have confidence and analytic abilities and good communication skills as a leader, but I think that it may not be the case that anybody can lead and there are certainly instances where people don’t want to lead. But when it relates to kindness, I think that the qualities of leadership need to include kindness and respect and honesty and transparency.

Kia Afcari: Other thoughts on this question?

Emiliana Simon-Thomas: I’ll just say really quickly that incivility is a huge predictor of burnout. The industries or professional sectors where incivility is a bigger quality of the culture, that’s where you see the highest rates of burnout. So feels like lack of incivility, right? Kindness is the antidote and is a way to alleviate the possibility or risk of burnout.

Kia Afcari: Yeah, Rich.

Rich Lyons: And I’ll just add one quick comment. I think more and more you hear the phrase, “lead from where you are,” and we tell that to people that are just out of school, for example, right? That leadership isn’t something that people with this level can do. How do you shape behavioral norms? It’s like, oh, only the CEO sets culture. It’s like, what are the group norms on your team and might you be able to influence them as a recent graduate or whatever your stage? It’s like, “Ah, lead from where you are.” So I think that those are the kinds of things that more and more, I think your question is relevant really throughout one’s career.

KeyAnna Schmiedl: I would just add the old adage of tone at the top, but mood in the middle. And I think around that mood in the middle, especially right now, is so critical. And that’s where kindness actually has exponentially more value for people to be able to see it and feel it from right here where they are at, and then to be able to say, “OK, and now how am I experiencing it up or down from there?” It’s just so critical.

Kia Afcari: Love that. Love that. So I want to zoom out to the organizational level a little bit. I don’t know how many of you have heard this story about Southwest Airlines in its early days where it had three airplanes and they were dealing with some serious financial crises at that time. And during this moment in Southwest’s history, they had to make a decision really, and the decision was pretty simple. They needed to lay off employees or sell one of their three airplanes. Now, most organizations would have quickly just laid off employees, but Southwest at that moment in their history decided that, no, we’re not going to lay off our employees. We’re going to sell an airplane. And what happened after that was remarkable because the folks on the plane realized that if they could turn those planes around faster in between each flight, if they can turn the turnaround time from 50 minutes down to 15 minutes, they could actually fly maybe as many flights as the three airplanes almost.

And so even the pilots would help clean the plane and they really came together. And it turned out that that advantage of turning those planes quickly became a significant advantage for Southwest and helped them really succeed in the industry. And what was more powerful was the story that they decided to sell the airplane, because that story stuck with their lore and it really put behind this idea that the company really cares about its people, that leading with kindness actually can make a difference. So from an organizational level, these stories can be very powerful for a culture. Now, not all of us are CEOs or leaders of organizations. And one of the things I’d like to hear from each of you is what’s one small, simple act that you do that’s part of your routine, that you do a weekly or monthly, something could be very small that really has you leading with kindness. And we’d like to just hear from each of you on that. So Rich, why don’t we start with you? What’s one small thing that you do that helps you lead with kindness?

Rich Lyons: Well, one thing I think I could do it more. One thing I’d love to do is giving somebody who’s whatever, a couple, three levels below me in the organization, positive feedback in front of their boss. Concrete positive feedback in front of their boss. I think those are the things people never forget. Obviously it needs to be earned and warranted, but doing it in front of the right people also matters.

Kia Afcari: That’s a great one. Remember that one. Good. Thank you.

Yamini Rangan: So one thing I do is prepare before every office visit. Before I go to any office and we have meetings, I’ll get a list of who I’m meeting, their names, how long they have been in their roles, and something that is a little detail about them that someone in their team knows. And I’ll give you a story. I went to Latin America, Columbia, two years ago, and I had read in preparation, this guy named Willie who learned to speak English by listening to music records.

And he didn’t even speak before joining, he tried to learn and he did it by listening to music records. And so I went to the office and I said, “Hi, Willie. I’m Yamani. What music record are you listening to right now?” And he had tears in his eyes. And I remember his feeling. And every time I see him, I’m like, “What music are you listening to now?” And he’ll tell me what he’s listening to as he’s improving his English. And it’s just that prepare when you meet someone, get to know them personally, take a little bit more interest in the human being, not the meeting on your calendar.

Kia Afcari: I love that. Thank you, Yamani. Beautiful.

KeyAnna Schmiedl: So I talked about props at the end of meetings. I think especially when you get to a certain level, if you’re managing people at all, I will tell you you’re already there. Making sure that you’re saving some time for recognition, progress, acknowledging that is really important. I think the other thing is actually one of my favorite aunts told me the story about when my cousin, her fiance moved on and it was a really hard breakup. And my aunt said to her, “You get one day to feel as bad as you want to, and then I need three days from you of picking yourself up and treating yourself like the person that you are because we don’t actually care about him.” And so the way that I translate that into the office is however much time you need from me in this moment to talk about how frustrated you are with this or what didn’t go right, I will allow as long as you give me twice as much time in thinking about a solution or talking about something that we can do to change it and letting me know where I can help you.

Kia Afcari: Great. That’s a great tip. Thank you, Kiana. How about you, Mei Ling?

Mei Ling: OK. For me, because I’m professor, I have students. So a couple of things I do is that it’s really important for me to let my student feel they’re seen relating to Yamani, your earlier point. So one small thing I do is I always try to remember my students’ names. And in early years when I was younger, I took pictures of them. So my daughter’s in audience today, so she probably remembers I tried to memorize students’ names by looking at pictures.

As I age, it’s becoming harder and harder when they change their hairstyle, sitting with different people that don’t remember. So then I started taking videos, asking them to say their name. So videos will help me to memorize their names more. So this is just the one small gesture making them feel seen. And also I try to send out appreciation emails to students, and especially for students who are struggling in my class, I proactively reach out to them and either set up a meeting or talk with them about what they can do, come up with strategy. I hold them accountable for the plan. And usually they always do better after those interactions. Yeah. So those are what I do.

Kia Afcari: Beautiful. Thank you so much Mei Ling. Emiliana.

Emiliana Simon-Thomas: Well, I do all the things that everybody else just said and … No, just kidding. Well, OK. So I like to ask people what made them laugh in the last few days or where did they go or where were they when they last felt totally amazed or inspired by awe in a particular setting? Just bring a recent profound or amusing experience to mind that I can relate to and can just feel that together.

Kia Afcari: I love that. Beautiful. Thank you, Emiliana.

Denis Ring: I have two different things. One is just to provide affirmations. I think as parents, we all hear, “You should catch your kids doing something good,” right? Like, “You brought your dishes to the sink.” And so I was always had my eyes on opportunities where I could go up to somebody and say, “I appreciate that you were reaching out to another person or that you did a great job, or this was very creative, or I appreciate the sense of leadership you bring to the job.” If I’m really going to go over the top, I bake bread as a hobby, so I would bring a loaf of bread and give it to somebody on a Monday morning just to say, “It’s your turn, so take it home.” And that worked pretty well.

Kia Afcari: All right. I’m looking forward to one of your sourdough loaves.

Denis Ring: I know. I owe you some bread.

Kia Afcari: Awesome. Well, just any final thoughts. This is our last bit together. Any final thoughts, anything anybody wanted to say that you didn’t have a chance to say or any final thoughts from anyone?

Denis Ring: I do. The last time Kia and I had tea and latte, I asked, what do we want everybody to feel or think as they leave this evening or if they watch a video of this? And we all have agency and we all want to be kind, but kindness in any organization doesn’t get activated until any one of us as an individual uses our agency to go be kind. And I hope that as a result of listening in on this, it would inspire everybody to look for opportunities to be kind.

Kia Afcari: I love that. Thank you, Dennis. Yeah. And I think that we underestimate how easy that can be to do and how much of an impact that can have. So I really appreciate that.

KeyAnna Schmiedl: Can I just throw in …

Kia Afcari: Please.

KeyAnna Schmiedl: … three props?

Kia Afcari: Yes.

KeyAnna Schmiedl: One, Kia, I was actually having a conversation with Avnika earlier talking about how hard the job of moderating well is, and so I just wanted to acknowledge how well you have done in creating a platform and opportunity for us to have this conversation.

Denis Ring: Give it up Kia.

Kia Afcari: Thank you. She just did it. She just took the opportunity to be kind right there. It’s working, Dennis.

KeyAnna Schmiedl: Also, to the audience who has been here and stayed this entire time, I know some people had to leave, really appreciate you being here. And then to my fellow panelists, I have learned so much sitting up here with all of you, and so I really appreciate your generosity and sharing. Thank you.

Kia Afcari: Awesome. Thank you. Great. And to keep the kindness going, I want to appreciate Trent Wakenight who’s been doing this amazing drawing. You can find him at markerninja.com. He’s a marker ninja. So check him out. He does this amazing work. We’re going to get a digital copy of this sent out to all of you. I’d like to give a sincere thank you to our panel for your time and your wisdom. I want to thank our team at the Greater Good Science Center, Nicole, Hong, Jason, everybody who helped out with this event. I want to thank the Haas Center for Workplace Culture and Innovation. I want to thank the Compassionate Leaders Circle who helped us with this event.

We did record this event and it will be put up on YouTube soon, so I look out for that. I want to thank you, our audience, for your time and interest today. If you’re interested in bringing a Greater Good speaker or workshop, Emiliana and I and others, if you saw this, it’s cool to be kind thing, you can reach out to us. We do speaking and workshops at all kinds of organizations. And as you know, Greater Good is a bonafide nonprofit. If you’re interested in donating, please consider that. And to close, I just want to give my sincere hope for you that you experienced the power of kind leadership in your own work and life. And I want to thank you and hope you have a great rest of your evening.

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(Music: “No One Is Perfect” by HoliznaCC0)

Anne Brice (outro): You’ve been listening to Berkeley Talks, a UC Berkeley News podcast from the Office of Communications and Public Affairs that features lectures and conversations at Berkeley. Follow us wherever you listen to your podcasts. You can find all of our podcast episodes, with transcripts and photos, on UC Berkeley News at news.berkeley.edu/podcasts.

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