The Perils of Being Kind

“However good our intentions, kindness can sometimes backfire on us.”

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“Be kind” has become one of the most ubiquitous phrases of the 21st century – splashed across T-shirts, LinkedIn posts, and workplace manifestos. But should we be more thoughtful about to whom we extend kindness, and what it really means?

When kindness causes harm

A few weeks ago, in my lovely, leafy Hertfordshire hometown, a woman was driving along a dual carriageway toward some traffic lights. About 20 metres back, a 14-year-old girl was waiting to cross.

The driver stopped and beckoned her forward. How kind.

The girl stepped out – straight into the path of a car in the outside lane, whose driver didn’t expect anyone to emerge from behind a stopped vehicle.

She escaped with only minor injuries, but the incident left me thinking about the cost of kindness.

My town is full of kind drivers. It’s common to see someone stop to let a pedestrian cross where there’s no official crossing – without noticing the line of cars now held up behind them.

And here lies the problem: however good our intentions, kindness can sometimes backfire.

The strengths and shadows of kindness

From self-help books to advertising campaigns, much has been made of the power of kindness – and for good reason.

Compassion helps us connect and deepen relationships. Some scientists argue it’s been vital to our survival. Research shows that being kind can lower blood pressure, reduce the risk of heart disease, and even increase lifespan. Studies also link kindness to happiness, resilience, and better mental health.

In recent decades, the power of kindness has entered the workplace, as aggressive, self-interested leadership styles fall out of fashion and organisations try to address burnout and low engagement.

And yet, as anyone who has read my previous posts will know:

every strength has its shadows.

Perhaps you are the dependable friend with a big heart – always ready to listen, always putting others first. Admirable, of course.

But if helping others consistently comes at the expense of your own needs, you may have slipped into people-pleasing. That desire to help may actually signal a need to be liked, an aversion to confrontation, or a lack of confidence in yourself.

The cost of kindness in the workplace

On an organisational level, the “ripple effect” of kindness can be just as problematic.

One of my clients – a small marketing agency – had a very stable and nurturing culture. “Being Kind” was one of their stated values. Whenever someone underperformed, they responded with patience, coaching, training courses, and above all, leadership’s seemingly endless tolerance.

But over time it became clear that some middle managers had neither upheld the caring culture leadership envisioned, nor delivered on their actual responsibilities. In fact, some had become overly directive, stifling their teams in pursuit of results.

Still, the leadership team maintained their patience. They were determined to “be kind.”

The moral of the story

Like the driver who waved the girl across the road, it’s easy to be kind to the person right in front of us. But what about everyone else affected by that choice?

The leadership of the marketing agency were trying their damnedest to be kind to a couple of middle managers. In the process, they were inadvertently being unkind to many others:

• The talented but less visible employee who could have thrived in that role.
  
  
• The teams who were left unsupported and underdeveloped.
  
  
• The clients who received a poorer experience.

And perhaps even those struggling managers themselves – kept in jobs where they were failing and increasingly stressed.

In reality, the leadership team may have been kindest to themselves: sparing themselves from the discomfort of hard conversations and difficult decisions.

How can organisations exercise kindness with caution?

When kindness means showing care, respect, and compassion, I’m fully in support. Aiming to be helpful and constructive – in big ways and small – is something I aspire to (even if I regularly fail!).

But kindness is not always about being soft and fuzzy to the person immediately in front of us. It involves seeing the bigger picture. Sometimes it’s making tough decisions that don’t feel kind in the moment. Sometimes it’s having uncomfortable conversations that confront hard truths.

Sometimes being kind involves being deeply unpopular.

The only way we can learn to make these judgment calls, whether in strategy or in our own behaviour, is by deepening emotional intelligence. Which, like kindness, isn’t a “soft” skill at all – but a survival strategy that’s increasingly crucial in the modern workplace.

At Famn, we don’t believe kindness and clarity are opposites. In fact, we see emotional intelligence as the bridge between them. Through coaching grounded in behavioural psychology, we help leaders develop the emotional intelligence and self-mastery to navigate these judgment calls with clarity. Whether through 1:1 executive coaching, group programmes, or our Crisis Leadership Assessment, our focus is always the same – enabling leaders to act with both compassion and consequence, especially when the pressure’s on.

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