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Priceless Perspectives #44: Kindness — The Strength to Help People Grow

Writer: Scott Doggett
Scott Doggett
Sep 2
9 min read

Leadership growth isn’t one-size-fits-all. Some leaders learn through practical workplace insight. Others through story. Some through Scripture. Others through the executive lens. That’s why each weekly theme is explored through four different perspectives… so you can grow in the way that reaches your heart, your mind, and your leadership practice.


This Week’s Theme: Kindness in Leadership


Kindness is sometimes mistaken for avoiding conflict, lowering expectations, or trying to keep everyone happy. Genuine kindness is stronger than that. It notices what people need, tells the truth without diminishing dignity, and helps others grow without making them feel small.


To explore this week’s theme, choose the lens that connects with you most or experience all four for a full, 360-degree perspective:


◆ Adventures of Noah Hart: The Take Worth Keeping

◆ The Shepherd’s Voice: Kindness That Takes Notice

◆ The Boardroom Brief: The Organizational Value of Kindness

Leadership Lens

◆ Leadership Lens


Why Kindness Is a Leadership Strength


Kindness is not simply a pleasant personality trait. It is the deliberate choice to use our words, authority, and influence in ways that protect dignity and contribute to another person’s well-being. Kind leaders still set expectations, address problems, and make difficult decisions. What distinguishes them is how people experience those moments.


Kindness Begins by Noticing


Many acts of kindness begin before anything is said or done. They begin when a leader notices. Kind leaders notice the person who has stopped contributing, the new employee standing alone, the colleague carrying an invisible burden, or the team member whose effort has gone unrecognized. They pay attention not because every problem is theirs to solve, but because people deserve to be seen.

Kindness often begins with recognizing what busyness has taught everyone else to overlook.

Kindness Tells the Truth Without Diminishing Dignity


Avoiding a necessary conversation may feel kind, but silence can leave someone unaware of a problem that continues to damage performance, trust, or opportunity. Kindness does not remove truth from leadership. It changes how truth is delivered. It replaces embarrassment with privacy, accusation with curiosity, and personal judgment with clear, constructive guidance.

Kindness is not lowering the standard. It is refusing to lower someone’s dignity while helping them reach it.

Kindness Is Most Powerful Under Pressure


It is easy to be kind when the schedule is open, the results are strong, and everyone is agreeable. Kindness becomes a leadership discipline when deadlines tighten, mistakes occur, or frustration rises. In those moments, leaders decide whether pressure will become permission to dismiss, embarrass, or ignore people. A kind leader can move with urgency without treating anyone as an obstacle.


Practicing Kindness This Week


This week, consider:

  • Noticing someone whose effort has gone unrecognized

  • Offering correction privately and encouragement generously

  • Making time for someone who cannot advance your agenda

  • Addressing an unkind behavior you have allowed to continue


The Leadership Ripple


Kindness creates an environment where people feel safe asking questions, admitting mistakes, and offering ideas. That safety strengthens trust, learning, collaboration, and accountability. A kind interaction may take only a moment, but its influence can travel through every person who experiences what leadership feels like when dignity remains intact.

Kindness is strength used in a way that helps another person grow.


Adventures of Noah Hart

◆ Adventures of Noah Hart


The Take Worth Keeping


Rows of corn stretched beneath the Iowa sky as Noah Hart and Luman followed a country road toward what appeared to be a small town movie set.


Cameras, lights, and cables filled the town square. At the center of the activity stood a man wearing a headset and quietly encouraging a nervous young actor.


“You must be our newest extras,” the man said when he noticed them.


Smiling man and boy with backpack shake hands on a film set in a small town; a glowing cartoon firefly hovers nearby.

“I’m Noah. I'm traveling across the country learning about leadership.”


“Then you arrived on a good day,” the man said. “I’m Pete. I’m an actor and a trainer, but today I’m helping lead this production and we are racing the sunset.”


Pete gave Noah a clapboard and showed him how to mark each take.


The crew was filming the movie’s final scene. Evan, a teenage actor, needed to walk into the town square and deliver one important line. But each time the camera rolled, he froze.


“Cut!” the director called after the fourth attempt.


A crew member sighed loudly. “We’re losing the light. Can’t we find someone else?”


Evan stared at the ground.


Pete walked beside him. “Let’s take five.”


“We don’t have five,” the crew member protested.


“We’ll lose even more time if we keep adding pressure,” Pete replied calmly. “Give me five minutes.”


He led Evan away from the crowd and sat beside him on the theater steps.


“What’s happening?” Pete asked.


“I know the line,” Evan said. “But everyone is waiting for me to mess it up again.”


Pete nodded. “Then forget about everyone else for a moment. Look at the other actor and speak the line to him... one person to another. Let’s walk through it together.”


Pete rehearsed quietly with Evan until the hesitation began to leave his voice.


Boy with backpack chats with two film crew men on a sunset street set, while a glowing cartoon firefly hovers nearby.

When they returned, Pete addressed the crew.


“Let’s give Evan the same patience we would want.”


The cameras rolled again.


This time, Evan lifted his head and delivered the line perfectly.


“Cut!” the director called. “That’s the one.”


The square erupted in applause, and Evan’s relieved smile was brighter than the fading sunlight.


Later, Noah found Pete packing equipment.


“You still expected him to get the line right,” Noah said, “but you never made him feel bad for struggling.”


Pete nodded. “The goal is to help people get better, not make them feel worse. If someone leaves too embarrassed to try again, what have we really accomplished?”


Before Noah left, Pete handed him a packet of wild rose seeds.


“Iowa’s state flower,” he explained. “A rose has soft petals and strong thorns. Kindness is like that. It can be gentle without being weak and strong without causing unnecessary harm.”


Noah planted the seeds near the theater steps. As he pressed the last one into the soil, a wooden sign shimmered into view:

Seed Planted (Iowa): Kindness protects dignity while helping people grow.

As Noah and Luman continued down the road, Noah looked back at Evan celebrating with the crew.


As Noah and Luman continued down the road, Noah looked back at Evan celebrating with the crew.


“Pete gave Evan more time,” Noah said. “Is that what made the difference?”


“What do you think Evan needed most?” Luman asked.


Noah thought for a moment. “Someone who still believed he could do it.”


Luman’s glow warmed. “And who helped him believe it too.”


Noah carried the lesson forward:


Kindness is not the absence of standards, truth, or strength.


It is the choice to use all three in service of another person’s growth.


Boy kneels planting seeds beside glowing sign, Seed Planted (Iowa): Kindness protects dignity while helping people grow, with a smiling firefly at sunset



The Shepherd’s Voice

◆ The Shepherd’s Voice


Kindness That Takes Notice


Theme Verse: “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.” — Ephesians 4:32 (NIV)


Kindness in Scripture


When Ruth entered the fields of Boaz, she was a foreigner, a widow, and someone with very little social power. Boaz noticed her, learned her story, ensured her safety, invited her to share a meal, and instructed his workers to leave additional grain for her to gather. His kindness was not merely a warm feeling or a few encouraging words; he used his authority to create protection, provision, and dignity. Boaz reminds us that godly kindness notices those who might otherwise be overlooked and turns influence into practical care.


Kindness in a Christian Workplace


Christian leaders reveal God’s kindness through everyday choices that others may never identify as spiritual:

  • Listening without rushing someone through their story

  • Correcting an employee without embarrassing them

  • Extending patience to someone who is learning

  • Protecting people from disrespectful treatment

  • Using authority to create opportunity for someone overlooked


Kindness does not require leaders to avoid accountability. Jesus consistently combined grace and truth. Christian leaders are called to do the same... addressing what needs to change while remembering that every person remains worthy of dignity.

Our faith becomes visible when people encounter the kindness of Christ through the way we use our influence.

A Leader’s Prayer for Kindness


Dear Lord,


Thank You for the kindness You continually show me.


Help me notice the people I might otherwise overlook. Give me patience when pressure rises, gentleness when correction is needed, and courage when someone’s dignity needs to be protected.


Keep me from confusing kindness with avoidance or weakness. Teach me to speak truth with love, maintain meaningful standards, and help people grow without making them feel small.


May my leadership reflect the heart of Christ so that others experience dignity, encouragement, and hope through every interaction.


Amen.


One Faith-Forward Mini-Challenge


Identify one person who may need to be noticed, encouraged, or treated with greater patience this week. Before approaching them, pray:

“Lord, help this person experience Your kindness through me.”

Then take one specific action: listen, encourage, offer help, express appreciation, or deliver needed truth with care.



The Boardroom Brief

◆ The Boardroom Brief


The Organizational Value of Kindness


Kindness is often treated as a cultural preference... valuable when convenient but secondary to performance. For boards and executives, the more useful question is whether people can consistently deliver strong results in an environment where dignity, respect, and consideration are optional. The evidence suggests they cannot.


Incivility Creates Measurable Organizational Drag


Workplace incivility may not appear on a financial statement, but it contributes to lost productivity, disengagement, errors, conflict, poor customer experiences, and turnover. SHRM found that employees lose an average of 36 minutes of productivity per incident, while 66% believed managers could have done more to prevent incivility and 70% felt business objectives mattered more to managers than how people were treated. When leaders overlook disrespect (especially from high performers) they create a management risk and signal that results can purchase exceptions from the organization’s values.


Recognition Makes Kindness Visible


Kindness often becomes visible through timely appreciation, meaningful feedback, inclusion, and evidence that someone’s contribution matters. In a two-year study of nearly 3,500 employees, Gallup and Workhuman found that well-recognized employees were 45% less likely to leave their organizations. Specific and sincere recognition can strengthen retention, protect institutional knowledge, and reinforce belonging, but generic praise cannot compensate for systems that routinely overwork, disregard, or mistreat people.


Kindness and Accountability Must Operate Together


Kind organizations still address missed expectations, poor performance, unethical behavior, and harmful conduct, but they use accountability to create clarity and growth rather than fear or humiliation. Leaders explain the standard, identify the gap, listen for context, establish the next step, and preserve dignity throughout the process. Without accountability, kindness becomes avoidance; without kindness, accountability can become punishment. Healthy cultures require both.


The Boardroom Questions


Boards and executive teams should ask:

  • What disrespectful behavior have we normalized because the person delivers results?

  • Do employees experience our performance-management process as clear and dignifying?

  • Are managers equipped to combine candor, kindness, and accountability?

  • Who is routinely overlooked when recognition, opportunity, and attention are distributed?

  • What do our people experience when pressure is highest?


Bottom Line


Kindness is not an alternative to performance. It is part of the environment that makes sustainable performance possible. It reduces the organizational drag created by incivility, strengthens trust, supports retention, and makes accountability easier to receive. Boards and executives reinforce kindness not by asking everyone to be nicer, but by establishing clear behavioral expectations, developing capable managers, recognizing meaningful contributions, and refusing to let performance excuse disrespect.



Join the Movement That Leads with Kindness


Kindness does not ask leaders to abandon truth, standards, or accountability. It asks us to use them without abandoning the person standing in front of us.


If this issue encouraged you, consider sharing it with a leader, mentor, teacher, or friend whose kindness helped you grow without making you feel small. And if you want to build a culture where principled performance and human dignity strengthen one another, we would love to walk alongside you.


Learn more at: nationalald.com


Start a conversation: Book a 30-minute exploration call



Because when leaders make kindness part of how they guide, correct, and develop people, something powerful happens…

People feel safe enough to learn, valued enough to contribute, and supported enough to grow without ever being made to feel small.

And always remember… people are priceless!

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