During his university days, the renowned writer Francesc Miralles spent his summers working as a waiter in a camping bar. As he has recounted on several occasions, there he discovered that, every time a customer came to the bar, he had to choose between three options: treat him with indifference (limiting himself to serving him a coffee properly), treat him in a bad way (being unpleasant and surly) or treat him with kindness (being helpful and pleasant). “I decided to always settle in the third option, because I realized that it generated a really positive impact on others”, says Miralles.
Being kind is a choice that still generates certain reluctance in the field of people management, since the false myth that associates good manners with professional weakness persists, assuming that an excess of benevolence is at odds with effective management. But in this context it is convenient to recover examples such as that of Jacinda Ardern, who governed New Zealand demonstrating to the world that the strength of leadership has nothing to do with decibels, testosterone or pride. Not even with the ability to instill fear. The true solvency of a good boss should be measured with other types of parameters, such as the ability to attract supporters to the cause, reliability in achieving objectives or courage when making decisions. Skills, all of them, perfectly compatible with kindness.
In this line, the psychiatrist and popularizer Eva Ritvo recalls that there is still no scientific evidence that establishes a direct correlation between aggressiveness and good management. On the contrary, she points to several studies that link friendly leadership with increased motivation, decreased absenteeism, or retention of talent. According to Ritvo, "it has been shown that managers who take care of their people can improve the work environment of organizations by up to 37%, causing increases in productivity of more than 12%".
Likewise, friendly bosses have another great value, and that is that they provide psychological security to their teams, making it easier for people to act and express themselves naturally, without fear of reprisals. This virtue is not only essential to promote professional development, but it is also necessary to build corporate cultures that are nourished by constructive criticism and bottom-up innovation.
In that camping bar, Francesc Miralles discovered that being kind is a worthwhile option, but one that requires active militancy, since the temptations to go over to the dark side of rudeness appear systematically. Precisely in these moments of weakness we must recover the thesis of the writer Brianna Wiest, synthesized in one of her masterful little phrases: "Emotions are temporary, but behaviors are permanent."
There is no single friendly leadership manual, but experts associate it with a series of competencies and values ranging from empathy to active listening, through temperance, humility or respect. In any case, what there is a broad academic and professional consensus on is the conviction of the positive impact generated by kindness, as that young university waiter already confirmed. One of the best speakers of the moment, Victor Küppers, expresses it clearly: "No one will remember you for your resume, but for your way of being."
