S. 2 Ep. 10 – Leveraging Kindness As A Business Strategy

Taylorr: Welcome to another episode of Technically Speaking, we’re your hosts, Taylorr and Austin and today we are talking about kindness. What it actually is, how it’s different than being nice and how we can use it inside of our businesses to build better relationships and have a better impact. And the perfect person to talk on this subject is kindness expert Shola Richards, as a speaker, Shola has shared his transformative message of kindness and his Go Together framework with universities, Silicon Valley, TEDx stages. 

And to this date, he says his greatest honor is being able to testify in front of the select committee on Capitol Hill about kindness and how to bring more civility to Congress. Last, but certainly not least Shola is a husband, father, identical twin, and self-professed kindness extremist who will not rest until bullying and incivility are extinct from the American workplace. So, let’s dive in, let’s learn about kindness, let’s learn about how it’s different from being nice and how we can make the most of it. As always stick around to the end for some awesome resources and we hope that you enjoy this one.

Austin: Alright, and we are live, Shola welcome to the show, man.

Shola: Hey, what’s going on Taylorr? Hey Austin, thanks for having me, appreciate you guys.

Austin: It’s our pleasure, so good to have you, it’s really our treat. This is going to be a fun episode, we try as best as we can to be a mission-first organization and you, I think are maybe the best example I can think of, of somebody who lives that, so, really excited to dive in, but before we get into the nitty-gritty, I just have to point out that you’re probably one of the best dressed human beings without a doubt.

Taylorr: Is this a natural thing that comes? Or like, can you give me a number of somebody that I can talk to about this?

Austin: Do you have a stylist, man, or?

Shola: Oh my God. First of all, thank God that this is being recorded because I’m going to just replay the first 45 seconds to a minute of those before I start my talks. Honestly, my dad was one of those guys that’s like, you can always be overdressed, but never be underdressed, so that was something that just kind of stuck with me. And I never wanted my clothes to be a distraction in a bad way, like, God, what is he doing? What’s he wearing? 

So, I try my best to try to kind of look together, let’s be real though, I’m on a podcast with two amazing gentlemen, I’m not going to roll in here not prepared because you never know, man, I have to represent for my guys. So, that’s the reason why, the second that this is over, I’m peeling this off and throwing on my sweats and a t-shirt but yeah, I appreciate the compliment guys

Austin: For sure. No, I appreciate a well-dressed, man. I put on a vest and I look like I’m an Olive Garden waiter, and so I can’t let myself go there, but you’re an inspiration.

Shola: Dude, bring those breadsticks and we’re good, man, that’s all I need.

Austin: That could be a side-hustle. So look, we could start this conversation a bunch of different ways, but as usual, we go and do additional research on our guests before we start off. And there was this line that we saw on your website that I really think hit home for both Taylorr and I. And that was this idea of using kindness as a business strategy, which at face value makes total sense, but I don’t think that’s talked about too often. So, can you sort of just take us on a journey for a second here as to how this idea among all of your other great ideas sort of came to life?

Shola: First of all, thanks for taking the time to research that, I think that kindness is so misunderstood, and I think that’s the reason why some folks like kindness as a business strategy. Well, I think the problem is people equate kindness with being nice, so being nice by definition is just being polite and agreeable, anyone can do that. Some of the worst human beings on earth have the capacity to say, please, and thank you. Do you know what I mean? Kindness is really, it’s a matter of depth and we’re talking about demonstrating through your actions that you actually care about your fellow human beings. 

And so, as a business strategy, what this means is that you are going to engage in challenging conversations with people who you work with because as your demonstration of you caring about them, you will do it instead of letting it slide. Does that mean holding people accountable? This also means just being in a place where they can show up and remove the barriers for them to do their best work, any business out there, whether an airline or you work in fast food or you’re in healthcare or whatever, tech; you want to have people doing their best work and treating each other well so that they’re not having these barriers in the way of showing up for their clients or their customers, or for each other.

Austin: So, it’s sort of about making an environment where people feel safe, maybe.

Shola: Absolutely, safe to be themselves and safe to also be able to share, we’re like what, 20, 21 months into the pandemic and I think that the mental health impact on people has been really well-documented. But the biggest one is that people still don’t feel safe sharing with others, the struggles that they are going through, that is where kindness comes in and psychological safety comes in. If I can raise my hand and tell my colleagues and my boss, Hey, I’m burned out or I need help, or I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing and know that you won’t be shamed or embarrassed for doing so that is the height of psychological safety and kindness. 

And every organization needs to have that as part of their culture, and to me, that’s what I’m fighting for, I want to make sure that people before we get into all the deep stuff and the challenging stuff about metrics and numbers, can we just be good humans? Can we just start there as the foundation and make sure that we’re not hurting people through our words and actions? Once we have that as our baseline, we can go so much faster to the other steps of the pyramid to get to the top.

Taylorr: Wow that resonates so much with me. I’m curious, Shola, what led you here? What led you to this position, where now we’re talking about kindness as a business strategy? Tell us about the journey.

Shola: Yeah, man. It’s so funny, Taylorr because I wish that I had a Disney curated story, it was just like, I saw the beauty of kindness and I was like, I want that in my life. It’s such a dark story, but I think that a lot of times people find positive things through the darkness, I’ll summarize because I know that we have limited time, but about 15 plus years ago, I worked in a horrible work environment. It was deeply toxic and just awful, I wrote about it my first book, Making Work Work, it was really, really bad. 

And to make a very long story short, I ended up falling into a very deep depression as I tried to deal with these people and reach out to HR and do lots of the stuff and was consistently ignored. And one morning, I live in Los Angeles, that’s where I’m broadcasting from, and I was driving down the I405 freeway here and I was like after dealing with so much cruelty and just deep-seated meanness, for lack of a better way of putting it, I just fell into a deep depression. And I said, while I was driving to work that morning to the toxic job, I’m done and fortunately, as much as I wish that I was saying that I was done with the job, it was far darker than that. 

I made a decision while driving to this job that I was going to take my own life and I did, I attempted, I should say and when I did, I tried to swerve my car off the overpass in an attempt to make it look like an accident. Thankfully, the guard rail held and I came back into oncoming traffic and I realized very shortly afterward, I was like, gosh, why isn’t anyone doing something about the cruelty and meanness in the professional settings? And I had a talk with someone and then they were like, Hey, you’re someone, why don’t you do something about it? 

And that was really kind of the beginning of it because, in the beginning, I was deeply unqualified, I wasn’t the right person for this, I never taught a class or spoke to anyone in front of an audience in my life but I was driven by the idea that I knew that kindness meant something. I knew the suffering that happened when kindness was absent, but I also knew how great organizations operated and how there was a relief on mental health when kindness was present, it was a simple idea and I just wanted to push it as far as I could and here we are.

Taylorr: Man, what a backstory.

Austin: Sometimes the most difficult challenges that humans have to face, you move beyond it because of just a willingness to do something. And so, first of all, I just want to acknowledge the fact that you were willing to tackle a probably seemingly impossible challenge to solve and you have made waves around the entire world by doing so, so thank you for doing what you do, first of all.

Shola: Thank you, Austin, appreciate that, man.

Austin: I think that I’m an optimist by nature., I try really hard to see the good in things and sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn’t, and it bites me in the butt, and I think that there’s a balance to be had between optimism and realism. But I just have such a hard time believing that people can be cruel as you put it, and they are, obviously, in many, many, many instances, but why do you think that is? And why do you feel that it’s possible for a company culture to sort of go in such a dark direction where it leads somebody like you to such a dark place and puts you in such an environment that you could even be there? Why does this happen?

Shola: That’s the million-dollar question and there are so many ways to answer it. From my experience and my research, there are a couple of reasons why, I think that in one case you may run into people who just flat out are unaware of how their words and actions affect others, there’s that. I was working with a client and a group that must go nameless and the person was a supervisor over a team and she was super toxic, at least, that’s what I was told, but I observed her working with her team and she’s raising her voice and yelling. 

And she said something that I found to be really telling it’s like, how would you know that I don’t care about you if I wasn’t yelling at you, that’s how I’m showing you how I care. And it’s not all of the time you’re going to get this, like, whoa, now we understand where this is coming from, it’s not always that simple, but it kind of was a wake-up call for me to understand. And I say this often, all bad behavior is simply an unskilled expression of an unmet need, and it’s kind of deep if you think about this.

Austin: Can you say that again?

Shola: I will, yeah, it’s a tricky one. All bad behavior is an unskilled expression of an unmet need. So, when you see people behaving poorly, oftentimes there’s some need, that’s not being met, now oftentimes when you see people who are workplace bullies and treat people horribly, they’re so broken inside and they feel so deeply insecure that this is their way of grasping towards some sort of meaning, some sort of stability, some sort of sense of control. 

Now, I’m not using this to excuse this behavior, obviously, but she kind of shows where this comes from to the point though, the question going deeper, I think that a lot of the reasons why this happens is because it’s allowed to happen, seriously, it’s like what we allow is what will continue. So, when you see this bad behavior, but said person is bringing in big numbers to the organization and bringing in lots of numbers and money or whatever it may be. 

It’s easy to turn a blind eye and be like, well, I know George is difficult to work with, but oh man, he’s so good, his Q3 numbers are, oh my gosh, we have to stop thinking like that and realize the cost, not just to the bottom line, but having someone like that in a leadership position or just part of the team. But also the cost to humanity, we are allowing this behavior to continue unchecked and I think that it’s up to all of us to play a role of trying to root this out before it’s too late.

Austin: Wow, there’s a lot to unpack there, I feel like we could just talk hours and hours about just [Cross-talk 12:48].

Taylorr: Let’s do it.

Austin: Yeah, let’s do it, can we stay here? Can we just keep this going? That would be just incredible. So, I’m curious, so we have been talking about kindness in this kind of larger organization, corporate setting and as you know, you’re a small business, most of the listeners here are small and micro businesses often solopreneurs. How do you think that we can apply kindness as a business strategy distilled down into these smaller organizations? Do you have any ideas there?

Shola: Heck yeah. One of the things that I think, especially if you’re in a business where you are like me, the reason why I have indoor plumbing and lights that are on is that I have to work with other people who will hopefully hire me. So, kindness is not just a business strategy that you should think about in terms of keeping organizations running effectively, but small businesses like myself and many people who are listening right now, need that. 

And I’ll give you specifics because I think that practicality helps and is one of the easiest things to do, especially, in the world of speaking, there are a couple of things. One of the kindest of things that you can do is anticipate needs, so if I’m flying in for a speech and I land in the city of the speech, most speakers, most likely they’re going to be, I made it here, I’m just going to go to my hotel room and go to bed. What if you just simply sent a text to the person who’s organizing the event and said, Hey, I’m here, I want to let you know that everything worked out fine, looking forward to tomorrow morning. 

It seems so simple but the meeting folks who I have had a chance to work with are like, God, I love that you do that, it just gives me peace of mind because I’m running around taking care of a thousand things at once and that’s one big thing that I don’t have to worry about, so thank you. It’s a kindness that you can give to someone else, another thing, and these are so basic, but the funny thing is because they’re basic, that gives people a reason not to do it.

One of which is the thank you but the thank you is so interesting, it’s like always thank people after you have an opportunity to speak on their stage and to reach out to them and share some things, they always enjoy that, they always appreciate it; they want to feel like what they’re doing matters and that you had a good experience, and that means something to them. There are so many things and maybe the most important kind thing by far is being easy to work with, there are, from what I’ve seen a few divas in the speaking space.

Taylorr: Your words, not mine.

Shola: I’m owning it, that was unkind perhaps but it’s true and it’s like what I’ve seen, I’ll give you an example and I’m going to keep it super generic, so it’s not identifying, I might make some real changes to the story so that no one can figure out who this person is. But I was speaking at a conference, there is a person who was speaking at the conference before me and they were talking about compassion as their topic and the AV was not working to this person’s liking. 

And you could see this person getting really angry, like on stage, it’s like, oh gosh, this isn’t good and then this person is about to share a story and the mic, kind of was cutting in and out and they got infuriated. Like, what are you guys doing? You can’t get a microphone to work correctly, and then what are you doing here? Mind you, this is from the stage.

Taylorr: On compassion as a topic.

Shola: The jokes write themselves and then they then after it was over, this episode probably lasted seven seconds or so, the person gathered themselves and said, okay, let’s go back to compassion. And it’s like, what, there’s such a lack of self-awareness from this person and what I found and the audience was just not feeling them after that. But what was interesting is part of kindness too, is also being the person who you said you are, if I want to market myself as a compassion speaker, in my case, a kindness speaker or one on team cohesion and I’m unable to demonstrate the basic tenants of my lesson in my day-to-day actions. 

Not only is it unkind, but it’s also untrustworthy and it’s hard for people to want to work with you again, so these are the things that I teach my kids but also it’s funny as adults, how quickly we forget these lessons.

Taylorr: Well, on one hand, looking at this person that you just gave the example of you can relate in some ways to the frustration that can come there, and so in a lot of ways kindness is sort of a discipline. We have to be mindful and self-aware, and it’s not always an easy thing to do, but it also, isn’t an excuse not to do it, you alluded to that earlier and I also think that it’s probably not as difficult as it seems across the board, but we all have our issues where we slip up. 

And I think the important thing is that you’re trying, even, that person, if they would have composed themselves and instead of going, okay, back to compassion, like, okay guys, I’m sorry, I lost it there, that was not cool, my bad, like that. People are very forgiving when you slip up if you’re just willing to own up to the mistake, but that’s the difficult thing too.

Shola: And it’s important to note and I want to be super clear on this, I don’t want to come off as like, I’m this expert, who is kind every single second of the day. Just this morning I was getting my youngest daughter’s breakfast and she was just standing in front of the fridge, like in my way and I was just like, halfway awake, I was just like move. And she’s like, oh daddy, aren’t you like the kindest person, isn’t your nickname, Brother Theresa.

Austin: Brother Theresa.

Shola: That’s my nickname, guys, it’s true, and they throw it at me all the time. Hey, Brother Theresa, you’re telling me to move. I was like, oh, man.

Austin: High bar that you have set for yourself, man.

Shola: Dude, I know and there’s no going back, man, but it’s so funny, I think that the best way to word it is how you said it, it’s a discipline, and it is a practice. And it’s something that requires ongoing attention, it’s not like you can just roll out of bed and say, I’m going to be kind every single day, the world will test you, like, let’s see about that and then you have to really lean into it and it’s not always as easy as it sounds.

Austin: Well, those are also the people that are most admirable though, the ones that face the biggest challenges and have the most reason to not be kind and yet still are, those are the people to look up to. So, I have this question, that’s sort of been lingering in the back of my head and I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on it and you actually made this distinction earlier between being kind and being nice, which was fascinating. I’ve never picked those two things apart for myself, but I think that you can go too extreme with anything and maybe kindness isn’t the right word, maybe this is niceness that I’m talking about here. 

But I imagine if somebody is so focused on being kind that they lose themselves in that, that you could sort of get trampled on, you can stop being heard, you can stop being willing to confront issues when you need to. So, where’s the line for you between being kind and still being sovereign, maybe, I don’t know if that’s the right word, but being your own person, being willing to stand up for yourself, you know what I mean?

Shola: Yeah, 1000% and I think that’s where that distinction between nice and kindness comes in because kindness understands that it’s a deep level of demonstrating that you care about others, and I should have included this before. And also, it should demonstrate that we care about ourselves as well, so a good example of this, a lot of stuff happens so recently, I had an opportunity to be in a board meeting for an organization and I was sitting in there and this happens, unfortunately, to a lot of women. 

The woman shared, it was a mostly male group in this boardroom but about maybe 20% were women, and this woman shared a point and it got glossed over, not surprisingly. And then a gentleman in the meeting, maybe five minutes later, regurgitated what she had said, maybe switched a couple of words around like, whoa, George, that was just brilliant. And what I saw with a demonstration of kindness was from another gentleman in the boardroom, who was like, oh; hold on a second, I’m changing names, that’s interesting, Amy literally just said that five minutes ago. 

So, I’m not sure if you all caught that, but she literally said, and then he repeated it, so we should probably be starting with Amy because that’s really what Amy said, that was Amy’s idea. That’s an example of kindness, the easy thing to do would be like, or the nice thing, I don’t want to make any waves, maybe Amy, didn’t say it, I don’t know. So, the line is when you’re talking about your own, self-respect when you’re talking about how you’re being treated and how you’re treating others, that’s my thing that’s kind of my Litmus test, like, am I hurting myself by engaging in this behavior by allowing something to continue?

As a black man, I have to deal with a lot that quite frankly I would prefer not to deal with, and part of the challenge for me is that I have to make decisions almost on a near-daily basis; do I engage in this conversation? Does the person know what they’re saying is actually really offensive to me? Some of these examples are really basic, but I’ll just give you one. Oftentimes when I speak, people, depending on where you are in-country, come up to me like, wow, oh, my gosh, you speak so well? I was blown away, oh, my, when you started talking, I was like, oh, heavens to Betsy, I had no idea what was going to come out of your mouth, but you’re educated. 

So, it’s that stuff, so the nice thing to do, if you even want to call it that, it’s like, thank you, I know, I try. But the kind thing is to help someone maybe understand like that’s not cool, you’re expecting me to be an idiot for some reason and I’m really struggling as to why you would think that. So, a very easy way to be kind in those situations is that, and this happened relatively recently, that’s why it’s kind of fresh in my mind, is after the person said that to me, I just simply asked the question, like she said, oh my gosh, wow, you speak so well, you’re so educated. 

I was like, oh, help me out, what do you mean by that? No, I’m just super curious as you said that like you were surprised, that I speak so well, I speak for a living, so shouldn’t I be kind of good at this I would suppose. What did you mean by that? And it’s a way to help someone understand that what they said, wasn’t cool, so to the point really directly, that line is around really thinking about treating yourself, like someone who you love and if that were my kids, I would want my kids to stand up for themselves, I have to stand up for myself. 

It’s the kind thing to do to honor yourself and that goes back to the practice part because there are a lot of people who are either unwilling or unable, I actually, would go more to unwilling. So, everyone’s able to do it, to really stand up for themselves and honor themselves when someone is being unkind to them and it’s not always easy to be that person to honor yourself, but once you start doing it is hard to stop.

Taylorr: Well, I feel like even when we first started the conversation where you separated nice and kind, I feel like that’s just been even more solidified in this portion of our conversation. And the thing that I’m kind of sensing about being kind as I’m learning from you, Shola, is that there’s often this element of inclusivity about being kind, like, you’re thinking about your children for example. You’re thinking about bettering humanity by being kind and like asking that question to that woman when, obviously, things got a little offensive and there were a million ways to take that interaction and be defensive or maybe just pass it off or whatever it was. 

But it sounds like being kind has this element of inclusivity to it and I’m assuming that’s probably why your framework Go Together kind of ties into some things. Am I picking up on those two connections, am I bridging that gap properly?

Shola: Man, Taylorr, my marketing is working, so yeah, that’s exactly right. There is a huge idea of inclusivity in this, I think that the worst way to live life is to be the type of person who’s like, hey, if it’s not a problem for me, it’s not a problem. And I think that it hurts so many folks because there are so many people who are struggling in some way and the idea of going together is based on an African proverb that’s my all-time favorite. It’s like if you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together, and I believe that this is the way that we can really start bringing ourselves out of pain. 

What I wish more people realized is that I know that allyship is a word that’s thrown out often, but like the idea of more men standing up for women, more straight people standing up for the LGBTQ plus community, more white people standing up for people of color, there’s an opportunity there to come together and to really do some amazing things. When we start to see like, wow, we do have differences and it’s important that we see those, but we also understand that at baseline, the things that unite us, wanting safety, kindness, being treated with respect, having an opportunity to live a life where we get to self-actualize in some way, those are all things that we all experience. 

And the sooner we come to realize that the better, but last month, I don’t know when this will air, but back in September 2021, I was invited to speak at Capitol Hill to testify in front of Congress to give advice on how to make Congress more civil to one another. And that was a trip but I’ll tell you one of the things that I found in a whole two hours of testimony, one of the cool things that I mentioned, I think that really resonated was in order for people to really get to a place where either side of the aisle has a chance to come together, you’re going to have to start humanizing people. 

And there’s a real market in dehumanization like the other side is this and the other side is that and we see it in Congress, we see it in our schools, we see it in sometimes our neighborhoods, and I think in order for us to go together, it has to start with kindness and that’s what I’m hoping to drive home.

Austin: Man, our culture, our society is so focused on the idea of being right and wrong about things that I think we do remove humanity from the equation and, I don’t know, everything in life has a gray area in most ways, you probably argue with that statement. But anyway, my point is, everybody has their opinions and they’re valid opinions and we just have to be able to unpack them and that doesn’t mean that we need to stick to those opinions, our opinions should evolve, but that’s the whole point. We have to have a conversation in order for us to make any progress and to land at anything that makes everybody happy or happier than where we were when we started. 

And so, first of all, kudos to you, I hope that we make some progress in that area because I would love it if I could turn on the news and it was like, Congress sat down today and had a wonderful conversation, we made real progress like that’s not happening most of the time right now.

Shola: One of these days but I think that part of it is just like you said, Austin, we have to start the conversation, at least, we have to begin to at least sit-down and try to find that common ground in some way.

Taylorr: Man, what a valuable episode, Shola, thank you so much for coming on and talking about kindness, I feel like this is one of those subjects where it can be easy to brush off and that’s not to be dismissive of the concept, but it’s like, oh, I can be kind. And you can immediately say, we assume rather, I know what kindness is and I am kind, and then we look away and go do the other thing. 

And I feel like I learned so much in just this half-hour conversation about the areas that I’m excelling in and the areas I’m not excelling in and really the differences between what being nice and kind is, there’s just so much more depth to this topic than I think that I even understood. So, hopefully, that’s the same for all of our listeners, thank you so much for providing value, Austin, I know.

Austin: Yeah, I have to bring this up. So look, I was telling Taylorr about this, I have watched your demo video, Shola, so many times, many times, my wife, we’ve watched it together, I cry every time I watch it, real, true story.

Shola: Wow, man, appreciate that wow.

Austin: Yeah, but you have this phrase in there, ubuntu. Am I saying that right?

Shola: It’s a tricky one, Ubuntu, yes, for sure.

Austin: I just think that it’s so cool. Can you share that with our audience?

Shola: Yeah, I’ll keep it tight. Ubuntu is an African word that means, I am because we are. There’s not a real English one-to-one equivalent with this word, so the best way to describe it is, Ubuntu, which is the height of human kindness, human compassion, and human connectedness. And I decided to go on a journey to try to see how to operationalize that in the world of business and that was my second book, Go Together based on the concept of Ubuntu and how we can put that to work in our workplaces.

Austin: Oh man. Well, I love that, it’s such an easy thing to remember too, I love anything like when you can label the abstract, it makes it more practical.

Shola: 100% and that word is it, Ubuntu, it’s a beautiful word.

Taylorr: Wow that is amazing. Shola, you are incredible, thank you again for taking the precious time to come and be on the show with us. As you know since you’re already here, we’re all about creating value for our audience, so what are some of the things right now you’re working on that our listeners can benefit from?

Shola: Yeah, well, if you’re into the message and you feel like this is something that could change how you work, live and lead, bring real practicality to this stuff. My books, I have two books, Making Work Work is my first one, that was a bestseller and then my most recent book is, Go Together, which is, I just kind of talked about that spirit of Ubuntu and I am working behind the scenes on creating an actual course and certification in making work work because a lot of people want the real practicality to bring civility into workplaces. 

So, that should be coming in early 2022, so stay tuned for that but in the meantime, feel free to grab a book and dive into the content more freely.

Taylorr: Awesome. Well, hey, links will be in the description, so everybody go check those out, definitely get a book, and of course, leave a review because, obviously. And, hey, if you liked this episode, don’t forget to rate it, like it, subscribe to it and if you want more awesome resources like this, go to speakerflow.com/resources. Thank you so much for chiming in, I just wanted to take a second to thank our sponsor Auxbus, Auxbus is the all-in-one suite of tools that you need to run your podcast and it’s actually what we run here at SpeakerFlow for Technically Speaking. 

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