1. Zen-like calm

Do you have a system to store the information, actions, task lists, checklists and files? What could be improved to make it easier to access? Zen like calm is an ability to remain focused and not be stressed by all the things you’re not doing.

2. Ruthlessness

Saying ‘no’ to as many distractions as possible. Could you afford to be more ruthless in your focus?

A few years ago, I was in the middle of one of the most hectic periods of my working life – running Think Productive, writing a book, speaking at conferences and generally trying to do too many things at once. I wasn't drowning, exactly, but I could feel the current. 

The thing that saved me wasn't a new app or a smarter filing system. It was 90 minutes on a Friday afternoon that I'd been doing for years and had started to skip. 

The weekly review. 

There's a story we tell ourselves about productive people. They start earlier, finish later, sleep less, do more. They're the first one in and the last one out. Their inbox is always at zero because they're always checking it. They're always on. 

This story is wrong. And it's causing enormous damage. 

Here's something I've been saying for years, and it still surprises people every time: 

Busy is not the same as productive. 

In fact, in my experience, the busiest people are often the least productive. And learning to be deliberately less busy is one of the most powerful things you can do for the quality of your work. 

Kindness rarely makes the headlines. It happens gently and quietly – but leads to spectacular results. 

I've spent the last few years running workshops and keynotes on kindness at work with organisations across financial services, healthcare, tech, charity, government and beyond. And the question I get asked most often isn't whether kindness matters – most leaders already believe it does – but how. How do you actually build it into the culture? How do you make it structural rather than accidental? How do you sustain it when things get hard? 

Here's what I've learned. 

There's a sentence I've been saying in workshops and keynotes for years now, and it never fails to land: 

Nice is for you. Kind is for them. 

People tend to pause when they hear it. Then something shifts. Because most of us have spent a long time thinking these two words mean the same thing – and realising they don't changes quite a lot. 

If you're an event organiser, an HR director or a leader putting together an away day, and you've been thinking about booking a keynote on kindness at work – this post is for you. 

I've been speaking professionally for well over a decade, and I've noticed that the questions people have when booking a keynote on kindness tend to cluster around a few common themes. Will it land with a sceptical audience? Is this appropriate for a corporate setting? What does the audience actually take away? How does it connect to business performance? 

Let me answer those questions directly. 

Most team away days look good on paper. A packed agenda. A high-energy facilitator. A few exercises thrown in to keep people awake. By the end, everyone’s tired, slightly overfed and still quietly unsure what they’re meant to do differently on Monday.

It doesn’t need to be this way.

A good away day earns its place in the calendar. It gives people space to think, reconnect and see the work with fresh eyes. And crucially, it changes behaviour afterwards.

After years of delivering KIND sessions and Productivity Ninja workshops, I’ve seen a few patterns in what works and what quietly derails the whole thing.

Let’s start with why many away days fall flat.

Most emails aren’t unkind because of what they say – but because of how they land.

We’ve all opened a message that looked perfectly reasonable on paper but somehow made our shoulders tense. The sender probably meant to be efficient; what we read was abrupt. In a world where we send hundreds of emails every week, those small lapses of tone have a big impact.

Writing kind emails doesn’t mean padding everything in niceties or avoiding hard truths. It means bringing clarity, empathy and care into the way we communicate – so that our intention matches the impact.

Self-kindness at work can feel awkward. Many of us have absorbed the story that it’s weak, self-indulgent or a distraction from “real work.” But here’s the reality: kindness starts with you.

When you treat yourself with compassion, you’re not just making your own life easier – you’re quietly showing everyone around you that it’s safe for them to do the same. Your self-talk, your boundaries and the way you look after yourself become a form of role-modelling. That’s the real leadership.

Every organisation I work with says it wants better teams. Higher trust. More honest conversations. Less conflict, more collaboration. People who actually want to be there. 

What most don't quite realise is that the thing underpinning all of that – the foundation the whole thing sits on – is kindness. Not the soft, sentimental kind. The clear-eyed, accountable, genuinely-caring kind. 

Kind teams aren't just nice places to work. They perform better, stay together longer, and handle pressure with more resilience. That's not wishful thinking – it's increasingly backed by evidence, and it's also what I've seen consistently across two decades of working with organisations. 

Here's what kind teams actually look like, why they outperform, and how to build one. 

When feedback springs from a place of kindness, it can strengthen relationships and spur personal growth. It’s about supporting each other’s development rather than pointing fingers. Imagine the difference between a boss who says, “This report is sloppy,” versus one who remarks, “I believe you could enhance this report by being more detailed in your analysis.” The latter, rooted in kindness, encourages improvement without deflating the recipient’s spirits.

Kindful derives from Middle English and has been quietly present in the language for centuries. But what does it actually mean – and why does it matter more than you'd think?