We need more role models of kind leaders in business

Jun 13

There's a dominant story about what effective leadership looks like. It's decisive, demanding, a little bit feared. It gets results by applying pressure. It doesn't have time for feelings.

You know the archetype. The brilliant bastard. The high-performer who's hell to work for but somehow always delivers the numbers. The leader who's celebrated in business press and studied in case studies while their former team members quietly look for jobs elsewhere.

Here's my problem with that story: it's not accurate, and it's not the whole picture. Kind leaders exist, they get results, and they build organisations that last. We just don't hear about them as much – because the drama of the difficult genius makes better copy than the quiet effectiveness of someone who simply treats people well.

That needs to change. And not just because kindness is nicer. Because it works.

The role model gap

Think about the leaders you've admired most in your career. The ones you'd work for again. The ones who brought out something better in you. I'd be surprised if many of them fit the brilliant bastard mould.

More likely, they were people who listened properly. Who gave you honest feedback because they respected you enough to be straight. Who took responsibility when things went wrong instead of looking for someone to blame. Who noticed when you were struggling and did something about it.

Those leaders exist in every sector and at every level. But they're underrepresented in the stories we tell about business success. The aggressive turnaround. The visionary founder who drove everyone to the edge. These make headlines. The leader who built a high-trust culture over a decade and retained most of their best people – that's a harder story to tell, but it's a more important one.

John Timpson runs one of the most unusual businesses in the UK – a retail chain that operates on radical trust, gives employees almost complete autonomy, and has a decades-long record of profitability and loyalty. He doesn't feature in many leadership textbooks. He should be in all of them.

Mary Portas has spent years making the case that kindness and commercial success are not opposites. That how you treat your people is your brand, as much as any marketing campaign. She's right.

These are not anomalies. They're examples of something that's available to any leader willing to choose it.

Why visible role models matter

Most leadership development happens through observation, not training. We learn to lead by watching the people above us. We absorb what gets rewarded. We replicate what we see celebrated.

If the leaders held up as exemplars are consistently the ones who drove hard and didn't much care about the cost to people, that's what gets absorbed and replicated. The culture of a whole industry – of whole generations of managers – gets shaped by which stories we choose to tell.

This is why representation matters in leadership as much as anywhere. Not just gender or ethnicity, though those matter too. But visible models of different ways of leading. If young managers only see aggressive high-performers celebrated, that's the script they'll follow. Give them examples of kind leaders who also delivered – and the script gets richer.

I wrote KIND: The Quiet Power of Kindness at Work partly for this reason. Not to argue that kindness is nice to have, but to make the evidence-based case that it's one of the most strategically effective things a leader can choose. And to give people the language and the framework to do it, in organisations that might not yet be making it easy.

What kind leadership actually looks like

It's worth being specific, because kind leadership gets caricatured as softness – as an absence of standards, a reluctance to have difficult conversations, a preference for being liked over being effective.

That's not what I mean. Not at all.

Kind leadership is honest. It gives real feedback rather than vague encouragement. It has the difficult conversation because it respects the person enough to tell them the truth. As Brené Brown puts it: clear is kind, unclear is unkind. Clarity is one of the most important acts of kindness a leader can offer.

Kind leadership is accountable. It doesn't hide behind process or blame the team when things go wrong. It creates psychological safety – the environment where people can flag problems, take risks and learn from mistakes without fear of punishment.

Kind leadership is present. It notices people. It listens properly – not waiting for the gap to speak, but actually taking in what's being said. It slows down enough to see the human being in front of it, not just the task to be completed.

And kind leadership is demanding. It holds people to high standards – not through fear, but through genuine investment in their development. The kindest leaders I've encountered were also the ones who expected the most, because they believed in the people they were leading.

How to model it yourself

You don't have to be CEO to model kind leadership. The most powerful thing any leader – at any level – can do is simply decide to be a good example of it in their own context.

That means being honest when honesty is uncomfortable. Giving credit generously. Taking responsibility when things don't go well. Protecting your team's time and energy. Noticing when someone is struggling and doing something about it before they have to ask.

It means building a culture in your immediate sphere of influence that you'd be proud to work in yourself. People will notice. It will ripple outward.

The business world has enough role models of the driven, demanding, take-no-prisoners variety. What it needs more of is people willing to demonstrate publicly and consistently that there's another way – and that it works.

KIND: The Quiet Power of Kindness at Work sets out the full case and the practical framework. The free 8 Ways to Kindness video course is a practical starting point. And the KIND Resources pack has tools to help you embed this in your team. If you'd like to bring this thinking into your organisation as a keynote, find out more about speaking here.

Frequently asked questions

What is kind leadership?

Kind leadership is an approach to leading that prioritises honesty, clarity, genuine care and psychological safety – without sacrificing standards or accountability. It's the opposite of the brilliant bastard archetype: it gets results through trust and investment in people rather than through fear or pressure.

Can kind leaders be tough and demanding?

Yes – and the best ones usually are. Kindness isn't the absence of high standards. It's the willingness to hold people to those standards with respect and genuine investment in their development. The most demanding leaders I've encountered were also the kindest, because they believed in the people they were leading enough to expect the best from them.

Why don't we hear more about kind leaders in business?

Because drama makes better copy. The difficult genius, the aggressive turnaround, the visionary founder who drove everyone to the edge – these stories are more narratively satisfying than the leader who built a high-trust culture over a decade and retained most of their best people. But that second story is the more important one, and it's the one that needs more airtime.

How can I become a better role model of kind leadership?

Start with the basics: be honest when honesty is uncomfortable, give credit generously, take responsibility when things go wrong, and notice people – actually notice them, not just their output. The leaders who model kindness most effectively don't make a big deal of it. They just make consistent choices, day after day, that signal to their teams that people matter here.

Graham Allcott