Kindness as a strategy: world kindness day 2025
Today is World Kindness Day
In the unrelenting world of product and transformation, kindness is often dismissed as “soft”. In reality, it’s the heartbeat that keeps performance alive
Fear is the arrhythmia. It slows decisions down, paralyses teams, and drags delivery off tempo. Kindness restores rhythm. It reduces friction, accelerates alignment, and multiplies productivity
But speed without stamina is short lived. When exhaustion sets in, even the best roadmaps collapse. Burnout is the silent killer in product and transformation. Kindness protects capacity. It sustains energy across long change cycles and keeps high performers engaged when workloads spike
And when the politics flare up, as they always inevitably do, kindness steadies the pulse. Turf wars drain momentum whilst kindness reframes conflict, disarms resistance, and redirects energy back into outcomes
Kindness isn’t just a fluffy concept that you broadly bundle in with general sentiment. It’s part of your core infrastructure when it comes to creating exceptional experiences that invoke loyalty. It’s the heartbeat of high performance, wellbeing, and trust when everything else feels uncertain
The leaders remembered for product and transformation successes aren’t those who pushed the hardest. They’re the ones who kept the kindness heartbeat strong when everything else was at risk
This World Kindness Day, the question isn’t about whether you value kindness. The real question is whether you are deploying kindness as a strategy. It’s easy to be kind when the stakes are low. But when all hell breaks loose and chaos is rife, are you doing the hard work to be kind to yourself and others when it matters?
Want to deploy kindness as a strategy in your organisation?
Let’s work on this together. Here are three ways:
Influencing for Impact: This practical 2-day workshop is for you if you want to influence a decision maker, influence a change in customer or colleague behaviour, or influence someone to buy something from you
Executive and Leadership Team Coaching: Work directly with Lai-Ling to problem solve for your specific situation in a confidential setting. This is for you if you want to develop and execute on a game plan that is 100% tailored to you
Leadership Development: Invest in the product and transformation leaders in your company with leadership development that is customised for their role. This is for you if you want your people to learn about people and politics