Governance Feature Article January 2019

Gay Haskins and Alison Gill cite a range of organisational examples, to suggest that kindness should be more to the fore in governance and in the boardroom ….

Have you ever thought that you should be emphasising kindness as a key feature of organisational success? Is kindness a core value of your organisation? Does the importance of kindness in leadership often come up in board meetings, board appointments and governance frameworks? The probable answer is, ‘No’.

Yet those of us who live in English-speaking countries will hear the word ‘kind’ very often. It is one of the 500 most frequently used words in the English language. Kind actions are remembered: they have a ‘boomerang’ effect: Kindness begets Kindness. The evidence suggests that kindness costs nothing yet creates significant value, yet its role in the boardroom is, to a large extent, unexplored.

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