Kind Leadership
Those of you who know history, know that politics has never been kind. Historically, the papers were unkind to President John Adams. Both the papers and his opponents called him “Gourd Head.” The other side of the aisle made terrible statements about President Andrew Jackson’s wife to the point that some believed it caused her death. Papers wrote a list of insults that were used against Abraham Lincoln. Even in contemporary politics, the demeaning of the other opponent has continued. Countless individuals spoke terrible things about President Barak Obama as he ran and served the country. All of this might be part of the political landscape, but that is not how Christian leaders are called to respond or speak of others.
The denomination I served with for 27 years recently elected two new individuals to two of its top six positions. In the midst of several days of elections it turned ugly, as some who did not like one of the candidates began to spread unkind stories, words, and downright lies about the individual. It was a low moment for the church and the leaders who call themselves Christians.
George Washington Carver was born into slavery, the first black student at Iowa State, the first black student to earn a bachelor’s degree in science, and the first president of one of our historically black colleges. He was a man who understood the power of kindness. “Be kind to others. How far you go in life depends upon your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life, you will have been all of these.”
Unfortunately, when we often think of leadership, we think of anything but kindness. We celebrate those who bully their opponents and use others as pawns to advance their agenda. We model our styles of leadership after those who weaponize cruelty. We look for individuals who will fight for a cause and demean those who face them. We seek to follow those who highlight and exacerbate our fears while making judgement on others. We seldom, if ever, ask what kindness would look like in leadership.
Yet, that might be one of our most important questions. How would leadership change if we chose to be kind? How would the world of politics, the workplace, the church, our communities, and home look if we simply chose to be kind? Let me ask you this. Who are the people that had the greatest positive influence on you? In the vast majority of cases I would guess they were kind.
Kindness is most often marked with the ability to see, believe, and want the best in the other. Kind Leadership begins with seeing the best in others (even those we don’t agree with) and continually demonstrates the qualities of…
1. Integrity
2. Service
3. Generosity
4. Humility
If you want to be a kind leader, it begins here.
Finally, I would suggest today, that anyone who cannot lead with kindness is not worth following. This is not a question of politics, faith, orthodoxy, policy, power, or the economy. It is about the individual leader. Those who get ahead by demeaning, dehumanizing, and destroying the other are not the kind of people that deserve our support, our vote, or our allegiance. You have a choice! Choose Kindness!!! Or as one author says… “The path to a kind world begins with kinder people. – Don’t be a jerk!”