The Quiet Power of Kindness at Work with Graham Allcott

In this episode, we explore the intersection of kindness and productivity in the workplace with author and entrepreneur Graham Allcott. Graham shares insights from his upcoming book "Kind: The Quiet Power of Kindness at Work" and discusses how kindness, empathy, and trust can lead to increased productivity, creativity, and overall success in business.

In This Episode, You'll Learn:

• The difference between kindness and niceness in the workplace
• How kindness can improve productivity, creativity, and team resilience
• The concept of the "Mother Teresa effect" and its impact on workplace behavior
• Practical ways to incorporate kindness into your daily work life

Practical Takeaway:

Experiment with the "Eight Principles of Kindfulness at Work" mentioned by Graham, starting with "Kindness Starts with You." Practice self-kindness and then extend that kindness to your colleagues by slowing down, listening deeply, and giving others your fullest attention.

Resources Mentioned:

• "Kind: The Quiet Power of Kindness at Work" - link
• "How to be a Productivity Ninja" - link
• Graham's weekly email: "Rev up for the Week" - link

Connect With Our Guest:

• Graham's Website

To stay connected and continue the conversation, be sure to follow us on LinkedIn.

And don't forget to check out our previous episodes for more tips and strategies to boost your workplace happiness. You can find them on your favorite podcast platform or on our website.

If you have any questions, comments, or topic suggestions for future episodes, please reach out to us. We'd love to hear from you!

Stay inspired, stay motivated, and stay happy at work!

Transcript

Laura Hamill: 0:06

Music, welcome back for another episode of the happy at work podcast with Laura Tessa and Michael.

Tessa Misiaszek: 0:14

Each week, we have thoughtful conversations with leaders, founders and authors about happiness at work.

Michael McCarthy: 0:22

Tune in each Thursday for a new conversation. Enjoy the show. Welcome to the happy at work Podcast. I'm Michael McCarthy, and I'm excited to welcome our guests from the UK. Graham Alcott, author and entrepreneur, Graham, welcome to the show.

Graham Allcott: 0:50

Thank you. Lovely to be here.

Michael McCarthy: 0:52

So Graham, just to introduce yourself to our audience, could you let us know what you're currently doing and what was your career journey that got you to where you are today?

Graham Allcott: 1:04

Yeah, so I am a speaker and author and entrepreneur. The latest thing that I'm talking about is what you see in the background here. So this is a new book that's coming out called kind, the quiet power of kindness at work. And it's sort of four or five years, really, of work on researching the links between kindness, empathy, trust, psychological safety, and how those things really affect us in the work that we do. And the background story to that is, I have a company called Think productive. We're in the UK. We're also in North America, Western Europe, in the Emirates and in Australia as well. And we're all about helping people to do their best work. So we were born out of a book I did coming up 10 years ago now, called How to be a productivity ninja, which has been a global bestseller. And yeah, really the kindness work that I'm engaged in now really came out of that work on productivity. So that's been the journey before that. I worked in charities, set up a couple of things, and, yeah, the business that I have now is really my sort of main pursuit, really, is going into companies working in that B to be kind of way, you know, keynote talks, workshops, that kind of thing. You know, it's, it's

Michael McCarthy: 2:25

interesting that you talk about your book productivity ninja. And I can certainly understand why I would be a best seller. Because everyone wants to, you know, squeeze the dime out of the nickel, if you can do it. And I'm curious, what did you start to notice about the intersection of kindness in the workplace and its impact on productivity? Is there a relationship? Yeah,

Graham Allcott: 2:50

there's, there's a relationship in in both directions, depending on where you start from. So the the idea for the book came out of me doing a keynote to an investment bank in Rome, and I'd given this one hour presentation all about productivity, people were nodding a lot. It seemed to be going really well. And then at the end of the session, I got into the Q and A and someone said, Graham, that's all really interesting. We get productivity, but you're also an entrepreneur. What's the thing that you've not told us in the productivity session that has been your secret to success. And the first words out of my mouth very instinctively were kindness. Feels everything. If you're kind, you win, simple as that. And it kind of launched into this very divided room where about 10% of the room had this real bristling reaction to it, where it was, hang on. What about Elon Musk and Donald Trump and Steve Jobs and like, surely the bad guys win, and then lots of other people are on my side. So it was like this pitch battle between team kind and team, screw them all and be evil. Yeah. And I think what I learned from that was there is a very strong correlation, certainly for me, in the way I've built teams over the years, is that when you have more empathy, when you have more trust, you know, I see those things trust particularly, I see as something that eliminates due diligence. So when you have trust, you can act quickly. You don't have to be sussing out every single decision and kind of feeling around everything. So once you have trust, everything gets quicker because you don't have the due diligence. And so I see kindness as definitely something that that does push productivity, because it bonds teams and it brings people to a place where they're able to do better work. And then, yeah, it's just been, even though we've been, I've been talking productivity for many years. I've always done it from a mindset of kindness. You know, the first words in how to be a productivity ninja are dear human being. And the whole purpose of that was to say, let's not treat this as How can, how can we squeeze, you know that that last bit of value out? Let's start from a place. Of we need humans to have a sense of well being, to be to be working in a way that's sustainable, rather than working in a way where they're going to burn themselves out. So I kind of feel like there's a really nice sort of overlap between the topics and an interplay between the topics. But then I think a lot of people do see them as quite adversary, or quite, um, you know, or like it like, it's a huge shift from from my previous work. So, yeah, it's an interesting it's an interesting question. I think that so

Michael McCarthy: 5:30

for the people who are listening to the podcast now and are like, Oh my God, these two guys are, like, hugging trees and, like, really getting along. What would you say to those who feel that kindness is weakness, and if you're too kind at work, it's all going to fall apart or bad things will happen. What are your thoughts on that?

Graham Allcott: 5:53

Yeah, so kindness gets confused with weakness. It gets confused with being soft. And I think, I think the thing with that is, the people who accuse, the people who say kindness is weakness, they are slightly confused. What they're really talking about is niceness. And there's a big difference between nice and kind, right? So the way I the way I put it, is nice is telling people what they want to hear, and kind is telling people what they need to hear, and so I think of kindness as being about the marriage of truth and grace, and you need truth at work, right? You need to have a conversation when someone is underperforming. You need to have a conversation where you like need that feedback, because the presentation you've just done wasn't up to scratch, and it needs to be improved. We need truth at work, and truth, often, the truth that cuts through is the stuff that, you know, really ups our game, challenges us to help us, helps us to perform better. But how do you deliver that? You can't deliver that truth without grace. Otherwise you get into a place of, you know, quite toxic teams quite quickly, because everyone's just falling back on themselves and just not looking out for the care of teammates. So the way I see it is like, yeah, if you have a completely nice culture that shirks the truth and shies away from the truth, then that can be quite weak quite quickly, and it will definitely fall down when times are hard, but if you've built trust up, and then you can deliver truth with grace, then you have the ability to be much more resilient, I think. And I actually think that's quite, you know, people think of kindness as soft. I think that's quite badass, right? To have a really strong, resilient culture, and to be able to have relationships at work where you can really call stuff out, where you can really, like, you know, stand up to truth and embrace truth, but knowing that you're doing that for the other person, I just think that's like, it's actually a really difficult skill set to master, and one that inevitably, I think, leads to a lot of success.

Michael McCarthy: 7:55

I have a case study for you, and I'd love you to interrupt. I'll just tell you what happened and how I felt. So I was recently in Buenos Aires for three weeks learning Spanish, because I want to teach in Spanish. And the day before in our class, a new student came in, a woman about my age from Holland, clearly a business person, and her Spanish was really, really easy to understand. So I and I just sort of resonated with her, and we were doing these team exercises. She's at the other table, and I'm at my with my partner. She's with hers, and I'm an American. I'm loud, high ceilings, no carpet, and so I was loud, and I didn't know I was loud because I was too busy talking being an American. And she says, she leans over, and I'm gonna say not nicely, but kindly. She said dear, dear, wonderful co student, I'm so glad you're in the class, but I can't hear, is it possible that you would just turn down the volume? I would so appreciate that. And I thought that was the nicest way she could have done it. I mean, she couldn't have done it any nicer. And I thought, I know I'm loud. I've been loud since I was born. I get it, and I'm unaware of it sometimes. And I thought that was the nicest way. So I I got quiet. But then later, during the break, she was in the room on the phone, and again, the acoustics were really loud, and two people in the room on break were talking pretty loudly, and I saw her put her finger in her ear so she could hear. I went to those two and I said, Could you speak a little softer? She's on the phone, and I think she's having some trouble hearing. Then another person came in and was loudly to me because it was break time. Oh, what are you doing for lunch? And I said, she's on the phone. It's like she enrolled me to like, do these two extra things. And I'm curious, how would you interpret like, what would you say about Wow.

Graham Allcott: 9:55

I mean, do you so? Do you feel like at the end of that you. You were you, you were kind of manipulated into changing the the societal rules of that space, in terms of, we, like you, should have been leave living with a bit more volume, and that, that first thing led you to behave in a different way.

Michael McCarthy: 10:15

Instead of, I would agree with everything, I would just switch the word manipulated. It. It was voluntary. I was appreciative that she said it so nicely. And I'm pretty sensitive. It's really easy to, like, hurt my feelings. So I thought that was I was so appreciated that she was so kind about it, that I knew that she's sensitive to loud noises, and the room was pretty bad for noise. Yeah, she kind of enrolled me without asking, like, almost to, like, pay her back, to say thank you for being so nice about it. I helped her out twice by telling two other groups to be quiet, yeah, and it was like she enrolled me.

Graham Allcott: 10:53

Well, there's a there is a thing that I've written about in the book called The Mother Teresa effect. And basically the Mother Teresa effect is when and this so the study was they showed people a sort of 40, I think it's 40 minute video, like showed students his 40 minute video of Mother Teresa doing kind acts. And what they got from it was the stress relieving chemicals, which is called salivary immunoglobin, in your mouth, you have much higher levels of those stress relieving chemicals in your mouth just by watching Mother Teresa do kind things, but it's the same response as you get when you do something kind for somebody else. So in terms of the ripple effect of kindness, you are more likely to be kind if you've just been kind. You're more likely to be kind if someone's just been kind to you, and you're also more likely to be kind if you've just witnessed other people being kind. So in all of those scenarios, you've got this, this lovely ripple effect that's happening where, when you put kindness into a space, you know you are, you are changing the expectations about where kindness is next going to come, and you're giving everybody else that permission to be kinder. So I would look at that and say, you know, what a lovely example of that sort of knock on effect, as long as you were feeling okay about the fact that the rules have changed a little bit, because it sounds like they changed for the better, everyone was being a bit more considerate, everyone was being a bit more empathetic to each other's needs. And I just think that's a really good example of if you, if you take that little microcosm into a team and say, now you've got a team that's looking out for each other and looking after each other. And that sounds, sounds amazing.

Michael McCarthy: 12:32

What I found interesting about Christine, and she's from Holland, was there was the she had this really interesting I kind of call it quiet steel, like leadership, quality of strength. But it's not aggressive. It's not out there. They don't even speak. It's almost just like a posture of, I'm standing tall, and I'm, you know, my shoulders are back, and there's just sort of this aura of, I have power. I am a leader, but I'm not a jerk, and I'm not aggressive and don't play with me like nothing is said. Some people just have that aura, and she had it along with kindness, but I never saw it as weakness. I felt like I wanted to work for her. I wanted her to lead me because I liked how she did it. And I'm curious if you've seen that there there are bumps in productivity or the organization working better when people like the kindness and they work better because of it. Have you seen anything along those lines? Yeah.

Graham Allcott: 13:39

I mean, there's loads of studies. There was one where they they basically had workers at Coca Cola in Madrid, and they asked them to commit six secret acts of kindness every day. So just basically, just go around your day, just doing kind things. And they found that not only did productivity go up, but also creativity went up, and it's quite easy to see why, right? So if you're having to think in a slightly different way, and how do I empathize with with those people over there? What do they need? How can I come up with different and surprising ways to be kind? Because I'm doing this experiment, so suddenly you're just thinking slightly outside of that status quo, that normal, you know, day to day way of thinking. So there's, there's loads of studies like that, where, when you've got more kindness and you've got more empathy and you have more trust, more psychological safety, you know, it's, it's not just productivity, actually. It's, it's also happiness, retention, creativity, critical thinking. There's a whole bunch of stuff that that improves in in Kinder environments. Yeah. So,

Michael McCarthy: 14:45

so here's a fun one for our audience. So I'm going to ask you a quick question. So let's say if two people, one person did a kindness, person received the kindness, did a kindness, I like that. Who feels better? Yeah, who feels better the person who received the kindness or gave the kindness?

Graham Allcott: 15:06

Well, I suppose I would. I'm not sure the answer to that, and I one of my answers to that might be like, who cares if both of them feel good? You know, I think there's often questions that that come up around kindness, which is like, what's the difference between kindness and generosity? And, you know, I think sometimes we get to philosophical about these things when you know, fundamentally, if something good is happening, do we? Do we need to, to compare it to something else good. It's just good. And so, yeah, like, I would say that in a way, like, who cares? I would also say, though, that the which, maybe I'm about to answer your question actually, so it's not to, not to be underestimated the power of what they call the helpers high so the person who is giving out the kind act. There's a whole bunch of and so again, it's oxytocin, it's dopamine, it's a lot of those feel good chemicals in the brain. Cortisol goes down 23% there's a whole bunch of stuff that when you're when you are being kind it's, it's seen as very, very good for your mental health scientifically. So, you know, I would say that from from that perspective, you don't need to wait for someone else to be kind to you go out and do kind things, and you will actually just feel better as a result of that. You know,

Michael McCarthy: 16:29

I love that. I've never heard of that phrase, helpers high. But, yeah, I totally get it. I teach my students do something kind for people, and you might feel better than them. It's a good feeling. And a few months ago, I had my first major surgery ever. I've never had anything done, and I was handicapped for 10 days like I mean, I was straight up, crutches, handicapped, and I decided, okay, I need help. And I just put in my mindset when anyone asks me, do I need help? I'm just going to say yes, because I want to make them feel good, and I also want to carry my groceries and walk my dog. So literally, every person that said, Can I help you? I was like, yes, even if I didn't need it. It was funny. I think a lot of people don't like to ask for help or receive kindness, and I'm curious if in your research, you've noticed that some people are better at giving kindness, but they're not feeling great about it. Receiving any thoughts on that. Well,

Graham Allcott: 17:30

let me move away from research and just be personal. So I have a son who's 10. He would there was a lot of complications in the pregnancy. And to cut long story short, we found out that he has a unique chromosomal disorder. Unique when you talk about chromosomes is a really bad thing. We like to think of our kids as unique, but unique when it comes to chromosomes is really bad because it's like, we don't know what the playbook is here, like, how do we look after him like whatever. So, so he's had quite a lot of health challenges. We've probably, I think we're at 11 major surgeries now, mainly spinal and then a couple on his eyes and various things. He has autism and developmental delay, but I tell you what he has. He's such a gift, like he's taught me more about kindness than anyone else, and the reason for that is that what I see of him in day to day life, as he moves through the world, he is a vessel for everyone else's kindness. Like as he moves through the world, it attracts this this kindness. So it's little things, like when he gets invited to a kid's birthday party, I get a text from the mum, and it's like, how do we make the space autism friendly for when Roscoe comes, you know, or just those little you know? Here's a photo of the room, because I know that's a really useful autism thing. And I think autism awareness has really upped a few notches in the last few years. And so people are more aware of the kind of things that are useful and helpful. But I get to see that every day. And so I think, you know, certainly for me, before having him, I had a really hard time asking for help with things, and I kind of have no choice with him, right? Like, a lot of the time I need help. I need, I need to be the person that's filling in those forms and getting the extra place on a on an event, or whatever. So so he's got a personal assistant with him, or whatever. I'm I'm kind of for him, for me to make, to adjust the world. For him often involves the health of other people. And, yeah, I've really noticed how that not only makes those people feel good, but often how it really bonds me with that person as well. So like, I find I get into some really deep conversations or or things go from being a chore to being quite interesting because of that, that connection and. Kindness that's happening. So yeah, that's just a very personal thing, but I do, I do, yeah, coming back to where you started, I think a lot of people, particularly if you're entrepreneurial, if you've had a successful career, if you're senior in an organization, you often think that to ask for help is a sign of weakness. But I actually think there's, you know, there's, there's a, there's a sort of shift that I've made in the last few years, which is, I no longer think of a sort of, you know, heightened form of independence as being the the sort of like the most developed form of society or capitalism, I think of a heightened form of interdependence as being really what we should be aiming for, rather than everything being so individualistic. Like, it's when we look at how we interact with each other and how actually, we can all add value to what each other's doing, and we're greater than some of our parts. Like, you know, that's where I think society gets much more interesting than this kind of hyper individualized competition route that we're that we're kind of generally finding ourselves

Michael McCarthy: 21:09

in. I love that story, and I think we're very similar in I was just raised in a culture if you don't ask for help because it is showing weakness. And if you are that powerful person, you have to keep that facade going. And I've completely shifted the way you've shifted as well. I've just done it in a different way, because I'm teaching college students, I asked them for help to empower them like I'm in Spanish, and a lot of my kids speak Spanish, and I'm I'm a baby walking in Spanish right now, and I just asked them these simple things, and they're so kind about it, you know, like, when I make a mistake, which happens in every sentence, you know, they're really sweet about it, and there is no change in respect. But I can see they stand a little taller. They're like, I'm important, and I was helpful, and I had value, and I helped their professor. And I think the knockoff effect of everyone doing this can really be impactful. And if someone who's listening now says, You know what, I want to take a little baby step, I want to put my feet in the water, let's say there's a manager, or maybe a direct report that doesn't have a lot of influence and power, what could each person do on their own to bring a little kindness into the organization to see if it would work for them?

Graham Allcott: 22:29

Okay, so in the book, there are eight principles of kindfulness at work, and there's sort of almost eight different lenses, or eight different ways of thinking around kindness. Let me share a couple of them, which I think could be really helpful. One So, so the first one of eight is kindness. Starts with you. I think back to what we're just talking about. People really struggle with this concept, but the idea is you can't role model kindness for other people if you're stuck in a scarcity mindset where you're not giving yourself kindness. So you've got to start with you. You've got to start with giving yourself what you need that is not selfish and self indulgent. It will actually help you to be kinder to everybody else. And so kind of starts with you. Another one, I think, which is a really important there's a really important relationship between these two concepts, kindness and slowness. So when you slow down, you spot opportunities to be kinder much more quickly. And again, back to the self kindness, you're much more likely to be kinder to yourself if you just slow down that little bit and you know, then you start to notice your own emotions. You're a bit more mindful. Start to see what you need. You start to see what everybody else needs. And then, I guess the third one, just in terms of, if we think about work, and we think about, what do we do all day in our work? The third one I'll share is, listen deeply. I think giving somebody your fullest attention, which is ultimately the most precious resource that we have, right? People say time is our most precious resource. We actually have a bit less of our fullest attention than we have time, right? So I think of our fullest attention as being our most precious resource. So giving someone your fullest attention is probably the most generous thing you can do, and listening is so commonplace in the work that we do, but also one of those things that we take for granted, because it's just we just, we turn up to meetings, we listen, whatever. But just think about practicing your listening skills, and think about the things that you can do to deepen the way that you listen and how you listen. And I think that, in itself, is not only a really kind act, but it will start to open up the possibilities of and the opportunity, opportunities to be kinder. You'll start to know. Notice those opportunities and start to notice where people need kindness much more when you just just deepen that sense of listening.

Michael McCarthy: 25:08

I love, I love both of these. And what's interesting, I like the slowness. Every year, instead of a New Year's resolution, I have like a theme. And so this year's theme is savoring, where I noticed that if I'm if I'm too fast, yeah, no more joy in anything. I'm, you know, I'm rushing, and there's, there's no more fun. So I love the savoring part, which is very close to slowness. And there was a quote I did we just we taught a class yesterday, and it was about listening that listening to someone deeply is very close to feeling loved. And I think a theologian said it, but I noticed when people like really, really listening to me, yeah, I feel, I guess you could say love, but certainly appreciated or respected. And when I give it to other people, I've had to work on being a better listener. Usually I just think about a better response, and I've really had to work on it. And I can tell how much people really do appreciate it when you put the phone down and you don't think of a better response like you really just lean in and just focus on repeating something that they just said, or a follow up question based on what they just said, so that they know, you know another one I do that I'd love to share with people. I learned this from a dean at a business school. If you're on Zoom and you put your two hands together under your chin like this, everyone knows that you're listening to them. You're not off to the side on the phone, but, but these, these are great. I think, I think slowing down and eliciting deeply is super important. And we're just coming to the to the end of our time together. And Graham, are there any final thoughts or things that you want to share with the audience that you think are really important, like the release date of your new book. Let's, let's tell people how to get a hold of it. When's it coming out? What's the title? Where can they get it? So

Graham Allcott: 27:07

we come out in the UK on October 10, and then we'll be out in the US. I think it's January, 6 or seventh, next. Okay? It's with Bloomsbury business, and it'll be on in all as I often say, it's available in all good bookshops and some bad ones too, mentioning rodo, Uncle Jeff. But yeah, if you want to connect with me, I do this. I do a weekly email, which goes out on a Sunday evening. And the idea is one positive or productive idea for the week ahead. And it's free. If you want to get on that, you just go to Graham orcop.com and yeah, you'll see a little form on there that you fill in. It's called Rev up for the week. And so the idea is just one positive thought, to just power your week on a Monday and we send it out every Sunday for free. And so yeah, to connect, connect with me there, reply to those emails. And yeah, we'd love to chat

Michael McCarthy: 28:02

beautiful Graham, thank you so much for your time. And we'd love to interview you again about, you know, six or 12 months after the book has been out, just to see what's the impact been, you know, what have you learned? What's really resonating with people? And I've really appreciated today's conversation with you that

Graham Allcott: 28:17

would be my pleasure. Thank you. Michael, okay,

Michael McCarthy: 28:20

take care, everyone. Bye, bye. We hope you've enjoyed this episode. If you'd like to hear future episodes, be sure to subscribe to the happy at work podcast and leave us a review with your thoughts.

Tessa Misiaszek: 28:35

Are you interested in speaking on a future episode, or want to collaborate with us? Let us know. You can send us an email at admin, at happy, at work, podcast.com,

Laura Hamill: 28:46

and lastly, follow us on LinkedIn or Twitter for even more happiness. See you soon. You.