Kind Isn’t the Same as Easy

At work, you meet all kinds of people. Most are ambitious and driven. Many are loud, some are rude, and a few will do anything to carve out their place.

Then there are a handful who are kind, generous, sharp, and calm.

Over time I’ve noticed that this second group gets taken for granted. People assume they’re easy to convince, easy to hand work to, and easy to hold to a lower bar. If they ever want to be seen differently, they have to work twice as hard to change that perception.

It usually isn’t malice. It’s convenience. People take the path of least resistance, and the person who never pushes back becomes the cheapest place to get something done.

But their kindness isn’t the problem. The problem is that their yes costs nothing.

Kindness and firmness aren’t opposites. A calm person with a clear no earns a quieter kind of respect than the loud one ever will, because everyone knows their agreement means something.

What worries me most is the freshers watching all this. They see loud behavior get rewarded, because those rewards are visible. They don’t see the trust the calm person built, or the crisis that never happened because someone caught it early. So they learn the wrong lesson and start trading kindness for getting things done.

That needs to change. Telling people to be nicer won’t do it. It changes when someone in the room shows that you can be kind and firm at the same time and still get things done.

Be that person. Someone new is watching.