“Kindness is everywhere when you start noticing”
Sarah Browning
Noticing Kindness
Keynote Speaker
Consultant
Workshop Facilitator
10 Word Bio: Communicator | Kindness cheerleader | Big sister | Women's football fan | Amateur artist
Location: UK
“Now more than ever we need to understand the power of noticing kindness, it’s everywhere when you start looking”
Sarah Browning, founder of the transformational wellbeing programme Time for Kindness, inspires and teaches people to notice kindness in their work and wider life to improve their happiness and performance.
Sarah, you are a kindness cheerleader. Why do we need to look out for kindness?
Kindness is powerful because it connects us as human beings. There’s lots of kindness in the world, we just don’t talk about it enough yet. And let’s face it, there’s a lot of gloom on our socials and mainstream media, so we need to look out for the positives that make us feel more hopeful.
Once we have this realisation that kindness is all around us, we see it everywhere - and it’s an instant reframe of how we feel about the world, and ourselves.
How can businesses benefit from your kindness message?
Once people start to see kindness around them in their workplace, the benefits are clear and transformational. When your cultural value of kindness shows up in individuals’ behaviour, it unlocks a way of working and connecting that allows collaboration and co-creation to thrive. Kindness is at the core of psychological safety and belonging that we all need as a foundation to thrive.
When kindness is genuinely valued, individuals’ well-being improves, they make better decisions and they have increased progress in the business. My work has a very personal impact on people and how they go about work.
When you see kind, you feel better. And when you feel better, you perform better too.
What challenges do you face when talking about kindness in the workplace?
The main challenge is people haven’t thought of kindness as a business or leadership skill. And yet research shows just how powerful kindness is in a business setting.
A study for the University of Warwick* found that kindness increased happiness and happier people ended up 12% more productive than less happy people.
The Harvard Business Review Study ‘The Price of Incivility’** found that 25% of employees dealing with unkind behaviour took out their frustration on their customers.
My work isn’t about everyone being nice to each other, it’s about understanding how to use an appreciation of kindness to improve communication and connect with colleagues. Kindness paves the way for deeper conversations, ones that perhaps felt difficult in the past, and it unlocks creativity, a proven way to solve problems and come to resolutions.
So how can a leader be a kind leader?
A kind leader starts by being a good listener. They use listening and empathy to develop positive relationships and an understanding about what their team needs to succeed. They use those relationships and understanding to empower others to be the best version of themselves, whatever that means for them. A kind leader demonstrates kindness as a value throughout their work.
Where should the focus be for creating a positive future for work?
There needs to be fundamental changes to the way work is organised and valued, and what is regarded as success. Finding ways to support people to be happier and more connected is part of the solution. This is about going deeper than before: understanding why we work, why we are driven to do good work, how our success is a collective measure not an individual one. And getting better conversations moving around an organisation.
The kindness workshop I run is one of those ways to start healthy conversations that have a positive ripple effect.
Share a simple exercise to start practising kindness at work
The Kindness Sharing exercise
Start your team meetings and events by sharing stories of kindness for 5 minutes.
You can be broad and ask ‘What’s your recent story of kindness’? or you can be more specific and ask ‘What act of kindness did you notice this week?’
It always gives people a buzz of positive energy – and that’s a great position to start your meetings from. You still have to discuss operational challenges and other tricky things, but you’re doing it with a more positive energy than if you just launch straight into the tough stuff.
Recommended reading
Kind: The Quiet Power of Kindness at Work by Graham Allcott.
This sums up so much of the principles behind why this stuff matters and gives practical advice for putting those principles into practice in your business.
Work with Sarah
Book Sarah as a ‘warm-up act’ - If you are running an event and need something a bit different to get the day started, Sarah runs a 20 minute kindness stories activity that will raise the positivity and energy in the room.
Run a Noticing Kindness Workshop - Do you want to improve your people’s wellbeing and the way they connect and collaborate? Harnessing the power of kindness in your business or organisation will help you do that.
Book a keynote talk - ‘Why kindness matters - how to use kindness to unlock your employees potential’