Do You Need Kindness as a Leader?
There’s a lot of good articles on the role of kindness in leadership, such as ones here and here. They explain how the best leaders lead with kindness and it’s the most important leadership trait.
I’m writing to explain that kindness is not a required leadership trait. If it was, you wouldn’t be able to build companies worth hundreds of billions without it.
Our most celebrated leaders today, such as Steve Jobs and Elon Musk, are known to be massive assholes. I’m going to explore the extent of their callous behavior and then explain why you should be a kind leader anyways.
Steve Jobs Threw Objects at Employees
Not something like a chair or a desk. But smaller things like wads of paper.
Jobs would directly confront early employees and call them idiots. He refused to give his friend and early employee any stock options. And, he’d fire people without notice. He didn’t change his ways with time either. In 2008, when MobileMe failed, he told the staff “you should hate each other for having let each other down.”
Jony Ive, one of Job’s closest friends, says that when Jobs gets frustrated, his best way to “achieve catharsis is to hurt somebody”.
Despite all this, he led a company that changed the world and is worth $2 Trillion. Many would still jump at the chance to work with him if they could, even while knowing all this.
Elon Musk Randomly Fires People out of Rage
One manager at Tesla had forbidden his subordinates from approaching Elon Musk’s desk. The reason being that he might ask an unexpected question, and if they didn’t respond appropriately their careers could end on the spot.
Musk would also publicly ridicule his employees and insult their competence. He berated an executive for not being in a meeting because he was taking time off after his wife gave birth.
If you pushed back against Musk on any of his grand projects (such as the fully autonomous Tesla factory), he would sometimes fire you. This can be justified by saying you need to be open to grand ideas if you’re working alongside someone like Musk.
But the problem with giving harsh consequences for raising objections is the culture it creates. The concerns smart people have is data. With that data you can come up with an action plan to solve the problem you’re trying to solve.
Musk and Jobs could get away with their random firings. Because when they did they’d have an army of smart people eager to take their place.
Why Be Kind?
Kindness is not necessary to get people to follow you. People tolerate cruel behavior as long as the value they get from you exceeds the pain of dealing with you. Jobs and Musk pushed people to their best and always taught their employees something.
So, if you’re a competent entrepreneur trying to build a legendary company, why should you be kind? After all, people will still want to work with you.
You should be kind because it helps you. Being kind to others makes you happier, reduces your stress and can even make you more energetic.
You can still make hard but necessary business decisions like firing people or giving honest feedback. But you can do it without destroying the basic dignity of other human beings. You can strive to mimic Bill Gates, who was harsh during the early days of Microsoft, but also reminded his employees that he respected them and their work.
So you don’t need kindness to build a legendary company. But I think you should be kind anyway. Because you’re not just a leader, you’re a human being.
