5. Micromanage
If you’ve done your homework and hired the right people, there should be no need to micromanage them. Give them direction, set challenging but realistic goals and keep them well motivated. By telling employees exactly what to do you destroy any motivation they might have to think for themselves and make valuable contributions.

4. Fail to Follow Through
Setting directions and providing goals are primary tools of a great leader, but if you don’t follow through, employees quickly learn to ignore what you have to say. Provide a few simple clearly communicated directions and then return to the subject within a reasonable period of time. Employees will quickly learn that you mean what you say.

3. Don’t Keep Secrets
Be as open and honest as possible with your employees. Poor leaders often use secrecy as a way to wield power. However, the less employees know the less able they are to act effectively. In addition, secrecy creates resentment and fosters gossip within the ranks. Google maintains an intranet that has information on all company strategies and current projects. The risk of secrets leaking out is less than productivity gained be everyone working together.

2. Play Favorites
Employees need an even playing field. They need to feel that if they work hard and excel at what they do they will be able to rise up in the ranks. Too often family ties or friendships bias leaders. Employees begin to spend more time and thought currying favor. Both those being favored and those out of favor will be less motivated to work hard. And remember, a perception of favoritism is almost as bad as favoritism itself.

1. Deceive Employees
One small lie can have profound effects within an organization. Once employees believe a leader is willing to lie, they have no basis to distinguish fact from fiction. And it often doesn’t matter who the lie is directed towards. Often leaders will lie to clients or authorities and keep employees as co-conspirators. But if leaders are willing to lie to clients, employees realize these same leaders are probably willing to lie to them in other circumstances.

10. Find an Inspirational Space
There is nothing special about most places of business, but there are notable exceptions. The campus of the household goods company S.C. Johnson contains three Frank Lloyd Wright buildings. Companies won’t want to drain the corporate coffers to create architectural masterpieces, but a little thought devoted to what distinguishes the place of work from the mundane world outside, can go a long way.

9. Set the Right Culture
As a leader you want a work culture that guides employees towards higher standards. Openness, resilience and engagement are fundamental for setting the right cultural landscape. A good leader encourages his employees by setting exciting challenges. The right challenges boost the employee’s creativity and engagement and improve the company’s productivity.

8. Measure Results
Good leaders- yes even kind ones- measure results. No matter what you are trying to do – lose weight, jump higher, improve shareholder return, – unless you measure there is no chance of improving. Good leaders see measures as organization-wide indicators of performance that require collective analyses and problem solving.

7. Money is Not Everything
Getting paid in line with industry standards is important, of course, as is being rewarded in other ways for work well done. However, good leaders know there is much more to motivation than monetary rewards. Not one of the successful leaders we interviewed mentioned compensations as a means to regulate behavior and to focus employees attention on what is most important.

6. Recognize Achievements
Don’t lose sight of the many accomplishments that occur outside the formal goal-setting process. It is impossible to identify everything that will need to be done a year or more in advance. It is essential to recognize achievements that went beyond the call of duty. Frequent praise and rewards work well.

5. It’s How You Say It
Very often, it isn’t what you say that matters, but how you say it. The best leaders have a knack for saying the right things in the right ways. Those ways help to structure meanings and thoughts. Andy Stern, the visionary head of the 1.9 million-member Service Employees International Union, underscores the importance of framing a conversation. They way you say something makes people more or less receptive. Be positive and enthusiastic.

4. Connect with Your People
Take the time to learn about the skills, family life and passions of your employees. Jay Ireland, President and CEO of GE Asset Management, learned from his early military experience that leadership necessarily involves getting to know the people around you. It is impossible to command effectively without developing a bond with the people whose lives are dependent on the health of the entire group and the decisions the leader ultimately makes.

3. Be an Idealist
Companies that have a sense of higher purpose attract and retain passionate employees. Proctor and Gamble, Smucker’s, Rodale, Vanguard and Tupperware all have it. They don’t just sell detergents, jellies, magazines, financial security, or plastic products; they make life easier, bring families together, and help to make people more secure. Beyond the day-to-day concerns about market shares and profits, these companies are all trying to improve the world and peoples’ lives. That may sound terribly idealistic, but that’s what these leaders are: idealists.

2. Solicit Ideas from Everyone
Giving people the true means to realize ideas and plans has a very important side-benefit. It communicates that good ideas aren’t the sole province of executives and that it is quite possible for suggestions that are consistent with the organization’s direction to emanate from anywhere in the organization. Google considers ideas one of its greatest assets, second only to its employees.

1. Be Honorable
Great leaders go above and beyond what is necessary. We came across a story recently in which a new hire asked to delay their starting day by a week because a relative had died. Instead, his boss told the new employee that he could have the week off, with pay. The bottom line is that companies that do the honorable thing are repaid a hundred-fold by employees who do not forget and who understand that their interests are a part of the business equation.

In recent months, the American automobile industry has been stunned by quarterly losses in the billions. But, should they have been?

From what I’ve learned while producing the documentary Leading with Kindness, it seems to me that if the big three automakers (and other major American companies too) had been guided by values rather than profits, all this pain and suffering might have been avoided.

The companies we’ve been profiling all put a strong emphasis on values. In other words, their first priority is to make the world a better place. They’re convinced that profits will follow. To many in the business world this may seem Pollyannaish, but for these companies, at least, this strategy seems to be working very very well.

Were the big American auto manufacturers working for the betterment of mankind? It’s hard to imagine how. For the past 15 years they’ve been focusing on building big SUVs and trucks, which they knew were dangerous to drive and bad for the environment. They were also highly profitable. It’s too bad this anti-values policy may have doomed these companies to failure.

Perhaps they would have fared better if management had acted more like their values-focused counterparts. At the wildly successful Google they have a policy of “Do No Evil.” (Granted they’re not always perfect.) And the management of the quickly growing Mitchell’s clothing stores believes in doing everything they can to help the community.

Ken Pollak, CFO of the women’s clothing manufacturer Eileen Fisher, says in his experience values-focused management really does work. “At the end of the day, you have to look at the results. You have to look at the profitability, the success of the company. And the success of the company is not only due to the product, but also I believe our culture.”

Eileen Fisher has experienced 12 percent compounded growth over its 25 years of existence with some long spurts of 30 percent. These companies are all doing well, even in these difficult economic times. Could it be that a focus on values could be even more effective when times get tough?

       Most of us can conjure images of the nice guy who exudes selflessness and warmth. But if one were to exclusively focus on those attributes apart from the service to which these traits may be put, the essence of a kind leader would be lost. In the absence of any clear functional goals, these niceties simply form a nebula of good feelings: a comfortable but directionless air. That may be the right tonic for a cocktail party, but not one that suits personal development and performance.

      The purpose of kind leadership isn’t to protect or shelter employees from hard decisions, troublesome issues or setbacks but to inspire trial, perseverance and personal growth. Kind leaders treat others like adults, and not as charity cases or dependents. And while there are ample pockets of levity and fun, the real mission of a true leader is to build a whole, fully functioning person who takes responsibility for his or her actions and values the welfare of the entire group. Kind leadership, then, isn’t for the faint hearted who shun conflict or bury bad news in order to preserve a swell of fellow feeling. It isn’t for those who mistake camaraderie for productive community action. Kindness makes others stronger; paternalism weakens. Kindness builds a reservoir of resilience and self confidence, enabling people to think big and to believe in what they are capable of accomplishing.

      The goal of kindness is to forge a mental toughness in others so that they can work and thrive independently and, in turn, foster in others the same leadership qualities to which they once were beneficiaries.

      There is nothing perverted about expecting the best from people, of challenging their capabilities, and pushing for and expecting improvements in all aspects of their life. Fortunately, these expectations seldom need to be conveyed intrusively if a leader has seriously practiced and refined the art of leadership: the beauty of quality leadership is that apart from the need for occasional direct instruction and guidance, much of it rubs off on others simply by being an exemplar model of leadership – and having astute observers as students. We have found that good leadership is particularly infectious when the leader has a sufficient supply of what might most accurately be called “fascination.”

      Superb leaders are interested in great many things they are interesting, life-giving, life-affirming people because they are interested and curious people. They are consummate learners whose taste for the truth and relentless search for better ways readily engage the intellects of others. Indeed, these pursuits are the very touchstones of enterprise. 

     In a way, kind leaders are selfish since they revel and find satisfaction in the successes of others. They realize that the successful leader helps others to become successful. But people are not going to naturally risk failure or exert themselves to exhaustion unless the leader can convince that the path ahead is both relatively safe and rewarding. For that, you need warmth – you need tolerance – you need humor, but you also need to provide the periodic assist of a strategic push or subtle (and, at times, not-so-subtle) prompt. Followers require both the safety of goodwill and the exhortations of progress in order to excel. Neither alone will do – one is too hard, and one is too soft – both together are just right.

Michael O’Malley

Coauthor “Leading with Kindness”