This is the third story in The Little Book of Kindness — a series of small reflections on everyday acts that quietly change us.
Kindness Matters
Kindness—or more often, the absence of it—shows up everywhere.
In families. In workplaces. On train platforms. In public life.
But nowhere did its absence echo more loudly than in the early days of the pandemic. That absence feels familiar once again, as Australia navigates another period of moral and political flux, shaped by distant wars and the devastation unfolding in Gaza.
I remember the fear.
A flu-like virus, new and fast-moving, sweeping across the world. Lives lost daily. Systems buckling. Uncertainty everywhere.
This was a moment for steady hands and clear minds.
A time for leaders to rise—to inform, to protect, to collaborate across borders in the service of life.
I had spent decades studying leadership. Not just strategy or systems thinking, but the essence of it—the qualities that matter when the world starts shaking: integrity, presence, care.
I knew what steadied people in crisis. I’d helped others find it.
And yet, something about those early press conferences jarred me. It wasn’t only the uncertainty or the fear. It was the tone.
There were moments when gravity was required—and something lighter, even casual, took its place. I remember pausing a broadcast, feeling an unexpected hollowness settle in.
Not anger.
Absence.
Not performance or spin—but the quiet lack of something essential. Humanity. Care. Kindness.
That night, I pulled out my journal. Not to plan. Not to strategise. But to reckon. To hope. To return.
Lockdown brought solitude, whether you wanted it or not.
I turned inward, and I turned to thinkers who had long helped me make sense of the inner world. Carl Jung wrote that consciousness shapes not only individual lives, but our shared reality. That without self-awareness, power drifts toward shadow. That care is not sentiment, but necessity.
And then there was Flo.
If Jung opens the door to the inner world, Florence Scovel Shinn invites us to walk through it with kindness.
Her work reminded me that kindness is not merely a virtue—it is a force. One that begins in thought and language and moves outward, shaping the energy we bring into the world.
For her, every kind word is a seed. Every gentle thought, a turning point. She wrote of a Divine Design—a natural unfolding when we align with care rather than fear.
Slowly, I began to see kindness not just as an action, but as a lens.
A way of seeing.
A way of being.
This series is written from that lens.
It isn’t about performative niceness.
It isn’t about sprinkling kindness over broken systems and calling it leadership.
It’s about returning to something deeper — an inner kindness that shapes how we think, speak, lead, and live.
Kindness Isn’t a Slogan
There are moments when the language of care is used fluently, while its substance is absent. When efficiency is praised, even as harm is quietly distributed. When systems are defended long after their cruelty is known.
I’ve come to understand that kindness, when stripped from leadership, leaves a particular kind of wound — not always loud, but deeply demoralising. A message seeps into the culture: that care is optional, that harm is collateral, that responsibility can be outsourced to process or policy.
This is not leadership.
It is abdication.
Kindness demands more than words. It asks for properly resourced support, systems designed with dignity, and accountability that is lived — not merely spoken.
The Kindness We’re Denied
As I’ve grown older, I’ve learned that unkindness doesn’t always arrive with sharp edges. Often, it wears polished shoes. It speaks smoothly. It is rewarded.
There is a quieter violence in public life that we name too rarely: the normalisation of failure, the recycling of power, the absence of consequence. When those entrusted with care are elevated despite harm, a subtle lesson is taught — that kindness is weakness, and accountability optional.
I don’t believe that.
And I’ve come to see that naming this pattern—without rancour, without spectacle—is itself an act of care.
Because the kindness we are denied in public life becomes a kind of collective grief. A national ache. A sense that something essential has gone missing.
Leadership, at its best, does not harden us.
It steadies us.
It holds the weight of uncertainty without deflection.
It honours human life not as data, but as sacred.
Kindness is not soft.
It is not naïve.
It is not weak.
It is the quiet discipline of seeing clearly, acting responsibly, and refusing to abandon our humanity — even under pressure.
That is the leadership I keep returning to.
It’s the type of kindness this series of stories is written for.
. . .
Leadership reveals itself most clearly in moments of strain.
Not through titles or statements, but through tone. Through what is held, and what is quietly abandoned. Through the choices made when no one is watching — or when everyone is.
Kindness, in this sense, is not softness.
It is attentiveness under pressure.
It is the refusal to let efficiency eclipse care.
When leadership forgets this, something frays — not just in institutions, but in the collective spirit. And when kindness is restored, even in small ways, steadiness returns.
This story is an invitation to notice the kind of leadership you respond to — and the kind you quietly practise every day.
Journaling Prompt
Take a few moments to reflect.
- When have you felt most steadied by someone’s leadership — formal or informal?
- What qualities were present in that moment?
- Where in your own life are you being asked to lead with greater kindness — in your words, decisions, or silences?
Write without rushing.
Let kindness guide the way you listen — especially to yourself.
. . .
This is Part Three in The Little Book of Kindness series.