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Kindness Is a Leadership Practice

  • Catherine Addor
  • May 25
  • 3 min read

"If you have the chance to make people happy, do it. Sometimes people are struggling silently. Maybe your act of kindness can make their day."



Kindness isn’t fluff. It’s not weakness. And it’s certainly not something that needs to be justified with a benchmark or assessment rubric.


Kindness is a leadership strategy.


In our schools, we spend a lot of time talking about results: data, achievement, growth. But the most impactful thing we may offer our students and colleagues can’t be measured on a test. It’s the culture we build. And culture, more than any curriculum, is what sticks.


Kindness builds trust. It creates psychological safety. It reminds people they belong, even on the days they feel like they don’t.


If we want to shape communities where students can thrive, where staff members feel seen, and where everyone contributes to the whole, we must treat kindness not as a feel-good extra but as a foundational practice of leadership.


That means making space for people’s humanity. It means checking in, following up, and offering grace when deadlines slip or tempers flare. It means understanding that kindness doesn’t mean being passive or permissive. It means being clear, honest, and generous at the same time.


And yes, this is something we can teach.


But we won’t teach it through a lesson plan or a compliance checklist. We teach it through the way we lead meetings. Through how we respond to mistakes. Through how we speak about people when they’re not in the room.


Here are three ways to actively lead with kindness in schools:


1. Model Accountability with Grace

Being kind doesn't mean avoiding hard truths. It means delivering feedback with care, offering support alongside challenge, and recognizing effort even when outcomes fall short.


2. Recognize the Unseen

Celebrate the quiet contributions. The student who includes a classmate without being asked, the teacher who covers for a colleague without complaint. Shining light on these moments signals that who we are matters just as much as what we do.


3. Build Structures That Reflect Care

Create routines and rituals that center care: a “pulse check” in meetings, reflection journals, time for gratitude or appreciations. Institutionalize kindness so it becomes the fabric, not the exception.


The Call to Action

If we want to build school communities where learning can flourish, we must start by making them places where people can flourish. That begins with how we treat one another, not just in moments of celebration, but in moments of stress, frustration, or silence.


Kindness won’t show up on a district data dashboard. It shows up in everything that matters: In whether students take risks. In whether teachers stay. In whether families feel welcome. In whether we lift each other up or leave each other behind.


So here’s the challenge: In the week ahead, choose kindness as a leadership act. Catch someone doing something thoughtful and name it aloud. Start your next meeting by asking how people are, really. Be the person who notices, includes, affirms, and supports.


It may not change everything overnight. It might change someone’s day. Over time, that’s how we build cultures that sustain us all.


The truth is: being kind is not a vulnerability, it’s a superpower. One that multiplies the moment you use it.


Lead with that. Teach that. And watch what grows.

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