E147 – Kindness at Work with Emma Lloyd

Okay, so welcome to today's episode of world work podcast. It's the first one that we are recording in 2022 which is pretty exciting, and we've got a great guest today. We're speaking to Emma Lloyd, and we're speaking all about kindness and the role and the contributions that kindness makes to our experiences in life and at work. So a really great way to start the year off before we get into the conversation, though, Emma, could you introduce yourself and say a little bit about what you're working on and the projects you're involved in at the minute?

Absolutely Well, it's absolutely great to be here. So thank you so much and talking about something that I am truly passionate about. So my company is called create the ripple, and we focus on supporting a range of companies across the globe and across industries, with learning and development, although I think it's so much broader than learning and development because it supports employee engagement experience. We're looking at human potential, and we're looking about how can we be more human in the workplace, which is a wonderful link, almost seamlessly to kindness, of course, as well. And that can be anything from your one to one coaching, big events, smaller events, even in this wonderful virtual world that so many of us find us in now as well. And that's a little bit about sort of what I do on a day to day basis, as well as being really passionate to just look at whatever way we can spread gratitude, kindness, to support people to be their absolute best,

brilliant. That's a lot of fantastic stuff in there. And today we're specifically interested in kindness and trying to explore a little bit of what it is and how it manifests in the workplace and in our lives and and why it matters, and all this kind of stuff. I'd like to start at the very beginning and just talk about kindness itself. And I was just wondering, how would you describe kindness? What is kindness? It's this word that we all sort of intuitively have a grasp on, but my sense is that it manifests in lots of different ways. And it would just be good to get your thoughts on what kindness and acts of kindness

are, I think. And it's such a Gosh, that's a bold, big question to start with, isn't it? I I always start initially to look at and I genuinely do this with words, which is, where does the word originate from? And if we actually look so, kindness is an old English word, and it's spelled with a y, so pronounced the same. And really interestingly, the meaning is nation or produce increase. And the reason why I like that is it's that sense of almost magnifying, amplifying, getting bigger, if we look at the Middle English. So the next sort of meaning as we go through time, it's around noble deeds and courtesy. And more importantly, now the definition would be friendly, generous, considerate. I think for myself, these are human attributes. So for me, being kind is allowing ourselves the time and space to be human, to be human a little bit more of the time and and in the busyness and in the virtual world that we work in, we sometimes lose that humanness, which I think means we lose some of that natural, instinctive kindness.

Yeah, and it's great to reflect on it. It's such a human quality, and I guess sort of sidestepping the conversation a little bit and sort of opening up in a different way. It feels like kindness is a topic that is increasingly in people's minds at the moment. It feels quite contemporary. It feels like there's something about our context that is surface in kindness, some of it, people are more interested now than perhaps they were maybe 40, 8200, years ago. What's your sense of that? Do you get a sense that that is a correct observation? Do you feel the same type of thing, and do you have any thoughts on why that might be the case, particularly in the workplace, where we talk perhaps more about kindness?

I think you're absolutely right. I feel it. It's almost a hot topic, which has its risks associated to it as well, because it almost is. It feels as though, right, let's do kindness. Let's tick it off here. And it's like it doesn't quite work like that. But in answer to your question, my sense is we've been really focused on, if we think sort of 1980s 2000s it was, go big, go fast. And. And then obviously we had things like financial crash, and it was rebuilding after that. It's a lot of performance driven. And there comes a point when we've excelled at looking at all of the ways that we can try to continue to improve performance. And it's taking a step back to go, hang on a minute, these things that in the past seem to be almost opposing opposites. So you've got performance over here and over here, we've got some human nice stuff, but there's no place for that in business. It was a brilliant book. I don't know if you've come across it, the trusted executive by Dr John Blakey and Dr John Blake, but it's the sentence says, Blakey, you're too nice as the opening paragraph, because it's talking around the fact that Gone are the days now that niceness and kindness are seen as things that are outside the business world. In fact, these are intertwined, and if we really want to be successful and in performance, we need to get back to those humanness, because that's what's really going to help to support people to thrive. And I think with work now, I was going to say most I'm going to stay with it. Most organizations are recognizing that we need to look at the whole being, so whether that's mental and physical well being, whether that is with regards to mastery and growth and development, all of these different aspects are critical to help to support us to retain talent, and therefore, it feels like we're recognizing, now and supported by quite a bit of science and studies out there as well, that it's what makes us human that actually will help to support us to thrive, whether that's professionally or personally.

And you know, it feels to me, like we're sort of catching up with a bit of a past reality. So I think if we went fairly far back in time, we had a predominance of fairly mechanistic type roles and sort of, man, you know, sort of more manufacturing, you know, tactile type jobs that lived more in that set of mechanistic metaphors that still shape a lot of the way that we think about our workplace, but a lot of that stepped back as we've had more sort of knowledge work, more creative work over the last 100 years, and it feels like we've just gradually seemed to value more of that human aspect in helping people in those roles perform more. So it feels like we probably should have seen this stuff 50 years ago or 75 years ago, when we started to shift more towards this sort of knowledge and service based economy, which I think is really interesting. I was going to say one other little thing that pops into my mind about this, which is, I'm particularly interested in responsibility in business, and by that, often, what I mean is making sure that the businesses and the organizations that we are involved in create net benefit at a societal level. Fundamentally, that's what I care about. So I'm interested in looking at how these organizations create positive impact on the full range of stakeholders that they have, as opposed to, perhaps historically, viewing beneficial outcomes as shareholder returns. And I think kindness lends itself very well to that sort of organizational maturity of seeking more beneficial outcomes to a range of stakeholders. What are your thoughts on that? How do you see kindness in that sphere?

Yeah, very much. I think the thing that sort of comes and pops into my mind when you're talking there is it's this focus on understanding and recognizing the importance of culture. So So actually, rather than just from an output point of view, it's not just what we're doing, it's how we're doing it. So those values based decisions being more purpose driven and recognizing as well that you know, stakeholders aren't just now interested in the what and the shaker shareholder return. They also now are looking and asking questions around culture, around diversity and inclusion, around corporate responsibility, sustainability, all these fabulous things that, again, almost a little bit like I said, recognizing, if we look a little bit more inward, looking from a business point of view around looking after the whole employee. Actually, if we look a little bit more from a macro level, it's looking after the whole organization. So rather than just performance being that sort of metrics bottom line, it's there's other really important bottom line considerations which feed into that responsibility as well, and and and kindness is so broad and almost fits into all of those things I just spoke about. Because actually, if we're inclusive, we're being fair, we're being kind, if we are being sustainable, guess what? We're being. Kind, if we're looking at the culture, if we're looking all of these different elements, they loosely. In fact, I'm writing a new session now, and you've just given me a great idea, but you're right, isn't it? It's, I think we need to move away from kindness being seen as something that's a little fluffy or a nice to have, or, you know, it's all sort of unicorns and fluffy fans. No, no. It really is about supporting us to be really successful and doing it in the right way as well. And I tell you what Darwin, let's go right back to in time. Darwin comes to mind because people often would say in the past, it was around survival of the fittest. Well, more and more you'll see whether it's survival of the friendliest or survival of the kindness, because what we're able to look at is that it wasn't about people having conflict with one another. When we talked around survival of the fittest, it was around cooperation and understanding and connection, but but in sort of a very sort of different way back in the time then, and I think that's what we're now seeing as you reference, is this change that okay? So this compassionate approach is what is going to help to support us to survive in really challenging and ambiguous times that are ahead of us as well.

Yeah, that's interesting, and that point about the collaborative versus the sort of competitive environment is really important, and that's all part of a mindset and part of a view as to whether or not we exist and are playing zero sum games or whether we're playing generative games. And I think the consensus now is, particularly in, you know, more knowledge based economies, is that this is a generative game. You know, we are creating and creating as we go, and everyone can contribute to making this pie bigger, if you will, as opposed to grabbing a bigger slice of it. If we think about kindness, then, as a sort of actor or something that generates a little bit of an impact if we're on the receiving end of a kindness, I'm not sure if that's one. How one should use kindness, but I'm gonna use it if I'm on the receiving end of a kindness, a singular act of kindness, what kind of impact does that have on me? How does that change my sort of emotional state? Or does it affect me neurologically? Or what does it do to me? How do I feel this result?

And this is the wonder of kindness. So when you receive kindness, you have a boost of all of those wonderful happy neurotransmitters, so dopamine and serotonin, it's all going crazy inside. So it makes us feel really good. But those key neurotransmitters. What they're actually then doing is they're sparking up our reward centers. They're allowing us to be more creative, more innovative. Interestingly, it allows us sounds a little bit of a sort of a contradiction, but it allows us to take a little bit more risk, in the sense that we feel that we can maybe show a little bit more of ourselves. We can demonstrate that vulnerability, and ultimately, it helps to support us to feel seen and heard and valued. And those are fundamental aspects, and whether that is physical or mental, well being, and gosh, you don't even need to go to Google Scholar for that. Just open any search engine, and you can see studies which will support that when we are feeling good, when we're feeling hard, when we are on the receiving end of kindness, we are more likely to be better placed to perform. And I, I use that word carefully to perform, which is, this isn't necessarily about a work output. This is just about us being able to be the best version of ourselves.

Would I be right to maybe guess as well that if we are under receiving end of those things, and we have all those great sort of chemical responses and feelings and emotions as a result, that probably leads to an increase in our own sense of subjective well being. Would that be fair? Yeah,

absolutely. I think what's really interesting is that it's I, not just because it's the company name, but it creates ripples. And I think what's really important when we look at kindness is we can it was who was it? It was gentleman called Bob Carey, and he said unexpected kindness is the most valuable, most powerful, yet least costly and underutilized agent to human change. And I remember that really stands out for me in the sense of I think we underestimate the power of kindness, whether that's to us from an individual level, from a well being, whether that is team, organizational and societal level, kindness really is a superpower. And I don't say that. In a sort of a grandeur. So gosh, listen, Jeremiah, it truly is and and what excites me about it is it's within us all. It's there, yeah, and

the way you described it there made me think of sort of power generation and kindness being one of those things that the benefit it produces is so much greater than the cost that it's involved in generating it that it is one of these sort of scaling things that can be like a perpetual motion machine. You know, if each person did that little bit, then it circulates and grows and grows and grows, which is, I think, just a lovely little way to think about it. So I think that's wonderful, if we think a little bit about, I guess, the workplace and some of the things that you've spoken about there, I'd like to explore a little bit about how kindness shows up in the workplace. What are the things that we can do in the workplace to be kind to our peers and and I guess, I'd like to start off by just asking, does kindness always need to involve being nice and being fluffy and soft, or does kindness sometimes take on other lenses that we need to adopt in order to perhaps be kind in the longer term? What's your thought on that?

So I think it starts with being present, being a little bit more conscious, a little bit more of the time, which in the crazy times we live in is I also think about slowing down a bit and pausing, because it's really challenging sometimes when we're so busy that we may not always demonstrate some of those behaviors that would be perceived as being kind. I am a bit of a quote machine, so I'm going to share another one, but it's a Brene Brown, and it, for me, encapsulates kindness. So she says she defines connection as when you are seen, heard and valued, and you can give and receive without judgment. And for me, and that tags on to your second part of the question there, that's what kindness is about. It's about seeing stuff. It's around valuing it, appreciating it, acknowledging it, and calling stuff out and and giving and receiving without judgment. You know, some of the most challenging conversations I've had were because I was being kind, because I believe I have an unwavering belief in other people's potential, and if that means I need to have a challenging conversation, actually, it's not a need, it's a want, because I'm being kind and and I think this is an interesting area, particularly maybe in leadership, I think across the board, but in particular in leadership, which is we need to move away from this almost persona of a strong leader, and actually we can be strong and we can be kind in the same breath, I would say, you know, I'm fiercely ambitious, and I can be quite challenging. And I'm sure people that know me listening might go, yeah, quite difficult, but I also am immensely warm and kindness. And it's about the merging of these two things together in the workplace that I think will help to support people understanding. What do we mean by kindness? Um, I am not a fan of the expression random acts of kindness. I am a fan of conscious acts of kindness because I don't believe that it's ever impactful when it's random. I don't know, actually, no hit back. Of course, kindness when it's random is lovely, but you see the point where the real impact is when I have stopped or done something to help, to support another, in whatever guise that takes. And don't forget, it's not a selfless act. There is an actual phenomenon called the helpers high. It's a true thing, which is, I also get many of those buzzes from delivering that kindness, even if it is a challenging conversation, because when you're able to connect with another, that helps to support that sort of ripple effect of kindness, yeah, and that

goes straight back to the some of the conversations that we've had, and this in this podcast and and others about a well being. And you know, the the act of kindness being a great contributor to our own well being as well. I just want to check out a word and get you to talk about it, if you wouldn't mind a little bit, and that word is intent or intention. What do you see the relationship being between the intent of an individual and kindness? How do you how do you see that sort of connection?

I think it's really important, and I think it's for two reasons. So an expression I used earlier, I will often say, is encouraging people to be a little bit more conscious, a little bit more of the time, which, you know, goes hand in hand with sort of that intent, because I know that sometimes I get it wrong. Well, even if I'm trying to be kind, I might get it wrong. You know, when you say the wrong thing at the wrong time and people go, Oh, I didn't say anything because I didn't know whether it was the right or wrong thing. I truly think I when I remember I read the power of intent by Wayne Dwyer, and I really, really related to it. Which is, I think intent is really powerful. Which is I, my intent is to be a kind person. What we have to recognize, though, is that we are judged by our actions, not by our intention. And so therefore we have to be forgiving with ourselves sometimes. And I think we need to talk more about our intent. I was only having a conversation yesterday about this, some really good stuff going on in a company. And I said we actually need to communicate the intent, because it may well be that people aren't feeling yet all of this sort of good thought and ideas, and sometimes we need to almost communicate that intent. So I think it is about being increasingly conscious intentional, but it's also being able to communicate that intention as well. And and the more we do that, then I think again, that will help to support, to foster an environment of greater kindness

That's lovely. And increasingly, I think, as people look at leaders in the modern world and the current world, and even looking into the future, a lot of the historic traits that people may be associated with leaders are being challenged and changed. And this is a perennial thing, right? I mean, this will always go on as the world always is changing, but it feels like a lot of traits that were valued are being discarded in favor of a new set of of traits that individuals are looking for and people talk about, you know, things like vulnerability, inclusion, all those things as being increasingly important skills, if you will, for leaders to have. Where do you feel kind of sit within that sort of collection of characteristics of a leader, and do you feel that it's something that lends itself to success and progression for individuals in their careers as they seek to progress up the organizational ladder?

So I think there's two points that have come to mind, if I can go to the first point, and I think this probably comes from looking at behavioral preferences and supporting Folk is I often say to people, you know, I've got brown eyes. I can't change that. And actually, a lot of those behavioral preferences, I can't change them. I can be increasingly aware of them. I can adapt them, control them as well. And I don't necessarily think it's always very helpful for us sometimes to be saying to folks you know what you know as you've just signposted, we need less of this, and we need more of this, because some people are naturally, maybe very strong characters and quite assertive in their approach. And actually, yes, okay, we need that. And other individuals may have a slightly more passive approach, what would be perceived as maybe a more warmer and that's okay. We need that as well, I think, to allow and support people to be able to demonstrate this, if we put it in inverted commas, kindness in the way that's going to help to support them in their role and or to create an environment for others. That's where we really need to focus. And the reason why I just pointed that out first is I think it creates a lot more buy in, because it means that I'm going to demonstrate kindness, maybe in a very different way, to someone else. So, you know, I will get fluffy teddy bears, or anybody who's had one, but I'll send all handwritten notes. Oh, my goodness. I love writing handwritten notes, but I know that some individuals would go, that's not me. Well, don't do it. Then what's you? Well, you know, I'll send, I'll send a quick text. Well and well, some people might go a quick text, but if that for them is intentional kindness, then brilliant. And I think without being too prescriptive of how does a leader need to demonstrate kindness, I think it falls across all behaviors. It almost underpins the how of what we're doing, the Compassionate, the care, the values element of it, and so for that reason, I think it can manifest in a lot of different ways, and whether that is, as we mentioned earlier, that sort of broader corporate responsibility piece, whether it's through performance, whether it is through the connections that we're making with clients, stakeholders, employees. Kindness is a fundamental leadership skill. I would absolutely say it, but I think kindness feeds into connection, the ability to connect. I think it feeds into the ability to. Challenge. I think it feeds into cooperation with others, a collaboration and we could go on. It's almost as though it's an attribute, I'm going full circle, of being human, that allows us if, if, through all we do, we demonstrate a little bit more humanness, a little bit more of the time, I feel that actually we're going to help to support and expand our leadership capability.

Yeah, that's nice. So so it really feels it's that it's either another layer across that pantheon of behavioral preferences that we all have, that we can all draw on at different times, or that it's sort of orthogonal to those. There's another set of capabilities that we can bring in whatever our preferences are, and that, I guess, using it judiciously in our own way, with our own intent, will help us create better outcomes for ourselves and those that we work with.

Yeah, and of course, there is what I'm going to say in there as well, because sometimes you'll say, Well, how do I do it? Of course, there are some go to stuff, you know, being present, really thinking about listening and thinking around, you know, gestures, the language that we're using and really helping to support, to build individuals self worth and potential towards their own growth as well. So there's an awful lot of things that I think practically I could rattle off a list. I'm just not a fan of it, in the sense of without the fundamental piece of buying and intent, which you quite rightly spoke around earlier, it makes these things sometimes seem a little fictitious, disingenuine, and you can see people sort of like, go, oh gosh, here we go, you know. And so it's almost as though we need to create that first bit and then, gosh, there's, there's so many things that people do and could do maybe a little bit more of the time. I've got a question. Just

as you were speaking, I was thinking a little bit there about self interest, and I guess a question is, is it possible to be or how does one manage self interest and kindness to others?

It's a challenging ones, and I it's a really interesting one, because people will sometimes say, I'm using myself as an example. Here go. You're so kind. And I'm thinking, I'm not sure it's always selfless, though, because what I've also learned is that when you're really kind to folk, guess what they're going to deliver, they're going to perform more as well. And it's almost that inner consciousness of going, Who am I doing this for? Am I doing it for me? Am I doing it for someone else? But then the question of, well, if I'm doing it because I want to help to put more good out into the world, well, is that a bad thing? Is it a good thing? You know? So, so I think you can get a little bit tongue tied with regards to it. And again, I suppose it goes back to that piece around intent, but also it's okay, it's okay to use kindness as a skill, to help, to support the growth of maybe an individual, a team and or a business. I think as long as and the two things that I come back to is I never want to be complacent. I don't want it to be a given that OM is always kind, because I need to make sure my daily conscious act of kindness is in the forefront of my mind, and also to have a level of humility with it. I I quite often like to send little random messages to people or little quotes, and not for any reason, just because I'm trying to, you know, send out a little bit of positivity. And I wrote an article about it, because it never ceased to amaze me, where the amount of people who'd say, oh my gosh, Emma, you're a white witch, like I needed that just at that moment, and I've got to be honest, I started to think maybe I am, maybe I really have gone. And then I very quickly kept myself a peg down, because what I realized is, there's never a bad time for kindness, because if we take it back to that broader listening, being listened to, valued and acknowledged, and so when you demonstrate kindness, there is always that opportunity for maybe a greater ripple effect or impact. So I think it's important for people not to get too tongue tied around the houses, around whether they're doing it from a selfless point of view or not. I think if the intent is checked, if we are not complacent about the impact of it, and I think, as we'd mentioned, that, you know, the world is turning all of the time, so we need to also keep that in check, then actually, there's always a place and time for kindness. As you were speaking

there, I was thinking about. The fact that you know, sort of breaking down a little bit of what you said, one of the messages that I heard is that perhaps we should be kinder to ourselves when it comes to how we're doing with being kind to have this as well and hold that lightly. Well, what do you think about being kind

to yourself? You know what? I can't believe we're however many minutes in, and we haven't talked about that, because you're so right. I think that being kinder to ourselves, being gentle with ourselves, there's a great expression that I borrowed, which is, instead of having hindsight, have kind sight, what was I learning? What was the experience in there? Because I think I know, again, speaking from my own, I find it a lot easier to be kind to others. I'm really quite horrible to myself. Sometimes I would never speak to people like I speak to myself. And I think that by when we're talking around kindness or kindness in the workplace, you're right, it's giving ourselves a break. It's maybe being more gentle with ourselves, as I mentioned, I think is critical aspect to this That's

brilliant. Well, thank you for for reflecting on that a little bit. I guess what I'd like to do is just bring the conversation around a little bit to what we might be able to do a little bit differently in the workplace as a result of this. Is there anything that you think we as individuals could do differently, whether we're in leadership roles or not, based on this sort of knowledge and reflection of the importance of kindness. I

think I would say the starting point also is to just take a bit of a pause button to acknowledge how much kindness we do demonstrate. But maybe it's not under the umbrella of kindness, because often it's the small acts I will often refer to. It's the small things, really, when we look back, turn out to be the big things. I don't know whether you've seen or what was his name is it drew Dudley, and he talks around everyday leadership, but it doesn't just have to be leadership. And he talks about lollipop moments. And I don't want to be a spoiler. I'm always a spoiler of TED talks, but you know what? It's great. And he talks about lollipops. But what he talks around is that too often, we almost talk about these things with such stature that we feel as though, right, I need to put some time in my diary and I'm going to plan how I'm going to be more kind more of the time. And it's often the things that we don't plan for that we don't, maybe even realize that we've been kind. And the expression that he uses, and actually, I relate to it when, you know, sometimes, like a few years after you might have done something, and you get a LinkedIn message, or you get a social media message, and they go, I just want you to know that that really helped and and what he talks around is that often we're like, really, I don't even remember that. It's not even in my radar. I have no idea. So rather than us again being kind to ourselves, but rather than us beating ourselves up because I wasn't very kind today. No, you will have been kind by pausing, acknowledging, and I know this is sort of slightly repetition, but it is that valuing and just taking a moment to be more aware of what's around us. There will be so many examples that lend ourselves to maybe be a little bit kinder a little bit more of the time. Is

there anything that you think we can do in terms of shaping our maybe routines, or the way that we approach the world, or what we do throughout our life to give us maybe a little bit of a higher probability of being kind in those moments as they occur, because my sense is, quite often, kindness is at its best, those sort of instinctive moments that we don't know about, where we enter into those moments in a place ourselves, where we are full of whatever we need to be full of, that enables us to be kind about moment, to be what somebody else needs. About moment, to do. What is the right thing at that moment? Have you got any thoughts on what we can do so that we are in that place more often ourselves, when those opportunities for kindness occur? So

my go to in that situation, and there's a range of sort of practices we can look at, is practicing gratitude, and I think they're so interlinked, but gratitude is something which can be really challenging, something when there's lots of business going on, or even if we find the circumstances we're going on in the moment and we lose sight sometimes of even in times of real hardship. So this isn't that everything's rosy or perfect. Being able to ground ourselves with just pausing and saying, you know, what am I really grateful for today? And that can be anything from a warm piece of toast or I remember an example I once used I was I'd actually just lost my father to COVID, so I'm using that as an example to say it wasn't a good time. It was a really, really tough time. And I went for a walk. And I remember I shared, I went, Oh, the trees and the leaves are really green, aren't they? They're much greener this year. I remember somebody looked at me going, what's wrong with you? Grief is affecting ever in a multitude of ways. But it was because I'd never noticed, of course, the trees weren't greener, but I was allowing myself to go, wow. Look at the trees. Look at how beautiful they look as well. And I think gratitude helps us to almost gain a little bit of focus, helps us to get a bit of perspective, but also, just like we said earlier, it releases those happy feel good hormones that help us to be in a position where I feel we are more likely to embrace kindness, and that embracing kindness means I'm more likely to receive it. I'm also more likely to give it as well. Yeah,

it can be that lovely virtuous cycle, can't it? If it starts to be there as ripples go out and come back again. One more. Agree what, what might we be able to do if we are leading a team or part of a team, to to sort of change the way it feels in a team, so that teams become a little bit kinder? I know it's it's hard maybe if we're not in a leadership position, or if we've got other pressures on us, but it feels to me that it probably is possible to influence the way that group of people that we work closely with together work together, to increase the kindness. Have you got thoughts on what one might

so I do believe in whether it is peer to peer or whether it's leader to a direct report, behavior breeds behavior. So I also often will say it starts with you, and that is you as an individual. I think we can spend an awful lot of time saying they're not kind, or those people there, or we're not showing kindness, or that old them up there. And what I often say, whichever layer of an organization I'm working with, guess what? They always blame those people up there. At some point, we have to take that accountable approach, which is okay. So what can I do to show up? And this feeds in to those behavioral preferences as a leader within a team or with colleagues within a team, not being too prescriptive. Now, one of the things that I've done previously, and it's based on the work of Sean Acker, he wrote The Happiness Advantage, amazingly funny TED talk as well, and he talks about six daily practices. And what I love about it is that there's something in there for everybody. So when we've shared them, we've said you don't have to do all of them, and actually maybe just choose one that you think would help to support you to feel that sense of kindness, positivity or otherwise. And they're everything, ranging from exercise so that floats people's boats. There's gratitude in there. There is meditation, journaling, breathing, these, all these different things, but there's a multitude of things in there, and that they are all designed to help to support the rewiring of the brain, because this is something that sometimes might take a little bit of practice. And as we know, depending on where you read, to form a habit, can be anything from, you know, two or three weeks up to two or three months and beyond. And so it's also about being a bit gentle with this habit of creating a culture, or fostering a culture of kindness, and not falling at the first hurdle. So the three daily gratitudes, I know a number of leaders have said, Oh yeah, we started it for a week, and then then it got a bit busy. And so rather than doing it every day, once a month, once a week. Let's just start to start this. Something just popped in my mind. Somebody just shared it only last week. They've got a kindness board, and on it, they encourage people to take and to put on a kindness idea every day. I love it, and they sent me a picture of it, and it was phenomenal, because people had put up lots of different ways of demonstrating kindness. But I love the fact that you could, you took one, but you put a post it note back on there with another idea or another way of demonstrating that kindness. And I think the more that we can do this, give and take approach, whilst also associating it with by just turning up to a meeting and being a little bit more focused, or maybe like putting your phone away for that meeting, you're demonstrating kindness. You're demonstrating a level of respect. And I know that sometimes I've said, Thank you, thank you for, you know, for being so interested or so focused. And I felt that sort of warmth and feeling of kindness just simply from somebody being present.

Brilliant. It really sounds like there is a lot that we can do as individuals to change how we feel in different moments, to improve. Improve or increase for kindness that we demonstrate and in turn receive some back. And it feels like there's hope for our teams as well to bring more kindness into it, which is brilliant. And of course, as you said at the beginning, all of this can lead to better outcomes for us as individuals, in terms of our well being, in terms of our performance, in terms of our fulfillment in the workplace, in terms of what we achieve, and also for our teams, and more broadly, the different stakeholders and that we have in our organizations. So it feels like a really a bit of a win, win, doesn't

it? Absolutely, that's right, and I think that's it, like you mentioned earlier on, though, this isn't just about being a selfless you know, I'm certainly far from perfect. I do have that inner desire to be kind. I just seen so many benefits, and sometimes folk, I'm like, Do you know what? You don't need to try that hard. You can just be a little kinder, and you will get amazing results as well. So I would encourage people to give it some thought and time around these smaller gestures and never underestimate the power of kindness.

Brilliant. Okay, well, in the interest of time, I'm going to wrap up our conversation, but just before we go, would you be able to let people know how they can find out more about you and what you're doing and the work that you're involved in at

the minute? Oh yeah, of course. So I am on LinkedIn, so Emma Lloyd and create the ripple. But also on Twitter, you'll see that there is a feed, I'm going to say, almost dedicated to kindness, just under Create the ripple, and you'll see nothing there, apart from no surprises, quite a few quotes along the way, but just putting a little bit positively out there. So if you do fancy a little bit of kindness and positivity, it's wonderful folk that join us there as well, and might just be that little boost that you're looking for in a day. Brilliant,