Leading with Kindness: How to Make Human Connection Your Business Advantage

Your inbox is full of AI-written pitches that open with "I know all about you" and follow up with "just in case you didn't see my last three messages." Heather McGonigal and Barbara Schindler have had enough. In this episode of Leadership with a Twist, they argue that human kindness is the competitive advantage most businesses are overlooking right now.

This one gets personal. Barbara talks about her running battle with bank and cell phone chatbots. She admits to typing "you are a stupid robot" more than once, and says her phone's AI rewriting her texts pushed her over the edge. Heather separates the lazy, cut-and-paste use of AI from the kind that stretches your thinking, like brainstorming with ChatGPT after hours when the team is offline and you'd otherwise be working alone. From there the conversation turns to leadership. They cover taking a pause to ask how a message will land before you hit send, and remembering that you never know what mountain someone is climbing today. They also talk about asking your own team where technology should take work off their plate and where their judgment needs to stay fully engaged.

The framework they land on is simple enough to use Monday morning: put efficiency on the back end and keep kindness up front. Heather's local Toastmasters club fills the room every week because it meets in person, while nearby virtual groups struggle. That tells you how hungry people are for real connection.

Key Takeaways

• Lazy AI puts extra work on the person receiving it. Partnering with AI to extend your own creativity is a completely different use.
• Before you roll out a new tool, sit in your customer's seat and ask whether their experience actually gets better.
• Kindness has to exist inside your team before customers can feel it. Culture can't be faked from the top.
• The businesses that catch the next wave will be the ones that kept the human element front and center while everyone else raced toward automation.

Action Steps

• Pick one customer touchpoint where automation replaced a person and experience it yourself this week.
• Ask your team where technology could take work off their plate and where their thinking matters most.
• Practice the second pause before sending anything that affects a relationship.

Questions to Reflect On

• Where has speed quietly replaced connection in how your business communicates?
• If you asked your clients whether working with you feels human, what would they say?

Want to talk through how this applies to your team? Book a complimentary coffee chat : https://www.empoweringleadershipteams.com/coffeechat 

About the Hosts: Coach Heather and Coach Barbara are the lead Executive Coaches of Empowering Leadership Teams. They specialize in helping entrepreneurial businesses and their teams meet the moment and become the most empowered they can be to work together and achieve optimal results. With deep expertise in leadership development, team dynamics, and navigating organizational transition, they bring practical, actionable wisdom to leaders facing the challenges of today's rapidly changing business environment.

Leadership With a Twist on Substack:  
https://leadershipwithatwist.substack.com

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