Nov 10, 2020

The Moment We’re In Calls for Kindness

This is an email I sent to the KIND team this morning, encouraging empathy and bridge-building during a time of deep division within our country.

KIND Team,

This past weekend, Americans elected Joe Biden the 46th U.S. President. I have long felt that President-elect Biden’s campaign messages echo KIND’s ethos and I am encouraged that this administration will champion the values that we at KIND, regardless of political party, hold dear.

I realize that this news does not hit everyone the same way. As I have said before, everyone has a home here at KIND. We must continue to model empathy and respectful listening and discourse, not only internally at KIND but also externally in our communities.

Since I immigrated to the U.S. in 1984, I have never experienced such polarization, distrust, and even downright hatred among fellow Americans. While substantive differences are real, what we have in common is far greater. We need to re-learn how to respectfully disagree, learn from one another, and work with our fellow citizens for a brighter future.

The overwhelming majority of Americans long for a more perfect union. Everyone has a role to play – and a duty to play it – in forging this path. And we at KIND have a particularly important contribution to make by modeling our values within our communities, bridging relations, listening, and acting with empathy. The work ahead will require assumption of positive intent from one another.

The issues are real. It is absolutely not easy. But just as being KIND requires strength, so does trying to forge common ground with our fellow citizens. These are not weaknesses but signs of courage and leadership.

With warmth,

DL

Empathy          Leadership

More from Daniel

You can’t make big ESG commitments while failing at the basics of kindness

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Ultimately, what we achieve as corporate leaders, even in the form of social impact, must work hand in hand with how we go about achieving it. How we act along our journeys is at least as important as–if not more so than–the destination. For example, if we are donating a portion of profits to at-need communities, but not being open-minded, respectful, and honest in how we lead in the workplace, we risk undermining our larger goals by contributing to a disrespectful, intolerant, or unethical culture. In fact, a company with no stated social mission that is modeling positive values like integrity and respect may be doing more good for our world than one with a big ESG commitment failing at the basics of kindness.

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The Media Is Over-Covering Divisiveness. It’s Going to Destroy Us

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In 2000, President Clinton hosted a peace conference at Camp David that gave many hope for peace in Gaza; but a few months later, the Second Intifada, a major Palestinian uprising against Israel, began. Having been working in the region for decades to found and build PeaceWorks, a company that used market forces to foster peace between neighbors in the Middle East, I was confused and depressed by the news. On Western television, I saw pictures of ruthless violence and terrorism from Palestinians, giving me the impression, at least initially, that the moderates I knew had succumbed to extreme ways. But when I went to talk to my Palestinian friends, and they showed me what they were seeing on the television, I was shocked:. Their news programs depicted all Israelis as merciless killers.

On both sides of the conflict, the news media seemed like it exclusively published stories portraying the worst of the other side, characterizing all Palestinians or Israelis as hateful enemies. It turned out that my friends hadn’t changed at all; they just weren’t the ones the media were showing. And in portraying things falsely in such a negative light, the media fed the conflict rather than helping resolve it.

We Americans are now facing this same problem, with potentially devastating repercussions for our democracy and our ability to lead the free world.

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