Case Study 2 According to a recent Gallup survey, less than half of employees (45 percent) feel strongly that their employer cares about their well-being. Many realize that this needs to change. Practicing active, habitual kindness can transform the remote workplace and it can start today. A little reassurance, compassionate listening, a conscious effort to validate people's fear and confusion all go a long way. Employees and managers alike face unprecedented obstacles every day. In March and early April, as COVID-19 spread worldwide, a study by Mind Share Partners in partnership with Qualtrics and SAP found that 42 percent of respondents said their mental health had declined since the outbreak. Six months later, people's anxiety, confusion, and despair are topics of near-daily reports in the news and on social media. Even if gestures of kindness and compassion were not woven into business as usual before the pandemic, they are essential now and going forward. Unfortunately, the notion of kindness in the form of the simplest words and gestures often gets lost when CEOs and managers are in perpetual crisis management mode, struggling with layoffs, remote work technology, market woes, and a range of other frustrating disruptions. While confronting these challenges requires time and unique skill sets, kindness does not. The value and rewards of kindness have been touted by leaders as legendary as King Solomon and Desmond Tutu to latter-day executives like General Motors CEO Mary Barra, known for her inclusive, employee-centric style. Kindness is teachable. Ritchie Davidson of the University of Wisconsin has compared practicing kindness and compassion to weight training: "People can actually build up their compassion 'muscle' and respond to others' suffering with care and a desire to help," he said. Great leaders attest that it is not a sign of weakness or relinquishing authority to be consistently kind and to offer encouragement and show genuine interest in employees' mental well-being in punishing times. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, at once forceful and compassionate, remarked that one of the criticisms she's faced over the years is that "I'm not aggressive enough or assertive enough, or maybe somehow, because I'm empathetic, it means I'm weak. I totally rebel against that. I refuse to believe that you cannot be both compassionate and strong." We've seen how stress can alter behavior. It's jarring for managers to see normally calm, high-functioning employees show signs of confusion and burnout. Teams are failing to meet deadlines and executives tell me they see an increase in petty conflicts and a parallel pandemic of short tempers, exposed nerves, and increased sensitivity to perceived slights. It's important to remember that kindness is contagious as well as calming. And it is healing: the Mayo Clinic urges us to "intentionally set a goal to be kinder to others. Express sincerely felt kindness to a co-worker." Science has confi ...

1. Case Study 2
According to a recent Gallup survey, less than half of
employees (45 percent) feel strongly that their employer cares
about their well-being. Many realize that this needs to change.
Practicing active, habitual kindness can transform the remote
workplace and it can start today. A little reassurance,
compassionate listening, a conscious effort to validate people's
fear and confusion all go a long way.
Employees and managers alike face unprecedented obstacles
every day. In March and early April, as COVID-19 spread
worldwide, a study by Mind Share Partners in partnership with
Qualtrics and SAP found that 42 percent of respondents said
their mental health had declined since the outbreak. Six months
later, people's anxiety, confusion, and despair are topics of
near-daily reports in the news and on social media. Even if
gestures of kindness and compassion were not woven into
business as usual before the pandemic, they are essential now
and going forward.
Unfortunately, the notion of kindness in the form of the
simplest words and gestures often gets lost when CEOs and
managers are in perpetual crisis management mode, struggling
with layoffs, remote work technology, market woes, and a range
of other frustrating disruptions.
While confronting these challenges requires time and unique
skill sets, kindness does not. The value and rewards of kindness
have been touted by leaders as legendary as King Solomon and
Desmond Tutu to latter-day executives like General Motors
CEO Mary Barra, known for her inclusive, employee-centric
style.
Kindness is teachable. Ritchie Davidson of the University of
Wisconsin has compared practicing kindness and compassion to
weight training: "People can actually build up their compassion
'muscle' and respond to others' suffering with care and a desire

2. to help," he said. Great leaders attest that it is not a sign of
weakness or relinquishing authority to be consistently kind and
to offer encouragement and show genuine interest in employees'
mental well-being in punishing times. New Zealand Prime
Minister Jacinda Ardern, at once forceful and
compassionate, remarked that one of the criticisms she's faced
over the years is that "I'm not aggressive enough or assertive
enough, or maybe somehow, because I'm empathetic, it means
I'm weak. I totally rebel against that. I refuse to believe that
you cannot be both compassionate and strong."
We've seen how stress can alter behavior. It's jarring for
managers to see normally calm, high-functioning employees
show signs of confusion and burnout. Teams are failing to meet
deadlines and executives tell me they see an increase in petty
conflicts and a parallel pandemic of short tempers, exposed
nerves, and increased sensitivity to perceived slights.
It's important to remember that kindness is contagious as well
as calming. And it is healing: the Mayo Clinic urges us to
"intentionally set a goal to be kinder to others. Express
sincerely felt kindness to a co-worker." Science has confirmed
what we observe in our daily interactions. According to the
Mayo Clinic, acts of kindness activate the part of our brain that
makes us feel pleasure and “releases a hormone called oxytocin
that helps modulate social interactions and emotion.
Being kind is good for our own and our employees' mental
health." And that translates to improved morale and
performance.
Here's what Psychology Today had to say about kind bosses:
"They have been shown to increase morale, decrease
absenteeism and retain employees longer. Kind bosses may even
prolong the lives of their employees by decreasing their stress
levels which improves cardiovascular health."
"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle." —
Philo of Alexandria
The pandemic is not a time for a stern, iron-fisted approach to
leadership and management. The virus's vast fallout demands a

3. kinder, gentler approach. What can CEOs and managers do to
infuse their leadership with kindness and empathy? Here are
straightforward, effective ways to practice kindness as a matter
of course:
"I hear you." Really listen. Be fully present and don't judge.
Encourage employees' questions and concerns. Listen actively—
no side glances at the phone. "When someone shares that they're
struggling, you won't always know what to say or do," write
Kelly Greenwood and Natasha Krol in Harvard Business
Review. "What's most important is to make space to hear how
your team members are truly doing and to be compassionate.
They may not want to share much detail, which is completely
fine. Knowing that they can is what matters."
""Are you okay?" Show a willingness to provide comfort and
monitor for signs of distress such as social withdrawal and poor
performance. Know when to refer an employee to professionals,
suggest Lesley Hammer and Lindsey Alley in The Conversation.
""What can we do to help?" It may be as simple as validating an
employee's personal challenges during the pandemic. But being
kind might also involve taking an active role in offering mental
health resources or creating a virtual support group or sounding
board.
""How are you managing these days?" According to the MIT
Sloan Management Review, “some companies are creating
deeper insights into the specific situations their workforces face
by surveying home workers.” What they’ve found is that being
single and working under quarantine alone carries a very
different set of stresses than being a member of a working
family with young children. For employees experiencing the
pangs of social isolation, one company launched daily virtual
coffee breaks. For those working while caring for children,
leaders must be sensitive to issues of exhaustion and the
difficulty of working during pre-pandemic office hours.
"Leadership signaling that working unorthodox hours is okay
could make a real difference to their stress levels," according to
the article.

4. ""I'm here for you." Let your employees know routinely that
you are there for them when they need to share concerns or
simply require a sympathetic, nonjudgmental ear. Consider
making yourself available at times outside work hours; these are
not normal times.
""I know you're doing the best you can." This statement is, with
few exceptions, true. In scores of first-person accounts and on
social media, people are reporting they are working harder than
they did pre-COVID. This makes perfect sense; as layoffs and
furloughs skyrocket, employees live in fear of losing their jobs.
In times of crisis, bosses must alter their expectations. As Bryce
Covert wrote in a New York Times op-ed, "Keeping output
steady while maintaining our physical and mental health just
cannot be done. We have to work less, and employers have to
get on board." Public schools are closed in a majority of states,
most child care services have ceased operations, and a majority
of couples with school-age children both have jobs. "These
working parents are logging on after the kids are asleep and
answering emails before they wake. Bosses must acknowledge
how incredibly hard this has been." But as Covert noted, "far
too often, employers are acting as if little has changed. Their
employees are responding to their expectations by working
themselves even harder. Enough."
""Thank you." Say it with sincerity and say it often.
Along with empathy and emotional intelligence, kindness is one
of the most essential soft skills for good leadership. But in these
times, it might be the most crucial one. To paraphrase Henry
David Thoreau, kindness is an investment that never fails.
Answer each question in a paragraph
1. Describe the nature and role of Managing People:
2. Discuss why this is important as a result
3. Identify the concepts
4. Discuss the three components of the subject and how it can

5. assist positively
5. What kind of leadership philosophy applies?
6. What kind of leadership solution has to be applied?
7. What is your overall analysis on the matter? Are your
solution based on a long term or a short-term plan?
Case Study 3
We think about trust as rare and precious, and yet it’s the basis
for almost everything we do as civilized people. Trust is the
reason we’re willing to exchange our hard- earned paychecks
for goods and services, pledge our lives to another person in
marriage, cast a ballot for someone who will represent our
interests. We rely on laws and contracts as safety nets, but even
those systems are ultimately built on trust in the institutions
that enforce them. We don’t know that justice will be served if
something goes wrong, but we have enough faith in the system
to make deals with relative strangers. It’s not coincidental that
trust ultimately found its way into the official US motto, “In
God We Trust.” Even if trust in our earthly structures erodes,
it’s so vital to the national project that we threw in a higher -
order backstop.
Trust is also the input that makes the leadership equation work.
If leadership is about empowering others, in your presence and
your absence, then trust is the emotional framework that allows
that service to be freely exchanged. I’m willing to be led by you
because I trust you. I’m willing to give up some of my
cherished autonomy and put my well- being in your hands
because I trust you. In turn, you’re willing to rely on me
because you trust me. You trust that I will make decisions that
advance our shared mission, even when you’re not in the room.
The more trust that accumulates between us, the better this
works.

6. How do you build up stores of this essential leadership capital?
Here’s the basic formula: people tend to trust you when they
think they are interacting with the real you (authenticity), when
they have faith in your judgment and competence (logic), and
when they believe that you care about them (empathy). When
trust is lost, it can almost always be traced back to a breakdown
in one of these three drivers. You can find the roots of this
framework in Aristotle’s writing on the elements of effective
persuasion, where he argued that you need to ground your case
in logos, pathos, and ethos. You will also find this pattern in
much of modern psychology literature.
What signals are you sending about whether the world should
trust you? We don’t always realize what information (or more
often, misinformation) we’re putting out there about our own
trustworthiness. What’s worse, stress tends to amplify the
problem. Under pressure, we often double down on behaviors
that undermine trust. For example, we unconsciously mask our
true selves in a job interview, even though it’s precisely the
type of less than fully authentic behavior that’s going to reduce
our chance of being hired.
The good news is that most of us generate a stable pattern of
trust signals, which means a small change in behavior can go a
long way. First, we tend to get in our own way, in the same
way, over and over again. In moments when trust is broken (or
fails to get any real traction), it’s usually the same driver —
authenticity, empathy, or logic—that gets wobbly on us. In fact,
we call this pattern of setbacks your trust “wobble.” Your
wobble is the driver that’s most likely to get shaky in periods of
low trust. Everyone, it turns out, has a wobble.
We also all have a driver where we’re rock solid, one that stays
strong and steady in our interactions with others, regardless of
the circumstances. One of the three trust drivers rarely lets us
down, even if we’re woken up out of a dead sleep at 3:00 a.m.

7. and asked to perform. We call this pattern your trust “anchor.”
Your anchor is the attribute that’s least likely to get wobbly on
you, even when the proverbial clouds start to gather and winds
start to howl.
Answer each question in a paragraph
1. Describe the nature and role of Managing People:
2. Discuss why this is important as a result
3. Identify the concepts
4. Discuss the three components of the subject and how it can
assist positively
5. What kind of leadership philosophy applies?
6. What kind of leadership solution has to be applied?
7. What is your overall analysis on the matter? Are your
solution based on a long term or a short-term plan?