Kindness as a Core Competency in Healthcare Leadership
Can kindness be taught? And more importantly, can we afford not to teach it?
In a recent episode of The Specialist GP, Dr Louise Kuegler speaks with Dr Nicki Macklin about a powerful reframing: kindness in healthcare is not an innate personality trait. It’s a professional skill that can be practised, measured, and built into leadership frameworks. 👉🖱️ Kindness in healthcare leadership w Dr Nicki Macklin. — The Specialist GP
In a sector facing high stress, burnout, staffing pressures, and complex decisions, their message feels particularly urgent.
“Kindness isn’t soft. It’s accountable, courageous, and essential to safe healthcare.”
Kind vs Nice: The Critical Difference
Too often, kindness gets mistaken for niceness.
But they’re not the same thing.
Niceness is about smoothing tensions and being liked
Kindness is about fairness, honesty, and supporting people to do their best work
Kind leaders don’t avoid difficult conversations — they have them. They set clear expectations, offer feedback respectfully, and hold people accountable while preserving dignity.
Kindness is not people-pleasing.
It’s clarity delivered with humanity.
The Case for Kindness in Leadership Training
One of the most provocative questions raised in the episode was this:
Can we afford NOT to include kindness in leadership programmes?
Research shows that when staff consistently experience kindness from leaders and colleagues, they report:
Lower burnout
Higher morale
Stronger teamwork
Greater psychological safety
And importantly, there’s emerging evidence that cultures built on kindness have:
Fewer patient harm events
Better clinical governance
Reduced workplace incivility (a known risk factor for patient safety)
Patients who feel heard, respected, and cared for are more likely to follow advice and raise concerns early. Safety begins with connection.
“We Don’t Have Time to Be Kind”
A common pushback is that clinicians are simply too busy.
But the episode challenges this assumption beautifully.
Kindness is often found in micro-behaviours, not extra tasks:
Allowing patients to tell their opening story without interruption
Asking “What matters to you?”
Making eye contact
Pausing before responding
Evidence suggests that not interrupting patients can actually shorten consultations, not lengthen them. Small shifts, enormous impact.
From Trait to Skill: Making Kindness Visible
Both speakers emphasise that we need to stop treating kindness as something invisible or instinctive.
Kindness can be:
taught
practised
measured
embedded into governance
When leaders model it consistently, it spreads. Over time, it becomes part of culture and clinical identity — not a special extra.
“Kindness is a professional competency. Not optional. Not exceptional. Expected”.
Just as we build frameworks for safety, risk, and quality, kindness deserves the same structural attention.
Why This Episode Matters
This conversation feels both hopeful and pragmatic. It moves kindness out of the realm of sentiment and into the space of leadership practice.
It reminds us that cultures change through countless small actions — visible, deliberate, repeated.
Healthcare needs leaders who can make good decisions under pressure while also seeing the human beings in front of them. Kindness is not a distraction from safety and standards. It’s what strengthens them.
If our goal is high-quality care, robust governance, and thriving teams, then kindness isn’t a luxury.
It’s a critical piece of professional competence — and everyone benefits when it’s embedded.
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