Business | Bartleby

Should you be nice at work?

Kindness is in vogue

An illustration of a man in formal attire holding a smiling mask in front of his angry face. In his other hand, he holds a miniature version of himself dressed in red, which is holding an even smaller version of himself, continuing in a repeating pattern.
Illustration: Paul Blow

Kindness is in the air. Publishers produce business books with titles like “The Power of Nice” or, simply, “Kind”. LinkedIn, which is ostensibly a networking site for career-minded professionals, is overrun with sickly videos showing people being improbably generous to the homeless. Firms publicly embrace the values of compassion: one manufacturer of safety-gear talks of “offering grace internally”, which sounds terribly intrusive.

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This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “Cool to be kind”

From the September 21st 2024 edition

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