Why Kindness matters in recruitment

Mark Crowley, Founder at Tall Roots

July 18, 2024

My wife and I recently had a family friend come over to our house.  However, our three-year-old, Erinn, is currently suspicious of people that she doesn’t know, and she didn’t like that this ‘stranger’ was in her house.  So, after an hour of clinging onto me and my wife, Erinn told me that she wanted our friend to leave.  I reminded her that our friend had come over to spend time with us all and that she wasn’t being very kind by saying that.  To which she responded “But why?  I do want them to leave.”

Like most parents can testify, teaching children values is a journey.  But we persevere, because it matters to us deeply that Erinn grows up to be kind, not just for when she starts school, but also for when she enters the world of work.

It used to be viewed (and by some still is) that teaching children to be too kind can make them pushovers in later life.  But studies have shown that kind people are typically more successful in their careers – and they’re happier too.

So, it was natural that in 2021, while sat in my sister-in-law’s kitchen in rural Ireland writing the values for Tall Roots, I chose Kind to be one of them.  And it is the value that I am personally most proud of to date.

Our mission at Tall Roots is to improve social mobility in leadership.  But when we started out, there was little evidence or data on how best to do that.  People assume that when someone gets to a certain point in their career, where they grew up doesn’t matter.  Yet we increasingly recognise the impact of imposter syndrome on someone’s career, even for the most experienced leaders – not least within the charity sector.

And what’s the best way to overcome imposter syndrome?  To help people not to feel like an imposter, of course.

We use a variety of tools at Tall Roots to make our processes more inclusive, including sharing our preliminary interview questions with all candidates in advance (I would encourage everyone to share their interview questions in advance by the way – it’s been a game changer for us).  And that stuff is all great, but the biggest success factor for us as a business is simply by being Kind.

We want every single person who engages with us to feel fully supported and able to be their whole selves.  To know that we recognise vulnerability isn’t a sign of weak leadership; it is a sign of humanity.  The onus is on us as recruiters to guide our candidates – and our clients – through the executive recruitment process, and to break down barriers in traditional processes that can be intimidating, particularly to emerging leaders.

And guess what?  Prioritising kindness in recruitment not only helps recruit more people from working class backgrounds into leadership roles, but it also enables better diversity as a whole.

I believe that we are entering a heightened era of kindness in business.  The latest generation of workers are increasingly wanting to only work for businesses that share their own values, and they will walk away if they don’t.  We prioritise kindness at Tall Roots because it is morally the right thing to do.  But kindness also make good business sense, and as we grow, we will be constantly thinking about how we can also create the kindest environment for our own staff.

Erinn did have a point though.  She wasn’t being unkind; she was being honest about how she felt.  I just wish she would have a bit more diplomacy.  That’s the next skill to learn...

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