Kindness + Math: A Better Way for Leaders?

• Amid chaos, practicing kindness can stimulate calm and creative thinking, enabling leaders to respect the agency of others while exercising their own.
• Integrating social sciences and humanities into business education can equip future leaders with the tools to make kinder, more ethical choices.
• Tomorrow’s leaders must learn to pause, reflect, and build genuine human connections amid the pressures of speed and efficiency.

Transcript

James Rhee: [00:15] In times of chaos, I think normally the reaction that most people anticipate is fear, or anger, or things like that. We know neurologically that doesn't activate the most thoughtful parts of your brain.

[00:27] You make short-term limbic system catalyzed decisions that often are self-interested and not longitudinally wise.

[00:37] So when I talk about kindness and math in times of chaos, kindness is a function of your humanness and of your brain activity that's the most longitudinally thoughtful, calm, creative. You can't be kind when you are fearful.

[00:54] It creates an environment that's literally the opposite because you're thinking of other people's agency, of a broader mutualism. Whereas in fear, the human reaction, if you don't check it or if you don't really have systems to, is that you are self-interested and you take care of yourself; that's kindness.

[01:12] Then, the math part is really a distinction that in business, it's not philanthropy; it's very different.

You can't be kind when you are fearful.

[01:18] There are stakeholders and shareholders, so the math has to make sense. It's also a distinction that math is very different from financial statements and accounting.

[01:28] Accounting and financial statements are conventions that we use to summarize and compare data. Math transcends all of those things.

[01:36] So when you combine kindness and math, what I'm asking people during times of chaos is, can you think calmly, activate the best part of your brain, create a system that is mutually beneficial for many?

[01:49] Do you have that discipline? And is it mathematically consonant, like is it profitable? Is it sustainable? Are you liberating yourself from accounting and looking at a bigger picture with possibilities?

[02:04] I think the importance of the word accountability and tying it to the definition of an agency hasn't been talked about enough.

[02:12] It's even more important today. I think where we come as a society is not just in business, but clearly in business schools, where we are training a lot of future leaders.

Great leaders let other people's free will emerge, they create that environment, and give them continuous learning and the confidence to do it.

[02:21] Perhaps we've gone too far in applauding agency, narrowly defining it, and stripping it of the fact that you have free will, the ability, and the desire to advance your interests.

[02:35] But when it comes at the expense of others, when you're taking away other people's agency, that's not an active agency. That's borderline chaos.

[02:46] And so, great leaders have agency of their own free will. They let other people's free will emerge, they create that environment, and give them continuous learning and the confidence to do it. But they're never ever unmindful of the fact that when you take away other people's agency for a profit.

[03:05] I don't really think that's leadership, and we're training a lot of people like that. People mistake agency with free markets, with unbridled greed, unbridled negative externalities.

[03:19] I've been very disappointed with the fact that some of the most highly valued companies in business are creating an awful lot of negative externalities. It's not easy to be fluent in multiple languages, right?

We need to assess these days about what we should be teaching future leaders on a continuous basis, particularly with technology.

[03:32] You have to understand what's measured and what's not measured in accounting. You have to understand economics, like what's a positive and negative externality. You have to understand sociology.

[03:43] There are a lot of disciplines that require a bigger picture understanding of what sort of impact one's actions are having.

[03:52] So, you know, I think every school, every trainer of leaders, we need to assess these days about what it is that we should be teaching future leaders on a continuous basis, particularly with technology.

[04:06] I get worried that there's a knee-jerk groupthink over-reliance in saying, 'Oh, AI is going to solve everything.'

Business schools would be great if they incorporated more of the social sciences and humanities into the curriculum.

[04:12] But the issues we're talking about right now are much more ensconced in the humanities and critical thinking. These are the things that business leaders, oxymoronically, need to over-index in, right?

[04:26] It's that judgment that we're going to need more of.

[04:29] Yeah, I think, business schools would be great if they incorporated more of the social sciences and humanities into the curriculum and then wove it into finance, and capital markets, and marketing, and branding, and work theory, so that people had a more holistic understanding of how human beings behave.

[04:47] There's a lot of chatter about divisiveness and the fact that tech will solve all the divisiveness.

[04:54] Know that my thesis in college was during the Antebellum South, when the country was on the cusp of a civil war, and people thought the telegraph would prevent the civil war, thinking that people would communicate better.

[05:10] Think about the parallels today, right? Everyone can communicate with one another with their thumbs, constantly, 24 hours a day.

How do you create an environment where people communicate? It's very intentional.

[05:18] Clearly, there's a difference between communication and quality communication, right? Really emotive communication versus transactional communication.

[05:28] I'm not a Pollyanna. I know that business interests and dollars are going to accelerate in speed. Speed of communication—we are obsessed with speed, height, power.

[05:41] I'm saying that we need to be savvy about that in teaching business school leaders, any leaders, about being tech-savvy. You're not going to stand in front of a truck and stop it.

[05:52] There is an arbitrage, however, in treating and training leaders to know how to really pause, to really see through the speed, to really know how to have very meaningful connections.

[06:03] How do you create an environment where people communicate? It's very intentional, and you're communicating mind and heart at the same time.

[06:14] I think that's a skill set. People say, "Oh, that's too hard to train people." I just don't think that's true. That's why I spent the last four years in a classroom, saying, "I can."

Students and leaders remember things that are emotional.

[06:25] You can, because it's not just words and numbers. You have to present it in a very musical, artistic way, which is how our brain works.

[06:35] Students and leaders remember things that are emotional. I'm teaching finance and accounting, and these sorts of "boring subjects." I'm teaching them in a very emotional way.

[06:47] My students, whether in the boardroom or the classroom, are like, 'We can't believe we just cried while learning accounting.' And I was like, 'Oh, did you?' Because now they will remember it forever.

[07:00] I'm hopeful that if I teach them how to make a lot of money and show them examples of making lives better for other people, maybe these leaders will think twice, or three times, before making a decision that's cruel or harsh, where they could have found a better way.

[07:20] That's what I'm working on right now.