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#146 How kindness shows up in moments of change with Graham Allcott

Another Door Stories

Release Date: 03/06/2025

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"When you have kindness in the culture, you build psychological safety. And from there you have high performing teams, better staff retention, creativity, resilience, like it really stacks up in terms of all the different benefits that you get by increasing levels of kindness and empathy in your business."

Kindness can transform not just your personal well-being but also the landscape of work and leadership. In this episode, I reconnect with Graham Allcott, productivity expert, author, and now a passionate advocate for kindness in the workplace. We share the inspiration for his new book Kind, and how kindness is essential in moments of change. Kindness to yourself, and others.

Graham shares his journey of closing doors, his evolution from productivity to kindness, and the impact kindness can have in our daily lives and careers.

 

Here are the highlights:

05:55 Transitioned from managing a business to an MD

10:06 Ready to shift focus from productivity talk to new topics for personal interest

24:06 Experimentation encourages curiosity

35:44 Promote kindness to counter negative narratives 

39:22 Curiosity about understanding inherently different personalities

52:37 Kindness begins with self-kindness

 

The things that helped Graham navigate change - 

Book: "Wintering" by Katherine May

Music:   "Lovely Day" - Bill Withers

The one piece of advice: “When you think about kindness, it's really important to be kind to yourself first. And once you start to be kind to yourself first, then you start to rewire your brain to make it easier for you to be kind to everybody else. So never think of self kindness as self indulgent. Always think of it as the thing that helps to role model for you and everybody around you an abundance mentality instead of a scarcity one.”

More about Graham

Graham is the author of multiple books, including the global bestseller How to Be a Productivity Ninja. His latest book, KIND: The Quiet Power of Kindness at Work, focuses on why organisations with kinder, more human-centred cultures are ultimately more successful.

He is the founder of Think Productive, one of the world's leading providers of training and consultancy, with offices in the UK, USA, Canada, Australia, and the Netherlands.

 

Website: https://www.grahamallcott.com/

 

About your host Eleanor 

Eleanor supports individuals, teams and organisations through change. Whether it’s 121 coaching or large scale organisational change through communications and training. Eleanor’s work centres around how we, as humans, work through change, embracing the messy bits, the role of playing, with the aim to see opportunity. “Too often we get stuck in the change happening to us, when just through that next door is an exciting next chapter.” 

 

Eleanor is the founder of Another Door and the author of Why losing your job could be the best thing that ever happened to you. 

 

Instagram:instagram/anotherdooruk

LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/eleanor-tweddell/

Website: eleanortweddell.com



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