Be Firm and Kind, Short and Sweet
I was working on an important email with Michael the other day and he shared the guidance, “be firm and kind, short and sweet.”
I’ve been thinking about it ever since.
First, because I appreciate the internal consistency – the mantra takes its own advice! More substantially, each standalone element of the advice has some benefits, but the power comes in their combination.
And it’s not alone: some powerful business concepts come in unlikely pairs. Two that come to mind are Harrison Assessments’ paradoxical leadership and the featured pairings of the Agile manifesto.
Let’s unpack each of these a bit more.
Firm and Kind, Short and Sweet
Firm and Kind
Firm has much to recommend it on its own. Merriam-Webster includes definitions like:
Not weak or uncertain
Not subject to change or revision
Not easily moved or disturbed
I want to be steadfast, well-founded, and certain! Except when I’m learning, in which case I want to be curious and methodical… We start to see some reasons for layering on modifiers and exceptions.
Adding kind to the mix introduces:
Of a sympathetic or helpful nature
Arising from or characterized by sympathy or forbearance
I have a moderate desire to be gentle and I do want to be helpful, but I start to feel associations of weakness or getting pushed around in reading these descriptions.
Put together, firm and kind points toward providing clarity in a warm way. It evokes the image of an elementary school teacher who leads students through well-organized lessons and cares deeply about a stubbed toe.
In this email example, firm and kind meant:
Acknowledging the other party’s requests
Stating my points without exaggeration
Leaving out the softening filler phrases that I often turn to when I’m afraid I’m being mean (“if it’s at all possible,” “we’ll see what we can do,” the list goes on)
Let’s keep going to the other half of this counsel.
Short and Sweet
Has anyone else heard the song Short People by Randy Newman? (Here’s an appropriately lighthearted official video.)
As a short person myself, I was tempted to be offended, with “short people got no reason to live” in the first verse. But the melody is so catchy, and he sneaks in such timeless adages as “short people are just the same as you and I… all men are brothers until the day they die” that I can’t help but enjoy the song.
All that to say, being short isn’t always a good thing. Short can mean:
Not extended in time
Seeming to pass quickly
There are some things we want to be brief – dental work, a scolding – and others we want to last for a long time – vacation, a great meal!
The jury is definitely out on short. But how could you dislike sweet?! It can mean:
Pleasing to the mind or feelings
Marked by gentle good humor or kindliness
Then we get to saccharine, cloying, so I guess sweet isn’t all good either.
Combined, short and sweet seems to get at the best of both concepts. If a meeting is short and sweet, it means that we got done what we needed to get done, and it didn’t take too long. Awesome! If a podcast is short and sweet, it provided valuable insights and concluded before I was tired of thinking about them. Love that.
In the case of this email, short and sweet meant:
Making a point one time holistically, rather than in pieces over three statements
Addressing what I could and providing high-level guidance on how further information could be gathered
Removing an entire section that boiled down to “I don’t know”
Firm and Kind, Short and Sweet Indeed
Like many techniques, this advice can be applied iteratively to great effect.
The final version was half as long as my first draft. Short and sweet, indeed. And I’m happy to say that I kept the firm and kind half of the content. With this combined guidance, I emphasized the warm, empathetic, clear elements and trimmed anything that tended toward defensiveness.
But enough about an email. Where else do we see unlikely pairs in business transformation?
Paradoxical Leadership
At FlexPoint, we think highly of Harrison Assessments, a research-based analytics firm focused on helping clients acquire, develop, lead, and engage talent. One of their tools is around paradoxical leadership:
“Harrison's Paradoxical Leadership Assessment provides key insights into the paradoxical choices that leaders need to make on a daily basis. It provides analytics related to leadership paradoxes which reveal leadership strengths and weaknesses. The Harrison Paradoxical Leadership Assessment measures 12 leadership paradoxes which reveal subtle issues of balance, giving leaders a deep insight into key leadership issues” (emphasis ours).
Some of these pairings include:
Certainty about opinions with open-mindedness
Self-assuredness with self-improvement
Making decisions with collaboration
Just like before, each element has its own power, but optimal impact comes from the balance of them together.
As a leader, if I focus only my need to make decisions at the expense of collaborating with others, those around me may feel that I don’t value their input into our shared success.
Similarly, if I lean all the way into self-assuredness, I may be seen as arrogant. But if I lean all the way into self-improvement, I may be seen as wishy-washy or amateur. Balancing self-assuredness with self-improvement allows me to show up both confident and curious with various stakeholders.
There’s power in these paradoxical leadership pairings, and I recommend reading the full list and thinking about how each of these shows up in your leadership.
Agile Manifesto
Perhaps the most succinct example of powerful pairings is found in the Manifesto for Agile Software Development. It says:
“We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value:
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan
That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.”
I love their final framing! They’re not saying either side of the list lacks value; rather they’re saying, “when these two things are in tension, we’re going to prioritize the items on the left.” In the original, the left items are in a bigger font, to add even more clarity.
This type of guidance is both kind and empowering. It avoids a long list of dos and don’ts, allowing the people following the framework to use their wisdom to determine their best path forward. And yet it’s clear in its overarching advice, and the language is crisp enough to leave little room for ambiguity.
If I’m prioritizing customer collaboration over contract negotiation, I’m going to spend most of my time investing in productive interactions with customers, rather than updating contracts to reflect the latest details. (Indeed, contracts for Agile engagements can be quite tricky! We appreciate the nuance in this article from Scaled Agile.)
And if I’m prioritizing working software over comprehensive documentation, I’m going to spend most of my time developing software, rather than updating documentation about the software. This is a helpful guide for Agile teams, both for their internal organization and in setting expectations with customers.
A Short and Sweet Conclusion
We hope you’ve enjoyed considering these unlikely pairs and can see practicality in your work and life. Where will you be firm and kind, short and sweet today?
