The secret to becoming a more innovative board? Kindness, says billionaire entrepreneur Daniel Lubetzky

But of course he does; he’s the founder of Kind, the famously “not-only-for-profit” snack company. He shared his definitions of both traits during a talk at the National Association of Corporate Directors 2022 Summit on Monday. To be “nice” is passive, while kindness is active, requiring the “strength of honesty,” Lubetzky said. “If you’re nice, you don’t bully people. But if you’re kind, you stand up to the bully.”

Lubetzky’s appearance, which I caught virtually, hit emotional notes that suited a conference on modern corporate governance but may have been out of place—even a bit woo-woo—only a few years ago. That his talk resonated with an audience more used to discussing the minutiae of fiduciary responsibilities is yet another sign of how boards are changing.

Kindness matters in the boardroom because it allows for conversations that are grounded in candor and trust, which in turn helps teams stay sharp, ambitious, and innovative, Lubetzky argued. Avoiding defensiveness—a natural human reaction—also allows people to engage with ideas instead of egos.

The former Kind CEO, now chief impact officer, said that he starts to feel uncomfortable if, after about 30 minutes into a meeting, people are not poking holes in his ideas. To keep debates lively, Lubetzky sometimes takes a “silly position” on an issue to force the group to drill down. At the end of such meetings, he thanks the employee who challenged him the most, whether or not that person’s ideas triumphed. 

Lubetzky’s personal history shaped his preoccupation with respectful debate. The entrepreneur, an immigrant who moved to the U.S. from Mexico as a teenager, is the son of a holocaust survivor. His father was liberated from the Dachau concentration camp at age 15. To him, kindness is not only fuel for effective leadership within a company, but it’s at the heart of all democratic processes. These days, he believes it’s missing from the public conversation.

Before ending this talk, Lubetzky urged board members to guard against a “dystopic” future in which companies align with polarizing politics. “That’s not the solution. But I am very concerned that I don’t have a solution,” he said. Companies should take a stand on issues that make sense to them and will genuinely better the world. But they also need to transcend nasty partisanship, he said. 

Lubetzky’s general philosophy is that leaders need to show their humanity to build connections with employees and create a resilient culture. “Have some fun, relax, not everything needs to be like a machine, as productive as ever,” he said, later claiming that even as the company grew to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars under his watch, he barely looked at its financials. “I found it so boring,” he said.

But on how boards can interact with an obstinate CEO, he was clear: If a CEO signals that they dislike when boards challenge them or will even fire board members who disagree with them, the board ought to unite to tell that chief executive what needs to change. “That may be your most important role as a board,” he said. “The minute you introduce a culture where things are not questioned, that’s the minute where you’re going to look back in five or 10 years and find that’s when your organization started becoming mediocre.”

Lila MacLellan
lila.maclellan@fortune.com
@lilamaclellan

Word of Advice

“It's much more likely that union members actually understand the total business and are more likely to be responsive to the needs of making changes or problem-solving.”

—Sara Nelson, international president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, AFL–CIO, speaking at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit about why companies ought to welcome employee-led unionization drives.

On the Agenda

👓 Read: ​Looking for the counterargument to Daniel Lubetzky’s appeal for kind leadership? In The 7 Rules of Power, Jeffrey Pfeffer, a Stanford Graduate School of Business professor, proposes that leaders avoid appearing vulnerable and display anger when it’s warranted.  ​​

🎧 Listen: A power trio of popular leadership experts—Brené Brown, Adam Grant, and Simon Sinek—appear on Brown’s Dare to Lead podcast this month, churning out highly quotable insights about the modern workplace.

📖 Bookmark: One last leadership-themed read. Sudev Sheth, a University of Pennsylvania senior lecturer, pulls new lessons from the 1972 “miracle of the Andes,” when a chartered plane carrying Uruguayan rugby players crashed, leaving survivors to plot their rescue.

Onboard/Offboard

Juul, the beleaguered vaping company, named two independent board members who are both experts in restructuring: Paul Aronzon, former head of global financial restructuring at the law firm Milbank, and David Barse, CEO of XOUT Capital and family office DMB Holdings. Visa tapped Kermit Crawford, former Rite Aid COO, to sit on its board. Rajesh Subramaniam, CEO of FedEx, joined the board at Procter & Gamble. 

In Brief

- Tiktok was accused of exploiting refugee children in Syria who use the platform to ask for donations.  

- Meta is determined to make the metaverse the next office.

- If companies are “hoarding” employees, it could make an expected recession less brutal for workers.  

- An activist investor gave Kohl’s an ultimatum: Replace at least three long-tenured board members, including the chair, or face another proxy battle.

- U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren accused Wells Fargo of not doing enough to protect its customers from Zelle scams.

Editor’s pick

For board members tracking trends in workplace culture, the Wall Street Journal’s feature on the “Pls fix, thx” meme is a must-read. The phrase describes the frequent late-night or weekend emails that managers send to junior employees asking for document revisions. The messages are sent with the implicit understanding that the employee will drop what they’re doing and “send the 39th version of a PowerPoint slide” to their boss.

Here’s a snippet:

“To be ready to respond to a ‘pls fix,’ Ms. Noël, the former consultant and banker, would lug her laptop to brunch and bars. She took it on a Christmas carriage ride in Central Park with her family, and regularly charted her running routes to stay within a 15-minute radius of her laptop.

Those few seconds between double-clicking on the email attachment and understanding the scope of the assignment held a special dread. Was this a few quick wording changes to a slide deck? Did she need to rerun an entire data analysis? Was this going to blow up her night?”

Read the rest here and pls fix this if you can.