We help work suck less and businesses thrive more.

We believe work should be one of the most fulfilling parts of life. We believe that business is a force for good. We want to accelerate the growth of purpose-driven people and planet positive businesses. But work sucks for too many people. And leaders need these people to thrive. Kindness creates thriving organisations that thrive more, stand for more, care for more and give more. That’s why we exist. Our Why.

#WorkKind

How This Whole Thing Started

The year before the pandemic, two businesspeople, on two continents came together, united by one powerful mission: to redefine work with kindness. That mission became The Kindness Corporation.

Hi! We’re Cole and Magnus, aka, “the two businesspeople.”

We could use a lot of long winded, glamorous words to tell you, our story. But the simple truth is this. Suffering, passion, the willingness to challenge with good intent and our belief in humanity led us right here. After decades of working for large organisations that did more harm than good, we said, “Enough.” We decided to stop being angry and use our energy to create better.

We left our corporate careers and comfortable salaries. We dug deep and reflected on what we’d learned, what we knew and what we had to share that could possibly help someone else. There was one irrefutable conclusion: Kindness is an essential competency for healthy people and high performing organisations. It makes business better.

So, we came up with a short list of the things we could do to make work better and we launched The Kindness Corporation.

We’re glad you’re here.

Magnus Wood

CEO & Co-Founder

Waking up wishing I hadn’t.

Every work day.

For months on end.

I simply don’t recommend it. Getting to that place where you are suffering so much at work that, on waking, when you remember that it’s a work day, you wish you hadn’t woken up. It’s not good for you. It’s not good for the people with whom you work. And it’s certainly not good for your loved ones, family and friends who can see your suffering.

At the start of 2019 I was running a multi-million dollar division for a well-known company. I didn’t like them, their values, and the culture they’d created at head office. And I wasn’t alone in thinking this way.

I come from a career in scrappy startups and global corporates. I’ve ridden the Dotcom Bubble and survived the Great Recession. One lesson has been absolutely clear and, as a leader, it has served me well:

The core role of a leader is to create and serve the environment where people thrive and can do their best-ever work.

It’s not much more complicated than that. But in 2019, despite my best efforts in my division, it wasn’t the experience I, and from lots of conversations, I could tell others were having.

So, we parted ways and I set out on a journey to apply my energies and focus encouraging work cultures where people and companies thrive.

Just before the pandemic hit the UK in February 2020, quite independently, three clients all asked me, “How do I create a kinder working culture?” A great believer that the Universe has just powerfully given me a message, I then set out to research kindness and especially workplace kindness. I carried out the largest meta-analysis of workplace kindness ever conducted; reading everything I could find until the breadcrumb trails kept leading me to the same reports, the same studies, and the same data.

I found out two things:

  1. Kindness isn’t talked about much at work.
  2. Every piece of evidence that I could find about workplace kindness showed that everything you wanted to go up at work — trust, wellbeing, productivity, performance, creativity…these all went up. And all the bad stuff like mental and physical health issues, tolerance, bullying, toxic cultures..they all went down.

I wrote a book. The Kindness Code: Seven Steps to Unlock The Power of Kindness at Work. It’s the only book that supports everyone at every level to create more workplace kindness. Read it and you can start creating kinder work right away.

And my kindness journey continued from there, working with some great organisations and learning how to bring the power of kindness to work. Something we sum up as #WorkKind.

Cole and I met, we started The KIndness Corporation together and journeyed together for a while. It was a blast and we achieved a great deal of good in the world.

You can get to know some more of my story in this post and this video conversation with Krish from Tales to Inspire. As well as the other places I’ve written for or appeared at.

To add more colour, I’m also a forager, cook, gin-maker, yogi, father of two beautiful daughters, and live on a houseboat down the river from London.

Now I continue to lead The Kindness Corporation, working with and collaborating with some incredible people who #WorkKind.

Maybe that’s you?

Magnus Wood CEO & Co-Founder of The Kindness Corporation

Cole Baker-Bagwell

Co-Founder & Corporate Hippie

I am an accomplished business strategist, executive advisor, 30-year mindfulness practitioner and skilled workplace facilitator.

I’m an expert on workplace kindness and the transformative effect it has on relationships, organisational growth, stability, and success. I’ve led award-winning teams working with the giants of Silicon Valley and Wall Street. Throughout my career, I’ve learned the benefits of nurturing people — the soul of business.

I was instrumental in the creation of #WorkKind with the aim of teaching people how to develop kindness and mindfulness as core business competencies by sharing the knowledge, actionable practices and tools that help people thrive.

I’m a practicing yogi, proud Mom, neuroscience nerd and horse whisperer who loves to wander barefoot, and host dinner parties as often as possible. I live in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina with my husband and fur babies.

I turned the company over to Magnus in late 2022 so I could pursue working and serving locally, in my Blue Ridge mountain community.

We live what we value…

This is who we are and what we stand for individually and collectively. Our values are the compass and litmus test for every choice we make.

TKC_Values_72_Kindness

KINDNESS

Leave everyone and everything better in every thought, word and action.

TKC_Values_72_Integrity

INTEGRITY

Whatever you do, do it for the purpose of serving other people, the planet and all beings.

TKC_Values_72_Curiosity

CURIOSITY

Meet others and the world with the mindset and intention of learning together and discovering what is possible.

…and that includes where we work.

Aloha

The Hawaiian greeting “Sharing the joy of the present moment.”

We’re often asked where we work.

One answer is everywhere: the work we do is truly global.

And the other answer is this beauty: Aloha, Magnus’s home/office. Living and working on the tranquility of the water truly is for me #WorKind.

Look out for us in the rivers and canals around London. And why not pop in for a coffee?

As seen at, in & on…

Alliance of Independent Agencies

Authority Magazine

Blue Earth Summit

Creative Brief Bite

Forbes

PIRATE Summit

Tales to Inspire

The Business Journals