E348: Heather Ditillo - Are we getting Kindness wrong?
What does kindness look like when you need to say no, deliver difficult feedback, or hold someone accountable? TedX speaker and Lead the Kind Way founder Heather DiTillo joins Leticia to explore why kindness is more than being nice—and how it can help people navigate hard moments at home and at work. Heather shares lessons from her early work with Mr. Rogers’ team on the child abuse prevention initiative One Kind Word, her experience in nonprofit and technology leadership, and the personal turning point that brought her back to kindness as her life’s work. She offers practical ways to pause, get grounded, and respond with care, while still addressing what needs to change. The conversation also looks at how kindness can build trust, strengthen teams, and support better performance. Heather’s reminder: the conversations we avoid today help create the culture we live with tomorrow.
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SHOW NOTES
📺 [3:14] Heather grew up with Mr. Rogers – learned that people, feelings, and kindness matter
🍎 [6:15] First job out of college: Head Start teacher for at-risk three to five-year-olds
💡 [7:09] Lesson from parenting classes: what you pay attention to, you get more of
🌍 [9:53] Her sister invited her to Uganda with Bead for Life – entrepreneurial training for women
🏥 [11:32] At 55, a tumor in her neck – forced her to ask: if these were my last words, what would they be?
❤️ [15:11] Kindness isn't only needed when things are going well
🧭 [19:25] The KIND framework: Know yourself, Invest in others, Navigate with courage, Do the right thing
🎤 [21:39] TEDx Boulder talk coming in November: Are We Getting Kindness Wrong?
🌍 [25:20] Every tradition has this practice: Buddhism's metta, Hinduism's ahimsa, the Golden Rule
👨👩👦 [27:32] Her son Logan: "No mommy, I'm not mad. I'm angry and frustrated with you."
📈 [34:41] Harvard Business Review and McKinsey: leaders who lead with kindness get better performance and profit
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Leadership & TEDx Speaker | Founder, Lead The KIND Way™
Heather Ditillo, MSW, is a leadership speaker, facilitator, and founder of Lead The KIND Way™. For more than 30 years, her work has centered on helping people navigate hard things—from her early work alongside Mister Rogers’ team on the child-abuse prevention initiative OneKindWord to her years leading teams and organizations across the nonprofit and technology sectors, most recently as COO of a data analytics and technology consulting firm.
Today, Heather helps thoughtful, caring leaders navigate hard conversations, difficult decisions, and messy human moments with courage, clarity, and kindness. At the heart of her work is a belief that kindness isn’t weakness—and that kindness and accountability are not opposites.
Heather is a 2026 TEDxBoulder speaker, where she’ll explore a deceptively simple question: Are we getting kindness wrong?
