[Kalium]

There's a great deal of nuance to how kindness is defined. It's very easy for one set of actions to be either very kind or very unkind, depending on definitions.

Listening, being respectful, and being empathetic may drive one person to bite their tongue and silence feedback that someone is performing poorly out of fear of hurting them or the morale of the team. Another may be driven by the very same things into giving candid feedback.

This article does not do a good job of exploring the difference. It just asserts "Being nice is the new punk".