Is it better to be kind than right?

When Hero and Destiny were attending Cunningham Elementary, there was a poster in the hallway with the phrase:

It’s better to be kind than right.

I understand what the phrase is trying to teach. Winning an argument is not worth humiliating someone, and being correct does not excuse acting like a jackass.

But as a general rule, the phrase is incomplete. It presents kindness and truth as competing values when they do not have to be.

A better mental model comes from Kim Scott’s book Radical Candor. The framework considers two dimensions of communication: how personally you care and how directly you challenge.

The goal is to care about someone enough to speak plainly while remaining humble about your own perspective. Radical Candor is not permission to be abrasive.

This is a much more robust mental model for having tough conversations. Perhaps the nuance is a bit difficult for elementary-age children, particularly because “challenging directly” feels a bit confrontational. But, challenging directly does not mean being unkind nor does it mean being right.

It means expressing your perspective clearly while remaining open to correction.