The animal you watch from a safe distance may be spending its entire attention on your presence.

Your safe distance is not necessarily their safe distance. The animal that appears to be grazing calmly may be spending all of its attention on you, holding still, tracking your position, unable to do anything else while you remain. What looks like a peaceful encounter can be one party frozen.

This translates directly to people. Your relaxed presence in a room can be someone else’s whole occupied attention, depending on the difference in power between you. If you are the larger presence, the manager, the confident one, the one with the say, assume your comfort is not shared. Leaving earlier, or standing further back, is often the actual kindness.