Tag Archives: Lance Secretan

Kindness and Common Sense Often Go Hand-in-Hand

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“There are few problems in life which kindness and common sense cannot make simple and manageable.” (Mary Burchell)

Attribution: Donna CameronI’ve been invited to speak at a conference later this month on the importance of kindness in business and the workplace. Working on my PowerPoint (of course, there must be a PowerPoint!) and putting some notes together this last weekend, I kept thinking how obvious it is: kindness is one of the keys to success in business—both individual success and organizational success. It seems like a no-brainer.

I’m old enough that I remember the days of “Chainsaw” Al Dunlap and a proliferation of business books about Winning Through Intimidation, Looking Out for Number One, and Nice Guys Finish Last. There really was a time when “profit at any price” was a prevailing business philosophy and when ideals like kindness, compassion, and even teamwork were viewed as soft, squishy, and oh-so-weak.

Managers believed—they were even taught—that they got the most effort from their employees through bullying, browbeating, and coercion. They overlooked the obvious—that those behaviors resulted in low morale, resentment, and high turnover.

In recent years, there’s been a whole lot of research on kindness. As I’ve noted in many earlier posts, there are health benefits, wealth benefits, relationship benefits, and, yes, many, many business benefits. Just as there were once many books on cutthroat business practices, there are now numerous books on compassion as a successful business strategy. Among them:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unlike the others, this last one isn’t a recent book. It’s 20 years old, but still one of the best business books I know. Certain ideas are timeless, and you’ll find them in this and other books by Lance Secretan.

 

Here’s just a sampling of some of the recent research on kind and compassionate workplaces, found in these books and elsewhere:

Employees of companies described as having kind cultures:

  • Perform at 20% higher levels
  • Are 87% less likely to leave their jobs
  • Make fewer errors, thus saving their companies time and money
  • The companies themselves have 16% higher profitability
  • And if they’re publically traded companies, they have a 65% higher share price.

Research has also shown that compassionate business cultures consistently have:

  • better customer service
  • healthier employees and fewer absences
  • far less turnover and an easier time replacing employees when they do leave
  • higher productivity
  • greater employee engagement and commitment, and
  • an atmosphere where learning, collaboration and innovation are more likely to flourish.

In business, kindness is your competitive advantage.

It helps to have some common sense, too.

Which brings to mind United Airlines’ recent incident. I’m sure you’ve heard the story: Passengers were bumped from their seats and removed from a plane to make room for United crew members who needed to get to the flight’s destination. One bumped passenger, a doctor of Chinese descent, was forcibly removed when he refused the bump, telling airline personnel he had to get home to see patients. Security dragged him from his seat and pulled him by his arms and on his back down the aisle; his face was battered and bloodied in the process. What did United gain by this? Well, maybe they got their flight crew to their destination, but it cost them millions of dollars (one estimate I saw said easily a billion!) in bad press, lost passengers, and worldwide contempt. In China, where United is among several airlines competing for a share of the huge travel market, videos of the incident have gone viral at record rates, and Chinese travelers are vowing never to fly United. The monetary and P.R. costs to the company are incalculable.

Common sense and a compassionate mindset would have told United there were numerous other options: buying tickets for their crew on another airline, seeking a back-up crew, allowing the stranded crew’s flight to be delayed, approaching passengers without the confrontational, stormtrooper tactics…they could even have chartered a small plane. The relatively small cost of any of these options would have been preferable to the “nuclear option” they chose.

But if kindness and compassion—and, let’s face it, common sense—aren’t part of a company’s culture, these are the sorts of things that happen. I’m guessing other airlines, and other businesses in general, are using the United story as a teaching moment for their executives and employees. Let’s hope United has the good sense to be one of those companies.

If they’re interested, I can recommend some good books….

“When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.” (Jimi Hendrix)

Positive Feedback Nets Positive Results (and the converse is also true…)

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“When we treat people merely as they are, they will remain as they are. When we treat them as if they were what they should be, they will become what they should be. ” (Thomas S. Monson)

Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; attrib: Donna CameronCarol’s comment about last week’s “Kindness in the Workplace” post got me to thinking.  She noted her experience that treating people with kindness and encouragement brings out their best work.  The carrot, she said, is far more effective than the stick.

That recalled my first real job after college.  It was my first “9-to-5” office job and it was for a textbook publisher—a small publishing division incongruously owned by a huge publically-traded corporation that had a global presence in technology and defense.  The president of our little division was a bully.  He motivated—if that’s what you call it—by fear and intimidation.  That was about the time that a variety of books on winning through intimidation, looking out for number one, screw the other guy, and nice guys finish last were gaining in popularity.  I’m pretty sure he stayed up nights underlining these texts and planning how he was going to terrorize the editorial and sales teams working under him.

My immediate boss trembled at the mere mention of his name, and a call from the “home office”—3000 miles away—always triggered panic.  The twice-yearly meetings that brought together staff from all the division’s offices were an opportunity for him to browbeat his employees one-on-one or in small groups.  He would berate, belittle, and threaten employees in front of their peers.  After a national sales meeting, there was always a spate of resignations—mine was one of those finally.  And yet he wondered why the company had high turnover.

I worked with some really good people at that company, and I was sorry to be leaving them when I resigned.  But I wasn’t sorry to leave the company, its chief executive, or the pervasive culture of fear and intimidation.

I don’t regret the three years I worked there.  I learned a great deal, met a lot of tremendous people, and developed some professional confidence.  I also had an opportunity at a very early age to make some decisions about what I would and would not tolerate in my professional life.  I vowed to myself that I would not work for another bully, and that I would not be a part of a culture that didn’t value its employees or that relied on threats and intimidation rather than encouragement and support.  I don’t think I articulated it at the time, but from that day forward, I sought kind employers and managers, and when it was my turn to step into the employer/manager role, I sought to be kind and encouraging.  I don’t think I always succeeded, but it was my intent.

Last week, I mentioned Lance Secretan’s books on leadership as being ones that addressed leading with kindness and compassion.  D. Michael Abrashoff—a former Naval commander—has written a couple of great books that also approach leadership from a positive and compassionate perspective.  In It’s Your Ship, he describes how he took over command of the USS Benfold—positioned dead last in naval rankings—and, in partnership with its crew, quickly turned it around to be deemed “the best damn ship in the Navy.”  It’s an inspiring story, and a great lesson in leadership.

One of Commander Abrashoff’s guiding principles was to empower and support his people.  He said, “I prefer to build myself up by strengthening others and helping them feel good about their jobs and themselves. When that happens, their work improves, and my own morale leaps.”

He further noted of his shipmates and crew, “The more I thanked them for hard work, the harder they worked.  The payoff in morale was palpable.  I’m absolutely convinced that positive, personal reinforcement is the essence of effective leadership.”

His next book bore the great title, Get Your Ship Together, and it was a collection of case studies of successful businesses—ones that achieved their success through various means of positive personal reinforcement..

In neither book does Abrashoff diminish the need for criticism or discipline, but shows how it can be applied firmly, fairly, and with compassion—and to great result.

We All Need Feedback

Feedback isn’t always going to be positive—we’d never learn or improve if it was.  But any manager or leader who thinks a steady stream of negative feedback will motivate employees and make them eager to improve is woefully misguided.  Professor Kim Cameron (no relation, but coincidentally, I do have a sister named Kim Cameron) of the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan asserts that both positive and negative feedback are essential, but that effective motivation requires a ratio skewed heavily to the positive.  He reports that high-performance teams demonstrate a positive statement ratio of 5.6-to-1 vs. low performance teams which exhibit a positive to negative ratio of 0.36 to 1.

Expanding Dr. Cameron’s research beyond just the business world, what if we apply his findings and ratio to family settings, and friends, and our day-to-day interactions with all our planet-mates?  What would happen if each of us committed to a personal goal of making six positive comments for every one negative remark.  That would make for either a very positive world … or a very quiet one.  Either way, it’s an improvement.

“Invent your world. Surround yourself with people, color, sounds, and work that nourish you.” – Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy (Sark)

Kindness in the Workplace

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“The common mistake that bullies make is assuming that because someone is nice that he or she is weak. Those traits have nothing to do with each other. In fact, it takes considerable strength and character to be a good person.”  (Mary Elizabeth Williams)

Cloudy Sunrise at Storm LakeOver the years, I’ve accumulated a lot of books about business, management, and leadership.  A lot.  Probably enough to fill a good-sized bookcase.  Many I purchased; many were given to me by authors who wanted to introduce me to their ideas in hopes that I would hire them to speak at a client conference.  I haven’t read them all, but I’ve read quite a few, and I’ve started many more but never gotten past the first few chapters.

I’ve been leafing through them over the last few weeks and have been disappointed—though though not surprised—to see that words like kindness and compassion are mostly absent.  Even the books that approach leadership in refreshing and enlightened ways: The Art of Supportive Leadership, Love and Profit—The Art of Caring Leadership, Leadership Jazz, Leading Change, Leading with Soul….  They’re all good books with good ideas, and good intentions, but the authors don’t seem to see kindness as an important element of leadership.  It baffles me.

It’s as if kindness is too weak and nebulous a concept to be put forth in a serious book about business.  There were a few exceptions and those books happened to be not only the ones that I read all the way through, but often they were the ones that I have read several times and highlighted extensively.  Notable among these were Lance Secretan’s excellent books, Reclaiming Higher Ground and Inspirational Leadership.

I can’t think of many places more in need of kindness than the business world and the American workplace.  Or many places where kindness would make such a difference.  I have to assume that there are business books that address the importance of kindness in the workplace, and I just haven’t come across them yet.  I hope someone will point them out to me.

Several years ago, one of our company’s long-time employees retired.  At the retirement party we held for her, she said the word she would use to describe the company if she were asked was “kind.” I remember thinking at the time that I could think of no word I would rather hear used to describe our company.

Oh, sure, I want us to be daringly innovative and wildly profitable, but even above these qualities, I want us to be kind.  Since that day when Margaret labeled our company’s defining trait, I think we have been more conscious of that value and more committed to it.  Kindness was always modeled by our company’s founder, Lynn Melby, and as each subsequent partner joined the ownership team, we implicitly accepted kindness as one of our personal values, and we continued to cultivate kindness along the way.  That’s not to say we haven’t slipped occasionally.  We’re human, after all, and the business world can, at times, challenge the kindest intentions.

It isn’t easy to always be kind in business, and there may be times when kindness is well-disguised, but if the underlying culture is kind, the intention generally shines through.  Whether we are interviewing, training, correcting, or even terminating an employee, we do our utmost to approach it kindly—using empathy and compassion.  In client or vendor situations, likewise, when problems arise we look for solutions that are fair and respectful to all.  Where we have perhaps failed is in keeping clients too long that don’t share our values.  Clients who don’t practice kindness themselves.  Clients that don’t want to pay for the services they receive, or who put the blame on others for mistakes they make, or who ask us to bend our integrity on their behalf.

Choosing Integrity

A few years ago, after a large conference, a couple of our staff noticed that the hotel had missed a sizable food and beverage charge on the bill.  The client’s convention chair directed them to pay the bill quickly and not point out the error.  Our staff followed their consciences rather than his instructions.  They pointed out the error to the hotel and asked for a corrected bill.  The chairman was not happy.

In doing this, our team not only did the right thing, but also modeled our values to our client and to their office colleagues.  The longer I am in business, the more certain I am that success lies in working with people—employees, clients, suppliers, business partners—who share our values.

Unkind people can learn to be kind, just as dishonest people can learn to be honest.  But if they choose not to value those traits it is probably because beneath it all they believe that others are just as unkind or dishonest as they are.  Our job, then, is to decide whether to work with such people.  If they are likely to change, we should give them that chance, but if they are unlikely to, we should seek our business partners elsewhere.

There’s so much more to be said about kindness in business and in the workplace.  What has been your experience of kindness (or its absence) in business?  Please share your thoughts below.  Maybe we can start a dialogue.

“We live under the illusion that organizations are ‘them’ when, in reality, they are ‘us.’  If we wish to work in evolved organizations, we must each be the first to start the journey.” (Lance Secretan)