If you think Kindness is a fluff word, or possibly you think it is too much of a simple idea to incorporate into your business – think again. What does Kindness mean to you?
“Kindness is a word that conjures up other words like respect, integrity, gentleness.”
In a business context, kindness is a very tangible way of making mutual respect actionable. It is a shift in the way we think about business and kindness.
Have you ever shopped or continued to used a service that provided you with extra care and attention? Did it feel good? Was it a good experience or a WOW experience? Would you be willing to go back there again? That business performed a Kind service for you. They were willing to take the extra time (actionable) to care for you with kindness.
How many horror stories have you heard about poor customer service? I bet we all could up with a few stories to share.
Some Business Owners seem to think that Kindness doesn’t effect the bottom line. Think Again! Ask yourself these questions:
- What value are you adding to your workplace, to your customers and to your community?
- Your bottom line depends upon what value YOU are adding to your business. Kindness is just a tool to add value to your bottom line.
- What are you doing to create your organization to be the best place shop at or to work at?
- Do you provide your people the opportunity to contribute their ideas or solutions?
- Do you invest time and money in your people?
- Do you provide workplace or customer service initiatives?
- Do you inspire everyone to learn and grow?
If you are having trouble in answering YES to any of these questions here are ten ideas to add value and to create the results that you would like to have to add to your bottom line.
- Make sure that you start with some shared values – share your vision and then build on it together.
- Get them excited to be on your company’s team.
- Care about them personally not just professionally. Take off your business hat.
- Be authentic and show your people and customers that you care. You can inspire them to care about others by your leadership.
- Ask them for help. Find out what their needs are and why they want to be on your company’s team.
- Always be present for them. Listen, Listen, Listen.
- Implement their actionable ideas, if you can’t do all of them then communicate that.
- Recognize and Reward.
- Find ways to implement positive rewards and initiatives to recognize each person’s successes and the team’s successes.
- Encourage people to learn and grow in your organization.
“Kindness is the golden chain by which society is bound together”
Johan Wolfgang Von Goethe
Mari-Lyn Harris
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