Kindness First
A few years ago, I was honored to speak at Wesleyan University on the subject of bringing out talent in other people. Some of the attendees observed that while many of us want to bring out the best in others, there are only so many hours in a day. For the rest of that week, I tried to think of the simplest possible way I could make a difference.
Here's what I have done ever since. Each day, in the #1 slot on my to-do list, I write "kindness." Before I do anything else, I take at least one action that serves no purpose other than to be kind to another person. Here are some of the possibilities that both you and I could consider doing each day:
Praise another person to his or her boss, peers, family, or friends.
Share someone's contributions privately or publicly, perhaps via social media.
Send a heartfelt thank-you note.
Offer assistance, whether that means teaching someone a new skill or saving them a trip by picking up items at the store.
Introduce two or more people with mutual interests.
Take the time to quietly and fully listen to another.
Show compassion and empathy.
Volunteer.
Personally, I don't use a to-do list on the weekend, but I try to practice kindness first even on my days off. It's the single best way to connect with other people and lift my own spirits. The more unexpected my kindness, the more satisfaction I will experience when offering it.
If this sounds overly altruistic, I'd like to confess that to me, this kindness first strategy is one of the most selfish plans I've ever hatched. By reaching out to other people every single day, I am strengthening my social network—and, in effect, taking out an insurance policy on my health and longevity.
The stronger your social connections, the happier and healthier you are likely to be. In my experience, strong social connections don't come from asking people for favors or manipulating them to get what you want. They come from showing genuine interest in other people, and from demonstrating an authentic interest in their well-being. They come from being willing to help others. They come from giving of yourself.
At Wesleyan, I offered 20 tips for bringing out talent in others. In retrospect, perhaps I should have offered just one: put kindness first.
Your Kindness Will Lead You to Success
I am not impressed by someone's ability to intimidate, cajole, persuade, manipulate, overpower, or overwhelm others. No—the people who impress me most are those who already have the ability to do these things, but choose instead to let kindness lead them to success.
Once upon a time, a colleague of mine, frustrated by an assistant who couldn't move as fast as he wanted, pulled her into his office and unleashed five minutes of verbal abuse before firing her. She ran out in tears, and he came out with a big smile. “That felt SO good,” he said.
He viewed this incident as a success. I saw it as evidence that he was kind to people only so long as they did exactly what he asked. Otherwise, he cared not one whit about them.
It's easy to yell and threaten, but these behaviors are signs of weakness, not strength. Strong people don't lose control of their emotions. Skilled prizefighters say that once you lose your temper, you have lost the fight. Your vision narrows, and you become dangerously impulsive. If losing one’s temper represents weakness to fighters, it is a deadly flaw for professionals.
True kindness fosters more kindness. It opens eyes instead of closing them. It is contagious, and it feels wonderful.
Kindness does not equal weakness—quite the opposite. It takes tremendous strength to be kind to someone who is slowing you down, or who thinks differently than you do. Kindness bridges such gaps, and brings out the talent hidden in so many people.
Through being kind, you can attain success. In my experience, this is the wisest (and toughest) strategy of them all. I have seen the future, and it is...
From now on, kindness will lead you to success.
The Secret of Success in Social Media
Want to turn social media into a powerful asset for your career or company? Use it to help others. The more you support others, the more credibility and reach you will enjoy. Both will come in handy when you most need them.
This an extremely difficult lesson to learn.
Go to any company’s website. Pick one at random. The odds are overwhelming that 95 percent of the site's content will promote its own products and services.
Now look at their Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook feeds. You’ll probably see a similar stream of self-promotion. After a short time, such companies train readers to ignore what they say.
Countless consultants and authors make the same mistake. They tweet incessantly about their new book or article, or blab about the magazine that just wrote about them. There is nothing wrong with sharing your work, but when you do nothing else, you start to wear down the audience you wish to impress.
In the spirit of full disclosure, I also blab about my latest book. I have also allowed readers to download my entire book for free, and only decide after they read it whether to buy a copy (for someone else).
Why do I do this? Because I believe in helping other people first.
The truth is, it takes enormous self-discipline to find ways to help others instead of resorting to blind self-promotion. Most of us yearn for—and respond to—genuinely human voices. In the long run, an altruistic approach works far better than "buy-buy-buy-buy" messaging.
The best social media strategy is to always be on the lookout for valuable news that others will find useful. In doing so, you can demonstrate your mastery of certain subject areas. Your reputation will become associated more with how you carry yourself, and less with how much you self-promote.
As your following grows, your efforts to help others will carry more weight. It won’t be any harder to help others—a tweet to 10,000 followers is no harder to send than one to 10 followers—but your impact will increase dramatically. As it does, more and more people will show you gratitude and respect.
When you think about it, the secret to success in social media isn't any different than the secret to success in life: help others first.
The Power of a Thoughtful Introduction
Let's look at introductions from two perspectives: from the point of view of someone who makes an introduction, and from the vantage point of someone who receives it. Each requires different skills.
When introducing others, you can do it with wisdom, style, and class, or you can mess up the situation like a nervous teenager on a first date. The right approach is to take responsibility for the new relationship until it can stand on its own.
At first, only you will understand the reasons why these two people might benefit from knowing each other. It is your responsibility to highlight this information, and make it crystal clear why you have brought them together.
If one or both people have personality quirks, you ought to share a tactful warning. I was once introduced to a person and warned, "He can be harsh and insensitive, but you have a lot of interests and connections in common."
All of these observations turned out to be accurate, and it was a good move to connect.
Personally, I never introduce people just to be polite, or because one person wants to meet the other. When introducing people, you are putting your relationship with each individual on the line. I only make introductions that are likely to benefit both parties.
Likewise, after a reasonable period of time has elapsed, I always check back with both people to see whether the introduction was useful to them. In this way, I get better at introducing others. In many cases, this last step is not necessary, because...
When being introduced, always report back to the person who introduced you. Neglecting to do so can represent a huge faux pas.
An executive I know introduced a former colleague to someone in her firm who was recruiting for a wonderful job. The former colleague ended up being offered the position, but he never circled back to tell the executive. When they ended up at the same internal meeting months later, the executive was shocked that her former colleague was working there. He had never even bothered to let her know, never mind say thank you.
If someone takes the time to introduce you, it is your responsibility to treat that person (and your new contact) with warmth and grace.
If you are too busy to respond, make the time.
If you don't understand the reason for the introduction, immediately ask for more background information from the person who introduced you.
There are only seven billion people in the world. That may sound like a lot, but in my experience, you keep crossing paths with the same people. The more warmth and grace you display, the better your experience the next time you cross paths.
Our world is about relationships, pure and simple. Use the power of introductions to strengthen yours—and to build new ones.
People are What Matter Most in Business
Here's what drives me crazy: professionals who think that business is about technology, money, manufacturing processes, or the supply chain. This is nonsense. All successful companies revolve around human needs.
Without people, every patent in the world would be worthless. People are the ultimate consumers of every product and service, including the most obscure manufacturing technology. Even in business-to-business sales, people make the decisions about what to purchase and when.
Corporate leaders go on and on about building—and sustaining—competitive advantage. Companies try to compete on price, quality, or design, but these create temporary advantages, at best. The only lasting competitive advantage is the knowledge your company possesses—and that your competitors lack—about the people your company serves.
Why is this true? Such knowledge enables your firm to make loyalty more convenient than disloyalty. It becomes easier for customers to work with you than your competitors. It becomes easier for you to understand and serve their needs. It becomes easier to make a fair and sustainable profit, because you don't waste time and money on things your customers don't value.
Not everyone agrees with me. Some managers despise the thought that people matter. They think business success is all about managing the numbers; that's why you see firms cutting employees to boost profits. Ah, but this is a very, very short-term strategy. You can't cut your way to success, especially if you forget that business is all about people.
Imagine a firm that begins axing employees to increase profits. Think about the relationships it will disrupt by taking dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of people out of the picture. Those missing employees will have had numerous work relationships. Tons of information will disappear about the needs of the customers, partners, and suppliers they worked with. As these employees depart, so will their insights and information.
This is why so many management teams embrace CRM and knowledge management systems; they take knowledge from inside people's heads and put it into the hands of the business. Employees have long been suspicious of such systems. A salesperson might correctly realize that if she inputs all of her contacts and customer interactions, it will be easier to replace her.
Of course, none of this is a problem if a firm’s culture and top management team put people first. When leaders realize that people are what matter most in business, everything else falls in line.
There's A Lot We Can Learn From Mr. Rogers
"Fred Rogers was much more revolutionary for his time than people knew," says Caryn Capotosto, producer of the documentary, Won't You Be My Neighbor?.
The film by director by Morgan Neville is an official selection of the Documentary Premieres program at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. The film's producer led a discussion about the film at a private event hosted by FiReFilms, a organization that gives its members access to filmmakers whose work changes the world for the better.
"Radical kindness" is how Capotosto described what Mr. Rogers practiced during his decades as host of his PBS children's show, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. His gentle and personal manner masked a commitment to bring love and acceptance to every child, especially if he or she was lonely, sick, alienated, or wrestling to understand the world around them.
For example, following the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. & Robert Kennedy, Rogers insisted on taping a special message to parents.
When racial segregation was still a very real issue, and some were fighting to keep public swimming pools segregated, Rogers brought Francois Clemmons to his show, making him the first African-American with a recurring character on a children's TV series. Sometimes, Rogers and Clemmons would sit together with their feet in a wading pool, talking and singing songs. Today, it seems like an innocent and unremarkable scene, but at the time it was evidence of the host's strong sense of what was right.
In 1969, Rogers appeared before the US Senate, to support funding for PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. In a short video of his appearance, you can see the strength underneath his strong principles and how he quickly engages the interest of the committee's chairman.
Throughout his life, says Capotosto, Rogers questioned whether he was making enough of an impact and if it really mattered. This is despite the fact that his show had become a cultural icon and and helped raise millions and millions of children. Rogers saved—and responded to—every letter he received, and to this day every aspect of his show and the research and feedback associated is preserved in an archive.
Lisa Dormire counted Fred Rogers as a mentor and friend, and she wrote that, "Fred was often known to say, 'When something is mentionable, it is manageable.' Talking life’s disappointments and heartaches through with someone you trust is so very important. Finding your voice is essential."
Rogers taught children how to be compassionate and kind. He showed them that is is healthy to talk about your feelings and that—no matter what happens in your life—you are a very special person.
If this sounds like a do-gooder masking the true nature of the world, consider the results. Working in a mass market medium, without the ability to actually engage in two-way conversations with his viewers, Rogers made each child feel as though he was talking just to them. This is a rare skill, even today when nearly everyone has access to interactive technologies.
Thus, one of the enduring lessons of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood is that being genuine and true to your principles is far more powerful than any technology or short cut. But even more importantly, Rogers showed how to be principled without being strident. He was never negative, yet he made it clear that certain beliefs and practices were harmful and ill-advised.
Capotosto suggested that this is very much a film released at the right moment. Our society could use a reminder how to be compassionate, positive, and purpose-driven.
Daniel Fienberg of the Hollywood Reporter put it another way, writing, "It's hard for me to judge Won't You Be My Neighbor? on artistic grounds because mostly it's a documentary you want to hug."