Most of the business advice you’ll find out there can become very obsessed with enhancing productivity, profit, and growth. This does make sense – a business needs to succeed after all.
But are there instances where it’s worth sacrificing some of the productivity and some of the profit in order to be kind?
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In today’s video, I talk about the value of being kind in your communications – and how your prospects for growing business productivity and profit may be enhanced by adding kindness to your business strategy.
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Kindness Is at the Heart of Great Service
Recently, I saw a LinkedIn post by facilitator Adrian Ashton, who had conducted some keyword research and concluded that most people value kindness from the consultants they work with and the people that are supporting them. This got me thinking, and I realised that this idea could be extended much further. I believe that everyone wants kindness from pretty much everything, and that businesses and their customers are no exception.
If you think about why your business exists, you’re probably serving someone – most businesses provide a service of some kind. What if kindness is the main thing that people want when they’re being served? Whatever the product or service on offer – whether you’re selling moisturiser or serving food in a café – I think that everyone wants kindness to be part of the transaction.
Kindness Is Hard to Measure
The problem with kindness is it’s really hard to measure. As marketers, we love to measure things – and in business we use measures such as KPIs to track productivity and profit – but you can’t measure kindness, so it’s really hard to get a complete sense of how kind your business is towards your clients and customers.
It’s easy to focus on your productivity and your profit when you’re moving your business forward, but be careful not to leave kindness behind.
Are You Sacrificing Kindness for Profit?
Look out for red flags that suggest you’ve been sacrificing kindness for productivity and profit. One of the biggest indicators relates to how you communicate internally. If your internal communication to your own employees is often sharp and to the point, there’s a good chance that you haven’t been radiating kindness to your clients or customers.
In the drive to achieve productivity and profit, kindness may be one of the first things that gets sacrificed. Internal communications provide valuable insight as to whether your business may be tipping towards this point because it’s much easier to inadvertently sacrifice kindness to your internal employees – you’re relying on the fact that they’re being paid to work for you, so if you’re not super kind to them the warning signs may not appear straight away. They are still getting paid and you are still seeing productivity and profit.
Conduct a Kindness Comms Check
If you know your business is really focused on productivity and profit – the “go go go!” approach – it may be time for you to do a quick kindness comms check: pause, check and reflect. Conduct a good audit of your systems, especially your customer service systems, and consider whether your communications output suggests you’ve been sacrificing kindness for productivity and profit.
If all signs suggest kindness has been sacrificed along the way, aim to make being kind – internally and externally – a significant part of your business strategy. While I can’t guarantee this will further boost productivity and profit, I do believe you’ll be running a better business, you’ll have happier employees, and you’ll be contributing to making the world a better place – and I think that these should be some of your goals as a business.
Be Kind… Be Ethical!
Questions about kindness and supporting your employees can be just as important to answer as questions about productivity and profit – and when you consider these together, you are tapping into the heart of running an ethical business.
I love talking about business ethics and ethical marketing; in fact, I’ve already started some discussions on these topics and I’m sure I’ll do more in future. If you’re interested in finding out more, please do get in touch and I’ll happily point you in the right direction.