This may sound like a refresher course on a subject we all learned in kindergarten, but it bears repeating because I see this rule broken every day both in business and social interactions. Be kind to others!

In business, it’s easy to see the benefit in being kind your customers: if you treat them poorly, they will stop giving you money. What about being kind to co-workers, vendors, and even competitors? Can being kind to them be a benefit to you as well? Absolutely.

If you treat your co-workers with a consistent and high level of kindness, courteousness, and respect, you will most likely enjoy a more positive work environment, higher levels of productivity and cooperation, and you will see that your kindness may even be contagious.

Vendors are often overlooked in the kindness continuum. When dealing with a frustrating customer service problem over the phone, it is to forget that you are talking to a real human being with feelings who most likely had nothing to do with the problem you are experiencing. These individuals often make an easy target for the release of anger or frustration. What good comes from this? None! You have now created a negative situation where the person on the other end of the line has no interest in helping you find a solution. You have also succeeded in ruining someone else’s day and contributing to your own high blood pressure. Not a great move.

If you had instead approached the person with kindness and simply explained your problem and frustration, you could have enlisted the person on the other end of the phone as an ally—a person who would be willing to go the extra mile to help you solve your problem. The end result? Your problem has a greater chance of being resolved and the person on the other end of the phone feels a sense of pride in helping their customer and doing good work.

It’s harder to see the benefit of acting with kindness when dealing with a competitor. After all, you want your business to succeed and they can certainly get in the way of that. But how will it benefit you to treat them poorly? If you talk badly about them, it is usually only interpreted by the listener as a poor reflection on you. If you are rude to them or act in an unkind manner, it also only ends up tainting your image.

Perhaps a better approach is to act in a dignified and kind fashion in all situations and find a sense of pride in your behavior. Others will take note, respect you for it, and act with kindness in return.

 
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