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Mar
30
Corporate Kindness
Filed Under Workplace | Leave a Comment
There are a couple books out on the topic of corporate kindness and how being nice can actually be a competitive advantage. In The Power of Nice: How to Conquer the Business World With Kindness by Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval, they explain how friendliness and common courtesy along with how you look affects people’s moods and attitudes towards you. Cheerfulness and being polite and respectful spreads more easily than irritability and facial expressions and body language convey more relevant information than a sales pitch.
It’s all about the notion of consequences and karma – people may forget what you say, but they never forget how you made them feel. They remember acts of kindness as well as rudeness. After all, isn’t business and all of the world about relationships and how we connect with others be it inside or outside our organization?
Another book, The Kindness Revolution: The Company-Wide Culture Shift That Inspires Phenomenal Customer Service by Ed Horrell identifies how companies with stellar street reps for service excellence practice extreme kindness, respect, fairness and genuine niceties. He notes that the opposite of kindness isn’t being mean, it’s indifference. When indifference sets in, then it gives people a bad experience and in a world of choices, the customer (internal or external) chooses to walk. In fact, you can say that about any relationship – when indifference and disrespect and unkindness sets in, most people walk.
With a little more corporate kindness and consideration, I would argue that we would have many more gruntled workers than disgruntled workers. And we could actually save lives…one statistic form the Department of Labor cites that the #2 killer of workers on the job is homicide by a disgruntled colleague or customer. What are you doing to impart kindness in your daily activities? What are you doing to add light to the world? What are you doing to save a life today?
Mar
23
There are some really amazing free virtual office tools available to us! It’s worth checking out. When you sign up for a free user account with Google you get the following: Gmail: Users agree the unique way message threads are displayed, the thorough email search function, and the option to archive rather than delete messages have them hooked. The gigantic storage space is a bonus, and any email address to which you send is automatically entered into your address book for easy retrieval. Gmail is also easy to use from mobile devises.
Calendar: It’s simple to create entries, allow an assistant to add appointments for you, view multiple calendars as one (work/personal/spouse), and set alerts. You also have one-click options to add an event to your calendar if it’s mentioned in an email message, and to create a map to the location.
Google Docs: Save, edit, and share documents and spreadsheets in this portion of your account. They have great collaboration tools, and you can access the documents from anywhere. Bloggers can publish directly from Google Docs to their blogs.
Google Talk: Allows for instant messaging and voice calls between users.
Picasa: Another way to store, edit and share photos online.
Adwords: drive traffic to your site and gain more exposure with this service where you can purchase words that show up in Google searches. Click on the button to the right under Energizing Links to sign up for your Adwords.
Groups: Join or create your own online interest group.
Adsense – monetize your marketing and earn money from your website while you sleep with Asense – click on the button to the right under Energizing Links to sign up for Adsense and start earning income every time somebody reads an ad from your site.
YouTube – Of course when you just can’t handle one more minute of adminstrivia – check out their entertaining videos for a few minutes until you need to check back in again and get back to work.
Have a great weekend and take a look at systematizing your administrivia to make your life easier!
Mar
21
Embrace Imbalance
Filed Under Well-Being | Leave a Comment
I know I’m supposed to be living a balanced life, as I walk my talk showing others how to lead more simplified, balanced lives and prioritize the things that matter. I find myself inundated lately with a symphony of things that seem to command my attention all at once. It’s at this time that I believe we need to embrace imbalance and go with the flow while letting go of some things for the time being.
Perhaps we can’t balance on a daily schedule, maybe it needs to happen over a span of a week or a month. When you know you need to gut through things or a plethora of projects for a month or two, then you brace yourself for a little imbalance during that time, as long as you can reward yourself with new balance at the end of the sprint. Having balance is all good and well, but sometimes it just isn’t possible and we need to get clear and what to do and what to drop.
What do you need to do and what do you need to drop today or this week in order to come back to center, regroup, re-charge and re-energize yourself. Get fiercely focused, get ready for a sprint and then find some fierce fun at the end of it all and reward yourself for your accomplishments. My reward for these past 2 months is a cruise and a trip to Cabo to mix some fun and effectiveness. What’s your reward?
