Do You Include Kindness In Your Company Strategy?
Wednesday, March 22, 2017 - Joe Kiedinger
Kind*ness: noun – the quality of being friendly, generous, and considerate.
To me, kindness is looking at another without judgement and with a sincere desire to help or care about them. I know there are many business leaders who feel uncomfortable with such a soft natured concept. I met one leader years ago that said to me, “my kindness is your check”. I don’t think so.
I know a handful of genuinely kind people in my life. Marlin Greenfield of Festival Foods is
one of them. He is kind 24/7. Those of you who know him would agree. It’s what I’ve emulated myself to be but still pale in comparison to him. He defines what a Servant Leader is meant to be. He is strict but fair, celebrates small victories and takes an active interest with everyone he meets.
I was reminded of kindness at church this Sunday. It was at the center of the message. I was reminded that it’s easy to have kind moments with people, but that doesn’t make you a kind person. Scientific research was shown that kindness is not inherent in humanity. People learn to be kind and when presented with kindness, they become great!
This message apparently fell on the ears of my two youngest children. While Mom and Dad were doing laundry and ironing (yes, I iron… and I’m real good at it too… thanks Mom!), our girls decided to wash our cars. They spent about an hour on the chore!
We thanked them and soon after the task was done, they began acting ‘unkind’ to one another. We reminded them of what they learned earlier in the day, kindness must be a part of every moment of every day, not just a once in a while.
There are company leaders, like Marlin, including supervisors, managers and C-suite leaders who make it a personal choice to include kindness in everything they do. Because of it, they are remembered and written about in articles like this.
How do you wish to be remembered?
Joe Kiedinger
ACTION PLAN: Get kindness in your game. I’m still working on this myself. Good reminder.
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