Category: Leadership

How to Start on Time and Respect Late Arrivals

8/12/2022

The program starts at 9am. I’m the kind, compassionate and patient trainer, so let’s wait for the stragglers. Wait, what? I’m here on time, you’re here on time. Why are we waiting? It’s the polite thing to do for the stragglers, and it’s terribly rude to do to those who arrived on time. One argument is if we start on time, the late comers will need us to repeat things to catch them up anyway. I think that’s even worse, so it would be easier to just start late. I almost always promise my participants that we start and end on time. After all, making and keeping promises builds trust, and we need deep trust in our relationships, right? This article will dive into some solutions that accommodate trust and respect for everyone.

I believe that we are always teaching people how to treat us. If you start late, you’re teaching people to arrive late next time. For example, I know that if I am attending a webinar, I can expect to start several minutes late, and to listen to boring introductions for the first 10-20 minutes. I tend to arrive on time and use that time to catch up on my emails. It is very rare, that I feel my time is respected on a webinar or at most meetings. We are all trained or being trained to operate with very low standards.

My first step is promising participants in advance that I will be starting and ending on time. I reinforce it with a request to arrive ten minutes early to settle in, have some social time and get comfortable. Even working on Zoom I offer coffee social time at the beginning of a meeting, so people can randomly make new friends, just like at in-person events. People love this!

In some of our training programs, the end of the day needs to be flexible because we don’t want to leave someone struggling if we are processing some deep emotional work. In this case, I promise to start on time, and give an estimate of the target ending time, and ask participants to be flexible give or take 30 minutes for the end time, and I explain why.

I am a nice guy, I understand that some people will be late for unexpected reasons, and because they have been trained by other facilitators to expect to start late anyway. Here’s how I support them and still start on time. I start with something fun and energizing, that is not critical to the rest of the day’s content, so I don’t need to repeat it for the benefit of late comers. My favorite is to start with an energizer, even on Zoom. This is a fun activity that you usually do after lunch to bring up the energy of the room and get people’s bodies moving. Why not start the day with some high energy and laughter?

Some trainers and facilitators dislike energizers, and some participants really hate them because they are afraid of looking foolish or vulnerable. We are transformational leaders, so let’s make this easy and beneficial. Start with something really easy, and really fun. It’s important to know some really good energizers that are new to most participants. I Have a dozen or so go-to energizers I have memorized and practiced. If you want fun ideas and new games that will have you and your participants loving it, take a few improv classes at your local theater company. Or find some online. After you learn a few, you can start to adapt games to fit your theme and gamify just about anything.

So, I start exactly on time with an energizer game. Preferably something I can later tie into the learning. It typically takes 5-10 minutes to do a good energizer, so late comers will either join in, or come in near the end of the fun and wonder what they missed. That’s ok, they can play more later in the day. We can welcome them with enthusiasm and love, without any judgment for being late or making them feel bad.
By the way, never, ever, ever, greet a late arrival with a sarcastic “glad you could join us”. This is a common mean-spirited comment in toxic work-place settings, and it will annihilate any attempt at creating emotionally safe space for the entire room.

If you are using a slide deck, another idea is to start the event with cartoons. Jack Canfield does this at every event from a one-hour keynote to a 7-day training. He teaches that we start with humor because it improves the immune system and our memory, and opens us up to better learning, and it’s just a lot of fun. He’s right. I'm adding this suggestion because you could also use this to solve the starting on time situation.

Whatever you do, remember, the goal is to build trust and create safety. We do this by starting with clear expectations explained in advance. We build on it with modeling integrity, making and keeping small promises like starting on time. We also build community by having fun and laughing together. And we respect late arrivals while simultaneously training them that we start on time.

If you’d like to talk more about safe and sacred spaces, I’d love to hear from you! What’s been your biggest challenge?

Michael J. Kline is a Teacher, Healer and Firekeeper. You can often find him teaching emotional processing skills like RIM (Regenerating Images in Memory), or assisting Jack Canfield, training transformational trainers, or hosting a retreat at Con Smania Retreat Center in Costa Rica. Otherwise, he’s at home in Sarasota FL, with his husband of 34 years, and their labradoodle Luke. You can reach him through his website www.intus.life, or e-mail mike@intus.life

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Coaching the Uncoachable

1/4/2019

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Rebecca MacLean and Michael Kline

By Rebecca MacLean and Michael Kline

Let's just call them resistant, rather than uncoachable, shall we?

If you search articles about coaching the “uncoachable”, you will notice many say “These clients aren’t worth the effort.” “Try to avoid those clients, and if you have them, accept that they are not ready for coaching; end the relationship.”

According to John Mattone, a globally respected leadership coach authority, it generally benefits no one to consider a client “uncoachable.” John goes on to explain “Most of all, successfully coaching the resistant requires understanding the cause of the client’s reticence so that it can be addressed.” Others advise, “The coach must help the client uncover their own intrinsic motivation to change.” But none of them really tell us HOW to do that. The advice is: walk away, refer the client to therapy, or “it just takes time to build trust.” Unfortunately, that doesn’t help you in your next session; it leaves you frustrated and most likely down one paying client.

The Real Problem
Have you considered the possibility that the client’s resistance is the work they need to tackle? The client isn’t resistant to coaching per se, the resistance is the problem revealing itself to you.
According to cognitive neuroscientists, people are conscious of only about 5 percent of cognitive activity, so most decisions, actions, emotions, and behavior depends on the 95 percent of brain activity that goes beyond conscious awareness. The late Dr. Robert Zajonc, social psychologist at the University of Michigan, explained “In many cases when people explain why they’ve made a decision, they are simply rationalizing, attributing what sounds like a reasonable basis for what is really a murky, unknowable process.”
Piotr Winkielman, a researcher and professor of psychology at UC San Diego, states, “The affective system responsible for preferences is separate from the cognitive system responsible for inferences; because early affective processes are automatic and therefore inaccessible to higher-order interventions; and because early affective responses are not represented as conscious feelings.” That’s why your client doesn’t know what’s stopping them, they just reactively resist.
The Solution
A technique called Regenerating Images in Memory (RIM)® developed by Dr. Deborah Sandella, RN, PhD, makes this murky and unknowable process known. The early affective processes are quickly brought into conscious awareness so that higher-order interventions rewrite the automatic responses and preferences. Using this technique, clients can safely, consciously, and quickly tap into true sub-conscious motivations for behavior, understand the origin, and resolve any that are no longer serving the client. RIM does not require the coach to be the expert. It is a non-threatening, emotionally safe, client-directed process that navigates directly the root cause of resistance, making the “uncoachable” not only coachable but on a direct path to change. It is important to note that this process is not as complex as it may seem at first, and can be done within the boundaries of coaching. RIM does not require therapy skills and is careful in its training to draw clear lines separating mental health issues from coaching work.
RIM utilizes the client’s imagination, body sensations and images to bring the sub-conscious into awareness. “Language is limited,” Gerald Zaltman, an emeritus professor from the Harvard Business School says, "and it can't be confused with the thought itself. Images, however, can capture unconscious feelings, often discovering a core; a deep metaphor simultaneously embedded in a unique setting."
Dr. Sandella explains how RIM utilizes those images for healing and creating behavior change. “The latest neuro-science findings support the efficacy of RIM® by explaining that the brain and nervous system is “plastic” or changeable. Since the brain registers an imagined experience similar to a real experience, we can re-generate emotional memory to create neuro-pathways for new endings to old stories. All the while, factual memory remains stable. During the RIM® process clients integrate a new felt body-experience that translates to automatic or reflexive behavioral, physical, and psychological changes.” This transforms the uncoachable client’s subconscious resistance into drive and motivation so your coaching can gain traction.
Rebecca MacLean www.macleanlifecoaching.com and Michael Kline www.intus.life are Master Certified RIM Facilitators, who love hosting retreats, teaching, supporting coaches and playing in the world of personal and professional growth.

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The Workplace Bathroom Problem

4/18/2016

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By Michael Kline
The news is full of headlines about the so-called bathroom law in North Carolina. We remember when this topic arose in NH several years back, so we know it is really about discrimination and ignorance, and has precious little to do with bathrooms or the workplace. There is, however a real challenge in the workplace that has to do with bathrooms and it ties directly into job satisfaction, turnover, engagement, accountability and productivity. The bathroom problem employers have is that their employees have been over-potty-trained. That’s right, I said over-potty-trained. Allow me to explain.
I have many nephews, each of whom, I call my favorite. One in particular though, is special not only because he carries my name, but he carries the attitude I had through my childhood and youth. Michael the 2nd, (whom we call Version 2.0), has always declared that “school is stupid” until he left school and entered the work force. Now he declares that “work is stupid”. He is in pretty good company, including most of his generation and many of his uncles. More importantly, he may have a point. Could his point be made more eloquently? Of course. Let us not miss his point, however, lest we tick off the generation that will be taking care of us when we are in the nursing home. Version 2.0 woke me up to the reality of just how “stupid” school is and how ill-prepared students can be when they enter the work force, or adulthood in general.
At age 19, Version 2.0 explained it this way. ”I just finished school, how do you expect me to make big decisions that affect the rest of my life, when yesterday I had to raise my hand if I had to pee?!” I take his point to mean quite literally, we control every little behavior of children and expect them to take responsibility seriously. They are over-potty-trained to the point of having to ask for permission to go to the bathroom! We do the same at work. Even if you don’t literally tell your employees when they can pee, do you tell them when they can think, what they can think and with whom they can share their thinking? The more we micromanage, the less we can expect accountability. Thanks to extensive research on the subject, we now know that employees value autonomy. Our antiquated education system, designed for the industrial revolution, prepares students to go to work in factories where thinking is discouraged. Our more modern workplaces require critical thinking skills, mastery, independence and commitment. This should be a match made in heaven, since the top three motivators that employees value most are mastery, autonomy and purpose. The problem might be that we older policy makers are still thinking old-school. We need to maintain control. Version 2.0 has a point about that, too. “Work is stupid” he would say, and he’s right because work is about control. Control kills creativity and violates the motivators of autonomy, mastery and purpose. We were taught that control is everything, without control we would have chaos, right? Well sort of, yes. Chaos invites creative problem solving. To keep the chaos focused on the goals and to have it converge in agreement and forward movement, we have structure. Structure means people can have freedom to think, violate previously sacred cows, question everything and go to the bathroom whenever they want. They also live with a self-regulating system of agreements on how they work together that encourages full participation and engagement that has a sense of purpose.
Talk to your younger workers. The younger generations are not so different from us. What they are demanding is what we would have demanded if we thought we could get away with it. Thank them for making it ok to demand respect and engagement. We talk about the youth not having respect, but what they really lack is blind, fake respect. They have respect for people who recognize their value and voice. We older generations really were only faking respect for anyone in authority even if they did not deserve it. Those days are gone. Let us see what we can do, as Ralph Waldo Emerson said “to earn the respect of intelligent people and the affection of Children”. In my travels everywhere, amongst progressive leaders, I see a hunger for structures that allow for creative and cohesive chaos and risk taking. There is a yearning for leadership methodologies that create engaging, meaningful and respectful, safe spaces where amazing work gets done. It is the future of successful organizations. I think we need to decide if we would rather lead through the movement, or let our new 24 year old boss lead us through it.
Michael Kline is a Certified RIM Facilitator and Certified Canfield Success Trainer for personal and group transformation. You can reach him through his website www.intus.life, or e-mail, mike@intus.life.

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The Procrastinator

1/17/2016

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By Howard Stanten
Like all saboteurs (those voices in our head that resist our connection to our own greatness), “The Procrastinator” tries to protect us and keep us safe and comfortable. Those of you blessed with “The Procrastinator” know that the more important the task, the more you will hear from this invasive species. You see “The Procrastinator” looks for things you want to accomplish and then covers them with a green ooze that smells like rotting fish. The question I hear over and over again is “Why are the things I most want to accomplish so often covered in green ooze that smells like rotting fish?”
The answer just might be found in the belly of a large human eating beast tens of thousands of years ago. If we were to do an autopsy on this beast, we would find a human who became too curious about the world beyond the cave, took a risk, wandered out into the dark, and…. became supper for a hungry monster. In those days, life threatening danger lurked under every rock and behind every tree. And, when the sun went down, it’s a good thing most of our early ancestors stayed in the cave. We wouldn’t be here today if they had done tonight what could be done tomorrow.
Psychologists have studied procrastination extensively. There is research that indicates that avoiding what is really important to us (read also: “scary”) is a relatively modern coping mechanism that has evolved to help us avoid the short term stress of facing our fears. I suggest that this voice may have been lurking in our heads much earlier.
You see, back then, “The Procrastinator” was a life saver. “Wait until the morning” was a necessary and lifesaving motto to literally live by. The thing is, today many of us are living our lives in response to a voice whose life saving purpose has largely become irrelevant. There are very few occasions when we find ourselves actually staring into the mouth of death. “The Procrastinator,” however, doesn’t know this. In fact, it can’t. It’s hard-wired to be that way and lives in a part of our brain meant to protect us. “Don’t do it Now-You might die!”
An unfortunate modern-day consequence of listening to “The Procrastinator” is stress. “The Procrastinator” disconnects us from doing what we want to do. It gives that task the appearance, and more importantly the emotional feeling, of something we don’t want to do. Who would energetically do a swan dive into a pool of smelly green ooze??
A vicious cycle is produced when we don’t do what is really important to us. We stress over the not doing, delay further, stress more, and on and on. This stress is associated with feelings like anxiety, boredom, regret, sadness, emptiness, and regret. Yes, many of us do eventually “get it done,” but we often do so by stuffing these emotions deep inside. Usually, it’s another saboteur like “The Fear of Failure” that comes to our rescue at the last minute, saving the day. Relying on fear to push “The Procrastinator” aside releases all kinds of stress hormones that negatively impact our long term mental and physical health. We may indeed reach a good deal of “success” in life repeating this process, but the cost is high and the payoff in terms of any sense of personal fulfillment is low.
The volume of “The Procrastinator’s” voice for any of us depends on what we’ve been exposed to in our upbringing, and what we’ve inherited in our genes. The good news is that, through conscious choice, we can access the volume control and turn it down. When we turn down the volume, the green ooze washes away. Without that mess covering up what’s really important to us, we rush for the diving board, take a strong bounce up, spread our wings, and dive into the crystal clear water.
So, how do we make this conscious choice? Well, the irony here is we don’t need to do anything more than simply notice our breath. “The Procrastinator” usually has us running around doing anything but what we really want to do. To get to what we really want to do, we need to stop everything and do nothing but breathe. No “to do” list, no organizing the office supply draw, no email, no watching TV, no sleeping. Just breathe. Here’s the simple formula for what comes next:

Focus on your breath
Deepen your in -breath
Deepen your out- breath
Repeat 10 times
Simply notice and experience without judgement how you feel right now

I invite you to give it a try…. now…. Breathe…. Deepen…. Repeat…. Simply Notice
Chances are you feel less stressed, more present, calmer, and more engaged than you did a minute ago.
For those of us that need scientific proof before we change any of our habits, there’s good news that’s been around for a long time. Deep breathing activates the parasympathetic nervous system which is responsible for relaxation. When we simply notice our emotions without judgement, we make the conscious choice to “be with” rather than “fight” ourselves. This “being with” frees us to move forward.
When we de-stress, we break the vicious cycle that “The Procrastinator” sets in motion. Emotions that were previously keeping us stuck become “(E)nergy in (motion.)” Our capacity to wrap both arms around our higher self comes alive!
Like most things worthwhile in life, practice is the key. So, practice again……………
Now, turn towards the one thing you’ve been avoiding that’s really important for you to do right now and go for it!

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One Thing Fixes Everything. Not.

7/30/2014

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So often, we think we have just the right idea to solve a problem. It seems so simple, if we could just get others to see our brilliance, we could solve all our problems!

My niece is staying with us for her annual vacation in the mountains, something she’s been doing since she was 8 years old, and her visits just keep getting more interesting. In the beginning, like most children, she had an answer for everything. Now, as she is applying for medical school, she is much more educated, and I am happy to report, wiser as well. She has realized something that many people either never realize, or at least do not like to admit. We do not have single solutions to most problems. Even simple problems have complex issues just below the surface. The
following is a real question from Brown University Alpert Medical School application:

Imagine that you are approached by a multibillionaire philanthropist who wants to donate a substantial fund of money to a single project with the goal of “fixing the US healthcare system”. He or she asks for your expert opinion on what project this money should go towards; what would you advise and why?

This led us to an interesting conversation about the real challenges facing healthcare – seemingly unsolvable by our government throughout history, unsolved by the insurance industry, the hospitals, the universities, the non-profits, the churches and the World Health Organization, but a reasonable question to present to students who have yet to enter medical school. At least we will learn how she thinks. Frankly, she thinks the school admissions folks could learn to clearly state a question, because as we picked this one apart, it could mean a wide variety of things, but that is another story.

If the intent of the question is to ask for one project that could have the most impact, as opposed to the one project that could “fix” the whole system, we could have a fighting chance. We discussed a few paths, none of which we decided on. 1. Buy congress. There’s a reason the food and chemical companies do this - this may be the least expensive path to getting laws changed that dramatically affect the safety and health of food, alcohol and tobacco, school lunches, insurance, etc. 2. Hire ad agencies to make the truth about health appear as sexy as the lies we get from industry that has a profit motive in conflict with health and wellness. 3. We always seem to have money for wars and fighting the marijuana trade (who would be happy to pay taxes). Surely, we could find a way to house, feed and treat mentally ill homeless people, instead of using the Emergency Department. I bet by now, you have some ideas of your own – universal healthcare? Repeal the Affordable Care Act? Go back to the system we hated before the system we hate now? Rely on charity and churches? Promote personal responsibility? Sue the fast-food joints? Get kids to be more active? If the question was to identify a single project, for which you have passion and why, that
would make more sense.

To ask for a single project with the goal of “fixing the system” strikes me as absurd.

How do you approach problems in your life or workplace? Do we look for a solution? Do we look inward to ourselves and think we can solve it alone? Do we look to the one person responsible and ask them to find a solution? Every problem is complex. We are inextricably linked to one another in so many ways. The ripple effects of our decisions cause unintended consequences for our employees, our customers, suppliers, neighbors, etc. A lack of easy solutions frustrates us, so we short cut to a simple solution that solves our immediate problem and we decide we will worry about other things later. This happens even with simple problems. For example, I went for an iced coffee and waited almost ten minutes because now, iced coffee gets in line behind all the specialty drinks. This can take quite a while on a busy day. I asked why they no longer just pour iced coffee the way they do hot coffee and learned they changed it a year ago to ease the burden on the front line people. I wonder if any customers were consulted before making this change. I am practicing being patient, and learning to embrace long lines when I have the time. Otherwise, on a busy day, choose hot coffee or leave. I wish I had a voice.

Does this sound familiar? Right now, we just need to “fix”this problem, whatever it is. My advice is to slow down. Invite the stakeholders, host the difficult and time-consuming conversation, review your true goals, and make a decision
when you find the wisdom to solve a problem that is most win/win, and that is most congruent with the ultimate mission at hand. None of us is smart enough to do this by ourselves. Further, most problems require more than just a single solution.

Michael Kline is a professional facilitator, success coach and trainer. He may be reached through his website, www.klineseminars.com, or e-mail, mike@klineseminars.com.

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Meetings by Candlelight

8/28/2013

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Conway Daily Sun
August 28, 2013
By Michael Kline
Since the discovery of fire, humans have gathered in circles around the fire to tell stories, share ideas and solve problems. Today, our work circles have morphed into long rectangular tables and the fire has moved to one end, known as the PowerPoint presentation. Various members of the circle no longer tell stories. Instead, one
speaker, who wields the remote control of the presentation slides, tells the story. Not surprisingly, most people think meetings are a waste of time. At home, the situation is often worse, partly because it is more important and partly because it should be under our own control to do better. At home, our circle gathering at mealtime is often lost to fast food on the go and eating at different times, with no time for sharing, caring or engaging in real communication. Do these things matter? If so, how do we fix it?

In the work environment, employees are looking for more meaning. Employers are seeking engagement from/with their employees. Their actions demand compliance, but seldom, if ever, promote engagement. Is this topic about motivation?   Daniel Pink, in his book Drive, teaches us what science knows that business does not. Science knows that intrinsic motivation is more powerful than extrinsic motivation. Business thinks we are motivated exclusively by
dollar incentives. Science knows that once minimal financial needs are met, money is not an effective motivational tool for most people.

Far more important, is being part of something important, making a contribution that matters, having positive relationships and feeling engaged. Think about the best boss you ever had. Chances are, that boss made you feel
great about yourself and brought out the best in you. When you do your best work, I bet you were lost in the work, and did not notice the time passing or other distractions. We call that being in “flow”.Flow cannot be bought with the
promise of a bonus. Positive relationships, engagement (flow), a sense of meaning and achievement happens
when we turn off the PowerPoint and put the fire back into the center of our circle. (We use a candle as a reminder of the metaphor). It happens when we face each other and we have a different kind of conversation. It happens when we all tell our story with intention and we all listen to one another with attention. I must sound like I just got back from a hippie retreat where we all sat around a circle and sang Kumbaya. I did, and I highly recommend it to anyone who is wondering what is wrong with his or her business or family. The biggest real-life challenge to this concept is time
and the biggest reward is anything you want.

All this takes time. So we risk productivity and we slow down. When we slow down and have this experience, we learn from one another. We make it safe for quiet people to speak and share their otherwise hidden wisdom. We identify real problems and solve them, instead of rushing judgments and covering up symptoms. We build trust. When we have trust, we make decisions faster and with more confidence. With trust, everything moves faster and costs less.  In low-trust environments, everything moves more slowly and costs go up.

Steven Covey, in Predictable Results in Unpredictable Times, calls this “moving at the speed of trust”. When we slow
down, and invest in the painfully slow, but hugely rewarding process of listening to and valuing one another, we actually are speeding things up.

The reward comes in the form of building a team that cares. Actually, we are building a tribe, who lives to come to the circle around the fire and share and care, and contribute their ideas and solve the group’s problems and commit to the collective future and who asks for what they need and who give what they can. We have the power to create such an amazing existence.

I found my inspiration for returning to this seemingly basic, yet complex and ancient idea of gathering and communicating, from the book The Circle Way, a Leader in Every Chair by Christina Baldwin and Ann Linnea. I just returned from The Circle Practicum, a five-day intensive retreat (www.peerspirit.com) with the authors and a group of business people, teachers, legal professionals, ministers and dreamers who were so inspirational, I can’t wait to share more with you. Stay tuned, or contact me for details.

Michael Kline is a local retailer, success coach and trainer. He may be reached through his website, www.klineseminars.com, or e-mail, mike@klineseminars.com.

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Making Money From Kindness

5/25/2011

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Making Money from Kindness
Conway Daily Sun Wed. May 25, 2011

By Michael Kline

Does Kindness Weekend have anything to do with business or is it just about school-yard bullying and politicians? I’d say it has to do with every aspect of our lives, but this being a business column, we should discuss kindness and its role in making money. I know; I’m crass.

First let’s get passed the actual business side of this particular kindness event. In life, as in business, we get that on which we focus our attention. If you want more sales, focus on your sales efforts; if you want more kindness in your life, focus on kindness. It is more effective to focus on sales than to focus on fear of financial failure. It is also more effective to teach and practice kindness, than focus on fear of bullying or conflict. Focus on what you want. This event is simply a community wide focus on kindness.

Cynics might say this is some sort of business gimmick, and I’m devaluing the message by talking about making money from it. Being involved in the event, I can tell you first hand it is about quality of life; both the benefits of kindness and making money. Kindness Weekend was conceived out of a desire solely for public benefit. To fund the event, the N. Conway Village Association invested in it to bring traffic to the valley, so it is being promoted as another reason to bring families to the valley for Memorial Day weekend. Of all the things we could create to sell for a profit, what could be more beautiful? The event is sponsored by The Evergreen Institute for Wellness, with their message that Kindness produces physical health benefits for the giver of kindness. When you do something for someone else, it can reverse feelings of depression, provide social contact and decrease feelings of hostility and isolation that can cause stress, overeating, ulcers, etc. With everything to gain, nothing to lose and no cost, who would even want to argue with that? So, what about you making a profit from all this?

Business is about making money. Some think it is more profitable to be unkind. They are wrong. K=R=P is a formula Tom Peters uses to explain the impact of kindness on business. In 1982, Tom Peters authored the world-changing business book In Search of Excellence, and more recently, his new book 163 Ways to Pursue Excellence. The formula stands for Kindness = Repeat Business = Profit. Far be it from me to challenge the mind of Tom Peters, but I would change the R to stand for Relationships. The repeat business he talks about comes from the same relationship-building trust that increases productivity, reduces turn-over, sick time and labor problems with employees. Better relationships also help negotiate better terms with suppliers. So my version of the formula K=R=P is Kindness = Relationships = Profit.

Consider an extreme example featured in a New York Times article in May 2008 – American Airlines and Southwest Airlines held annual meetings in Dallas on the same day. Airline pilots picketed the American Airlines meeting while Southwest pilots bought full page newspaper ads thanking founder Herb Kelleher for his 37 years of service. Animosity between management and labor is near impossible to navigate when there is no trust. We see this in our political system globally, nationally and locally. We see it sometimes with our own staff relationships. Without kindness, there is no trust, without trust, there is no relationship. Without relationship, we’re fighting and clawing our way through all our dealings. Kindness is no longer an option in business. It is critical to the customer and the employee and if you’re smart (and I know you are), you’ll make it critical with the supplier, landlord, neighbor and even wrong numbers. Everyone is a potential relationship.

My regular seminar students and column readers know I talk a lot about building trust. In all business relationships, trust reduces cost and increases speed. Dr. Stephen Covey calls it “moving at the speed of trust” in his book Predictable Results in Unpredictable Times. If your customer needs a lawyer before signing a contract, it is far more expensive and time consuming than making a hand-shake deal. If you have to “sell” your employees on a new idea, you would enjoy greater productivity if you had instant buy-in based on trust. This is not to say you should expect people to follow blindly doing as they are told; those days of curmudgeonly bosses are long gone. This is about leadership, which involves employee in-put, which is a form of kindness. I hear some of you grumbling, so hear me out. I know that you know what you’re doing. I know you don’t have time for every employee’s ideas. I know you want to be able to trust your employees as well, to empower them to be their best. So how do you become the cultivator of employee engagement? We have a system for that! Yes, we have a system for everything, as you have surely read in previous columns. An effective business development process has a management system that provides the framework and structure for employee engagement in an orderly fashion that respects input efficiently, maintains focus, creates accountability and drives productivity like nobody’s business. It allows for, no – it requires kindness. Good thing kindness is free.

In researching this column, I was online listening to Tom Peters lecture at Cornell University. When Tom tells you that his ridiculously over-the-top-big-time selling book In Search of Excellence really didn’t say anything more than take care of people – maybe there’s something to that. How to make it fit in the real world can be complex, but the message is simple.

Albert Schweitzer said: "Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust and hostility to evaporate."

That’s good for business.

Michael Kline is a local retailer, success coach and trainer. He may be reached through his website, www.klineseminars.com, or e-mail, mike@klineseminars.com.

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How to Start on Time and Respect Late Arrivals

Coaching the Uncoachable

The Workplace Bathroom Problem

The Procrastinator

One Thing Fixes Everything. Not.

Meetings by Candlelight

Making Money From Kindness

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