Humanity – The Real Leadership KPI

I love the concept behind the Tipping Point for the sheer energy it generates around something good and worthwhile. A wonderful example jumped out of the business section the other morning… Kindness a new approach to business it read.

Guest writer Mitch Joel, president of the digital marketing agency Twist Image and author of Six Pixels of Separation, began his piece by asking some provocative questions, “Is it that hard to be kind to one another?” “Is the simple act of having a culture of kindness going to affect the bottom line in a negative way?” “Can a business be both kind and profitable?”

It’s a big idea that has the potential to change the conversations we have with each other in the workplace…and fundamentally change our way of measuring success and of gaining a strategic advantage. With a name like Humanity at Work, it isn’t a leap to anticipate my thoughts about including human values in our professional relationships.

Approaching the Tipping Point

Hasn’t it been amazing to notice the changes in leadership book titles over the past 10 years? We are now describing leadership using words such as: emotional intelligence, courageous, authentic, fierce, from the inside out, soul, quiet, presence and passion. Along with this new language, has come a significant shift in how we measure the effectiveness of our leaders. Not only do they have to deliver bottom line results, they have to do it with passion!

Having come from a corporate background, including government and volunteer sector involvement over the past 25 years, I have a hunch that kindness, along with some other very positive human values, are what true leadership has always been about…. we just weren’t ready to have the conversation on such a personal level.

We are now though, and one reason is that we do have a new business language that allows us to engage in meaningful conversations about our emotional experiences within the workplace, rather than pretending that we are exclusively hard-wired to left brain ways of doing things.

The big question is… “If kindness and other human values are the real leadership measures of success, how can we support leaders to take the leap from ‘what we’re doing’ to ‘how we are doing it’?”

Transparency and Communication

When you combine transparency and communication you get trust…. and in the workplace, trust builds followership, commitment, passion and kindness.

My challenge to you as a leader, wanting to incorporate human values into the strategic framework of your organization, is to be transparent about how you measure your own success and the success of those around you, and to communicate through conversations that encourage others to speak from their values.

Here are some thought provoking questions from Susan Scott’s Fierce Conversations that are guaranteed to open courageous, authentic, passionate dialogue in the workplace. A fierce conversation is one in which we come out from behind ourselves, into the conversation and make it real.

▪ What values do you stand for and are there gaps between those values and how you actually behave?
▪ What conversations are you avoiding right now?
▪ What are you pretending not to know?
▪ What is at stake for you to lose or gain?

“Mark these words, kindness will soon become the killer app and the winning business model.” Mitch Joel

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Derek Sivers: How to start a movement

With help from some surprising footage, Derek Sivers explains how movements really get started. (Hint: it takes two.)

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Books that will inspire

If you could see my bookcase—you’d know in a blink (with apologies to Malcolm Gladwell)—that the pursuit of understanding has been a life-long enquiry for me.
 
There are simply thousands of business and professional development resources to explore and very possibly you too have a bookcase that groans with pleasurable reads. I’m currently making a list of all of these books and will be blogging about them in a few days. Stay tuned.

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