“Who do you want to be? It's a simple question, and whether you know it or not, you're answering it every day through your actions. This one question will define your professional success more than any other, because how you show up and treat people means everything. Either you lift people up by respecting them, making them feel valued, appreciated and heard, or you hold people down by making them feel small, insulted, disregarded or excluded. And who you choose to be means everything.”
Incivility affects your business's bottom line. How? Because how you treat the people you work with and the customers you serve impacts how they interact with you. At the very least incivility demotivates the people around you, makes it hard for them to buy into why they should be working with you and, at worst it turns people way. Incivility could literally be the single biggest driver that is sinking your business. In this TED Talk you’ll see that it literally pays to be kind in your business.
My favorite part of the video is there’s empirical data that supports that nice guys (and gals) don’t finish last. It’s the leaders and business owners that demonstrate civility consistently who prove to be the most impactful leaders in their organizations. I absolutely love this! It’s not about how well your sales funnel works, the colors you choose, or any other tactic; it’s about how you treat people that matters most when it comes to finding success. This even applies for the entrepreneurs and side-hustlers who are a team of one right now.
This week I challenge you to find some inspiration from the most successful CEOs that were mentioned in this TED Talk. Can you find ways to better the culture in which you work, be kinder to the people you serve, or even strive to bring someone up?
Do you lift people up or hold them down? Based on research, Christine Porath shares the costs of incivility and how civility pays. She explains how incivility is a bug—it’s contagious and we become carriers of it just by being around it. Christine reveals the true power of civility and how our little actions matter.