5 reasons for kindness

Not that you need any more reasons to be kind, and you might even ask what does kindness have to do with leadership. In the video below I talk about a few reasons that you as a leader will personally benefit from being kind. So clearly good reasons that you might want to do random acts of kindness or just plain act kind to your staff or customers.

However lets be clear -modeling or demonstrating concern for others and kindness is very important for any leader to do. I work in the nonprofit sector and clearly kindness and sympathy for those people who we work with is critical. However my staff team works very hard to support families and in our industry we worry about our staff being resilient against burn out and compassion fatigue. If they are not they won't be able to be the critical support they are to families. Now think if you are a leader in a for profit organization, do you think you always know what your staff are going through at home or in their personal life. I talk in the video about the benefits you will get out of a little bit of kindness, but think how much better customer service or productivity your staff will display if they think you have their back.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1H_rfHXBpk

Richard Branson's business advice

Okay I have to admit -I stumbled onto this link by mistake. I saw a tweet from Richard Branson saying something about you don't need to "strive" in business. At least that is what I thought it said -so I clicked on the link. This did not seem like something Branson would say and of course her didn't. I had read the tweet wrong and Virgin.com was posting a blog post of Richard Branson's favorite business quotes about the need to strive in business. The video below lists some of these quotes. Really when I think of the times where the charity I run now had accomplished the most,the
 board and management were definitely "striving" -there was a willingness to reach out just a little further than your grasp. One of our board members Jim had joined to board to help us with a capital campaign. One of our board members asked Jim ,how do we know what size gift is the right size for us to commit personally to this campaign. Jim would tell our board your gift should hurt just a little. For a campaign as important as this you should give just a little more than it feels comfortable to give- it should be a "stretch gift". In the for profit or non profit world if you want to do something impressive you need to stretch or strive a bit more than you feel comfortable with
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwvDc_d-R1M&list=PLjzMzGrDIfLop25p4t1XIBDrknBEzmKnC&index=6