Celebrate Good People in business.
Who are your firefighters?
Wine impresario Gary Vaynerchuk has declared today Good People Day, and the tweets and blog posts have been coming thick and fast. People are praising the good people they know, which seems to fit Gary’s vision of a day in which we celebrate what’s good, instead of spending so much of our time on the negatives of life.
This puts me in mind of a great old post by Kathy Sierra:
Angry/negative people can be bad for your brain
. . . Can any of us honestly say we haven’t experienced emotional contagion? Even if we ourselves haven’t felt our energy drain from being around a perpetually negative person, we’ve watched it happen to someone we care about. We’ve noticed a change in ourselves or our loved ones based on who we/they spend time with. We’ve all known at least one person who really did seem able to “light up the room with their smile,” or another who could “kill the mood” without saying a word. We’ve all found ourselves drawn to some people and not others, based on how we felt around them, in ways we weren’t able to articulate. . . .
Celebrating good people is more than just a feel-good exercise — it’s a step toward keeping ourselves in good mental health. Being around good people can make our brains more receptive to good and positive things, which can lead us to adopt better habits for ourselves.
Working at Hoover’s all these years, I’ve gotten spoiled by the company’s culture. I’ll sum it up by saying that, more or less, only nice people stick around here. Just yesterday I was talking with a new colleague who’s been here only a couple of months; she remarked on how easy it is to work here because everybody is just so nice. We’re human, too, but we do treat each other well. And in the long run, I’m sure it makes us more competitive in the marketplace.
There are other ways to manage. Some have succeeded with various forms of corporate tyranny. But the best way, for my money, is the nice way.
Go celebrate some of the Good People you know!
(Photo by icopythat.)
Category: The working life2 Comments so far
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Just catching up on this month’s entries! I am really enjoying the work/life balance theme here, as well as the concept of acknowledging work *is* part of your life. What I mean by that is that there really are people who think that their lives are on hold 8 or 10 hours a day, as if work doesn’t count, and I think that really translates to behavior. You are who you are whether you’re at home with your kids or whether you’re leading a meeting with team members. It drives me CRAZY to know that there are people who think they can be a jerk at work, yet somehow they would never consider themselves a jerk in “real life.” Or even worse, people who feel there are different ethics at work vs. home.
You allude to it in your posts — it all counts. It’s your life, whether it’s working on a PowerPoint or sitting on a beach with a margarita. And it’s who you are, whether it’s with your best friend or negotiating with a vendor.
So be nice!
Amen, K.K. — And the (not-so-)crazy thing is, the very same advice that works for your private life works soooo well in your business life: Be nice. Be honest, even when it hurts. Be straightforward. Live up to your commitments.
It’s hardly rocket science, eh?