Month

May 2013

Kill them with kindness… even in business

I just finished a call with a potential client who is getting hammered through social media and online comments because of a very public scandal. She was seeking a publicist. I was happy to offer some counsel, although in the end I wasn’t the right person for the job. She and I went back and forth throughout a weekend over the phone with ideas on how to combat this attack.

She paid me the ultimate compliment. She said I was kind, and that very few people are kind to her because of the scandal and the mis-communication that it has caused.

That reminded me of a promise I made to myself 20 years ago.

I was cowering behind a cubicle wall at a very large public company where I worked in the finance department where they had unwisely hidden the small PR team. The president of the company had stormed up to our group at 6 p.m. to rant and rave about a speech I had written and inadvertently had left revisions that had been made in a previous edit. My boss at the time stood up tall and took the blows. He never once said, Megan wrote the speech. She’s the one to blame. She’s the dummy who didn’t make the right edits. Meanwhile, this idiot making six-figures was hollering every word in the book at the top of his lungs so that anyone in finance, real estate, marketing and even down in IT could hear his slurs.

I promised myself at that very moment. No matter how important success became to me, I would not act like THAT. I would not become unkind. And, I would not treat people disrespectfully.

I do not hold myself up as unique. Recently, I was in a meeting of communication professionals for KC/IABC at our monthly Independent Communicators luncheon. Our discussion topic turned to this very issue – with a slight twist. Can a woman gain success in the business world while maintaining a kind demeanor? And we all agreed she can!

Kindness and respect in the workplace was significant to every single person in the group (mostly women). And although it had been challenged throughout the years for us, and we’d definitely seen women and men who had climbed the ladder more quickly or furiously because of their lack of kindness, it wasn’t something we were willing to sacrifice.

Stay true to your promises. Go Kindness!   :)