☺️ Kindness: A Difficult Default
Robin Rendle in a short post about the importance of being kind and being cool:
Kindness is easy to quantify. Kindness will make you do things that’s bad for business but great for customers that will eventually make it great for your business again. At this one company many years ago I remember arguing that we should add unsubscribe links to our emails and someone said “nah, that’s bad for us and this number will go down.” Well, that ain’t kind! That’s super shitty and eventually decisions like that will make you lose trust with folks. People are highly sensitive to scummy behavior from ten thousand miles away and it’s the best way to differentiate yourself with someone else.
Exactly.
Being kind has served me incredibly well, and I've been privileged to be on the receiving end of the kindness of others countless times.
It's important to keep in mind, especially during times like these, that most people are kind. In fact, I think kindness is our general default. That default can and does change, though, with enough external influence or pressure.
I try my best to make sure that default doesn't change for me, and I love meeting and working with people who have managed to keep their kindness intact. I respect the hell out of anyone who manages to keep kindness as their default; it can be a very difficult thing to do.