Has technology taken over the world? Our future seems to be driven by the next efficiency-maximizing cloud-based platform, or the next innovative gadget or app that promises exponential top line growth. As these technological changes move our world faster, I thought a friendly reminder about The Golden Rule would be appropriate.
The Golden Rule is simple:
- Treat others as you would like to be treated
- Don’t treat others in ways that you would not like to be treated
- Wish upon others, what you would wish upon yourself
As organizations strive for greatness, technology alone won’t deliver results. Human interaction will always play a major factor in creating a healthy culture and strong customer loyalty.
An organization’s leadership is responsible for setting the formal guidelines and procedures for employees to follow in delivering The Golden Rule both internally to fellow employees and externally to customers, and partners. More importantly, leadership must informally ‘lead by example’ so that The Golden Rule creates a healthy, trusting culture that enables employees to create great products and services that will yield increased customer loyalty.
For me, here are the three most important principles leadership needs to keep in mind when implementing The Golden Rule internally and externally:
1) Communication
Make sure your communication is honest, regular, timely and transparent.
Honesty creates trust, which is vital to both culture and loyalty. Regular and timely communication provides employees, customers, and partners with answers they need before questions are even created. Transparency is another key builder of trust, as it demonstrates openness to all stakeholders.
2) Engagement
Engagement should be felt at an individual level for all stakeholders of an organization.
Creating positive emotion within all stakeholders is critical to culture and loyalty. Internally, ensure that engagement is woven into employee reviews, department meetings and company-wide events. External engagement extends beyond marketing and is incredibly powerful when all employees are empowered to create emotional interactions with customers, or partners.
3) Development
Human and organizational development creates the roadmap to achieving greatness.
Growth is vital to achieving greatness at a human or organizational level. Formal plans for growth demonstrate a commitment to development for employees, customers, and partners. Regular measurement against developmental plans that include feedback on successes and opportunities is critical to achieving successful growth.
No matter what your role or level in an organization, following The Golden Rule will make a difference. Whether you’re setting the organizations 5-year strategy, implementing the next technology upgrade, rolling out the latest product or service, or answering the phone to serve customers or partners, applying the basic principles of The Golden Rule will get you on the right path to achieving greatness.
Thank you for reading. For further discussion, please contact Al at [email protected].
