I was telling a friend about a recent meeting with a senior leadership team: “It was a great meeting because they immediately ‘got’ that the way they treat their people affects the way their people treat their customers.”
My friend (who is very non-corporate) laughed, “Even I get that!”
This seems like an incredibly obvious equation — Better Leadership Interaction = Better Employee Interaction = Better Customer Experience = Better Results.
If we recognize that this chain is largely about emotion, we could also write it as the chain of emotional capital:
Leader EQ -> Workplace Climate -> Customer Delight -> Win.
It’s a blinding flash of the obvious… and now we can MEASURE all these steps… yet it is phenomenally rare in organizational life.
Why? Perhaps we get caught up in the flurry of “stuff to do” and quarterly pressures, and we forget that ALL leadership is people-leadership. Perhaps we forget that ALL relationships are an emotional exchange — and that ultimately the value of an enterprise can be more accurately measured by emotional capital than by EBITDA.
Do you see organizational leaders following this “golden rule” (treat your employees as you wish your customers will be treated)? Why doesn’t it happen more often?
Joshua Freedman
Joshua is one of the world’s preeminent experts on developing emotional intelligence to improve performance. With warmth and authenticity, he translates leading-edge science into practical, applicable terms that improve the quality of workplace relationships to unlock enduring success. Joshua leads the world’s largest network of emotional intelligence practitioners and researchers.See 252 more posts by Joshua Freedman
So true,can’t elaborate further.show your employees kindness and they will empathize with the customers.result repeat customers.
Brilliant Josh, and it seems that most companies are ONLY focused on EBITDA. They forget that it takes a lifetime to build culture and they can easily extinguish it in a short period of time. The recipe for success is the emotional connection, bond, or purpose that generates the capital. Financial AND emotional!
This seems so obvious, but it is so often ignored in the corporate world in favor of berating and belittling employees.
Hi Robin – I suspect that the “berating and belittling” isn’t the real intention, but generally is an accidental (and terrible) byproduct of dehumanizing business. In the face of so many numbers, so much quantitative analysis, so much short term pressure, and huge scale, a basic fact gets lost: ALL businesses are people businesses. There is no such thing as “an organization” apart from the people who are the lifeblood all enterprise.
Great message for almost every corporate leader. Surprisingly, all will agree to it, but very few would actually follow. Every sales leader is caught within the web of weekly/monthly/quarterly results. The sales graph MUST go up under all circumstances and sales team is the biggest sufferer. Its time that top leadership gives more importance to customer satisfaction than the sales graph. Once customer is satisfied, the sales graph would automatically follow an up ward trend. This is long lasting
Colonel – it’s a great point: We need to mission clear, not just the tactic. I imagine in your service you’ve often seen this confusion occur — if the Lt. doesn’t understand the commander’s intent, he might have a tactical success that’s a strategic failure. In the case of employees and customers, if we focus only on the short-term, we lose value instead of creating it.
I greatly influenced by this message as I believe – “If your internal customer is not happy you can not make external customers happy”.
It’s a fact and yes, implementation is very difficult. However it is not impossible. We must try our level best to ensure our internal customer is working in conducive environment.