There is an old saying that I have borrowed from Richard Carlson which is so apt “You catch more flies with honey”.

In simple terms you get better results treating people with respect and politeness than you do from being aggressive, pushy and nasty. While most business owners accept the logic of this there is often a significant gap between intellectual understanding and an awareness of what happens in practice in their dealings with staff.

Its not that people set out to be particularly obnoxious it is more the case that they are just reacting how they have always reacted based on what they unconsciously believe will produce the results they are after. You can observe everday examples in business of leaders using intimidation to leverage the results that they want. While these leaders may achieve results in the short term sooner or later such behaviours will come back to bite them – call it Karma or simply just what goes around comes around!

There is a popular reality show on tv at the moment called “The Apprentice”. Not wanting to mince words it is in my opinion one of the worst possible shows on and a  show of few redeeming qualities. It shows people in business at their worst. It places value on competition rather than collaberation and is down right mean spirited. Yet people are compulsively driven to watch it. What a fantastic example of how not to run a business!

Consider for a moment how you feel when someone tries to bully you (we have all had this experience). You first response is to contract and become defensive. You are unlikely to want to put more effort into the task at hand and depending on your own psychological makeup will either retreat within yourself and simmer quietly only to explode later or become immediatley aggressive yourself and find ways to get back at the person who has upset you.  All in all neither response is productive in any business.

The reality is that if your business has grown beyond infancy and employs staff to sell the products or provide the services you offer it is your staff who provide the interface between your business and its customers/clients. If you treat your staff like indentured slaves they in turn are likely to take their frustrations out on your valued customers/clients. THAT is BAD for business!

In their defence you can all but hear the aggressor’s response – but what about the bottom line? Staff need to be pushed otherwise they become lazy and unproductive. Yeah right!

I suggest that quite the contrary is true. If you support staff and treat them with kindness, patience and respect and in so doing show that you genuinely care about them they are far more likely to go the extra mile for you than if you make them feel small and not valued. Truth be told the the potential for business success can be measured by how far the business  has evolved beyond the “industial age” model of doing business to the more collaberative and interconnected “information age” model.

Where does your business stand?