Today I'm here with Annie discussing how to build kindness with organisations, the bank of goodwill and the benefits that kindness brings for business. Annie, thanks for joining us.
Annie Hazlerigg, Behavioural Psychologist
So, I understand you're a behavioural psychologist. What's your field of specialism?
Annie Hazlerigg, Behavioural Psychologist
Well, I focus on three areas; employee commitment, how we generate commitment and the sense of purpose and drive in the people that work for the organisation. The second area, I suppose it naturally leads me to look at is leadership, the impact of leadership and how leadership is a catalyst for commitment and drive. And I have a particular body of work in emotional intelligence because ultimately, it's a relational exchange and I think the emotional intelligence factors play a big part in that. And I suppose it all wraps up in an area we're all interested, which is culture change.
Let's start with the bank of goodwill. Could you explain what it is and how does that relate to our definition that we're talking to on kindness?
Annie Hazlerigg, Behavioural Psychologist
So just pull back, I suppose, before we talk about bank of goodwill. I think studying Baringa's proposition around kindness and what you guys believe in, I've split it into three things. I think kindness is an intention. If you're putting people first, it's almost a life position that you've decided to take up and it will be founded in belief.
And I guess from that belief emanates behaviours and those behaviours translate your intention for kindness into the experience people have of you being kind, listening, being honest and tackling tougher issues. And the final part for me is the goodwill. So what's created by the intention, the behaviour, the value you create through kindness. So that's why I've called it a bank, because it's a nice, simple way of describing like any investment, that we want to see a return. We want to see reciprocal relationships.
I think that's why I feel the bank of goodwill analogy or metaphor is a good one. Because go back to what I said. You know, my area of interest is motivation and understanding what behaviourally people need to see to be motivated to take an action. If I think about the Bank of Goodwill idea, it's, you know, we're meeting today and you get me a cup of tea, I think, Oh, you know, I really want to sit and engage with you.
And we share a conversation and we are reciprocating value all the way through that conversation. And it's very intangible, it's very subtle, but it builds this bank of goodwill between us that we can draw in. We can make a deposit and pay in to it So I think with understanding all that concept, people can get maybe less a bit cynical if they feel that the bank accounts constantly being raided. But nobody's investing. So when I see business language, we invest in people, we're people centric, we’re people focussed. I think take it down to individual level and recognise it's the everyday interactions and investment in those people that builds up that bank of goodwill over time between employee and company, but also maybe customer and company.
And I'd love to explore the sort of unspoken contract of this reciprocity. So, is there more you can talk to me on that?
Annie Hazlerigg, Behavioural Psychologist
Yeah, it's very subtle. Little studies like, you know, if a waitress smiles at you, they get a bigger tip. So there's lots of studies like that where that difference of interaction makes a massive difference. But it's subtle and it's very nuanced. And the other thing is, if you do it cynically, it goes totally the reverse. Good example is quite a lot of companies look at random gift giving to customers.
I think you've heard of this. If you start gift giving around the time of the purchase decision, the potential is I won't buy it because I feel you're manipulating me. If it comes randomly into my letterbox, “just thinking about you Annie so thought we'd send you a chocolate bar”, the amount of satisfaction and loyalty increases because I feel it's authentic.
But maybe it is that it's a coded word for reciprocity. Be nice to someone and they'll be nice back to you. Maybe, it's kind of we wrap it up as something broader, but it's as simple as that. That sort of almost primordial evolutionary principle. How do you get on in a society is you kind of have to be nice to people and you'll get something back in return, perhaps.
Annie Hazlerigg, Behavioural Psychologist
I go back to this principle I have, which is operationalise the values. Take something that could be quite intangible, but operationalise, embed it into processes, embed it into the way you work.
How do you do it? Can you give us some examples of that?
Annie Hazlerigg, Behavioural Psychologist
So for example, if we take the principle of listening, you will recruit people and promote them who have a natural empathy, propensity to be a good listener. They might be fairly introverted. You could say, well, let's just recruit lots of those types of people. But of course you want diversity and you want a mixture of skills. So operationalising something like listening would be to invest more in development of people so that they actually learn the skill.
So you might, you'd want all of your leadership programs. I'm a huge advocate for emotional intelligence and I can talk more about where I think the link is. There is no example of any company I've ever worked with that hasn't invested in it and not seen a return on all of those good human skills. But operationalising, it means get it into the development program.
Let's move on to some of the practical benefits of kindness in business. It would be useful to just get your perspectives of how do businesses benefit if they are able to execute on this kindness, kindness theme.
Annie Hazlerigg, Behavioural Psychologist
There's a differentiation if you can get human connection right. Attracting, retaining good talent is about making people feel that they are individually considered. And so I think from an employee point of view, we probably can see it more evidenced as well through things like customer or employee satisfaction scoring. So I think for a business to benefit, I think it's just focusing on differentiating yourself and attracting and retaining people. And also getting the culture that means when they're out with the customers or the clients, they represent that culture well and they talk well and they advocate for you. So, you know, the net promoter score is really important that you would actually recommend a company to a colleague or that actually you're selling that company on the phone in interactions with the customer, talking about how good it is.
For me, it seems quite intuitive that the benefits of kindness are being played out in the employee experience. And are there other benefits to the tangible outcomes for business, whether it be the creativity or product development or customer values?
Annie Hazlerigg, Behavioural Psychologist
If you tap into this intrinsic motivation in people, which is purpose, the feeling they're on a mission, and that they've got a future, that's when they'll start to give you that discretional effort and they'll start to generate ideas, explore better ways of doing things. And also get some trust because it's a foundation of innovation, that in risk averse businesses they don't do it well because the penalty for getting it wrong is too harsh. So if I translate kindness into how do you encourage risk, how do you encourage innovation, how do you encourage people to think those things that haven't been designed yet, you'd say that is that is a positive. My other attribute, I think benefit is organisational resilience.
So what do you mean by that?
Annie Hazlerigg, Behavioural Psychologist
So all organisations can be stressed by a competitor scenario, customer scenario, economic climate. So I think it's like an elastic band and some organisations, snap very quickly because they're already so stretched that one inch more and they can't hold. So go back to the beginning of our conversation if we're banking in a reciprocal way, goodwill with each other, when we face those challenges there is stretch in the organisation to make it happen.
And one of the best models of leadership in organisational change, transformational leadership, is founded on the idea of the servant leader and the leader who's investing over time, giving people what they call individual consideration, which is seeing people as individuals. So giving kindness in the way they want to receive, you know, how do I want you to be good? To me that would be different. They built up a bank of goodwill. So, through transformational leadership style and servant leadership style, under extreme pressure, the organisation can hold because people feel what we call contained. You know, they're held by a good close relationship where they feel valued and heard and understood.
And I wonder actually in the sort of context that some organisations, businesses and people are experiencing at the moment, in the context of cost-of-living crisis, but also the economic environment, how are people going to be kind in this environment? Because it feels like people individually are going to feel stress and anxiety and they have that translated in the workplace. So, are there any tips and tricks of how our listeners can be kind in this current environment?
Annie Hazlerigg, Behavioural Psychologist
Well, empathy? How well do you know the situation? Again, go back to what we said about, you know, kindness is the act of the recipient and not the person giving it. How you receive it is where its value lies and I guess counterintuitively, don't do what you feel driven to do. Do what you feel is the right thing and the long-term thing.
So, the example about COVID, when companies were intelligent enough to bring people together in groups to say, “look we've got a problem. We're facing a global pandemic. We've never faced it before. What should we do?” People had generosity and understanding and said, “well, we'll take a pay holiday. I get paid probably really well, I'll take more. Why don't we decide that we don't need to pay? We won't do a three-day week. Some of us will drop to two”. So there was this great wave of good ideas. And so how do you do it in challenging times? It's your best opportunity because the test will tell you, that when it's tested is when it will feel really good.
You know, it's like any relationship. If you breach a relationship, you know, lie to a friend, let them down. And they said, you know what, It's okay. I know you're struggling at the moment. You swell, don't you? With love for them and pride in them. And think I know why you're my friend because you're not fairweather. And I think organisation lines have massive opportunities at the points where you could so easily start the obvious route, do something counterintuitive and bring your people in to the discussion with you.
Because I wrote in my statements here, you know, containment and forgiveness in an uncertain world, the value of kindness today, I think, is paramount because there's not very much we can bank on that makes us feel secure.
That's wonderful. Thank you. And thank you for your time.
Annie Hazlerigg, Behavioural Psychologist
Oh, thank you. I've really enjoyed it.
