Tony Hsieh, longtime Zappos CEO who passed away in 2020 at age 46, is known as one of the most empathetic modern-day leaders. He stated, "Just because you can't measure the ROI of something doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. What's the ROI of hugging your mom?"
Hsieh's point drives home a very important point in life, that not everything needs to be measurable or provide a return on investment, including love and kindness. However, it would be interesting to quantify the real-life ROI on love and kindness in our personal and professional lives.
Let's take a look:
When people feel appreciated and loved, they give more to the relationship, whether that is a personal or professional relationship, and have less stress and anxiety around situations having to do with the relationship. So ROI = HIGHER PRODUCTIVITY AND BETTER ATTENTIVENESS in both personal and professional relationships.
Providing a psychologically safe environment in which people feel that they can openly communicate and will be treated with kindness impacts retention. So ROI = LESS TURNOVER in both personal and professional relationships.
Kindness inspires gratitude and flexibility, and agility is one of the most important attributes of a successful team, personally or professionally. So ROI = INCREASED FLEXIBILITY AND WILLINGNESS TO TRY NEW THINGS.
These are only a few of the advantages and ROI of kindness. However you spin it or calculate the ROI, kindness is never a wrong thing.
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