Episode 874 - Small Courtesies, Big Culture

0:04 Helping leaders motivate their people to a higher level of performance through strong human relations, team building, and goal achieving. This is the 7-Minute Leadership Podcast with your host, Paul Falavolito.

0:22 Hello, everyone, and welcome to the 7-Minute Leadership Podcast. It's episode 874. Today, I want to talk about something that costs almost nothing, takes no time. and somehow has become one of the most overlooked parts of leadership, and that's courtesy. You know, holding the door, saying good morning, looking up from your phone when somebody's talking to you, asking somebody how their weekend was, and actually listening to the answer.

0:51 These things sound small because they are small, and that's exactly why leaders underestimate them. We spend enormous amounts of time talking about workplace culture. Companies hire consultants to study it. They create committees around it. They put values on walls. They hold retreats. They send out surveys asking employees how they feel. Meanwhile, somebody walks past an employee in the hallway every morning without saying hello. That's culture too. Culture isn't only created during the big moments. A lot of it is built during interactions so insignificant and that nobody thinks they matter until they disappear. Think about walking into a workplace where nobody acknowledges you. You say good morning

1:42 and you get silence. You hold a door for someone and they walk through without saying anything. You finish a difficult project and nobody acknowledges the effort. Someone leaves a mess behind because they assume somebody else will clean it. Or you send a message that deserves a response and hear nothing. None of those things by themselves will destroy a company. If you stack enough of them together, day after day, and eventually people start describing the workplace differently, they'll say, nobody cares around here, people are rude, management doesn't appreciate anybody, everyone is out for themselves, now we have a culture problem. And it started with behaviors that seemed too small to matter. I always say I've worked

2:32 in environments where performance matters immediately. EMS, hospitality, emergency management from my past. One lesson carries across all of them. People notice how you treat them, especially when you don't think anyone is watching. Hospitality understands this extremely well. Walk into a great hotel or restaurant. And pay attention to those little interactions. Someone acknowledges you. Someone makes eye contact.

3:02 Someone says good morning. Someone notices that you're standing there looking confused and asks if you need help. Or someone picks up a piece of trash even though cleaning isn't technically their job. The best organizations don't consider those behaviors insignificant. They consider them part of the experience. And here's where leaders sometimes get this wrong. They want employees to provide incredible service to customers while tolerating terrible courtesy between employees.

3:36 And that doesn't work very well for very long. You can't build an organization where everyone is supposed to treat the customer like royalty while employees treat each other like inconveniences. The customer experience eventually becomes a reflection of the employee experience. So if you want people to care about customers, patients, guests, clients, or the public, start paying attention to how people inside the organization treat one another, especially the leaders, because people watch us. If I'm the leader and I walk into the building every morning without acknowledging anyone, I'm teaching something.

4:18 If someone does good work and I never recognize it, I'm teaching something. If I leave a mess because somebody beneath me will eventually clean it, I'm teaching something. If I interrupt people constantly, if my phone is more important than the person sitting across from me, I'm teaching something. Nobody needed an employee handbook for any of those lessons.

4:40 They learned by watching me. And that's what makes courtesy such a powerful leadership tool. It's visible. People can feel it immediately, and it's contagious. When the leader starts saying good morning, other people start saying good morning. When the leader cleans up after themselves, people will notice. When the leader says thank you, appreciation becomes normal. When the leader holds the door for the newest employee, hierarchy suddenly feels a little less important than humanity. Those moments send a message.

5:16 We see each other here. We relate. respect each other here and people matter here. I've said many times that I believe in the idea of human first, employee second. This is where that philosophy becomes practical. You don't need some giant employee engagement program to demonstrate it. Just remember somebody's name. Ask about their children. Say congratulations when something good happens. Notice when somebody has had a rough day.

5:46 Bring the garbage can back in after you empty it. Replace what you use. Say please. Say thank you. Basic human courtesy. So here's an interesting leadership exercise. Tomorrow, pay attention to your workplace for one hour. Don't evaluate productivity. Don't look at financial performance. Don't check the dashboard. Watch how people treat each other. Does anyone Acknowledge the person walking through the door. Do people say thank you? Does someone offer help without being asked? When somebody drops something, does another person help pick it up? When the phone rings and it's clearly not someone's responsibility, does anyone answer it?

6:28 When somebody leaves at the end of their shift, does anyone say goodbye? You can learn a lot about an organization's culture without opening a single spreadsheet because culture leaves clues everywhere. And leaders leave the biggest clues of all. There's another part of courtesy that we do need to talk about. Courtesy becomes even more important when you're under pressure.

6:54 It's easy to be polite when the day is going perfectly. What happens when you're busy? What happens when you're irritated? What happens when you're behind? What happens when somebody makes a mistake? That's when people really learn who you are. The employee who makes a mistake already knows they made one.

7:12 You can correct them without humiliating them. The person asking you a question may not know you've answered that same question four times today. You don't need to tell them that. The customer standing in front of you doesn't know what happened five minutes before they walked through the door. The employee coming on to shift doesn't need to inherit your frustration from the previous eight hours. Courtesy isn't weakness. Courtesy is controlled. It's the ability to manage your own behavior even when the environment gives you plenty of excuses not to.

7:46 And leaders set that temperature. Walk into a room angry every day and eventually people stop talking when you enter the room. Walk into a room approachable, respectable, and interested in people and information starts flowing toward you. And that's a major leadership advantage. People tell leaders things when they believe the leader will treat them with respect. They mention problems earlier. They share ideas. They ask questions. They admit mistakes.

8:14 They tell you when something doesn't feel right. That's how something as simple as courtesy can eventually influence performance, safety, retention, customer service, and trust. It starts small. A hello. A thank you. A door held open. A chair pushed back in. A mess cleaned up. A name remembered. a conversation where the phone stays in your pocket. None of those actions are impressive enough for a leadership conference. Nobody's going to put refill the coffee pot on a PowerPoint slide and charge $ 5, 000 to explain it. Maybe that's why we overlook it.

8:55 Leadership has become so obsessed with big ideas. Sometimes your culture needs something much smaller. It needs people treating each other well. and leaders have to go first. So tomorrow morning, before you worry about changing your organization's culture, try changing the first five minutes of your day. Walk in, look at people, say good morning, use their names, ask how they're doing, notice something, help somebody, say thank you, and then do it again the next day. Because culture isn't something you announce, it's something people experience. And sometimes the biggest cultural changes begin with the smallest courtesies. So great leaders understand that every interaction leaves something behind. Respect leaves

9:52 something behind. Kindness leaves something behind. Courtesy leaves something behind. Your people may forget the meeting you held the email you sent or the presentation you gave they'll remember how it felt to work around you so never underestimate the leadership power of being a decent human being small courtesies big culture And this has been the 7-Minute Leadership Podcast, and I thank you for listening.

10:20 For more Paul Falavelito podcasts, visit paulfalavelito.com.