📍  You know, what shocks me these days? How rude people have become. . Sometimes it feels like common courtesy has evaporated. I'll walk into a building and it's like I'm invisible.

No one holds the door. If I drop something, people step over it, and then on the rare occasion someone does hold the door or hands me something, I dropped. I thank them multiple times, and I am so shocked that I act like I've just witnessed some sort of rare comment in the sky.

Isn't that wild? We're living in a society where kindness should be the default, yet it feels rarer than ever. That hit me hard this week when I was heading to meet with a client that I do fractional CEO work for. I had my laptop and my bag and my notes and the coffee that I absolutely had to stop for that I hadn't yet finished.

Basically, all the things that make you feel like you need a third arm. And as I approached the building, a stranger stopped and held the door for me. Just a smile and a simple, here you go. And I thought, wow, that is what leadership actually looks like. Not the posture, not the alpha persona that people are trying to sell in sales trainings, but the small intentional act of making sure someone else is seen.

I carried that moment with me into my client's office where the question on the table was this, Sarah Beth, how do we keep momentum without losing our culture? And here's what I told them. Culture isn't what you write down on a wall or what you bury in a mission statement. Culture is how you treat people in the smallest moments.

It's the tone in your emails. It's whether you cut people off in meetings. It's how you treat the person at the front desk or the new hire. Trying to learn courtesy or lack thereof is culture in action. And that's what we're gonna talk about today. Courtesy is not optional. It's not soft. It's not a decoration on leadership.

It's a strategy, and it's one of the most important strategies we can practice as leaders, as entrepreneurs, and as good old human beings. So when people tell me they want to improve their culture, I don't look at the posters on their walls. I look at how they treat each other when the pressure is on.

Because the truth is, is that culture isn't what you say it is. It's what people experience. If eye rolls are tolerated in meetings, that is your culture. If sarcasm and snide comments go unchecked, that is your culture. If gossip is around every corner, that is your culture. You can have the best policies, the best mission statements, the best brand statements, the best vision.

But if nobody says thank you, that is your culture. I once worked under a leader who believed that kindness was weakness. He never smiled, like ever smiled. I don't even remember him cracking a moment of laughter at anything he never said. Thank you. And thought that being cold was really the only way to earn respect.

And yes, people feared him, but no one trusted him. Everyone acted out of fear. Out of fear. We would lose our jobs out of fear. We weren't good enough out of an urgency or a need to try to impress him in hopes that maybe you would change his mood. No one was inspired by him, and eventually people would leave.

Contrast that. With leaders that I've served since leaders who could hold you accountable, but do it in a way that left your dignity intact. Leaders who smiled, who remembered names, who told you the truth, but told it with care, people would run through walls for those leaders. And in my opinion, that's the difference that courtesy makes because just like I worked for that really, really stiff cold leader, I have also worked for some of the most incredible leaders I've ever met in my life.

People who literally changed the way I lead to this day because they made such a lasting impact. Now, whenever I come up with some sort of theory where I'm like, okay, courtesy is the strategy or kindness really does matter. I really like to do a little bit of research to see what everybody else thinks and not because I have some sort of intrinsic thoughts that maybe I don't have a good enough idea, but because I believe so passionately in what I'm saying, that I wanna know if there's ever been research done on it so I can give validity to it.

Because, hey, if this was just a platform where I was just coming on here and telling you all of my beliefs, how would you know if you should believe me? So let's pull in the science because. After all, this can't just be Sarah Best opinion, research has to back this up. So I have five things after a little bit of research that I have discovered and it says, and everything that I learned is that people judge us first on warmth, which is our intentions, and only after they do that, they judge competence, which is our ability.

If people don't feel you have goodwill, your skills won't matter to them in the same way. Rudeness doesn't just hurt the person on the receiving end. Studies show that witnessing incivility lowers performance. It drains creativity and it even makes customers view your brand more negatively.

Positive emotions expand perspective, so small acts of kindness like holding a door, literally broaden people's thinking and help build long-term resilience. Expressing gratitude encourages people to help. Again, a simple, sincere thank you starts a reinforcement loop that builds stronger teams.

And lastly, doing kind acts improves wellbeing. Leaders who practice courtesy show up better and teams can feel it. So kindness isn't just nice to have. It's the system that fuels trust, performance, and growth. I do wanna clear one thing up. Being kind doesn't mean being a pushover.

Assertiveness and kindness can absolutely coexist. Assertiveness is clarity. Aggressiveness is carelessness. You can say this work is strong, but we're still missing blank by Thursday. Or I hear your frustration, but our client needs this commitment. Let's figure this out now, or That behavior doesn't align with who we are.

Let's reset. All three of these examples are firm, clear and still kind, and studies prove it. Leaders who find that balance are more effective than those who are either too passive or overly aggressive. The sweet spot is being clear and respectful. That's when people feel safe and accountable at the same time.

Now, you might argue with me that there are plenty of billionaires out there who are really aggressive, but I'll have to ask you, what does your turnover look like? How many times are you having to pay people to retrain, rehire, revamp?

Questions to think about. Now, earlier on when I first started recording this podcast, I would talk about my theory of something called generational leadership. If you wanna learn more about it, go check out the first 10 episodes in season one.

For me, generational leadership means that what I model is what the next generation normalizes. So every micro moment is teaching, and if I shortcut courtesy, because I'm rushed, I'm teaching my team that speed is an excuse to skip respect. If I let sarcasm slide, I'm teaching that it's okay to cut others down.

If I blow past gratitude, I'm teaching that effort doesn't matter. But when I pause to say thank you, when I coach instead of criticize, when I slow down long enough to look people in the eye. I'm planting seeds that grow long after I'm gone. We're not just building results today. We are actually shaping tomorrow's reflexes.

And so courtesy, in my opinion, of course, is generational. Another piece of this whole puzzle that we're talking about today is coaching. So if an employee or a client isn't meeting your expectations, you aren't choosing them for events, you aren't choosing them to lead projects. You don't like working with them because of how they treat you for whatever reason, they're not meeting your expectations.

Your responsibility is actually to coach them to what your standard is. Not shame them. Not ignore them, not condemn them, not replace them. It is to coach them. So I have a standard framework that I use. It's six simple steps. And I'm gonna tell you the name of each one and how to act upon it.

So grab your notes app on your phone, grab a pad of paper or your favorite notebook, or pause this episode and go get those things and then come right back. First, I want you to state the standard. That's the first part. This framework goes in six different steps. State the standard, describe the gap, ask their story, co-create the fix.

Name, the accountability affirm their worth. So let's break each one down. Number one, state the standard. This is clear. One sentence, what is it? What is the standard that you have that you need them to meet? Number two, describe the gap. Just the facts. Where's the gap between the standard and where they are right now?

What is it? Just facts Number three, ask their story. Let them talk. Again, they're not meeting your expectations, so let them know that you wanna know why. Ask their story and then let them speak. Number four, co-create the fix. You build together how you meet to your expectations. These are my expectations.

These are the facts of why you're not meeting those expectations. What is your story when you're now building it together to fix this so you can get to my expectations? And number five, name the accountability. Decide when to check in. And number six, affirm their worth. Remind them they are capable.

Courtesy makes that conversation safe. Clarity makes it useful, and accountability makes it real. I wanna tell you a story from my own team this week. Every year, every quarter, every month, every week, and every day, we have goals. Strict ones, ones that we've mapped out that we know. We anticipate losses, we anticipate gains, and we have to overall have gains.

So how do we achieve that? We have sales metrics. My team was really down last week. Shoulders slumped, voices low, not many comments in the chats. The vibe was defeat. They did not meet their metrics. Now, the old Alpha persona would've said, we failed. Push harder, fix it. Explain yourself.

What are you gonna do to fix this next week? How are you gonna make this better? And in fact, I knew that there was a part of me inside that actually wanted to respond that way. Come 4 59 on Friday when I hadn't heard anything from my team and there wasn't an update on our metrics and no one was responding.

I had to stop and pause for a minute because I wanted to write things like no one responded. Why didn't you respond? We failed. Push harder, fix it. No one's clocking out until this is done. There was a part of me that wanted to do all of that, but would that have gotten us the results we were looking for?

The answer is emphatically no. Absolutely not. So what I did was think about the week, how it had gone, how we had not met our metrics that week, and I recognized what the room was saying. I recognized how my team was feeling and the lack of replies and the reacting via emojis to comments and statements and goals.

I realized what was going on, and I had the choice to respond assertively. I command the space demand results, but I didn't. They were already defeated. I let the weekend be. I knew that on Monday we were gonna meet together for our Monday morning sales call and talk about what we were gonna be going over.

But before I needed to worry about Monday, I needed to make sure my team understood that I cared about today, and I still cared about them. I didn't want them to live in the slump. I wanted them to know that we are not defeated. We are being prepared, prepared to receive everything that is meant for us.

And when I choose to flip the script, we ask better questions like, where did conversation stall? Where did we sound surface level friendly, but not genuinely connected? Where were we clear? Where were we vague? How were we approaching  every client with the mindset of how can we earn your business? How can we solve problems for you?

How can we make business better for you? And then we took the time to build a 10 day sprint. New outreach scripts stronger. Follow up a different approach to our marketing efforts and our ads online. A courtesy checklist for calls using their name, pausing for silence, summarizing, setting next steps.

A gratitude practice where each person thanked a teammate daily for something specific. And you know what? By the end of our sales meeting on Monday, the energy in the room had completely shifted. I even heard my team saying, you know what? My mindset was all wrong. I need to change that around. I see how I was going.

Negative there, courtesy is actually what changed the room. We didn't pretend the numbers didn't matter, but we turned the moment into fuel and to recognizing that if we want to win in the end. The journey is gonna require trials, seasons of doubt, seasons of struggle, moments where we're not quite making the numbers because all of that is gonna teach us lessons and how we need to revamp things, how we need to get more creative, how we need to beat our competitors, how we need to win the business, and earn the trust of the clients that we wanna have.

And if you're in sales, hear this. That alpha persona that you're being told to adopt, it is a lie. Customers don't want arrogance. They want connection. So I train my team with that in mind, open with connection, ask how their world looks before you pitch. The very first question that I ask is for someone to tell me everything that made them call me.

I need to know what I'm up against. I need to understand how I can relate to them, how I can use their words to further solidify why I'm the best choice. Then I teach with care. I offer solutions not only to how to make their business better, how to save them money, what their investment is going to look like, because it's not just a bill they're paying.

It's an investment in their business becoming better. And then I close with clarity. I define exactly what happens next. In the next one hour this happens, you're going to get a text from my team. In this amount of time, we're going to call you again. By this time, we're going to start all of your onboarding forms and send you a link for you to complete.

Courtesy builds trust and trust sells. This week I'm gonna challenge you to reset courtesy in your life. I want you to try this five day reset with your team. Day one, notice and name acts of courtesy and moments it was missing. Day two, start every conversation with a warm connection. Check. Day three, send two thank you, one to a teammate and one to a client or customer or patient.

Day four, call out the rudeness you've tolerated and decide to stop it. Day five, practice a coaching conversation with kindness, clarity, and accountability. These small, steady steps, they equal a big culture change for you and your business. Every episode I bring in my that's good moment where we recap portions of this episode that help you remember what key things I want you focusing on as you go be the best leader you can, and I want you to remember this week that you don't have to choose between being kind and being strong.

The best leaders actually choose both. Courtesy is not weakness. It's strength wrapped in respect. And when we model that, we're not just leading for today, we're teaching the next generation a better way to lead. And in my opinion, that is always good.

Thank you for spending time with me. If this episode resonated with you, please share it with someone on your team, someone in your friend group, or just a fellow business bestie that you feel needs encouragement. Show them what a courtesy reset can look like. If you're looking for a speaker, a co-host on a podcast, a trainer fractional, CEO, or any of the things that I offer on my website, sarah beth herman.com, .

Feel free to schedule a virtual call with me, and I'd love to chit chat with you about your needs in business. All of the links to the resources, references, and ways you can connect with me are listed in the show note.

And as always, every episode is released on Mondays, but Thursday before, we have a series of free training that are posted both on dentistry support.com for the dental industry and for any industry on sarah beth herman.com. These are precursor free trainings released early so you can get started on learning what we're focusing on every Monday.

I am Sarah Beth Herman, your host, and  📍 I'll catch you on the next episode.