Those who know me well know that courtesy is central to my personal credo. Its important as human beings we approach everyone with a little humility, as there are always greater and lesser amongst us. We vary in any given pecking order depending on our skills, attributes and the context in which we encounter people.
But away from the purely interpersonal, I want to talk about courtesy in the context of business here. It just makes good business sense. Courtesy and congruence go hand-inhand. As I say to many of my clients, the way to be authentic is very much for your words and your deeds to match, simply coined, say what you do, do what you say. Congruence finds expression in courtesy when if you value and highly regard the customer, you will observe their true needs, not simply what you have on offer.
So many in the entrepreneurial world want to develop a business model that will allow for scalability and therefore exponential growth. This approach can often wash out the very values, personal styles and individual attributes that give the company its initial character and identity. Larger companies often seek to define customer service and the courtesies therein in terms of what their delivery system can offer, rather than what the customer needs. Writ large, we have seen this disastrously visited through the internal market within the NHS and dare I mention the social care sector, when it comes to the procurement and distribution of PPE and the simple courtesy of getting back to smaller companies that could have filled the gap. The problem is when you think “macro” the micro gets lost and it is in microcosm that individuals exist, and courtesies become indispensable in that relational space.
Courtesy in a business context is not simply a matter of business etiquette, but sound business values. If somebody is approaching you offering you goods or services, you do them a great favour by telling them “no thank you” rather than not getting back. At least that person knows where they are rather than trying to see whether youve received the email in the first place. In this context “no” can be a courtesy to someone because it allows them to clarify the nature of the transaction between you and redirect their efforts productively elsewhere. Its amazing how even the most confident of people, feel unable to do this as if it were some sort of projective social rejection, the sort of which they would never want for themselves.
Therefore, getting back to someone, doing what you agreed to do, or simply just listening, is all part of the courtesy process. Courtesy is not an option in this context, it is an essential business discipline and needs to be thought through in the context of the services you offer, the goods you produce, the supply chains you utilise, the stakeholders
enmeshed in your business practice and many more.
Anyway, why would you want to run an organisation that lost sight of decent human values? Of course, thats not your company, is it?
