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Oct. 6, 2006
Being nice leads to success
Kindness can be an asset in business, as well as in life in general.
CYNTHIA RAMSAY
The Power of Nice: How to Conquer the Business
World with Kindness
By Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval
Currency/Doubleday, New York, 2006. Hardcover, $23.95
With Yom Kippur only days behind us, we are acutely aware of the
frailty and fallibility of human beings: our list of sins is long
and it will take our entire lives to overcome them. In this mindset,
a book about how to use being nice to your advantage seems cynical,
but if compassionate and constructive actions are what will make
the world a better place,
then how much weight should we give to the motivations driving those
actions? How you answer this question will in part determine what
you think of The Power of Nice: How to Conquer the Business World
with Kindness by Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval
Kaplan Thaler is the chief executive officer and Koval the president
of the Kaplan Thaler Group, one of the fastest-growing advertising
agencies in the United States, with close to $1 billion US in billings.
Their many clients include Centrum, Coldwell Banker, Continental
Airlines, Liz Claiborne, Office Depot, Pfizer, Revlon and United
Jewish Appeal. On their website, they describe their philosophy:
"We believe in being entrepreneurs. We believe in a flat management
structure. We believe a great idea can come from anyone. We believe
you must offer hands-on attention with big agency capabilities....
We believe that all of this allows us to create ideas that explode
into the marketplace and grow brands exponentially."
In The Power of Nice, the pair flesh out these ideals and
their general attitude toward business and life. They back up their
approach with the results of various studies showing that "nice
is luckier in love," "nice makes more money," "nice
is healthier" and "nice spends less time in court."
They also share their some of their own experiences, and those of
others, to illustrate just how far-reaching are the effects of being
nice.
Kaplan Thaler and Koval offer readers six "power of nice"
principles: positive impressions are like seeds in that positive
energy makes an impression on one person who then is nice to someone
else, and so on, perhaps even returning to benefit you; you never
know who someone knows or to whom they are related, so be friendly
to everyone; people change, so don't just be good to your
peers and superiors, but to all of your colleagues; nice must
be automatic because if you take time off from it, the person
to whom you were rude will remember it; negative impressions
are like germs and can spread; and, finally, you will know
if you've been nasty, even if others don't, and this will affect
your future relationships.
The Power of Nice helps readers both understand these principles
and put them into action. One of the fundamental beliefs necessary
to commit to being nice is that resources are not finite and that,
for example, giving advice to a competitor doesn't mean that you'll
lose market share – rather, the market will expand. So spread
the wealth, share the credit, make friends of enemies, tell the
truth, be positive, listen to and empathize with others and, by
doing so, you'll create a nicer universe. Who knows, you may even
make millions.
Easier said than done, for sure, but almost every chapter concludes
with a few exercises. One of the first "Nice Cubes" –
and one that is integral to the whole nice ethic – is "Be
a best supporting actor."
"Most of us don't mean to be inconsiderate," write Kaplan
Thaler and Koval. "We're just so busy starring in our own movie
that we forget that everyone else is starring in theirs. That's
why it's extremely important to see yourself as others do –
as the supporting actor in their movie. So do an inventory
of all the people in your life and ask yourself what kind of character
you'd play in their movie. Are you the loving, doting grown daughter
or the distracted, absentee one? The sweet, supportive boyfriend
or the needy, selfish one? The office troubleshooter or the drama
queen? For each relationship, write down five ways that you can
make your 'character' more sympathetic."
Coming full circle, the book's final exercises entail a similar
process: making yourself aware of other people's perspectives and
better able to address their needs. In "Star in someone else's
movie," you are asked to think of someone with whom you're
having a conflict, then write out that person's view of the situation
without letting your hands stop moving, i.e. without overanalyzing
the matter: "You want to feel their emotions, not think
them."
The Power of Nice is full of sound advice and provides methods
of achieving professional and personal improvements. However, Kaplan
Thaler and Koval make it all sound so easy – as do most self-help
writers. The two pay lip-service to the fact that being nice is
not always easy and that they aren't always successful at it, but
they don't delve into these details. It would have been beneficial
to hear more about what to do when kindness doesn't work –
when dealing with an irrational boss, a belligerent employee or
a cut-throat competitor, for example. What do you do when repeated
efforts at benevolence and empathy are ignored or, worse, met with
hostility or malice? Certainly that doesn't mean you abandon being
nice, but how do you keep your spirits up? If you have a really
bad day and lash out at the world, is it possible to recoup your
losses?
These are questions that The Power of Nice doesn't address,
but at least Kaplan Thaler and Koval get us started in the right
direction. If niceness were to become the next craze, it would definitely
make this new year – and those that follow – sweeter,
indeed.
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