Moving Through Your Career and Life in a Manner That Makes You Proud

Here are the first 1,500 words or so of my book, "KIND THOUGHTFUL ENGAGING: Moving Through Your Career and Life in a Manner That Makes You Proud." The book is free. If you want to read the rest, just click on the book's title.

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INTRODUCTION

A few years ago, I read these words in the New York Times:

Mr. Spielberg — an engaged, thoughtful and kindly presence — sat down in TriBeCa recently to talk about how the post-9/11 world informs his new film.

Ever since E.T. came out, I've wanted to be Steven Spielberg. But reading these words, I felt that tug even more strongly.

What a wonderful way to go through life: an engaged, thoughtful and kindly presence.

So many people enjoy a bit of success and let it go to their heads. Their ego swells or they rest on their laurels. They use the same formula, again and again and again, even after it stops working. Or—even worse—they use the same formula and become boring and utterly predictable.

At one point in his interview, Spielberg said, "I always said to myself if I ever achieve a success where I can decide what to do independently, I wanted to tell stories that are meaningful to me about people that did great things."

Pay close attention...

That are meaningful to me

If money or power or ego is what drives you, then eventually you will disappoint your family and the people closest to you. But if you are driven by what is meaningful to you, then the sky is your limit.

By meaningful, I mean some sense or purpose, or a set of ideas. Are you curious about the world around you? Do you seek knowledge and insight, simply because, well, you seek knowledge and insight?

For your sake, I hope so.

I would gladly spend the rest of my days working to live up to those five words. To make that more likely, I took the time to gather my thoughts and share them in this book.

Full disclosure: nearly everything in this book has appeared at one time in my LinkedIn articles. But even if you follow me, you’ll likely find quite a few that you have missed.

Bruce Kasanoff

Park City, Utah, USA

Kindness First

A few years ago, I was honored to speak at Wesleyan University on the subject of bringing out talent in other people. Some of the attendees observed that while many of us want to bring out the best in others, there are only so many hours in a day. For the rest of that week, I tried to think of the simplest possible way I could make a difference.

Here's what I have done ever since. Each day, in the #1 slot on my to-do list, I write "kindness." Before I do anything else, I take at least one action that serves no purpose other than to be kind to another person. Here are some of the possibilities that both you and I could consider doing each day:

• Praise another person to his or her boss, peers, family, or friends.
• Share someone's contributions privately or publicly, perhaps via social media.
• Send a heartfelt thank-you note.
• Offer assistance, whether that means teaching someone a new skill or saving them a trip by picking up items at the store.
• Introduce two or more people with mutual interests.
• Take the time to quietly and fully listen to another.
• Show compassion and empathy.
• Volunteer.

Personally, I don't use a to-do list on the weekend, but I try to practice kindness first even on my days off. It's the single best way to connect with other people and lift my own spirits. The more unexpected my kindness, the more satisfaction I will experience when offering it.

If this sounds overly altruistic, I'd like to confess that to me, this kindness first strategy is one of the most selfish plans I've ever hatched. By reaching out to other people every single day, I am strengthening my social network—and, in effect, taking out an insurance policy on my health and longevity.

The stronger your social connections, the happier and healthier you are likely to be. In my experience, strong social connections don't come from asking people for favors or manipulating them to get what you want. They come from showing genuine interest in other people, and from demonstrating an authentic interest in their well-being. They come from being willing to help others. They come from giving of yourself.

At Wesleyan, I offered 20 tips for bringing out talent in others. In retrospect, perhaps I should have offered just one: put kindness first.

Your Kindness Will Lead You to Success

I am not impressed by someone's ability to intimidate, cajole, persuade, manipulate, overpower, or overwhelm others. No—the people who impress me most are those who already have the ability to do these things, but choose instead to let kindness lead them to success.

Once upon a time, a colleague of mine, frustrated by an assistant who couldn't move as fast as he wanted, pulled her into his office and unleashed five minutes of verbal abuse before firing her. She ran out in tears, and he came out with a big smile. “That felt SO good,” he said.

He viewed this incident as a success. I saw it as evidence that he was kind to people only so long as they did exactly what he asked. Otherwise, he cared not one whit about them.

It's easy to yell and threaten, but these behaviors are signs of weakness, not strength. Strong people don't lose control of their emotions. Skilled prizefighters say that once you lose your temper, you have lost the fight. Your vision narrows, and you become dangerously impulsive. If losing one’s temper represents weakness to fighters, it is a deadly flaw for professionals.

True kindness fosters more kindness. It opens eyes instead of closing them. It is contagious, and it feels wonderful.

Kindness does not equal weakness—quite the opposite. It takes tremendous strength to be kind to someone who is slowing you down, or who thinks differently than you do. Kindness bridges such gaps, and brings out the talent hidden in so many people.

Through being kind, you can attain success. In my experience, this is the wisest (and toughest) strategy of them all. I have seen the future, and it is...

From now on, kindness will lead you to success.

The Secret of Success in Social Media

Want to turn social media into a powerful asset for your career or company? Use it to help others. The more you support others, the more credibility and reach you will enjoy. Both will come in handy when you most need them.

This an extremely difficult lesson to learn.

Go to any company’s website. Pick one at random. The odds are overwhelming that 95 percent of the site's content will promote its own products and services.

Now look at their Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook feeds. You’ll probably see a similar stream of self-promotion. After a short time, such companies train readers to ignore what they say.

Countless consultants and authors make the same mistake. They tweet incessantly about their new book or article, or blab about the magazine that just wrote about them. There is nothing wrong with sharing your work, but when you do nothing else, you start to wear down the audience you wish to impress.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I also blab about my latest book. I have also allowed readers to download my entire book for free, and only decide after they read it whether to buy a copy (for someone else).

Why do I do this? Because I believe in helping other people first.

The truth is, it takes enormous self-discipline to find ways to help others instead of resorting to blind self-promotion. Most of us yearn for—and respond to—genuinely human voices. In the long run, an altruistic approach works far better than "buy-buy-buy-buy" messaging.

The best social media strategy is to always be on the lookout for valuable news that others will find useful. In doing so, you can demonstrate your mastery of certain subject areas. Your reputation will become associated more with how you carry yourself, and less with how much you self-promote.

As your following grows, your efforts to help others will carry more weight. It won’t be any harder to help others—a tweet to 10,000 followers is no harder to send than one to 10 followers—but your impact will increase dramatically. As it does, more and more people will show you gratitude and respect.

When you think about it, the secret to success in social media isn't any different than the secret to success in life: help others first.

Yes, those were the first 1,500 words or so of my book, "KIND THOUGHTFUL ENGAGING: Moving Through Your Career and Life in a Manner That Makes You Proud." The book is free (you do NOT need to share your name or signup for anything). If you want to read the rest, just click on the book's title.