First Humanize Yourself, Then Your Business

Too often we forget that change needs to happen internally (our own behaviors) before we can expect anyone else to follow suit. It’s like the manager who emails his team at midnight, but preaches work life balance on Monday morning. It’s a valuable life lesson beyond the world of “social business” that we all live in.

We talk a lot about the need for business to become more “human”, preach the humanization of brands, throw the “trust” word around and beg for transparency. However, a brand or business will never completely reach humanity; unless employees within the organization first change their own behaviors, starting from the owner on down to the customer support staff. And even then, it’s still just a business and marketing program.

This means that the business leaders have to do more than just say, “hey, we are a social business” but actually exemplify the behaviors they are preaching to the rest of the organization. In other words, they should:

•Trust their employees
•Put their money where their mouth is
•Write their own blogs, tweets and Facebook posts
•Stop having the department admin write the important team memos
•Hold teams accountable for collaboration
•Get out of their offices and collaborate with everyone

One thing is for certain. Behaviors travel across the organization through copying and imitation. When business leaders change the way they work and communicate, it will hopefully spread like an epidemic and everyone else will eventually follow. That’s when conversations will switch to a more meaningful “humanize the brand” conversation.

At TheHomeMag, we are always striving to help you with your marketing efforts. If you need any assistance with implementing any of the above concepts, please click here.