The ROI of Kindness | Linda Cohen

Peter Winick

Introducing kindness to the workplace through interactive virtual keynotes.

An interview with Linda Cohen about how keynote speaking has changed during the pandemic, and how she continues to deliver her message of kindness.

Is kindness a mindset, culture, or capability? What is the cost of empowering your employees to be kind to their co-workers, customers, and themselves?

To get a deeper understanding of where kindness fits into the workplace, we’ve turned to The Kindness Catalyst, Linda Cohen. Linda is a nationally recognized kindness expert and keynote speaker with over a decade of experience. Her new book, The Economy of Kindness: How Kindness Transforms Your Bottom Line, provides real-life examples of companies that have employed kindness as a secret weapon to build and maintain their organizations.

We start our conversation by discussing how Linda started her kindness movement by writing her first book, 1,000 Mitzvahs: How Small Acts of Kindness Can Heal, Inspire, and Change Your Life, as a project to honor her father. As she began to deliver keynotes on the topic, she truly realized her passion for the subject. Linda discusses the concept of an “economy of kindness,” and how kindness is a soft skill that businesses rarely emphasize. Yet, the ROI of kindness in your business is undeniable.

Linda has had to use her agility and willingness to learn in the last two years, overcoming massive changes to the keynote speaking industry caused by our current workplace situation. Linda shares tips on transitioning to virtual events, including the skills she had to learn and the changes she made to her delivery in order to ensure she still connects with her audience on an emotional level.

Kindness is essential in today’s business world. Times are changing, and thought leadership delivery methods have to change with them. Discover ways to effectively connect and deliver your message, no matter the circumstances.

Three Key Takeaways:

Growth is possible when kindness is part of your DNA. Does your thought leadership encourage people to be kind?
Delivering a thought leadership keynote virtually requires additional means of interactivity to avoid the risk of losing the audience.
After delivering a virtual keynote it is important to seek feedback to ensure your thought leadership was delivered in the way you intended.

If you need a strategy to bring your thought leadership to market, Thought Leadership Leverage can assist you! Contact us for more information. In addition, we can help you implement marketing, research, and sales. Let us help you so you can devote yourself to what you do best.

Transcript

Peter Winick And welcome, welcome, welcome. It’s Peter Winick and the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage. And you’re joining us on the podcast, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. Today, my guest is Linda Cohen. She’s also known as the Kindness Catalyst. She’s been a nationally recognized kindness expert and professional speaker for over a decade. She worked with a variety of businesses and trade associations on the ROI of kindness. Her first book was called The Thousand Mitzvahs How Small Acts of Kindness Can Heal, Inspire, and Change Your Life. And her latest book, which came out just a couple of months ago, is called The Economy of Kindness How Kindness Transforms Your Bottom Line. So you’re also she’s a past present National Speakers Association Oregon chapter. And let’s see what else. She lives with her husband of 28 years. They have two spirited young adult children and two Cavalier, King Charles Spaniels, Ginger and Remy. So we always got to give a shout out to the puppies. So welcome, Linda. How are you?

Linda Cohen Thank you so much, Peter. I realize in my introduction I have the name of my dogs and not the name of my children.

Peter Winick Yeah? Well, you. You say adult children puts it exactly when and if they move out, then they will be. Yeah, yeah. Note to self. Yeah, there goes, there goes my baby. Her baby. She’s just got. Yeah. Because of the Mother’s Day gifts this year. Right. So if I were to have met you several years ago when you were in American Jewish University or Brandeis and to tell me where are you going to be in 25, 30 years, this probably would have been exactly how you had planned it. Might not know.

Linda Cohen No, I went to school for fundraising. I really thought I’d be working in a probably, you know, Jewish nonprofit doing fundraising. That was kind of what I trained for. And we moved to Portland. It’s a very lovely community here, but it’s very small and I never kind of found that particular work here. So stay at home mom for about a decade and then started my consulting business, kind of fell into it. You mentioned my first book, and that was a project I took on to honor my father to do acts of kindness in his memory. And that really led me to this career that I’m now doing now as a professional speaker.

Peter Winick Yes. So let’s talk about well, let’s talk about two things sort of the economy of kindness as a concept, and then we’ll get into the business side of speaking. But that’s kind of a different concept, right? So we’ve gone through what leadership always comes in waves. There’s, you know, the happiness cycle and then the gratitude cycle and grit, resilience, whatever. But I think I don’t know that kindness ever got its day.

Linda Cohen So I think it’s getting its day now. I mean, honestly, when I started talking about this ten years ago, people would say, Who is going to pay you to talk about kindness? Like, really? They were testing me about that. And I have to say that now many of my speaker colleagues have added this idea of speaking about kindness because it really does relate to the soft skills that I think businesses often say aren’t as necessary when we realize now if you come in with those soft skills, we can teach you other technical skills that you might need for our work, our culture. I mean, some technical skills.

Peter Winick So so is kindness more of a a mindset, a culture, a capability that can be developed? All of the above. Like where would you put it?

Linda Cohen I think it is developable. I mean, I think we all have it inherently. I think when we get busy and tired and stressed out, we think we don’t have the ability to do it anymore. And that’s one of the things I challenge audiences when I talk to them because I don’t think it takes a lot to do an act of kindness that could be beneficial and meaningful to someone else. And I do believe it’s part of a culture for sure. And I think if you are not paying attention to that, your culture may develop without it. But if you are cognizant of it, you are probably really structuring your work and you’re giving a lot of autonomy to your employees to be able to have the kindness gift, you know, that they would share and just point your case, you know, or case in point, I guess there was a grocery store that opened up when I was pregnant with my second child back 20 years ago. It was not the cheapest grocery store in town. It was about a mile from my house. I loved shopping there, and part of why I loved shopping there was because the employees, even the checkout clerks, were totally empowered. If they had to make a decision on the fly, they could do this, you know, act of kindness or for a customer without having to talk to their managers. And really, that was the culture that the that the founder really wanted to impart in them, to really give them a lot of autonomy. And I loved shopping there. It’s now there are there are about 20 of those stores now around the metro area and it was actually sold to a bigger conglomerate. So the growth is possible when you create a culture where you’re really doing that as part of your is part of your DNA.

Peter Winick Well, that empowerment and agency is a big piece, right? Because not that someone would be unkind if every time they have to do something, it’s let me check with the manager, which we see a lot in large scale operations. But it probably isn’t an accelerant to kindness, isn’t it, when you feel like you’re a sort of a, you know, an automaton or something like that.

Linda Cohen So I think giving your employees and I mean, I’ve seen it a lot even during this pandemic, I have seen and heard from employees. And from clients that one of the biggest ways their manager or their leadership team showed kindness to the employees was allowing them to think outside of the box. I mean, certainly last year when we were all walking into this global pandemic, I knew not what it was going to do for our businesses. Being allowed to think outside of the box and my manager saying, okay, go for it, take try that. Let’s see how it goes. And many times it was successful and it was something we never would have tried unless we were forced to do it. But it really it meant a lot to employees. And I mean, I even heard from employees who thought their jobs could have been cut and instead the manager was letting me try something different outside of the box that really empowered me. And for that, they were grateful.

Peter Winick Well, it’s interesting. I think some things that might have been perceived as well, that employer’s client has now become an expectation. So like remote work. I’ll cut you some slack because you have a long commute or you’ve got, you know, whatever. You know, you’ve got a spouse that works a different shift. So that was perceived as a kindness or an accommodation. Now it’s an expectation because we’ve shown that where we are doesn’t necessarily impact how much we do or how productive 100%.

Linda Cohen I’m actually really happy about that, to tell you the truth, because I think flexibility was always something that was sort of a choice. If I could be that way for my employees. And this pandemic has shown that we can have flexibility, we can be doing our jobs remotely and in other places, other hours, and we can still get our jobs done. And I think that that’s I really feel like that’s going to be the big demand of employees now as we walk out of this pandemic. And the global resignation, I think has a lot to do it with. Is my company allowing me to have any kind of work life balance. And if it if it’s a company I want to stay working for, you know?

Peter Winick So let’s go to sort of the other side here, which might be a bit less kind. So, you know, the pandemic has not been kind to the keynote business sort of hashtag understatement. But and I was on a call earlier today on this. How is it evolved for you? Right. So the traditional model of you’re the speaker and you’ve got a theme that lines up with our event or the theme this year or whatever, fly and do your thing, go home, make everybody happy. Great. That’s not the game that we’re playing now. I don’t know if we’ll ever have another 2019 from an event business perspective. So what are you seeing on your end? And more importantly, how have you. I hate the pivot word, but for lack of a better word. Have you pivoted, pivoted or modified what you do to deliver the message?

Linda Cohen I mean, just like every other speaker, March of 2020, you know, things started canceling that were live in person and then luckily got rescheduled for many of those events in a virtual format. So set up a home studio, began to get more comfortable with technology since I wasn’t going to have anybody in it helping me do any of that, I stepped out of my comfort zone and learned how to do more engaging kind of interactives online so that even though I’m talking to a camera, I am engaging with my audience. And for me, I say beyond the chat, you know, I’ve tried to step into interactive exercises where people are using their phone or I’m using an old whiteboard. I have an old word that I have here that I use or showing things to the camera. You know, anything that engages people, getting people up in their audio, in their offices and doing something different, or even finding something in their office to show if we’re able to show each other. So, you know, I think it honestly, where I was in my own speaking business, I feel sort of blessed that it happened now because I felt kind of nimble enough to be able to try some different things. And I wasn’t so stuck in my ways maybe to be scared of it, you know? And so I feel like I’ve embraced it. I, I did my first live. I’ve had about four live events since the summer, but I flew last week for my first live event. And, you know, that actually felt kind of awkward. I wasn’t ready to be back. Like, it felt weird to be in front of humans again and see them. It was wonderful. The energy is always amazing. It’s so great to see people.

Peter Winick And go, Yeah, pent up need of.

Linda Cohen Pent up.

Peter Winick Connection of. Yeah, yeah. I think there’s an awkwardness of do we shake hands? Do we hug like all that, the physicality.

Linda Cohen But you want to hear the voice, you want to hear a kindness. This association didn’t. I’ll mention this in case any of your listeners are association members. They had the little tags, you know, the typical tags you put on your or whatever. This one said, six feet apart, please, and vaccinated as a couple of choices of the tags. And I thought that was a way to put, you know, on your nametag, I’m comfortable with this or I’m not. And I thought that that was kind of a kindness that the association did.

Peter Winick No, that’s interesting because there are, I mean, rules, laws that we have to comply to. But then, you know, there’s personal choice and everybody’s got their thing. You know, whether you want to promote, whether you’re vaccinated or whether you’re not or whatever. But six feet apart isn’t to say, okay, like that person probably doesn’t have to be as tense going through that, given that there’s a notification says, okay, that’s cool, no judgment, all good, whatever. And then there’s another one that says I’m a hugger or whatever.

Linda Cohen I didn’t even see that one. I didn’t do that one at this association. But the problem I actually have, I speak to your colleague and he he wrote you did a T-shirt. I think it said something like, I’m vaccinated. Please give me a hug. This was right when he last spring when he got vaccinated was so. Excited. So.

Peter Winick If you’re enjoying this episode of Leveraging Thought Leadership, please make sure to subscribe. If you’d like to help spread the word about our podcast, please leave us a review and share it with your friends. We’re available on Apple Podcasts and on all major listening apps as well as at ThoughtLeadershipLeverage.com/podcasts.

Peter Winick So have you found so obviously you’re doing less in-person. But I think and this is the point for most speakers, just because we’re not in-person and in-person will come back to some level, etc., etc., doesn’t mean you’re out of the game, right? Because now you have to figure out what is a different medium. Obviously digital to deliver the message, but you’ve got to sort of develop new muscles and new capabilities because it’s interesting to me in that virtual speakers are awesome at the command of the stage, the orchestration of the music, the vibe, the feeling, the, you know, what they’re wearing. I mean, all those things play in the slides and all that sort of stuff. And now it’s we’re competing with the ding of someone’s email or ESPN or whatever or putting on another browser. And a lot of the bigness that you need to do from a presentation perspective on stage is not only overkill, but like, well, it actually goes the other way, right? It’s like a bad infomercial.

Linda Cohen So maybe you look to just connect with another human being, You know, maybe your stories are softer and quieter. And I know for me, I did a I did a virtual keynote with hospice professionals a couple of weeks ago. And when I tell my story, I got a little teary because I have you know, I have death in my story, in my story. And I just I just felt that emotion. And actually, the meeting planner at the end, she said, you know, we can really still connect with you and that even though we’re all just virtual and I think that that’s what you’re going for when you’re more in a virtual setting, I think there’s an authenticity that has come out.

Peter Winick Of the.

Linda Cohen Virtual. You see people’s background, you see their cat or their dog walking by. Maybe the kid gets up and hugs the person. I mean, you know, if you’re the keynote speaker, maybe you’re going to try to limit those things from happening. But it’s still my choice. And so you’re going to be an authentic person experiencing something right now in real time that’s happening for you. So I think that even though.

Peter Winick Yeah. And even though there’s, you know, more distance, technically it feels like there’s less distance, right? Because depending where I am in the audience, I might have a good view of you. And I had a great view, you know, whatever. Not a, you know, depending on the seat, but everybody’s got a great seat. I think there are sort of two waves of reaction that I’m hearing from my speaker friends. One is, man, I miss the I need that energy of the audience in real time to feed me. I need to know that I’ve got that right. And then there’s another group that says, you know, I know I’m good and I’ve got them. And this allows me to just concentrate on the camera and be really good at delivering the message and not letting it get in my head. When I see that tiny little blue light wave back of row 18 because someone’s got their phone out and I’m ignoring that 492 people are enjoying it. And there’s one jerk with their phone and I’m thinking it’s, there. The brain starts going, my God, they’re getting bored of that. Whatever. And it can throw you off your game. So do you have any reactions to that?

Linda Cohen I kind of straddle both. I agree with what you’re saying, that when you have an audience that isn’t 100% feeling the energy with you, it can feel offputting. And there’s still this amazing synergy that happens. Like when I can popcorn around a conversation and have people answer and I can see them and hand them the microphone. But I’ve also embraced this virtual life, and I think that there is an intimacy that we can create here. And I think that there is there’s a there’s a nice work life balance when you are working remotely and you can, you know, finish your talk and hop upstairs and, you know, have a meal with a spouse or whatever. I will say, one of the things that I have asked for when I’m working virtually is to have a follow up call with the meeting planner of some time later that day, if at all possible. Because as a speaker, the thing I missed is that few minutes afterwards, or maybe even longer, if you know there isn’t another activity happening for the participants right away, that connecting with the human being. And so I have really asked for that.

Peter Winick And you also know, as the speaker, whether you nailed it or not, based on the room. Right. And sometimes you don’t when you think it’s sort of air, but it’s still right. You don’t get that on the digital. So I like that.

Linda Cohen I know if you’re at the end of the event, you turn it off and you walk away and you have no feedback whatsoever. I mean, maybe people are putting in the comments. Thank you. That really resonated with her. Maybe. Yeah. But I mean, I’ve made it a point not only to try to make an appointment with the meeting planner, if at all possible, soon after the event to just get a little live feedback. And I also try to do some LinkedIn right away with my audience. You know, if I’ve had people I have a slide that says I’m on LinkedIn, please, like, yeah, yeah, I have a way to engage them, you know, and, and I’ll give something to them. A PDF about 18 Ways to Cultivate Kindness or what have you. And then I’ll follow up with those people so that I have some live virtual interaction with people who I know were participating.

Peter Winick Yeah, I think that’s great. Any other. Forty’s in terms of moving forward, in terms of other ways to deliver the kindness message. So keynoting is obvious, right? And whether that’s done in person or remotely. But have you have you thought into programs e-learning, how do you how do you go into an organization and set up an organization says you help us get our people to be kinder weather to each other, to our customers, to our to the market or whatever it is, and then we work in that area.

Linda Cohen Well, I just wrote my second book, like you mentioned, and that just came out October 1st. So I am using that content to begin to create more deep dive kindness workshops that I am offering to businesses where we could do, you know, several half days, several days together. Probably I’m going to structure it a four day over the course of 6 or 8 months where I would come in and do some segments for them and homework in between. So I have a couple of first clients that will be talking about that with, but I’m excited to be able to do a deeper dive into more long term cultural work. And that’s a pivot for me because, you know, keynoting was my sole work mostly, but I think that this is an important way and I think companies are going to need it as we weather the pandemic and come out of it.

Peter Winick When I think that chunking out the content over time is where it’s going, right? So it used to be we had this because everything was in person, so we flew everybody in to wherever, you know, the hotel and wherever extra day we had to make the most of it. Now, if we can do it remote, it’s great to do an hour or two worth of content, give them some things to do, reconvene in 6 or 8 weeks and say, How did you apply that? What did you do with that? You know, put them into cohorts or whatever. And then by the time the program is over, not the session, it’s over a period of time, they’ve actually developed their own kindness habits or ways or tested things. Some maybe some work, some did whatever.

Linda Cohen But I don’t know, you could have you could give them content, have them exercise it for the few weeks in between or month in between. Whatever the timeline is, come back if there’s any questions or things that are working. Or one of my favorite questions that I have come up with during this pandemic is what holds you back from finding ways to be kind. And I started asking that last November 2020 to a group of firefighters when I was told this is not a group that’s going to engage with you. So you’ve got to find some way to engage with them. And so I used an interactive technique, and it was so successful that I started using it with every audience. And there’s some great information in there, you know, because if people say stressed, tired or overwhelmed, but they say or they say management, you know, don’t get good onboarding, whatever. That’s a big for your work. And it’s anonymous, so it’s safe for the employees to share that. But that can be really important information for the for the leadership. And that’s the only way you’re going to know how to change a culture, you know, So it’s important to kind of know what’s going on. And I keep saying, you know, we’re having this great resignation and you think you have an awesome company with an awesome culture. You better start talking to your employees before they quit. You know, you may maybe want to have those interviews now with them.

Peter Winick What’s hold before they quit and before they broadcast to, you know, Glassdoor or whatever, how maybe less than kind it really is behind the scenes. So this has been fun. Any final thoughts or words of wisdom from the queen of kindness?

Linda Cohen It doesn’t have to cost a lot. The ROI of kindness could be could be not very expensive. So if you think it’s going to cost a lot and in terms of your bottom line or for any organization, it is absolutely going to save you dollars with turnover, with your reputation of your organization, where you potentially could leave, lose clients and being able to just have a wonderful culture where people really love working for you and love coming and being part of that.

Peter Winick So thanks. This has been great. Appreciate your time. Thanks so much.

Linda Cohen Thanks, Peter.

Peter Winick To learn more about Thought Leadership Leverage, please visit our website at ThoughtLeadershipLeverage.com. To reach me directly. Feel free to email me at Peter at ThoughtLeadershipLeverage.com. And please subscribe to Leveraging Thought Leadership on iTunes or your favorite podcast app to get your weekly episode automatically.