Motivate your team with small gestures that speak volumes

Sometimes we need a moment to step away from the “big picture” and focus on the little things, the important things, and those seemingly trivial things that need our attention. Today those important things will take us to Kiambu.

More than 300 students at a secondary school in Limuru have for the last three months been selling mandazi (buns) and stationery to their colleagues to help raise Sh2.4 million for their principal to undergo a kidney transplant in India.

The students from Nyamweru Secondary School came up with the idea after their principal got a donor. The teacher was diagnosed with the disease six years ago.

Led by a fourth former, Salome Muiruri, the students who are day scholars decided to start selling mandazi and other items to help them get fare to and from school.

But when they learned that their principal had been missing classes to attend dialysis at Kenyatta National Hospital, they agreed that they would continue with the business but that the money would go towards the medication of their principal.

The power of connection: John Maxwell calls it the power of connection. If you are able to touch people’s hearts, then you will be able to take their hand and lead them. 

It is necessary to be able to connect with someone’s heart before asking him to sacrifice his time and energy.  Your business and friendship will come together in record time if you are able to win the hearts of the people before taking their hand.

I will give an example from my own experience. I worked for a company where the management used to ask employees to stay late because we were quite busy and work needed to get done. 

But the managers would leave after lunch and be gone for the rest of the day. They would also take every Friday off. It used to upset junior workers and morale hit rock bottom. 

In their book, The Power of Small: Why Little Things Make all the Difference, Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval argue that bigger is not always better.

In fact, these authors challenge all of us that our smallest actions, words, and gestures often lead to our greatest long-term rewards and outcomes.

In short, our kindness, willingness to help, attention to detail, attitude, desire to offer a positive word or our simple “please” and “thank you” responses will make all the difference in building strong personal and team relations.

Team members tend to work harder when they know others care about them and want the best for them. As a result, our smallest actions and gestures often have the largest impact on our personal relationships and long-term team successes.

It doesn’t take much, but doing the little things may be the difference between playing a good game and winning.

The little things: When times are tough and people are stressed, taking the time to genuinely inquire how someone is doing sends a powerful message of caring.

We’re not talking about a spill-your-gut session here or in-depth psychotherapy, but taking a minute or two to inquire after a co-worker’s sick child or parent or to see how the job is progressing. Let people know you care. As a consequence, they are more likely to care about you and the business.

In this electronic age, hand-written correspondence has been abandoned in favour of e-mail and voice mail , among other mediums. For convenience sake, that’s mostly a good thing.

But if you want to stand out from the crowd, take the time to write a short, hand-written note to express gratitude or appreciation to your best customers, clients or prospects. This small gesture will go a long way in saying “you matter to me” and leaves a very strong impression.

I believe that we all have the ability to be leaders, and at some point in all of our lives there has been someone who has looked up to us as someone they trust.

They watched the little things that we did. Those countless small actions that we live out every day can have a big influence that we will never see.

That is why pure leadership isn’t about the lights, camera, or glory—it is about doing the right things, the little things, because that is how we positively influence those around us, and that is how we can change the world.

Would your staff make mandazi for you to send you to India for a kidney transplant?