Focus On Corporate Values – Friendliness
Values are a useful way to communicate a desired way of organizing, but they are also a source of conflict. Let’s take this one, the first value expressed by a servicing company:
Being friendly (more general stated as: friendliness)
This is a wide area but a site (1) has detailed the social interaction of friendliness in sub categories:
- through a desire for a long-term close relationship with a character.
- through socially acceptable forms of physical contact.
- by taking the initiative in requesting a character to share in a pleasant social activity (inviting).
- through extending assistance to a character or offering to do so (helping, protecting).
- by offering a gift or loaning a possession to a character.
- or … expressions of friendliness that may be conveyed through either verbal or gestured means. … sympathizing with or praising someone (verbal).
- or … Friendliness is felt toward a character but it is not expressed overtly (covert).
This is a very logical and strong value that fits a profile of the servicing company.
A service company is constantly in contact with very demanding customers, and the positive climate will be the best guarantee for a high productivity.
But acting friendly is under such a demanding scenario hard to achieve as a continuous “attitude.”
The client is said to be always right, but also sometimes not quite fair.
Being friendly, can’t there for not be the only value, what is needed additionally:
being fair (fairness) or honesty.
Honesty acts as an complementary value for friendliness. In order to act more friendly we have to discard how we really think and feel. Honesty is more egocentric-oriented, friendly is more altruistic-oriented.
It is good to focus on the client, but you cannot discard your own good sense. Friendliness and honesty form a solid couple (of corporate values) for a servicing company.
1 – http://dreamresearch.net/Coding/friendliness.html
1 – http://dreamresearch.net/Norms/friendliness.html
© 2007 Hans Bool
Hans Bool writes articles about management, culture and change. If you are interested to read or experience more about these topics have a look at: Astor White or sign-up for our newsletter.
