Clive Simpkins

Branding and Marketing YOU - a new book by Donna Rachelson

Great new book on the topic being launched by Donna Rachelson on 9th February.

She took a novel tack and video-interviewed nine leading people across diverse fields in South Africa. Specifically Monica Singer (CEO of STRATE), DJ Fresh (5FM fame), Prof. Loyiso Nongxa (Vice Chancellor Wits University), Tumi Makgabo (former CNN broadcaster and businesswoman), Mike Stopforth (CEO Cerebra), Ian Ollis MP, Vuyo Jack (Empowerdex pioneer), Allon Raiz (serial but very successful entrepreneur) and exercise and sports science guru Prof. Tim Noakes.

If you want some really fresh perspectives, this will be the book to deliver them. Here's the review I wrote for RISKsa magazine.

Download Branding and Marketing YOU review in RISKsa mag

Let’s have a look at you

At one stage in the last twenty years, personal image was a big thing for business people. How you looked, walked, talked, behaved, the briefcase you carried (you'll find one of them in a museum!) what you drove – all contributed to the overall impression you created. Colour Me Beautiful and other international absurdities had people slavishly following colour charts, worrying about the 'season' of skin on their wrist (to help choose colour tones) and making sure that the total picture conveyed what they wanted it to. Then, along with the death of 'power dressing' came a pendulum swing. Dress-down Friday gripped many international organisations. The tie was outlawed and even audit firm partners would walk around trying ever so hard to look chilled in their open-necked shirts. The effort at informality became as extreme as the formality that preceded it.

The global financial downturn of 2009 had many organisations and individuals wonder whether looking smarter and better groomed would make a difference to how people behaved and how companies performed. There's been a re-focus on appearance. The only significant change being that it's no longer called personal image but 'personal branding'. However much you hate that concept, fact is that people can indeed be a brand and positioned in a manner little different from Procter and Gamble promoting, advertising and merchandising a can of soup.

There's absolutely no conflict between you taking care of your appearance, dress, grooming, body language, voice and overall impact or impression and being true to yourself. We're all multi-dimensional beings. We display multiple facets – all of which are a part of us but no single one of them is all of us. Yes, we should want to be real. Little is more powerful than authenticity. But 'being you' doesn't have to mean dressing like you selected your clothes from a Salvation Army donor hamper. Or walking around with cracked, broken fingernails or torn cuticles because you're an avid gardener.

Don't get me wrong. I'm truly one of the most unpretentious people I know! J I love nothing better than mooching around at home in an old t-shirt, comfortable, baggy shorts - and (confession) - a pair of Crocs. But in public, we all have expectations of a brand. A brand personality builds either by design or default. If you don't construct and manage it by intention it'll land up attracting perceptions by default - no effort required. This can be downright bad and dangerous for you or your organisation.

We might not like to think so, but it's a rare person who doesn't take an instant 'snapshot' of someone else when they meet them for the first time. Totally automated and subconscious programming will slot the person into a category and we'll tend to respond to them according to that category. Most of us, to some extent judge the book by the cover. If it looks tatty it'll need to be a meisterstück to excuse a dishevelled appearance. Other than in highly creative or outdoors careers (advertising, movie-making, design, wildlife etc.) or at the fringes of business, will we easily accept off-beat, peculiar dress and behaviour without being suspicious or diminishing the calibre of the person in our minds.

I have a pragmatic view on personal branding – particularly the image side of it. It's a marketing exercise. What's your constituency, stakeholder or target audience likely to expect from you? Try to position your appearance somewhere between the two ends of the continuum of those expectations and you'll be placing a safe bet. Don't let your look, clothes or anything else about you get in the way of good communicating. They're only bit players in the process - not stars of the show.

If you wonder why you're not rising quickly enough through the ranks of an organisation, or effectively pitching your small business or services to clients – perhaps you don't sufficiently 'look the part'. You have to be packaged in a way that's aligned with their expectations. If not, they're not going to easily buy you, your ideas or your services.

Originally published in RISKsa magazine, October 2010 issue.

Your company may *have* to use social media

In or out? This is a question many organisations have to face. It's about whether they put a toe into the Social Media pool or dive in at the deep end. Both approaches can be disastrous. The crux of the issue though is – there's little option but to engage. It's not a question of 'if' – but 'when, where and how?'

When socmedia (you can live with that in the interests of brevity?) got even halfway mainstream some corporates via their opportunistic ad agencies thought it was a low-cost advertising medium. There were naïve attempts to peddle their snake oil under the guise of consumer comment or happy customer endorsement. What they discovered, as have many others more recently, is that social media is rigorous in outing dishonesty in any shape or form.

What's delightful and terrifying at the same time about socmedia is the utterly uncontrolled, immediacy of it. Nhlanhla Nene (then Director General in the ministry of finance, now deputy minister and an extremely capable man) featured on SABC Morning Live TV and his chair collapsed. He became an international celebrity within the hour. He temporarily lost his sense of humour, regained it and earned our admiration. Here's the link: http://youtu.be/XnHIeXQCfog

Nestlé adopted a very haughty stance when Greenpeace queried the origins of the palm oil it used in the production of Kit Kat chocolate products. So Greenpeace crafted a really smart TV commercial. Here it is: http://youtu.be/VaJjPRwExO8 In case you haven't seen it and didn't want to go to the link (I can deal with the depression J) it featured a bored man shredding documents, reaching for a Kit Kat, breaking off a finger and crunching it. But it wasn't a chocolate finger. It was an Orangutan finger. The Nestlé palm oil was being sourced from Indonesia and endangered species jungle habitat was being destroyed. Global negative response was phenomenal. The Nestlé CEO landed up contritely apologizing on international TV and promising that they'd in future verify origins of all raw materials. Given that toxic Melamine was found in some of their baby formula (also due to iffy origin) not too long before the Kit Kat debacle, one hopes Nestlé have learned something.

Tiger Woods took stick on socmedia by dithering for four months before making a half-baked and appallingly contrived 'apology' with a hand-picked, non-media audience. He suffered a flood of derisive jokes and comments as a result.

Tony Hayward, the BP CEO had his worst nightmare when viral footage of the Gulf of Mexico oil catastrophe (no, it wasn't a 'spill' – you do that with a glass of milk) had people around the planet in uproar. Link here: http://youtu.be/O-rJH9xB7fk He suffered from serious foot-in-mouth disease and BP replaced him as media spokesperson with their Chairman. The man is a Scandinavian and instead of saying they had not communicated well with stakeholders, he referred to us as 'the little people'. That phrase was made notorious by one Leona Helmsley of Hotel heiress fame - busted for stealing from the corporate cookie jar. See story here: http://bit.ly/bHCiae

What's the point of all of this? Marshall McLuhan http://bit.ly/c7jf4 legendary media guru said that the medium is the message and predicted we'd be working in a global village. We are. The time to global market is immediate via socmedia and the Internet. The concept of corporate media management has gone out of the door. You can't control it but you can learn to be proactive. Plus respect the vital need for candour and transparency when things go wrong in your organization or with your service.

The biggest paradox is that South African giants like the mobile phone networks have done poorly in their attempts to engage and keep in touch with customers. Vodacom and Cell C admit they don't monitor twitter over weekends. Ah, so they have a part-time socmedia strategy of engagement? Not advisable, not sustainable. The worst 3G outage in years took place on Sunday 19^th September but Vodacom were not monitoring the cries for information from their stranded wireless Internet users. We languished in cyber hell without connectivity. Outcome for me? Tipping point finally reached. I shall have ADSL installed at my home office and downgrade my Vodacom 3G to the bare minimum for when I'm not near a WiFi hotspot.

The lesson for corporates is this: You can't experiment with socmedia. You'd better have a real strategy for using it. Have people who understand it managing it for you. Make sure they're passionate about it. All companies can and should learn from FNB's helpful, ever-present and responsive @rbjacobs on twitter. You can't hide away in your plush offices and hope that angry tweets or facebook posts will evaporate into cyberspace. They won't. They'll just go viral. Think about it.

This post was first published in Memeburn

 

 

 

 

Pay it forward!

I don't know who it was that said, 'the only time you want to get even with someone is when they've done something good to you.' A beautiful sentiment and one which we can apply to both social and business advantage.

Kevin Spacey's role [he's pictured left] in the 'Pay it Forward' movie had a major impact on me years back. You may recall the story. Schoolteacher briefs kids to come up with a project that can change the world. In a nutshell, one little fellow has the idea that if anyone does something good to or for you, you 'pay it forward' to several other people. There's no 'pay back' to the person who did the favour. On this basis everyone understands that you 'make the circle beega' by allowing the ripples of gratitude to touch many others.

I'm a hopeless mathematician but I guess someone can do the sums and show how such an approach would significantly benefit communities and indeed even countries, if widely enough adopted. What I particularly like about it is that it encourages a spirit of sustainable generosity and expansion.

All too often over many years of playing mentor to many people both formally and informally, I've run across a mercifully small percentage of 'grabby' people. Who suffer from the IMM syndrome – I, Me and Mine. It's all about them. Whatever they're able to extract, beg, borrow, plagiarise, steal or leverage from someone else will be used exclusively for their own advantage. I stress that they're in the minority.

In my time as a freelance Talk Radio 702 show host many years back, I came to realise something. Most people want to help. Most people are inherently generous. But they need you to be very specific about how you wish them to help. I recall an instance where the Jukskei river had come down in flood due to heavy summer rains. Shacks had been washed away (as they are every year) near Alexandra Township in Johannesburg. We put out an appeal for help and it appeared to fall on deaf ears. Until someone more experienced than we were said, 'Tell people exactly what you want and where you want it delivered.' We asked for plastic sheeting, blankets, tinned food, bottled water, candles and matches. Within the hour truckloads of supplies were being delivered to the receiving centre. There's a wonderful lesson in this.

There are those who are good at admin, planning, logistics and co-ordination. I'm not. I'm an ideas man and a 'connector' of other people to resources. So the important take-away is to realise where we can best apply our talents and God-given abilities when the planet experiences or expresses a need.

The famed Hindu monk, Swami Vivekananda said that 'service to man is worship of God.' That the highest service we can do is to serve other human beings. That's something that would fit comfortably with all religions I guess. The Gift of the Givers organisation (a wonderful Islamic co-ordinated non-denominational relief organisation) has the concept summed up in its name. Those who assist or 'give' are the real recipients in the process. To go Hindu or new-agey, its 'good karma' being built up in the spiritual bank account.

Don't be put off by the somewhat philosophical tone of this thinking. It's well-demonstrated in the field of psychology that those who give of themselves and their energies (not just their money) are mentally healthier, better balanced and happier people. It's an intrinsic of human nature that we want to and need to be involved in acts of generosity and altruism.

From today, let's all adopt the visionary young student's thought. Tell whoever does something good for you that you'll be paying it forward to several others with their kindness in mind. Tell those who ask how they can pay you back to go and pay it forward. There's an intergalactic positive revolution embedded in the concept.

[This was published in RISKsa magazine September 2010]

 

Meet the mainstream media

Excerpted from Clive Simpkins' book: Media Appearance Secrets

Many people regard a media interview in the same light as a medieval torture chamber. With a bit of simple preparation it needn't be of course. Former British journalist and Economist editor, Walter Bagehot (pronounced badge-it) famously said, 'Do not let in daylight upon magic'. But once you do let in the light of understanding, much of the mystique and angst goes from the media engagement process.

The question most frequently directed at me when coaching in media skills is, 'What makes for a good media interviewee?' The short answer is always, 'When you're well prepared and then set out to enjoy yourself.' When you enjoy the interview, the readers, listeners or viewers will enjoy you.

There isn't some special aptitude or genetic predisposition to handling the media well. Here are a few contextualising thoughts, whether for print, radio or TV:

1. Get the full name and contact phone numbers (including mobile) from the person who makes contact with you about the interview. Get a back-up name and number. I was once left sitting in the deserted reception area of a TV network, causing great anxiety to the news anchor who was expecting to interview me, because the contact person's mobile phone was off! Fortunately I made the second half of the newscast.
2. Have an objective for the interview – regardless of what they might be interviewing you about. What do you want to leave behind in the mind of the reader, listener or viewer? If you know that – in one simple sentence – you can introduce thoughts or material that will help deliver on that objective. If you sit passively waiting to hit the ball back across the net, you're wasting an expensive and valuable opportunity.
3. You can't ask for the questions in advance. Those days are gone.
4. Don't even depend on the topic remaining the same. A breaking news story can skew the direction of your interview if the journalist feels you have the expertise to respond to the emerging issue.
5. You have no right to pre-read, check or approve the print piece or the radio or TV interview if they're pre-recorded. You may offer to check material if the interviewer so desires, purely for factual and technical accuracy. Remember: you're not the print sub editor, or, in the case of electronic media, the commissioning editor.
6. A poor general knowledge, even if you are a subject matter expert, is a major disadvantage, because you'll present only a very narrow spectrum of information.
7. Read in advance, something of the journalist's print work, listen to the radio host or watch the TV anchor person to get a sense of their style, pace and rhythm.
8. Cut non-essential clutter from your diary on the day of the interview. This will better help you focus and remain calm and resourceful.
9. Former US president Richard Nixon infamously said in 1972 to then national security advisor, Henry Kissinger, 'Never forget: The press is the enemy. The Establishment is the enemy. The professors are the enemy.' Wrong: The media (dunno about the profs and the establishment) are your umbilical cord to your public.
10. Media exposure in the right environment and editorial context is worth a lot of money. If you're not prepared and you don't leverage the time to optimum advantage, you're pouring a big and expensive opportunity down the sewer.
11. Rehearse with colleagues and 'insiders' the worst-case, nightmare questions that you'd most hate to be asked in an interview. When you've gone through them in advance, they don't sound quite so ghastly when the journo or interviewer asks them.
12. Be on time for the interview. If it's TV, be in sufficient time to go through make-up or you'll appear on camera sweaty or shiny and that'll make you look nervous – just like Richard Nixon.
13. When the interviewer greets you, don't say 'thanks for having me'. They didn't. Your mom and dad did!
14. Don't greet 'the listeners'. You're having a conversation with the interviewer. Not the masses.
15. Keep your answers concise - the classic soundbite. Give headline, then sub-head and if asked, elaborate with 'body copy' detail.
16. If you represent an organisation, you're the voice, the face and the image of that organisation in the interview. What you say and how you behave has a direct impact on the public perceptions and image of that organisation. So don't take things personally, stay calm, focused and be cordial.
17. Keep good eye contact with the interviewer. Think into, listen into, speak into their eyes.
18. Keep your vocal tone and manner warm and conversational. Speak in your normal, natural voice. No airs and graces.
19. Don't say anything to anyone before, during, in commercial breaks or after the interview that you wouldn't be happy having broadcast to the nation. Microphones may be live when they shouldn't be - and remember, no bad language or off-colour humour.
20. Finally, having prepared, now be prepared to have fun!

 

Calm, convert and conquer your anger

(Excerpted from Change Your Thinking Change Your Life, by Clive Simpkins, published 2003)

 

Anger is the result of frustrated desire. I often hear people say, "He made me so angry!" or "I couldn't help being livid!" or "It just happens before I even know it!"  These statements put the blame for becoming angry on someone else, or on circumstances. The good news is that you can, if you wish, minimise anger almost immediately. With a little time and effort you can overcome it and manage or convert (sublimate) the energy you might have wasted on anger, into something more useful.

Anger is the result of frustrated desire. The steps to it are short and swift. You start off by having a desire or wish. Nothing wrong with that, but when you add impetus, energy or concentration to that desire it develops quickly into a demand. As soon as the demand encounters frustration, you're into anger. The simple solution would be to say, "Then don't be demanding." But as we all know, that's a lot easier said than done.

It's helpful to go back a few steps in the observation of our thought patterns. Some of our "thinking" is not at conscious brain level at all. We have lots of packages, audio and video tapes, CD ROMs, flash discs, e-mails, memos, letters and documents in the subconscious mind. They may have been recorded, filed, archived or stored there many years ago. Yet they can still negatively influence our thinking and responses in certain situations.

Whether or not we're aware of it, any behaviour starts off with thought. That thought creates a second level of activity, which is feeling or emotion. At that stage, we may "feel" angry, depressed, humiliated or whatever. But the feeling was preceded by an internal (self-talk) discussion. Perhaps along the lines of, "How could he speak to me like that? He's got some nerve!" We might not even be aware of this internal dialogue, but we'll experience the result, as emotion.

Our emotions inevitably translate into a third level - behaviour that's visible to others. In some people, it's like viewing a synoptic chart. A high pressure system here, a depression there! The sequence then, is thoughts-feelings-behaviour, much like an archery target. Thoughts are in the centre, surrounded by feelings or emotions, with behaviour being external - the biggest, most visible circle of all.

When we're upset, we're out of control, low on constructive resources, illogical, and it may take hours to return to a state of equilibrium. Meantime, we may have caused significant or even irreparable hurt through what we said when angry.

Here's a suggestion: start noticing which comments or thoughts irritate you. What it is that makes you flare into anger. Become aware of their presence in your mind - only sooner than you did previously. That you even notice them now is a significant step forward in the direction of anger management, control or conversion.

You'll reach a stage of awareness where you'll catch the thought early enough to make a conscious decision not to get angry. You'll choose an alternative to stay in balance, equilibrium or harmony.

Having observed and then caught the thought bubble, you'll be into the management phase of your thinking. Instead of other people or circumstances "pressing your buttons" or "making" you angry, you'll now enjoy a choice in your response. One choice is not to be angry. If you are angry, it'll be because you choose to be.

You won't have an immediate one hundred percent success rate. This is an incremental self-awareness and growth exercise and hiccups will occur. Control of your thoughts, emotions, behaviour and mind, will though, be taken out of the hands of other people, and given back to the rightful custodian – you. It'll be a relief and an energy saver.

 

Criticism and self-esteem

 

Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent – Eleanor Roosevelt.

Being able to deal well with criticism from colleagues, friends or those you love is a sign of emotional intelligence (EI or EQ) and maturity. The single most common effect of criticism is that it can easily and negatively impact on your sense of self worth. If you've given clients or people in general permission to influence your self-esteem, you're vulnerable to damage.

Self-esteem is the value we privately place on ourselves - and it's a feeling. You may perceive yourself to be a competent, worthy person, or you might consider yourself to be unattractive, without special merit, inferior, unassertive, socially unskilled or the like. The range of choices is wide. We choose whether our self-worth is internally developed, maintained and championed - or whether it's at the mercy of vested interests or the distorted personal agendas of other people.

There's a relevant story told from the life of the Buddha. It is said that a man began abusing him. The Buddha didn't respond. This made the man even angrier. Eventually he raged, 'How can you remain so tranquil when I abuse you so?' The Buddha looked at him calmly and said, 'If you offered me a plate of food, and I refused to accept the plate, the food remains yours.' The same principle applies to criticism.

Critics are usually unhappy, unbalanced people. Generally trying to make themselves stand taller by trampling on the self-worth of those they crush underfoot. They're usually incapable of seeing the potential or the positive upside of a situation or idea. To quote thinker and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, 'Taking to pieces is the trade of those who cannot construct.' That's them. Criticism can reveal inappropriate competitiveness or jealousy. Jealousy is the direct product of a sense of inferiority. Inferiority is the outcome of poor self-esteem. So, it's a vicious downward cycle. Critics don't realise that each time they attack someone or something they're exposing and further undermining their own impoverished sense of self-worth.

How should we respond to criticism? I use a simple evaluation mechanism in my own life. If the criticism consistently comes from just one person, I ignore it. They need to be in a hospital ward marked 'Self-esteem repair unit.' However, if the criticisms and observations come from a variety of sources in different circumstances, the chances are that they're valid. I then take them seriously and have, over the years changed many things that I do or say, as a consequence. 

If you're a contrarian or  pioneer in any shape or form, ahead of your time in thinking or innovation terms, you'll inevitably be attacked. Swami Vivekananda referred to the three phases through which new ideas have to pass: Rejection, ridicule and then acceptance. Understanding this makes it easier to handle the lack of receptivity or criticism you'll encounter from some quarters.

If you allow the critic's words to have a negative impact on you, you're giving her or him permission to manage your self-esteem on your behalf. Considering they're not doing too good a job in their own self-worth department, this just doesn't make sense! Remember that bad behaviour of any sort is a symptom of physical, emotional or psychological pain. They're in pain - don't add to it - but also, don't collude with it.

Criticism can be a useful self-management barometer. Listen to what people say and engage in a bit of introspection. It's an effective way to keep your ego in check. There's a fine line between ignoring the views of other people and being seriously affected by absolutely everything they have to say. Finding and maintaining a balance is the key.

Teaching children how to cope with criticism is a healthy early-life lesson. Quite frequently, our most damaging self-esteem messages are embedded in our formative years. They may be related, as were mine, to impoverished financial circumstances, obesity and a lack of athleticism. Being able to review past messages and press the 'delete' or 'overwrite' button is an important self-esteem and mental health skill. Make sure you remain in charge of it.

 

 

 

Caving in to pressure

You're 'your own person', right? You make your own choices, decisions and you don't get bullied or pressured into doing anything you don't want to. Like changing an opinion. Or do you? Let's see.

I arrived - exhausted from 5 hours of driving - at a Drakensberg mountains resort. I was scheduled to run a workshop on leadership development the following morning. I was hungry, thirsty and first prize would have been checking into my room and enjoying an hour or two of peace and quiet before the evening meal. But that was not to be. I'd been getting SMSs en route from the client HR exec, asking 'Where are you?' He insisted that I 'join them for a drink' in the pub. OK, I thought, even though I don't drink alcohol, I can park my own needs for a bit and go make 'em happy. It would also give me a chance to get a feel for the group I would work with the next day. My, my, what a feel it was.

In the pub I found a fully-fledged 'initiation' session underway. New reps and other hapless staff members who had not previously undergone the rite of passage demanded by the thuggish majority in the sales department, were being dragooned into the following: Insert a raw, unbroken chicken egg into mouth. Without opening mouth, break the shell, swallow the contents, spit out the shell, tilt head backwards, open mouth and someone would shake a hearty dash of Tabasco sauce into it. This was followed by a shooter of alcohol. Like a bunch of school boys in a rugby locker room, they were roaring their drunken encouragement, derision or approval as a variety of people gagged during the ritual, sometimes barely moments away from an embarrassing vomiting episode.

As I was introduced so there were chants of 'initiation, initiation, initiation'. Someone approached me with an egg in one hand and a Tabasco bottle in the other. There was an expectant murmur in anticipation of me enduring the process. I quietly stood my ground and simply shook my head. The pub fell totally silent. This wasn't in the script. Everyone else had complied and here was the one fellow who was going to be troublesome. They had (so they thought) a foolproof technique, they started jeering and catcalling, saying 'chicken, chicken, chicken'. Clearly the feathered creatures featured highly in their subconscious database for some or other reason. Again the pub fell silent – many of them now had smug expressions on their faces signaling , 'Well, let's see him cop out of this now.'

Quietly but well-projected enough for everyone to hear I said, 'Thanks for the kind invitation, but first up, I've been vegetarian for forty years and I don't eat eggs. Secondly, I'm your guest facilitator on leadership tomorrow and this exercise is going to provide us with some wonderful material on a variety of fronts related to your leadership skills. Absolutely nothing you can say or do will force me to eat that egg or swallow Tabasco. Because I choose not to.' There was a very uncomfortable atmosphere for a few minutes and then the minority of socially skilled people in the pub tried really hard to pick up the conversation and get back to their mood of unrestrained jollity. I excused myself to the MD after one soft drink and said I'd see them at supper later. I have no doubt that my lack of being a sport, being a killjoy and all sorts of other aspersions must have kept the conversational wires buzzing once I left. It didn't concern me.

Supper was uneventful, except for people getting even more intoxicated. The truth of a saying from one of my young female clients struck me. She says: 'When guys pack for a conference, they pack another personality along with their clothes.' Pretty true – in the main.

The following morning I laid into this thuggish, hung-over crowd in no uncertain way. We spent significant time discussing corporate culture, reputation, image and a host of other topics related to their totally unacceptable and socially insensitive behaviour. That they wanted to impose their lack of sophistication upon people in their organization was bad enough. That they attempted to do so with an external service provider was completely beyond the pale.

What can we learn from this? Learn to say no. Don't allow your values, beliefs, attitudes, perceptions or behaviour to be compromised simply because the 'herd' wishes to impose its will. A sign of character and guts is refusing to fold or cave in to peer pressure and being comfortable dealing with the consequences. I hope you find the strength to do so.

Has the media shot itself in the foot?

In answer to the question, 'is the media in South Africa the architect of its own misfortune' (because of threats of censorship) I wrote the attached article for the Mercury newspaper in Durban, South Africa. It was published 16th August 2010. Here it is:  Download Muzzling you and the media Mercury 16th Aug 2010 (The PDF will take a minute or so to download)

Does your business have ‘soul’?

The era of e-mail, the Internet and abbreviated communications has brought with it increasing levels of discourtesy in business interaction. Call centre training seems to have been exhausted by the constant 'churn' factor (staff changes). The absence of social sophistication in those dealing with queries has led to dreadful social gaffes becoming the norm.

Can you or I change the pattern? Maybe not at a macro level, but certainly for ourselves and those immediately around us – the answer is yes. Part of the brand proposition of your business, service or product offering is the social engagement that goes with what you do.

'Polite' may not sound cool – but it's the foundation from which we need to work. We simply can't afford to treat a customer (for want of another word) in any way other than with politeness, warmth, appreciation and indeed gratitude for the fact that they're actually our salary cheque speaking.

I recently had the opportunity of staying in an incredibly expensive hotel, courtesy of a client who clearly saw that as the right thing to do since I was working with their people in that city. Bless 'em. For the inflated price I knew they were paying, I had the privilege of being a number. There was a seamless and yet utterly soulless smoothness to the machine that the hotel was. It was a people-processor. Perfect service, perfect smiles but literally devoid of a personal touch or a sincere word from the staff. The high in the sky double-glazed windows that insulated my executive suite from the outside world and left me cocooned in a strange silence, was the metaphor for the hotel's overall approach.

The business assignment over, I decided to spend the weekend in Cape Town to recover some energies and give myself a mental break. I checked at my own expense into a highly personable, way more down to earth little hotel. The doorman deviated from his job description when he saw my equipment cases piled in the back of the car. He became bellhop and concierge all at once. Inviting me to drive into the parking garage where he met me with a trolley. He then insisted (not with that 'I know I'll get a big tip' manner either) on making my arrival painless and really pleasant. His behaviour was as if he owned the hotel – which he certainly didn't.

Being as tuned into communication experiences as I am I couldn't help notice the contrast between the two establishments. The one was almost what I'd have expected at a Swiss euthanasia clinic. Professional, no-nonsense but remote. The other – a much more comforting way to die if you'll excuse the continued analogy.

That same trip saw me use a car hire company at Cape Town airport. On a Friday afternoon at 16:20, there was just one attendant behind the counter. I began to hell-raise, as is my habit when I encounter bad service. Because I always contrast it with the experience I try to give people when I work with them. Interesting for me was the surly attitude of the supervisor who had been pried out from behind the scenes. Her comment: I'm not officially on duty yet. That's the difference between someone doing a job and someone with a vocation for good service. The irritated customers (yes, there were other but silent sufferers) were not her concern until she got 'officially' on duty. The brand and reputation damage wasn't her bag. Although a supervisor, she was after all just an employee. I asked for the head office phone number and left a message for the MD (she wasn't available after 16:30). Nobody ever returned my call. So I'm not surprised that the supervisor echoes the so-called leadership lack of service or interest.

Have you examined lately, how your customers and clients might be feeling about you, your staff and your business? It's never too late to start making small changes that make a big difference. Try it. You, your staff and the clients will like it.