Courtesy Towards All

Leadership requires many critical ideas and principles to guide us toward the right path of progress and achieving our goals.

Patience, humility, hard work, resilience, wisdom, caring, vision, empathy, integrity, empowerment, and more.

These are all super important topics for another day, but I think one principle doesn’t get the attention it deserves: courtesy.

Probably because it is taken for granted or assumed by the masses, but it says a lot about someone being kind towards others and respectful to anyone they interact with.

This can be how you treat your teammates and people who work for you. Or how you treat your competition and those in other businesses against yours.

This can even be how you talk to and view the person there to clean your building space or the janitor who comes in once a week to mop up the mess that has been made.

We are all trying to get through life with the tools and resources we have. Some have more than you; some have less.

Regardless of status, position, or title, we must all treat everyone with the same courtesy and kindness we want others to give us.

To start receiving that, however, you must first give it to those in your life, whether they have been with you for yours or are strangers you are meeting for the first time; courtesy must be consistently implemented.

With courtesy, you gain stronger relationships, a better reputation, and good character that will serve you well as you experience life’s ups and downs.

But it has to be authentic. People can tell when you are not being genuine as soon as you utter your first word.

Being courteous isn’t a sales tactic or a trick up your sleeve. It is something you are as a person and must embody every day with the people you meet along your journey.

It must be natural. Never artificial.

Take time to see where you can be kinder to others and respectful to your team and your community.

Courtesy, now and always.