We live in the times of Life coaches and Professional evangelists who spin yarn after yarn of traditional wisdom into new fabric to use as a mental veil or forehead blinkers for their followers. Yes, most of what they say or write goes to develop more of a herd mentality than serve to open up our minds.

In the same vein the business model that started with the likes of Dale Carnegie and Norman Vincent Peale, with the Commercial industry of Self help books, has only made these Help Gurus richer. The fad is so pervasive and continuing that there has to be at least one 'How To' book on our night stands even today.

Either these self-styled Business Messiahs repackage the wise old into a fancy new or create garbled up mumbo-jumbo that aims to hook our senses into passive submission. We lap it up because it brings relief into our monotonous train of thoughts and adds a little novelty to an otherwise prosaic prose that tends to surround us.

Yet, amidst this entire new age clutter and information overload, there actually exists Rule #1 that, if adhered to, can become hugely transformational. It is something that our ancestors and past masters have told us. A rule that our parents and teachers have urged us to abide by. A tenet that the best organizations in the world, seek out in their star employees!

And that simple, yet difficult to consistently attain, rule is – Be Nice!

When you decide to go out to work and make a career for yourself, the first speed bump that you hit against is people who are not so nice – the Boss is seldom nice (especially when viewed from a skewed angle), the Management is not nice (with their large axe to grind), the HR is particularly vicious (always the management's watchdog) and the immediate Supervisor is almost the Villain (with the sole aim to show you in bad light). The organization-specific emotions are often woven around this theme and rarely do we find a consummately happy, content and satisfied team player.

The biggest problem, however, lies with you. When you are not so nice yourself – to the Boss (yes, you heard that right), to the peers, to people who report to you, even to the guests, to the blue collared workforce that actually makes the foundation for the Organization to have a certain positive rhythm - the energy gets reflected back at you in a much higher degree of scorch and burn.

When you are not nice then you indulge in the following vices –

  1. Bring in negative energy with you into work. An energy that is as threateningly infectious as the good energy is refreshingly so.
  2. You take affront at the slightest of slight and then plan to counter it with revengeful acts.
  3. You give an ear and mouth to information that is not your business in the first place, the sort of business that often festers menacingly in the water cooler corners or the cafeteria. Gossip mongering comes easy to you.
  4. You get into convoluted loops of name-calling emails that swell up with unpleasant character assassination; when they are actually meant to convey sane, sensible, value-adding, professional thoughts and ideas.
  5. Your strategies are centered on stealing credit, back-stabbing, being slothful yet demanding recognition and reward, dressing up the mediocre as something magical and passing the buck.
  6. You hate everything that the Boss, management, team asks for.
  7. You refuse to share information with your team and those who report to you, making their lives difficult and their deliverables out of reach.
  8. You trounce upon people mercilessly; but whine and whimper uncontrollably at the faintest payback in the same vein.
  9. You cut corners in your work, don't think twice before snapping ties that bring no benefit to you and cruelly rend the rope that others sweat out to climb up to the next level with effort.
  10. You have the mean machine going on all its engines, in all its deviousness with the focus on hamming, harming; shamming, shaming; gaming, grandiosing; vindicating, vilifying.

But if you are nice then you are naturally kind, compassionate, understanding, team-playing and positively productive with your nous blend well with your niceness.

Being nice brings in fewer furrows on your forehead; less worries, more enchanting wonderment; it makes you less jealous and more zealous; less abrasive and acerbic and more affable and intrinsically a positive-people aggregator!

If you are nice then the Universe is your ally, the world your oyster, the Boss your mentor, colleagues your cheerleaders, work a place of good fun and mirth and life a magnificent roller coaster ride in a Fair full of surprises – some that you rejoice in, others that you learn from.

What's more! If you are nice and ask for things nicely of ANYONE, you usually get them!

Don't take my word for it. Try it.

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