I like the idea of karma and believe in it. I, also, believe it can teach us lessons about how to be better leaders and be more customer and employee centric businesses.

Let me explain my thinking.

The common understanding of karma is that every action has a consequence and good acts will have positive results and bad acts will produce negative results. In common terms, karma is explained by various sayings like:

“What goes around, comes around”

“You reap what you sow”

“The laws of cause and effect”

However, if you dig into karma you will find that there is an additional element that is talked about in Buddhism and links karma directly to the motives behind an action. This means that it’s not just the act that is important in deciding if it is good or bad, the motivation behind the act can make the difference between it being something that is a “good” or “bad” action.

Now, whether you believe in karma or not, this additional element is important and worth exploring.

Why?

Well, I believe that there are times when we want things to happen faster than they often do. In those moments, we can become frustrated and impatient and, sometimes, to get things moving quicker, we can be lured into resorting to other tactics to get stuff done.

However, in doing this we can lose sight of our and others ability to sense when someone is not being ‘true’ or is being ‘nice’ in order to get us to do something.

Ever had that feeling?

This is our emotional instinct or ‘sixth’ sense and tells us a lot about what is going on around us and can reveal the true motivations behind someone’s actions.

If you’ve ever had that feeling then, guaranteed, your people and your customers have felt it too. And, perhaps, they’ve felt it from you.

To help with minimise this in our businesses, I think we can learn a lesson from the inaugural address in 1961 of John F. Kennedy when he said:

‘And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.’

So, imagine if your ‘country’ was your customers or your employees ask yourself what you can do for your ‘country’ and try not to think about what your ‘country’ can do for you. I think this is a great way to make sure that your motivations are in the right direction and will help build your ‘karma’ with your customers and your employees.

Hopefully, that ‘karma’ will flow back to you directly or in other ways.

What do you think? Agree, disagree, indifferent?

Photo Credit: Carolyn_Sewell via Compfight cc