Sarah Browning’s ORB member business, Browning York, helps to deliver responsible organisations’ vision of a better society by developing communications for them. Her Time for Kindness programme is aimed at harnessing the kindness that already exists in the world. If you’d like to add some of that power of connection and collaboration to your business, here are 3 tips to start you off.
Kindness in your business
As business owners, sometimes it can feel like our work is never done. There’s always another task on the to do list that will take you towards your goal and simultaneously take up more of your time. From marketing to finance to service development to admin and much more. We certainly wear a lot of hats!
There is also a lot to celebrate about running a business yourself. I’ve been running my communications consultancy for 13 years now and one of my favourite things is being able to make business decisions based on my values. This guides me in what I work on and who my clients are.
Noticing kindness
Three years ago I set up the Time for Kindness programme alongside (and aligned with) my communications work. Through this programme I inspire and teach people to notice the kindness that already exists in the world, helping them feel more positive and hopeful. Improvements in wellbeing are good for individuals and for the organisations they work for.
I believe that one of the most powerful things you can do for yourself and your business is to notice the kindness going on around you. And if you have employees or others working with you, encourage them to do the same.
Some of my favourite business-related kindness stories sent in to Time for Kindness are:
- A business that slows its production down during school holidays to enable parents to spend more time with their kids
- A zero waste shop owner who recommended other local businesses as a venue for an event for neurodivergent people
- An expert in their business field who took time out to give advice and shout outs to a fledgling business just starting out in the same field
Top 3 tips
Kindness has made a huge difference to my business and to me personally. It is a powerful thing because it connects us as human beings. If you’d like to add some of that power of connection and collaboration to your business, here are my tips for where to start.
• Make a conscious choice to look out for kind acts. They will be there, you may just not have noticed them before. If you catch yourself focussing on the negative, stop and ask yourself if there is a different way to look at what’s going on. Even in the darkest of situations you can often spot someone who is doing something kind to help another person, however small their action is. The more you practise this way of thinking, the easier it will become.
• Recognise that even the smallest of acts can be kind. Kindness doesn’t just show up in grand gestures. Commenting on a small business’ social media post, sharing a software tip with another owner, offering to do the washing up for a colleague – these are all small but mighty acts of kindness. And they add up over time.
• Be kind to yourself. It will be easier to spot something in others if you’re experiencing it yourself. So silence the negative inner talk, create reminders of what’s out there so you can turn to them on darker days, close the laptop early some days and cook a nice meal. You are doing your best with your business, so celebrate that.
Kindness is all around us. We just don’t talk about it enough – yet!
To find out more about the Time for Kindness programme and the kindness workshops I run, visit https://timeforkindness.co.uk/ You can find out about my communications consultancy work, including how I help not-for-profits and for-purpose businesses to be more strategic when they communicate, by visiting https://www.browningyork.com/
Sarah Browning
Founder of Browning York Ltd and Time for Kindness
“My mission is to inspire hope and positivity by highlighting all the kindness that already exists in the world, from individuals and organisations. I run the Time for Kindness programme and I work with organisations that have a vision of a kind world to be more effective in their communications.
The Time for Kindness programme is all about sharing stories of kindness to inspire hope and positivity. Once you start to ‘see kind’ in the world, it becomes a positive cycle of noticing even more. In addition to the story sharing element, as part of the programme you can sign up as a voluntary Kindness Ambassador or take part in a wellbeing workshop to learn the skills to see kind.”