The Hidden Power of Smiling by Ron Gutman

9 thoughts on “The Hidden Power of Smiling by Ron Gutman”

  1. Luis, even without clicking through to watch the videos yet, I must share my own story and lesson learned about smiling. I attended a retreat last month and one of the lessons was ‘Smile more.’ πŸ˜€

    I returned home on a Sunday. Went to work on Monday and practiced smiling at all times, even while sitting and reading ema*l. πŸ˜‰ And I was replacing a document in my beloved internal community software, software that I know backwards and forwards. And an error popped up. And my reaction was a curious, “Ah…..?” This was amazing to me – my ‘normal’ reaction would have been an irritated “What???” (as in WTF?) I attribute this difference in attitude and reaction to the smiling. Powerful stuff!

    Keep smiling folks… it really works! πŸ˜€

    1. Hi Trisha! WOW!! That’s just such a wonderful story! I am really glad you have made the time to share it on this blog and show / demonstrate the power of smiling! I will keep an eye on it next time around I may bump into tech problems, as I am sure it will have the same effect you mentioned above! W00t!!

      With that lovely story, you will be enjoying the videos, I am pretty sure! I will be looking forward to that weekend retreat myself in a few days, where I am hoping to exercise plenty more my smiley muscles!! hehe

      Thanks again for that wonderful comment! πŸ™‚

  2. Great post!!! Makes me appreciate every day with my wife and 3 month old baby Sebastian!! He brings us so many smiles and really helps us enjoy life. I totally agree that smiling is soooo important and something that is a big focus for us in our Service Desks. Smiling whilst helping our clients adds to the wonderful customer service we can deliver!!

    1. Hi Nath! Great story, indeed! I can imagine how you folks couldn’t get enough of those smiles while at home with baby Sebastian! πŸ˜€

      It’s pretty amazing how close we are going to relate to this one as well. When I first started working at IBM over 14 years ago, I was also on Customer Support, for the mainframe, then PC, and one of the core courses we all had to attend was on pure customer service skills where one of the main traits we all got out of it was the power of the smile, even while you are on the phone!

      It makes a total difference having a smile while talking to people on the phone and I can’t imagine what those days would have been like without that attitude! Looks like old good habits die hard! πŸ˜‰

    1. Hi Travis! Thanks much for dropping by and for the feedback! Great stuff! I was not aware of the work from Ekman, but will surely be looking into it, as well as that rather interesting book link! Looks right along the alley of stuff I would be interested in! Thanks much for sharing it across and glad you enjoyed the post as well! πŸ™‚

    1. Ohhh, more awesomeness! Many many thanks, Travis, for sharing along that follow up link! Already checking it out and adding the book into my reading list! W00t!!

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