Yesterday we had someone representing our home insurance company come to the house. The winter has been brutal and for the first time since we've lived here we're seeing some effects from the weather on the inside of the house.

He was a very nice guy, and we got on right away. We walked throughout the house, him taking pictures along the way. I showed him the garage, and then the outside of the house, where he could see some of the bad stuff actually taking place; even in cold weather, you'll have spots that will leak. Unfortunately, we'd had a flash snow event Saturday night (that's what we get instead of "storms") that had left a nice layer of snow on the roof, so he or someone else will have to come back whenever the weather decides we've had enough for awhile; in this area that could be May.

He thanked us for being nice to him. He was telling my wife and I some stories about going into homes where he was made to feel unwelcome or unsafe, and how whenever he goes out, even to good neighborhoods, he's never sure who or what he's going to encounter.

I was thinking how strange that is. After all, the last thing I would ever want to do is treat someone bad who came to my house to help me out. True, one may not always get the money they hoped to get in times like this, but you never make someone feel bad in your space on the first visit unless they ask for it.

This message can be spread to any business office in the world. Sometimes leaders forget that the people who work for them will be spending at least 1/3rd of their entire day with you, and in essence it's their home and your home as well, for at least a little while. Treating people badly in their own home is abysmal; treating them badly in "their" home as well is unconscionable.

Employees need to be made to feel welcome when they come to work. It's always in a leaders best interest to have employees want to come to work. Everyone works better when they feel good. If you doubt me, take your own test and see what you get back. Some old school managers still subscribe to the theory that even making people mad is a great strategy because it gets the juices flowing. In this day and age of computers, where it's easy to even "accidentally" bring down an entire network, I'm thinking that's the last thing a leader of today needs to be doing.

To me, being nice goes a long way to feeling good. And, in the case of yesterday, being nice could end up getting us a bigger check when it's time for them to decide on a claim amount. Kindness always has better rewards.