Remember during the presidential campaign when one of the candidates said, “Corporations are people”? He got a really hard time for that. Of course there’s more than one way to read that sentence, and in at least one of the ways…he was absolutely right.

Corporations are made up of people. What happens to the company happens first and foremost to the people in it. If you harm a company, it doesn’t harm the building it’s in. It doesn’t harm the computer systems or the products on the shelves. It harms the people. And if you make a company successful, it’s the people who benefit.

Companies undergoing major change programs know that these are the times that try people’s souls. And just as with any influence on the company, one of the most important things to remember in a change program is that change is about people – not systems, not hardware, not products. People.

I love to tell the story of Burt’s Bees, a company that did this right. When they were poised to make a huge international expansion, CEO John Replogle decided to put his employees’ happiness first. He made a conscious decision not to turn up the pressure any more than absolutely necessary. Instead, he focused on culture, creating an environment that was much more likely to see them safely through. He asked his managers to talk to their teams often about the company’s values. He also held a half-day company-wide workshop on happiness. Not productivity, not efficiency—happiness.

At every step, he fostered positive leadership, which kept his managers and employees engaged and cohesive as they made their successful transition to a global company.

In addition to learning about happiness and reinforcing company values, the employees at Burt’s Bees felt like they were important, like they were the key to the company’s success in this venture. That’s good—because it’s true. And that feeling propelled Burt’s Bees into a very successful expansion.

Engagement and involvement of the people involved in a major change are critical for success. How critical? A PWC study found that nine out of ten of the key barriers to the success of change programs are people-related.

So if that’s the case, why does management usually spend 90 percent of its time in a merger or expansion talking about the impact on systems and hardware instead of the impact on the living, breathing people who actually make up the company?

It’s no wonder 76 percent of private sector employees think change is managed badly in their organizations.

Be the exception. Remember that change impacts people most of all, and that putting your people first isn’t just nice—it’s also the best thing for the company itself.

Did you ever have someone pass you in the hall when you were having a bad day and say, “Smile!” You probably wanted to put out your foot and trip the person. THAT would have made you smile, right?

Not so fast, grumpy. By encouraging you to brighten up your outlook, that person might very well have been doing you a favor.

Martin Seligman, author of Learned Optimism, has done profound research that shows that optimists tend to be far more successful than those who interpret events as negative.

His research shows that successful people explain good things as positive and permanent:  “That’s how it always is for me.” And they describe less optimal results as not likely to happen again: “That’s just not like me.”

Most conflict in the workplace, in marriages, and in any relationship is a result of someone’s filter that hears the worst possible interpretation and then fights against the other person as if they actually said it—even when they didn’t say it and moreover, don’t mean it!

The great thing about your attitude is that you can change it for a powerful shift in results. There is no longer the need to hear the worst, imagine the worst, and therefore, fulfill the promise of making the worst come to be.

As an experiment, set the intention that whenever you hear a request or a thought from another person, you will run it through the best possible filter, the one that says they are on your side and want the best for you.

You can even make it systematic. For one day, for every substantial conversation you have, write down the exact words the person said. Go back to the person and ask, “What I think you said was xyz. Is that right?”

Then tell them what you thought they meant. Ask if you interpreted correctly or if there was anything that you added that wasn’t there. When they make adjustments, repeat those and ask if you heard them correctly.

Make a log of the findings. You will undoubtedly find a pattern. For example:

• You wrongly assumed they didn’t like you.
• You wrongly assumed they were saying you were doing something wrong.
• You wrongly assumed that they were trying to say something to hurt you.

Reset your programming so that whenever you hear a request or a thought from another person, you will run it through the best possible filter, the one that says they are on your side and want the best for you.

Then notice that life just became infinitely better.

Quick tip

The next time you find your temperature rising after someone makes a statement, take a quick minute to find two other ways to interpret it—including at least one positive way.

You Respect is not just an Aretha Franklin song. It’s the glue that holds teams together.

Sure, everybody likes to work in a respectful environment. But giving everybody a “nice” place to work might not capture the attention of your management team. Talking about the bottom line, on the other hand, tends to capture that attention—and a disrespectful work environment can create a constant flow of cash straight out the door.

Here are some sobering numbers: Sixty-three percent of new hires who do not feel treated with respect intend to leave within two years. The workplace they leave behind is stuck hiring and training new staff—a major drain on resources. Across all industries, an average of 46 percent of new hires leave their jobs within the first year for one reason or another. That’s a disaster for them and for the company that hired and trained them, and now must replace and retrain.

So some of those who feel disrespected don’t actually end up leaving. But do you really want them to stay? Don’t think so. Feeling disrespected by colleagues or management is a major factor in employee disengagement. It results in a workplace full of sleepwalkers, clock watchers, and complainers.

As my grandmother used to say, “A fish rots from the head down.” If a department manager treats his people like garbage, there’s a pretty good chance he’s being treated that way by his own supervisor, and so on, all the way up to the head of the organization. The reverse is true as well. A CEO who treats his executive team respectfully is likely to find that they pay that respect forward, and you end up with a workplace steeped in respect.

That said, it doesn’t have to come from the top. Anyone at any point in the org chart can declare a “no disrespect zone” between themselves and the people they work with on a daily basis. You can be an example of someone who always treats teammates and your management with respect and goes out of the way to be respectful to new team members.

It always goes back to that Golden Rule, an ethical idea so powerful it’s in every moral system in the world: treat others as you would like to be treated. It’s the human thing to do.

You can’t blame people for being a little jaded. Every few months there seems to be a new silver bullet for business success. Fads like Six Sigma and matrix management drained oceans of time and resources out of the companies that tried them while generating ROI that you couldn’t find with a microscope.

That’s why after capturing lots of initial attention in the business world, both of these fads now show up mostly on lists of bad business ideas.

But what about employee engagement? It seems like everyone’s talking about it now. Is it just another flavor of the month—or is this something with real staying power?

As a recipe for success, employee engagement is now well beyond the proving stage. Years of solid research stand behind the claim that employee engagement is a crucial key to productivity.

For example:

• 70% of engaged employees say they have a good understanding of how to meet customer needs – but only 17% of disengaged employees say that.
• 78% of engaged employees would recommend their company’s products or services, but only 13% of the disengaged.
• 59% of engaged employees say that their job brings out their most creative ideas, but only 3% of disengaged employees.

Gallup estimates that the lost productivity of actively disengaged employees costs the US economy $370 billion annually.

Here’s the best part: If you’re one who is disengaged, you can change that in a New York minute. Engagement is a choice. Everywhere you go, there you are. If you’re not happy in this job, you’re not going to like the next one or the one after that. Hold up the mirror and decide to see a person who cares in it. Life goes better that way!