Why treating people well will make you more successful

In 19th-century Britain, a persecuted religious sect called the Quakers took the business world by storm — even though they weren’t allowed to go to college or hold public office.

Many Quaker businesses are still household names today, like the bank Barclays and the chocolate company Cadbury.

Why did Quakers do so well in business? Because they followed a strict code of ethics. They dealt fairly, they never conned or deceived anyone, and they never tried to take advantage of anyone.

People liked dealing with Quakers, because they knew they wouldn’t get ripped off. That helped Quaker businesses get better terms with their suppliers, and it helped them get more and more customers — especially in otherwise low-trust industries, like banking.

Your reputation is your most valuable asset.

If you haven’t heard of the prisoners’ dilemma already, it’s basically a game theory game where each player has an incentive to screw over the other — but if they both cooperate, they end up better off than if they both defect.

If the players cooperate, they both get a reward. If one player defects, the defector gets a bigger reward while the cooperator gets a big punishment. And if both players defect, they both get a small punishment.

Even though cooperating is better for both parties, they’re both better off in the short term if they betray the other.

In 1980, Robert Axelrod, a professor of political science at the University of Michigan, held a series of “tournaments” to determine the best strategies in repeated prisoners’ dilemma games.

The results were surprising: although a bunch of super-smart mathematicians and game theory-ists submitted super-complex algorithmic strategies that would try to cheat like crazy, the strategy that performed the best was simple. It was called “Tit For Tat”, and it just did whatever the other strategy did last round.

“Tit For Tat” would cooperate if the other strategy cooperated, and it would defect if the other strategy defected. Effectively, this meant that “Tit For Tat” rewarded players for cooperating, and punished players for cheating.

Since there are so many prisoners’ dilemma games in real life, it’s not surprising that human ethics works the same way that “Tit For Tat” does. We assume the best in people, and we’re willing to cooperate with them — until they prove they’re assholes. Once we know they’re an asshole, though, we want to punish them.

So, take a lesson from the Axelrod Tournaments: if you treat people poorly, they’ll treat you poorly in return. And if you treat people well, they’ll treat you well in return.

Tit For Tat In The 21st Century

This goes double in today’s world, because our communications technology is so much better. It’s much easier for people to gossip about people who misbehave, because if someone mistreats you, you can go on Facebook or Twitter and complain. Meaning it’s much easier to figure out who is a good person and who is a scumbag.

Today, if you mistreat one person, you lose the trust of everyone that person talks to — which could be fatal to your reputation.

Think about online reviews, for example. When you buy a product on Amazon, chances are, you’re probably gonna read the reviews before you make a final decision.

That makes it a lot harder for Amazon sellers to try and take advantage of people. If they do, they’ll quickly end up with tons of bad reviews, and people won’t trust them anymore.

In other words, technology means the returns to being an asshole are tanking, quickly.

Long-term thinking vs. short-term thinking.

Ethical businesspeople do better in the long term, because people trust them more. But people still often have strong impulses to screw people over, because that lets you win more in the short term.

Moreover, most people don’t realize they can do better in the long run by not screwing people over. It’s not exactly intuitive: if you survey people, they’ll probably tell you that being mean and cutthroat is the best way to do business.

Plus, there’s a bias toward negative information: when we talk about business leaders, we’re more likely to say something bad about them than say something good about them, simply because negative gossip is more useful to society. It’s much more important to know someone’s faults than it is to know someone’s merits.

That falsely makes people believe that the way to the top is to step over everyone else — meaning many who go into business start stepping over people.

Plus, in the world of business, where short-term results are easily measured through profits, meaning people get initial positive feedback for doing wrong.

Fortunately, those bad actors usually don’t stick around too long. Eventually, people figure out that they’re assholes, they stop trusting them, and the asshole goes out of business.

That’s why it’s better to trust people who’ve been in business for a long time. If someone’s been doing the same thing for years and years, they’re probably ethical — otherwise, they wouldn’t have stuck around too long. Whereas people who just started out are less trustworthy, and you’ll be better off holding them to higher levels of scrutiny.

The Only Ethical Rule You Have To Follow:

So, you’re convinced. Before, you were selfish. But you’ve seen the light! And you’re committed to being a better person.

But how? If you want to be good, what do you have to do?

In my opinion, there’s only one rule you have to follow: only pursue “win-win” relationships.

In other words, you can’t have any victims. Everyone you hang out with has to be better off because they hung out with you.

If you can train yourself to think about how to make other people’s lives better, rather than just your own, you’ll have better relationships with everyone in your life: your business partners, your friends, your employees, your bosses, and your spouse.

So, like, I can never exploit anyone?

Nope.

Let me be clear: there are cases where you can get away with breaking it — as in, it won’t kill your reputation if you treat someone like garbage.

Even when you can exploit someone, though, it doesn’t mean you should. A great example is employees: many bosses treat their employees very poorly, and they get away with it, because employees need jobs.

But if you treat your employees poorly, even if they don’t quit their jobs en masse, they’ll be unhappy. They won’t work as hard, or be as loyal. And you’ll have a harder time attracting new people when the time comes.

Henry Ford learned that if he paid his employees twice what his competitors offered, they’d stick around a lot longer — meaning he’d make up what he paid them in extra efficiency and reduced training costs.

In other words, even in traditionally exploitative relationships, it’s better to treat people well. Your reputation is more valuable than whatever you can win in the short term.

Don’t hang out with people who aren’t good people.

Finally, if you ever see someone violate this one simple rule — whether it’s your boss, a romantic partner, or whoever — get ready to cut them out. You don’t want to be involved with someone like that long-term. It’s gonna come back to bite you in the ass.

Hi! My name’s Theo, and I write thought-provoking articles about stuff I think is interesting. If you liked this article, you might like some of my other articles — like this one about the innovators who change the world, and the lobbyists and ass-kissers who get in their way:

https://medium.com/@theo.seeds/the-2-types-of-people-that-run-the-world-124f7ee2c3d

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