Welcome to Episode 190 of The Executive Edge podcast, the podcast for skills in life and business.

This week’s guest is Dr Bruno Roque Cignacco.

Bruno is an international business consultant, TEDx speaker, lecturer, and best-selling author.

For over 30 years, he has advised and trained businesses on international trade activities and social marketing.

As well as having worked as a consultant on international marketing, Bruno is a university lecturer at different institutions in the UK teaching business modules to both undergrads and postgraduate students. He is also the author of business and personal development books published in different languages. His new best-selling book is “The Art of Compassionate business – Main Principles for the Human-Oriented Enterprise” (Routledge).

Discussing compassion

On the show Bruno talks about how he trains companies to become more compassionate and how to become much more mindful with their communication at work and also with other stakeholders.

He outlines how companies can develop a business model that includes not only profits, market share, productivity, profitability, but also a strong human aspect such as camaraderie, empathy, compassion, generosity, gratitude, and so on.

Bruno stresses that this is important because, as he says, “in business everything is interdependent: you cannot succeed without the help of customers, employees, and your community”.

“It’s vital to “build strong long-lasting relationship[s] with different stakeholders,” Bruno says. “Relationships that are based on win-win agreements.”

In other words, no successful company can win at the expense of its stakeholders.

Bruno explains that businesses need to stop seeing the customer “as numbers in a database […] only to get profit. Instead these customers [are] humans being and need to be addressed in the most meaningful way.”

When you treat staff and customers with consideration it generates a positive cycle of reciprocity.

“When you treat people in a kind way,” explains Bruno, “they are more likely to respond alike. When you treat people in a dismissive way, when you take them for granted […] how [do] you expect them to cooperate.

To learn more, listen to the show!

Links

• TEDx talk The art of compassionate business at Bonn Square Salon (Oxford, UK)
• Bruno’s book
• Bruno’s website
• Bruno on Linkedin