Leadership and Self-Awareness

In one of my early posts, called “What is Management”, I define Leadership as the art of getting other people to do what you want them to do. I also noted that not all managers can do this successfully. For reasons that continue to elude me, even people who have studied the science of management seem to fall into the habit of thinking that the people who report to them are somehow different from management personnel. So different, in fact, that being treated abusively by their supervisors will improve their work performance, rather than lowering morale and propagating resentment. The technical term for this is “crap”, and it makes me very “irritated” because these people should know better. In fact, so should anyone; ask any six-year-old child at random what is wrong with this practice and see if he or she can’t explain it to you perfectly.

Of course, depending on their relative levels of experience, education, training and salary, the people who report to you probably ARE different from you, at least in some respects. Wages you would consider insulting might be a huge raise to some of your subordinates; working conditions you would never accept might be an enormous improvement from the ones they have labored under in the past; perks of the job or benefits that you consider routine might change their whole lives for the better. What far too many management personnel fail to consider is that these differences do not change the basic human needs, or the hierarchy in which they are arranged. Just because someone’s salary is a quarter of yours does not mean they can or will tolerate being paid late, any more than you can, and just because someone has assumed a certain level of risk in order to earn a living does not mean that they are oblivious to increased risk or unsafe working conditions.

Most importantly of all, the fact that they are lower-level personnel, doing jobs you would never take for wages you would never consider, does not mean that they are willing to tolerate abusive, offensive, hostile or demeaning working conditions. Too many supervisory personnel seem to believe that they can go around acting like petty tyrants and bullying their subordinates without any consequences whatsoever. In the long term, however, this is nothing but a blueprint for complete failure.

As management professionals, one of our most important duties will always be to examine the directions we are giving from the point of view found on the other side of the desk, and to remember that behavior that would anger or annoy us will probably anger and annoy the workers, as well. This goes for motivational techniques and team-building exercises too, by the way. If it wouldn’t work on you, don’t assume that it would work on your subordinates. On the other hand, if you read the description of a program or activity and think about how great that would have been for you, when you were just one of the line workers, there’s a good chance there might be something to it.

Of course, when all else fails, there’s an easy way to find out if the people reporting to you would like to take part in an activity, receive a new (or different) benefit, or change the flow of work to include a new procedure: ask them. Just the way you would like your superiors to ask you before instituting a change in your work environment, in fact. And where the change is being driven down from higher management and you have no choice but to accept it, you can always call your people together and explain to them why this is happening, what higher-level idiot is behind it, and how you intend to keep the effects from making their lives any more difficult.

Just the way you would want your supervisor to do…