Attn leaders/managers: people are people
by Miki SaxonIdeas from Leadership Turn
Ignoring for the sake of this post that I think leading and managing are heavily intertwined, consider the biggest thing they have in common—people.
Call them followers or employees/volunteers/staff they’re all people. No matter their age, attitude, education, economic status, gender, etc., they’re still people. And it doesn’t change with country, industry, or situation.
So why do educators, pundits, the media, etc., insist on presenting so many things as specific only to the group under discussion?
Last December I wrote how ridiculous this was after reading an article about what turns Gen Y off in their leaders/manager. The list included
- Inflexibility.
- Judgmental attitudes.
- Close-mindedness.
- Unwillingness to listen to and respect Gen Y’s opinions, ideas and views.
- Intimidation.
Well, duh. You show me anybody who likes these traits under any circumstances.
Today, I read about seven mistakes made by church leadership, including
- stopping listening.
- getting distracted.
- getting complacent.
- becoming arrogant.
- failing to delegate.
Well, duh again. Same reason.
There seems to be a great commonality in how people want to be treated, so why is it so difficult for those in charge?
Your comments—priceless
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January 31st, 2008 at 10:21 am
Miki- as you know packaging and repackaging the same thing can seem to make it “different”. I find this is also true with the concept of “innovation”- very little is truly new, rather, people need to realize that they can research innovative ideas in other areas and apply them to their own situation. As to the “helpful hints” type of advice- I think it’s more of a function of people forgetting or being lazy about applying what they learn so that they constantly need to be reminded about structured approaches to doing work and working with people.
January 31st, 2008 at 10:27 am
Bob, granted everything you say is true, but I still have a problem when stuff like this is cast as exclusive to a certain group or demographic.
January 31st, 2008 at 12:08 pm
Miki – I’ve worked with children, youth, and adults. I’ve worked with every generation alive today. I’ve worked with volunteers and paid staff. I’ve worked with “churched” and “unchurched” people. I’m married to a beautiful 34 year old and have a 6 year old daughter. Every one of the people represented above wanted to be treated the same way. People are people. It really is pretty simple.
January 31st, 2008 at 12:28 pm
Only to us simple-minded folk, Casey, only to us:)
January 31st, 2008 at 5:11 pm
Nice post, Miki. There will always be the quest for the newest “finding” but most of what we read will be what Plutarch knew.
February 1st, 2008 at 11:45 am
I think a lot of what people talk about being unique to certain groups is caused by people asking how they DON’T want to be treated instead of how they DO want to be treated. The words describing what they don’t want are many, the words describing what they do want are few.
February 1st, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Very true, Mike, but whether it’s the DOs or DON’Ts the answers are still the same for all people.
February 28th, 2008 at 12:17 am
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