Great Quotes: Humanness at work/home
Tanmay Vora
Humanness is somehow evading the high tech and highly formal workplaces where we see people being treated simply as “resources”.
Tom Peters quotes “Philo of Alexandria” in his blog post “A [More or Less] Christmas [and Management] Thought”:
“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.”
Through this quote, Tom delivers a very strong message that compassion towards your people is as important as getting the job done. Someone has rightly said that with technological advances we have reached moon but it is still difficult for us to reach out to a person sitting next to us.
I believe when an individual is genuinely interested in his people, understands them, listens, helps, trusts, invests (time and efforts), people do appreciate that and walk an extra mile to get things done. People then, don’t need to be pushed to do the work. Understanding the “human” aspect is the hardest part – for managers, for individuals and for businesses to reach excellence.
As Tom says: “Compassion and thoughtfulness are always merited—and Christmas is a particularly good time to think on this subject near the center of humanness at work or at home.”
Thanks Tom, for that worthwhile thought.
Excellent! I recently read a short poem by Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) as part of a (proud) father’s brief talk at her 21st birthday party to a room full of student friends (several of them, like her, studying to be doctors):
“Surgeons must be very careful,
when they take the knife!
Underneath their fine incisions
stirs the culprit — Life!”
A person in authority, holding real power in their hands, such as an employer or manager, must be sensitive. It is not just a matter of sending staff through team building exercises. Even the best teambuilding ideas in the world, delivered by experts, don’t even begin to address the real needs of people. What we all want are things like appreciation and challenge. And, like you imply, Christmas is one of the easiest times in the commercial year for senior people to do just that for the people who work with them.