BUSINESSES ARE A MOSAIC OF UNIQUE INDIVIDUALS

You are reading this article differently to any other reader. You will see the same words but they will have different meanings and interpretations to those perceived by anyone else – including me!

If this was a speaking presentation to, say, 50 people, I would be making 50 presentations.  Each person in my audience would be hearing something different.

When you communicate with your staff, each of them receives that information differently, based on their own unique perspective.

Every human being is unique in the course of human history. Every person is born with a unique set of skills, abilities and talents. These are developed through a set of unique life experiences.

The uniqueness doesn’t stop there. The recipient (including you) of any communication is on two main journeys.  One is during the course of daily geographic travels between waking up and going to bed.  Only some of that journey is in the workplace. The other will be an experiential journey from yesterday to tomorrow. Your message will be greatly influenced by what is significant in those journeys. 

What does all this mean for you as a manager?

You readily embrace people’s difference when it comes to determining the needs of your customers. But it isn’t so easy when it comes to managing employees.  Many bosses simply say ‘that’s the way we do things here and you can like it or ‘lump‘ it’.  

As a manager, are you therefore supposed to treat each employee individually?  No more so than in the way you deal with customers. Just as your business success depends on respecting  that each buyer is different, so you need to respect that each member of staff is different.

And you really wouldn’t want all your staff to be the same.   In a world of knowledge management, business thrives on the diversity of thinking. 

Successful managers embrace diversity in their staff positively and with enthusiasm. They see the people in their business like a mosaic. The pleasure of an attractive mosaic is found in the overall picture, based on a creative arrangement of separate pieces. The excellent manager respects, acknowledges and encourages any process that promotes individual diversity to maximize corporate productivity.  

Instead of a pyramid organisation chart (with the CEO at the top – or at the bottom), we need sometimes to see the organisation as a flat line structure, showing all staff as equals, irrespective of their corporate status. The flat line approach highlights staff as unique beings, sharing part of their personal journeys for differing reasons and  lengths of time. Round table discussions can do much to increase the harmony between personal dreams and corporate goals.

Now comes the acid test of this article. I wonder how you received it, what it meant to you, and how (and if!) it will change your thinking in any way about managing staff?  I wonder where you are in your life journey and what in that journey brought you to read this article?  Whatever your answers, I wish you well in your personal journey and in your efforts as a manager to harmonise your personal goals and those of your staff with the goals of the business.

17 March 2007