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This weekend I watched a video from a psychologist analysing the chilean society and people´s behaviour. Among other things she ask for people to be aware of the responsibility they themselves have in creating that society and that starts with seeing that there is people behind the activities performed to them, and being kind and considerate to them. She says how the doorman, the cleaning person, the bus driver is completely invisible and ignored by the people they are serving and very rarely receive a good morning and a thank you.
I listen to a All in the Mind podcast from Natasha Mitchel from ABC Radio National interview with Professor Graham Martin, a doctor who went suddenly paralysed and then experiences how the professional people working at the hospital, especially the doctors, really ignored, not saw at all, the patient behind the problem, how the patient is treated as something, as a problem to be diagnosed and not as a real person.
I ran my DISC profile and realised that what I actually thought was me caring for people was just me working with people because through them I can get more done than by myself. I am a high I and although I do care about people I could see that most of the time what prevails in the way I interact (or hopefully used to) with them is the High I characteristic of getting things done through people.
I then read through some of the forum content questions and answers on manager-tools and had the feeling most comments sent me the message people were indeed mostly concerned with themselves and their achievements that anything else. There seem to be so little thank you notes on the responses and so little updates on the status of the problem stating how the answer had indeed helped so that the next person that had a similar problem and read the post could see not only the problem and the recommendation but also how well it had worked out.
Was it really, or was it just my impression?, I asked myself. So I decided to run some statistics on it. I followed 33 questions posted and out of the 33, 15 of them had either a thank you note in response or and an update on the issue from the originator of the question. That is 45%, which I believe is actually high from the normal behaviour one sees elsewhere. But I still think is far from ideal. I still think it adds to the evidence that shows that we have forgotten there is people behind the actions that we see and that we work so hard to solving our own problems and achieving our own objectives that we forget to be kind and help others along the way.
Perhaps we are not that different from the doctors we criticise...
Am I crazy? Am I expecting too much? Am I over analysing, over thinking it, over idealizing it? Or are there people out there that agree that the work environment and the world would be a better place if we started thinking more about the other and the impact of our actions to others rather than about ourselves and our goals? That we all though about what we can leave to others through our actions rather than what we can gain out of it for ourselves?
Please if you care, do share your thoughts. Thanks.
Nara