The seventh of the principles of Slow Leadership
Most of what we have in life hasn’t been earned. We were given it by someone else. Our life itself is a gift. No one can be born without parents, and even if they’re not always what we would wish them to be, the fact remains they gave us life. Even our success at work is rarely due entirely to our own efforts. Someone has to provide us with office space, desk, computer, background support, and other basic services. It’s fashionable to ignore this, and make fun of the “backroom types†who keep our world running, but that doesn’t make it right.
Hamburger Management—today’s norm for most organizations—isn’t too strong on gratitude of any kind. It encourages you to focus on competing, grabbing, beating out the other guys, getting more than your share, and making sure you don’t fall behind. “Devil take the hindmost,†its propoents say. “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. If you can’t hack it, you’re dead meat.â€
Is someone weak and in need of help? Too bad. Let them go and hire someone who can stand the pace. Rather than recognize what you might owe to staff, treat them as simple pairs of hands, to be hired when useful (and cheap) and fired when not.
Take a moment to think—really think—about a world based on ideas like this. Can you imagine the misery and alienation? Loyalty becomes entirely a one-way option. Past service counts for nothing. If you fall behind, even a little, no one will help you. Nobody will stop to give you a hand or say “thank you†for your efforts. Everyone is out for themselves. Every favor must be paid for, every advancement comes at someone else’s expense. You’re on your own, completely.
Recognizing your dependency
You wouldn’t want to live in such a world. Thank God, no one does—yet. Despite all the hype, people need other people. Gratitude is natural—even necessary. We’re social animals, however self-obsessed and self-conscious we allow ourselves to become.
Macho entrepreneurs may boast of being “self-made,†but it’s a lie. None of us can make ourselves. As children, we’re totally dependent on others for food, shelter and warmth. That’s why street children are such a disgrace to humanity, and that’s why most of them die. We are where we are today because of the efforts of a few people we know and many hundreds we don’t—tinkers, tailors, soldiers, sailors, teachers, doctors, nurses, farmers, truck drivers, and all other groups that make our privileged lives possible.
How much of what you are today is due solely to your own efforts? Not your birth, not your clothes, not your food, not your education, or even your ability to speak and write and read your native language. People taught you how to do your job. Others helped you win promotion and made your income and standard of living possible. Still others made the car you drive and the house you live in. Are you “self-made?†Don’t be ridiculous!
Appreciation is precious
Slow Leadership demands you take the time to give proper appreciation to those who support you and make your successes possible. It’s strange that organizations and leaders fuss over fancy techniques for motivation and incentives, when they generally ignore the greatest incentive of all—appreciation. What’s more, it’s free. It’s even in unlimited supply, though the miserly way most leaders dole it out would lead you to believe they had to pay for it with their own blood.
What do we all want? To be appreciated, valued, listened to, and loved a little. Give people appreciation and gratitude and the “repayment†is enormous. I have never encountered anyone who didn’t feel better for a little gratitude.
Can you imagine a world where appreciation and gratitude would be the norm, instead of the exception? Where leaders truly recognized they owe their position to the people “beneath†them and acted on that knowledge?
Wouldn’t that be a world worth living in and striving for?
It’s in our hands to create such a world, or destroy it. If you start remembering what and who you need to be grateful to, and showling it, others will too. It could start a trend—surely a far better one than setting an example of climbing over the prone bodies of others on your heedless way to the top.
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