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Are You One of Us, Or One of Them?
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In that difficult period in your youth, where you’re old enough to move about but not yet old enough to be trusted to stay at home alone, you probably found yourself spending a lot of time in the car shopping with, at least in the 1950s and 1960s, your mother. If your parent was also a mentor, this could have also been time well spent in your personal development. In fact, it was in the car where I first learned about “them,” and how they were nothing like “us.” The concept was first explained to me when I noticed that no matter how many parking spots were available in front of the store, my mother always chose a space in the back two-thirds of the parking lot. The reason? It was explained to me people that like “us” always leave the spaces nearest the store for the handicapped, elderly, or people with infants. If you were young and had your health, it was the right thing to do. Of course, not all people followed this common practice. Those were, of course, “them.” But that wasn’t an excuse for “us” to behave any differently. Right is right, even when right is in the minority. The failing of the majority is not justification for “us” to behave like “them.” At the end of grocery shopping my job was to return the shopping cart to the rack, whether it was the hottest day of the summer, the rainiest day in spring, or the coldest day of winter. We didn’t push the cart into the empty space next to our car or shoved it in between the adjacent park cars. You see, “we” did not allow a minor personal inconvenience to ourselves justify passing the inconvenience onto others. A willingness to act appropriately that is limited only to those instances where no personal inconvenience is involved is in fact a form of hypocrisy. If you know the difference between right and wrong but you turn it on and off based on personal convenience, you are in fact one of “them” pretending to be one of “us.” You probably have convinced yourself, but you haven’t fooled “us” for a minute. Some seek truth and the meaning of life after trekking for weeks in the wilderness of the Himalayas from the Dalai Lama. Me? I learned it in a ’56 Chevy, in the parking lot of a Stop and Shop, picking up milk, eggs, a couple of chops, and some coffee for the old man. Fundamental truth #1: There are only two groups of people in this world: the selfish and the selfless. Does this have anything to do with HR/staffing? In a cynical, “dog eat dog,” “kill the competition,” “good guys finish last,” “pull up the gang plank, I’m on board” business world where we equate devious and heartless with clever and determined, should you even bother to seek out the people of this world who push their carts back to the rack? Or give consideration to those who show respect for the elderly, infirm, and burdened rather than leaning on the horn and swearing? Why do we so often find in our business culture the belief that those who are caring cannot also be ambitions, or that the greedy are the true leaders? Consider the following traits of the selfish, and consider the opposite condition that exists for the selfless:
Assuming the premise that the above “Polly Anna” point of view has merit, what can we do about it?
So what is the point of this exercise? HR/staffing is not just about who you hire and who you fire. It is also about training and directing your existing workforce. It’s about upgrading your current talent and their performance?? and by that effort, creating the beacon you need to attract and recruit the candidates you truly want in your organization. It’s about building a success-driven team motivated by selfless personalities and enlightened self-interest. Enlightened self-interest, by the way, is like being selfless, after having it explained to you that you will actually succeed faster and to a greater degree by not focusing on just your self. In the next installment we will discuss how to go about building this kind of workforce. But do you really need to make all this fuss? Is this an issue for you? Answer these questions and decide:
By the way, my mother continued to shop on her own right up to the end in her 75th year. She had a partially crippled hip and required a cane, but she still parked in the back two-thirds of the parking lot. After all, the front one-third was for people with greater need. She was 75 and she still had more class than all those people half her age getting tense, acting out road rage, fighting over the “best parking spaces” nearest the store. They were still out there fighting their parking lot turf war and my mother was already halfway through the store. Now, who was really more productive? Have a great day recruiting.