Seek To Understand, Prior to Being Understood.

Lately i've been thinking a lot about personnel management, recently applying it to my own employment – and again with other situations whether they directly affect me or not. In my own situation, I have found the small group of people I directly work with; ten to be exact, have all formed our own dynamic in an ebb and flow of unity and separation. Outside my own job, there are people that work for themselves, work for small departments like myself, and then we can get into the major private and public institutions that employ hundreds and thousands of individuals. Regardless of size, geography, or industry, personal management is something that all of us need to understand clearly. It's a science that isn't given enough time in our education, training, and development. We study organization behavior in higher education, but we don't really understand what learning and experience is required to properly "manage" others. As diverse as our workforce is becoming, many of our managers are still stuck in the decade long ago hierarchal structure of superiority. Rank-and-file is and should be applied to military positions. We now have a great number of women and minorities filling positions in sectors that are typically male dominated. I use the present tense, because they are still dominated by men. Where I'm going with this, I'll get to now. Simply put with the continuous change that are workforce will undergo, human resource management has not kept up with it. Administrators cannot expect that their managerial idiosyncrasies that may have been successful in the past are still going to enlighten and lead their subordinates. If an administrator does not have the respect of those who work for him or her – they will not succeed. Respect is a key ingredient of personnel management, you must have the admiration of those who spend their days representing what you proclaim to lead.

In my work currently, I have two supervisors – one of whom I work directly with on a daily basis. Now, keeping as far away from the individual nature of both of their managerial styles, I will extend my experience as to my statements above and note one other specific aspect of personnel management that can only be learned within its practice. That is, humor does not solve problems. You can make someone genuinely laugh (or genuinely cringe), but humor is not a solution to anything at any time. Respect cannot justly be earned through comedy, though it does have its benefits, respect is earned through credibility and conversely, the respect a superior exudes upon deserved others.

I had a wonderful and incredibly insightful professor my senior year of undergrad who would always tell us, "Seek to understand, prior to being understood." As open and largely philosophical as that was – I didn't appreciate its true meaning until I started working within the dynamic of an entity that had been set well before my arrival. As the environment changed and management didn't, I became aware of how simple, yet how difficult, it is for someone to understand another before asking them to accept your own being. Saying this, I mean for anyone who supervises another – and know that this extends beyond the role of the work place – one must understand the intricacies, the background, the culture, the experience, the education, the generational differences, etc., far before you can expect that individual to accept all of which you are yourself. Seek beyond your norm. What you do, how you act, and what you believe is your perception of "normal." What others do, behave, and believe is not.

Seek to understand, prior to being understood.