During the summer of 1973 I was 8yrs old. My favourite sport
was baseball. I wasn’t very good. My coach, a retired US Navy guy, decided to
teach me how to catch fly balls & line drives with two hands. I was trying
to catch one-handed and dropped almost everything. Off I run to centre field,
with no glove.
Coach starts whacking fly balls at me, and I try to catch
them one-handed. It hurt! And yeah, I dropped them all. Then he tells me to come
in a little closer to 2nd base, and he starts drilling line drives
at me. That hurt even more. There was also the added bonus of potentially
getting a line drive in the face. That would have been fun!
The last season that I coached was in 2008 or so. If I used
that approach with my players (~12yrs old) I’m certain a visit from the
authorities would have ensued. I had to change how I coached, even from what I
was doing in the 1980’s.
And this relates to the workplace how?
Well, back in the day things were all about, effectively,
being ordered to get stuff done. “Smithers!!! Have this on my desk by 4pm or
I’ll murder your cat and eat your ice cream!” That kind of nonsense. And we
liked it. More truthfully, we didn’t know any better. Can someone please try
that now and let the rest of know how it turns out?
You can’t do that anymore. Today’s workplace requires us to
be collaborative, nurturing, and caring. Deadlines and budget constraints
haven’t disappeared, but the way we communicate them to our teams has certainly
changed. Now there’s a lot of “what do you need from me to get your stuff
done?” kinds of conversations happening. We even ask our teams [insert
incredulous gasp here] how they’re feeling emotionally & psychologically.
Look, I’m fairly old-school; so old it was a one-room
frickin’ schoolhouse. You went to work, knew what was expected, did your job,
then buggered off. If you needed work related help you asked for it. If you had
personal issues, you asked someone outside of work. I had no problem with that,
but I’m glad things have changed.
I truly believe that having a kinder, more nurturing
approach in the workplace makes for a healthier, happier, more effective
workplace. People that feel cared for are likely to stay around longer. If they
feel supported, they’ll simply do better, however you define that. Being
proactive as a People Leader by regularly asking the “soft” questions makes you
a better leader. If someone on your team is struggling (for whatever reason),
you’ll know sooner and be able to help them through it.
There are days that it seems kindness is sorely lacking in
the world. Let’s do our part and at least bring as much of it as we can to
work.
How has the evolution to a kinder workplace impacted you?
What do you think about it?
How did those fielding lessons turn out? I became a pretty
good ballplayer, with a great glove. Our team went on to win the league
championship. I was named to the Hong Kong all-star team in 1974.
Be great today, be better tomorrow!
Cheers!
Connect with me on Bluesky: @chriswalker1964.bsky.social
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