Have People Simply Become Objects

Have we have become objects? When I think about the last 72 hours, I have read stories about youth sports officials being attacked, physically attacked by parents and blindsided with violence. Recently, I went up to my favorite restaurant in the whole world, the bear trap in Land O Lakes Wisconsin, and a group of eight people who ate their entire meals for whatever reason did not like the Brussel sprouts and refused to tip the waitress on a bill that was well over $300. The other day, I was talking to two employees of one of our client sites and they started to use profanity and complained about upper level management’s?inability to lead the company. After asking both individuals, if they had ever led a company, they quickly became aware I was not going to embrace their feedback. What's been so amazing in all three incidents, as I'm sure people have never done what their counterparts have done.

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It's so easy to sit in the bleachers and complain about people yet, It's harder to get on the field. I ask myself, why do I think this is occurring? I think the main reason is people are bottled up, fatigued, exhausted, and we have forgot to be good to each other as corny and cliché as that sounds. I think it is imperative that we all take a big deep breath and say to ourselves, what are other people going through. On a recent phone call I was talking to a sales representative from one of our client sites and within the first 60 seconds he had used profanity seven times and raised his voice with me three times, needless to say he was extremely angry and I quickly realized he was not angry at me. We just met. He was certainly angry, very angry about something. As the conversation progressed, I quickly realized he started to express some emotion around this whole thing. I kept asking him, what do you mean by this whole thing? He said the pandemic. I said, well, how has it affected you? And he finally let his guard down and started to tell me that his wife had actually lost her job as an administrative assistant at a local company. Through some extended conversation I asked him why she was not working virtually. He really had no idea that industry even existed. Within 30 days, she had been contacted by two companies after sending her to a site to post her administrative experience. They now had additional income coming in and the flexibility around working virtually so she could spend time with her kids at home. He quickly became congenial if not very friendly. He said to me, I wonder why someone hasn't me about this? I said, you have to take a step back ?and ask yourself, are you approachable? He quickly put his head down on a zoom call and said, yeah, you're right. I tend to push people away.

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All of these examples illustrate that people are just not thinking clearly. We as leaders have the opportunity to take a deep breathe when conversing. We have to remind ourselves, we cannot fix these people. We first have to start with listening to these people and then offering suggestions of assistance. This is at the core of coaching. This is at the core of leadership. This is at the core of just being a good human being. I challenge everyone to just simply do a random act of kindness, even for someone who you don't know.

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As I was writing this article, I went to a Starbucks and I've heard people do this act before. I was in the middle of writing this article and there was a young high school person behind me who could not afford what they were buying. This is not some poor kid, but just a kid who hadn't brought enough money. So I bought the drink for the high school student and the person looked at me, didn't say anything. I went to my table and continued to write my article. What was funny is that the young person did not say thank you, which I thought was also pretty revealing, but I thought that's not why I did it. The person from behind the counter came up to my table and said, I wanna say, thank you for doing that. That was very nice. Those are such tough situations for us. Low and behold, as we were talking, the young lady walked back into Starbucks and said, sir, I wasn't expecting that. I didn't know what to say. I just wanted to say a heartfelt, thank you. I hope you have a great day.

?I would not say I'm the most empathetic or kind person. It takes practice. It takes repetition. It takes commitment. If every single one of us did it Boy, would things be better!