Mitch's Blog

Are we as Americans getting ruder?

I wondered about this one evening when another consultant and I were on an elevator. It stopped on the next floor, and a woman got on who was speaking on a cell phone. My friend and I were talking, and she started speaking louder because, obviously, we were ruining her ability to carry on a conversation with someone who wasn’t there. When she got off on the next floor, she turned around to look at us as though we had slapped her child; I found that incredible.

Are the people who report to you ruining your business? Can those same people ruin the reputation that you, or others before you, have worked hard to establish?
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Every day people wake up, get themselves cleaned up (most of them), head out the door and go to work. This is a universal thing; it’s not something that only happens in the U.S., it occurs in every country in the world. Even the poorest of countries have folks who go through this same process on a daily basis.

geralt via Pixabay

Folks get to work, get themselves prepared for their day, sit at their desks or in their vehicles or whatever it is they do when they get there. No matter the level of the position, this is a common, every day thing.
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I was talking to someone who’s a supervisor at a local company. This person told me it was employee evaluations time, and she was hesitant because she didn’t know how some people would react to their evaluations; obviously the bad ones.

I asked her if she knew these people and she said yes. I asked her if they had reacted badly previously and she said yes to some, no to others. I then asked her how well she felt she knew these people and she said she thought she knew them all pretty well.
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I often get questions from friends and employees as to how to deal with the people they report to. Even those who are responsible for other employees ask me this same question.

rawpixel via Pixabay

They feel they’re not being treated fairly compared to how they see others being treated. They feel their work is minimized, or that they’re not receiving the respect they deserve for their performance. Since I’m not in their office, I’m never quite sure whether it’s a matter of perception or reality. Often it doesn’t matter.
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I’d like to share a true story from my history with you. Back in 1969, my dad, who was career military, was being sent to Vietnam. Because of a series of circumstances, my mother and I ended up living with my grandmother in this black neighborhood in Kansas City, Missouri. When she first bought the house, it was a nice middle class area, but by the time we got there it had declined into a ghetto; harsh, but true.

Dad & Me, December 1969

I was something totally different than what these kids were used to seeing. Because I’d gone to better schools out of state, I was way ahead of them in every single subject. Because we’d had at least a modicum of a nice income (when you live on a military base, things cost way less), I had very nice clothes. My mother made sure I looked, well, as pristine as a 10 year old can look going to school every day; that was her style.
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