ARTICLE

This does not apply to you...

Now that I have made the transition from principal to consultant I have absorbed the Golden Rule that one mustn’t insult the client. So I wish to make clear that what follows does not apply to you.

 

It applies, as you will clearly recognise, to the CEO and managers in the college down the road, your main competitor, that idiot from…


Some time ago I was talking to an HR specialist about a recent screw-up in an organisation. “It’s not rocket science” she almost shouted in exasperation at the apparently illogical way that an individual had been dealt with. The thing is it might as well be. Now, don’t get me wrong, I may well be the hero when I describe my own career but there are many who would pay good money to articulate my many faults. But if you look at many of the decisions that get taken in the sector and particularly the way people get managed then I think I have a valid point. Proof? How about inviting all staff to a meeting and HR standing at the door directing some to another room to be advised that they had been selected for redundancy? No? How about getting a student to tell a whole staff meeting how lucky they are to be working in such a well-led organisation and berate them for protesting about proposed change? Still not convinced? Then how about…. 

Now I was an HR director twice before I became a principal and so I had the opportunity to see and learn from those managers who always seem to have safe hands in dealing with difficult situations but I learnt more from those who could manage to insult 8 people when there were only 6 in the room. The fundamental difference between the two seemed to be respect.

 

The safe-hands managers respected their staff as people. That meant that they didn’t make change for changes sake but only when they could demonstrate to themselves and to others that it made the organisation better or more secure in some way. They did not shy away from tough decisions or difficult conversations but the manner of the doing always took into account that there was a human being or human beings on the other side of that table.

 

They took decisions that meant that staff lost their jobs but they understood that this meant for some a fundamental life change. In essence they had the ability to put themselves on the other side of the desk and treated those they were dealing with the way that they would expect to be treated themselves.


Now that’s not rocket science, is it?