Objects or People

I am thrilled to start blogging with this piece a whole lot has termed "insightful". I once worked as the Head of Department in a school, and as expected i had quite a number of people working under me. I'm a person who does most things by the book. I also treated my subordinates by the book, maintainig a strictly professional relationship with them. I did not SEE a problem with this, because afterall we were in an organisation that emphasised prefessionalism. But i noticed no matter how hard i tried i did not inspire the kind of motivation i needed from my people. Still i saw no problem with me. I worked and acted strictly by the book, how can i be the problem then? I felt the people i was working with had the problem.
I was at home one day, when a little niece of mine, just learning to crawl, fumbled about the living room floor. Without paying much attention to her i watched as she got stuck under a chair. She struggled frantically to free herself, but the more she struggled, the worse the situation became. She blamed the chair for her present situation. Afterall, she's doing everything she possibly could to get out, she could not be the problem, the chair HAD to be the problem. the actual problem, however, was not the chair, but the fact that she could not see how she was the problem.
I would say she was IN THE BOX concerning that situation. i will explain the theory of being in the box in my subsequent blogs. Something also struck me, our situations were not so different, what if i was also in the box concerning my workers? after all i also did not see how the problem could be mine. maybe that was actually the problem.
What i'm trying to get out of this is that people ultimately respond (unconsciously) to our feelings towards them and not our actions. Have you ever tried to get into the good books of a colleague or a boss before and it seems everything you try never works. think again. how exactly do you feel when doing these things. do you treat them as persons with similar interests, fears amd aspirations, or just as objects, to be used for a certain purpose-which may also be to justify our 'kindness' and 'friendliness'.
I propose that we should be careful in treating people as people if we want to inspire the most productivity in them...