Has the art of management lost its soul?

Look around and you will have to look no further to see managers, leaders, HR practitioners and subject matter experts doling out advice on the importance of negotiation and the art of posturing. It is spreading like an epidemic across layers of management and seems to destroying the human fundamentals of honesty and transparency on which the art of management, was once truly based.

True leaders displayed human qualities – the ability to feel, to connect and to inspire and not merely say all the right things and posture well. Seems like this is where we are at today. Almost every discussion today between individuals, professionals or firms seems to have an underlying play (pretty apparent at most times) of who can get ‘the’ better deal. Whether it’s an employee discussing his/her future with his/her boss or management trying to retain someone by showing them they matter or an M&A or something as simple as checking someone for performance/non-performance ; it seems to be happening in all spheres of professional engagement today.

This isn’t to say ‘honesty’ and ‘transparency’ aren’t being practiced but there is selective disclosure (and more lip service at times) being exercised with the intent of having the ‘upper’ hand always. No question about the ability to negotiate and posture being important, but does it need to transcend every facet of professional relationships. Does every relationship need to be transactional?

Absolutely not and in my opinion there is still some soul left in the smaller entrepreneurial outfits that exist today. Large companies and their over reliance on processes and their need to always protect the business first doesn’t allow for it.

I strongly believe the larger companies need to figure out a way to bring the ‘soul’ back because a large part of mankind today works for these companies and learns from them on a daily basis. Society has to improve in order to overcome the current crisis the world faces; and I’m not referring to the financial one alone but to the religious and political ones as well.

We have to become better humans and the larger companies have a big responsibility here. They have a captive audience for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week in a live environment. They need to make a start by recognizing and rewarding these qualities in individuals even if it means the business doesn’t gain for a change.

Let’s not make individuals who put all their cards on the table feel like fools and look to short change them in the interest of the business.

Let’s get some genuineness back into engagements! Let’s make a start!