Shared Dignity or is that Dignity 2.0

I talked about customer service and dignity with my last post, and I’ve been rolling that over in my mind ever since. At the same time, my life has been hit pretty hard in the past few weeks with some things that I can’t discuss much. Suffice it to say that I have spent the last year dealing with some incredible personal positives while at the same time trying to deal with some temporary losses. All that I can say, is that it is amazing what a few false allegations will do to get you to consider some deep introspective thought. Result? Dignity thoughts!

In my last post I talked about customer service and how the basis of a good customer relationship was dignity. I want to build upon that and talk about dignity in other relationships. In fact, this is the Anonymous Manager, right? So lets focus on managing people!

As a manager, you have a few choices here. On the one hand, you can ignore the dignity of your team (in this case, lets call them employees) and just tell them what to do. This is easy. There is no partnership here. No team spirit. You command, they execute.

The truth is though that this will cause rapid turnover. And then Rapid Turnover again. And Again! It does work though.

On the other hand, you can ignore your own dignity and do all of the work yourself. Once again though, you will experience turnover. AND. Burnout. Your own burnout.

There is even a third option. First, ignore the team’s dignity and tell them what to do. Second, ignore your own dignity and work till 2:00 am regularly, fixing their mistakes. Third, and most importantly, tell them all. Martyr yourself.

But instead. Why not consider their dignity as well as your own? Give them clear direction, but watch the process diligently and “help” them when needed.

Don’t bend over backwards, but do consider dignity in relationship transactions! It just might be worth it’s weight in dignity. YOURS!