It is amazing to see how in Today’s global and modern work, we still implement and support old but yet effective tenets, such as Plato’s division of labor (Cholbi, 2022) describes it as “Plato’s division of labor is a system of labor specialization that assigns people to economic classes based on their natural abilities. Plato believed that this system would ensure that the most capable people would perform the tasks that were essential to the city’s prosperity“. Without realizing it, too many leaders assume that the role of leadership is to control (Arbinger, 2019).
In organizations that maintain a clear divide between leaders and followers, there is often a culture of justification and blame. Those responsible for executing tasks can attribute poor performance to unrealistic or uninformed plans, while planners can blame failures on poor execution. Although leaders may call for greater accountability, the structure of most organizations inherently fosters a lack of accountability. When leaders adopt an outward mindset, they enable individuals to take full responsibility. This involves empowering them to both plan and execute their tasks. Think about how this might look in a home setting.
One of the key takeaways in “The Outward Mindset: How to Change Lives and Transform Organizations” (Arbinger, 2019) are no other but 1) Seeing other as People: Emphasizes the importance of viewing others as individuals with their own needs and goals, rather than as objects and 2) Culture of Accountability: Encourages a culture of mutual respect and accountability, leading to more meaningful and sustainable success. Those two points are so important that they also apply to our daily lives and outside a work or corporate setting.
Everything comes down to “Respecting and trusting people while giving them freedom to do and perform”. In personal life, this might not me the norm though, unfortunately. This is when having some Emotional Intelligence (EQ) is extremely useful and needed.
References:
- Cholbi, M. (2022). Philosophical Approaches to Work and Labor. Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
- The Arbinger Institute (2019). The Outward Mindset : How to Change Lives and Transform Organizations (pp. 125-135). The Arbinger Institute.