I don’t know what’s Dying faster, common sense or common courtesy.
I’m reminded of that because of an article I saw in Fast Company: “Do you have to say bye to your boss every day?” Here’s all you really need to know from the article:
It’s the end of the workday. You’re ready to bounce. But you feel compelled to check in with your boss. For many workers, it feels like the appropriate thing to do. But … those norms may be changing.
As with so many things in our post-certainty world, the answer to the question posed in the headline is, “It depends.” Here are an even dozen things, among others, on which it might depend:
The New Epidemic
The Fast Company article is all part of The Great Infantilization. Seventeen years down the road from the publication of this article, we’re reaping the rewards of the Kindergarchy. Adults are treated like the children they were raised to remain — in large part because their bosses have been treated like the children they were raised to remain — lacking maturity, autonomy, or capability. And if that immaturity yields fear or feelings of inferiority, those bosses may exhibit desires for control, lack of trust, or unconscious biases. As a result, professional environments become overly supervised and patronizing, with policies, communication styles, and management behaviors that undermine independence, initiative, creativity, and morale. It’s a vicious circle.
Even as I recognize the danger of generalizing, it’s hard to ignore things like policies that limit flexible work options, as if people aren’t responsible or dependable enough to manage their own lives and workloads. It’s hard to condone treating mistakes as failures that require admonition, rather than giving people opportunities to learn from their mistakes. And some of these practices have gotten worse with remote-work tools that enable constant surveillance with things like screen-sharing mandates.
And so it is that we have articles like the one in Fast Company. We have people disengaging, refusing to take risks, and avoiding creative problem-solving. We have talented people leaving jobs for environments that value trust, autonomy, and creativity, while those who stay develop passivity and dependence. This is not good news. But given recent history, it can’t be surprising.
If low self-esteem, Anxiety, and dependence have become more common than sense, respect, and courtesy, we shouldn’t wonder why articles like the one in Fast Company are being written — or why the country’s in the shape it’s in.
Here’s hoping the pendulum swings … soon.
Originally Published on https://www.bizcatalyst360.com/category/lifecolumns/notes-to-self/
