Is Balance Bogus?

As practitioners, we must remain neutral and balanced when we diagnose behavior in organizations. There are many sides (perspectives) to every story. When I was a teaching assistant in graduate school, I asked one of the drama students to burst into my class feigning our break up and accusing me of cheating. The drama student was very believable. The students in my class were sucked into this performance like viewers of a TV reality show. At the end of this "performance," I asked the students to write down what they had witnessed...just the facts. The students moved beyond reporting the facts to filling in the blanks with inference. Clearly there was an imbalance; there were biased views. Sides were taken and the story was filled out:

• Some students thought that I indeed was cruel and harsh for having abused the relationship. Clearly I had cheated given the emotional state of the "victim" (the drama student). This group actually imagined me on a date, entwined in a lover's embrace.
• Some students came to my defense in writing as well as in reality. This group was clearly influenced by how calm I was during the "victim's" rant which came close to ending in a physical charge. If it were not for a group of "football" students who lept from their chairs to protect me, I might have been physically attacked.

Do employees, managers and leaders have unbalanced views of each other? Indeed, as humans we are fundamentally flawed in our ability to fairly assess situations and people. We hold onto our personal views to such a degree that we allow them to cloud our judgments...to a point where we sometimes do harm - sometimes physically, sometimes psychologically. We damage careers and reputations. To what end? What will it take for us to be respectful of our differences? What will it take to be balanced and fair in our judgments?

It's History

There is a dramatic sculpture referred to as The Future that sits in front of the National Archives with the inscription, "What is past, is prologue." Soak on that for a moment.

The phrase comes from Shakespeare's, "The Tempest" and is a metaphor that is spoken in Act 2 referencing actions that were described in the prologue of the play. Both the prologue as well as the actions referenced in the prologue are in the past.

Some interpret it to mean the past affects the future....more precisely, the past is just the precursor of what's to come. Wished I'd known that when each adolescent high school romance came to a crashing halt. Indeed, they served as a way to develop my future relationship skills.

What in the past is prologue to our current economic situation? Have the decisions of previous administrations led to the fall of the mortgage industry, for instance? Some would say absolutely and point to the Bush administration. How far in the past is prologue? In a recent issue of Investor Business, a journalist traced decisions as far back as the 1920's during the Hoover administration, that have impacted where we are today. Who would have predicted then that the past was a prologue to what we are experiencing today?

What is happening in our organizations today, that will serve as prologue tomorrow? During this economy, when jobs are being lost and few companies (excluding the government) are hiring, are organizations taking advantage of their employees: overworking them, cutting learning and development opportunities, eliminating benefits?....all in the name of fiscal responsibility. What is this prologue telling us?