MANAGEMENT
Perhaps, the first and foremost training that must be imparted to any individual, who is assigned the task to supervise others, is, “on the art of speaking”. The assigned supervisor is the boss for those who report to him; this is regardless of where the boss himself is placed on the ladder of hierarchy. Hence the supervised have some basic and minimum expectations from the boss about the manner, method and tone of his conversations with them. It is a given thing that bosses shall always speak with due regard to decency that is normally attached to the office he holds. Indecent conversations are never in order.
The boss/supervisor is expected to be serious; his choice of words has to be exemplary and his disposition has to be serene and calm. There is no room for being a Falstaff to the audience. Humour beyond a level is a recipe for informality and that will undoubtedly lead to incompetence. A public demonstration of being hilarious, comical, sarcastic, and vitriolic or even a fair combination of any of these elements can ever be popular with the supervised.
Giacomo Leopardi made this observation in 1834AD that men are ready to soften anything from heaven or others, provided that when it comes to words, they are untouched. The snooty managers consider themselves hyper smart, hyper confident with no parallels. Those who show no respect in conversation are those who cannot coach or be coached hence mostly take on to cut them into bits and pieces. They relish the sight of a shattered personality. Humility is never their creed.
I am sorry, I was wrong or other sentences of similar import remain permanently expunged from their vocabulary. In conversations, they would thump their desks with their palms and for more dramatic effect with their clenched fists!
The lingua franca of such managers would be very different to include remarks like, ‘are you ever well’ to a suffering colleague; ‘why do you keep falling sick?’ and in situations of anger, ‘at the end of the day, you should know who is the boss? In fact everybody should.
The ill-mannered and ill-spoken manager is essentially a narcissist who only believes in self promotion. I am good, is a mantra they recite all the time at office or at home. Remarks like, ‘does anybody besides me think here’ or in worse situations they would adopt spectacular methods that titillate their unmanageable larger than life egos. They believe to be “Gen. Sheep” in the army of workers.
The wound of a sword heals over time, but the wound of words never gets dry and patched. It remains live; nothing soothes the pain. I heard a manager say to a rather lowly paid and meek colleague on his being a late-sitter as an evidence of being ‘inefficient’, that you Mr Farukhi, collect tomorrow your settlement cheque. Fired at 7pm!
There are several managers roaming in government and private sector office corridors who are ardent subscribers and followers of the ruthless Pol Pot of Kampuchea, who killed millions under the ambit of the theory, ‘to keep you is no benefit, to destroy you is no loss’. Supervisors falling in this category have obviously been weaned on pickles or on the concentrated juice extracted from the Thailand dynamite green chillies. With their tongue lashing these supervisors are creators of terrestrial hell.
Managers that remain oblivious of a colleagues suffering like having to deal with sick parents or wife or even worse a special child are devious conversationalist who are apparently disguised as gentlemen where the gentleness is only every inch of them.
To the abusive tongue-lasher nobody is good until dead. Most of such supervisors are good, they never speak well of one another. No camel has seen its own ugly hump.
The dubious manager, since he is accustomed to bullying does not give much respect to the sanctity of the board room. They lack control over their voice; with changing decibel levels they speak to colleagues as if they were addressing a public meeting- they indulge in giving a fie to each other rending the meetings to an informality galore and the use of language is not of a corporate board room. Actually in retaliation it may be time to bray, to a boss, who refers to any colleague as ass! They forget to belittle is to be little.
He can blurt out on the shop floor, ‘don’t ever forget who keeps the cheese on your cracker biscuits’ they can’t see a belt without hitting below it. You would find some colleagues making a party with the boss who is tongue lashing at others forgetting easily ‘never join with the friend when he abuses his horse or wife, unless the one is about to be sold and the other to be buried’. You get back with identical force what you give.
In reaction, colleagues to such nasty characters must choose to ask what description of character it is they admire; they shall find this a very conciliatory question. The blow of a whip raises a welt but the blow of a tongue crushes bones.
Remember insect’s sting, not from malice, but because of their inherent instinct. Can’t change the insect; can’t change the boss. They seek not your blood but your pain. The tongue lashers have one principle that is of self-interest; a desire for power to be able to insult. These belong to the school of lying, hypocrisy, and cowardice.
Managers must know that their harsh and terse language will eventually be used in the construction of their tombs.
The writer is a senior banker and freelance columnist
