For years scientists have reported that recklessness and inconsideration are on the rise in Western societies. People care less for each other and more for themselves. Egocentricity seems to work better than consideration and compassion for others. Some neuroscientists link this to a change in the size and structure of the brains frontal cortex, and with a declining development of “theory of mind” in individuals.
“Theory of mind” describes peoples’ ability to reflect on their own and others’ actions across the full range of human mental states, for example beliefs, desires, intentions, emotions etc. Children will develop a theory of mind usually around the age of four when they learn to “see” through the eyes of others, and develop a feeling for what the world might look like from their perspective. This ability to walk in someone elses shoes is a very important part of social development and helps everybody to get along.
Some psychological theories state that humans are incapable of having relationships with more than 150 others at any time. Our brains are just not designed to manage relationships with hundreds or thousands of people. In the past that limited capacity to form relationships was not a problem. People mostly lived in small communities. Our modern societies are much more crowded, however, and fewer and fewer people live in small rural communities, and instead live in large cities with thousands or millions of inhabitants.
With our inability to form a relationship with all these other humans around us, our mind does its best to ignore most other humans around us, and perhaps not recognise them as humans at all. That way they become objects, not subjects, and can be dealt with in an entirely different way. The symptoms of this development are all around us. Just watch drivers during peak time traffic. It’s war out there. Entertainment acts like “Lady Gaga”, celebrating egocentricity, become international stars with kids and grown-ups alike in awe. Or witness the inconsideration for others in the behaviour of folks in public parks or large building complexes. Barbeque on the balcony with the smoke trailing towards the neighbours so that they have to close their doors and windows? Who cares?
Signs for this growing inconsideration can clearly be found at work as well. Workers unions lose members, and have done for years, each individual is interested in their own personal advantage more than that of the entire workforce. If I can get a payrise, who cares whether the company needs to let go of ten colleagues somewhere else? A crude example, admittedly. There are plenty more for those who care to look around and see with open eyes. Egocentricity is a motivator for managers to rise through the ranks, it is the reason why voluntary proactive collaboration and sharing across teams and divisions is a rare thing.
But does being inconsiderate work at work? It’s complex and it depends. It depends, for example, on the structure of work tasks, on the formal organisation, and the prevalent culture. Any organisation of humans structures itself around unit sizes that it can grasp and work within. Larger units tend to form into smaller subunits, whether formally or informally, to allow the individuals to relate to each other and form the relationships necessary to perform their daily tasks. Whether a company claims to have deep or flat hierarchies, humans will naturally organise themselves into smaller groups, with leaders and followers, and not necessarily along the formal boundaries of the organisation.
Within the small subgroups, being inconsiderate will work only to the degree of interdependance between the individuals to get their work done. In highly formalized work tasks it will be easier to be inconsiderate then in less formally organised work tasks. Take for example a call center. Each agent is self-contained, and the temptation to be inconsiderate to other agents is great. Looking out for myself instead of the others works better for me individually, because my performance gets measured individually. Although there are team performance metrics, a failure to achieve these will usually hit the team leader or group manager, not oneself. The same is true for any work task that is structured around the individual performance. Colleagues might well be courteous to each other, but the temptation to behave inconsiderate is greater, and the fear of punishment for inconsiderate behaviour is less strong.
A more unstructured work task requires the support of other colleagues for individual achievement. In these situations inconsiderate behaviour will have a direct impact on personal achievement and performance. Helping others and looking out for others will help myself. This does not necessarily mean that a more considerate behaviour is necessarily less egocentric. I might collaborate and help others purely to help myself, and care nothing for these individuals outside of work or even outside the individual task. I sometimes hear older colleagues say that in the past the bond between colleagues was stronger and extended beyond the work context into ones’ personal life. Younger colleagues would not follow that tradition and care less for activities outside work, or be more inconsiderate.
Does a general tendency toward growing inconsideration for other human beings in societies have an impact on company performance and subsequently on the leadership style required to achieve a satisfactory performance? I think yes to both questions. A growing inconsideration for others is passed on and deepens from generation to generation. If children will not learn “theory of mind” from their parents or other children, then how can they in turn pass it on to their children? Over a period of time, being inconsiderate becomes natural and accepted behaviour. This “inherited” lack of compassion and consideration for others in workers will manifest itself in every aspect of companies’ life. Leaders will respond in a variety of ways to this cultural change in their organisations. Some will come to the conclusion that more authoritarian behaviour is the only way to cope with the lack of consideration, and tend toward process and control. Others will try to teach their staff “theory of mind”, whether by example, by making them walk in others’ shoes, or any other means necessary.
I personally tend towards the latter faction and believe that a growing lack of “theory of mind” in individuals can only be overcome by an emphasis on learning experiences that form “theory of mind”. That, I believe, is true not only for organisations, but generally. How will a growing number of humans get along if “theory of mind” is chronically underdeveloped? A whole series of different alternative lifestyles will emerge from this, and a whole number of different styles of organisations. There is a risk of increasing potential and willingness for conflict in all this that we must understand and counteract. We can already see the beginnings of this today. It will be interesting, and somewhat disconcerting to see where this takes us in the future, both as organisations, and as human beings.
I came across this Youtube video on Google+. A student interviews fellow students at the University Library. The question asked to both male and female students: Can men and women just be friends? The answers given and the way the video was put together are very insightful. This little video is a gem of gender psychology…
Motivational Theory says that if you want folks to perform better you pay them more money. The better you pay them the better they perform. While this may be true most of the time for jobs with a direct relationship between input and output, some manual labour task for example, it shows not to be true for any job requiring even a tiny amount of cognitive skill. Instead of money what motivates folks that work in cognitive skills jobs is self-determination, mastery of their craft, and a sense of purpose. Pay your people enough to make a decent living, and don’t throw money at something money can’t buy.
The surprising truth about what motivates us
The thing about Google+ is this: when I first joined Google+ I added lots of people to my circles without really caring much for what they posted. I just wanted to have the feeling that I had lots of folks in my circles and therefore would, in time, have lots of folks who have me in circles. Of course it didn’t work out like that at all.
The number of people I had in circles grew steadily, but the number of people who had me in circles grew painfully slowly. As a result of my early efforts to add folks at the rate of knots, the quality of the posts in my stream was poor. I did not enjoy visiting Google+ regularly to check up on posts from folks in my circles because there was so much rubbish.
Then I started to do two things:
1.) I started to post my pictures and stuff I find interesting on Google+ more regularly instead of just “listening” to others.
2.) I started to remove anyone from my stream posting flower shots, macros of insects, cute animals and overdone HDR shots, and anyone consistently posting information or shares that I did not really care for.
This had two immediate effects. First it reduced the rubbish in my stream and I actually started to enjoy visiting Google+ to see what new posts had come in since my last check-in. Second it started to grow the number of followers that had me in circles. At the time I write this article the number of folks I have in circles and the number of folks who have me in circles is nearly equal, with the number of folks following me growing and the number of folks I follow shrinking.
And I think that this really is the secret to Google+ and how to enjoy the community out there. Be very concerning who you listen to, make sure they have something to say that has quality and substance consistently, and share quality content that you think will earn you recognition from others, and do that consistently as well. Oh, and don’t forget to enjoy the result.
In the science-fiction series Star Trek, planet earth and the whole human universe are governed by ethics that originate from some utopian philosopy. I took a test on beliefnet recently to see what type of guy I really am at heart. I learned two invaluable lessons from this. First, don’t complete any assessments on a website called beliefnet. I received tons of unwanted spam mails following the assessment and was saved purely by the grace of Google Mails excellent spam mail filter. Second, there was another lesson for me. I actually learned something quite valuable.
I am not, as I thought until recently, a rotten atheist who will burn in hell come judgement day. No, I am in fact a foul secular humanist who will burn in hell come judgement day. Yeah! Now this is good news to me, believe it or not. Should humanity suddenly turn to the wisdom of Star Trek to govern its actions on planet Earth and in the rest of the Universe, I might just be offered a senior position from the start. Surely they must be looking for guys like me with plenty of experience not believing just anything they are being told.