A pet peeve of mine is an organization that makes a push to produce more client-friendly information bulletins, pats itself on the back for being so culturally/politically/ethnically aware and then uses phrases like “an urge to defenestrate.” Imagine a leaflet speaking to a generally vocabulary-challenged client base and further that the whole point of that particular leaflet is to foster the sense of inclusivity of said clients. The manager responsible for the final version of the leaflet strikes out “want to jump” and replaces it with “urge to defenestrate.” Why? Because that’s the term in the policy that underpins the organization. Imagine further that in all the back-clapping for “speaking like the common man”, no one gets the deep irony, nor the underlying offensiveness.

The thing that strikes me is not that the average manager thinks they can use words effectively outside their personal comfort zone, and without any training or study, but rather that the average manager doesn’t really understand that there is anything outside their personal comfort zone. Those ones out there – those clients, or customers, or user group – they are viewed as assets. The only point of view is from the bowels of the organization. Even when the mission of the organization is to provide a service for that group, and being able to understand from the point of view of the served would be clearly valuable, managers often simply cannot do that. People become assets because the manager’s point of view is tied (seemingly irrevocably) to the heart of the organization. Having being nurtured on the policies and procedures that are the nerve pathways and circulation network of the corporate body, interaction with clients is moderated through them. The assumption (usually unconscious) is made that the client should come from the same stand point. Bad assumption, but there you are.

Of course I understand that policies and procedures are critical to the success of the venture, but the whole idea of management is (or should be) to steer a course between the needs of the people the organization exists to serve and the policies which limit and order what those interactions can be. So if you run a suicide prevention organization that targets people who largely come from the less educated portions of society, then just because your policy manual uses the term “defenestrate,” that doesn’t mean you should use it in the documentation that tries to convince your client base to believe that you want to include them, that you want them to feel included in the world that they wish to leave. If you are any kind of decent manager, then you need to give up the language of the manual and cling to its meaning: use “want to jump out your window?” If you don’t then you have proven that you value position above person.

Now it may be that you do value position over person. In fact, if you are a manger, that is probably because you do have that value set. Despite how you may imagine yourself, the fact is that to get to where you are you have probably had to maneuver past others who equally deserved what it is you seized. You have almost certainly ceased being friends with those who no longer match you in status. But whatever, right? You’re there. The thing is, do you also want to do the job you landed? Do you want to serve your clients? Then you need to grow some empathy, even if it is a learned response. Learn to let the manual go long enough to say “please don’t jump.”