Eupsychian Management - Abraham Maslow by Abraham Maslow

Author:Abraham Maslow
Language: eng
Format: epub

Also, the other way about, it makes life much tougher for the boss if he has to execute his friends. Things are likely to get all mixed up, certainly all sorts of guilt feelings can be aroused, and this is a good, fertile source of stomach ulcers. It would be better for a certain amount of detachment and social distance to be maintained here, as between officers and men in the armed forces. As I understand it, there have been many efforts through the world to make armed forces democratic, and it has never worked out well because the fact remains that somebody has to tell this particular person to take a chance on being killed, or even to go to his death. This cannot be decided democratically, because nobody wants to die. Somebody has to choose impersonally, and, therefore, it’s better for the general to be a lonely, aloof, detached figure, not to be friendly with any of the people whom he may have to send to their deaths or whom he may have to order to be executed. Perhaps the same thing is true for the physicians, especially for the surgeon who will refuse to operate on his friends. Or for the psychiatrist who will refuse to take on

his friends and relatives as patients. This is very sensible in view of the fact that human beings find it very hard to handle the mixture of love and justice in the same person. I know this runs counter to the whole music of the stuff I’ve read on managerial policy and especially the confusions about participative management. Power is power, and it may even go so far as to be power over life and death, and the person who has power over my life and over my death I certainly cannot love in exactly the same way I love a dear friend where no power is involved.

Kay (Mr. A. Kay, president of Non-Linear Systems) made a very good point here when I discussed this with him, namely that the concept of openness is getting a little confused. He suggested that it have two different meanings, and I thought about it and agreed entirely that this is a very useful distinction. Openness in the boss and in participative management can mean and should mean his openness to any suggestion, to any fact, to any feedback or information that pours in on him, no matter whether it is pleasant or unpleasant. He should be open in this sense, and there’s no question about it. He must know what’s going on.

But openness in the sense of expressiveness, of dropping of all inhibitions and speaking, I would say is definitely not desirable in the judge, the policeman, the boss, the captain of the ship, and the general of the armies. It is one of the responsibilities of the leader in such a situation to keep his fears to himself often. I know that if I were on an oceangoing ship and the captain

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