Treating people the way we want to be treated won’t ever achieve equality. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be done. A proposed solution.
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He likes ice cream. She likes coffee.
An odd take away from a team-building workshop attended more than 25 years ago, but it came back to me today as I pondered what equality in the workplace (or anywhere else) really means.
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… instead of “treat others the way you want to be treated” you’ll have greater success by “treating others as they want to be treated.”
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The workshop was centered around a personality assessment. I don’t remember which one, something with colors for the four quadrants and a purple circle in the middle. I was right on the line between the red and the blue and a skosch away from that purple circle. Which, if what little I do remember is correct, makes me weird.
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The point they were making had to do with Tony Alessandra’s Platinum Rule. Which says that instead of “treat others the way you want to be treated” you’ll have greater success by “treating others as they want to be treated.”
And that’s where the ice cream and coffee came into the picture.
If her colleague did something nice, our female presenter explained, and she wanted to express her appreciation, using the Golden Rule she would gift him with her favorite coffee. Which wouldn’t be meaningful to him, or might even be insulting, because he didn’t like coffee. Not her favorite coffee, or any other coffee.
On the other hand, her colleague continued, if she did something nice and he wanted to say “thanks a bunch,” the Golden Rule would suggest that he buy her ice cream. Rich chocolate ice cream with nuts and chunks of chocolate. Which, since she didn’t give a fig for ice cream of any flavor, wouldn’t give her warm fuzzies at all.
The Platinum Rule, they explained, would involve learning enough about the other person to know how they wanted to be treated (giving each other treats, get it?) and act accordingly.
Thus, the assessment. Because, they reasoned, if you have a better understanding of how the other person is wired, their natural style and preferences, you have a foundation for learning how they want to be treated so that you could apply this Platinum Rule.
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I’ve used that “Platinum Rule” approach in many circumstances, networking, hiring, managing, friending, loving, speaking, coaching, it applies to any situation if you want to improve a relationship. The Platinum Rule is truly golden!
As we all gathered for lunch during the break in that many-years-ago workshop, one of our team members offered a much better illustration. “What if,” she hypothesized, “the other person was a masochist. Would you really want them to apply the Golden Rule?”
Yeah, no. Maybe?
But let’s stick to workplace examples.
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What if, instead of treating everyone the same, we treated them the way they want to be treated? Could equality be achieved by applying Tony’s Platinum Rule?
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When my partner mentioned that many companies find it challenging to wrap their heads around equality, since that would basically mean treating everyone the same, that story about ice cream and coffee came back to me.
What if, instead of treating everyone the same, we treated them the way they want to be treated? Could equality be achieved by applying Tony’s Platinum Rule?
What if we really thought of our employees, co-workers, vendors, contractors, and clients as individual people? What if we invested the time and energy to know them well enough to treat them the way they want to be treated?
Not the way we think they want to be treated based on assumptions about gender, ethnicity, choice of partner, or choice hairstyle – but by taking the time to ask, listen, observe, and treat each person in the organization as an individual with individual needs and preferences?
For instance, what if we offered every person in the organization a certain amount of family leave? Not maternity leave, or paternity leave. Just family leave. Paid or unpaid. To use as needed for any family emergency or event.
And what if we allowed each individual to define “family?” Not immediate, or first generation. Just “I love them enough to call them family and need to take the time to be there for them.”
What if we treated everyone’s “special circumstances” as special, regardless of our personal values or biases. Just “if it’s important to your life, then we consider it according to your values, not ours.”
Oh I know it would cause uproars, and legal issues, and HR nightmares.
But I think it might also cause a flood of top quality resumes, an engaged and dedicated employee base, and a unified culture that would be hard to beat in the marketplace.
Photo: Flickr:Joanna Bourne