In an ideal world,
managers would lead people rather than manage them, but in the real world, this
is just not practical. In most cases,
managers exercise both leadership and management over their employees in order
to accomplish the work that needs to get done.
Most management practices
are based on theories about why people behave the way they do in organized
working environments. In the culture leading up through the 1970s,
most managers just assumed that most people worked
as little as possible, had very little ambition, avoided responsibility,
were selfish, resistant to change, gullible, stupid, and
easily manipulated. Consequently, they
formulated policies and management practices that tightly controlled and coerced
their employees to work. These coercive
management practices actually caused the very behaviors described above
resulting in a self-fulfilling prophecy and increased organizational
bureaucracy and control. Dr. Douglas M.
McGregor in 1960 called this Theory X.
Today it’s satirized in Scott Adam’s business cartoon Dilbert.
Over the past century,
organizational psychologists have proposed different theories about what
motivates people to work and how best managers can motivate them to be
productive. Generally speaking, these
theories about human work behavior include looking at people as need-satisfying
creatures, perceiving and rational information processors, emotional
creatures, or learning creatures.
Based on these assumptions about people, there are literally thousands
of different management practices in use today.
It all depends on the individual manager, the organization, and the type
of business.
Yet organizational
psychologists readily admit that each of these theories of human work behavior
is inadequate at best to explain why people behave the way they do in working
environments. In some circumstances
their assumptions and theories seem to apply; in other circumstances they do
not. This is why multiple perspectives
are needed. People are motivated by
their needs and goals, their emotions and moods, and the emotions and moods of
other people. People are also
information processors and are able to learn in a variety of ways. But there’s more to understanding human
behavior than just looking at one theory since all the theories are correct to
varying degrees and in varying circumstances.
Christians don’t pretend to have all the answers either, but they do believe that all truth is God’s truth regardless of its where it came from. Nevertheless, by looking at human behavior through the lens of Christian beliefs we can
better understand people and be more effective managers. This also helps to
filter the good management theories and practices from the bad ones (like Theory
X described above).
Christians readily agree
with organizational psychologists that human beings are need-satisfying
creatures, perceiving creatures, rational information processors, emotional
creatures, and learning creatures. But,
we imperfectly try to satisfy our needs; we imperfectly perceive and at times
irrationally process information; we imperfectly show our emotions; we
imperfectly react to the moods and feelings of others; and we imperfectly learn
information. At times all of us are
selfish and don’t work up to our full potential. We imperfectly behave these
ways because of our fallen human condition. And since we’re all imperfect, Christians
believe we must generously apply mercy, love, and forgiveness while at the same
time being just and fair in our dealings with others.
Just think about how God
treats us. Is God all-just or is God
all-merciful? Well He's both! But He prefers to be merciful! As a manager,
we believe that you should also be just and fair with your employees. This is just good stewardship. But you should also temper these with mercy. By doing this, you will (over
time) win the trust, respect, admiration, and loyalty of your employees, and in most cases employees will continue to give their best efforts.
