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Emily Bucklin
BUS 200 Management
Prof. O’Halloran
10/8/2017
“The Management of Humans”
Dealing with people is one of the most challenging obstacles a person must go through in
life. However, it may not seem that way until you are obligated to manage or lead a group of
people. “According to a CPP Global Human Capital Report, almost 40% of U.S. employees
report having to deal with conflict at work “frequently” or “always”, and it is estimated that we
all spend almost 3 hours each workweek doing nothing but dealing with conflict situations”
(Peglar, From Struggle to Strength: Leveraging Workplace Conflict for Positive Change,
2017). Trying to please everyone and anyone will never happen; and is something that most
people can’t wrap their heads around. Pleasing someone comes with an internal approval; it
shows you matter. In the workplace, this internal approval must be forgotten and switched over
to being a leader.
Leaders stick to their values, clarify them, and then hope their followers will engage
within those values. The three practices to essentially “deal” with others in the workplace are
done by avoiding favoritism, being open-minded, and by assessing each employee’s strengths
and weaknesses. Unfortunately, forming constant positive relationships with others is easier said
than done.
Avoiding favoritism, is the one I believe to be the easiest. You have learned since you
were a child to treat everyone fairly. Favoritism in the workplace is one of the most obvious
gestures a manager can portray. Simple things like having inside jokes with an individual to
allowing a worker extra overtime are gestures that do not go unnoticed to the surrounding
employees. It is comparable to when you are part of a group of friends, and you notice that
Friend A and Friend B have been spending a lot of time together and excluding the rest of the
group. Most likely in that situation, you are going to feel ruled out. In the work setting, those
surrounding employees will notice over time and perceive the act as betrayal. When the
employee feels left out or betrayed, it damages the communication channel.
You may wonder exactly why or how favoritism comes about so common in the
workplace. Steve Peglar believes it is because, “we as individuals simply “like” certain people
more than others. Because of this basic fact of our humanity, it seems only natural that we
would tend to treat those we like more in a more favorable manner” (Peglar, 2013). Exactly like
mentioned above in the friend group example, humans tend to gravitate towards people they see
