Hi folks, sorry for the delay. The COVID brain fog is real. Trying to get back into the swing of things has proven fun, but not in the “ha-ha” way.
One of the things that got me into the humor research that I am focusing on now and one of the reasons that I wrote my book, The Humor Hack, is the ridiculously high levels of disengagement that exist in the workforce. I also see it in the classroom. My colleagues routinely complain about the high numbers of disengaged students. With all of that I started to look to humor as a way to begin to chip away at these problems of disengagement. I saw it and still see it as an underused tool in our arsenal to make our work better and more meaningful. But in truth, humor can’t be the only thing we use. We need to radically rethink how we talk and understand work and our relation to it. This leads me to today’s post.
One of the main problems modern hiring managers and companies apparently face, given how often I read or hear about it, is “atttracting and retaining talent.” Not attracting and retaining people, but talent. This way of phrasing it really shows what companies really seem to see their workforce as. They see the workforce as tools, talent, and not people.
It wasn’t until recently that I noticed that this way of talking about the problem fits precisely into another issue I’ve worried about. Bosses look at employees as means to ends. They see them only as things they do. This, I argue, is a really bad way to view people. It’s reductive, restrictive, and basically immoral because if you see the person only as what they can do for you or your company you’re not seeing them as an individual and many think this is the absolute wrong way to go. People are far more than that which they do or their talents. Given this, they should be seen and treated as more than just tools or talent.
When you enter into the space of thinking about how to hire people and approach it as one of “attracting and retaining talent” this shorthand tells us what you’re focusing on—the things the people can do for you, not the people themselves. This problem has been festering for years. Gifted writer and neurologist Oliver Sacks lamented that modern medicine focused more on, and I am praphrasing here, “the disease that a person has, rather than the person the disease has.” He worried about this because in medical care we treat people, not diseases. If we were to shift our focus life would be better for both patient and provider. I offer that the burnout we see in health care also has its roots in this approach. Physicians make diagnoses in short order and then move on.
This short sighted approach can be seen elsewhere in our collective thoughts. If you’ve ever heard the phrase “to a hammer everything starts to look like a nail” you can see the theme again. This idea has kicked around in various ways for a while, and there’s a fascinating history, but part of the idea is that when we focus only on one thing, to the exclusion of all else, we lose something. We also may use the tool in situations that aren’t appropriate because are thinking has become so contstrained. In some situations having a narrow is fine. In others, it’s less so. If all a company or hiring manager sees is an individual that does a job, that is a bundle of relvant talents, you do disservice to the person you’re looking to hire. You also start to create the seeds for disengagement.
The founder of Southwest Airlines Herb Kelleher (yeah, they’ve been in the news for all the wrong reasons) once said “You don't hire for skills, you hire for attitude. You can always teach skills.” This statement helps us to look beyond the talent and look at the person and that’s a really important thing to do. To search for talent and retain that talent means you’re looking for skills not people. And not to be too obvious, but it’s people who have the skills, not the other way around. Kelleher’s point, one that made him such an important and effective CEO, is that he focused on people first and not skills. When his company started to look the other way, it started to fail.
If you really want to “attract and retain talent” then stop thinking and talking about those people as talent, or skilled workers. Sure, qualifications need to be met, but when be careful that you don’t become the hammer that sees everyone and everything as a nail. Once that happens, you start to create an environment that diminishes and devalues the individual. You start to subordinate them to the job. This, more than anything leads quickly to disengagement. Instead, focus on people, help the person build skills, build resilience, grow themself as an individual. Take Kelleher’s words to heart. You will soon find an engaged and enthusiastic person in your ranks. And since this is a forum on humor, throwing in a laugh now and again will help that focus on the person be all the better. It’s not an easy thing to do, but then again, nothing worthwhile ever is. So let’s get to it.