Читать книгу The Faithful Manager: Using Your God Given Tools for Workplace Success - Anthony E Shaw - Страница 13

For over thirty-five years I have been studying people at work, including studying my own behavior. Although my resume shows that I’ve held a number of different positions, Urban Planner, Management Analyst, Corruption Investigator, Deputy Mayor, Human Resources Vice President, and Human Resources Consultant, what all these positions have in common is my observing, listening, analyzing and reflecting on the subject of how and why do people behave at work.

During college, I worked as a maintenance person and administrative assistant for a real estate firm in Brooklyn Heights, NY. My boss was Ken Boss. That was his name, no fooling! He would say with a smile, “I was born to be a boss.”

He was an attorney, a real estate investor, a collector of everything, an artist, a writer, a candidate for public office, a gadfly, a political activist, a landlord, and a surrogate uncle to me. In short, he was an amazing, confusing, dynamic bundle of human energy. Yes, I never knew anyone like him, before or since. He had all the money he would ever need, and then some, but if he saw a toaster on top of a garbage can, he would take it. “If you saw a five-dollar bill on the ground,” he asked me, “would you take it?” Of course. “Well this toaster isn’t broken, the person just doesn’t want it anymore and it’s worth at least five-dollars!”

Oh, he had a rule about collecting. “I don’t pick garbage. I only take what’s on top!”

Don’t laugh, he found the original printer’s galleys for a book by a well known author who lived in the neighborhood, with the author’s handwritten corrections and comments. I think that piece eventually brought a tidy sum at auction. The Boss home, a magnificent brownstone on one of the finest streets in Brooklyn Heights, had a TV in every room except the baths. I don’t think Ken bought any of those sets.

He either used or gave to others, including many of his tenants, the refurbished toasters and TV sets and other disjecta he collected. He was a self-proclaimed, card-carrying Socialist. He didn’t do too shabbily as a capitalist, either.

I painted apartments, cleaned hallways and fixed minor leaks in his buildings during my last 18 months of college. Upon graduation from college, I worked in his office.

Thus began my career of studying people. You learn a lot by listening to tenants complain to their landlord. I learned a lot by watching Ken hold the phone away from his ear while one more tenant confirmed that the discoloration in the porcelain of his toilet bowl required the installation of a whole new one. Every two minutes or so Ken would put the receiver back to his ear and say, “I see.”

Well, he didn’t see; he was on the phone. And he didn’t seem to hear because he didn’t seem to be listening. And he didn’t seem to want to hear. But when the call was concluded, I was dispatched to carefully paint over the discoloration and make another tenant satisfied.

Okay, maybe this wasn’t the height of customer service but in its way it worked. The tenant had a chance to vent without being interrupted. Once Ken knew what the tenant wanted, a suitable, cost-effective solution was devised and implemented. The tenant saw a response that usually was more than acceptable.