Larrimore C. Crockett is on the faculty of Southern Vermont College where he teaches a course on Management Ethics to students who are primarily adults with extensive management experience. If we are to move forward on all these fronts we need to re-envision managing as a caring activity. Very simply because managers, collectively, have more power, have more influence, make more of an impact on others, than any other group of people in the world. Let me support that assertion. First of all, managers decisively shape our working lives.
Most people work in an organization of some kind.
Indeed, we spend most of our waking hours within organizations. It is managers who shape those hours, set the tone and environment, and profoundly affect the way we feel about ourselves. But most of all, managers determine the extent to which we experience our working hours as a time of growth. They determine the extent to which our work is a time of exploration of our potential, of being challenged and inspired to be our best. If our life within organizations makes us feel worthless, angry, guilty, cynical, bored or exhausted, then it is going to be an uphill battle for us to restore our confidence, peace, optimism, enthusiasm and energy in our private lives.