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CREATING EXCELLENCE
DAVE SWANN / DSWANN@STARBULLETIN.COM Cooperation
A form of mutual altruism
I'm not certain we needed a major research study from the University of California-Los Angeles to prove the following point. Finding your paper in your garage on a Sunday morning, almost automatically adding 15 percent to your bill in a restaurant, producing a new commercial jetliner and managing the state government of Hawaii have one thing in common: They are dependent upon cooperation among relative strangers.
What was particularly disturbing, to this observer, was that the concept used in the study to explain this glue that holds all social systems together was "altruistic punishment."
Talk about an oxymoron. A quick trip through Webster's yields the following: "The principle or practice of unselfish concern for the welfare of others (as opposed to egoism)" has been joined with "to handle or treat roughly, harshly; to hurt." To be sure, the second definition of altruism listed is "behavior by an animal that may be to its disadvantage but that benefits others of its kind."
The essence of their argument is that "altruistic punishers" are willing to stick their heads into the lion's den. Specifically, they are willing to confront members of a group to stop behavior that might hurt the group, even if by doing so the confrontation costs them something personally.
When it comes to applying this concept to organizations, whose achievement of excellence is greatly influenced by people's voluntary willingness, and ability, to cooperate, there are several things wrong with this way of thinking. Confrontation, for example, is portrayed as something bad, which it is not. Confrontation simply means putting heads together in the service of achieving a common goal. It is the ability to manage confrontation and conflict, which is essential to realizing its positive potential. When employees have been given the skills they need, they can have healthy, productive confrontations. They can form and maintain win-win relationships, and punishment, altruistic or otherwise, has absolutely no place in such relationships.
Furthermore, we are neither laboratory animals nor the mathematical simulations used to test this theory. We are human beings. We are empowered with the ability to make conscious choices. In any given moment, we can elect to be egotistical; to manifest unselfish concern for our fellow human beings; to be rough, harsh and hurtful; and even, as past and recent history have reminded us, to be unbelievably torturous and cruel. Along with this freedom to choose comes accountability for the consequences. Managers can choose to berate challenging employees or to confront them as fellow human beings struggling to do their best. In both cases they should expect reactions and responses that are related to their behaviors as managers. We are all 100 percent accountable for our 50 percent of every relationship. Or more simply, what goes around comes around, be it punishment or altruism.
Finally, let's return to altruism. We need look no further than the 250,000 Americans who risked their lives to free the people of Iraq to be reminded that we are capable of incredibly unselfish acts of altruism. When St. Francis of Assisi said, "It is better to strive to comfort than be comforted, to understand than to be understood, to love than to be loved," he was offering us an ideal toward which we can strive. But we are human beings, not saints. We need to both understand and be understood, to comfort and be comforted, to love and be loved. In other words, being human means we need to be able to have it both ways.
So once again we are brought to an earlier point. Cooperation may be hard-wired into our emotional systems, and it is certainly essential to the success of any organization. But we don't need punishment, of others or of ourselves, to ensure altruistic confrontation. What we need are constant opportunities to fine-tune and hone our skills at manifesting our cooperative human natures.
Irwin Rubin is a Honolulu-based author and president of Temenos Inc., which specializes in executive leadership development and behavioral coaching, communication skill-building training and large-system culture change. His column appears twice a month in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. Send questions and column suggestions to temenos@lava.net, or visit temenosinc.com.
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Visitor's memories laced
in famous banyan's boughs
We have just returned home after visiting your wonderful island. While there, we heard that plans were in place to tear down the International Market Place. Needless to say, I was greatly disturbed, and planned to start a writing campaign to stop this. I always look forward to returning to the International Market Place, and my trip to your islands is not complete without visiting there.
But, upon reading of (the Queen Emma Foundation's) plans for the site (reported Sept. 10 and 11), I totally approve. If you keep the banyan tree (a great memory for me is the dress I bought in a shop up in that tree) and keep the historic feeling of the islands there, I will be thrilled. Please do not make this area another expensive upscaled shopping center. There are too many of those already.
Mary Stought is a resident of Marco Island, Fla.
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