Mr. H—, though, is still taking them on, still paying them $5 a week—or maybe it's $10—still treating them all alike. He gets a lot of bright young fellows into the business. But every so often he passes up a chance to get an exceptionally promising boy—because he is fair and treats them all alike. What's a rule for, anyway, except to break? Mr. H— will never know that it's the exception that proves the rule—particularly when you are dealing with human values.
But more later of the newer viewpoint. For the moment we are talking about handling the "help"—and making it sound as though it were solely the problem of the big employer.
Not so. It is a problem with every one of you in business—unless you do nothing but sit in one spot and do one job from nine to five, five days—we hope—a week.
The editor who wants a manuscript typed; the salesman who must get long distance; the man at the machine who has to get tools from the toolroom; the errand boy with his bundle to carry—all have the same problem. To all of them it is just as important in relation to their own scale of things as it is to the manager of a business with ten or a hundred or a thousand employees. It is the eternal problem of GETTING OTHERS TO COOPERATE.
Some men are good at it; others are total failures.
Many a man on the bench or at the machine has the ability, knowledge and experience which qualify him for a job as foreman or even superintendent. But he can't hold down a foreman's job because he hasn't the knack of getting hearty, whole-souled cooperation from others.
Foremen, too, have changed, you see. Today the successful foreman is less often the hard-boiled driver, more often the student of his job, of his men, of himself. He has learned that, to be fair, he must treat every man differently.
Often we hear of Bill's losing his job as a mechanic, not because he didn't know his job, not because he couldn't run every lathe in the shop, but because he "couldn't get along" with the other men. And we think, Poor Bill! it's too bad he's so quick-tempered.
Generally we blame it on "temperament." Yet some of the very best handlers of men are the crabbiest, crankiest gents in seven states. Others are as cold as steel. And like as not the warm-hearted, generous man is a monumental failure at handling his "help."
No, when you check specific methods of handling people—methods which are successful for the most part—something much more fundamental than temperament will be found.