Friday, August 12, 2011

Encouraging a new vocabulary at work

"The inherent language of the corporate workplace is far too small for us now. It has too little poetry, too little humanity, and too little good business sense for the world that lies before us. We only have to look at the most important word in the lexicon of the present workplace - manager - to understand its inherent weakness. Manager is derived from the old italian and French words mannegio and manege, meaning the training, handling and riding of a horse....images of domination... and the taming of potentially wild energy. It also implies a basic unwillingness on the part of the people to be managed, a force to be collared and reined in.....most people don't respond very passionately or creatively to being ridden... Sometimes over the next fifty years or so, the word manager will disappear from understanding of leadership... It is the artist in each of us we must now encourage into the world, whether we have worked for Getty Foundation or for Getty Oil" - 
- David Whyte

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