Quote of the Week...from Abraham Maslow

If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.       --Abraham Maslow.

Abraham Maslow was a twentieth century American psychologist who devised the "Pyramid of Needs" model to account for human motivation.  I used a different quote of his earlier this year...click HERE to read that article.  There are varying degrees to read his above quote, but all interpretations lead to the same general principle: how one tackles problems depends inextricably on that person's own mental and physical makeup.  Kids toward their parents, students toward their teachers, employees toward their bosses...all eventually learn to discern their superiors' innate traits and abilities and tailor their behavior toward them in order to secure a reasonable environment.  Well, that's probably how it's supposed to go although what I think happens is that the subordinate in question mixes up leader #1 with leader #2 and gets frustrated with a completely different reaction to their input.  Poor Mary Richards: an earlier supervisor liked her spunk, but Lou Grant hates it!  In my own long, checkered history from toddlerhood on to the present moment, I've dealt with authority figures of different kinds.  And it's tough when one of them sees everything about me as a nail to be hammered back into place...I've come to recognize them early on, though, and tend to quickly get myself out of their line of attention as much as possible.  Fortunately for me, it's been a few years since I've had to deal with anyone of this sort head on...I've been blessed with some pretty wonderful people around me.  Yet in other locales, I've heard from others about their own disheartening experiences with authority figures. So, if you're the one in charge, the last thing you want to be seen as is someone who is springing around trying to catch others misbehaving or only resting for a moment in order to "hammer" them back in place. You'll end up creating an alternative, hidden world among whoever your subordinates happen to be, with them doing everything they can manage behind your back, instead of them feeling secure in presenting their selves, along with their mistakes, candidly before you.  Not a good way to go about things...it reminds me of that great old sixties spy/science fiction TV series The Prisoner and one episode in particular: Hammer into Anvil....