T.H.I.N.K.

A fb friend posted the above photo on her wall, or whatever you call your homepage. It's from the Great Parenting Practices fb page. I don't know the site, but I love the T.H.I.N.K acronym. It's new school for my Mom's old school, "If you don't have anything nice to say, than don't say anything at all." Although, admittedly, the T.H.I.N.K. formula does leave room for constructive criticism vis a vis "h," helpful.

I don't think so much about Inspiring my little guy at 5 with what I say as much as by what I do. Kind? Yes. Necessary? Yes. Helpful? Definitely. True? I'll take the fifth. But taken as a whole it seems like a pretty good guideline for communicating with your kids.

As easily as seeing that young girl sit there with that poster I can even more easily see any number of employees from any number of businesses sitting there holding up that sign for their bosses. I see it in hospitals, I've seen it in restaurants, I've seen it in big retail stores: Managers berating their subordinates. In the situations that come to mind I don't even recall the managers being especially angry-- just mean and inconsiderate of the employee(s) in their charge.

In an era when so much emphasis is placed on customer service and customer satisfaction, nothing strikes me as more contradictory and as more distastefully than seeing the inconsideration and mistreatment of an employee by their manager. One sniff of that and I know the bottom line is not about caring and concern for anyone other than the manager for his job and the company for it's thrift. In my limited experience I've seen more than one manager who seems incapable of abiding by the T.H.I.N.K. acronym and seems to prefer instead to utilize the acronym derived from the words Foul, Unnecessary, Condescending, Kick-ass, Yell, Offensive, and Uninformed. Maybe that's just because some managers are more comfortable with the latter and incapable of the former.