Its Not Fair
Do you sometimes think things are not fair?
My sister-in-law promised my eldest niece two desserts, one at the restaurant where we were having dinner and then an ice cream shop. Because dinner took so long my 7 year old niece was informed there would be no time to go get the ice cream.
But that isn’t fair was her response!
After some whining, crying, drama (from her, not me!) with follow up coaching from me and her 5 year old sister, the issue was resolved. She got the ice cream.
But before the resolution, everything went awry because fairness was not perceived favorably by my niece.
Being fair (or fairness), being fair to others, is high on the list of people’s values.
The Academy of Management lists fairness as one of their 54 work values. Whenever I facilitate groups of managers on a values exercise, fairness always (and I mean every time, so if I’ve done 100 facilitations doing this exercise, this has happened 100 times) is in the top 5 of the collected group’s values.
I have coached upper managers and executives who aspire to be fair to everyone. I have seen white papers written where one of the goals is to be fair.
As a leader or manager do you aspire to be fair?
If you do, stop!
You are setting yourself up for stress, conflict, miscommunication and unproductive time.
Going for fair is a trap. This is because what’s fair to you is different for someone else. Fair is a feeling based on our values, experience and past. It’s not about being right or wrong yet if we feel something is not fair then we do feel we are being wronged and we’re in the right.
Fair is subjective. Subjective measurements and suggestions can not lead to agreement unless everyone involved sees whatever is happening the exact same way. And the likeliness of this happening in a work environment is as high a probability as a 7 year old accepting she can’t have her ice cream because the service in a restaurant was too slow!
As we start to recognize the trap of using the word fair:
• We can recognize how much or little we each use the word
• We will see how much the word is used by others
• We can start to focus on how to use objective measurements instead of the subjective fair
And when you start to do this, ironically you will be heading towards being fair!