Maslow on Management

By-Products of Enlightened Management

The man (or woman) who truly is influenced by enlightened management should become a better husband (or wife) and a better father (or mother), as well as a better citizen in general.

There are plenty of data to indicate that a mother who truly and deeply loves her child can behave in practically any way toward that child, beating it or slapping it or whatever, and yet the child will turn out well. It is as if the basic attitude of love is important and not so much the particular behavior. There are all sorts of data to make this point quite clearly in this relationship at least. Behavior is not a very good index of character or of underlying personality or of attitudes. Anybody who puts on behavior like a cloak, as an actor would, finds that this doesn’t work very well. People somehow are able to detect at some conscious or unconscious level that a person is acting and not really feeling deeply the attitude which he is trying to convey through his behavior. So in the same way we have the possible complication that the supervisor who takes all sorts of courses and reads all sorts of books and is trained in various ways and who agrees with the data and who honestly tries to behave like a superior supervisor, may not be able to get the same results if he does not deeply feel democratic, parental, affectionate, etc.

This brings up the profound ...