Why Everyone Matters: Breaking Down Hierarchies in Professional Organizations

Kevin Frick is the Vice Dean for Education at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School. He has been an avid runner for the past 11 years – participating in 9 marathons (including Boston in 2013) and one 55 mile ultra marathon in South Africa.  He has spoken about mentoring to the Carey Women in Business student association and for TEDx JHU DC.  You can follow his personal blog where many of his poems appear as well as his professional blog

Within professional organizations, there is sometimes a perceived order of importance.

While a title could mean a person is in a C-suite or top leadership position, a good approach is to treat everyone as if an organization is relatively flat.

As a leader, you want people to know that everyone is important, and you should want to learn something interesting about as many people as possible.

I am intentional in being self-aware and not creating an environment that reflects the perception of “higher and lower.” There are individuals throughout my life who have asked something to the effect of, “Why are you interested in me? I’m just a little person.”

Here’s why no one is a little person:

• Everyone in the organization is a contributor. A recipe for pizza crust includes only flour, water, salt, and yeast. These four ingredients sitting next to each other on a counter or even in the same bowl unmixed don’t amount to much. Mixed and kneaded they make a wonderful base for cheese, sauce, and other toppings. All people in an organization lined up side by side may not amount to much. But working together in a coordinated manner the organization is more than the sum of the parts. Each part is necessary for the whole to function. When making the dough, if you forget the yeast, you’ll only have a ball of flour.
• Everyone in the organization has a story. Right now, someone “low” on an organizational chart is doing amazing things outside the workplace. They have an expertise that may appear less frequently, but no less valuable. When you learn about team members’ outside interests, you are opening your workplace up to a richer environment. You can also tap into diverse talents and contributors in unexpected ways.
• Everyone in the organization knows something you don’t right now—and you never know when you will need that information. Everyone should feel like she or he matters now, because each person may be a key player in the future. You may have heard, “The hardest time to make a friend is when you need one.”  This goes for internal and external business relationships as well. Building relationships now pave the way for getting things done in the future.

You are not just a little person, and those who work below, next to, or above you aren’t either. But that doesn’t mean people don’t feel like one sometimes. Here are some questions you can ask to keep yourself in check.

• Do I create an environment that minimizes the potential feeling of “being a little person”?
• Am I aware of times when I could be doing things that make others feel little?
• What are ways I can help others avoid ‘feeling little’?