The Second Paradoxical Commandment

March 26, 2008

The Mentorship Approach With Teams & Groups

If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Do good anyway.

© Copyright Kent M. Keith 1968, renewed 2001

Maybe it’s skepticism borne through experience that causes many employees to doubt their employer ever acts out of consideration or kindness.

Maybe it’s a sign of a pervasive entrepreneurial spirit that clients will tend to see improvements in your service as just a way to earn more money. Or maybe Kent Keith is right.

In the child care world, payroll is the biggest expense. You have to have enough teachers and caregivers to provide an interesting and fun day for the children and keep the group sizes reasonable. The expected pattern is to send people home when the number of children in attendance on any given days starts to drop. It’s a way to save money and increase profit, but it’s at the expense of low-wage people who need a predictable number of hours per week.

I didn’t like that. We only sent people home during low attendance times if they asked to leave. This was usually the days around major holidays. In fact, if I scheduled someone for a half-day because they asked to take the afternoon off, I would let them leave mid-morning if attendance was low. And I would pay them for the full time they had been scheduled to work. It seemed right to me. I regularly got confused looks when they looked at their paychecks and wondered – often sheepishly – if I forgot they left early.

Sometimes I confused my staff even more. During a period when someone was on vacation and another person would call in sick, or maybe when we transitioned from school year to summer and were waiting for part-time summer staff to be available, we had to rearrange schedules to cover all the groups. Some people came in earlier and took longer breaks, and some were willing to work a little overtime and help close at the end of the day.

After a pay period like that, I would look at actual payroll expense compared to my budget, based on every position being fully staffed. I took a portion of the payroll savings and paid it as bonus to the people who went out of their way to help us by adjusting their schedules and taking on extra responsibilities. Inevitably, staff who got bonuses were grateful, but they looked uncertain, like they were worried I made a mistake and might take the bonus away!

Our parent-clients and my friends would also be skeptical when we made improvements to the classrooms, equipment, playground, or programs. When we upgraded the playground, inevitably people assumed it was because that would help us get more clients. Actually, we stayed close to full with a waiting list in some groups at the time. We did it because we wanted the kids to have more fun and more variety.

When we added a music program, and when we instituted Spanish and art and drama classes for all the preschool groups, eyes would light up and people would suggest we were going to be able to charge more for having these “extras.” We explained that we were just offering things we were able to offer at a reasonable expense to us. We didn’t increase prices when we added those programs. We just improved the experience of the children in care.

Maybe it’s just an indication of my lack of entrepreneurial vision that I didn’t see the opportunity to save on staff costs as a way to make more money. I didn’t see a connection between adding new equipment and programs and hiking the rates, either. I was just trying to treat our employees well, and give the children in our care a warm, comfortable, safe, and happy place to be.

If you put quality and respect and consideration first and try to do good, people will assume you’re working some angle.

Do good anyway.

Posted in The Mentorship Approach With Teams & Groups, Zine 6: March 2008