HUMAN RELATIONS: Making a Life

“Most of us have a job in which there are some eight balls that we’re associated with,” said Topeka’s famed psychiatrist, Dr. William Menninger (TIME, Oct. 25, 1948), in a talk last week to a Chicago convention of 1,500 supermarket executives. Menninger had come to plead that U.S. industry, which provides first-aid stations for physical ills, should start providing the same service for emotional ills.

“It is the smart man,” said Psychiatrist Menninger, “who recognizes that all of us are a little queer at times.” He pointed out that 70% of the people who have to be fired are dismissed because “of their social incompetence—not because of their technical incompetence. In other words, they can’t get along with people—and that is why we can’t use them. Yet so many times, of course, they can be helped.”

Chronic Mistakes. Moreover, said Menninger, emotional troubles account for 85% of “stomach trouble” and “a very large percentage of heart difficulties.” It is some 25 to 30% of the population who cause 60 to 100% of all accidents; they are the “accident-prone,” related closely to “the mistake-makers that somehow or other keep on making the same mistakes again and again and again…” All of them are emotionally disturbed. “It is taken as a matter of course that cut fingers, broken arms and upset stomachs should have immediate attention. But it is seldom realized that prompt handling of an employee’s emotional problems is an equally important factor in the prevention of serious mental ills…

“One emotionally disturbed employee can mess up a whole department, and if he is a supervisor or executive, his personal problems may extend their effects even further. Industrial disputes frequently arise or become aggravated by the mental ill-health of a foreman or department head…I am not limiting my remarks to psychotic patients in our state hospitals…Mental ill-health also includes such common problems as perennial troublemaking, goldbricking, inability to take or give orders, absenteeism, accident-proneness, undependability, querulousness and suspiciousness. In fact, these ‘minor complaints’ are its principal manifestations.”

Dollars & Cents. What is needed is an understanding by all executives of the importance of the emotional aspects of interpersonal relationships. “The most important factor that either makes or breaks [corporate relationships] is leadership—the job of understanding how people feel and think, because how they feel and think determines what they do…I don’t care how many new lounges you put in the ladies’ lounge room—or how many pensions or salary increases—the things your folks want most, you can’t buy. What [they] want is dignity and confidence and belief in each other and integrity and understanding.

“The job can add so much, or subtract so much, from these emotional and psychological necessities…It isn’t a matter of just human materialism…It’s going to be an increased satisfaction to our customers, if we are happy…It’s going to pay off in cold dollars and cents to management if we could put some of these general principles of values, human relationships, really into practice…It is going to make a lot more people have a chance not only to make a living but to make a life.”