Ask a five-year-old what they think of your idea and you’ll get an honest answer. Ask a room full of senior managers and you’ll often get something rather different.
Children are wonderfully direct. They ask “why?” until you run out of answers. They say when they’re tired, when something isn’t fair, when they simply don’t want to. They’re curious about everything and embarrassed by very little.
Then we grow up, go to work, and learn — very quickly — not to do any of that.
What we trade away
Somewhere between the playground and the boardroom, many of us swap honesty for diplomacy, curiosity for caution, and “no” for “I’ll see what I can do”. Some of that is maturity. A lot of it, I think, is fear.
And in a high-pressure or unhealthy workplace, that fear gets exploited. People who can’t say no end up doing everyone’s work. People who don’t ask questions end up following decisions they never agreed with. People who never state their boundaries discover they don’t have any.
The honesty, curiosity and directness you had as a child weren’t naivety. They were wisdom you were taught to forget.
Bringing the savvy child back
I’m not suggesting anyone throws a tantrum in the quarterly review. But I am suggesting that a little more of that childhood clarity would do most organisations — and most of us — a power of good.
Ask the obvious question. Say no when no is the right answer. Notice when something isn’t fair, and say so respectfully. Be curious about why things are the way they are.
It’s the idea at the heart of my book, The Savvy Child Within You: that the wisdom we need to reclaim our self-respect at work is often wisdom we already had.
