2. Since the best way to see things from someone else’s perspective is to “work” in his or her shoes, see if you can spend a day, a morning, or even two hours performing one of these jobs. If that’s not possible, spend some time carefully observing the jobs and then interview several people who perform them. Describe your boss’s reaction to this request. Was he or she supportive? Why or why not? Why is learning to see things from someone else’s perspective one of the most diffi cult things to do in today’s workplace? Sometimes, the inability to see things as others see them has to do with the people involved. Inexperience, ignorance, and selfi shness can all play a role. In most organizations, however, the inability to see things from someone else’s perspective results from the jobs themselves, not the people who do them. Because jobs limit who we talk to, what we talk about, what we think about, and what we care about at work, it should not be a surprise that people who perform different jobs have very different views about each other and the workplace.

For example, at Southwest Airlines the pilots who fl y the planes and the ground crews who unload, load, and refuel them had little appreciation for each other.

The ground crews felt that the pilots treated them like second-class citizens. The pilots couldn’t understand why the ground crews weren’t doing more to get their planes out of the gates and in the air as fast as possible.

To improve understanding and help them see things from each other’s perspective, Southwest created a program called Cutting Edge, in which the captains and ground crews learned a lot about each other’s jobs.

For example, the pilots brought the ground crews into their cockpits and showed them the detailed processes they were required to follow to get planes ready for departure. The pilots, on the other hand, gained appreciation and understanding by actually working as members of Southwest’s ground crews