Knowing the characters of external, internal customers

Tshwarelo Hosia | Monday July 28, 2025 10:25

In the financial sector it is mandatory to know the financial character of clients and their various streams of revenue primarily for purposes of fighting the scourge of financial money laundering.

In other work environments it is equally important to know and appreciate not only the character of external clients but also internal customers - being the employees. Often much attention is skewed in favour of the external customer to the detriment of the internal customer. The truth of the matter is that the well-being of internal customers is as important and valuable as that of the outside client. This brings one closer home to the core business of this column - the teaching industry - where affording teachers humane and fair treatment is fundamental. Technology is yet to succeed in its ultimate goal of replacing teachers.

Maybe one-day robots or technology will take over the teaching industry. Hitherto, teaching remains essentially a human driven enterprise and therefore the way teachers are treated plays a fundamental role in the successful execution or otherwise of teaching and learning functions. The success of any industry in the final analysis rests on how well a company is treating its employees. Employees are people not machines to be exploited to drive the profit motive. Advocating a human centric style of management Simon Sinek reminds employers that “every employee is a son of someone or daughter of someone”. Sinek underscored the need to treat individuals as ends in themselves and not as a means to an end. In the teaching profession just like elsewhere, it is vitally important for school managers to know their staff well. It should be recognised that every teacher is a human being with a specific name, unique identity and professional traits that must accorded some modicum of respect.

Recognition of one’s identity and peculiar strengths and challenges is non- negotiable. It is a complete turn off for some employees to constantly remind their bosses how their names are spelt or pronounced. This can be demeaning especially after working for some time together. And this reminds one of a story of a school principal that had a notorious distinction of not remembering very well the names of his charges especially the male teachers. A worst case scenario was when the school principal, on a particular staff meeting day, reportedly tried to call a veteran male teacher but got stuck and ended up saying the gentleman next to Mary and the irony of the situation was that Mary was not that old in that school. The mistake was a mark of disrespect and indifference. Philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724- 1804) would have rebuked the school principal for the reckless attitude.

Kant argued that it is our duty (as leaders- my emphasis) to treat others with respect. This means treating others as ends in themselves and not as means to an end. Nobody should be treated like a resource to be exploited to achieve organisation goals or some profit motive. People bring their best selves when they feel good about their work environment. The urge to be better than yesterday could be a response to an external stimulus - a positive work environment. The school principals in a school setting play a crucial role in the process of ensuring the happiness of their subordinates. Their duty is to create a climate in which all teachers could unleash their genius, energies and innovative prowess for the benefit of students. When loved and cared for, especially by their supervisors, teachers will always demonstrate readiness to surrender the souls to the cause of teaching and learning. Administration with a human face lubricates the teaching environment and softens even hard-core non-conformists.

Knowing one’s subordinates is good for maintaining and upgrading the overall health of an organisation. Knowing what an individual teacher can do or cannot do can be a basis for decision-making on deployment. Deployment of teachers should be anchored on data and not the whims and caprices of any one. There is always a controversy surrounding deployment of teachers at the beginning of an academic year. The controversy is mainly occasioned by failure to make data the epicenter of decision-making. Sometimes this results in a scramble for certain high caliber classes. This occurs in a teaching environment where not many teachers are keen to handle chronically low achieving students. But consistent with their game changing prowess teachers should take pride in working with struggling classes. Value addition reflects the power of the teachers to change the performance trajectory of students who otherwise started the learning journey with overwhelming learning challenges. Teachers teaching low achieving students in my view deserve performance bonuses not only for their bravery, empathy but also for turning around what seemed like a hopeless situation. As a matter of fact, resolution of such a dispute over who qualifies to teach what level could only be settled by the use of data. Student learning outcomes and their well-being should determine deployment.