The golden rule as a way to run a team, and its blind spot
Treating others the way one would like to be treated rules out most cruelty. It does less to tell a manager what a particular person needs.
I grew up with the thought that I wanted to treat people the way I’d like to be treated, and I think if you do that, it’s pretty hard to go wrong.
Nolan Ryan pitched in the major leagues for twenty-seven seasons and retired with more strikeouts than anyone before him. The line comes from his autobiography, written long before he became president of the Texas Rangers. This year he led the group that bought the club out of bankruptcy, and the team went on to its first World Series. The sentence reads like a principle he now has to apply to an organization of hundreds, not a clubhouse.
As a rule for running a company, it works best as a floor. A manager who asks how a decision would feel from the other side avoids a long list of common failures: layoffs announced by email on a Friday evening, customers kept on hold while a refund is quietly delayed, suppliers paid ninety days late because they cannot complain. None of those survive the question.
The blind spot is that people do not all want the same treatment. A founder who likes blunt criticism in public may give it to an engineer who hears it as humiliation. A manager who loves being left alone may leave a new hire alone when that person needed daily help. The golden rule assumes that what the speaker would want is a good guide to what the other person wants, and on details it often is not. Management writers have long offered a revised version: treat people the way they want to be treated, which requires asking.
With customers the same gap appears. The founder would like a product with every option exposed. Most customers would like a product that makes the choices for them.
So the line is a sound instinct about fairness and a weak method for the specifics. Keep it as the test for anything that might be unkind or dishonest. For how to support a particular person, ask them.