Working For People vs Working With People

"I have offended God and mankind because my work didn't reach the quality it should have." ~ Leonardo da Vinci

"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." ~ Thomas A. Edison

"Work is love made visible." ~ Khalil Gibran

Working for people versus working with people is about power, autonomy, and collaboration.

When we think about working for a manager for a so-called boss or an owner, we're looking at traditional structures of working roles defined by power, mainly concentrated in a hierarchy.

In such a hierarchy structure, the worker is always subordinate and always reliant on the manager or the boss or the employer for income and his or her job security and very limited autonomy for the worker.

Typically working for someone, the workers has very little say over their tasks and they literally fulfill their delegated duties handed to them from a manager or an owner, often the worker in this hierarchical structure feels like a cog in a factory.

Philosophers such as Jon Stewart Mill and Bentham both support such utilitarianism. Such a system of productivity is for the greater good and it has a systematic top-down structure of worker for manager or owner work culture and group mentality.

On the opposite side of the spectrum working with the people focuses on collaboration, shared goals, and mutual respect.

The power structure is very different. Instead of top down vertical organizational power, working with the people would be more lateral power from boss to employee where there's a sense of equality, equity, and partnership, and most importantly shared leadership in the workplace.

Working with people have a shared decision making environment which becomes an equally shared collective effort for everyone's benefit and success.

Working with the people environment fosters a strong sense of autonomy and worker empowerment with strong encouragement for innovation and creativity.

Thinkers such as Paulo Freire, view workers in an environment built on cooperation, collaboration, and human growth.

Some parts of society depending on the type of profession and the type of work needed, working for someone has built in entrenched social hierarchies with inequality of power and wealth accumulation.

For a lot of professions with higher post-secondary achievements with college diplomas or degrees tend to gravitate towards working with people, type of jobs and careers that promote more egalitarian structures that have strong community bonds with a lateral power structure that everyone has transparent accountability and leadership for everyone's success.

Depending on a person's personality and preference and somewhat education attainment, a person can be working in an environment which has more alienation and hierarchical structure of power or a more lateral encouragement of empowerment and autonomy.