They Don’t Teach Corporate in College

Chapter 7

People Management

One company I worked for offered a course designed to improve employees’ interpersonal skills. I was in public relations and interacted with people all the time, so it was a no-brainer for me to sign up. On the first day of class, I was surprised to see that I was the only marketing person in the group. Most of my class-mates were computer programmers and graphic designers. Later, I asked one of the programming supervisors why he wanted his people to take this class. After all, these folks sat in front of machines all day long—it wasn’t unusual for them to go from morning coffee to lunch without talking to a single human being.

“Aren’t some folks drawn to programming because they don’t want to deal with people, because ...