Let's Treat People as Individuals

Posted by Laddie Blaskowski on May 23, 2008

As the presidential race progresses, you hear a lot of labels for people being thrown around. It reminds me of a presentation I sat through a couple of months ago on how to market to people in various age groups. The premise was that people tend to have a universal mindset matching others in their age group. That presentation really bothered me.

I’m tired of labels being used to describe people because they detract from people as individuals. I’m not saying that there aren’t any common values between people of the same age or demographic group, but we need to stop putting everyone into categories. Are all Gen-Y’ers really always asking why this and why that? Of course not. Did all Gen-X’ers grow up with more than two parents and, therefore, they expect more? That’s ridiculous. My two sons are one year apart, and their belief systems and lifestyles are as different as night and day.

I happen to be a Baby Boomer (by the way, there are reportedly 79,902,844 of us). If, as the presenter suggested, every Boomer believes they’re supposed to do as they’re told, then how do you explain the great strides in the world since the 1960’s? I assume someone in that demographic questioned the old ways and forged new ones.

I have a better idea. Let’s try dropping the categories of Boomer, Gen-X, Gen-Y, etc. and look at the person instead. In fact, maybe we should stop being so hung up on lumping people into other groups – right-wing Republicans, liberal Democrats, gays, whites, blacks, etc. – and look at them as individual people.

Grouping people by generalities can only get us into trouble. Whenever I have met someone new who appears to be different from me in some way, and have asked them about themselves, I’ve learned that our similarities far outweigh our differences. If we look at people and drop the categories, we can almost always find common ground.

This attitude will help us in our businesses, in our lives, and in our country.