I went to Edmonton on Tuesday to observe a one day session of The Manager is the Medium, a managerial training program H&K Canada recommends and sells to clients. As part of the program, participating mangers undertake a "communications covenant" activity in which both managers and employees outline and agree to their obligations to one another and expectations of one another. Gail Roberts, co-creator of the program, delivered most of the session and when it came to the communications covenant activity, she told a story to illustrate a point about how equality is perceived.

A few years back, her and her partner, Bart Mindszenthy, needed some professional photographs done for an article they'd written for one of Canada's major dailies. When they arrived at the photographer's studio, they spent some time chatting about what they did, their business and the purpose of the photographs. After a few minutes, the photographer asked them if they were equal partners in the business, to which they replied they were.

When they went to pose for the photo, the photographer had Gail stand on a box so that she would stand taller than Bart. According to the photographer, when people see a picture of a man and a woman of equal height standing together, they assume the man is in the position of authority. The only way to regain the perception of equality is by having the woman stand taller than the man.

I thought this was quite intriguing, so I googled "equality and perceptions" and came across this article from the online version of the University of Michigan's student paper, The University Record. According to the article, a study was done in the early 1990's that had college students estimate the height of other college students pictured in individual photographs. For every photo shown of a male of a certain height, the students were also (unknowingly) shown a photo of a female of the same height. Those participating consistently judged the females as shorter than they actually were and the men as taller than they actually were.

Gail and Bart translate this theory into their work in managerial communications, by teaching that at work (and in the communications covenant exercise), the manager needs to have more obligations to a direct report than expectations of the direct report. 

Does this idea fit beyond the scope of the manager-direct report relationship? Can any person or institution of perceived authority 'level the playing field' by communicating a genuinely unbalanced laundry list of responsibilities (I will do this, that, this and that if you do this one thing for me)? Could this principle be used in transforming an organization to be more participatory or could it be perceived by the Gen-"y"-ers (a.k.a. me) as a throwback to the days of lifetime loyalty and obligation?