What This Theme Explores
Seeing Others as People vs. Objects asks whether we meet others as full, feeling beings or as instruments and impediments arranged around our own agendas. To see someone as a person is to allow their needs, cares, fears, and hopes to count as much as our own. To see them as an object is to reduce them to a function—an obstacle to remove, a vehicle to use, an irrelevance to ignore—what the book calls being "in the box." Crucially, the book argues this inner stance precedes behavior: influence, leadership, and satisfaction depend on the way we regard others, not the techniques we deploy.
How It Develops
The theme first takes shape through Bud Jefferson’s airplane story, which reveals that identical outward behaviors can spring from opposite inner states. Bud’s impulse to block a seat exposes how quickly comfort and convenience turn fellow passengers into threatening objects; conversely, a stranger’s quiet kindness shows how seeing others as people naturally produces generous action without performance or pretense.
The narrative then uncovers the engine that flips people into objects: self-betrayal. When Bud ignores his nudge to help his exhausted wife Nancy, he must justify that choice—so he recasts her as lazy and undeserving. This self-justification distorts reality, making the other seem blameworthy enough to warrant our neglect, and trapping us in a posture that keeps generating more proof of our rightness.
From there, the book widens the lens to relationships. Kate Stenarude’s story with her son shows how objectification breeds collusion: when we see someone as a problem, we act in ways that provoke the very behavior that “proves” our view, and they reciprocate. Each person’s box sustains the other’s, locking both parties into escalating conflict and mutual diminishment.
Finally, the book presents an exit that is not a technique but a shift in sight. When Tom Callum questions his own virtue instead of defending it, he stops resisting the reality of his wife Laura and son Todd. In that moment, he experiences them as people again, and his behavior changes as a consequence, not a performance—evidence that the “way out” is simply ceasing to objectify.
Key Examples
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Bud’s Airplane Story: Bud’s strategic briefcase placement turns strangers into threats to his comfort, revealing how self-protection narrows our field of vision. The woman who gives up her seat does not perform kindness; she recognizes a need and responds, illustrating how seeing people as people naturally mobilizes care.
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Tom’s Confrontation with Joyce Mulman: Tom treats Joyce as an obstacle—he doesn’t know her name or context, only that she has complicated his day. When he later apologizes, the shift isn’t in script but in sight: he acknowledges the person behind the inconvenience, and the relationship becomes possible.
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Lou Herbert’s Leadership Before and After: Early on, Lou views his team as instruments for his success or impediments to eliminate, culminating in a mass exodus that exposes the cost of objectification. After his change of heart, Lou’s “hard” conversation with Bud is firm yet humanizing; because he wants Bud to succeed, his rigor inspires loyalty rather than defensiveness.
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Tom’s Family Turning Point: Seeing Laura and Todd as burdens traps Tom in chronic resentment. When he stops defending his self-image and recognizes their separate struggles, genuine connection becomes possible—less a technique for harmony than the fruit of restored regard.
Character Connections
Tom Callum’s arc embodies the theme’s central claim: changing behavior without changing sight is shallow and unsustainable. His early interactions—whether with colleagues, Sheryl, Joyce, or his family—treat others as extensions of his needs. His transformation unfolds as he questions his own justifications; as people recover their full humanity in his eyes, his relationships begin to heal.
Lou Herbert functions as the book’s leadership parable. His initial failures stem not from skill deficits but from a stance that reduces people to outputs. His apology to Kate and subsequent practices emerge from a different way of seeing, showing that effective leadership is a moral orientation—regarding others as ends, not means—before it is a method.
Chuck Staehli stands as a foil. His results-first posture treats employees as levers for status, which generates minimal effort and simmering resentment. He demonstrates how objectification can get short-term compliance while eroding trust, initiative, and creativity.
Bud Jefferson and Kate Stenarude serve as teachers precisely because they do not posture as moral exemplars; they expose their own betrayals and invite Tom to consider his. Crucially, they model out-of-the-box correction—firm, truthful, and grounded in regard—which allows difficult truths to be heard without humiliation.
Symbolic Elements
The Box: The box symbolizes the self-justifying mental frame that turns people into objects. Inside it, we edit reality to protect our virtue, producing attitudes and actions that confirm our distorted view; outside it, the personhood of others becomes vivid, and new choices become obvious.
Lou’s Ladder: Lou once removed a ladder from Kate’s department as if tools—and by extension, people—existed to serve his immediate priorities. Returning with a ladder is more than an apology; it’s a tangible reversal of stance, restoring usefulness in service of people rather than bending people to tools.
Contemporary Relevance
In a polarized world of algorithmic feeds and productivity dashboards, it is easy to collapse people into labels, avatars, and metrics. This theme exposes how such reductions corrode collaboration, empathy, and learning—and how simply choosing to regard others as people reopens the possibility of trust. It offers a practical antidote for workplaces, families, and civic life: rehumanize first, and better outcomes will follow as a byproduct. The book’s claims about leadership and influence and personal responsibility and transformation are thus timely: sustained impact flows from an inner commitment to see, not a technique to manage.
Essential Quote
“I wasn’t really seeing them as people at all. They were more like objects to me in that moment than people.” - Bud Jefferson, Chapter 1-5 Summary
This line crystallizes the diagnostic move of the book: the core problem is not what we did, but how we were seeing. By naming objectification in himself, Bud models the honest self-scrutiny that makes change possible; once the lens is acknowledged as distorted, reality—and the people in it—can come back into focus.