Take all the books written on how to be successful in business. Add everything published on therapy – how to develop your inner self, how to lead a fully functional life – and you’ll have, well, a lot of bedtime reading.

Has it occurred to anyone why these two schools of thought never meet? Why the lessons of one are not inextricably bound to the other? I know business is increasingly espousing ‘soft values’, but that’s just about as near as it gets. I certainly don’t detect anything resembling common sense in most HR departments or the appraisal processes of most businesses.

Consider what, according to the expert authors, constitutes the manager we all aspire to be or employ. You know, “able to engender loyalty among their team, develop sales leads, achieve technical excellence in all areas”. You may well wonder whether anyone of lesser stature than Clark Kent need bother to try. Do such people exist? And if they did, could you sit next to them at dinner without thinking what an awful bore they were? Why is the assumption always made that if each member of the team were perfect specimens of Homo Sapiens, the team as a unit would be any the stronger for it?

The ‘Dream Team’ is actually made up of complementary talents. You can’t execute a perfect ‘one-two’ round the negotiating table unless one of you is Mr Charming and the other is Ms Iron Fist.

Ask yourself what sort of DNA structure binds your top people or your teams together. Can you reshape into defensive formation when things get tough? Can you line up one behind the other when your business plan requires you to drive through the competition? If things go wrong on the left, can you rely on the guys to rush over and help from the other side of the room? You’ll only be able to answer yes if you have allowed the people that work for you enough freedom for these links to have formed.

The problem may well be that your current systems and culture require everyone to conform to Corporate Man. Do all of them feel pressurised to measure up to each of the 10 criteria that HR has in their wisdom decided are the constituent elements of Clone Co? Does their annual appraisal form always read like a long list of missed targets and partial successes?

Try doing this instead: throw away the list of five things staff have to be perfect at and allow each of your managers and staff to shine at what they do best. Then make each of them acknowledge their greatest weakness, the one attribute that constitutes their most dysfunctional characteristic. Pompous old Andrew will have to admit that he is aloof, but he’s also allowed to shine when it comes to putting on the gravitas. Allow Richard his childish moments, so that you don’t lose a second of his inspired thinking and enthusiasm that ignites others. Allow them to give their inner selves a bit of a public airing, and you’ll almost find that the Andrews of this world will become less pompous and the Richards less childish.

Do this and something extraordinary will happen in your business. It will come alive, the noise level will go up and your people will love coming to work. Allow your people to flourish as individuals and the business will flourish. They will take ownership of it because the contribution that you will encourage them to make will mean it is theirs. Personal agendas will be left aside because the company’s agenda will become their own.

Be brave, tear up that business school book you’ve been mugging up on and put compassion and humanity back into your business.

Christopher Jenkins is senior partner of Wingrave Yeats. He was voted best business advisor of the year by the CBI in 2001