Well, it didn’t happen like that. Powell was positive and in control right from the start. CEO Laventhol treated him to an elaborate introduction. During his accolades for Powell, Laventhol also revealed that before going into the newspaper business, he had once been a private in the US Army. Powell came to the podium and thanked Laventhol for his generous introduction. Then, with a twinkle in his eye, he added, “And, Private, that introduction was done very well.”
Powell gave a five-star speech. His positive thinking won over every one of the 300 or so senior managers present even when he had tough questions to answer.
Powell was the highest-ranking officer in the US armed forces. Yet he came from the humble beginnings. He was raised in the South Bronx in New York. Both of his parents were working-class immigrants, only one of whom had graduated from high school. Despite competition and prejudice, Powell graduated from the City College of New York. There were no special admissions for minorities in those days and this was important as Powell is African-American. He competed for and got a regular commission in the Army through the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) at the City College of New York. He was not an affirmative-action success story as some have suggested. He was a Colin Powell success story, and as Drucker recommended, he expected to succeed.
There was real, live bigotry and prejudice as Powell rose through the ranks. There was no quota system to assist him. He completed not as a minority, but on his own ability. Powell made it to the very pinnacle of the US armed forces on sheer guts, an incredibly positive attitude, and his own merit and ability. Powell was a positive thinker and those who followed him became positive thinkers too. His positive thinking culminated in leading our armed forces as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the most successful major military action since World War II: Operation Desert Storm.
While still Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Powell spoke to kids in the ghettos. And because he couldn’t reach them all in person, he had 10,000 videotapes made which were sent to high schools across the USA.
Here’s what General Powell told them. “There’s nothing you can’t accomplish if you’re willing to put your mind to it, if you’re willing to set aside the negative influences that are out there, if you believe in yourself, if you’re committed to yourself, and if you believe in this country, and if you let nothing hold you back. Don’t let the fact that you’re Hispanic or black or any other attribute hold you back. Just go for it. I did it; you can do it. Don’t look for a silver bullet. Don’t look for ‘a role model I’m going to follow’. Be your own role model. Believe in yourself.”4
VISUALIZE THE RESULTS YOU WANT TO ACHIEVE
If you want to learn to expect positive results, you’ve got to see those results achieved in your own mind first. Psychologists call this mental rehearsal or visualization, and it is amazing what can be done with it. Mental visualization seems to work best in a very relaxed state, and I have witnessed, as well as been involved in, many experiments that illustrate just how powerful mental visualization is.
My wife is a clinical psychologist, and I studied psychology at the graduate level myself. Therefore, I attended a number of seminars on hypnosis, many with her. Under a hypnotic trance, a subject is extremely relaxed and open to suggestion. One sequence while so entranced is to have the subject imagine himself in a lemon grove, to pick a lemon, slice it in half, and squeeze a bit into his mouth and taste the lemon.
The amazing thing is that when you do this, your lips invariably pucker as you imagine the sweet-sour juice from the lemon in your mouth. One theory is that all hypnosis is really self-hypnosis, and anyway to enter yourself is quite easy. In fact, if you found yourself pucker your lips when you thought about the lemon juice now, you self-hypnotized yourself!
But there is more. When in a hypnotic trance, a subject, after some visualization techniques, can be told that a cube of ice applied to their bare skin is red hot. Believe it or not, it can raise a blister on the subject’s skin!
However, one of the most amazing stories I ever heard about the power of mental visualization and self-hypnosis, especially regarding its use in expecting positive results comes from a psychologist by the name of Charles Garfield. I first heard about Garfield from an article in The Wall Street Journal in January 1982. The article said that through visualization techniques and visualizing a positive outcome, Garfield was able to significantly increase the speaking performance of top executives. Later, Garfield wrote a book, Peak Performers, in which he described the following incident.
In Milan, Italy, at a conference on peak performance, Garfield met some Russian scientists who began to discuss their current work. Learning that Garfield was an amateur weightlifter, they invited him to participate in an experiment. They learned that Garfield had been able to bench press 280 lb. They asked him what was the most he thought he could lift. Garfield told them 300 lb. After some encouragement from onlookers, and working up to it, he was good as his word and lifted 300 lb. However, Garfield said that the lift was made with great difficulty and required every ounce of his strength and concentration.
Next, the Russians put Garfield into a very relaxed, hypnotic state and took him through a series of visualization exercises that lasted about an hour. During these exercises, he visualized himself pressing not 300, but 365 lb in the bench press, which to Garfield seemed utterly impossible. However, after this preparation, when told to do so, not only was he able to accomplish the lift, but he felt that it was easier to lift 365 lb than when he had tried to lift 300 lb!5
To use visualization to expect positive results is easy. Sit in your chair or some place that you can relax and simply visualize your goal in every detail. If your goal is to make a speech, then imagine yourself on the stage waiting to be introduced. Hear the introduction given for you. Are there flowers on the dais? Smell their fragrance. Are some waiters still serving coffee? Listen to the sounds they make as they move about the room. Smell the aroma of the coffee. Sip some yourself and savour its taste in your mind. Use all five senses to make the scene as real in your mind as you possibly can.
If you are preparing yourself to give a speech, listen to the applause in your mind as you are called forward to begin your presentation. Imagine looking out into the audience and visualize the eager and expectant looks on the faces of those who are about to listen to you. Now, give your speech in your mind and note the audience’s rapt attention. See yourself connecting with the audience, and see the audience responding to what you have to say and hanging onto every word. Now see yourself coming to a powerful conclusion, and see the audience leaping to their feet to give you a standing ovation in their enthusiasm.
After you have done this once, repeat the whole sequence again. If your project is several days ahead, I recommend repeating it several times a day. The night before your performance, you can repeat it a dozen times or more. You will be pleasantly surprised with the results that you achieve in your presentation by expecting success through mental visualization.
BE WHO YOU ARE – DON’T PRETEND THAT YOU ARE SOMEONE ELSE
You can’t be someone you are not. You’re stuck! We all are. We’re all different, but we all have the potential for being successful.
A.L. Williams, was an $18,000-a-year high school football coach in Georgia in 1977 when he founded a life insurance company based on a new concept. Most insurance companies make their largest sales through emphasizing ordinary life insurance. Williams pointed out that you can buy a lot more insurance for less money with term insurance and you can make even more by investing the difference. Obviously, his competitors were not thrilled.
Williams had no MBA and no corporate business experience. Still, his company became one of the largest of its kind in the world in less than ten years with over $81 billion in individual life insurance. Williams wrote a book on his experiences. Its title was All You Can Do Is All You Can Do, but All You Can Do is Enough! 6 What Williams is telling us with this title is that what we think our
limitations are makes a slight difference. That it is still good enough to reach success and to become wealthy if that is what is desired.
Too many try to be what they are not. They may be kind and thoughtful, and yet are afraid to display these qualities. They may have read management books somewhere that promoted a tough management style. So, they want to be tough. Or maybe they heard that today’s leader should have a participatory style. So, they strive for participation, even when it is inappropriate. Or maybe they try to be overfriendly, when by nature they are more reserved.
One senior vice president told me this story back when Total Quality (TQ) Management was all the rage as the latest management fad. “We hired a team to come in and teach us TQ. They got all the senior and middle managers together for four days. They told us we should all be more open and call each other by our first names. They made us wear big name tags that read ‘Bob’ and ‘Bill’ and ‘Joe’. That’s never been the style in our company, and it certainly wasn’t the boss’s style. Then we were supposed to spend three days coming up with a strategic plan. It was one of the worst experiences I ever had, and I suspect that the same was true for others, including our middle managers. We had to call the president ‘Bob’. It was terrible. I never felt so much tension in relationships with senior leaders in the company. We came up with a plan, but we all knew it was awful. Fortunately, ‘Bob’ recognized it, too. We threw it out and redid the whole thing about four months later. This time, we got real and were ourselves. What a difference! And the conference was a lot more open and free of tension, too!”
It wasn’t that calling senior managers by their first names was so bad. In many organizations that works just fine. Drucker used to tell his graduate students “call me Peter” and we did. It was doing what was not normal in this organization that was the problem.
I once taught the same graduate student at two different schools. One was Claremont Graduate School. There everyone was on a first name basis with professors. The other school was California State University Los Angeles. There professors were always addressed with his or her title as doctor or professor. “How should I address you?” my student asked. “Is it Dr Cohen or Bill?” “That’s easy,” I responded. “When you address me at California State University Los Angeles, you call me Dr Cohen. When you address me at Claremont you call me Bill.” And that’s what we did, and it worked just fine.
MAINTAIN YOUR ENTHUSIASM
Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.”7 Peter Drucker believed even more emotional investment was needed to reach the top. He thought that not only enthusiasm, but that passion was essential with each individual taking responsibility for his or her own results and continued learning.8 Of course, you need to do this yourself as well.
One thing I can assure you is that if you aren’t enthusiastic about something, no one else will be. That’s a fact. You can’t expect others to enthusiastically accept a challenge that you haven’t enthusiastically accepted yourself.
1. Drucker, Peter F. The Practice of Management (New York: Harper & Row, 1955), 194.
2. Grant, Michael. Readings in the Classical Historians (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1992), 101.
3. Xenophon. The Persian Expedition, translated by Rex Warner (Baltimore, MD: Penguin Books, 1949), 104.
4. Powell, Colin L. “Address to Los Angeles Times Management Conference”, 19 March 1993.
5. Garfield, Charles. Peak Performers (New York: Avon, 1986), 71-75.
6. Williams, A.L. All You Can Do Is All You Can Do, but All You Can Do Is Enough! (Nashville, TN: Oliver-Nelson, 1988).
7. Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “Essay X: Circles”. Essays [First Series] (Boston, MA: J. Monro and Co., 1841), https://bit.ly/2KumoNc.
8. “The Passion Puzzle”. Drucker Institute, 27 September 2013, https://bit.ly/2KuCh6b.
CHAPTER 10
TAKING CARE OF YOUR PEOPLE
So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work. Treat every worker as a volunteer because in today’s world of knowledge workers, that’s what they are.
– Peter F. Drucker
When I first wrote about the importance of taking care of your people as one of the eight universal laws of leadership, I thought only of employees or those being led. In fact, I quoted Xenophon, the author of the book Drucker frequently touted as “the first systematic book on leadership written two thousand years ago, and still the best”.1 Xenophon was first to document words to the effect that: “People are only too glad to obey the man who they believe takes wiser thoughts for their interests than they themselves do.”
Later I expanded my thinking about “taking care of your people” to include not only subordinate employees, but customers too. And when I realized that taking care of your people was also a success principle, I expanded the definition to include all people that you meet professionally. Your success is always dependent on others, and if you truly want success, you need to take care of them as well.
HOW FAR SHOULD YOU GO IN TAKING CARE OF YOUR PEOPLE?
How far should you go in taking care of your people? Fortunately, most civilian careers do not normally require someone to lay down his or her life for people to take care of them. Some, such as police, firefighters, and others may do. But make no mistake. The more that you take care of the needs of others, the more they will help you on the way to the top. Of course, this does not mean helping others in unethical or illegal ways or that you should violate your own beliefs or standards in helping them. Years before President Trump, a friend of mine who was serving as a political appointee in Washington at the time explained to me why a senator had opposed and voted against and eventually stopped a nominee of his own political party from getting appointed as Secretary of Defence. My friend said that years before the nominee had publicly attacked the senator unnecessarily, for no reason other than personal disagreement. The nominee had done nothing particularly wrong, but as far as the senator was concerned, it was payback time. It would be nice if everyone would simply turn the other cheek, as Jesus advised, when disrespected or treated poorly. However, that’s unlikely to happen. You may dislike someone, but you should still need to treat them fairly, honestly, and with respect.
DOES IT REALLY HAPPEN?
They say that Thomas Watson, who founded IBM and later instituted extensive programmes in education, healthcare, and recreation for IBM employees was continually visiting his factories and spent hours talking to his employees. On one occasion, he told an employee, “If you have any problem at all, let me know.”
Later, the employee came to New York and asked to see Watson. On being ushered in to Watson’s office, he told Watson that his younger brother had an incurable disease and he had been told he would not live long. Remembering Watson’s promise, he asked whether anything could be done that was beyond the medical resources of his small community. Watson had the brother put in a top hospital under the care of a famous specialist.
At this point, the employee began to feel a little guilty that perhaps he had overstepped Watson’s invitation and he began to apologize to Watson. But, Watson interrupted him. “When I said bring your problems to me, I meant exactly that.”2
IF YOU WANT TO TAKE CARE OF YOUR PEOPLE, DO THESE THINGS
Normally, your duties will not require you to take care of your people to the extent that Watson did. However, the idea is on target. If you want to be someone that aims for the top like Drucker, here is my advice to you:
• Be the one others turn to when things go wrong
• Give others’ needs priority over your own needs
• Really care
• Assume the responsibility
• Share the gain.
BE THE ONE OTHERS TURN TO WHEN THINGS GO WRONG
It doesn’t make much difference whether it is your responsibility or not. Of course, if it is, it is more important. When the chips are down and times are difficult is when others really watch
to see what you do. Do you really take care of your people, or is it all for show?
MR FEUERSTEIN HAD A ROUGH BIRTHDAY
Age or other factors have little to do with this concept. You either take care of your people, no matter how bad the situation, or you do not. A man from Lawrence, Massachusetts named Aaron Feuerstein did, and the situation was indeed bad. On the night of 11 December 1995, while Feuerstein was celebrating his 70th birthday, his factory, Malden Mills, suffered a major fire and destruction.
Malden Mills was a complex of nine buildings, and it employed 2,400 semi-skilled workers. Most of them were immigrants. The company, which manufactured upholstery and synthetic winter-wear fabrics, was one of the largest employers in the region. Feuerstein’s grandfather, a Jewish immigrant from Eastern Europe, founded it in 1906. Feuerstein had earlier problems with Malden Mills. He had laboriously worked the company out of Chapter 11 reorganization and saved the company in the early 1980s. He had a reputation for taking care of his people and in paying what some termed the best wages in the textile industry. Productivity had practically tripled prior to the fire.
His losses in the fire were significant. One of three boilers exploded in a building where nylon velvet materials for chairs and other furnishings were made. Not only was this building destroyed, but three of his nine buildings were levelled. Thirty-three workers were injured, 13 of them severely. Almost half his work force had no work.
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