Power_ Why Some People Have Itand Others Don't - Jeffrey Pfeffer [33]
The late Reginald Lewis was a successful African American corporate lawyer and founder of a buyout firm, TLC Group. TLC bought the McCall Pattern Company in the early 1980s and, under Lewis’s turnaround efforts, returned investors 90 times their money. TLC later bought Beatrice Foods, creating the first black-owned company with revenues of over $1 billion and making Lewis one of the wealthiest people in the United States. But back in 1965, Lewis wasn’t someone with a prominent place in African American business history. He didn’t have an international law program at Harvard and an African American history museum in Maryland named after him.2 He was just a young man from a tough Baltimore neighborhood who was graduating from Virginia State University and had set his sights on going to Harvard Law School. During that summer he was in a Rockefeller Foundation–funded program at Harvard Law School for high-potential college students designed to interest them in careers in the law and help them prepare for the application process. There was just one problem—one of the rules of the program was that no one who participated could even be considered for admission to Harvard Law School. Moreover, Lewis had not taken the Law School Aptitude Test, or even applied to Harvard Law, and he wanted to start the program that fall.
Even as he was doing well in the summer program by expending enormous effort and standing out in the mock court trial to such an extent that 30 years later professors still talked about his performance, Lewis met with a Harvard Law professor and then with the dean of admissions. With these faculty members he pressed his case by forcefully arguing “the myriad ways an association between Reginald Lewis and the law school would be mutually beneficial.”3 At the end of the summer, Reggie Lewis matriculated at Harvard Law School, becoming the only person in the history of the school who was admitted before he filled out an application.
Both Reginald Lewis and Keith Ferrazzi understood that the worst that could happen from asking for something would be getting turned down. And if they were turned down, so what? They would not be any worse off than if they had not asked in the first place. If they didn’t ask or if they were refused, they would not receive what they sought, but at least with asking, there was some hope. Some people do believe that worse things could occur: that their bold behavior could offend those exposed to it and they could develop a “bad reputation.” Probably not, and the risk of standing out is well worth taking, as we are about to see.
ASKING WORKS
Asking often works. After reading the Keith Ferrazzi case, one student in my class decided to ask the head of the London-based consulting firm recruiting him to have a meal together once a year. The head of the firm not only agreed but suggested a lunch once a month and also volunteered to be this former student’s mentor. Another individual, Logan, was working at Deloitte Consulting while the firm was being reorganized. Logan, a talented person with a good reputation in the Atlanta office, would be getting a boss who didn’t know him. The new boss was coming to town to meet with everyone for 30 minutes as part of a get-acquainted visit. Logan called the guy and commented that since he had to have lunch anyway, why not have lunch together? The new boss agreed and Logan used the opportunity to start forging a positive, personal relationship with his new boss.
Asking Works, but People Find It Uncomfortable
Asking for help is something people often avoid. First of all, it’s inconsistent with the American emphasis on self-reliance. Second, people are afraid of rejection because of what getting turned down might do to their self-esteem. Third, requests for help are based on their likelihood of being granted: why ask for something like a meeting or dinner once a year if you are certain the answer is going to be no? The problem is that people underestimate the chances