Winning - Jack Welch [102]
There were countless other mentors who helped me in my career, from the executive education teacher who tried to teach me public speaking when I was twenty-six, to the young woman in PR who tried to teach me the Internet when I was sixty. But let me just add to the list one more mentor that can work for everyone: the business media.
Business is like any game. It has players, a language, a complex history, rules, controversies, and a rhythm.
The media covers it all, and from every angle. From my earliest days in Plastics, I learned mountains about business just by reading every financial newspaper and magazine I could get my hands on. From them, I picked up what deals worked and which failed, and why. I followed people’s careers. I tried to understand what kinds of strategic moves were criticized and which were praised. I kept up with different industries, from chemicals to medical technology.
And I used what I read. I learned, for instance, about PepsiCo’s executive training program from an article in Fortune magazine. I was so impressed by PepsiCo’s model—which used the company’s own executives as teachers—that I built it into the foundation of our training program in Crotonville.
I didn’t believe everything I read, of course, and the more I knew, the more I realized that some articles were off the mark in their analyses. Regardless, I still believe the business media is such a good teacher that I am always amazed when I meet a young person who doesn’t just consume it. Don’t let that happen—this mentor is right there for the taking!
My point is that mentors are everywhere. Don’t just settle for the mentor assigned to you as part of a formal program. Those official mentors teach you the company ropes, but they’re just a start. The best mentors help you in unplanned, unscripted ways. Relish all that they give you in whatever form they come.
Don’t be a downer. The fourth and final way to help yourself get promoted is as hard or as easy as you make it—have a positive attitude and spread it around.
Yes, it’s nothing more sophisticated than that. Have a sense of humor, be fun to hang out with. Don’t be a bore or a sourpuss. Don’t act important, or worse, pompous. Smack yourself in the head if you start taking yourself too seriously.
In politics, people talk about each candidate’s likability factor, which is just another way of saying “personality appeal.” Both of those terms refer to something intangible, but they really matter—in politics and at work.
Obviously, being a congenial, upbeat person will not get you ahead by itself. You need everything else we’ve just talked about—great results, expanded job horizons, good character, visibility, mentors, and all the rest. But it is very, very hard to get ahead without being a positive person because, very simply, no one likes to work under or near a dark cloud. Even if the “cloud” is very smart.
I know it is not easy to always be upbeat. Life doesn’t always go your way. But every time you feel yourself spreading gloom at work, think of Jimmy Dunne.
Jimmy was a senior executive at Sandler O’Neill & Partners, the investment banking firm that was located on the 104th floor of the World Trade Center’s south tower. On September 11, sixty-eight of the staff’s 177 employees were killed, including the company’s founder, Herman Sandler, and its lead partner, Chris Quackenbush. Overnight, Jimmy became the CEO of a company that was literally and emotionally decimated.
Jimmy was, of course, grief-stricken by the firm’s incalculable human tragedy, and distraught over the deaths of two of his closest friends, Herman and Chris. But today he will tell you that he knew one thing would prevent the firm from shutting down and the disaster worsening—a can-do attitude.*
“All I did after 9/11 was walk around, consoling people, talking about how we were going to survive and rebuild,” he said recently.
As he hired to replace Sandler O’Neill’s lost employees, Jimmy looked for people who were upbeat, positive, and as undaunted as humanly