Creative Reaction

“Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain - and most fools do. But it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving.” -Dale Carnegie

It seems few people today realize that Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, written in 1936, details in hundreds of anecdotes how management skills and “people skills” were leveraged by some of the richest men of that era.

One of the principles that struck me was that truly great people easily forgive. A passage from the book:
“Sincere appreciation was one of the secrets of the first John D. Rockefeller’s success in handling men. For example, when one of his partners, Edward T. Bedford, lost a million dollars for the firm by a bad buy in South America, John D. might have criticized; but he knew Bedford had done his best - and the incident was closed. So Rockefeller found something to praise; he congratulated Bedford because he had been able to save 60 percent of the money he had invested. ‘That’s splendid,’ said Rockefeller. ‘We don’t always do as well as that upstairs.’”
(Of course, in 1936, a million dollars represented considerably more money than it does today.)

Another quote from the book:
“A great man shows his greatness,” said (Thomas) Carlyle , “by the way he treats little men.”

But this tops them all!
“Bob Hoover, a famous test pilot and frequent performer at air shows, was returning to his home in Los Angeles from an air show in San Diego. As described in the magazine Flight Operations, at three hundred feet in the air, both engines suddenly stopped. By deft maneuvering he managed to land the plane, but it was badly damaged although nobody was hurt.

Hoover’s first act after the emergency landing was to inspect the airplane’s fuel. Just as he suspected, the World War II propeller plane he had been flying had been fueled with jet fuel rather than gasoline.

Upon returning to the airport, he asked to see the mechanic who had serviced his airplane. The young man was sick with the agony of his mistake. Tears streamed down his face as Hoover approached. He had just caused the loss of a very expensive plane and could have caused the loss of three lives as well.

You can imagine Hoover’s anger. One could anticipate the tonguelashing that this proud and precise pilot would unleash for that carelessness. But Hoover didn’t scold the mechanic; he didn’t even criticize him. Instead, he put his big arm around the man’s shoulder and said, ‘To show you I’m sure that you’ll never do this again, I want you to service my F-51 tomorrow.’”

Our work environments could be vastly better places if we learned from this example.