PEr Chronicles: Respect the people

So far in 2021, almost all of the buzz in fiction has been around young women. This year’s Rathbones prize featured only one man on a shortlist of eight. A generation ago the shortlists were dominated by men. This has changed, the energy, as anyone in the publishing world will tell you, is with women.

I’ll say this: working with such a diverse group of people in my earlier days, most of them women, actually gave me insight into something far more important than how to be a leader. I built a level of trust with a majority of people in my team. I knew their names and their kids’ names, and I made it a point to ask their opinions about things going on with the business. I respected them, and in return, I think they trusted and respected me.

Everything we accomplished was a group effort. Any of our job descriptions might have been fluid enough, and we helped one another when and however we would.

If you give without the expectation of gain, you receive much more in return. There’s just no better test of the quality of someone’s character than how they receive, and also how they give.

If you don’t work as a team, you’re nowhere. The problem with most people is they don’t listen. Sometimes I had to tell people things ten times until they got it right. And when that happened, I could tell immediately I just had the wrong person in the job.

There’s a fine line between being competitive and overcompetitive, between winning when it counts and when no one’s counting – and some people cross that line with alarming frequency. Let’s be clear: I’m not disparaging competitiveness. But if we’re guilty of putting down other people, it’s our stealthy way of positioning them beneath us (ie it’s all about winning). If we withhold information, it’s to give ourselves an edge over others. (again, winning). And so on. So many things we do to annoy people stem from needlessly trying to be alpha male (or female) in any situation – ie, the winner.

There are leaders who still retain remnants of the top-down management style where their job was to tell everyone what to do. These leaders are smart enough to realize that the world has changed, and most of their subordinates know more in specific areas than they ever will. But old habits die hard. It is extremely difficult for successful people to listen to other people tell them something that they already know without communicating somehow that (a) “we already knew that” and (b) “we know a better way.”  But the higher up you go in the organization, the more you need to make other people winners and not make it about winning yourself.

Another variation of our need to win is telling the world how smart we are. We need to win people’s admiration. We need to be the smartest person in the room. It usually backfires. I have news for you: being smart turns people on. Announcing how smart you are turns them off.

My belief is that you can always teach people how to do things. What you cannot teach people is how to understand other people. If someone does not understand people, that person might as well just go in another direction because they are never going to get it right.

I never evaluated people based on their gender, race, religion, and any other bias. What I learned was more important about people was their attitude and their integrity.

I have always been aware of my own shortcomings and have never had a problem admitting them or taking the advice of experts. I believe honest self-evaluation and the ability to listen to others has been one of my greatest strengths, one that has served me well over the years. If someone had a better idea than mine, of course I would adopt that. I really didn’t care if I didn’t get credit. I didn’t need credit; I needed success.