Being Nice Makes Good Business Sense

Several years ago I was getting ready to interview with a law firm in New York. It was my first interview ever as a law student and I was pretty nervous. I was trying to get on an elevator as the door was closing and I saw a woman rushing towards it. I reached quickly for the button to open the elevator and was able to get the door to re-open at the last second. The woman got on and told me which floor to push, and I did this for her as well. The woman was very heavy and was not particularly well-dressed. We were going to a very high floor and there were several stops along the way.

At one of the stops, I started looking over my hair because I could see my reflection in the glass in the elevator. I looked up and saw the woman looking directly at me, and she smirked as if to say I looked ridiculous primping in the elevator.

At that point in my life I lifted weights frequently and spent a lot of time at the gym. I taught myself it was important to stick up for myself at all costs. Normally, what I would have done was turn around and tell the woman to mind her own business. On that occasion, however, my nervousness must have gotten the best of me. I turned around and looked directly at the woman.

”Do I look ok? I am going to an interview and I am a little nervous. I want to do a good job.”

The woman looked absolutely stunned. The way she looked at me had invited me to strike out and attack. Instead, I had done the opposite.

”Yes, you do. Just pull your tie up a little. I am sure you’ll do fine.”

This woman ended up being in charge of the hiring committee at the law firm. She was reputed to be extremely difficult as an interviewer and did not like anyone. In my interview, she was very nice to me. I ended up getting the job at the firm and working in this same law firm over the summer. The woman was nice to me during the summer as well and stood up for me. In fact, she was one of the nicest people in the law firm I can remember.

There is really something to being nice. When you are nice to people, you invite them to be nice in return. However, most often we are less interested in being nice than we are in being thought of as important, powerful, or right.

Given the incredible number of experiences I have had over and over again in my life, I am confident there are various forms of energy we simply do not understand. I firmly believe when you send out negative energy, it comes right back to you. I also believe when you send out positive energy, it comes back to you as well.

One of my favorite books of all time is The Richest Man in Babylon. One of the rules in this book is that when you make money you are supposed to give away 10 percent of it to charity or some other good cause. The idea is when you give away 10 percent of your income, you will realize how much abundance there is and you will become less attached to money.

While the book makes this point, and I believe there is truth to it, there is another important point about giving away money as well. When you help and give to others you create positive energy which is directed back at you. There is nothing more important than having positive energy directed back at you. The more positive energy you have directed at you, the better your life and everything in it is going to be.

The word ”appreciation” is, to me, one of the more interesting words in the English language. What appreciation means essentially is positive energy directed towards something. For example, when a stock appreciates it means people are excited about it and its value rises. When you are appreciated it means people like you and the value you bring them. Anything that appreciates takes on more value than it originally had. Things typically take on more value when others are excited about them for one reason or another.

You want to be appreciated. You need to be appreciated. Being appreciated means others are seeing and recognizing your value. When people see your value, you get more opportunities and your career and your life can only improve.

Think about things you appreciate in your life and the people who appreciate you. You appreciate these people and things because of how they make you feel. When we are babies, the only things we think about are our needs and taking care of those needs, specifically our need for food and comfort. We do not yet have the capacity to appreciate the needs of others. As we grow older we learn how our actions affect others positively or negatively. We learn we can make others happy or sad. We begin to learn how our ability to make others happy has an effect on our own happiness.

The world exists as exchanges of energy. If negative energy goes out then negative energy comes back. If someone robs a liquor store, the police come after the person and incarcerate him or her. If someone makes a large financial donation to a good cause, the newspapers write about this person’s generosity for all to know. There is a constant interplay between positive and negative energy in the world, and you want to be on the receiving end of positive energy. This is really the only decent place to be. When positive energy comes to us, we feel better and the world is a better place to us. This simple rule is so easy to follow.

We exist in a consumer-driven society where so many of our desires are shaped by things outside of us. For example, many people evaluate their happiness based on their material possessions. People strive to earn the money to purchase the best house and car they can. They want nice furniture and watches. They want to travel to the best places. Many people evaluate their own self worth based on their ability to accumulate these possessions. This is the way of the Western world. What this sort of consumer culture does, however, is focus almost exclusively on the act of accumulating various things. It does not emphasize the act of putting out positive energy and instead bases everything on taking in energy. This constant taking in often violates laws of the universe which demand equal exchanges between opposite forms of energy. Instead of being focused on taking things in, we need to be focused on putting out positive energy.

This brings me back to the act of being nice. Several years ago, I was listening to Deepak Chopra speak and he was making a similar point. He said whenever he visits someone’s home, he always brings them a flower. In bringing people a flower, he is trying to set up a dynamic of being nice and sending out positive energy. Sending out positive energy is something that comes back to you every single time.

There is a best selling career book called Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office. The message of this book is if you worry about offending others, are forthright when explaining information, and make sure your decisions are popular, you will never get ahead. The idea behind the book is that in being nice to others you will not be successful. I believe the opposite is true. When you are nice to others you send out the sort of energy which gets you ahead.

Some years ago I was at a seminar and met a woman who had been a partner at a large and important law firm, but had quit after a year. She was now a real estate agent and I got the sense she was struggling a little. She told me about how she had been working with the law firm and did not become partner until she demanded it and turned mean. She told me people had walked all over her in her job until she became mean. When I asked her to give me some examples, she did not have any. She simply said they did not make her partner.

I think the woman ended up getting fired from her job within a year of making partner. She had worked for the firm for almost 10 years, and within a year of deciding the best thing for her to do was to become ”a bitch,” she had lost her job. Being mean simply does not work.

I have seen this happen in my own life and with people who have worked for me as well. Recently, I had someone working for me who was extremely competent in all respects. The person was working very close with me and I was extremely impressed. For some reason, however, this person could not get along with others outside my office. One day, she called and screamed at a co-worker for no apparent reason. She also refused to follow instructions. Somehow, she’d come to believe it was good to be mean to others, to attack others savagely, and to not follow orders. The person was quickly let go despite her competence in other areas.

Who knows how this person rationalized losing her job to herself? If she had just been nice to others she would still be happily employed. Instead, this person ended up losing her job and poisoning the people around her who were working for her in the process. When someone sends out negative energy, it does a lot of damage.

You need to be nice to others. This is the most important thing you can do in your job. Let the negative energy of others flow right through you and be nice in response. The way to get ahead is to be liked, not feared and hated.

We want to work with people who are nice. Companies need people who are nice. It is important to be nice. I want to be very clear that by being nice I am not talking about being a doormat. When you are nice and place the needs of others on the same level as your own, you are simply being smart. Being nice is the smartest thing you can possibly do in your career.

The Importance of Culture in Organizations

What You Will Learn An organization culture relates to your success and happiness. In any business environment, when the employee and employer are on the same plane, success is much more likely. When making a lateral move, it is important to select your employer based on your preference of work culture. The key to defining job satisfaction is to determine which culture suits you the best. You need to feel comfortable and appreciated in your work environment.

Employees’ level of success and overall happiness has more to do with a particular culture (which is sometimes also referred to as the personality of an organization) than with any other factor. This article discusses (a) the importance of organizational culture, (b) why some employees do not give strong consideration to culture, (c) the reason that failure to seriously consider culture prematurely ends many careers, and (d) why making a lateral move provides the best opportunity to evaluate culture and the course of your career.Just as the work, salary, and prestige level can vary from employer to employer, the cultures within each organization can be very different. Consider the following examples:

• There are organizations in which style is definitely valued over substance.
• There are organizations in which substance is definitely valued over style.
• There are organizations in which people wander around in Birkenstocks and call each other ‘dude’.
• There are organizations in which employees are expected to call superiors ‘Mister’ and ‘Ms.’.
• There are organizations in which employees need to make appointments with superiors before speaking with them.
• There are organizations in which supervisors chew tobacco in the office and during meetings.
• There are organizations that value your having string family connections more than your work ability.
• There are organizations that are extremely secretive with their employees.
• There are organizations that believe everyone who puts in a solid effort over the course of six or seven years should be promoted.
• There are organizations in which employees work around thirty hours per week, which is considered a good effort.
• There are organizations in which employees are hired and are then almost universally encouraged to leave after five or six years of service.
• There are organizations that have been collapsing for years, but which portray themselves to employees as strong and secure.

I could go on and on. Suffice it to say, however, that your success and happiness in your career may have more to do with your thoughtful and intelligent decision to join an organization that best fits you culturally. People simply want to be around people they like, and when people like each other in the workplace, both sides of the relationship benefit.

OBSERVATION:

We all have certainly heard that Albert Einstein flunked out of grade school. Perhaps Einstein was too concerned with the theoretical rather than the practical. Whatever the reason was, Einstein simply did not experience success in the environment he was in at the time because the school, and the people in it, could not understand or appreciate where he was coming from intellectually. Do the employees in your organization understand where you are coming from? In a business environment, when the employee and the employer see eye to eye, success is far more likely than in situations where they do not.

Employees Often Fail to Give Strong Consideration to Culture When Choosing an Employer.

The problem with the way many employees manage their careers is that, when choosing a job, they are motivated primarily by prestige and money, more so than by the cultures of the organizations they are considering.

When an employee instead evaluates offers based upon where she believes she fits in the best, that employee is far more likely to find happiness and success in her career. The problem, however, is that most employees simply do not think this way, the reason being that employees are competitive by nature, and “fitting in” is not nearly as easy to quantify as things like money, company cars, etc.

In almost all respects, it is most difficult to gain the best positions with the largest, most prestigious, and highest-paying employers. Yet, the pressure to join these organizations typically commences while an individual is in school.

The problem with this type of thinking is that it can often lead employees to make horrible career decisions. If an employee is always thinking in terms of what he can do to look best to others, he will often neglect what is best for him personally. None of this is to say that there are not numerous advantages to come from being part of a truly significant organization. Nonetheless, this should not be the only consideration on which an employee bases his career choices.

OBSERVATION:

Many people, in fact, have subordinated much of their happiness in life in pursuit of money, respect, power, and admiration from their peers. This leads many people to base their entire concept of happiness on things like having the largest house, the most expensive car, and other traditional accouterments of the American Dream.

Failing to Consider Culture Ends Many Careers Prematurely–

Careers that Could Have Otherwise Been Highly Successful.

It is easy to find out an organization’s compensation structure, but this is a simple and superficial distinction to make between organizations. It is not as easy to gauge an organization’s prestige level; however, it is much more difficult to evaluate a organization’s culture and whether that working in that culture will keep you happy over the course of your career.

One of the largest mistakes employees make when evaluating competing offers from organizations is believing that money is the most important factor they should be considering. While money is certainly an important component of any analysis, it is not the most important factor. Making any career decision solely based on money can be a horrible mistake. If you properly assess all variables, including culture, and you choose the right organization, you may have a stable career and life. If you go to an organization just because of monetary considerations, you may wind up so disgruntled that you are eventually not working at all.

OBSERVATION:

On a day-to-day basis, in each of our offices, we speak with employees who began their careers with ultra-prestigious, high-paying law firms. Many of these attorneys stopped practicing law two to seven years into their careers because they became disillusioned. Most of these lawyers say things like “I would never work in another law firm. I would only work as an in-house attorney. The résumés of these attorneys are sometimes littered with one firm job after another, where the next and then the next firm were virtually identical in terms of culture to the very first firm that the attorney joined right out of law school. Of course these attorneys are not happy practicing in a law firm. They have only worked for one type of law firm during their entire career. The problem is that these attorneys have worked in a firm culture that was such a bad fit for them that they never got the opportunity to experience practicing law with a group of people they like, respect, and emotionally profit from. Not all law firms are the same. Fitting in with the community of lawyers that make up a particular firm is the key to long-term success and satisfaction in law firm life. Not fitting in is often the key to failure, and can even lead to one changing one’s career path altogether.

Consider the choice of where to live, and compare the process of making that decision with choosing to join any particular firm or organization. Some people prefer the lifestyle in New York to Los Angeles, or prefer San Francisco to Seattle. Preference for one city or neighborhood is entirely personal and individual. The considerations are whether we feel accepted and appreciated in a community and whether we see people around us that share similar goals and aspirations. Whether that community supports and enhances your lifestyle becomes a driving force in your deciding where to live. And, just like you need to feel that you can thrive in the community in which you live, you should feel that you can thrive in the environment in which you work.

You should constantly ask yourself these questions: Is this organization a place where I will feel accepted? Will I be surrounded by people with the same values and goals? Will this organization complement my lifestyle? Boiled down, what is the culture of the organization?

Making a Lateral Move is Your Best Chance to Find Your Perfect Firm Culture

Many of our candidates, when preparing for an interview, want help identifying those questions that will help them unearth the true culture at a firm. In short form, the question that needs to be answered for each lawyer and every employee is simply, “Will I like it at this firm or organization?” Unfortunately, try as we might, we cannot always answer these questions as well as we would like. The culture of a firm may vary from practice group to practice group, and it is impossible to pin down with any meaningful certainty whether or not a good firm is always a good fit. Often, the only way to learn this is to actually go to the interviews and speak with the attorneys or individuals you may be working with.

It’s important to remember that the interview process for a lateral move is much different from when a law student interviews for a summer clerkship. This is a plus. Unlike summer associate openings, which can sometimes number in excess of 100, when a law firm conducts a lateral search many candidates are interviewing for one, or possibly two available openings. In these situations the law firm is not as concerned with competing for any one particular candidate. Conversely, when a firm is in a heightened state of competitiveness, it can sometimes be more difficult for the lawyer interviewing for the job to get a sense of whether the particular law firm is comprised of people with whom the lawyer would want to spend the rest of his or her career. But this is the kind of firm you should be seeking. Keep your best interests at heart, and do everything you possibly can to ensure that you find a good fit. Obviously, your task is to get the job; however, you also need to understand the firm’s culture. At BCG we have identified several ways in which you can evaluate whether a particular firm is right for you.

Preparation is the First Key to Evaluating Culture.

You’ve gotten an interview. Before the interview, you should research as much as possible to determine the objective factors: How big is the office? What is the salary? In our opinion, this objective fact gathering is helpful in determining how well the firm or organization is doing financially, and how it has grown over time.

Diversity. It may also be important for you to look at the firm’s or organization’s commitment to diversity. We don’t know of any organization that doesn’t have an anti-discrimination policy. However, some organizations are more proactive in this area than others. Is it important to you that there are employees of color or of various sexual orientations?

Location, location, location. Where is the office located? Of all these factors, we find that this tends to be the least important factor in evaluating culture. A California company known for having employees that wear Birkenstock sandals around the office might have a New York office with that same type of atmosphere. However, even in Hawaii or Miami, there are going to be radical distinctions amongst organizations. These distinctions are important. The city makes little difference, in regards to the type of culture that exists within the organization. There are laid-back firms and organizations in Chicago that are down the block from offices where you wouldn’t think of entering without wearing your most formal business attire. The key is identifying and understanding the various cultures of the organizations themselves.

Governance. How an organization conducts its day-to-day business is important. Employees have to run the business of their organization, and how they choose to structure the organization can say a lot about its culture. The business model often reveals the core values of the organization. Generally, organizations are governed in one of several ways:

The democratic organization allows each employee to become involved in the decision-making, regarding anything from new hires to compensation to long-term planning. For many organizations, the democracy may only include supervisors, so it is not necessarily realistic that a junior employee will be making high-level management decisions, or even weighing in with an opinion. However, many democratically run organizations do have some level of junior involvement within the organization’s governance, such as on pro bono committees or with respect to summer associate entertaining and recruiting. This type of culture is entirely inclusive, although sometimes it is the result of too much administration bogging down each individual lawyer’s already heavy workload. The values reflected here are participation and integration, which may come at the cost of expediency and/or consistency.

Many organizations govern using a small, centralized committee of decision makers, which results in greater consistency, in terms of vision and management. However, this culture is more exclusive in terms of firm governance, which may turn off the young attorney or employee who wants to be a part of the decision-making and planning efforts of an organization. In this system of governance, it’s important to find out how the leaders are chosen and the values they hold dear.

At the end of the day, however, what is more important than the method of governance is the reason behind why a particular organization chooses the business model it does. Asking an organization’s superiors why things are the way they are helps define an organization’s culture and vision for the future. If you hear that the goals of the business match yours, you have likely found a culture in which you will be succeed and be happy.

Word on the Street. You probably know the reputation of the organization where you’re interviewing. Is it known around town as a sweatshop or a quality-of-life organization? BE CAREFUL! Even if a reputation is mostly on target, you could end up joining a practice area or working with a partner that is decidedly unlike the overall firm or business culture.

“Lifestyle” or “quality-of-life” are other ways the business community may refer to a certain organization. These terms have become somewhat hackneyed of late, but still have value in terms of defining a particular organization. A quality-of-life organization is fairly self-explanatory, which is to say that the organization has placed a premium on allowing associates to have lives outside of work. What does that mean? Sometimes, it means a slightly lower billable hour requirement than at other firms. Other times, it may mean that the firm’s or organization’s management is more amenable to situations other than typical full-time associate positions, including part-time, telecommuting, flex-time, or non-partnership track. The popularity of this term has caused it to be somewhat diluted. Don’t take these types of labels at face value, and investigate what that term means within a particular firm.

Again, be careful. Sometimes attorneys and job seekers interviewing for a position swing too far in terms of evaluating. Spending all of your time in this process wondering, “What can the law firm or business do for me?” will prevent you from showing a potential employer that you are a good match for it. This is a two-way street, so showing a law firm or other organization what you are made of is just as important during an interview as evaluating the organization.

Conclusions

The key to true job satisfaction is determining which organization’s culture suits you and your career. Finding the right culture will allow you to find a job that won’t feel like work. What is going to make the difference over time is not a $5,000 per year salary differential, but whether or not you feel comfortable and appreciated in a particular environment. No matter what the reputation of the organization is, going through the process of discovering who the people are and what they think of you and your skills will be the best indicators of your potential long-term satisfaction and success.

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If My Boss Gets Mad at Me or I Get a Poor Review, Does This Mean I Should Look for a New Job?

What You Will Learn The people who can improve in response to criticism are the strongest people of all and the ones to whom great things happen. Those who confront their weaknesses are the ones who achieve great things. Having your weaknesses pointed out to you gives you an opportunity to be pushed to higher levels of performance. You are lucky to have bosses and others who care enough to motivate you to improve yourself.

Fortunate are the people who find themselves in situations where their bosses are demanding of them.  I say this in all seriousness and for several reasons.  At the outset, I want to caution you this article is not for the faint of heart. It’s for individuals who take their careers and lives seriously.  You have chosen to be part of the working world and put the futures of individuals and companies on the line based on the quality of your skills.  So it is time you faced some cold, hard truths.

When I was younger, I attended a very demanding private high school.  I also took the hardest classes I could.  Most of my former classmates are quite successful today, leading in the professions of law, medicine, and other pursuits.  I remember when I was in high school working almost every school night until 12:30 or 1:00 a.m. on homework.  I also remember being just an above average student and getting tons of criticism from my teachers. My writing was good but could be better. I needed to be more punctual about arriving for practice. When I did math problems, I needed to spell out the proofs of each problem much more carefully. I needed to do this. I did that poorly. I should spend more time reviewing the punctuation before turning in my Spanish homework.

In retrospect, I know all of these criticisms were about things that were true.  At the time, I think what I did is something we all do.  Instead of making sure I was accountable for every error, I found fault with the teachers and coaches who criticized me, even looking for reasons to find fault with them personally.  I even complained about my school and teachers to other students, trying to make them see these criticisms of me were totally unjustified.  When we do not like what we hear, we often attack the messenger, don’t we?  This is perfectly normal.

When I went to college, I was still somewhat angry with my high school but took everything in stride.  I did not change anything I was doing in terms of studying and continued working hard in all my classes.  A mere three years after graduating from high school, I remember being informed by my college (a top-ten college) that I had been nominated by the school for a Rhodes Scholarship because my grades were so good.  I remember being very surprised when the school told me they had only nominated four or five students for this award–I still thought of myself as an average student.  College had been much easier for me than high school.

What I realized then, and understand now is when the bar is raised for people, those who try to jump over it get stronger.  You often become so strong you do not even know it until you are competing in another field.  The high school I went to was training its students to “go to the Olympics,” both academically and in life.  I simply did not know it at the time.

Up until a few years ago, I used to stop at a gas station to get some coffee each morning on my way to work.  The gas station was near a public high school in Los Angeles, and the owner spent a lot of time defending his gas station against kids trying to steal this or that from his store.  In addition, kids were always loitering outside the gas station, smoking cigarettes, passing unseen items between their hands, and making lots of noise.  If I happened to drive by that gas station later in the day, kids from the high school were still horsing around and up to no good, when they probably should’ve been in class.

I do not need to wonder–because I already know the answer–if the teachers of these students were always waiting in the wings with one criticism or another of their student’s work.  I would venture to say the teachers probably never went so far as to hover over these students and make sure they were doing their best.  I doubt any of these students went to top colleges, and I am pretty confident none of them will ever be nominated for Rhodes Scholarships.

I am also 100-percent confident that each of those students, if placed in the right environment, would be capable of great things.  The right environment would encourage these students and would also raise expectations of them.  What we believe we can do is very important.  What I am willing to bet, though, is that no one had much hope for these high school students hanging out in front of the gas station.  Because no one had any hope for them, I knew nothing good would happen to them.

What would have happened to these students if someone had set goals for them and made them accountable?

There are very few people in our lives who will believe in us.  For most people, taking the time to give someone honest appraisal is not a fun thing to do.  People simply do not enjoy being criticized, and criticizing others is not a great way to make friends.  There are also very few people who are willing to work hard to better themselves and overcome criticism.  The people who can improve in response to criticism are the strongest people of all. 

Certainly no one is perfect right out of law school, and anyone who disagrees is mistaken. I remember when I was a summer associate in a New York law firm and the firm gave me a stinging review that scared the pants off me.  I could not believe it.  I also remember speaking with the associates in the firm about their reviews at a big dinner.  While I did not speak with all of them, roughly half said they had received good reviews, and the other half willingly admitted their reviews were poor.  At the end of the summer, the strangest thing happened:  the people who had supposedly gotten good reviews did not get offers, and the ones who had received the poor reviews did.  This was in the mid-1990s, when the legal economy was in shambles!

When a class of associates joins a law firm, it is likely only one or two of them will still be there when it comes time to make partners.  This could be one or two people out of a class of 75.  The truth is that the 73 or 74 out of 75 people who are no longer there:

“ not because they have been fired,
“ not because the firm is a horrible place,
“ not because one partner is unfair,
“ not because the firm does not have opportunities available,
“ not because working in-house is better,
“ not because they have always dreamed of doing other things outside the law, and
“ not because the work is boring.

The reason most of these people leave is they do not want to–or cannot–change in response to criticism.  It is very difficult for most people to confront their weaknesses.  Most people choose to go through life not confronting their weaknesses, and this is fine.  However, those who do are the ones who achieve great things.

One of the biggest problems law firms encounter when hiring new attorneys is that most new attorneys believe they are special.  Having attended law school and been admitted to the bar, many of these attorneys expect their first employers to do a lot of ego-stroking, telling them what good attorneys they are and how unique they are, for example.  I have seen this happen on more occasions than I can count.

There is nothing wrong with this attitude.  It only becomes a problem when the attorney or law student is not strong enough to accept criticism.  Unfortunately, law schools, colleges, and others do not prepare budding attorneys for the criticism they will eventually face, and they often cannot handle it.  Yet taking criticism is a perfectly normal part of becoming a functioning attorney.

When I was practicing law, I often had opportunities to go up against more experienced attorneys, several of whom had been practicing 30 or more years longer than I.  I never lost a case against one of these attorneys. However, because I was young and just starting out, the cases were never that complex and my opponents not all that formidable.  In these cases, I went up against attorneys from small law firms that did not have particularly good reputations.  The difference between the work I did and the work these attorneys did was profound.  Their work would typically be littered with typos.  Their legal arguments would often be poorly thought-out and just plain wrong.  I knew in almost all cases the work these attorneys produced would not even come close to getting out the door at the law firms where I practiced.

When you consider this example, you should realize it does not differ from the example of my high school and their established standards.  Contrast a first-rate, demanding high school with a poor one.  Contrast a good law firm with a poor one.  The difference between first-rate organizations and poor ones–and the people they produce–often comes down to two concepts:

ACCOUNTABILITY AND STANDARDS OF PERFORMANCE

The levels of accountability and standards of performance an organization has for its people make a huge difference in the final quality of what is produced by that organization.  The more accountable the organization holds the people in it, the better the organization.  The better the organization, the higher the work standards of its employees and the better they will do, no matter where they find themselves.

I recently read the biography of Jack Welch, former Chief Executive Officer of General Electric.  In this book, Welch spends a lot of time talking about when a company decides to elect a new CEO, there are usually five or six people who are top contenders for the job.  The ones who do not get the position typically leave and go on to immediately assume CEO positions in other leading companies in the world.  For example, the CEO of Home Depot, Bob Nardelli, is someone who did not make CEO at General Electric and then left to take his current position.

When I first read Welch’s biography, I was struck that the people who lost the fight to become CEO of General Electric left were welcomed as the CEOs of competing companies. It was almost as if failing was a good thing.  How could someone who failed in one situation be such a superstar performer elsewhere?

I thought about this for some time, and I realized what it was all about.  General Electric is a world-class organization that sets high hurdles for all of its employees.  In fact, I have heard that the hurdles that General Electric sets are so high that it simply asks the bottom 10 percent of its performers to leave each year.  When people come from a world-class organization that sets high standards, the world knows the organization has molded those people into world-class performers.  Again, the situation is no different than it was at my old high school.  Because of the demands made on me, I went on to become as good as I was capable of being.

This brings me to the answer to the question, “If my boss gets mad at me or I get a poor review, does this mean I should look for a new job?”  In my opinion, the answer is simple:  absolutely, positively not.  Instead, you should consider yourself blessed.  How many of us have opportunities to be pushed to higher levels of performance?  How many of us are lucky enough to have bosses and others who care enough to get us to improve ourselves?

The natural reaction to any sort of criticism is to lash out at the person or the organization criticizing you.  I think this is a huge mistake.  People in the know will pay tens of thousands of dollars for this sort of guidance and to be pushed beyond their current levels of performance.  CEOs of many companies will hire coaches for more than $5,000 an hour to criticize them and push them.  Olympic athletes of every sort generally have coaches behind them, pushing them every second of the day.

Is your organization competing in the Olympics?  Do you want to be in an organization competing at the highest level?  Are you willing to compete at the highest level?

The next time an employer gives you criticism or pushes you along remember you have a choice.  You can find a group of people who will never find fault with you, like the kids at the substandard Los Angeles public school.  You can also choose to practice law with a lousy firm and get beaten by 25-year-old kids when you are a 55-year-old attorney because you never decided to jump over the bar when it was held high for you and never took the advice of those trying to help you.

I would encourage you to compete in the Olympics, and the next time someone pushes you to improve yourself, smile, put your head down, and follow his or her advice. The next time you look up, you may find yourself on top.  If you are like me, you will find the whole experience quite enlightening, and if you have character, you will realize you can never be more indebted to anyone than to the people who challenged you to be the great person you are.