Читать книгу I Took the Only Path To See You - Jon Fisher - Страница 11

By Gerald Fisher

Kindness has been around for my entire life. I just wasn't aware of it until I started doing some research about kindness. I found some colleagues were kind while others were not so kind. That's when I noticed that kindness was an admirable attribute because we all appreciate people who are kind.

Clearly kindness affects us, but I didn't see the bigger picture that kindness could also be contagious and be a major factor in the conduct of business. Not only is it true that you don't have to be a bastard to succeed, but it's also true that if you have a certain kindness in your life and in your spirit, it will affect the people around you and be contagious. Then you'll be even more successful than if you were calculating, nasty, and unkind to others.

The example that pops into my mind is a major quarterback for an NFL team who was well known to everyone. During training camp, there was a rookie trying to make the team's center. So he snapped the ball to the star quarterback, but the ball hit his fingers at an awkward angle and the quarterback winced in pain as the ball flew high in the air.

At this point, the whole coaching staff ran out on the field. Half went to see if their star quarterback was seriously injured, and the other half went to berate the rookie center. They were yelling at him, saying, “How can you think of making the team if you snap a football like that? What kind of a player are you? If you hurt our quarterback, you will never see the field and you'll be gone by tomorrow morning.”

At this point, the quarterback came over and said, “No, you're getting it wrong. His was a perfect snap. The fault was mine. I was ill positioned.”

The rookie center, as you might guess, was so overwhelmed by what the quarterback did that he said to himself, “I'm gonna play for that guy and I'm going to play my heart out,” which is what he did.

That was expected from the rookie center, but the additional factor that I hadn't focused on after all these years is that a lot of players witnessed that event. There was a lot of discussion in the clubhouse, a lot of talk amongst the linemen as the people who support the quarterback, and they all were taken aback at how kind and considerate and generous this guy was, and the whole team just reacted with euphoria.

They gave their all for that quarterback. They did things they didn't think they could do. Although it wasn't all entirely due to the generosity of a quarterback, it played a large role in defining that quarterback's position as a leader for the team.

Many people have contributed major inventions or founded organizations that have literally changed the world and society for the better. While some of these people have been kind and generous to others, others were not. Ultimately, what matters isn't any admiration or accolades someone receives for their actions but how those actions affect other people both individually and collectively throughout an entire organization.

Back when I was a graduate student, another graduate student named Dick had the idea that our little physics department athletic team could win the all University Intramural Athletic Championship. Now the idea that a bunch of physics graduate students could win a sporting competition sounded like mental illness because the intramural championship had always been won by a fraternity or a club, not by a bunch of graduate students in a physics department.

But Dick was a great administrator and a great manager, and he had an idea. He wanted to find people to represent our team in the lesser events because he knew that competition would be strongest in the most popular events but weakest in the lesser events, and that would give us a chance.

So he found a big, strong kid who could represent us in weightlifting. He recruited my best friend in the physics department to throw horseshoes. Keep in mind that my friend had never thrown a horseshoe in his life, but he volunteered and looked up the rules. Now think how many people enter a horseshoes competition. Two, maybe three? It turned out my friend won and allocated all the points from the horseshoe competition to our team's total.

Of course, the points allocated from horseshoes was not equivalent to the points allocated from baseball, football, or basketball, but it was a start. We competed in weightlifting, horseshoes, badminton, and bicycle racing.

Then one day, Dick burst into my office and said, “Fish,” which is what he called me, “You've got to get down to the pool. Grab a bathing suit. We're entered in water polo.”

Imagine what it was like wandering through the locker room, asking to borrow a bathing suit. It, of course, didn't work so I had to lay out the big bucks at the gym store for a high-tech speedo.

Not only had I never played water polo before, but I had never even seen a water polo match. I told Dick, “I want to help but I'm not much of a swimmer. There's got to be somebody better.”

Dick said, “Well, I'll look around. But we can't forfeit. If you forfeit, you get no points, and there are only two other teams entered. One was a varsity swimming team, which has a number of Olympians on it. By some technicality, the swimming team was free to play water polo. The other team was from the university's water polo team that consisted of players who didn't make the varsity, but they were championship players from high school.

And then there was our team.

Dick said, “We're going to come in third. There's no doubt at that, but we're going to get the points for coming in third, which is a lot of points.”

Well, not only did I almost drown – apparently there have no rules in water polo – they also just beat the crap out of me and I couldn't even get out of the pool.

I had to go over to the side and use the steps and somebody had to push me from behind. I fell down like a beached whale and good ol’ Dick came over and said, “You guys did great! But I have some bad news for you. That was just the first period.”

Had I been able to get up and raise my hand, I would have told Dick a thing or two.

Instead I told him, “Just push me back in the pool.” When the score reached 58 to nothing, the referees mercifully called the game, but still granted us the points for third place.

Being a great manager and administrator, Dick looked up records on everybody in the department and everybody in the university, and he found Professor Bill Little.

Bill had come to the university as an assistant professor and quickly became an associate professor before being promoted to a full professor. He became a power in the department, and he was only in his thirties. But what caught Dick's attention was that Bill had been the national champion of Scotland in the pole vault during the Cold War.

Dick approached Professor Bill Little, and Little said he would be glad to help. What Bill neglected to say was that he hadn't touched a pole or done any kind of jumping whatsoever in about 15 or 20 years.

Undaunted on the first day of competition, Bill grabbed a pole and ran down the runway. He planted the pole, went up, but went under the bar instead of over it, and flew off to the side, missed the landing area, and almost killed himself.

We all saw that and we thought if Professor Bill was willing to do that, we thought we all had to do the best we could do as well. Professor Bill's generous act spread through the whole group and we did better than we had any right to do.

Amazingly, we wound up winning the All University Championship. The school athletic director even announced our victory at halftime of the homecoming football game. That started our run of two straight years of championships where the physics department won the All University Championship, beating out all the fraternities, all the clubs, and all the other athletes on campus.

Good old Professor Bill did not win any events and was not going to compete against high school all Americans, and people who were currently running track for the university, but he gave us his all, even though he could have killed himself or gotten himself seriously injured.

That showed me that you don't have to be a calculating loser in order to succeed. Instead, you could show an act of kindness, you could show an act of caring and compassion, and it ends up coming back on you and making your organization that much better.

If you are the head of any group, your group will be better and probably the best it can be if your leadership just includes semblances of kindness.