Massive Income

A Tale of Two Captains

In Herman Wouk’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Caine Mutiny, the abrasive captain of a minesweeper is relieved of command by his executive officer during a typhoon. Like Captain Bligh in Mutiny on the Bounty, Captain Queeg (played in the film version of the story by Humphrey Bogart) is a petty tyrant who ignores his crew’s advice, ridicules officers and sailors publicly, and explodes in anger over trivial matters. Captain Queeg takes over a sloppy ship and is determined to turn it into one of the Navy’s finest. To do that, he will need help from his officers, but in his first meeting with them (see Figure 6-6), he lets them know that he goes strictly by the rules and won’t tolerate debate. “I am book man”, Queeg says. “Deviate from the book and you’d better have half a dozen good reasons, and you’ll still get an argument from me, and I don’t lose arguments on board my ship. That’s one of the nice things about being captain”. Merrick, the executive officer, tries to tell the captain that the crew of the Caine is not used to doing things by the book. Implicit in his warning is that change will have to be managed carefully, but Queeg won’t hear it: “You can tell the crew there are four ways to do things on my ship—the right way, the wrong way, the navy way, and my way. If they do things my way, we’ll get along”.

Figure 6-6: The Caine Mutiny. Humphrey Bogart as Captain Queeg letting his officers know that he doesn’t lose arguments on his ship. Photo courtesy of Bettmann/CORBIS.

Queeg knows the book, but he doesn’t know how to lead men. He is mercurial, becomes angry when challenged, and is easily distracted by trivial matters. During an exercise in which his ship is pulling a target, he orders the ship to turn and then sees a sailor with his shirttail hanging out. He had seen this infraction of the rules earlier and admonished the officers and crew never to let it happen again. When it does, he becomes obsessed with disciplining those responsible and loses sight of the ship’s movements. The helmsman tries to warn him that they are sailing in a circle and risk cutting their own towline, but the captain angrily tells him to shut up. When they do cut the towline, the captain blames it on faulty equipment and refuses to accept the responsibility for the incident. Queeg is a perfectionist who won’t tolerate any questioning of his authority. He won’t tolerate criticism and won’t admit mistakes, and his crew quickly learns that to avoid his wrath they have to keep silent. It’s an intolerable situation, and when Queeg freezes during a typhoon and the ship is in danger of foundering, the executive officer forcibly relieves the captain of his command.

The Caine Mutiny is fiction, but the events on board the USS Florida were not. The Florida is a Trident submarine, one of the most lethal weapons ever built. Nearly two football fields long, with a crew of 154, the Florida carried twenty-four long-range missiles with 192 nuclear warheads. It was one of America’s most potent nuclear deterrents. In September 1996, the Florida got a new captain, Michael Alfonso. It was his first command, and like Captain Queeg he quickly established who was in charge. He told the crew he was going to push them hard, and he did, but they were not prepared for his loud, abrasive style. Captain Alfonso was a screamer, and that is highly unusual in the confines of a nuclear submarine whose mission is to run submerged and silent for months at a time. Like Queeg, Alfonso berated officers and enlisted men publicly, often for minor infractions. The ship’s morale plummeted, and the crew began comparing themselves to the unfortunate crew of the Caine. In midsummer of 1997, the Navy investigated the reports of problems aboard the Florida, and Rear Admiral Paul Sullivan, perhaps worried about low morale on board a nuclear missile submarine, took the unprecedented step of relieving the captain of his command. The admiral had lost confidence in Alfonso’s ability to lead the officers and men on board the Florida.^[25] Table 6-1 shows more of the parallels between these two captains and their ships.

Table 6-1: A Comparison of Captains Queeg and Alfonso.

Captain Queeg of the USS Caine	Captain Alfonso of the USS Florida
Upon taking command, told the officers he would go strictly by crew he would push them hard. the book.	Harshly reprimanded anyone whose performance he felt was lacking, whose performance he felt was regardless of rank. lacking, regardless of rank.
Frequently yelled at the crew.	Was known as a “screamer”, which grates on crews in the confines of a nuclear submarine.
Had an abrasive manner and did not listen; people were afraid to tell him when something was wrong.	Had an abrasive manner and did not listen; people were afraid to tell him when something was wrong.
Would not tolerate non-regulation dress; reprimanded an Sailor for having his shirt tail out.	Would not tolerate non-regulation dress; reprimanded an officer for wearing a non-standard hat.
Officers used humor to cope; one made up a song about the captain called “Old Yellow Stain Blues”.	Officers used humor to cope; one joked about the USS Florida diet plan—getting your ass chewed every day.
Ordered punitive measures when his wishes were not complied with quickly (no liberty for 3 months because some men were not properly dressed during battle drills.)	Ordered punitive measures when his wishes were not complied with quickly (ordered the crew to repeatedly clean an area even after it was spotless).
Became enraged when a quart of strawberries went missing; ordered a middle-of-the-night investigation and then a strip search of all crewmen to locate a fictional missing key.	Became enraged when the soda dispenser that should have contained Coca-Cola had Mr. Pibb instead. Ordered three senior officers to appear and then shouted obscenities at them.
Arrived late for a movie being shown on deck; was enraged that he hadn’t been notified of the film, a western. A sailor reminded him that he said he was sick of westerns, but the captain suspended all movies for 30 days.	Arrived for lunch one day and was angry that the potato soup was not being served on time; ordered a drill, which took all sailors away from their meals. If the captain couldn’t eat on time, no one could.
Was relieved of command at sea during a typhoon by his executive officer, Merrick.	Was relieved of command by an admiral after an investigation found sufficient cause due to ship problems and poor morale.
Had his defenders. Some people felt that Merrick erred in relieving him of command.	Had his defenders. Some people felt that he was a just an old-style officer in a new navy.

By this example, we don’t mean to imply that leaders who are abrasive, petty, and mercurial will always suffer the consequences of their negative interpersonal BD. Competent jerks sometimes succeed because the benefits they bring to an organization outweigh the damage done by their behavior or because the organization is afraid to remove them for some other reason. Richard Tedlow reminds us, too, that the giants of American industry were not always the nicest of people: “I’m not going to make the case in this article that the legendary titans of American business offer a template of leadership lessons for all of us to follow. Many were individuals we wouldn’t want to emulate, at least in every particular. They could be scheming and, more than occasionally, ruthless. Indeed, in many instances they were as titanic in the problems they created—especially the interpersonal problems—as in the empires they built”.^[26] What do we conclude from this? It is possible to behave badly and still succeed, but if you decide to go that route, you’d better have Andrew Carnegie’s resources, or Bill Gates’ timing, or John D. Rockefeller’s connections, because the odds are against you. More and more, employees as well as customers won’t tolerate it.

If you don’t like certain people, it’s easier than ever to escape them. If you are a lousy person, it’s harder than ever to keep people around you.

–Tim Sanders, “Love is the Killer App”

Taken From : Winning Behavior—What the Smartest, Most Successful Companies Do Differently

The Jackass Defense

Bullies with bad tempers are not confined to the business arena. Sports has had its share of prima donnas, Neanderthals, and bad boys in uniforms. Dennis Rodman comes to mind, but he dressed up (once in a bridal gown), talked tough, and behaved outrageously as a way to get attention. Rodman is an exhibitionist and a showman. For serious negative BD, we have to turn to John Rocker, the former Atlanta Brave, former Cleveland Indian, and then Texas Ranger whose racist remarks disrupted his team, incensed fans, and prompted the baseball commissioner to impose a stiff suspension and fine. Rocker created so much animosity that a Web site was created called http://www.rockersucks.com in which one fan wrote: “You are a disgrace to the game of baseball. Maybe you should think before you shoot off your big fat mouth. You are an immature punk who is lucky to be in the majors. Get some class!”^[16]

Rocker’s career started auspiciously enough. He was heavily scouted as a high school player and he opted to go into the draft instead of attending college. He graduated from high school in 1993 and was drafted by the Atlanta Braves, who saw him as an excellent pitching prospect. He developed in the Braves’ system and behaved himself until September 1999, when he came in as a relief pitcher against the New York Mets and saved three games. Mets fans were understandably resentful at Rocker’s performance and let him know it. Rocker went on record as saying Mets fans were stupid and “a tired act”. His talented pitching in September meant the Mets and Braves would meet again for three games in October, and the winner of the series would win the National League East title and compete for the championship. In October, Mets fans booed Rocker; threw beer bottles, batteries, and water at him; and made vulgar remarks about his mother and his girlfriend. Rather than ignore the crowd, he returned fire—with insults of his own (see Figure 6-5).^[17] However, his sentiments were not yet fully captured in print. The Braves won the first two games in their October battle for National League East title. The hostility erupted again when Rocker saved game three, a win that put them one game away from the National League Championship Series.

Figure 6-5: John Rocker Incites the Fans. The pitcher’s volatile temper and abusive comments ignited a firestorm of controversy. Photo courtesy of Al Tielemans/ Sports Illustrated.

In game four, Rocker was put in to clinch the Braves’ 2-1 lead and save the game, but he failed. One Mets batter hit a Rocker pitch that scored two runs. After that, Rocker lost what composure he had left. One reporter later called him a one-man psycho circus. He spit at Mets fans and gave them the finger. After the game he blamed the loss on his teammates and the Mets hitter who had cost him two runs. He said the Braves shortstop was too old to “make that kind of play”, and he discredited the hit by claiming that it was “one of the more cheaper hits I’ve given up my entire life”.^[18] He took no responsibility for the loss, blamed his teammates, and bad-mouthed the Mets hitter who won the game. Rocker’s outbursts strained his relationship with his teammates and added fuel to the Mets fans’ fire. The Braves won the series in six games, but were later swept by the New York Yankees in the World Series. As the baseball season ended, the feud between Rocker and Mets fans had gained enough momentum to make an interesting story, and Jeff Pearlman of Sports Illustrated invited Rocker for an interview. It was an opportunity Rocker should have passed up.

In Pearlman’s article based on that interview, Rocker came across as a foul, loudmouthed, intolerant buffoon. Worse, his comments about New York and its people were blatantly racist. Here are two of Rocker’s most infamous remarks:

On ever playing for a New York team: “I would retire first. It’s the most hectic, nerve-racking city. Imagine having to take the [Number] 7 train to the ballpark, looking like you’re [riding through] Beirut next to some kid with purple hair next to some queer with AIDS right next to some dude who just got out of jail for the fourth time right next to some 20year-old mom with four kids. It’s depressing”.

On New York City itself: “The biggest thing I don’t like about New York are the foreigners. I’m not a very big fan of foreigners. You can walk an entire block in Times Square and not hear anybody speaking English. Asians and Koreans and Vietnamese and Indians and Russians and Spanish people and everything up there. How the hell did they get in this country?”^[19]

During the interview, Rocker also referred to an unnamed Atlanta Braves teammate as a “fat monkey”. The fallout from the Sports Illustrated story was immediate. Although Rocker later apologized, it was not enough to assuage the anger and disgust many people felt. Among the reactions were these:

• Baseball commissioner Bud Selig demanded that Rocker undergo a psychological evaluation and would consider the results before deciding on disciplinary measures.

• A number of major league baseball players were outraged at Rocker’s remarks. New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter said, “I wouldn’t sit in the same room with him. I wouldn’t sit with someone who’s a racist. He says he’s not a racist, but he makes racist comments”.^[20]

• Protestors marched in front of CNN’s Atlanta headquarters, angry that the Atlanta Braves had taken no action against Rocker. (CNN’s parent, TimeWarner, owns the Braves.)

• Braves first baseman Randall Simon, who is from the Dominican Republic, said he knew Rocker was talking about him when he described a teammate as a “fat monkey”. In an interview with Morris News Service, Simon said, “I swear to you if he said that to my face I’d tear him up, and one of us would be suspended right now”.^[21]

• Teammate Chipper Jones worried that the distraction Rocker was causing was hard on the team and could bring even more trouble: “It seems like we always have our distractions and adversity every year, but this year has been the worst…. We have twenty-four guys in there that have lived with this distraction every day, and we didn’t ask for any of it. You get asked about him so much, and then there’s the safety issue. I think about it all the time. You don’t know what’s going to happen. How easy would it be for someone to sneak something in any stadium and take a pot shot at somebody?”^[22]

• Heavy metal rock band Twisted Sister objected to the Braves’ use of their song, “I Wanna Rock”, to introduce Rocker when he came onto the field. Guitarist Jay French said, “We’ve got Hispanics in this band, Italians in this band, people who are Polish and Russian. We’re all immigrants, all foreigners—quote unquote—and this is our way of saying his comments were not acceptable”.^[23]

Before the dust had settled, sports analysts were speculating about whether Rocker could remain with the Braves and, indeed, if he had any baseball career prospects at all. The only hope for Rocker, it seemed, was to play dumb, as commentator Frank Deford suggested: “Presumably, Rocker will, in some fashion, try to construe the hateful remarks he made to Jeff Pearlman of Sports Illustrated. The words he spoke are themselves, of course, in no way defensible, nor can he repair the hurtful damage he has done. But it is possible that Rocker can at least seek to mitigate the sins of his tongue—and his heart—by pleading that he is not so racist, not so vile, not so hurtful, but instead that he is simply a showoff and a dimwit. This might be called the jackass defense”.^[24] In the end, the Braves traded Rocker to the Cleveland Indians, where he remained for a difficult season. Later, Rocker was a reliever with the Texas Rangers. It’s anybody’s guess whether the hullabaloo he caused has made him wiser, but in May 2002 he traveled with the Rangers to Cleveland and pitched against the Indians. He was relieved in the eighth inning, and on his way to the dugout Cleveland fans began booing. Instead of spitting, cursing, or making obscene gestures, Rocker just smiled and tipped his hat to them.

The John Rocker story raises an interesting point about negative interpersonal BD. When you behave badly toward people, they develop a bias against you that can take on a life of its own. You become the galvanizing object of their wrath. Even when you are no longer behaving badly, their negative bias toward you lingers. They expect the worst and will not give you the benefit of the doubt. This is why a single bad experience can drive customers away from your business and keep them away for years. Anger and disappointment die hard.

Taken From : Winning Behavior—What the Smartest, Most Successful Companies Do Differently

Other Examples of Negative Behavioral Differentiation

Chainsaw Al and the Queen of Mean are two of the more blatant examples of business leaders who paid a price for their abusive behavior toward others, although cynics would point out that both are multimillionaires, and their negative interpersonal BD didn’t ruin them. Still, it would be wrong to assume from their example that clawing your way to the top and abusing people around you is a recipe for success. Helmsley and Dunlap were public figures whose caustic behavior brought them notoriety, and they did pay a penalty for it. What is less obvious are the ruined lives and fortunes of thousands of lesser-known business leaders whose negative behavior derails their careers and brings indeterminate harm to the people and companies they have been responsible for. We can measure some of the damage.

Sexual harassment, for instance, is clearly one form of negative interpersonal BD. In our schema of negative interpersonal behaviors shown in Figure 6-3, sexual harassment would fall under “being intimidating”, “trying to take advantage of others”, “being pushy”, and perhaps “being manipulative or deceitful”. Most business people are not guilty of sexual harassment, so the few who are negatively differentiate themselves based on their behavior. The consequences? According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, more than 15,000 sexual harassment complaints have been filed with the agency every year since 1995. In 2001, the monetary benefit to those filing the complaints was $53 million. In that same year, more than four hundred sexual harassment lawsuits were filed, and the monetary benefits of those suits exceeded another $50 million.^[9] As we write this, the cost of settling a single sexual harassment complaint has reached a new high. The average cost to defend against a complaint is $300,000, and the average settlement is around $280,000.^[10] That is a lot of money to pay for hostility, immaturity, and poor judgment.

Less blatant than sexual harassment, but even more costly to business, are executives’ negative interpersonal behaviors that alienate customers, demotivate employees, disrupt teams, and cause the executives themselves to derail. In the context we are using the term, derail means to be fired or demoted or to plateau in one’s career below the level one should have attained. As its railroad metaphor implies, when executives derail, they fall off the career track. Why does this occur? A study of 300 middle- to upper-level managers by Michael Lombardo and Cynthia McCauley uncovered six common reasons for derailment: problems with interpersonal relationships, difficulty molding a staff, difficulty making strategic transitions, lack of follow-through, overdependence, and strategic differences with management.^[11] Three of these six factors involve interpersonal competence or what Daniel Goleman has labeled emotional intelligence.

According to Lombardo and McCauley, the category problems with interpersonal relationships includes “adopts a bullying style under stress”, “isolates him/herself from others”, and “has left a trail of bruised people”.^[12] Managers who derail because of poor interpersonal skill, then, are people who don’t handle stress well and become bullying or authoritarian when the going gets tough. They exclude others, don’t allow enough participation, make decisions without consultation, and are aloof or distant from the people they manage. Finally, they may be abusive, threatening, intimidating, or too hard on people. As coaches, we are frequently asked to counsel executives who have become known as “people killers”. At their worst, these bullies negatively differentiate themselves by being insensitive to others, demanding inhuman sacrifices of time, harshly criticizing in public even the most minor offense, and blaming others for their own failures.

Lombardo and McCauley’s second factor, difficulty in molding a staff, includes “is not good at building a team”, and their last factor, strategic difficulties with management, includes “could not handle a conflict with a bad boss or one he/she disagreed with”.^[13] Clearly, these three major causes of derailment involve a host of interpersonal problems. Every manager may be guilty of bad behavior from time to time, but when it becomes a pattern of abuse or neglect, when it is repeated often enough to have a long-term negative impact on the manager and the people he or she manages, then it constitutes negative interpersonal BD.

How many managers are at risk of derailing? Another study of more than two thousand executives determined that a significant percentage were derailing or already had. In “Recovering Executives at Risk of Derailing”, Barbara Spencer Singer reports in a Lore International Institute study that tracked the careers of 2,171 executives and discovered that “30 percent were being promoted faster than their peers, 35 percent were at risk of derailment in the near future, and 12 percent had already derailed”.^[14] This study also said that 22 percent of executives were on track. Oftentimes, derailed executives leave the company they were working for, but some don’t. In either case, the costs are staggering:

Not all derailment leads to exiting a company—a person might be offered a consultancy or be reassigned to a new job—but when the person is forced to leave, it typically costs a company 16 to 18 months’ of that person’s pay to replace him or her…. The person might also just stagnate. Sometimes, derailed executives are put into ‘placeholder’ positions where they won’t do much damage. This practice leads to inefficiencies and reduced productivity—and costs the company much more in the long run. Finally, additional costs are incurred through lost sales and lost customers. Executives that have left the organization or have become disgruntled often impact customer loyalty. Clearly, executive derailment is an enormous financial burden, costing corporations billions of dollars a year.^[15]

The internal impact of managers who are abusive, abrasive, and interpersonally inept is substantial. The external impact on customers must also be enormous, but it is impossible to calculate. Managers and employees of companies who behave badly toward customers directly affect sales. However, inept interpersonal relationships internally also indirectly affect sales by demotivating employees and creating apathetic and even hostile interactions with customers.

Taken From : Winning Behavior—What the Smartest, Most Successful Companies Do Differently

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Chainsaw Al and the Queen of Mean

It is not difficult to find examples of business leaders whose interpersonal misbehavior makes them the object of fear and loathing. The media loves stories of people behaving badly, particularly when they fall from their lofty positions. What happens to them can serve as an object lesson for the rest of us. A decade ago, the person everyone loved to hate was Leona Helmsley, the billionaire wife of real estate magnate Harry Helmsley. Dubbed the “Queen of Mean” by the media and “the wicked witch” by New York mayor Ed Koch, Helmsley was notorious for her arrogance and nastiness toward everyone she considered beneath her. Her own attorney described her as “a tough bitch with an explosive temper”. Although she and her husband were extraordinarily wealthy, they ran afoul of the law when it was discovered that millions of dollars in renovation bills for their Greenwich, Connecticut, home had been falsely charged as business expenses to their Manhattan office buildings.

Harry was deemed too ill to stand trial, so Leona faced tax evasion charges alone. During the trial, much of her negative interpersonal behavior surfaced. In fact, it became her lawyer’s explanation for the crime: “The novel defence was that staff so feared her wrath that they independently resorted to faking invoices to minimise the time they had to spend in her company. The court heard that when it was brought to her attention that a contractor she had refused to pay had six children to feed, she retorted: ‘Why didn’t he keep his trousers on? He wouldn’t have so many problems.’ Her past sins were paraded daily”.^[4] During the trial, Helmsley’s maid testified that Leona had said, “We don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes”. She was convicted of tax evasion, fined, and sentenced to four years in prison. She served eighteen months and was freed with the stipulation that she perform hundreds of hours of community service, which, it was later reported, she had had her servants do for her.

At the time of her trial, Newsweek ran a story about Helmsley. Her face was featured on the cover with the headline, “Rhymes with Rich”. Subsequently, her rise and fall were featured in a trash TV movie starring Suzanne Pleshette entitled “Queen of Mean”. On our bell curve of interpersonal behavior (Figure 6-1), Leona Helmsley’s behavior is so far to the left it may not belong on the same scale as “normal” bad behavior. She is a prime example of someone whose interpersonal behavior negatively differentiated her, and the consequences of that behavior include being pilloried in the press, turned into the butt of many jokes on late-night TV, testified against by people who worked closely with her, and being shown little remorse by the legal system. Indeed, when she complained to the trial judge that she was too ill to go to prison, he made the offhand remark that the prison he was sending her to had a hospital wing.

Another business figure people loved to hate in the last decade was Al Dunlap, self-styled corporate tough guy and ruthless king of downsizing. Dunlap made a name for himself as an aide to British billionaire financier Sir James Goldsmith but is most noted for his stints at Scott Paper and Sunbeam. At both corporations, his strategy was to slash and burn—to ruthlessly cut products and employees in an effort to maximize shareholder value. In an era of radical cost cutting, Wall Street applauded his moves. Scott Paper’s stock rose 225 percent, which added $6.3 billion in value to the company. However, critics felt that in the process of cost cutting he trimmed as much muscle as fat. Shortly after Kimberly-Clark purchased the company (a merger in which Dunlap pocketed $100 million), Scott Paper began to look like an empty shell. According to one observer, “His ‘miracle’ at Scott was accomplished in less than two years. However, it took only one quarter for Kimberly-Clark to find out it had purchased a prettied-up ‘pig-in-a-poke.’ Scott’s buyer discovered that Dunlap and his henchmen increased earnings by cutting and closing critical plants, deferring all maintenance on plants and equipment, and building inventories for the sole purpose of booking sales. None of what he accomplished at Scott was designed to build for the future, only sell off the present, all in the name of adding shareholder value”.^[5]

In 1996, he was appointed CEO of Sunbeam. According to Business Week’s John Byrne, at his first executive meeting Dunlap verbally attacked Spencer Volk, head of international business, for being one minute late to the meeting. “The old Sunbeam is over today! It’s over! It’s over! It’s over!” Dunlap kept repeating. He then forced the senior officers to beg to keep their jobs, part of what P. Newton White, who joined the team from Scott Paper, described as Dunlap’s “piss all over them and then we’ll build them back up” policy.^[6] Byrne said that some of the senior officers were more than ready to get out of there. “At least then they could take their severance pay and walk away from what was surely going to be a living hell, working for an impulsive and abusive loud mouth”.^[7] True to his slash-and-burn nature, Dunlap cut 12,000 jobs at Sunbeam, shut down two-thirds of its eighteen manufacturing plants, and engaged in a business practice known as “stuffing the channel”, which means persuading retailers to buy more products than they need by offering huge discounts. This adds a lot of revenue to the books very quickly, and, indeed, Sunbeam’s stock jumped after Dunlap took over and made his first moves. This house of cards came tumbling down in 1998 when retailers, overloaded with Sunbeam products, stopped purchasing, and revenues plummeted.

Later, under Chapter 11 proceedings, Sunbeam was forced to restate its financial results for six quarters ending March 31, 1998, which covered most of Dunlap’s tenure at Sunbeam. Early in 2002, after years of legal wrangling and investigation, “Chainsaw Al” agreed to pay $15 million to settle a class action lawsuit by Sunbeam shareholders, which had accused him and three other former Sunbeam executives of securities fraud. (Interestingly, as part of the same lawsuit, accounting firm Arthur Andersen, famous now for the debacle at Enron, agreed to pay $110 million to settle claims with Sunbeam shareholders.)

Of course, this is more than a tale of corporate mismanagement and downsizing run amuck. It’s really a tale of misguided leadership and the consequences of interpersonal behavior so deplorable that it ruins companies as it ruins lives. Al Dunlap fancied himself a tough guy, a Rambo in pinstripes, who was there to set people straight. In an interview with PBS, he said, “I’m a no-nonsense person. I’m not coming there to listen to all the excuses which they’ve been giving. That’s what got them into trouble to begin with. I’m not there to hear what can’t be done. I’m there to get results. I’m there to challenge people beyond what they’ve ever been challenged before. And so, if that’s tough, then yes, I am tough”.^[8] But there’s a difference between tough and tyrannical. Jack Welch was also tough, but he knew how to build a company and inspire a leadership team. Welch also downsized and focused a large organization by selling underperforming units. However, in the process he built a strong culture, a leadership engine that remains the envy of many companies, and a high-performing enterprise. Welch trained a generation of business leaders who went on to lead other companies, and he left a powerful legacy. Dunlap left burning hulks.

Taken From : Winning Behavior—What the Smartest, Most Successful Companies Do Differently

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The Bell Curve of Interpersonal Behavior

Figure 6-1 illustrates the normal distribution of interpersonal behaviors, which we presume to reflect the range of behaviors present in any interaction. The middle hump of the curve shows the range of average or normal behaviors, and these constitute about two-thirds of all interpersonal behaviors. In other words, what we experience two-thirds of the time from people is behavior we would consider normal, although there might be great variations in those behaviors. Some people listen better than others, but unless we encounter people who are remarkably worse or better listeners than normal, we would say that their listening behavior falls in that vast middle hump. The wings on either side of the bell curve reflect the negative and positive behaviors that would be one standard deviation beyond the norm. In a normal distribution, each of these wings would include one-sixth of the behaviors we observe. So, statistically, one-sixth of listening behaviors are significantly worse than normal and one-sixth are significantly better. To make our point more concretely, we will examine each of the three areas of this bell curve in more depth and will look at the types of behaviors one might find there. First, we will look at the vast middle hump (Figure 6-2). This is the normal range of interpersonal behavior.

Figure 6-2: Average Interpersonal Behaviors. The middle of the bell curve represents the norm of interpersonal behavior. About two-thirds of the people we encounter normally behave this way. Whenever we interact with others, these are the kinds of behaviors we expect.

Customs obviously differ, but it would be fair to say that in any part of the world people would normally be civil with one another: returning a greeting when one is given, answering when asked a question, being polite according to the customs of politeness in a particular culture, being reasonably friendly and responsive, and so on. This is especially true in business contexts, where the behavioral standards are higher than they would be, for instance, at a football match. In the normal course of business, customers would expect people to listen to them, be honest and forthright, maintain appropriate eye contact, and be respectful. In the average business encounter, these behaviors would occur but would be unremarkable, which is to say they would not behaviorally differentiate. It’s what happens most of the time, and although it may satisfy customers it probably won’t delight them. Merely doing what is expected may satisfy customers, but most suppliers can do that, so satisfaction alone is not differentiating. It’s the price of admission.

Occasionally, however, customers experience the kinds of behaviors shown in Figure 6-3. This is the left wing of the bell curve, the negative one-sixth of behaviors that are one or more standard deviations below the norm. These kinds of behaviors are remarkable. When we experience them as customers, we notice them because they are so far outside our normal expectations, and they negatively differentiate the people behaving this way. These behaviors range from apathy (at the top of Figure 6-3) to hostility and deceit. Given the importance of retaining customers, it is amazing that people in business can behave this way, but they sometimes do. Throughout this book we report the results of our research on BD, and as our research shows, lawyers, physicians, nurses, waiters, new car sellers, and others who ought to know better sometimes treat customers so badly that the customers vow never to use those providers again. Many of the negative behaviors we cite in our research are interpersonal in nature and are reflected in Figure 6-3.

Figure 6-3: Negative Interpersonal Behaviors. The left wing of the bell curve represents behaviors that are one standard deviation below the norm. These kinds of employee behaviors negatively differentiate the company and have a repulsive effect on customers.

At the other end of the interpersonal bell curve (Figure 6-4) are positive behaviors that are significantly beyond our normal expectations. Because these behaviors exceed our expectations and create a more satisfying emotional environment, they tend to be memorable, too. When we experience these behaviors as customers, we feel better about the interaction, we like the people who treated us so well, and we are inclined to return to them and their company when we need more of what we bought from them. Positive interpersonal behaviors, like all BD, have an attractive effect on customers (negative behaviors have a repulsive effect). In our research on BD, we asked consumers of healthcare to identify their worst and best experiences with nurses and physicians. Here are some typical responses, listed as elements of the left and right wings of the interpersonal bell curve:

Figure 6-4: Positive Interpersonal Behaviors. The right wing of the bell curve consists of behaviors that are one standard deviation above the norm. Employees who exhibit these behaviors positively differentiate the company, which has an attractive effect on customers.