The boss of my book team always decides I’m healthy when I start ruminating in this blog about women.
Or, as he unkindly puts it, “imaginary women.”
Nobody who works with me seems to have the slightest fear of me or worry themselves sick about whether I might be offended. Folks who worked for me in Washington and elsewhere, people I had the power to fire in a minute, felt the same way.
Two people in Washington offered to take pay CUTS to work for me.
Niccolo Machiavelli considered an important question in his classic book “The Prince.” He asked, “Is it better for a leader to be loved or to be feared by those he leads?” He concluded it was better to be feared.
I flunked that test big time.
I scared a lot of people in my rough life, but never anyone I led or bossed. I don’t know if they loved me, but they sure as hell weren’t afraid of me. The lady who anchors my book team just sent around a note that instructed our people about what not to bother “little Bob” about.
I LOVED it!
Sorry, Niccolo, I failed your test, and it’s too late for me to pass it now. If I tried to get my crowd to be scared of me now, they would just laugh and tell me to go sleep it off.
#1 by Richard L. Hardison on 09/03/2004 - 8:04 pm
Obviously, “little Bob,” you didn’t get an MBA from Harvard otherwise you would have been the terror of the District of Clowns.
Seriously, Nick was wrong. The most effective leaders have been loved, or at least repected. Fear is a poor motivator when it comes to giveng the best effort. I’ll guarantee the fact you were loved got you far more than being feared.
#2 by Hurndo on 09/04/2004 - 4:12 am
I’ll second that. Having served my time in the godforsaken Marine Corps, I know that the worst leaders would blow up in a heartbeat while the best leaders were the ones who could crack a joke. Unfortunately, their ideal is the former. Fear is the ultimate demotivator. And fear always becomes hate which becomes rebellion.
On another note, in mobster movies, there is always some mafioso quoting Machiavelli. Well, in recent years, I’ve seen a couple flicks where the mobsters say they like Sun-tzu’s “Art of War” better. So a couple years ago, I picked it up. God, what a pile of crap. I read two chapters before I realized that I could have written it when I was in kindergarten. This has gotta be some artsy-fartsy thing where some dumbass history professor required it and all of his little lemmings grew up to require it in their classes.
#3 by Don on 09/05/2004 - 11:52 am
Fear = Joseph Stalin
Love = George Washington
Take your pick.