I recently started a 14-week series of podcasts at timesfreepress.com on things I learned from the mayors and other politicians I have worked with over the years of my career. It reminded me of how much I owe some of the people who have passed through my life.
This is the most overlooked success factor in the world today. You can go to a dozen motivational and success seminars and never hear a word about it. Yet, I believe it is the most important thing to learn.
As concisely as I can state it, here is this law on success: One will succeed in life to the extent that he or she learns the secrets of those he or she works for or around.
By "secrets" I do not mean that these lessons are hidden. To the contrary, the skills and powers of people we work under are often as plain as the nose on your face. But how often are you mindful of the nose on your face?
No matter what your opinion is of the person who is your "boss," if you don't become aware of why they are failing or succeeding, you are missing a lesson that can make you or break you at some pivotal moment of your life.
If you strongly dislike your boss, you will tend to repress them from your mind. You will spend your time in the swirling emotions of strong dislike rather than calm observation. Often say to yourself, "I will remain sufficiently cool and intelligent to see why this person is so unlikeable because this negative trait might destroy my career if I don't."
Likewise, with a boss you like and admire say, "I will fully pay attention and marinate myself in the good qualities of this person and make those qualities my own."
Be honest enough with yourself to recognize that people you don't like may have positive qualities you will do well to emulate. I had one supervisor who could make me blindly angry. I was so blindly angry that I had not realized she was poking her finger into a hypersensitive eyeball in my psyche. All of us have those hypersensitive eyeballs in our psyche. You could also call them "pain storage pouches."
The only large lesson I got from reading the popular novel "Celestine Prophecy" was that the emotions we have in our relationships and experiences remain in storage in our psyche exactly as they were stored and similar experiences in the future will bring out the same emotions. That's why I was strongly reacting to my supervisor. Finding this trigger opened my mind to what this supervisor was trying to impart.
These truths do not just apply to bosses. They also apply to co-workers. When I would go to a new job I would look at the list of employees and pick out some I knew possessed traits or talents I wanted to learn. We need to be keenly aware that every person we work around knows something we don't know. Even the lowliest person on the staff chart can impart something we need to know.
At all times, all of us are both teachers and students.
E-mail Dalton Roberts at DownhomeP@aol.com.
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