4 No One Likes to Take Orders

I once had the pleasure of dining with Miss Ida Tarbell, the dean of American biographers. When I told her I was writing this book, we began discussing the all-important subject of getting along with people, and she told me that while she was writing her biography of Owen D. Young, the founder of RCA, she interviewed a man who had sat for three years in the same office with Mr. Young. This man declared that during all that time he had never heard Young give a direct order to anyone. He always gave suggestions, not orders. Owen D. Young never said, for example, “Do this or do that,” or “Don’t do this or don’t do that.” He would say, “You might consider this,” or “Do you think that would work?” Frequently he would say, after he had dictated a letter, “What do you think of this?” In looking over a letter of one of his assistants, he would say, “Maybe if we were to phrase it this way it would be better.” He always gave people the opportunity to do things themselves; he never told his assistants to do things; he let them do them, let them learn from their mistakes.

A technique like that makes it easy for a person to correct errors. A technique like that saves a person’s pride and gives him or her a feeling of importance. It makes them want to cooperate instead of rebel.

Resentment caused by a brash order may last a long time—even if the order was given to correct an obviously bad situation. Dan Santarelli, a teacher at a vocational school in Wyoming, Pennsylvania, told how a student at the school had blocked the entrance to one of the school’s shops by illegally parking his car in it. One of the other instructors stormed into the classroom and asked in an arrogant tone, “Whose car is blocking the driveway?” When the student who owned the car spoke up, the instructor screamed: “Move that car and move it right now, or I’ll wrap a chain around it and drag it out of there!”

Now, that student was wrong. The car should not have been parked there. But from that day on, not only did that student resent the instructor’s action, but all the students in the class did everything they could to give the instructor a hard time and make his job unpleasant.

How could that instructor have handled it differently? After asking in a friendly way who owned the car, he could have said, “That’s a nice-looking car, son, but it’s going to get towed if you leave it there. We need to have clear access to the shop, so we’ve started cracking down on illegal parking.” No one would even have had to ask that student to move his car. He would have bolted to the lot to save his car and his pocketbook from a tow charge, and he probably would have thanked the teacher for the timely warning!

Beginning with questions not only makes an order more palatable; it often stimulates the creativity of the persons whom you ask. People are more likely to accept an order if they have had a part in the decision that caused the order to be issued, and less likely to bristle at being told what to do.

When Ian Macdonald of Johannesburg, South Africa, the general manager of a small manufacturing plant specializing in precision machine parts, had the opportunity to accept a very large order, he was convinced that he would not meet the promised delivery date. The work already scheduled in the shop and the short completion time needed for this job made it seem an impossible order to fulfill.

Instead of pushing his people to accelerate their work and rush the order through, he called everybody together, explained the situation, and told them how much it would mean to the company and to them if they could make it possible to produce the order on time. Then he started asking questions:

“Is there anything we can do to handle this order?”

“Can anyone think of different ways to process it through the shop that will make it possible to take the order?”

“Is there any way to adjust our hours or personnel assignments that would help?”

The employees came up with many ideas and insisted that he take the order. They approached it with a “We can do it” attitude, and the order was accepted, produced, and delivered on time.

An effective leader will use…

PRINCIPLE 4

Ask questions instead of giving direct orders.