as high and external control as low (upper left) there is the belief that “I create the world.” When carried to an extreme this can lead to narcissism and imperiousness, as well as to a false belief in one's abilities (and to being seen by others as the proverbial empty suit, or in Texas as “big hat, no cattle”).
Another version of this belief is illustrated by the classic motivational speech in which the speaker exhorts the audience to overcome fears simply by telling themselves they can or by emulating some deeply dramatic challenge that the speaker has overcome and wrestled to the ground.
One of the funniest examples of the weakness of belief in solely internal control is Bob Newhart's classic routine of a psychologist who charges only a dollar a minute for a maximum of five minutes because his consistent advice to any dysfunctional habit or irrational belief is: “Just stop it!”1
Case Study
I was once president of a company owned by a wealthy insurance magnate and financier. This man believed strongly in a positive mental attitude. He preached this philosophy as the route to success and the cause of his own fortune of over $450 million.
I wondered if he had his etiology (cause and effect) mixed up: that he had a positive mental attitude because he had earned $450 million in the insurance business, not vice versa. At one point I joked that if he wanted everyone to have a positive mental attitude he should give them all $450 million.
I was fired not long after – which taught me that even if a positive mental attitude does not guarantee millions in riches, it does tend to help you keep your job.
Today, there is a major industry dedicated to convincing people that control of their lives is totally personal and achievable. The highly paid speakers in this industry may be thriving more than their customers. If we truly had total control over our lives, none of us would choose to get sick or eventually die.
We are great believers in positive mental attitude. We believe that helping people to become more motivated about taking control of their own lives is a noble goal. We also believe that the reality of what we can control needs to be balanced with the acknowledgment of what we cannot control.
In the bottom right of Figure 1.1 we have high external control and low internal control. In other words, the world creates and directs us, a Calvinistic sort of predestination. In more modern times this condition has been represented by B. F. Skinner, the psychologist and behaviorist who believed that human behavior could be controlled and predicted. He advocated programmed learning and similar educational practices to train people to whatever ends were desired. Skinner believed that external stimulus was more powerful than individuals' internal control.
We believe Skinner's work sheds some very valuable light on human behavior, but it falls far short of explaining all of it. While our environments are powerful, so are we. I recall hearing many years ago, but can't recall who said, “We train animals, but educate people.” You can teach people to perform repetitive tasks – a feature of the training industry that sprang up in response to the world wars – but you can't train people to be enthusiastic, or motivated, or have high energy. That comes from within.
If your belief is that others not only can determine but are responsible for what you become, then you are in a position of surrender. This is the professional victim, who constantly blames the system, or “them,” and feels no power. Victims have no inclination to create their own change initiatives. One of the greatest expenses for any company is absenteeism and the greatest cause of absenteeism is stress, and stress is often caused by the feeling that one has no inkling of what may happen tomorrow and no influence over it.
In the extreme case this belief is that the journey has already been mapped and the roads already paved.
This now takes us to the upper right quadrant, or high control both internally and externally – mutual creation. This quadrant represents the belief system of this book. We believe that all people can have significant influence over their own lives. We believe that we, as humans, can make a huge difference in creating our own lives, but that we are not gods. While we can make a difference in creating our lives, our environment can still play a large role in our ultimate success or failure. An innocent person being victimized by a drunk hit-and-run driver is not totally responsible for the outcome of what happened.
When we don't understand how much control we actually have in a given situation, it's easy to end up with misguided aspirations and inappropriate metrics. If we aren't careful, we can be pulled off course by going to either extreme – believing we can do everything or believing we control nothing. (For example, parents telling us that we are born winners who can do anything we choose – or parents telling us that we are born losers who can do nothing we choose.) Naively accepting their advice is forgivable in childhood, regrettable in early adulthood, and harmful in maturity.
As we become more successful, the importance of the top right quadrant grows, raising the bar still higher for responsible aspirations and metrics of improvement.
Here's a brief test on your personal metrics and norms:
1. Choose someone you consider to be a personal hero. It could be someone from personal life experience, such as a parent or teacher, or someone in the news, such as Sully Sullenberger (who landed his disabled plane in the Hudson River with no loss of life).__________________________________________________________
2. Write the personal traits of this person that make you consider him or her to be a hero on the lines below. While you may not like everything about this person, think of at least three reasons that he or she is one of your heroes. These virtues could be patience, boldness, great use of language, and so forth.
1. __________________________________________________________
2. __________________________________________________________
3. __________________________________________________________
3. Now return to step 1, cross off your hero's name, and write in your own name.
4. List which of the traits from step 2 you already possess and which you would like to develop.
1. Possess:____________________________________________________
Need to develop:______________________________________________
2. Possess:____________________________________________________
Need to develop:______________________________________________
3. Possess:____________________________________________________
Need to develop:______________________________________________
4. Possess:____________________________________________________
Need to develop:______________________________________________
The point of the exercise is that we can often control those traits that will make us “heroes” – emulating those we really admire for their deeds, behavior, and impact.
But we must become accustomed to an environment that we create and realize that this environment also influences us, a reciprocity of influence. Churchill, commenting on Parliament and its difficulties in taking action, said, “We shape our buildings, and afterwards, our buildings shape us.”2 What we're espousing is perhaps more of a halfway house, in which we build, digest, build, digest, alter, remove, build, digest, and so on.
The preceding exercise was designed by my (Marshall's) great friend Ayse Birsel.3 It changed my life. As it turns out, all of my heroes were teachers. They included amazing leaders like Frances Hesselbein (Presidential Medal of Freedom award winner and former CEO of the Girl Scouts), Alan Mulally (2011 CEO of the Year in the United States and former CEO of Ford), as well as wonderful professors such as Peter Drucker and Warren Bennis. What did my heroes have in common? Not only were they fantastic coaches and teachers, they were extremely generous! None of my heroes ever charged