What Powerful, Terrible Leaders Have in Common
It’s being really bad at handling rejection
Like a lot of men, I have a long track record of sucking at rejection. Whenever someone said no to me, it was always THEIR fault that they didn’t see the best in me. I was great. They were foolish.
Back in the late ’90s, I spent a summer as a table runner at a restaurant in Western Connecticut to make beer money for college. I was, charitably speaking, an underwhelming employee. I took a lot of bathroom breaks to avoid the dish pile. I was too loud in the kitchen. I wore the same black pants and white shirt every day to fit the dress code for staff, and both garments grew filthier and more ragged as the summer crept along. I say all this with the benefit of hindsight. Live on for another couple of decades and you become much more objective in evaluating your younger self. But at the time, of course, I thought I was the BEST table runner who ever lived. I thought I deserved to be promoted to waiter. To OWNER, even.
I was not. The following spring, I called the actual owner to see if my old summer job would be waiting for me once finals were over. She said to me, in a disturbingly cheery voice, “No!”
“Really?” I asked. I was floored.
