The most important thing to any executive in an organization is emotional stability. Most of us have enough steam to get out job done, if we could just put the steam in one place. You have all seen young fellows you have to play like a clarinet to get the steam to come out at the right spots. Something gives us the ability to control it. Anybody who is going to be an executive has to have steam, but also the ability to control it.
First, any executive faces the problem of criticism. We have to criticize at times and be criticized. There is a vast difference between negative and positive criticism. The negative will always destroy our organization while the positive provides a way for improvement.
Learn to control your worry. A lot of the problems we have are just simply because executives have not learned to control worry. It you are just an amateur worrier, go ahead and worry. If you are a pro, you have to do something about it.
In 1940, my health was going to fail me — and no executive can do much work with poor health. I was the kind of worrier who didn't take his job lightly. I didn't take the worries to bed, no sir. I sat up in a chair with them. I was afraid of going to sleep so I sat up where I could really do the job right. Since 1941 I haven't worried a single day, even thought I carry heavy responsibilities just like you. I just found out it was possible to be worry-free. I had to attack it scientifically. What did I do?
I wrote on the inside of my skull, "Wait To Worry." I stopped worrying between the time I heard about something and the time I hear the facts. That is really the time span of the greatest amount of worrying.
When I was in manufacturing I had to quit calling employees into my office when I wanted to talk to them. If I called a fellow in, by the time he got there he was in such a lather that it took fifteen minutes to calm him down. I couldn't get a word of sense out of him. I found that it was better to get up from my desk, walk out there and talk to him there.
I wrote on my skull, "Today is the day that I will laugh about tomorrow." You got back to a family reunion and what do you laugh about? Why, the time you nearly burned the house down. Why? The things you worry about today you will laugh about tomorrow.
One of the colleges made a very serious survey of worry. They surveyed thousands of people. They found out that 30 percent of the things we worry about are already past. Only 8 percent of them are real, so if you are an average ordinary worrier you are 92 percent inefficient. If you operated everything else that way you couldn't keep your job.
Somebody asked a very successful executive: "To what do you attribute your success?" He replied, "Good judgment." "And," said the other, "where did you get your good judgment? He replied, "From experience." The first one asked him, "Where did you get your experience?" He said, "Poor judgment."
But we have to bounce between our judgment and our experience and stretch our emotional wheelbase out a little bit.
There is another thing about emotional stability. A sense of humor is essential. I never apologize for laughing with leaders. When I was running a factory I laughed just as much as I do now. Why? Lots of funny things happen in a factory — at times there is nothing to do but laugh off your high blood pressure. You have never seen an executive without a sense of humor who wasn't an egotist. Sometimes there is nothing to do but laugh, relax and laugh.
This is an archived piece written in 1956.
