Author: James Tehrani

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The Wacky World of Work: When Unions Add a Pinch of ‘Salt’

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In the first “Wacky World of Work” podcast, host James Tehrani interviews James Walsh about his book “Playing Against the House.” Walsh spent two years as a union “salt” trying to organize Miami-area casinos. Walsh gives an insider’s perspective on what “salting” is, and offers his perspective on how he would have handled things had he been on the labor side of the equation. He also discusses his role in a case that the National Labor Relations Board ruled on. Click the play button below to listen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo credit: Cory Vanderploeg

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Weeding Out Candidates and the Dumbest Thing I Ever Did in an Interview

With all the weeding that goes on in the hiring process, I’m surprised more recruiters aren’t prize-winning gardeners. But sometimes companies might be letting great candidates get away in their need to weed.

It starts with the cover letter, résumé and, nowadays, dozens of answers from the company’s applicant tracking system.

It’s not uncommon to hear things like, “This guy can’t even spell IBM and he wants to work here?”

Spelling and grammar mistakes are a common reason to reject candidates. I once thought I had an interview with a major magazine publisher, but it turned out to be more of an opportunity for the hiring manager to teach me a lesson by berating me for misspelling his last name on my cover letter. I knew I was done for when he showed me a collage on the wall of all the mailing labels he’d saved where someone misspelled his difficult-to-spell name.

Lesson learned. 

For the few candidates who do make it in the door for an interview, there’s always weeding going on. Focusing on “What did the candidate do wrong?” and “What red flags were raised?” tend to trump examining all the good qualities a candidate possesses.

And sometimes strong applicants do dumb things in interviews. I know I have.

It was a few months after I graduated college. I had left a terrible internship where I spent most of my time faxing and photocopying and took a job as a waiter so I could have my days free to interview. Coincidentally, when you’re behind and overwhelmed in your serving duties, it’s known as “being in the weeds.”

There were many Friday and Saturday nights where I was in the weeds.

As a waiter, you meet lots of different people from fiendish to friendly. There’s the guy, for instance, who scolded me for not putting his slice of pie down with the tip facing “either at 5 o’clock or 7 o’clock.” But I also met nice people, too.

One regular customer was a man in his 60s who worked in the publishing industry. We talked quite a bit, and I told him about my background and career aspirations. After a couple of months, he pulled me aside and told me he knew of a book publisher that was looking for an assistant editor. He told me to send the hiring manager my résumé and that he had already put in a good word for me. Sure enough, I soon got the call to come in for an interview.

I thought it was my big break. Surely his good word would be as good as gold in getting me the gig.

It might have been if it weren’t for my dumb move.

Before the interview, I had copied all of my best college clips and neatly arranged them in a nice-looking portfolio to show off my work. But then it dawned on me that this was an editing position, and not a writing job, so I needed to prove I could edit.

Light bulb!

At the beginning of my advanced editing class in college we were given a really hard test. I don’t recall many people doing very well on it, but I did particularly bad on it. OK, really bad on it. There must have been more red ink on it than a Peter Max “Blushing Beauty” poster. But as a way to prove to us how much we’d learned in the class, the professor gave us the exact same test as the final. I don’t think I aced it, but I did much, much better. I was proud of how much I’d learned about editing in that one semester.

The problem was he never gave us our finals back, so all I had was the original test. “Aha,” I thought. "I’ll bring the test to the interview to show the company how difficult it was and then explain how well I did on the final." "It's foolproof," I thought.

More like proof I was a fool.

While you’re never quite sure what someone thinks of you during an interview, I felt it was going really well. The conversation was free and easy, I don’t recall any stumbling blocks, so I was ready to close the deal. I pulled out my original test, and started to explain how hard the exam was and my vast improvement on the final.

Of course, I didn’t have the test to prove it.

You can’t always pinpoint the moment when you blow an interview, but I blew it and I knew it, even if I didn’t want to believe it. I tried to do damage control, but the interview ended shortly after.

I don’t recall if I got a rejection letter, but the customer at the restaurant who got me the interview came in a week or so later with the bad news. He had talked to his contact at the company and she told him they were hiring someone else. As I rightfully suspected, the test had scared them away.

I can’t say I blame them. It was a dumb thing for me to do. Hindsight, ya know. And maybe the person they did hire was a better fit anyway, but perhaps they missed out on a great candidate who made one boneheaded mistake.

Weeding is essential in the hiring process, but sometimes companies do tend to focus too much on the few cons rather than the many positives. It’s good to remember that there are some weeds you don’t have to pick because they’d actually look good in your garden.

That's my story; what's yours?

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Extreme Narcissism at Work: A Conversation With Psychologist Joseph Burgo

Dr. Joseph Burgo's latest book, 'The Narcissist You Know,' details eight different kinds of extreme narcissists, some of whom, like the bullying and vindictive narcissists, can make lives miserable for their colleagues. (Photo credit: Burgo photo by Kathy Stanford)

Before reading clinical psychologist Joseph Burgo’s latest book, “The Narcissist You Know,” my vision of an “extreme narcissist” was Vanity Smurf looking lovingly at himself in the mirror. You know, “Oh, Vanity, you’re Smurf-tastic.” That sort of harmless thing.

Was I wrong! Extreme narcissists, which come in many different varieties, Burgo says — from the less worrisome but more annoying know-it-all narcissist to the more concerning and scary bullying and vindictive narcissists — can be very dangerous, especially in the workplace. As Burgo writes, their motives are not always obvious, but when these people come after you, they can be relentless and even turn co-workers against you.

The common theme between all types of extreme narcissists — and Burgo says they could make up as much as 10 percent of the population — is these people experienced something especially traumatic in childhood, such as “a psychotic mother or vindictive parent or gross violence between the parents.” I recently had a chance to talk to Burgo about his book and how HR and employees can deal with these types of personalities in the workplace.

An edited transcript follows.

Whatever Works: Having read your book, I have to say I don’t think FDR had it right when he said, ‘The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.’ I think it should be ‘fear itself and extreme narcissism.’ There are some crazy examples in your book.

Joseph Burgo: It’s a pretty scary phenomenon. It appears in different ways — many different ways people might not be expecting.

WW: Tell me a little about the ‘bullying narcissist.’ You give an example in the book about ‘Marie’ who was bullied by ‘Loraine.’

Burgo: I use the bullying narcissist as my introduction to my subject because it pretty much typifies the way that extreme narcissists work. An extreme narcissist, more than just thinking a little too well of himself or herself, builds himself up at the expense of other people. The example I use in the book is of a woman who was working in a residential facility and became identified as the target of a bullying narcissist mostly because the other person, the bullying narcissist, was jealous of her. She [the bully] mobilized a team of her co-workers to kind of drive this woman out of the job because she didn’t want the competition. Something that bullying narcissists do a lot in the workplace, they will identify someone as their competition, someone they feel threatened by. Sometimes it’s for no reason that the other person can identify. It may just be who they are that’s the problem. They will target them; they will do what they can to sabotage [the other person’s] work product.

WW: There was an interesting example in your book when you talk about the ‘vindictive narcissist.’ You give the example of ‘Tyler’ and ‘Phil.’ What interested me was that ‘Tyler’ actually went to HR to explain that something was going on with ‘Phil,’ but HR pushed back and said, ‘No one else is saying this.’ How can HR handle a situation like this better?

Burgo: It’s a real problem because, as in some other examples I give in the book, narcissists are often very good at disguising their behavior to people who matter. So they hide it from their superiors. They may confine it to just one person. It’s hard to identify. Human resources might not believe it. They might view it … as a personality conflict, something that needs to be worked out between the two people. So they don’t take it seriously. I think that people in human resources aren’t quite onto this type of extreme narcissism yet. They don’t realize what a major problem it is. The other issue is that because narcissists are so ambitious, driven to prove themselves, they’re often very successful employees. You often find them in management. When management is the bully, it’s a problem for the person down below who’s trying to get some redress for the way she is being treated.

WW: You talk in the book about trying to empathize with an extreme narcissist, whether it’s a bully or what have you, but that’s pretty difficult if you have a bully coming at you. How do you handle it?

Burgo: I think feeling empathy in that situation is pretty much a superhuman chore. I think being attacked, when you’re being bullied, it’s hard to feel anything other than anger and resentment and hatred for the way you’re being treated. When I say you need to empathize, it’s just so you understand what the bully is going through and know how to handle them best. If you understand that the bully is dealing on an unconscious level with a sense of shame, then you know that you’ve got to be very careful not to do anything that’s going to stir up shame. You also need to know that they will fight to the death often. They’re relentless competitors. If you go up against them, you want to defend yourself and fight back, you’re going to escalate the battle. You have to understand that about them and know what not to do.

WW: You talk about celebrities who you believe are extreme narcissists in your book, including Donald Trump. Why do you feel that he might fall into this category?

Burgo: With the celebrities I talk about in my book, I never say that I believe they are an extreme narcissist without doing a lot of background research. So I looked into his childhood first of all, and his father was kind of a brutal competitor, brought his kids up to be ‘killers.’ Donald’s older brother Fred really couldn’t handle the pressure and drank himself to death in his 40s. There’s a consistent background here with the people that I talk about. The thing that really strikes me about Trump is that he demonstrates the three qualities I associate with extreme narcissists when they feel that their self-esteem has been challenged. They become indignant first of all. They find a way to turn it around and blame the other person or blame somebody else, and then they will treat the person who is criticizing them with contempt. That pretty much defines Donald Trump’s personality. The great example is the interchange with Megyn Kelly at the first Republican debate.

WW: So it has a lot to do with this ‘loser’ mentality. Many extreme narcissists feel they have to create a loser, is that right?

Burgo: It is, and I think that’s the most useful way for most people to understand extreme narcissism and the way they [extreme narcissists] look at the world. They view the world almost exclusively in terms of ‘winners and losers.’ They build up themselves by turning somebody else into a loser. That was the example with the bully, and you see with Trump. Again, he’s always pronouncing that he’s a winner in one way or another and quite literally calling everybody else losers. If you look at extreme narcissism that way, it’s pretty simple, pretty easy to understand.

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Take Bias Out of Processes, Not People, NeuroLeadership Institute’s David Rock Says

Bias is a big issue for companies — and people in general. It affects everything from hiring to purchasing decisions and everything in between. The fact is, whether we like it or not, we’re all biased. We can’t help it. It’s prewired in our brains and makes us who we are.

So what can companies do about it? If you think you can take bias out of people, you’re wrong, says David Rock, the director of the NeuroLeadership Institute, a global research organization focusing on cognitive research. Instead, he says, to limit bias, organizations need to addresses their decision-making processes. In other words, don’t even give the brain an opportunity to make an unconscious biased decision.

I had the opportunity to discuss bias with Rock (at right in the screen grab below) following his presentation at  CEB’s ReimagineHR: Building the HR Function of the Future conference in Chicago on Oct. 1. Here is an edited transcript of our conversation. I might be am biased, but I thought it was a fascinating conversation.

Whatever Works: So I’m biased, you’re biased, we’re all biased, so are we fighting a losing battle to try and get rid of bias?

David Rock: We’re all incredibly biased, and incredibly biased all the time. That’s actually a good thing in some ways. You need bias to get through your shopping routine. If you have to make a fresh decision about every single purchase, you’d never get home. So generally bias is not a problem. The trouble is for key decisions like who you should hire or which business to buy or which vendor to use, these kinds of things, going off unconscious biases can have some quite large consequences. So mitigating bias all the time is impossible and a bad idea. What we need to do though is significantly reduce the bias so that we make just basically better decisions that are not just automatic. In key decisions like the hiring, investment, etc.

WW: So where does bias come from? It’s sounds like some sort of defense mechanism?

Rock: It’s a complex story, but essentially we don’t have a lot of cognitive resources for mapping the world moment to moment in the brain, so we have to use heuristics and rules and pre-learned principles in order to make sense of the world. A baby comes out and everything’s just noise, so we don’t have a lot of cognitive resources for making fresh decisions and seeing things new. We’re built to use existing patterns basically, and that plays out in nudging us one way that we’ve always gone as an example of one of the biases.

To read my interview with CEB's HR practice leader, Brian Kropp, please click here.

WW: Talk about what companies can actually do if they’re concerned about bias. And should they be very concerned about bias?

Rock: The thing is bias actually is a big issue. It’s having organizations that are not as diverse as they could be, not as inclusive as they could be, and that’s a significant issue in itself. Additionally to that, poor investment decisions, poor purchasing decisions. Often these have very serious consequences in many organizations. So it is a real problem. The thing is it’s one of these very quirky problems where going at it the way that might seem obvious doesn’t really work. Most problems with people, workforce problems, you can sort of educate people a bit and create some change. Bias is one of those problems where it’s not really an awareness or motivation problem; it’s actually a perception problem. More education doesn’t really do much. You’ve basically got to reduce the chance of bias rather than rely on people to try to be less biased.

WW: How do you do that?

Rock: We talk about take the bias out of the process rather than the person. The very best way you can take bias out is to look at a process, work out the kind of bias that could happen and literally take out the possibility of it happening. A common example that’s sort of well-known is the orchestra that does blind auditions. Play this song behind a screen. We don’t know their age, their gender, anything. And you choose the best person, the best sound. And it ends up you hire completely differently when you do that. It’s removing the chance of bias, taking that human element out and just going with what really makes someone perform well.

WW: So the TV show ‘The Voice’ is doing something right?

Rock: <Laughs> That’s right. They are actually reducing bias. You’re not going to trick them with your smile or something else.

WW: You talk about the different types of bias out there, and there’s one you call ‘distance bias.’ There’s been a trend in the workforce with allowing people to work remotely. By doing that, are they introducing a bias that they’re not aware of?

Rock: Yea. Absolutely. So distance bias is one of the five big categories of bias that are driving our behavior all the time. We organized all the different biases — there’s more like 100 — into five categories based on how the brain creates these biases. And distance is one. Essentially it’s your brain saying, ‘Things that are closer to you are more valuable.’ Pay more attention to something closer to you physically or in time. And we don’t know that’s happening. And what can happen if an employee is working distantly is that you don’t pay as much attention literally to their ideas, to their work, the out-of-sight, out-of-mind principle ends up sort of actually being a little bit true compared to the person that might be in the office. It’s an unconscious bias that can work against the person that’s remote.

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Mercer Acquires Workforce Metrics Company Comptryx

Mercer went for the metrics with its acquisition of Comptryx.

On Sept. 30, the global consultancy announced it had acquired Comptryx, a workforce metrics company that specializes in the technology sector, for an undisclosed amount.

Comptryx was founded in 2010 by three human resources and compensation consultants: John Cunnell, Joe Duggan and Roger Sturtevant and has headquarters in the United States and United Kingdom. Its software allows companies to benchmark their pay and workforce metrics against competitors with three components: a global salary survey, workforce metrics analysis system and a labor cost modeling tool.

“The technology industry is a growing market for Mercer,” said Ilya Bonic, a Mercer senior partner and president of the consultancy’s talent business, in a news release. “The acquisition of Comptryx strengthens our consulting insights by ensuring the most robust products are utilized to achieve informed, data-driven talent management programs.”

Duggan added in the release: “Our mission is to elevate HR’s role by providing powerful organizational information that executive management needs to run the business. … We believe the experience and resources resulting from the combination of our businesses will be of great value to our clients.”

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Robert De Niro: Your Internship Is Waiting, Your Mentorship Is Needed

Robert De Niro and Anne Hathaway star in "The Intern." All photos courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures.

I’m gonna make Robert De Niro an offer he can and will undoubtedly refuse.

We have an editorial internship available, so if he wants some extra intern experience, I’d be happy to pull some strings.

De Niro’s latest movie, “The Intern,” opens this week (Sept. 25), so perhaps the famed method actor is looking to do a biopic on say H.L. Mencken and needs to work on his journalistic chops. The man did learn to speak Sicilian for his role in “The Godfather Part II,” to play saxophone for his part in “New York, New York” and, most famously, to box like a champ for his Academy Award-winning role as Jake LaMotta in “Raging Bull.” From what I've read, he's also a thorough interviewer of sources to learn about the intricacies of the characters he intends to play.

Yes, I know that opening is a play on Marlon Brando’s line in “The Godfather,” but De Niro did play Vito Corleone in “The Godfather Part II,” so it’s not completely off-base. I planned to use that line as an ice-breaker if I landed an interview with De Niro about “The Intern,” but alas it was not meant to be. I was, however, able to get a sneak peak at the Nancy Meyers written and directed comedy, which co-stars De Niro as 70-year-old intern Ben Whittaker and Anne Hathaway as Jules Ostin, the CEO of a successful e-commerce women’s clothing startup called About the Fit, and here are my thoughts.

(Note: Some spoilers below.)

Speaking of Brando, De Niro is at his best when he looks in the mirror in his movies. You really see the “soul” of his characters that way. Remember the power of LaMotta (De Niro) reciting Brando’s “On the Waterfront” lines in “Raging Bull” or Travis Bickle (De Niro) acting “threatened” as he prepares himself for mayhem in “Taxi Driver”? In “The Intern,” one of the funniest scenes is a short one where De Niro looks in the mirror practicing the best way to keep his eyes blinking naturally for when he’s talking to Jules.

We learn just before Ben’s first meeting with Jules that one of her eccentricities is she doesn’t like — or trust — people who don’t blink enough while talking to her, which is, I’m guessing, intentionally ironic as Jules seldom blinks when she’s having a conversation. Her eyes are wide open if you will. The beauty of De Niro’s role as the “observant” Ben is, in most scenes, he subtly blinks more than normal in Jules' presence. Watch for it in the movie; it’s a thing of beauty.

But there isn’t much time for blinking in the film. Meyers does a masterful job of establishing a quick pace to the movie that keeps it interesting. There’s a fantastic rhythm that’s anchored by the film’s nondiegetic score.

While Ben is the intern, he is also a mentor to Jules and some of the other younger workers on staff, which, I’m guessing, must be what it’s like to work with De Niro in real life.

He is a master at not only acting but also “becoming” the person he portrays, and he seldom fails. In this case, we find out that Ben, a former phonebook executive, lacks purpose in his life after his wife died and he retired. Of course, About the Fit — I’m not sure why a company name was picked with the initials ATF; it makes me think of the government agency and connotes a volatile environment — is a hip 2-year-old growing company, which asks intern candidates to create a Web video about themselves instead of a cover letter.

Acting the part of an older job candidate without much current tech savvy, Ben admits in his video that he had to ask his grandchild for tech support to figure out what a USB connector is. Later, once hired, Ben can’t figure out how to start his computer. It’s a bit cliché, but still funny.

Meyers has said Ben is the best male character she’s ever written, and it’s easy to imagine how she went to great lengths to tie the character to De Niro the real person by adding subtleties bordering on autobiographical portraits. The film is set in New York, De Niro’s stomping grounds, and there’s even a Tribeca reference, the place in New York where De Niro set up his entertainment business and, of course, his famous film festival. In one scene Ben offers to get sushi for Jules, who forgot to eat. It's one of De Niro’s favorite foods. In another scene, Ben, Jules and three other male employees drink shots of tequila until Jules has had too much. Patron is reportedly one of De Niro’s favorites.

It’s fun getting to know the work environment at About the Fit and the quirky characters who make up its staff (including Adam Devine and Christina Scherer [pictured with De Niro and Hathaway above] who play Jason and Becky in the film). Someone in the company rings a bell to recognize when something good happens to the company (such as getting a record 2,500 likes —hearts? — on an Instagram picture) or to recognize workers’ achievements, no matter how small. Ben gets recognized for cleaning a perpetually messy communal desk, and it’s great watching him sheepishly accept the praise. Getting the bell rung for him earns Ben a visit from the office masseuse (Rene Russo), and the two form an instant connection.

To show how busy Jules is, and perhaps her lack of leadership experience, she tries to do everything. She rides a bike around the office so she can get to her next destination faster, plans meetings in five-minute intervals, and even answers and handles customer service complaints when bridesmaid dresses show up in the wrong color. She promises to inspect the replacement shipment of dresses herself, gives the client her personal cell number if there are problems and even refunds the person’s money.

Hathaway for her part does an excellent job portraying the workaholic Ostin, and there is excellent chemistry between her and De Niro that jumps off the screen. You can feel the pressure mounting in Jules’ head as she tries to balance running a company that has quickly grown to 220 people with her family life, which we find out is difficult for her. Her husband (Anders Holm) agreed to take on stay-at-home Dad duties so Jules could focus on her career, but the decision obviously has worn on both of them. And some of the other moms are critical of the decision, which leads Jules at one point to exasperatedly say, “Are we really still critical of working moms?” Indeed.

I don’t want to spoil the film, but one of the only things that bothered me about it is how easily Jules forgives someone who hurts her badly. Earlier in the film, when she’s feeling the pressure of having to find a CEO to essentially be her boss, she says incredulously, “Get me some CEO lessons.” Truth is, she doesn’t need them; she just needs a mentor to point her in the right direction. She is a natural leader. In the aforementioned forgiveness scene, it feels odd to see this strong female leader seem weak in her acceptance of a personal betrayal even if it makes for a nice Hollywood moment.

“The Intern” is an excellent portrait of startup office life in 2015, and I highly recommend it. What sets it apart is the mentor-intern aspect of the movie, although at times it seems Hathaway’s character is the one going through an internship rather than De Niro's. After all, while millennials get most of the workplace attention these days, there is obviously a lot of older workers with a lot of knowledge to share and vice versa for that matter. That’s what internships are all about.

Right, Mr. De Niro?

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2015 Game Changer: Teresa Clarke

For large companies, a $1.8 million savings in health care costs might elicit a polite smile and nod from senior leadership, but for a midsize nonprofit organization with a mission to bring high-level education to urban students, it’s quite an achievement.

Achievement First’s Teresa Clarke, 39, was able to bring home those insurance savings in the first few months after she joined the organization, and she even negotiated a rate cap to ensure continued savings.

It’s a nice luxury to have a lawyer in the human resources department managing a staff of four HR generalists.

Max Polaner, Achievement’s chief financial and strategy officer, wrote: “Teresa led the effort to bring our HR function out of the dark ages by leading the charge to overhaul some of the antiquated processes.”

And that’s only a taste of why Clarke deserves to have the spotlight shown on her as a Workforce Game Changer.

Photo by Mark Thompson Photography

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Loyal Is Not a Fault: Companies Can Keep Workers Longer

Today’s average U.S. worker stays in a job about 4½ years, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which means employees just aren’t loyal anymore, right? Especially those job-hopping millennials?

Calm down; it’s just not true. While some workers do prefer changes of scenery, many are happy to stay put if there’s reason to do so.

Take Bob Miller for instance.

The recently retired Dallas Morning News reporter and columnist explained to his former colleague, Cheryl Hall: “When your knees pop and your mind doesn’t, it’s time to go.” But it took the 91-year-old Miller 64 years on the job to come to that conclusion.

Just read that number again: That’s a six and a four scrunched, not added, together. Wow.

If 64 were his age, it’s the number at which a young Paul McCartney thought he’d be an afterthought grandfather hoping for a birthday greeting and a bottle of wine. Yet Miller didn’t see it that way. He carried on with his daily duties under his assumption that his career would end only when he was “carried out.”

But as life goes on, of course plans change, and 64 years of tenure is pretty much unheard of, although not unprecedented.

According to Guinness, the record for tenure belongs to Thomas Stoddard, who started his career as a “mail boy” at Speakman, a plumbing pipe-fitting company, in 1928 and retired as a board member in 2008. In all, Stoddard who died April 8, 2014, at the age of 102, worked at Speakman for 80 years. That's about a year longer than the current average life expectancy in the United States.

While Miller and Stoddard may be the exception to the rule, logic says the men stayed because they were happy where they were at, and, of course, the companies were happy with them. Indeed, Laura Jacobus, The Dallas Morning News’ assistant business editor, told Hall, “I’ve never known anyone who enjoyed his job more” than Miller. Can’t beat fun at the old job game.

But the workforce has changed; that’s for sure.

While companies used to take a paternal approach to their employees, offering great benefits, like pensions, to entice them to stay for their career, those are rarities in 2015. I’m no economist, but it’s pretty clear that current economic conditions wouldn’t support yesterday’s paternalistic ideals. Although, even though some dispute the findings, it does give one pause to read reports that CEOs of the largest publicly traded companies make 373 times as much as average production and nonsupervisory workers, especially when average annual salary increases for nonexempt workers have been averaging about 3 percent.

Beyond compensation issues, as Patty Kujawa writes in our upcoming feature on financial “wellness,” companies are realizing that they probably should rethink their current laissez faire approach to workers’ retirement and help employees manage their 401(k)s. And health care has changed, too. Twenty years ago, no one knew what a consumer-driven health plan was. Now young workers in particular can’t remember a time when companies flipped most of the insurance bills.

It would be naïve to think that we will return to the days of paternalism, but that doesn’t mean companies can’t look out for workers in other areas. I really liked what Daniel Andrew, founder of Trademark Tours, wrote last year about allowing staff to work from home, flexibility with time off and listening to employees’ ideas. Those types of things make people happy.

If you’re looking to keep workers for the long haul —  and you should since finding new employees is really expensive — it pays to be nice even if your company can’t afford to pay a nice wage.

So let's congratulate Mr. Miller on his retirement; he earned it.

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Interview With George ‘The Animal’ Steele: Learning the Ropes of the Wrestling Business

Jim Myers, who is better known as George "The Animal" Steele, was famous in his wrestling days for chewing on and destroying turnbuckles in the ring.

The wrestling profession is a different kind of animal.

Heated meetings take place in a ring rather than a conference room, and chairs are often used for smacking down opponents rather than for sitting down on.

Former pro wrestler George “The Animal” Steele, 77, is perhaps the most famous hirsute grappler of all time. Besides his extra-hairy torso, he was known for his green tongue, odd mannerisms in the ring that he used to intimidate opponents, crude vocabulary on the mic and especially his turnbuckle-chewing. Nonwrestling fans might remember him from his role in the Tim Burton movie “Ed Wood” where he played wrestler Tor Johnson.

Outside of the ring, he was — is — Jim Myers, a now-retired high school teacher and coach of football and wrestling who has wrestled with dyslexia his whole life. At a time when dyslexia wasn’t well-understood, his learning disability caused him to be “written off as dumb” at a young age as he tells it in his autobiography, “Animal.” Things turned around for Myers when a mentor at Michigan State University, Roy Niemeyer, talked Myers’ professors into letting him take oral rather than written exams. Myers got a second chance at an education. He went on to earn a bachelor’s degree from Michigan State and later a master’s degree from Central Michigan University. He also inspired countless young people to lead better lives through his teaching and coaching. Myers has been married to his wife, Pat, for almost six decades, and they have three children.

Myers, believe it or not, was not a fan of wrestling when he entered the profession. He simply wanted a second job to supplement his income. In the early 1960s he was paid $4,300 a year to teach and coach. He remained a part-time wrestler until he turned 48 when wrestling became much more lucrative thanks to Vince McMahon’s big gamble on creating a pay-per-view event called WrestleMania, which turned a once-niche, territorial industry into an entertainment behemoth. At that time, “The Animal” changed from a hated heel (bad guy) to a beloved baby face (good guy) in a storyline that eventually led him to do battle with Randy “Macho Man” Savage to win the “heart” of Miss Elizabeth. When he started his ring career, Myers made about $25 per match but he was pulling in about $250,000 per year in the mid-’80s.

Myers details his battles with Crohn’s disease in his book. He became a deeply religious man after he hit his lowest point in the mid-’90s and nearly committed suicide to relieve the pain from the inflammatory bowel disease, which ultimately led to him having to have his colon removed.

So what lessons can employers possibly learn from an ex-wrestler’s story? Turns out plenty — about leverage, teamwork, communication and more.

Workforce: I think some people might be surprised to find out about your early career and how you had sort of a double career. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

Jim Myers: In 1962, I just graduated from college and [had] a teaching job. I was making $4,300 a year with two children, a third one on the way. The value of the dollar was different back then, but with those prices, I still was not going to survive. So my wife was giving me that look, you know, the cupboard’s empty, and I went out looking for a job to be a bouncer in a bar to make ends meet. And I found out one thing, I took a friend with me, Dave Pierce, and they don’t hire you if you’re drinking and you got a buddy with you. So that was a blessing. Dave was a huge wrestling fan; I never watched it. I was a football guy, so about 1 o’clock in the morning he talked me into calling up the local [Detroit-area] wrestling promoter, Bert Ruby.

WF: At 1 o’clock in the morning?

Myers: I woke him up, and surprisingly [Ruby] invited me over the next day. When I went over to meet with him, he took one look at me when he opened the door and said, ‘Beautiful.’ And I know what I look like, so I didn’t know how to take that, but I was invited in to meet his wife and his mother-in-law and his children. And then we went into his office and he started to ask me a lot of questions, and then I was giving the answers, and eventually he asked me to take off my jacket and my shirt. Now I had no clue about wrestling, so I take off my jacket and shirt and he sees the hairy body and he goes, ‘Oh,’ and he kind of goes crazy on that, and I still didn’t understand what was going on. … But he started talking to me about wrestling, and he thought that it might work big time. And I told him that I was a coach and teacher, and I didn’t want to be seen on television as a wrestler at that time. So he decided that I would wrestle as a ‘Student.’

WF: So when you called him at 1 in the morning, what exactly did you say to him that he didn’t tell you to get lost?

Myers: God was in control, I guess. ‘I want to be a wrestler,’ and they were looking for new wrestlers. So he invited me over. It kind of blew my mind also, but I guess it was meant to be. And then once I got all my stuff together … he started booking me. Now prior to that, they sent me to a gym across the river from Detroit in Windsor, Ontario — a Catholic church that had a gym underneath it to meet a bunch of wrestlers to train me to be a wrestler. I was in good shape, I loved to fight, and these guys gave me calisthenics to get me really tired, and then they took me to the ring and tried to beat me up. That’s the way they did things back then. … I responded to that, and before long they were telling me about how to wrestle professionally but not to tell Bert Ruby because they were not supposed to smarten me up. I thought wrestling was real when I went in there. I didn’t know what was going on. I never really watched it. I kind of looked at it as a joke, but anyhow, I didn’t really like that. I thought the integrity of me being an athlete was being challenged by ‘working’ a match. I really resented wrestling, but I needed the money. That was the hook. And I was making, once I got started wrestling, I was making $25, $30, $40 a night, and when you look at that as six nights a week, when you’re only making $4,300, that extra $25 a night, really did help.

WF: Was that typical back then for wrestlers to have other jobs on the side?

Myers: Some of them did. This is back in the territories, and some of them did have part-time jobs. … One of the guys in Detroit that was a huge heel was ‘Crusher’ Cortez, and he worked at the Chrysler factory, and then drove somewhere to wrestle at night. And he was a pure, outstanding performer.

WF: Wrestlers are all independent contractors, is that correct?

Myers: Exactly.

WF: So you’re not really employees, per se, of the organization?

Myers: Never signed a contract. In all the years I was with the WWF [Editor’s note: The World Wrestling Federation changed its name to World Wrestling Entertainment in 2002], and I’m talking the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, until Vince McMahon Jr. came in, all my matches were on a handshake. No contract signed. Jumping ahead, that’s why I was able to do so well is I was only available in the summertime because I continued to teach and coach until 1985, which gave me leverage. See what I’m saying? I got over big time in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, they wanted to use me all the time. I was going back to teach for a lot less money, but it gave me the bargaining leverage.

WF: So I think people might be surprised about this, but there really are no health care benefits in the wrestling industry. Is that correct?

Myers: There wasn’t. I don’t know about now. I know they’re under contracts now. Back then, no. In fact, I had a fella’, Bob Woolf, he’s passed away, but Bob was the organizer of baseball, football and basketball. He had a lot to do with organizing those sports. And I met with Bob in Hollywood Beach, Florida, about 1972, and he was talking to me about organizing professional wrestling. I told him, ‘I don’t think that would ever work because there was such a difference in pay.’

WF: You have dyslexia. If you were talking to a room of employers about how to get the best out of their workers who have learning disabilities or some other disability, what would you say to them?

Myers: I truly believe that when you have a handicap or a challenge, it can be a learning disability or a different kind of handicap, that God has made us in such a way that when you have a challenge, it’s really hard for other people to understand. He also gives you a gift in the other direction that other people might not have. And dyslexia, you have a hard time reading or writing, but the studies they’ve found dyslexia is most people that have that challenge have tremendous memories. I can remember way back when. My wife who was a math teacher, a high IQ gal, is blown away with the things that I can remember from the past. So I think every handicap, there’s a gift somewhere in there if you look for it to find it. And if you use it in the right direction, you can re-create a whole ’nother package for almost any business. For any business.

WF: Was it a tough time in the wrestling business in the early ’90s when Vince McMahon was on trial for providing steroids to wrestlers? [Editor’s note: McMahon was acquitted of the charges.]

Myers: Ooo. Ooo. Ooo. You know, no. Not for the business itself; for me as an individual. I was in Hollywood at the time making a movie, ‘Ed Wood.’ And I was called back I think it was ’94, I was called back into New York. They flew me back, picked me up with a limousine and took me right to the federal grand jury building. I sat in the same seat that [John] Gotti had sat in defending a business that I had learned to love. Now I told you at first I resented wrestling because I thought it was a challenge to my integrity as an athlete, as I learned the art of ‘working,’ which is a lost art, and putting on a performance without a script and getting people so mad they wanted to kill you, but bringing them down before they did kill you, which was pretty important, too. When I got into that frame of things, I learned to love the business. And I’m sitting in this chair [for the grand jury] and I’m defending the business, which was all very much political, I think, but I can’t prove that. They were asking me questions — a lot of the people, and I was an ‘agent’ at the time — the high-end business part of it. And a lot of the guys that was in there, were in there for two-and-a-half, three hours. The federal grand jury people got me out of there in about 45 minutes. But I had people roaring, laughing. They asked me if Andre the Giant took the steroids test. I said, ‘Well, not always. Do you think I’m going to take Andre by the pee-pee and make him pee in a cup?’ <Laughs> And I said, ‘Ya look at Andre and think well maybe he don’t need steroids. He’s already 7-foot-2 and massive and those kinds of things.’ So I had a lot of fun with it. I don’t guess I was too helpful to them, but I was angry about it, too, to be honest with you. They were challenging a business that had been very good to me and my family, and really I didn’t feel that I belonged in there, that we belonged in court.

WF: You mention Andre the Giant. Do you have any good stories about him?

Myers: Oh yeah. Andre and I traveled a lot together. Andre was great. One of my all-time most memorable matches was with Andre. We were in Albany [New York] wrestling … and the baby faces were on one side and I was on the other side with the heels. And Andre had been eating garlic and washing it down with wine. He told the boys over there, <Andre voice> ‘I have fun with George tonight.’ I didn’t know it. So I go in the ring, I go to lock up with him and he pushes me to the corner. <Adds an Andre laugh> ‘Heh, heh, heh.’ He puts his big hands around my head like a gas mask and goes <makes a heavy exhale sounds>, and not only the breath but the garlic and chunks of garlic are coming out in my face like I needed a facemask or something to protect myself. And I grabbed his thumb and I jerked on it and got loose from him, and he laughed. He pushed me to the other corner, put the hands up again and give me the gas mask again. I got his thumb and I rolled out of the ring, gave him the Italian salute and left. Left him standing there by himself, so he got a big kick out of that.

But another time, later on, Andre was sick and he said things like, you know, he was very honest about it. He said, ‘I’m nothing but a big freak, and I have no family, I have nothing. Wrestling is my family.’ And he’s in the process of dying, but he’s still traveling with the wrestlers just to be in the locker room with us. That was his family. And he said to me one night — this is kind of funny but it put a tear in my eye, too. Andre said, <Andre voice> ‘You know, for years, how many times they going to ask me, “How’s the air up there?’ ” ’ He said, ‘Now eat garlic, pass gas, and say, “How is the air down there?’ ” ’ That was kind of where he was at towards the end. He loved to sit in the locker room, play cards with the guys. Just a great guy. Just a really great guy. But just not much of a life outside of wrestling.

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Repeat First Down: Tackling Second Chances in the NFL and Business

I’ve been thinking a lot about second chances. Do “stars” get more opportunity at redemption than “regulars?”

In case you missed it, the Chicago Bears’ Pro Bowl wide receiver Brandon Marshall held a news conference on Sept. 18 to talk about domestic violence allegations made against him by his former girlfriend. The charges of alleged abuse, I might add, occurred when he played for the Denver Broncos — in 2006.

Why dredge up the past?

Simple. Domestic abuse and violence off the field are hot topics in the NFL right now with star players like Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson receiving suspensions for separate incidents. To spotlight the issue of abuse, ESPN recently re-ran a profile on Marshall that originally appeared a couple of years ago. Shortly after the report was shown, Gloria Allred, a high-profile civil rights lawyer who represents Marshall’s ex-girlfriend, rehashed Marshall’s situation in an attempt to show NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell’s lack of leadership when it comes to domestic violence.

As a Bears fan I may be biased, but I have heard nothing but good things about Marshall on and off the field since he came to Chicago in 2012. From all accounts, he has turned his life around. Marshall got a second chance, and I believe he deserved that second chance. Rice and Peterson almost got second chances as well, and they still might.

Initially Rice was suspended for only two games until TMZ released a video of the incident in question where his then-fiancée and current wife got knocked out. He has since been cut by the Baltimore Ravens and given an indefinite suspension by the league. Peterson, who is charged with injuring his son while spanking him with a “switch,” was initially reinstated to play for the Minnesota Vikings until the team reconsidered a couple of days later and put him on the exempt list so he cannot play. 

Marshall said something interesting at his press conference that caught my attention. He said, “You know I love controversy because it’s an opportunity, it’s a platform to talk about some of these issues.”

Good idea; let’s talk.

According to a 2012 fact sheet from the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, 24 people per minute are victims of rape, physical violence or stalking by an intimate partner in the United States, and nearly 3 in 10 women and 1 in 10 men have experienced rape, physical violence or stalking by a significant other. In other words, it’s a big problem. You might even work with or know someone who has been abused, and chances are you don’t even know it because abuse often goes unreported.

Beyond domestic abuse, sexual harassment is a big issue in the workplace that often goes unreported as well. According to U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission statistics, an average of about 7,600 sexual harassment cases were filed each year between 2010 and 2013, which might not sound like a lot, but according to a Huffington Post/YouGov poll from last year of 1,000 adults, 70 percent of the people who had been sexually harassed at work did not report it.

One sexual harassment that came to light occurred when Mark Hurd was CEO of Hewlett-Packard Co. back in 2010. While HP said Hurd did not violate the company’s sexual harassment policy, the company did say he violated its standards of conduct policy when he took Jodie Fisher, a marketing contractor for HP, to dinner using company funds. A letter from Allred, who also represented Fisher, detailed a number of events where Hurd allegedly made sexual advances on her. Hurd settled the charges with Fisher privately and he was not charged or convicted of any crimes, but he eventually resigned from HP and got a golden parachute of $50 million. He later took a job as president of Oracle.

According to a Wall Street Journal article at the time, analysts said bringing Hurd to Oracle was a “coup” that would help the software giant “expand beyond its roots.” UBS analyst Brent Thill said in the story, “This is a guy who can take the company to the next level.”

Oracle stock has gone from about $25 a share in 2010 to closer to $40 today.

So it wasn’t too surprising that Hurd was named co-CEO when Larry Ellison announced he was stepping down from that post on Sept. 18. Hurd will run the company along with Safra Catz, one of the highest paid female executives in the country.

Maybe money speaks louder than actions when it comes to second chances.

American Apparel, for example, backed former CEO Dov Charney for years even after a number of sexual harassment allegations surfaced. The clothing manufacturer’s board finally let him go this summer. Is it any coincidence that the company made the move after losing more than $106 million in 2013 and $27 million the year before?

We see it in  professional sports quite a bit: Star athletes seem to get many chances. Ray Lewis comes to mind. He is a former NFL player who pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice charges after he faced murder charges in a case that remains unsolved, but he went on to play a key role in a Super Bowl win with the Ravens.

I’m all for giving people second chances, but my question to you, the HR community, is simple: Do star executives get second chances that others do not?