The business of judging others
April 24, 2006 | 12:00am
I had a teacher in law school who was a judge, and in one class, he relayed to us how difficult it is to be a judge. He didn’t really want to be a judge at first but it seemed like it was his calling. His father was a judge, and one night his father went home, depressed. He asked his father what was wrong. His father said in a sad voice, "I just sentenced a man to death today." And he slowly went to his room with his head bowed. My teacher said, "That statement made a huge impact on me." And then, after a slight pause and smile, he continued, "Of course, eventually, my dad sentenced more than 20 people to death." Apparently, his dad became immune to imposing death sentences.
In fact, that’s what judges do every day. They judge people and cases. That’s what HR managers and heads of companies do day in and day out – they judge their staff and their performance. They judge applicants and see if they are worthy of being part of the company. Clients always have to judge among several potential suppliers who will serve them best.
In our daily lives, we have to make judgments, too. We have to judge whether or not a stranger we just met is trustworthy enough to be a friend. We judge whether we can trust our cars and homes to a potential driver or to potential household help. When you date someone, you try to measure the person up and see if she can be your potential S.O. (significant other). So judging others is not necessarily immoral. In fact, it’s almost a must that we have to judge in order to survive. If we overly trust just anyone, we may end up in a ditch somewhere.
But in my experience in the corporate world, one of the ways I try to measure people up is the way they treat others. But I have to qualify that. I don’t judge them by the way they treat me or the way they treat their peers. I judge them the way they treat people who are below them – or people who serve them.
You can tell a lot about a person from how he treats his subordinates, his staff, his messenger, his household help, his driver, and all the people who are under him. Why? Because the real self comes out. People are always wary with their actions and words whenever they are talking to someone who is "above" them – even with their peers. There’s an almost automatic switch that goes on whenever you talk with people higher than you, or equal to you. You always try to put your best foot forward. But whenever you’re dealing with someone "lower," the true self comes out.
I recently read an interesting article on USA Today’s website. The piece was by Del Jones and he talked about how top businessmen would measure up other businessmen by the way they treated waiters. The piece goes:
"It seems to be one of those rare laws of the land that every CEO learns on the way up. It’s hard to get a dozen CEOs to agree about anything, but all interviewed agree with the Waiter Rule."
They acknowledge that CEOs live in a Lake Wobegon world where every dinner or lunch partner is above-average in their deference. How others treat the CEO says nothing, they say. But how others treat the waiter is like a magical window into the soul.
And beware of anyone who pulls out the power card to say something like, "I could buy this place and fire you," or "I know the owner and I could have you fired." Those who say such things have revealed more about their character than about their wealth and power.
The man who came up with it, or at least first wrote it down, is Raytheon CEO Bill Swanson. He wrote a booklet of 33 short leadership observations called Swanson’s Unwritten Rules of Management. Among those 33 rules is only one that Swanson says never fails: "A person who is nice to you but rude to the waiter, or to others, is not a nice person."
Swanson says he first noticed this in the 1970s when he was eating with a man who became "absolutely obnoxious" to a waiter because the restaurant did not stock a particular wine.
"Watch out for people who have a situational value system, who can turn the charm on and off depending on the status of the person they are interacting with," Swanson writes. "Be especially wary of those who are rude to people perceived to be in subordinate roles."
The Waiter Rule also applies to the way people treat hotel maids, mailroom clerks, bellmen and security guards. Au Bon Pain co-founder Ron Shaich, now CEO of Panera Bread, says he was interviewing a candidate for general counsel in St. Louis. She was "sweet" to Shaich but turned "amazingly rude" to someone cleaning the tables, Shaich says. She didn’t get the job.
Shaich says any time candidates are being considered for executive positions at Panera Bread, he asks his assistant, Laura Parisi, how they treated her, because some applicants are "pushy, self-absorbed and rude" to her before she transfers the call to him.
CEOs who blow up at waiters have an ego out of control, Gould says. "They’re saying, ‘I’m better. I’m smarter.’ Those people tend not to be collaborative."
"Such behavior is an accurate predictor of character because it isn’t easily learned or unlearned but rather speaks of how people were raised," says Siki Giunta, CEO of US technology company Managed Objects, a native of Rome who once worked as a London bartender.
So whenever you have to make a judgment – whether to get a spouse or to hire a person, always remember the Waiter Rule. A lot can be learned from the way people treat waiters.
I should know. I was one.
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