Part 20

Get your "help"--it may be the switchboard operator or it may be a thousand automobile workmen--in the position of wanting those same three things. The help's job is his "trade," you are his customer; and his compensation is his profit.

When you do that, you have an employee or helper who is going to give you the hearty cooperation you're looking for--just so long as you are a good customer, and his compensation for helping you is a fair profit.

Next time you go into a store, try to keep that thought fixed in your mind. Everyone working in a business, you see, is selling his services--and when you use those services you are the buyer. Perhaps you pay in money for the services rendered--perhaps you simply repay him by making his day's work easier. In either event, treat your requests for service as though you and he were transacting a business that is mutually, but individually, profitable, and the cooperation which is otherwise usually begrudged will be automatically forthcoming.

But that, you say, is PERSONALITY. Then how do you account for this?

A. is a big, breezy salesman. He busts into a hotel, calls the "greeter" behind the desk by name, asks for 1209 "same as last time"--and gets all kinds of real service from porters, bell-hops and waiters.

It looks as though it might be personality.

Yet right behind him walks B. He's a horse-faced bird who never smiles--wiry, monosyllabic--asks brusquely for a $4 room--gets it. And gets everything else he asks for--just as promptly as A. does.

No, it can't be personality. For there's C. and there's D. C. is A's twin--and B. and D. were cast in the same mold. Their tips are no smaller; their demands no more unreasonable. Yet C. gets the poorest sample room in the house. And D's trunk is always the last one the porter brings up.

These aren't exaggerated cases. Hotel men will tell you they happen every day.

Why, then, did A. and B. rate such good service while their fellow knights of the road got none? Because when A. and B. asked for something, there was about the transaction a well-defined air of "you've something you can do for me--I've something I want done--what say we trade?" Whereas, when C. and D. came along, regardless of the personal manners involved, there was created the atmosphere of a one-sided business deal. C's breeziness had in it a touch of condescension, or D's brusqueness was the brusqueness of assumed superiority.

Thus is it seen, when we forget all about personality and study effects, that cooperation is gained by trading with the "help" according to the "help's" business.

Trade with an elevator man as though running an elevator were his own business--trade with the chief chemist as though the laboratory were his store--and they'll trade with you and be eager to make a satisfactory deal of it.

Under this fixed policy--or rule--the proper attitude to take towards this or that class of "help" becomes a matter of automatic selection.

And that is how we begin to acquire the KNACK OF HANDLING THE HELP. Thus do we step high, wide and handsome on our road to the KNACK OF MANAGING.

* * * * *

Now enters the business of COMPENSATION. There must be compensation in a trade if all hands are to be satisfied.

Everyone is in business because he wants something. Everything that will help him to get what he wants, he will like to do; everything that hinders him, he will dislike to do.

When you get ready to "trade" with someone, therefore, consider what the other man wants--that is, if you want to get the most help or cooperation out of the transaction. Then consider what you can give in return--balancing his wants.

+----------------------------------------------------------+ | +-------------+ +--------------+ | | |What YOU Want| | What YOUR | | | +-------------+ | "HELP" Wants | | | \ /+--------------+ | | +---------------------+ | | |What You Can Give and| | | |He Can Take That Will| | | | Leave Both Parties | | | | Satisfied | | | +---------------------+ | +----------------------------------------------------------+

There must be that balance in every satisfactory deal.

Examine the chart on this page. It will save a lot of paper and ink because it shows diagrammatically what must happen if there are to be satisfactory arrangements between you and your "help".

A word or two by way of interpretation may serve to show how it works out.

When the "help" is in your employ, the compensation--what you can give and he can take, leaving both parties satisfied--is his monthly pay check or his weekly envelope. Or it is the rate of commission. And bearing upon it are such things as local living conditions, and so on. When the "help" is someone not in your direct employ, then the compensation is regulated by the effect which performing the service you require, has on the success of the "help's" regular day's work.

For the moment, let's us return to the messenger boy whom we left in Chapter III just as he was about to deliver a message.

Or, at least, let's talk about another messenger boy whose task of managing his job differs in no wise from the first's--or, for that matter, from any other job of management.

This boy worked in a large Chicago building and his job was carting light but bulky packages back and forth between his company's quarters and its customers'. There were a dozen other boys, and most of them complained of having trouble getting up and down in the elevators. It seemed that the starter took delight in making the boys wait for the freight elevator--even when there was plenty of room in the others.

But this particular boy--an impudent youngster with a "fresh" way about him--had no trouble at all. So the office manager was anxious to know "how come."

He posted himself where he could observe without being seen. And sure enough, in came the fresh messenger boy with a bundle almost as big as himself. Down he set it, favored the starter with an impudent military salute and leaned nonchalantly up against the wall--well out of the way.