Posts Tagged ‘influence’

With so many out of work these days, employers can practically sketch their ideal employee and find someone to perfectly fit the image.

Not many would sketch Nic Schoonbeck.

A decade of drug abuse had left the 24-year-old with a felony arrest record and bedraggled appearance. But as Rhonda Abrams explains in her book Wear Clean Underwear: Business Wisdom from Mom, the owners of Zingerman’s deli in Ann Arbor, Michigan, prided themselves on looking beyond externals when interviewing prospective hires. So instead of being put off by Nic’s unkempt ponytail, torn t-shirt, and spotty résumé, they welcomed him aboard and assigned him sandwich duties.

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Children are much more influenced by what their parents do than what they say. Sherry Lansing is a perfect example.

When Sherry chattered about becoming an actress, like other stereotypical moms in the 1950s, Margot Heimann Duhl told her daughter to focus on becoming a housewife. But necessity had forced Margot off traditional paths. When she’d fled Nazi Germany for America at 17, she’d had to be self-reliant, learning to speak English and working as a dressmaker. And when Sherry’s father, real-estate investor David Duhl, died of a sudden heart attack when she was nine, Margot stepped up again. The grieving widow went to his office and announced she was taking over the family business. On being informed by a male office manager that she couldn’t possibly do that because she didn’t know anything about real estate, she replied, “Teach me. I can do it.”

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