(New York Times) —  Q. Do you remember the first time you were somebody’s boss?

A. I was 22, and I was recruited out of college to work as a production supervisor for Polaroid on a manufacturing floor.  And the interesting thing was that I didn’t know anything about the production process. I was in charge of about 20 men, and most of them were about 10 to 15 years older than me.

Q. So how did you do it?

A. I decided they were going to become my new best friends.  I needed to, first of all, defer to them on almost everything.  It was out of respect and it was real.  And, second, I tried to figure out what we had in common. I found out that one guy’s family was from South Carolina, and my family is originally from South Carolina, so we really bonded over that.  The other guy was a former marine who had spent time in Vietnam. We kind of bonded over the fact that I’d gone to military school. And so I relied on those guys to teach me the business.  I didn’t come in saying, “I’m the college guy, I know what I’m doing and you’ll listen to me.”

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