Analyzing Character: The New Science of Judging Men; Misfits in Business, the Home and Social LifeBlackford, Katherine M. H. (Katherine Melvina Huntsinger)
Science
Analyzing Character: The New Science of Judging Men; Misfits in Business, the Home and Social Life
Blackford, Katherine M. H. (Katherine Melvina Huntsinger)
Characters and characteristics; Success
"Your system was all wrong, and I can prove it to you," returned Nyall.
"Just wait a minute until I bring you in my charts."
RUBBING IT IN
Stepping into his office, he secured a number of charts and also several
sheets of tabulated figures. The charts were beautifully executed and in a
most admirable manner made graphically clear the sound reasoning upon
which Nyall had ordered the changes made. The tabulated figures proved
that his reasoning had been correct. He was positive, forceful, and
insistent in driving home his argument and in compelling his superior to
admit their force and cogency. When it was all admitted and Burton,
fighting to the last ditch, had been over-whelmed, Nyall's unconcealed air
of triumph was keenly and painfully exasperating to the defeated man.
This was only the first of the clashes between these two positive minds.
Ordinarily, perhaps, Burton would have preferred efficiency in the factory
to the triumph of his own opinions and ideas, much as it hurt him to be
found in error, But Nyall's disposition to wring the last drop of personal
triumph out of every victory was more than the good man could endure. With
his highly-strung nature, and goaded as he was by intense irritation, the
passion to prove Nyall in the wrong overrode all other considerations.
Thus he began to "cut off his nose to spite his face," as Nyall expressed
it--to conspire against Nyall's success.
If you have ever witnessed a fight for supremacy between two positive,
powerful, high-strung natures, with unusual resources of intellect and
capacity on both sides, we do not need to describe to you what happened in
the White Rapids Motor Company during the months that followed. Nyall
simply could not understand why Burton should jeopardize the success, and
even the solvency, of his enterprise by plotting against his own works
manager. To his friends he confided: "Honestly, I think the old man is
going crazy. The things he says and the things he does are not the product
of a sane, normal mind." Similarly, Burton could not understand, to save
his life, why Nyall should jeopardize the brilliant future which lay
before him "by bucking his president and general manager," as he put it.
"It is rule or ruin with him," he told his friends. "I never saw a more
stubborn man in my life. He is crazy to have his own way. He wants to take
the bit in his teeth, and if he were permitted to do it, he would run away
and smash himself and everything else."
BOTH BELLIGERENT AND STUBBORN
Why did not Nyall resign or, in default of his resignation, why did not
Burton discharge him? Such action was obvious for both men from a mere
common sense point of view, under the circumstances. The answer is that
both men were so obstinate and so set upon winning the fight upon which
they had entered, that neither of them would give up. It all ended when
the board of directors finally took a hand and removed Nyall in order to
save the institution from shipwreck.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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