This Issue: It’s Not Personal, It’s Business

The rules of the game of Business are all about making money. It’s about the bottom line. The sooner you realize that it's not personal, it's business, the sooner you’ll make it to the top in the business world. I’m often surprised by people who think business is something else. They come in with lofty ideas and philanthropic purposes that have absolutely no place in a business meeting. It’s a waste of everyone’s time.

I remember when a group of businessmen wanted to build an atrium on the ground floor of 40 Wall Street. It was a beautiful idea. They wanted to make 40 Wall Street the downtown equivalent of Trump Tower, except they forgot something. What would they do with the steel columns that support a 72-story building? That rather major structural component never entered their minds. I hope they didn’t take it personally when I pointed out their oversight.

Business is business. For example, if you get fired, there’s usually a number behind it, and that can take the personal affront right out of it. That’s the rules of the game. Businesses have to watch out for their bottom line, or they won’t be in business for very long. Don’t get worked up. If you do, you might be taking it the wrong way. Be objective.

It's not personal, it's business.

I learned early on that business can be completely impersonal even when dealing with human beings. One banker I was dealing with was like a machine. When a machine says no, it’s very tough. There are no rules in this situation because there’s no negotiating. I remember writing that you’d be better off dealing with a killer with real passion than with an institutional type who has no emotion and just wanted to go home at 5 o’clock. Sometimes we run into brick walls like that. Our only recourse is to find another way around it, which I did. And I gained insight into how impersonal business can be.

"It's not personal" does not mean "Become impersonable."

I’d rather be personable. It works better, provides more options for everyone, and allows for more creativity. It can require more energy, but I can tell you the results will be worth it. It still strikes me as funny that I suddenly became very popular after I started firing people every week on national television. People really liked me for that. Or so I thought. What they were seeing was the real person behind the famous name. They saw that I could be tough and demanding, but that I tried to be fair. I’ve always been this way, but it was never seen before except by my employees. When it comes to the rules of the game, I’m personable, but I can be all business. Believe me, it’s a formidable combination.

I have to be careful not to blow people away because if you cross me personally and professionally, I’ll have a double whammy waiting for you. I don’t enjoy being vicious, but sometimes it’s necessary for self-defense. I don’t like the double standard, as in, whatever I do is okay and whatever you do isn’t okay, or vice versa. If you treat me a certain way, then I can treat you that way, too. Some people call that the “eye for an eye” approach, but I call it playing fair. Sometimes the only way to deal with a bully is to punch him back. Let them know who they’re dealing with. Fair play is fair play--and once again, don’t take it personally.

It’s wise to be circumspect: get yourself out of the picture first in order to see the big picture. Don’t take personally what is not meant personally. A lot of times people misdirect their anger, and if you take it personally, you’ll become a bull's eye for angry darts. I’ve had people say totally off the wall things to me, which I can now deflect, knowing that about 90 percent of the time their comments have next to nothing to do with me. You have to develop a thick skin and keep your own positive wavelength going at all times.

Be tough, be smart, be personable, but don’t take things personally. Learn the rules of the game. "It's not personal, it's business," is good business.

I once worked for an entrepreneur who knew the rules of the game when caring for his employees. A forward-thinking boss, he held brainstorming meetings every month during which he handed out cash for promising ideas. He built a gym for us to use. He even gave us computers.

Was he an enlightened boss? Yes, but he also kept on his staff an old childhood friend, a bully who had no business working for the company. This bully was a man of limited imagination. He terrorized employees when he thought no one was watching. Employees felt powerless to fight back because of his protected status.

The bully’s presence was a rotten apple that spoiled all the good things the company owner was doing for us. How could we respect his judgment when he let a personal friend torment his employees? What about the rules of the game when it comes to trust?

More than a decade later, that company has now fallen on hard times. Maybe the owner gave away so many favors to friends that he finally gave away his own success, too. That happens when people can’t separate their personal and business lives.

If you have a keen eye, you will notice that many people fail to follow these rules of the game when it comes to separating business with their personal life. Worse yet, they become blind to the problem when their personal lives get tangled up in their careers. They make absurd mistakes that are completely out of character.

As I was doing some research for Trump University just last month, I spoke with a real estate developer who told me that he always gives work to his brother-in-law’s construction company, even though that man’s work is “shoddy, overpriced, and behind schedule.” When I asked him why he didn’t hire a different construction company, he laughed nervously and replied, “I do it to maintain family harmony and keep my wife from killing me.” I wonder if he will still be laughing when he goes out of business, and how much his family will like him then.

We can all become victims of that kind of thinking. I have a personal challenge in this area, too. When I go into a negotiating session, I tend to behave as though I am in a personal, not a business, setting. I want the other people to like me. I avoid negotiating too hard because that feels like a fight to me. Knowing the rules of the game, if I surrender to that tendency, I will fail. After all, the people on the other side of the table are not my friends. They want to get as much as they can from me. Fortunately, I know how to control this tendency before it does me any harm. But before I could fight the problem, I had to discover it.

It takes self-awareness to keep your personal life from harming your success, so fallow these rule of the game:

As you build your success, remember that it is more important to be respected than to be loved. If you have an incompetent employee on your staff, for example, you need to address that problem forcefully, even if you like the person. You are dealing with a business issue, not a personal one, and you need detachment. Be fair, but tough. Don’t play favorites.

When your business and personal lives collide, beware. If a friend or relative calls and asks you for a job, be frank about what you can and cannot do. Focus on business objectives. Hiring the wrong person for the wrong job will only lead to bad feelings later on. Firing a friend or relative can get pretty ugly.

Remember, people see everything you do. The entrepreneur I described at the start of this article--the man who sheltered an incompetent bully who happened to be his friend--probably thought people would not notice what he was doing. He apparently believed that his employees would love his good ideas so much that they could overlook the menacing presence of his unworthy friend.

Thinking like that doesn’t work. To reach the top and stay there, you can’t make bad business decisions because of personal obligations, needs, or desires. Know the rules of the game. If you are deeply committed to personal success, don’t let your personal life drag you down.

In the time B.C.--before computers--the rules of separation between home (personal) and work (business) was far more clear-cut. Today, there are very few rules of the game between home and work because of cell phones, e-mail, notebook computers, PDAs, and other powerful communications technologies. In some companies, employees are expected to be reachable at all hours and locations. Yet, management at these same companies often acts surprised, and can react harshly, when their employees’ personal lives “intrude” on the workplace.

Many of the problems that stem from boundary issues are the result of vague or wrong-headed regulations. This is understandable, though, because the phenomenon of “technological lag” dictates that a new technology will emerge long before the society into which it is born can adequately integrate it on the cultural level. In other words, technology is moving faster than our ability to address its human ramifications.

To address this gap between machines and behavior, business organizations are expanding their efforts to establish new rules of the game to delimit the boundaries of the private and company spheres. Indeed, this is the era of the “authorized use policy” (AUP), and its cousin, “the corporate blog policy.”

We’ve come a long way from the more authoritarian era, when sneaking a personal phone call home from the office was grounds for disciplinary action. Now, a personal phone call during business hours is as likely to made on a cell phone in the corridor as on a company phone in the office. In both cases, the same amount of productivity is lost, but the cell phone call seems less transgressive.

Technology has also transformed water cooler gossip with employee blogging. A once localized, relatively casual conversation has expanded to published musings with a global reach.

Several firms have had to fire bloggers, either for what they’ve said on their corporate blogs or for what some have said about their employers on their personal blogs. The known list of such companies includes big names like Google, Wells Fargo, Starbucks, and Harvard University.

Shutting down or prohibiting personal blogs is not a viable option, especially at large technology companies where such blogs--which often contain a good deal of commentary or information about the company--are rampant. Some companies, where employee blogging has been an issue, and others that seek to avoid any potential unpleasantness over blogs, have begun to implement standard guidelines through both formal and informal means. Some of the new rules of the game when it comes to blogging include:

• Stipulating that employees make it very clear that their blog is personal and in no way sanctioned by the company and that the views on the blog do not necessarily reflect those of the company.
• Insisting that employees not disclose any information that is confidential or proprietary to the company.
• Requiring employees to obtain permission before reproducing any company material on their site, especially trademarks and other branding elements.

The explosion of instant communications with a global reach has changed every facet of modern civilization, and none more so than the relationship between the individual and the workplace. It’s a social phenomenon that different cultures are coming to terms with, one company at time, whether through informal guidelines, legalistic documents, or some combination of the two. Given the accelerated pace of innovation and the unpredictability of technology once it reaches human hands, it seems the rules of the game for establishing guidelines between what is business and what is personal should itself be guided by clarity, flexibility, and a practical emphasis on maintaining the integrity of the organization rather than just controlling employees.