down.’ Most of them are in the accounting field for life, and they retain no particular love for the firm that drops them so casually. “I recently decided to let our seasonal personnel go with a little more tact and consideration. So I call each one in only after carefully thinking over his or her work during the winter. And I’ve said something like this: ‘Mr. Smith, you’ve done a fine job (if he has). That time we sent you to Newark, you had a tough assignment. You were on the spot, but you came through with flying colors, and we want you to know the firm is proud of you. You’ve got the stuff - you’re going a long way, wherever you’re working. This firm believes in you, and is rooting for you, and we don’t want you to forget it.’ “Effect? The people go away feeling a lot better about being fired. They don’t feel ‘let down.’ They know if we had work for them, we’d keep them on. And when we need them again, they come to us with a keen personal affection.” At one session of our course, two class members discussed the negative effects of faultfinding versus the positive effects of letting the other person save face. Fred Clark of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, told of an incident that occurred in his company: “At one of our production meetings, a vice president was asking very pointed questions of one of our production supervisors regarding a production process. His tone of voice was aggressive and aimed at pointing out faulty performance on the part of the supervisor. Not wanting to be embarrassed in front of his peers, the supervisor was evasive in his responses. This caused the vice president to lose his temper, berate the supervisor and accuse him of lying. “Any working relationship that might have existed prior to this encounter was destroyed in a few brief moments. This supervisor, who was basically a good worker, was useless to our company from that time on. A few months later he left our firm and went to work for a competitor, where I understand he is doing a fine job.” Another class member, Anna Mazzone, related how a similar incident had occurred at her job—but what a difference in approach and results! Ms. Mazzone, a marketing specialist for a food packer, was given her first major assignment—the test-marketing of a new product. She told the class: “When the results of the test came in, I was devastated. I had made a serious error in my planning, and the entire test had to be done all over again. To make this worse, I had no time to discuss it
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