The Lesson I Learned From a Man I Couldn’t Stand

I was reading General Stanley McChrystal’s On Character, and it reminded me of a lesson I learned more than thirty years ago from a guy I could not stand.

Some of the best lessons I have learned did not come from people I admired.

Sometimes the lesson is good even when you do not particularly care for the teacher.

From 1993 to 1997, I worked for Rosendin Electric.

Four years.

That was a long time for me to stay with one electrical contractor back then. Rosendin was one of only two shops I stayed with for about four years.

Part of the reason was that Rosendin was big enough that I could rotate through a whole cast of characters without having to drag up and go find another shop every time I got pissed off at somebody.

And there were plenty of characters.

Some I liked.

Some I respected.

Some I thought were idiots.

Some I thought were assholes.

Looking back thirty years later, I am sure I was responsible for plenty of the friction myself.

I was young.

My boundaries were not particularly good.

I took too much shit personally.

And I had a pretty strong need to prove myself.

One of those characters was a general foreman named Pete Ramirez.

Pete and I were not going to be exchanging Christmas cards.

I could not stand the guy.

But Pete was very good at certain parts of his job.

And whether I liked him or not, I paid attention.

Pete’s Game

Pete was ruthless about manpower.

His basic strategy was simple.

He would man the job up hard.

Get enough electricians on the project that Rosendin could get ahead of every other trade.

Get our conduit in.

Get our underground in.

Get our rough-in done.

Get our work into the ceilings and walls before the plumbers, sheet-metal guys, carpenters, or whoever else needed the same real estate.

In construction, getting there first matters.

Once somebody else fills the space you want, everything gets harder.

You are rerouting.

You are coordinating.

You are waiting.

You are fighting over inches.

You are burning labor.

Pete understood that.

So he would pour manpower onto the job and get us way out in front.

It was good for Rosendin’s productivity and margins, even if it made life harder for the other trades trying to catch up.

Then Pete would do the other half of the strategy.

Once we were far enough ahead that there was not enough work for the whole crew, he would lay off half the guys.

Then we would keep busy and let the other trades to catch up.

Once they did?

• Man up again
• Get ahead again
• Lay people off again

Wash.

Rinse.

Repeat.

I survived a bunch of those cycles.

At the time, I actually liked that part of the job.

I treated it as a proving ground.

Could I hack it?

Would I be one of the guys they kept?

Could I get enough shit done that when half the crew got their checks, I was still there the next morning?

Looking back, there was probably a lot of young-man ego wrapped up in that.

I needed to prove something.

To the company.

To the foremen.

Probably mostly to myself.

But I kept surviving the cuts.

And eventually Pete apparently decided I was worth keeping close enough that I spent some time around the office and job trailer and got exposed to how he thought about running work.

I would not exactly call Pete my favorite mentor.

But I learned from him.

One lesson in particular stuck with me for more than thirty years.

“I’d Get His Check”

Pete told me that if he walked into a work area and saw one of his electricians suddenly change what he was doing because the boss had walked into the room, Pete would make a mental note of it.

And by the end of the day, he would get that guy’s check.

Lay him off.

I remember thinking:

That is fucked up.

That seemed brutal even for Pete.

But Pete explained it.

The guy already knew what he was supposed to be doing.

That was the point.

Pete did not walk in and catch somebody who did not know better.

He caught somebody who knew better and decided not to do better because nobody important was watching.

Then the boss walked into the room.

Suddenly the guy straightened up.

Suddenly he got busy.

Suddenly he started doing what he already knew he should have been doing.

Pete’s attitude was basically:

If he only does the right thing when I am watching him, then I have to watch him.

And Pete did not want people he had to watch.

He wanted people he could trust.

I still thought Pete was an asshole.

But I remember thinking:

Okay.

I respect that.

Because he was right about something important.

What Happens When Nobody Is Watching?

That conversation stayed with me.

Reading On Character brought it back.

When we talk about character, we can make it sound much more complicated than it needs to be.

• Values
• Integrity
• Discipline
• Honor
• Responsibility
• Accountability

All good words.

But sometimes character shows up in something as simple as this:

Do you know what you should be doing?

Are you capable of doing it?

And are you already doing it before anybody important sees you?

Because if you know the standard and deliberately lower it when nobody is watching, what exactly changes when somebody walks in?

Not your ability.

Your incentive.

You were capable the whole time.

You just did not think it mattered until somebody with authority could see you.

That is different from needing help.

It is different from being inexperienced.

It is different from not understanding what good work looks like.

There is nothing wrong with accountability.

There is nothing wrong with coaching.

There is nothing wrong with supervision.

There is a reason jobs have foremen.

There is a reason martial arts has instructors.

There is a reason athletes have coaches.

We all need correction.

We all need feedback.

Sometimes we need somebody to kick us in the ass.

But there is a difference between needing help to meet a standard and already knowing the standard but only meeting it when somebody is watching.

That is the part Pete was reacting to.

When Does the Standard Become Yours?

When you are young, almost every standard comes from somebody else.

Your parents tell you.

Your teachers tell you.

Your foreman tells you.

Your instructor tells you.

The law tells you.

The employee handbook tells you.

The job specifications tell you.

The building code tells you.

At first, maybe that is enough.

You follow the rule because somebody said so.

But eventually something has to change.

The external standard has to become an internal one.

At some point you stop doing good work because the foreman might walk around the corner.

You do good work because that is how you work.

You stop showing up on time because somebody will write you up.

You show up on time because you said you would be there.

You stop training hard because the instructor is looking.

You train with intention because you are on the mat to learn.

You stop telling the truth because you are afraid of being caught lying.

You tell the truth because being truthful is part of who you have decided to be.

That is where character starts getting interesting.

When does the standard become yours?

Eventually the Foreman Leaves

There is another reason this lesson stayed with me.

Eventually the foreman walks away.

The boss goes home.

The instructor turns his back.

Nobody sees whether you did the last rep.

Nobody knows whether you cut the corner.

Nobody knows whether you cleaned up the mistake before anybody found it.

Nobody knows whether you gave somebody the whole truth or the convenient version.

Nobody knows whether you kept the promise you made to yourself.

If your standard only exists while somebody is watching, then it is not really your standard.

It belongs to whoever is supervising you.

That means you are renting your character from external authority.

The minute the authority disappears, so does the behavior.

That is a shitty way to live.

Because eventually nobody can supervise all of it.

Nobody can bird-dog you through your marriage.

Nobody can hover over your health.

Nobody can watch every business decision.

Nobody can stand over you while you train.

Nobody can inspect every promise you make to yourself.

Eventually you are alone with the standard.

And then you find out whether it became part of you.

You Do Not Have to Like the Teacher

There is another lesson buried inside this story.

I did not particularly like Pete.

There were things about the way he operated that I did not admire.

There were things I thought were ruthless.

There were things I thought were simply fucked up.

But he still taught me something I have carried for more than thirty years.

I think we sometimes make the mistake of believing that if we dislike the source, we can dismiss the lesson.

That is dangerous.

An asshole can be right.

Someone you disagree with can see something you do not.

A person can possess one quality you admire and five you do not.

You do not have to become your teacher to learn from him.

You take the lesson.

You test it.

You keep what holds up.

You leave the rest behind.

Thirty years later, I have forgotten a lot of things that happened on those jobs.

But I remember that conversation with Pete.

If the boss walks into the room and you suddenly start doing better, why were you not doing better thirty seconds earlier?

That is a hard question.

Maybe that is why I remember it.

Who Are You When Nobody Is Watching?

Character is easy when it is being rewarded.

Integrity is easy when somebody is keeping score.

Discipline is easy when the coach is standing there.

Doing quality work is easy when the foreman is five feet away.

The harder question is what happens after they leave.

I do not think character means you never screw up.

I do not think it means you never need accountability.

I do not think it means you magically become some perfectly self-disciplined human being who never needs help.

That sounds like bullshit.

But I do think there comes a point where you know better.

And once you know better, the question becomes whether you choose to do better.

Not because Pete might walk into the room.

Not because somebody might catch you.

Not because somebody is keeping score.

Because the standard became yours.

So here is the question I took away from a general foreman I could not stand more than thirty years ago.

It is the same question McChrystal’s book brought back to the surface.

If nobody knew what you did today, would you still do it the same way?

Because eventually the boss walks out of the room.

And what you do next says a lot about your character.

⚔ The Dojo Drill

Today’s training:

The Reputation Drill

Ask yourself:

Adjust behavior accordingly.

📚 Leader’s Library

​On Character by General Stanley McChrystal​

The book that brought Pete Ramirez and that thirty-year-old lesson back to mind was General Stanley McChrystal’s On Character.

McChrystal explores a question I think matters more as we get older:

Who are we actually becoming through the choices we make every day?

• Not what values do we claim.
• Not what does our résumé say.
• Not what reputation have we built.

What do we actually do when our standards cost us something — or when nobody is around to enforce them?

That is what made me think about Pete walking onto a jobsite and watching to see who suddenly changed what they were doing because the boss had arrived.

I may not have liked the teacher, but thirty years later I’m still carrying the lesson.

If questions about integrity, standards, discipline, leadership, and the person you are becoming interest you, On Character is worth spending some time with.

P.S. Know a martial arts gym owner who’s stressed about money or student numbers?

Do them a favor: send them to The Leader's Dōjō, my website where I help owners get more students and keep them longer with simple systems.

One forward from you could change their gym: The Leader's Dōjō​

Chuck