Mitzi Perdue

Effective Way to Increase Employee Engagement

A story about Frank Perdue and Don Mabe

The person who argued the most with Frank was the man Frank eventually appointed to succeed him as president of his company. This would have greatly surprised any outsider who didn’t understand how Frank operated.

The fact is, Don Mabe and Frank Perdue would have seemingly horrendous public arguments. As an example, Frank had once assembled a meeting with six sales people whom he, for unknown reasons, had nicknamed, “The Whores and the Booger Bears.”

This group was in a small room with the sales people sitting along the sides of a conference table, with Don Mabe at one end and Frank Perdue at the other. Frank and Mabe had been fighting like cats and dogs all day about whether to scrap the Cornish hen program.

Mabe, who was more cost-conscious than Frank, felt the program was too expensive. Frank, on the other hand, wanted market share. The two men were yin and yang.

Anyway, at one point Don Mabe got so mad that he took his glasses off, threw them down hard on the conference table – with the result that the glasses bounced once and ended up hitting Frank square in the chest!

The salespeople who were there reported that the incident was so intense that it seemed to be happening in slow motion. Some were even having trouble catching their breath. “Damn it, Frank,” Mabe yelled at Frank, “You need to retire!”

Frank picked up Don’s reading glasses, calmly handed them to the guy next to him, who handed them to the guy next to him until the glasses got back to Mabe. Meanwhile the argument continued to rage.

Cherish the people who stand up to you

You’d think an incident like that would rupture their relationship, but in fact, Frank was fine with it. The fact is, Frank and I had dinner with Don Mabe and his wife, Flo, soon after and we were all laughing about it. Frank never held a grudge and actually deeply appreciated Mabe’s views.

Mabe didn’t win that particular battle, but he often got Frank to see his way.

Frank valued that Mabe really, really cared. And on top of that, Frank benefited greatly by having someone confront him with the other side of important questions.

This was a pattern that Frank followed regularly: he valued the people who stood up to him; he never held it against them; and he gave them the respect of appreciating that they cared more about doing what was right than about telling the boss what the boss might want to hear.

Instead, people focused on doing and saying the right thing, as opposed to sucking up to the boss. It meant ownership of their work. It deepened their engagement.

Mitzi Perdue is a speaker, author, and businesswoman. She is the widow of Frank Perdue and daughter of Ernest Henderson, co-founder of the Sheraton Hotel Chain.
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To find out more about her programs and services,
write to: Mitzi@MitziPerdue.com
or call 410 860 4444.