Students are flocking back to Ann Arbor and campuses all across the country to start the new school year. Once again I will be teaching a course on Interpersonal Relationships and Personal Development at the University of Michigan Ross Business School. In addition, I have just been asked to teach a similar course for graduate students at UM College of Engineering for the Center for Entrepreneurship. I have designed the curriculum to help students develop positive relationships, improve their emotional intelligence competencies, and develop their personal leadership skills.
To help my students plan effectively for their future careers, in my blog post last week, I requested readers to send me a letter addressed to their 21-year-old self. Your responses have been so interesting that I plan to use the letters in the courses. I received an exemplary letter (see below) from Mike Anleitner who is a Senior Quality Engineer at Lennox Industries, and a graduate of both University of Michigan and Michigan Tech.
Today, I’m asking once again for your letters and your comments, email to rpasick@umich.edu
Dr. Rob
Dear Mike,
I’ve been asked to send you a letter—a letter that will give you career advice. Oh, by the way, I’m you—but in about 45 years. I’m just about to attend my 30th class reunion for the third college degree I received, an MBA from the University of Michigan. I can’t (and shouldn’t) tell you everything I have experienced, because if the advice I give you is heeded, you may take a very different path. I know you are living in 1971, and there’s a lot of turmoil in the world around you.
And—I’m going to limit this to career advice. You’ll have to work out the personal details away from your career for yourself.
To start with, I think you are just beginning to realize you aren’t as smart as you thought you were when you graduated from high school. You are a ‘95th percentile’ achiever, not a 99th percentile guy like you were led to believe over the years you spent in school before starting college. Don’t forget that. If you do, you’ll make small mistakes that will limit your career in many minor but not trivial ways. And, a fair number of people are going to think you are an unbearable know-it-all if you fail to take this bit of advice. Even if you are likely to be correct in a given situation, many times you’ll be better off keeping your opinions and analysis to yourself.
You do have a real talent for seeing future trends, though, and you can (and should) be willing to act using this talent. But, you need to be a bit more cautious than you naturally are about sharing that vision.
Of course, knowing when to speak up and when to hold your peace is a tough thing to learn. Even at this point in my life, I’m still learning about that almost every day.
The second key point I want you to understand is how poorly your background and upbringing has been in terms of teaching you the essential social skills that will affect your career. You don’t have any real idea about how to behave in the social settings of business, and you really don’t even have a clue about how significant that lack of knowledge will be.
You have limited skills for small talk; you always want to focus on important things. You need to develop that ability to engage in a social discussion that has limited value—other than getting to know someone a bit. You don’t know how to conduct yourself at full-service restaurants—nor do you realize that this is an area that is fraught with potential for doing things that will cause others to become wary of the way you might behave in other circumstances. Sure, you have table manners, but what you are missing is much more complex and involved than you realize at this point in your life.
You are also naïve about using alcohol in a business setting. I know you are learning about intoxicants at this point in your life, and that’s necessary. However, actual intoxication in a business setting is never a good idea; having just enough to feel that your inhibitions are starting to loosen is the farthest you should ever go.
In this same vein, you need to recognize that your parents do and will love you very much, and they have always been supportive and appreciative of your skills, drive, and energy. However, many of the people you will encounter in business will NOT share this view, and they will be openly hostile for reasons you will never understand.Up to this point, you’ve always behaved as if everyone around you wants to be positive and to engage with you.
While human culture tends to carefully protect children and adolescents from the rigors of life, adult life can be very competitive. In fact, it can be viciously competitive, and this reality can lead you into despair and depression. It can also lead you to be cynical and nasty as well.
Neither outcome—nearly infinite trust or venomous, cynical depression—is something you should accept as desirable!
In sum, you’ve lived a very protected and limited life, and you need to keenly observe, study, and learn from a wider range of society than you have experienced thus far. Growing up in Garden City and attending Michigan Tech has not given you what you really need to become socially adept, and these skills are never taught in the schools you have attended or the social strata you’ve lived in.
You’ll always be able to gain technical and subject matter skills. And, while you have a great deal of leadership ability, have a reasonable degree of affability, and are in many ways a very dynamic young man, you will be limited in what you can accomplish in your career if you take as long as I have to master the other aspects of your development as a socially-profound human being.
I guess I can give you one bit of hard knowledge about your destiny, since you are already deeply aware that this is likely. Soon after you graduate, you are certain to be drafted. You’ve known that for about two years now, and with a lottery number of 49, it can’t be avoided unless you choose to do something that I am certain you would come to regret. So grit your teeth and bare it. You’ll find that two years in the Army will turn out to be an invaluable experience, but one that you won’t enjoy very much. It might seem like five years, but it will be bearable.
Enjoy your life!
Michael A. Anleitner
August 2015