I love hearing stories about misguided celebrities who throw a strop when they can’t get a table in a restaurant or access to the VIP area in a club.
It’s just a matter of time before those legendary words are yelled at some poor member of staff.
“Do you know who I am?”
The thing is, it never works, because it shows a fundamental lack of respect for everyone else in the room.
There’s another one that gets far too many public airings – “Because I said so...”
It’s fine when you’re chastising an unruly child, but not when you’re managing grown-up colleagues.
The moment you take that angle, you’ve lost the room, the team, the whole agency.
Think of William Wallace’s big speech in Braveheart:
Aye, fight and you may die, run and you’ll live.
At least a while.
And dying in your beds many years from now, would you be willing to
trade all the days from this day to that for one chance, just one
chance to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take
our lives, but they’ll never take our freedom?!
How effective would he have been as a commander if his call-to-arms had been “Because I say so”?
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