Leadership Lessons From The Great Books

#132 - The Gift of the Magi/Short Stories by O. Henry (William Sydney Porter) w/Tom Libby
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00:00 Exploring leadership lessons from O. Henry's story.
09:05 William Sydney Porter charged, imprisoned, wrote stories.
12:34 Licensure is now formal, unlike 200 years ago.
18:14 At least three jailed for non-murder crimes.
21:40 Porter used O. Henry pseudonym to hide shame.
30:47 Treat others kindly; you'll need them later.
34:44 O. Henry's stories contrast Gilded Age's wealth.
40:22 Perception shapes reality; experiences influence storytelling.
45:00 Everyone faces personal trauma; understand and leverage.
50:31 Mastering style, motivation, delivery is achievable.
56:15 Della prepared for Jim's arrival nervously.
59:14 Gifted expensive combs for hair she sold.
01:06:38 Della benefits more; her hair will regrow.
01:10:34 Decisions during COVID's early days were uncertain.
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Opening and closing themes composed by Brian Sanyshyn of Brian Sanyshyn Music.
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Creators & Guests

Host
Jesan Sorrells
CEO of HSCT Publishing, home of Leadership ToolBox and LeadingKeys
Host
Thomas Libby
Producer
Leadership Toolbox
The home of Leadership ToolBox, LeaderBuzz, and LeadingKeys. Leadership Lessons From The Great Books podcast link here: https://t.co/3VmtjgqTUz

What is Leadership Lessons From The Great Books?

Understanding great literature is better than trying to read and understand (yet) another business book, Leadership Lessons From The Great Books leverages insights from the GREAT BOOKS of the Western canon to explain, dissect, and analyze leadership best practices for the post-modern leader.

Hello. My name is Jesan Sorrells, and

this is the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast,

episode number 132.

I first encountered the stories, that we are

featuring on our show today,

and the author today as a middle-aged child.

Now if this sounds like a weird framing, consider that I

was always the kind of kid that had a strong literary

streak. For example, I first read Of Mice and Men

by John Steinbeck, when I was 8 years old, And I cried

like a baby when, that big autistic

fellow died in the book, which made me

weird, by the way. And that's okay to say that I was weird. It's fine.

But such literary interests also made me open and

opened me up to the power of storytelling, the impact of

experience, and the capacity to mash up those two things

in interesting and potentially restorative ways.

Later in school, I formally studied the stories,

from this author today in a little bit of depth. And during my learning, I

was exposed to the, vercilimitude, there you go, I love that

word, of understanding the subtext of context as well

as the power of language, the magic of metaphor, and the necessity

of veracity being and serving as the soul

of wit. In that formal study, I was also exposed to

ideas that I I am certain led via the many winding roads of life

to developing some of the threads of ideas I've been weaving together the last few

months in my mind. As a result of hosting conversations on

this podcast, my extensive book and Substack reading, and,

yes, even observing the stream of doom flow by

via the Internet delivered to me directly

by my phone, I have some questions that this author's

writing in the world served to coalesce into

something, even these comments today.

So today on the show, we will be pulling leadership lessons

for leaders from one of the more unlikely short stories

by a celebrated writer of the gilded age

whose writing has never been out of print since

he died, which is stunning, actually.

Today, we are going to be covering for

our Christmas slash winter season, the gift of the

magi as part of 41 stories

by O'Henry.

Leaders. Sometimes the threads of thoughts come together to form a

patchwork fabric of conclusions, and then you read a story or a set of

stories by an author that confirms, whatever conclusion

you may have independently woven together.

And, of course, today, we are going to be covering these stories. We're gonna be

talking about them with my good friend

and bon vivant of the winter season,

Tom Libby. How are you doing, Tom? I'm hanging in

there, man. I'm living my best life.

Now isn't it snowing in the northeast at this point? Like, you're in the northeast.

Is it snowing today? It's not snowing today. So we have

not to be all meteorological on you. We have this weird high

pressure system right now sitting right on in the in the in the in

right around, like, hovering over the the harbor, like, where Boston Harbor is, stretching

out to just about Connecticut. So any kind of precipitation that's hitting that

bottom half of that is literally just going around New England. It's the weirdest thing

to watch on the radar screen, but, no, it's not rain. It's not snow right

now. Well, that's

good because, where I am at, it is

a balmy 65 degrees. So I

think it's 44 42 or 43 today for for me. We

had we had, we had, like, 2 days of, like,

like, almost 32 degree

temperatures, and everybody locally almost lost their

minds. Anyway. So Yeah. Fun fun fact. I I had I

had to spend some time out in the the forest this, this past

weekend, with, my with my brother.

And, when we showed up to the forest, it was 18

degrees out. It is it

is amazing to me that, like,

human beings don't care about the weather.

Like, if you look at, like, wooly mammoth death sites,

you see, like, little sharp little arrows because, like, people just kill them and eat

them. Yeah. Because they don't care. They're just like, I don't know. That seems like

something we should eat. Let's it's oh, it's 19 below. Doesn't

matter. We're gonna go get that thing. We're

hungry. Then they'll keep us warm. We don't

care. We don't care how cold it is out.

Oh my gosh. Alright. Well, with that, now that we've

covered our meteorological portion of the show,

we're going to pick up today with O. Henry's The Gift of the Magi.

Now this is a short story, by the author William

Sydney Porter, aka O. Henry. It's

only around 5 to 6 pages long. And so what we're gonna do is we're

gonna dip in, dip out of the story, and we're going to talk about a

lot of different areas today. We're gonna talk about the gilded age. We're gonna talk

poverty and pride and vanity. We're going to talk about Christmas.

And, of course, we're going to talk about the life and times of

William Sydney order. So from

the gift of the magi, we open.

$1.87. That was all. And

60¢ of it was in pennies. Pennies saved 1 and

2 at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the

butcher until one's checks burned with the silent imputation of

parsimony that such close dealing implied.

Three times, Della counted at $1.87, and

the next day would be Christmas. There

was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl,

so Della did it, which instigates the more reflection that life

is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles with sniffles

predominating. While the mistress of the home is gradually

subsiding from the 1st stage to the second, take a look at the home. A

furnished flat at $8 per week. It did not exactly beggar

description, but it certainly had that word on the lookout for the men

the mendicancity squat. Love that word.

In the vestibule below was a letter box into which no letter would

go and an electric button from which no mortal finger could coax a ring.

Also appertaining thereunto was a card bearing the name

mister James Dillingham Young. Now Dillingham had

been flung to the breeze during a former period of prosperity when its possessor was

being paid $30 per week. Now when the income was shrunk to $20,

the letters of Dillingham looked blurred as though they were thinking seriously of

contracting to a modest and unassuming d.

But wherever and whenever mister James Dillingham Young came

home and reached his flat above, he was called Jim and greatly

hugged by missus James Dillingham Young already introduced to you

as Della, which is all very good.

Della finished her cry and attended her cheeks with a powder rag. She stood by

the window and looked out dully at a gray cat walking the gray fence in

a gray backyard. Tomorrow would be Christmas day, and she had only $1.87

with which to buy Jim a present. She had been saving every penny she could

for months with this result. $20 a week doesn't go far. Expenses

had been greater than she had calculated. They always are. Only $1.87

to buy a present for Jim, her Jim. Many a happy hour she had spent

planning for something nice for him, something fine and rare

and sterling, something just a little bit near to being

worthy of the honor of being owned by

Jim. So we'll stop there for

just a moment. The layers

of gilded

age assumptions, pre feminist, by the way,

gilded age presumptions are layered right there in that first

part of a gift or the gift of the magi.

But we can't understand William Sydney Porter without

actually going into a little bit about who William Sydney Porter is.

He was born September 11, 1862 and

died June 5, 1910. He was an American writer

known primarily for his short stories, though he also wrote poetry,

and he peddled a little bit in nonfiction. Born

in Greensboro, North Carolina, Porter worked at his uncle's pharmacy after finishing

school and became a licensed pharmacist at age 19.

In March 18 82, he moved to Texas where he initially lived on a

ranch and later settled in Austin where he met his first wife, Athol

Estes. While working as a drafter in the Texas general land

office, Porter began developing characters for his short stories. He later worked

for the First National Bank of Austin while also publishing a weekly

periodical, The Rolling Stone. Now

in 18/95, he was charged with embezzlement stemming from an audit of the

bank. Before the trial, he fled to Honduras where he began writing Cabbages and

Kings, which was a collection of short stories in which he

coined the term, quote, unquote, banana republic.

Porter surrendered to US authorities when he learned his wife was dying from tuberculosis,

By the way, a disease that his mother died of and that he was in

he lived his entire life in fear of getting and of

dying of, and he cared for his wife,

his first wife, until her death in July 1897.

As a result of returning and surrendering to the US authorities,

William Sydney Porter, was sentenced to a 5

year federal prison sentence for embezzling, get this, $854.8

in March 18 98 at the Ohio Federal Penitentiary

where he served there as a night druggist because apparently

writing doesn't get you very far in a federal penitentiary in

18/98. While imprisoned, Porter

published 14 stories under various pseudonyms, one

being

O'Henry. I don't think Tom knew much about this guy or knew much

about O'Henry before we started our

podcast today. So you've had a chance a little bit to

hear about this, Tom. What do you think about this fellow,

William Sydney Porter? Interestingly enough, you're you're right. I didn't

really know the depth any kind of depth of his life or who he

was already, but I have I actually had heard of this particular story.

I don't know why this particular story, but this this one I had I

had heard of. I've known about it. I've I've, like, read passages of it

or had discussions about certain pieces of it and stuff like that before

today. But the reality of it was there was this is probably

the I don't know how you were able to pick the only story I've ever

heard of from O'Henry. It's,

it's interesting. But, I you know, when you ask, like, what

do you it's it's funny too because I thought my first thought

coming out of this onto this podcast was gonna be something totally different than what

I thought about his life. Because I read the first couple of passages of this

and was thinking to myself, how do you get a dollar 87 with having

60 pennies? Math I I was so

bugged out by the math here, not realizing that in in at

this time frame, I I think we had I think our

currency had half pennies and things like that. Yeah. Mhmm. Too. So

you could so, technically, you could have that. So my brain was okay after I

had to I I took a step back. Anyway, so but that's

where my first thought went. When I was when I read this, I was like,

you got a dollar 87. What are you talking about? How do you have What

are you talking about? That doesn't make any sense. The math doesn't work. Oh, Oh,

Henry needs to go back to school. And then realizing that he was

actually intelligent, you know, intelligent to the point, you know,

of, I mean, a pharmacist at 19, which you definitely could not do today.

No. But I I mean, I know that, you know, the

the the manners and the processes in

which we have to become a license to anything, doesn't even matter. In

insert licensure here, whether it's pharmacist, nurse,

plumber, electrician, it doesn't really matter. But, you know, a 100 years

ago or a 100 and whatever years ago,

or 2 almost 200 years ago. Sorry. You know, they they just

they didn't have the same I mean, you literally could apprentice under somebody from a

certain amount of time and get in that house on your license. So we didn't

have the formal schooling and testing and all that stuff that we have today. So

I I was initially like, my first reaction was, oh my god. This guy was

brilliant, a pharmacist in 19, thinking of what today's pharmacists have to go

through in order to become a and then realizing after the fact

after thinking of it for a second and going, he probably didn't have to do

any of that. He didn't have to do any of that. He didn't have to

do any of that. So He literally poured he literally poured bought poured

pills in one bottle to another bottle, which is it's I mean, that's all he

had to do. Right. And maybe some tinctures and some powders, things like that.

But, like, yeah, whatever. It's fine. I mean, it's not like he was an alchemist.

Right? Like, he wasn't actually mixing this stuff together. It wasn't so,

but, anyway but, you know, some of the things, you know, it's funny. Like,

you think about just the brief description of his life that you just read a

second ago, and you try to think about how you can take lessons

out of it for leaders. I find interesting because of you

like, we we've said this about a 100 times on this

podcast together, Hae san. Right? Like, the more things change, the more things stay the

same. Right? So the guy the guy has a job,

leaves that job to go better himself. Great. Gets married.

Awesome. Gets charged with a crime, leaves the

country, comes back to the country. Why? Because of a girl.

It's like, it's this this story has been written about a 1000

times. Right? Like so, and then, of course,

he faces his punishment, does his time, comes out, and then you don't really hear

a lot more about him after that. Like, you don't really hear a lot more,

of his life after after the prison sentence. Well, he

so one of the interesting shortly after. Right? Like, if you think about it, he

dies 1910, which is Well, one of the things and and by the way,

this this particular volume of O. Henry's stories,

has a great introduction in it that goes really

deep into, into his life. And

one of the things that the writer of the introduction says is

this about the jail. He says, jail was deeply traumatic

for him, though he received favorable treatment as a pharmacist and was given reasonable freedom

to continue writing. No one knows exactly how or why he transformed

himself in those years into what became his internationally celebrated pen

name, O'Henry, nor does anyone know precisely what, if

anything, the pseudonym is supposed to mean. By the way, we have some information about

the pseudonym later on that we'll talk about. Clearly, the important thing is

that it is a pseudonym. The use of the name O'Henry was a way of

separating himself from much of the reality he had no inclination to

deal with.

Yeah. I mean, so we've never talked about

prison on this podcast, but we might as well talk about it

today. So I I've

watched the Netflix show. I'm I'm a little bit of a fan of the

show, locked up abroad only

because the way I run my mouth,

if I I ever get in trouble at a foreign country, I wanna know what

I'm getting into. For sure. Like like, I

know not to run my mouth in, like, Honduras. I just I know you just

shut up. Just shut up. Shut shut shut gut

your mouth. There's no freedom of speech there.

When the man with the nice man with the AK 47 tells you to shut

up, you know what you do? I'm gonna shut up. Shut up

because because because I can't make it in Honduran

prison. There are things I would have to do in that

prison where I just you can't come back from them. Yeah.

Weirdly enough, Scottish prison is also terror. No. Not Scottish. No. No.

Norwegian prison. Norwegian prison, very clean,

very, very white. Almost

livable. Almost livable. But then there's

then there's a Caucasian fellow with, like, face tattoos all over his face. He says

he's gonna kill you with, like, a pen knife tomorrow. And he's very polite

about it, by the way, but he's still gonna kill you with a pen knife.

It's like it's just like, oh, oh, so there's, like, a range.

Continue. Yeah. You, sir. You, sir, have offended me today. So tomorrow, you

must die. Are you

serious? Like, he's he's in here for

killing somebody. He's not joking around in,

like, Finland. Yeah. Which is, like, the most

like, we tend I tend to think of as an American. And my Finnish listeners,

I apologize to you. I'm sure you're, like, living out the wire there. I'm sure

it's, like, West Baltimore everywhere in Finland all the time. That's really

unlikely. But but

but but where I come from, like, somebody tells you

they're gonna kill you. Like, they don't it's not usually in an antiseptic

antiseptic environment, extra fjord where that's gonna happen. Right?

But I guess you gotta put a prison wherever. So I I watched the show

locked up abroad. That way I could see these kinds of experiences. And

so I think of the American

penitentiary experience. And I've known people who have gone to jail.

I've known at least 3 people in my life who have gone to jail. It

might be as high as 5, but at least 3 people for sure that went

to jail. Right? Variety of different things.

Not murder, just a variety of different things.

And one of the things I remember one guy telling me when he got out,

he said, they call it a correctional facility, but they're not correcting

anything. And in 1890,

it must have been closer to, like, the Honduras kind of, like,

experience than what is now, which is

probably a little bit closer, at least in theory, to more of

the Finnish experience. Right?

William Sydney Porter went in to prison after

trying to escape to, ironically enough, Honduras,

and then came out or not came out.

But for for he went for embezzlement because he, like,

moved a couple of, what do you call it,

commas around incorrectly in a bank's in the bank's ledgers. And weirdly

enough, the bank in Texas, when you read about this, they

declined to prosecute him. The bank didn't

think it was a problem, but the federal government thought that what he had done

was a problem. Interesting.

Interesting. And so he was traumatized by

this. Well, I mean, that's

especially, I think about it. Embezzlement, it means, like, you're taking the money.

Right? So you're you're taking the money, and you're gonna go live live high on

a a high life on on whatever money you're you're because

embezzlement, for those of you who don't know, is stealing. You're stealing the money from

some but he didn't actually physically take the money. He made a it's an accounting

error. Right? Like, so It's a clerical error. What or a clerical error. It's right.

It's not even an accounting error. It's more a clerical error than a than even

accounting, which is why the bank didn't care. But so why

did the government like, that's the part that I never understood. Right? I

didn't under I didn't understand this. Like, so why did the government

choose to prosecute anyway? Are they trying to make an example out of some guy

who doesn't matter to anybody? Like like, I don't So I I I

will read you from the introduction because I was also fascinated by this.

So here we go. The magazine did not flourish, the the Rolling Stone magazine

that he established in Texas.

The the author here says, Porter slated to a life of dissolution and

illicit borrowing from various bank accounts. His father-in-law repaid

his embezzlement, and the jury acquitted him on criminal charges. Okay. So it wasn't a

clerical error. He was actually, like, moving money around. Okay. But the federal bank

examiners moved for a new trial. The Rolling Stone, his

magazine, died in 18/95. Porter was rearrested in 18

96 and promptly fled, first to New Orleans and then to Honduras.

He stayed 2 years. Roughly a year later, learning that

his wife was near death, he returned. She died a few months afterward.

The next year, 18/98, he was tried, convicted, and sentenced to

5 years in the penitentiary in Columbus, Ohio, where he, in fact,

served over 3 years. So it wasn't a clerical error. My

bad. I am I was incorrect. I thought it was because this is the other

thing about William Sydney Porter. There's multiple stories about

his life. Like, if you go to the Wikipedia, the stuff on his

Wikipedia article is different than what's in this introduction

here. Oh, interesting. So

he's one of these authors who

He's fascinating to me because

he created a pseudonym to hide

from the shame of going to jail, I think.

Because back then, if you in the 18 nineties,

if you were going to jail, that means you had failed. And by the

way, going to jail in

a country where you just come out of the civil war where you could go

west to escape, like, the federal forces if you needed to. And

we've talked about, you know, Sitting Bull and the the

moving of the movement of the native tribes and all these kinds of things that

were happening to people all at the same time after the civil war. Right? They

were all part of oh, Henry was part of that

massive shifting of America. Right? Well, I mean, let's call it what it is. Right?

It was, like, it was the forming of the wild wild west. Right? So Right.

And and the wild wild west was something that the government had very little control

over and Right. Till much later in history. I mean, like,

wound indeed was 18 90. Right? So you were talking just a few

years, after wounded knee. Is is it so that

the the west was still no man's land for the most

No man's land. Especially when the government came, you know, came to

view it because they they they had no way of wrapping their arms around the

whole thing anyway. So they were just kinda you know, in the way that the

way that local governments kinda just kind of

again, it's the. That's why we use that reference to things that are just going

a little crazy when, like, when you're talking about, you know, starting

cryptocurrency at one point was considered the wild wild west of investment. Right? Like, I

mean Well, it still is. It is still is. It's still is.

Like, we use that reference for a reason. So to Right. Like, so he could

have very easily skipped out, gone to California, New

Mexico, whatever, and never been seen again and not have to worry about any of

this stuff. He would they would never caught up with him. Never. And, you

know, Honduras is one thing. New Orleans okay. New Orleans is a major port. It's

Louisiana. I mean, come on. But but you could

go to I mean, he and and by the way, he had lived in Texas

for the vast majority of his, of his adult life. Right?

And so there's further west than Texas. Like, you can

go to New Mexico. I mean, you go to Arizona. All that's just

unfettered I mean wildest.

Let's be realistic here. Hey, San. It's 2024. If you wanted

to disappear, you could've you can who's going who's chasing you to

Utah? Like Nobody. You know what I mean? Like, dude, we still have states

that if you were just if you just went there and laid low, nobody would

question you and you could just live your life and nobody would go looking for

you. Like There's there's there's a reason

that and and by the way, I I'm

saying this merely as a statement of fact, not a knock on anybody.

But if you wanna be a white supremacist or quite

frankly a black supremacist, actually, why are we being racial here?

Idaho's the best place to do that. I And I'm not knocking people

from Idaho. I'm really not. There are a lot of nice people in Idaho. Des

Moines or not Des Moines, but Boise is great. Des Moines in Iowa.

Boise is great. I've been to Boise a couple times. I've been to Coeur d'Alene.

I almost took a job in Coeur d'Alene. Fine. It's a beautiful country. And,

like, if you wanna disappear okay. So current events.

Right? The guy who allegedly, we have to say

allegedly, shot the UnitedHealthcare

CEO. Right? Which, by the way, my wife works for. My

wife work works for that company. A full disclosure

on the Full disclosure. I knew about that shooting immediately because she got an

email, And we both work from home, so she came running out. She

goes, did you just see the new did you see what happened? I went, how

would I know that happened? Nobody's reporting on it yet. I literally googled it, and

nothing was being reported yet. My CEO got

shot. Like, I can't believe this. Like and I'm like I

was like, wow. I anyway, go ahead. So the CEO So the CEO. Right?

Right. Yeah. So the the the Italian

fellow, the alleged shooter, then you can go

find his name. He probably should have not gone to

a McDonald's in in Pennsylvania. Yeah. He

probably should have gone to the Great Smoky Mountains

following in the example of remember

I know Tom will remember this. The Olympic Park bomber. Not Richard Jewell,

not the guy who was accused of being the Olympic Park bomber, who actually wasn't

and his life got all messed up. But Laddiesel made a movie

about him. The guy who actually did the bombing this is something that's a

little known about this guy. He disappeared for,

like, 10 years Yeah. Into the Great Smoky Mountains of North

Carolina. And the only reason the FBI got him was because

he walked out to get, like, a newspaper or something or,

like, turkey jerky. Went to, like, a gas station.

He just walked out of the woods. And if he never walked out of the

woods, the phippies, the FBI would have never caught him.

Yeah. And this is and this is North Carolina. This isn't the west. This isn't

Idaho. To your point, Porter

could have gone he could have gone and hid somewhere. Could have gone

in the mountains, you know, and still done his writing, by the

way. Okay. So would have so would have been able to, to to write.

And it probably would have, by the way, helped for his tuberculosis, which he did.

Well, that's that was one of the interesting things I found out about him. He

lived in fear of dying of tuberculosis, and eventually, he

died of cirrhosis, heart failure, and

tuberculosis. He was he was pretty young when he died too. Was it 48?

Yeah. He was in his he was in his late forties. Yeah. But he didn't

he didn't hit until and we'll talk a little bit about that too.

But he didn't hit as a as an author until he

was in his late thirties. Yeah. So he really only had, like, maybe

7, 8 years of just, like, ridiculous production and

just sort of wrote himself to death Mhmm. In an attempt to escape from

the shame of that, that prison

sentence, you know, being arrested. Alright.

There's some lessons that leaders can glean from the life and times of William Sidney

Porter. Maybe the lesson is this, escape to the west.

Yeah. Well, I think I think part of it is, like, I I

think there there is a slight lesson here too that's a little bit more in-depth,

which is, like, no matter how much you run from something, if the problem

still persists, you're gonna have to face it at some point or another. Right? Like,

that that's essentially what he did. He left and he faced the music, but only

when he had to come back to help, you know, to help his wife. But,

I mean, we've all kind of been there, done that. Right? You and it's it's

that doesn't have to be something this, you know, this this,

the word escapes me. But it it doesn't have to be this this

bad. Right? Like, where you committed a crime that you're coming back to pay for

the crime. Like, sometimes, it's a decision that you just don't make right at the

moment because you don't wanna make it for whatever reason it is. Right. You just

move on past it. If it's still sitting there taunting you,

you gotta come back to it at some point, or it's it's gonna be your

demise. Right? Like, that's we and if you've ever been in the

leadership position, I think you'll understand what I'm saying right now.

Because, like, that, you know, not addressing, the the elephant

in the room, not addressing a problem that's going to continuous like, continue to be

a problem, not addressing things that are gonna be the downfall of your company if

you don't take care of it. At some point, you have to go back and

do it. So I guess I don't know. That I that does a little bit

more to it than There's an old school well, there's an old school word. You'll

like this word because you and I are roughly in the same sort of

area where we un where we we were raised with certain English terms

that have now fallen out of favor. Comeuppance.

Yes. Exactly. Exactly. Like,

you're gonna get your comeuppance. Like, you just are. You

know, long have I feared that my comeuppance would show up, and it did.

You know? Yeah. It always it always does invariably. I was I was

told at very young age, you know, as, you know, as I was going through

the ranks and and starting to become more,

authoritative in in certain roles, somebody much

older than me that was I I actually managed them,

and they they were so they were a subordinate of mine, but they were much,

much, much older than me. At the time, I was probably in my mid twenties,

and they were, like, 58 or 59, the Oh, wow. Closer retirement.

And he said something to me that just stuck forever, and

now I'm understanding it even more. Even though being at

his age level, and I love this guy, by the way. Even though he was

a subordinate, I viewed him more like a mentor even though I was supposed to

be his boss. Yeah. And, but because of that

that age gap and his experience and and,

it it it I anyway, he said to me,

you know, be be nice to people on the way up because you're gonna meet

them again on the way down. And I never I

I always did it because he told me to do that, and it

stuck with me that it's a good it's an it's a good thing to do.

Like, treat people with respect and, like, you know, it doesn't matter how powerful you

get or how much authority you get, like, you know, whatever. And now that I'm

in the back end of my career, I'm thinking of that going, I'm glad I

did that. Like, because there's a lot of people that used to

work for me that were much younger, and now they're now they're on the way

up, and now I can reach out to them for help. I get like, they

don't they don't think twice about about giving me, you know, the time of

day to be helpful to, like I was like and so now I'm thinking of

that advice saying, I'm glad I took that advice.

Like Yeah. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Yep. Yep.

Absolutely. Alright. Back to the short story.

Back to The Gift of the Magi. By the way, you can this is an

open source short story, so you can get this anywhere you

want on the Internet and check this out just in time

for the holidays. Alright. Back to the story.

There was a pure glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps you've seen

pure glass in an $8 flat. A very thin, very agile

person may, by observing his reflection in rapid sequence of longitudinal

stripes, obtain a fairly accurate conception of his looks.

Della, being slender, had mastered the art.

Suddenly, she whirled from the window and stood before the glass. Her eyes were shining

brilliantly, but her face had lost its color within 20

seconds. Rapidly, she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its full length.

Now there were 2 possessions of the James Dillingham

Youngs in which they both took mighty pride. 1 was Jim's

gold watch, which has been his father's and his grandfather's. The other was Della's hair.

Had the queen of Sheba lived in the flat across the air shaft, Della would

have let her hair hang out the window someday to dry just to depreciate her

majesty's jewels and gifts. Had King Solomon been the

janitor with all his treasures piled up in the basement, Jim would have pulled out

his watch every time he passed just to see him look at his beard

from envy. So now Della's

beautiful hair fell about her rippling and shining like a cascade of brown waters.

It reached below her knee and made itself almost a garment for her.

And then she did it up again nervously and quickly once she faltered for a

minute and stood still while a tear or 2 splashed on the

worn red carpet, on with her old brown jacket,

on with her old brown hat. With a whirl of skirts and with the brilliant

sparkle still in her eyes, she fluttered out the door and down the stairs to

the street. Where she stopped, the sign

read, Mademoiselle Solfournier, hair goods of all

kinds. One flight up, Della ran and collected herself panting.

Madam, large, too white, chili, hardly looked the

Solfournier. Will you buy my hair? Asked

Della. I buy hair, said madame. Take your hat off, and let's have a sight

of the looks of it. Down rippled the brown cascade.

$20, said madame, lifting the mask with a practiced

hand. Give it to me quick, said Della. Oh, and

the next 2 hours tripped by on rosy wings. Forget the hash

metaphor. She was ransacking the stores for Jim's

present.

One of the things that jumps out to you about, William Sydney

Porter's writing, and it doesn't matter whether it's Cabbages and Kings,

whether it's, Gift of the Magi, or any of the

stories that take place in New York City.

One of the things that jumps out to you about O. Henry's stories is

that while he is a writer of the

Gilded Age, when everyone is getting rich, off of

oil, off of the back end of the industrial revolution, when

literally people are selling everything they possibly can, even,

interestingly enough, General Grant, in his,

administration, at least his first one and potentially into a second one,

selling even the White House. Literally, anything that was nailed down

between or that wasn't nailed down between

18/70 and, like, 1910 was

literally being sold in America, which is, by the way, part of the

reason why Woodrow Wilson proposed,

the creation of the amendment that

or the proposed the amendment that created the IRS in

1913 and why Woodrow Wilson

proposed that the as his pitch

for the amendment that would create the IRS, I believe that that is the

16th amendment. He also said

that that amendment would never be

used for any more than millionaires.

Because everyone, you know, was trying to become 1.

One of the things that you see in the gilded age, one of the things

that you see during this time of immense avarice and

greed that is driving the country,

one of the things that you see is immense poverty

on the other side of that. And O'Henry's stories

focused on poverty.

We see at least in New York City stories, we see that

reflected in O'Henry's life on the embezzlement charge that he had. O'Henry

spent a lot of his life, pursuing money and trying to

attain, financial security

for himself and for his family.

But there was also a sense of trauma underneath this that o

Henry was able to tap into. There's this idea from Kevin

Hart that you gotta laugh at my pain. Right? You gotta you gotta

find entertainment in my trauma. And

just like there's a thin line between love and hate, there's also a thin line

between tragic the tragedy of trauma, particularly the trauma

related to want and the humor inherent in it.

Most of our stories today and I I just did a shorts

just recorded a shorts episode that you should listen to before this one about why

men don't read literary novels. But one of the or

increasingly men don't read literary novels. One of the challenges of our

time is that our trauma, just like in the gilded

age, is everywhere all over the place all of the

time. We can see our trauma on TikTok. We could see our trauma on Instagram.

We could see everybody else's trauma too. And the

trauma that would have been tragedy in the past,

is no longer fodder for story, particularly not at a

mass entertainment level, which is why most of the stories that

we see in our mass entertainment, and I'm talking about movies or

even streaming television shows, most of the entertainment

these these days, at least in my opinion, doesn't even rise to the

level of a William Sydney Porter short story. Most

of the things that we see are flat, boring, derivative, are

remarkably unsurprising and uninspiring.

And by the way, I think that's a shame. I think it's a shame because

the uniqueness of trauma is now no longer being used as

fodder for story the way o Henry did.

I think this is a real challenge, but I also think it's a

challenge for leadership. And so

this is going to put us in mind of a particular colleague of ours. It's

just when I wrote this, I was like, oh, he's gonna think about this person

when I bring this up. A particular co shared colleague of ours. But let's talk

a little bit about storytelling, Tom.

Well, I mean, it's interesting. So I I went back and listened to a bunch

of our episodes that we've done together. We haven't actually ever directly addressed

storytelling. We've we've gone around it and inside

it and underneath it and through it, but directly the the

directly talking about the actual act of storytelling itself. Like, how do you structure

a narrative? What is the thing that feeds that narrative underneath? Is it trauma? Is

it tragedy? Is it humor? Is it triumph? Is it drama? We

we've talked a lot about the things around it, but the actual,

like, act of putting together a story, we've never we've never talked about, like,

the the nuts and bolts of that. So how can leaders

leverage let's start with this question. How can leaders leverage personal trauma the

way O. Henry did to put together a compelling story?

Well, that that's, that's an awful lot to unpack there, Hayes. It is.

It is. I I think I I think before you even get

into that question, you need to understand

some dynamics first. Right? Me meaning,

I think one of the I was I was a probably I don't

know. I was 18 or 19 years old. I was driving, and I saw this

billboard that said and it it read this quote

that that nobody was ever be able to prove who exactly it

came from, but everyone believes it came from,

Albert Einstein, which was, perception

is greater than reality. One of the reasons I think that one of the

thing one of the reasons that I think that you're you're feeling the

way you are about about narratives and storytelling and the lack

thereof compared to 18, you know, the 1800s and the gilded age or

whatever. I I think that we forget, and sometimes

we forget that 2 people

can view the exact same situation and walk away with it 2 completely

different perceptions of how that situation impacts their life.

Right? And Mhmm. And so so to what so

somebody who decides to look at a tragedy and

turn it into entertainment because my pain can be laughter,

and what I suffered through could if I if

I if I present my suffering in the right

way, I could potentially prevent somebody else from suffering from the same

thing because they they they then will take the lighter side of

that, of that of that scenario. Right? Somebody's

a a death, a a car accident,

cancer, drug addiction, whatever that whatever that

trauma is that you've experienced, there are people that can

take those traumas and turn them into great stories, and there are people that

internalize those traumas until it turns out to be something

disastrous. Mhmm. And in that case, I think of somebody with for the sake

of argument, somebody like Robin Williams. Right? Sure. Okay. He he

externalized so much of his internal pain. But because it

was internal and nobody ever saw it, it it was the end of it.

He he took his own life because of it. Right? So it was like Right.

So I I think when you start understanding the dynamics of people and

you start understanding how those those things

how you perceive those things are going to impact your narrative or how

your storytelling is. Right? So all that being

said, if you're talking strictly about the structure,

then, sure, you need an intro, and you need a this, and you need a

sure. I mean, all that stuff is is is pretty simple, and and and the

audience can go look it up. There's there's nothing brilliant about

about the structure of how a story should be presented.

But when you start talking about the underlying tones and the narratives and the context

and all that stuff and how you how you want it to be

received, I think you have to go

start backwards. I think you have to start with your audience. Start with the

audience. What are you trying to convey to them? What

emotional state are you trying to get them to feel when you when they read

whatever it is you're writing? Your storytelling is going to

be again, so

storytelling seems to always come from a place of a couple of

things. Trauma is absolutely one of it, one of

them. Adventure is another like, you

you you just had this wild adventure that that you deemed a success

because of x, whatever the hell that happens. So now you wanna write a story

about it. It like, so there's a handful of

things like that, whether it's trauma or adventure or success

or overcoming adversity, like, some sort of

adversity. Any of those things can be the foundation of the story,

but none of them matter unless you know who you're telling the story

to. So Right. Yeah. The the you know? And, again, we

we can we can bounce in and out of,

literature versus marketing. Sometimes they're the same. But

literature versus marketing versus just I mean,

in our culture, storytelling was a verbal thing. You didn't write any of these things

down. It was just how could you tell the story and and the

mannerisms and the and the the the the verbalization

and how you how you accentuate certain words

mattered. And, like, there's even from even from a a verbal

storytelling perspective, there's ways to tell the story that

that you wanna make an impact at at certain points so that you get

a a particular message conveyed. Right? So but, again,

that still goes back to knowing your audience. You need to know

Right. Telling the story to a bunch of 5 year olds is very different than

you could probably tell the same exact story to a bunch of 5 year olds

and a bunch of 50 year olds, and it would sound like 2 different

story. It'll sound like 2 different 2 completely different things, but it's the same it

it's based on the same act action or activity or or trauma.

Right? Right. It's again, I I I

I think it's I think personal

trauma first of all, none of us are going to escape it. Let's just get

that right out out of the question. Like, get that right out of the Yeah.

No matter how well off you think you are, no matter how great a childhood

you had, no matter how none of us will escape personal trauma. You

are going to face some sort of personal adversity in your life

regardless of who you are and where you are in the, you know,

economic, socioeconomic scale. It doesn't it doesn't matter.

Money doesn't protect you, neither does, title or,

or any other factor that you can think of that you're do you think of

somebody else's life is better than yours or yours is better than somebody else's?

Personal trauma is going to happen in one way, shape, or form. So taking that

into consideration and how you leverage that as, you know,

as a leader, I think,

again, knowing your audience, knowing your subordinates, knowing your the the

people that you are leading, knowing your followers is going to be

really drastically important when you come

to how you're gonna leverage that trauma to motivate

them, move them to do whatever that whatever that is. But I definitely

think it's possible. I think you just need to know yourself and know your audience

really well. Well, there are there are only 5 stories. Like,

we've known this since Shakespeare. I say this all the time. Well, not all the

time. This is the first time I'm saying this on the podcast in this sort

of form. But I say it I used to say it a lot in trainings.

Right? When I would do training on, or deliver training content on,

leadership development and storytelling and leadership and narrative or conflict and

narrative. Right? There's there's only 5 stories. Right? So to

your point, there's a quest story, which is always an adventure story. Right?

I went off and did something. I discovered something. I I, you know,

I discovered fire and brought it back to people. Okay. So there's a quest story,

you know, that, you know, went out and picked up that,

branch that was hit by lightning.

Kind of awesome. We're gonna be able to cook our food now. Then

you have after a quest story, you have,

a romance. Now it's interesting. We almost never tell romantic

stories at work, obviously, because we all wanna avoid sexual

harassment. But romantic stories at work or

in a leadership context are always the kinds of stories that begin with I like

this or I like that or I had a passion about this or I had

a passion about that. Anytime as a leader or a follower

you're using the word passion to describe something that's happening, you're talking about a

love story. Then you have, your 3rd kind of

story is your, is your,

your kinda your to the point that we're talking about your tragedy. Right? Now

tragedy could be an adventure too. Right? But tragedy

is usually a or or we can sometimes call I sometimes call this a conflict

story. But, tragedy is I hate this

person or this person hates me, particularly at

work, or I was right about this project, and now these people are

gonna get there, to use the word we used in the last segment, these people

are gonna get their comeuppance, and I'm gonna laugh shouting Freud. You know?

Then the the next kind of story you have is a

is sort of a combination of the quest

story, the conflict story, and the romantic story. Right? But it's more of a

persuasive story. It's the to your point about motivation, it's the kind of story that

you tell with all of those elements that's trying to push people to do something.

And then the 5th kind of story, which we tell the least often,

but we only ever tell it when when we ourselves are new to a

role, is the stranger in a strange land story.

I don't know what's happening here. I'm a stranger. This is all

weird. And why am I here?

Like, I'm glad you brought fire, but, like, I was in the cave, 2 caves

over. I never heard of you. Right? Why am I here?

I don't know why all we always turn into cavemen when we do this. We

always turn because there all 3 all 3 caves

down. I I was I heard somebody had fire. I can't really see what it

was. What's this fire thing? It seemed like it's still like a good idea to

show up at the time. Well, you know what? And it's funny. These are these

are story styles. Right? And I think Right. So what what are the things that

that motivate people? And you can make there's there's

so many books about, like, motivational factors and what motivations

are. They all get boiled down to 2 things. It's it's

self preservation or the preservation of others. Like, that that's really

that's it. No matter what else you could say oh, no. No. There's people are

motivated by money. No. No. No. But what does money give you? Money when you

get a lot of money, you have self preservation. Like, you're Right. And you have

the ability to help your family and friends, which is the preservation

of others. Right? Like, it's it it it just what

motivates us as human beings is is are basically

those 2 things. It, like, it so all of those stories,

usually, if you read them well, if you read them and you read enough of

them, you'll start seeing underlying tones of where the self preservation comes

in or the preservation of others. Right. And so so,

again, when when you're talking about storytelling and and what the components of it

or how you how you start to master it, it's

you have to determine to your point a few seconds ago,

what style is the story going to be? Yeah. What is going to

be the, you know, what do you know your audience well

enough that you know to face them with one of those styles

in in one of those motivating factors, either self preservation or

the preservation of others? So those those are the component. Like I said earlier, I

was joking a little bit, like, the structure of it. Like, you know, you have

to have an intro. You have to have this. You have to have an outro.

Like, oh, yeah. Like, anybody can look that up. That's easy porn. Right?

Triangle. Exactly. But

but, like, the the the true, like, the true mastery of

that Venn diagram, right, which is, like, the the the style overlapping the

motivation, overlapping the the the delivery piece of it, and

perfecting all three of those things, that centerpiece of the Venn diagram.

There's I think

everybody has the capability of hitting it. I think everybody has the capability

of hitting the mark. It's just a matter of

where we are like, what we're what our our goals are trying to hit

with it. Think about your think about a 5 year old trying to convince you

to take him to the store to get candy. If he

tries and fails at that often enough, he's eventually gonna master that. He's

gonna get it. He's they're gonna get it. And they I I'm telling you.

They'll figure it out eventually. Well, one of the things one of the things I

always tell folks is the best person in the

history of the world at sales is a is a 5 to 7 year

old. Absolutely. I agree. Best person in the history of the world at

sales. Because all they have to do this is all a 5 to 7 year

old, all things being equal, of course, in a in a in a

robust situation where they are free to pursue themselves. Okay.

Cool. Not talking about traumatic situations or situations of,

like, criminal danger or anything like that. Okay. Yeah. Middle

class. Right? 5 to 7 year old middle class kid in America

is the best salesman in the world because all they have to do, this is

all they have to do, is watch you all

day. They got nothing else going on. They literally have nothing else going

on. They go to watch their target all day because they know you have something,

and they know that you are the thing in the way to get it. And

all they have to do is just watch you. That's it. Just all they just

observe. And they and they learn, and they know their audience.

That's it. That's right. They know their audience. They know their audience, and they know

that and they know that they don't have to come up with complicated

concepts or ideas or complicated questions to get the answers

that they want. No. That that can we go to the store to buy me

candy? No. Not right now. But why? I I'm a little busy right now. I

don't have the time. But why are you busy? Well, because I have to do

this. Like, they they ask the simplest questions until they just beat you down,

and you don't have a good enough reason to say no anymore.

Their their discovery process is ruthless. Exactly.

Exactly. Uh-huh. Well, the other piece is they have and this is the thing

that, like, adults in sales or adults who are telling

stories forget. That 5 to 7 year old has literally

nothing to lose. Right. They've already done the cost

benefit analysis ratio. Like, if I can get this person to say yes,

I'm gonna get candy or watch TV or play video games or whatever the heck

it is that I want. And if they say no, well, I'm just stuck

in the same situation I was in right now, which is I have no candy.

I have no video games, and I and I have no TV. So, like, how

is this how's what's the downside to me? Right? It doesn't set them

backwards. It does not no. And they have a good understanding of time

because for them, on a longer I mean, time is infinite. It's never

I mean, there's no there's no hurry. Time's

infinite. They have all the time in the world. Yeah. They're gonna live forever. What?

You're the one that's got a problem.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I

always used to say with my kids, like, particularly my 2 youngest, like

actually, my 3 youngest. My oldest child is a little bit different, but my 3

youngest always used to say that is the most I mean, like, if I could

have bottled that, my god, like, I would ruth I could

have sold anything. I could have sold anything. I could have sold water to a

well. Yeah. And and most of that is to your to your point, most of

that is just the the the lack of fear of failure.

Right? They just they don't None. They don't have the fear of failure, so they

just they just go. They just go, and they do, and they go, and they

ask, and they think that they don't they don't over they don't overthink anything. Nope.

They don't they don't, there's no, you know, there's no hesitation.

There's no like, that's the that's their biggest strength. It is

the the the lack of fear of failure. They just don't have it.

Well, why would they feel failure? Nothing bad has ever happened to them. Of what?

That's the exactly. That's my point. That's why they make salespeople

because, you know, the salespeople that you hire, that you say by the way, if

you don't hit your quota, you're fired. They have a fear of failure. Right

out the gate, you get a fear of failure.

Yeah. Okay. So you need by the

way, the the the the story about money is a 6 story. It's either a

rags to riches story or riches to rag story. Yeah. Right.

Those are those are those are your those are your 2, those are your 2

stories those are your 2 story or 2 variations of that of that story there.

Okay. Back to the book. Back to the short story here, the gift of the

magi. Gonna pick it up here.

Gonna kinda move move quickly through this because we wanna get to the denouement

here, and we have a, oh, we have a window here that's

rapidly closing, but it's okay.

So Della's ransacking the store for Jim's present. She found it at last.

It surely had been made for Jim and no one else. There was no other

like it in any of the stores, and she had turned all of them inside

out. It was a platinum fob chain, simple and chaste in design, properly

proclaiming its value by substance alone and not by mereutricious

ornamentation as all good things should do. It was even worthy

of the watch. As soon as she saw it, she knew it must be Jim's.

It was like him. Quietness and value. The description applied to both.

$21 they took for they took from her for it as she hurried home

with the 87¢. With that chain on its watch, Jim might be

properly anxious about the time at any company. Grand as the watch

was, he sometimes looked at it on the sly on account of the old leather

strap that he used in place of a chain. When Della

reached home, her intoxication gave way to a little prudence and reason. She got out

her curling irons and lighted the gas and went to work repairing the ravages made

by generosity added to love, which is always a tremendous

task, dear friends, a mammoth task.

Within 40 minutes, her head was covered with tiny, close line curls that made her

look wonderfully like a truant schoolboy. She looked at her

reflection in the mirror long, carefully, and critically. If Jim doesn't kill

me, she said to herself before he takes a second look at me, he'll say

I look like a Coney Island chorus girl. But what could I do? Oh, what

could I do with a dollar 87¢? At 7

o'clock, the coffee was made and the frying pan was on the back of the

stove hot and ready to cook the chops. Jim was never

late. Della doubled the fob chain in her hand and sat in the corner of

the table near the door that he always entered. Then she heard her step on

the stair away down on the first flight, and she turned white just for a

moment. She had a habit of saying little silent prayers about the simplest

everyday things, and now she whispered, please, god, make him think I am still pretty.

The door opened, and Jim stepped in and closed it. He looked thin and

very serious. Poor fellow. He was only 22 and to be burdened with a

family. He needed a new overcoat, and he was without gloves.

Jim stepped stopped inside the door as immovable as a setter at the scent of

a quail. His eyes were fixed upon Della, and there was an expression in

them she could not read, and it terrified her. It was not

anger, nor surprise, nor disapproval, nor horror, nor any of the sentiments that she had

been prepared for. He simply stared her fixedly with that peculiar expression

on his face. Now I'm gonna

skip one thing here

and go down to this part. You've cut off your hair, asked Jim, laboriously,

as if she had not arrived at that patent fact yet even after the hardest

mental labor. Cut it off and sold it, said Della. Don't you like me,

Jim? Just as well, anyhow? I'm mean without my hair, ain't I?

Jim looked around the room curiously. You say your hair is gone,

he said with an air of almost of idiocy.

You didn't look for it, said Della. It's sold. I tell you, sold and gone.

It's Christmas Eve, boy. Be good to me, for it went for you. Maybe the

hairs of my head were numbered, she went on with a sudden serious sweetness,

but nobody could ever count my love out my love for you. Shall

I put the chops on, Jim? Out of his

prance, Jim seemed quickly to wake. He unfolded his Della. For

10 seconds, let us regard with discreet scrutiny some inconsequential object in the

other direction. $8 a week or 1,000,000 a

year. What is the difference? A mathematician or a wit would give you the wrong

answer. The Magi brought valuable gifts, but that was not among them.

This dark assertion will be illuminated later on.

Jim drew a package from his overcoat pocket and threw it upon the table. Don't

make any mistake, Dell, he said about me. I don't think there's anything in the

way of a haircut or a shave or a shampoo that could make me like

my girl any less. But if you'll unwrap that package, you

may see why you had me going a while at first.

White fingers and nimble tore at the string and paper, and

then an ecstatic scream of joy. And then, alas, a quick

feminine change to hysterical tears in Wales, necessitating the

immediate employment of all the comforting powers of the lord of the flat,

for there lay the combs, the set of combs side and back

that Della had worshiped for long in a Broadway window. Beautiful combs, pure

tortoise shell with jeweled rims, just the shade to wear in the beautiful

vanished hair. They were expensive combs she knew, and her heart had

simply craved and yearned over them without the least hope of possession. And

now they were hers, but the tresses that should have adorned to the coveted adornments

were gone. But she hugged them to her

bosom, and at length, she was able to look up with dim eyes and smile

and say, my hair grows so fast, Jim. And the dolla leaped up like a

little singed cat and cried, oh. Jim had not yet seen his beautiful

present. She held it out to him eagerly upon her open palm. The dull

precious metal seemed to flash with the reflection of her bright and ardent spirit.

Isn't it a dandy gem? I hunted all over town to find it. You'll have

to look at the time a 100 times a day now. Give me your watch.

I want to show you what it looks like on it. Instead of

obeying, Jim tumbled down the couch and put his hands into the back of his

head and smiled. Dell, he said, let's put our Christmas

presents away and keep them a while. It's too nice to use just a present.

I sold the watch to get the money to buy your combs. And

now suppose you put the chops on.

To our point earlier, by the way, O'Henry was once

asked by a humorist named Irvin Cobb, an

unreconstructed southern humorist in,

oh gosh, in the in the 19 tens in a restaurant just before he

died, where he got his stories from. And

O'Henry infamously said this. He said, oh,

everything. There are stories in everything.

And then he proceeded to pick up a menu, according to the story

as it goes, and he created a story out of the menu in the

diner he was having breakfast at with

Erwin.

Connection is what we chase in the Internet era, and connection is what we

chased and have chased preview in previous eras in this country. Connection is

nothing new. But it used to be person to person connection, person to

person connection through stories.

O'Henry's stories have never been out of print, and I mentioned this already,

since his death in 1910.

He only attained fame, by the way, and he'd been writing short stories since he

was 19. But he only attained fame for writing short stories at the

age of 39, and, literally, he worked himself to

death, worked and drank.

However, the year before his death in 19 09, he gave an interview to the

New York Times in which he talked about,

the pen name o Henry, and this is directly from his words. He

says, it was during these New Orleans days that I adopted my pen name

of O'Henry. I said to a friend, quote, I'm going to send

out some stuff. I don't know if it amounts to much, so I wanna get

a literary alias. Help me pick out a good one.

He suggested that we get a newspaper and pick a name from the first list

of notables that we found in it. In the society columns, we found the

account of a fashionable ball. Here we have our notables, said he.

We looked down the list, and my eye lighted on the name Henry. That'll do

for a last name, said I. And now for a first name, I want something

short. None of your 3 syllable names for me. Why don't you

use a plain initial then letter then, asked my friend. Good,

said I. O is about the easiest letter written, and o

it is. A newspaper once wrote and asked

me what the o stands for. I replied, quote, o stands

for Oliver, the French for Oliver. And several of

my stories accordingly appeared in that paper under the name

Oliver Henry.

This story, The Gift of the Magi, has, as Tom mentioned

all the way at the beginning of our episode, is one of his

more memorable stories. It has been turned into

stage plays. It has been turned into movies. It has been a part of

other stories. And, again, has never been out of print since his death

in 1910. Matter of fact, it's become so much

a trope. The woman who cuts off her hair to

buy combs or sorry, to buy a to buy a watch fa or watch chain

and the man who sells his watch to buy combs. And, oh, they don't talk

to each other, And, oh, hilarity ensues. This is

this has become a trope of comedy. It's become a trope of

tragedy, and it's become a trope of drama because O'Henry,

William Sydney Porter, realized initially

that there was a story inside of this trope.

There was a story that was worth telling that needed to be

laid out. O'Henry

was also a social part of the part of the movement of the Gilded Age.

He was a I wouldn't say he was a social justice crusader. He

wasn't. He was a probably he would probably would have classified himself as a

fairly progressive individual, not the way we think of progressive now, but

progressive in terms of social reform. Right? And many of his stories,

as they reflected the poverty of the time, they also reflected the growing

consumerism of the time, which we can see in The Gift of the Magi

and which is particularly ironic for it being

a story that is focused around the Christmas season.

As a matter of fact, when I was reading this, and Tom and I talked

about A Christmas Carol, it is the anti Christmas Carol

story. It's an anti Dickens story. Even

though I would say O. Henry probably got us close in an

American context to capturing

the, the Dickensian

aspect of being an American

in the gilded age.

Short story, short episode today. Don't can't really do a lot

with this. Tom, final thoughts on o Henry,

on the gift of the Magi, what leaders can learn from all

this before we close out. Well, I think

the biggest lesson to me here is

the like, I got I feel like it's

broken record here. But, like, as a leader,

knowing your audience is important. Right? And in this case, knowing

like, being able to you know them by talking to

them, talking through problems with them, getting understanding from them, things that you

like things that if this this couple had done in the first place, they

wouldn't had this major, you know, swap off as you

would speak. Now, by the way Right. I'm still thinking the person that got out

you know, really made out in this deal is is, is Della because

she's right. Her hair will grow back, and she will use the combs. He

sold the watch. That chain is useless to him from now forever. Like

so, I mean, you know, I think, again, if you

look at if you're going to if you're going

to make a decision based on your gut or based

on lack of information, make sure it's a decision you can come back

from like she did. She cut her hair, and she which, by the

way, I also thought selling it for $20 was

where did that number come from? Because I think it's the same today. I think

if a woman sold her a a length of it, they're not gonna get more

than $20 for it either. So I I just thought that was interesting on a

side note. But, anyway But the the prices of hair are immune to

inflationary pressures. But her decision making

process, in my opinion, was better than his because she was

only impacting, first of all, something that was gonna impact only

her and only impacting something that she

knew would was gonna be a short term disadvantage or a short term

short some some sort of short term,

impact that that it was going to her hair's gonna grow back. He

Right. Made a decision based on no factor, no data, no information, no

he went on his gut and had nothing to show for it in the end.

Right. So I so, again, what leaders are taking out of this,

god only knows. I'm just trying I'm pulling I'm literally, you know, pulling at straws

here. But, you know, but I didn't think of it in that in that perspective.

Again, 2 leaders, same situation. I have to make a decision based on my gut.

I have to make a decision based on my gut. Can I make a decision

that has an a short term impact

enough that we can come back from it without anything else

happening? Am I gonna make a short term impact that I

can't pull back and I can't come back from? And I'm just gonna run with

it and live or die. I'm gonna live and die by my own. I'm gonna

I'm gonna follow my own sword. I'm gonna live and die by it. And if

I fail, company fails. We go and we move on. It is what it is.

It ends. But you see what I'm saying? Like, I Yeah. Yeah. No. Well enough.

But I think that that this does tell us a little something about how you

think through, how you think through a process matters.

I think that that is reflected in Jim's reaction at the end

there where he's just like, right. Gonna lay back

on the couch. Hands behind his head. Yeah. Behind his

head. I'm gonna live with my decision.

Well, and sometimes as a leader, like, I think about this

often. Right? So hindsight is always 2020.

Always. Always. And one of the failures we have

in our current era over the last 25 years

because of the Internet. Right? Because nothing ever dies and is allowed to

sort of fall into a space of forgetting. We're constantly second

guessing leaders' decisions of the past

based off current information that we had that leaders didn't have access

to. The biggest example of this is

George Bush and 911 and,

you know, making the decision to go to war in Iraq and weapons of

mass destruction and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Right?

And we judge him harshly, and we judge people who are in his administration

harshly, right, wrong, or indifferently. We judge them

harshly because we have information that we

claim they should have had access to, but we have absolutely

no certainty that they did. We can speculate. We can say they

should have known. We can say they absolutely did know. My favorite

conspiracy theorists always say, of course, they knew. There's no way they could possibly

have not known. But that's all speculation on our part

based off of after action reports and after the fact

information. It's just like with COVID.

I don't fault anybody who made a who made decisions

between, like, quite frankly, February of 2020

and June of 2020. Because you're making decisions in real time in

that little that little gap of 90 to a 100

days, you're making decisions in real time, and you have no clue

what is happening. Now after that, it gets into a little bit of a different

gray area there. But for that one spot,

I really I mean, now did

they not release all the information that they've had to the public?

For sure. And even whether it's 911 or

COVID, even the quote, unquote hidden information that the

public should have known, whatever that may mean, is still

I hate to say this. You may wanna pay attention to this. Mark this. It's

still limited information. Yeah. It's still limited. And

so, again Agree. Went back on the couch. Subject to interpretation too.

It's subject to interpretation. That's all. If if you if it if it's

not just having information doesn't make it factual.

Right. Right? Like, having information, you still need to digest

it or dissect it or verify it,

validate it. All kind of like, you can't just say, I I have a phone

in my hand. You guys can't see this because it's blurry. I have a phone

in my hand, and you could for all you it could be it could be

a brick. I don't know. You don't know anything.

I I don't know. Again, to your point, I I think it's easy to

vilify people after the fact. It's easy. Yeah. Yeah. And I and and it's some

it's something that we've done throughout history, by the way. This has nothing to do

with the in the, the Internet error. We've done it throughout history that

we've vilified people after the fact because we just you

know, to your point, I I think everything you said was absolutely absolutely dead on.

It's easier it's easier to be critical when you have more information than the

person that made the decision in the first place. That's right. It's very easy to

be critical. What's not easy to do is take it from

their perspective now knowing what you know Mhmm.

Doing the same like, you're you're gonna make the same decisions. Like, that's

the other thing. If you can if you can honestly look back at somebody and

say, now that I know what I know, if in

the moment, I probably still would have done the same thing that you do,

then then you can't vilify them, but we continue to do that. We continue to

vilify people for making decisions based on information they they currently have and not

information that we have. It's it's Right. Bizarre. It is it's a bizarre

kinda natural thing that we do. Well, it's a fundamental lack of,

it's a fundamental lack of humility, I think. And I think it's a a

species of hubris and

narcissism Yeah. That we Yeah. Because we're all perfect when we have the right

information. Oh, yeah. Everybody. Yeah. Like

Well, and this is what we're gonna do. I I have I have a strong

suspicion that we are going to outsource our decision making to our a our

coming AI systems because we are looking for the

perfect decision that will always work out everywhere

across all time and will have no downsides at all. Particularly in the

west, we're looking for this, in America in particular. Other

places, your your level of looking for perfection will vary based on

your cultural your particular cultural things. But we are we are

desperately searching for that perfect decision with

no downsides. And tragically, to your point

earlier, in the segment, we were talking about stories, we live in a

fallen world. It will never happen. There will

always be a downside. And our

our our machine learning tools, which they are only tools just like that fire in

the cave I mentioned previously, our machine learning tools

will only ever be as good as the human inputs who are

putting the information in.

And I think that's a I think that's a good spot to end for today.

Merry Christmas, happy New Year, and happy holidays for

us here at the Leadership Lessons from the

Great Books podcast. And with that, well,

we're out.