The Mirror Test
The following excerpt comes from Peter Drucker’s mythic Management (Revised Ed.), which I finished yesterday on the train back from New York City where I had attended Social Media for Social Change. In the context of stressing the importance of ones personal and professional values, Drucker relates an anecdote establishing what he calls “The Mirror Test”:
As the story goes, the most highly respected diplomat among all those of the Great Powers in the early years of the twentieth century was the German ambassador in London. He was clearly destined for higher things, at least to become his country’s foreign minister, if not German federal chancellor. Yet, in 1906, he abruptly resigned. King Edward VII had then been on the British throne for five years, and the diplomatic corps had been planning to give him a big dinner. The German ambassador, being the dean of the diplomatic corps–he had been in London for close to fifteen years–was to be the chairman of that dinner. Kind Edward VII was a notorious womanizer and made it clear what kind of dinner he wanted–at the end, after the dessert had been served, a huge cake was going to appear, and out of it would jump a dozen or more naked prostitutes as the lights were dimmed. The German ambassador resigned rather than preside over this dinner: “I refuse to see a pimp when in the mirror in the morning when I shave.”
Comments
Leave a Reply
Subscribe via RSS