Mike weaves his way through the morning throng at the convenience store. He is headed, as usual, back to the coffee island where he will prepare his first fix of the day. Ngoc is holding court at the register—laughing, teasing with several regulars as well as newcomers. She trades newspapers, cigarettes, gum, donuts, and juice for money and debit cards with the deftness of a Monte Carlo croupier.

Without missing a beat, she also delivers a corrective shout to her employee, who is building a point of purchase display directly behind her. The tiny woman with a Beatles haircut reminds the young man that every 12-pack has to face the customer in the same way in order to meet the distributor's display diagram.

"Extra large coffee for the extra large big shot . . . that will be $2.12 for you, Mr. Big Shot," Ngoc deadpans to Mike.

"There are two reasons I come in here, Ngoc. One is the fresh coffee; the other is the dose of humility you dole out. My wife says you are the only one who can keep me in line," Mike says.

"Your wife is a paradox. She says brilliant things like that, but she still had the bad judgment to tie herself to you. Is she smart or crazy . . . huh?"

"Maybe it was just a momentary lack of judgment," Mike says as he starts to pat, pat, pat his pockets, looking for his wallet, which he isn't finding.

"Yeah, that explains it," says Ngoc, who speaks grammatically perfect English but with a heavy accent. She loves to display her hard-won command of English idioms and slang. "What's wrong, Big Shot? So many things on your important plate today you can't remember a simple thing like a wallet?"

"Geez, I'm a moron. Sorry for the trouble." Mike heads back to the coffee island to dump out his cup, mildly irritated with himself. He wants the jolt of caffeine that first cup would provide. This is exactly the type of spacey behavior his bosses and his employees had pointed out in his 360 on Friday.

"Not so fast, Big Man. Today you'll drink your coffee as a treat from me. Not a gift from the corporation, either. I'm personally going to take what little money I have out of my wallet and pay for Mr. Big Shot's coffee," Ngoc dramatically removes two ones, a dime, and two pennies from her clasp.

"Because this morning I'm the Big Shot . . . my daughter got into Cal Tech yesterday." Everyone in line cheers as Ngoc awarded Mike his coffee.

"What about Princeton? Doesn't she have an application there, too?" Mike asks, happy he could get that first sip in.

"Oh, she got the rejection from Princeton yesterday, too, but that's okay. She will go to school with others like her, who can manage only a 4.5 GPA and a 1580 on the SAT," she says with a wink.

"Princeton is more for a smarty pants like you," she jokes. "We're just humble products of the public schools in my house."

Ngoc knows better than this, though. Over the past year or so, Mike has come in just about every morning. They have developed a nice friendship, and found that despite differing cultural backgrounds, they were similar in many ways. Through simple and direct questions over morning coffee purchases, Mike has learned Ngoc ran not just one but two of these stores for the publicly traded corporation. After the morning rush, she will hustle another store to bark instructions at her competent assistant managers. Her stores are the highest grossing and most profitable ones in the district.

Mike also asked about her family. That's why he knew her daughter was an academic star who earned prestigious high school honors. Ngoc gave him weekly updates on the college application process. And Ngoc knows plenty about Mike, too. He is happy to share stories about himself as well. If the store is quiet, he'll tell her about his projects and minor losses and successes at work. He never has to go into much detail; she is a quick study. She can commiserate with him, even though she isn't familiar with his business or his customers.

Despite her constant teasing, Ngoc realizes Mike isn't just a frat boy made good. She appreciates that he worked his way through state school and takes his career and his supervision of his division very seriously. They compare notes frequently about employee issues.

"If she gets into Stanford today, can I get another free cup of coffee tomorrow?" Mike asks on the way out.

"No way, Dude," Ngoc says. "One time deal, today only. Tomorrow: no money, no coffee for the Big Shot. But she won't hear from Stanford for another week, anyway."

"Okay, tell her congrats from me." Mike hustles out, gets into his car, and shuffles his iTouch to AC/DC's "It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock 'n' Roll)."

Then, just like he did back in high school, he turns up the volume too loud to be considerate of others in the parking lot. He is happy for Ngoc and can't help acting out some. A little AC/DC in the morning never hurt anyone, he rationalizes as he headed for the office.

But he is still irritated about the wallet.

"Yes, sir, I'll get the items on this ticket right away," the lady behind the counter at the dry cleaners tells Chad. He in turn manages a polite grunt of recognition as he keeps his head down, thumbing his BlackBerry. He is dismayed by one e-mail from the West Coast that popped up. His impulse is to fire off something immediately, but, remembering Friday's critical 360, he decides to let it sit until he got to the office. Making just a sliver of eye contact, Chad hands the lady behind the counter at the dry cleaners his debit card, signs the slip, and walks out with his shirts. He jumps into his car, turns up the audio on his MP3 download of the best-selling Freakonomics, and congratulates himself for never letting a moment of the day go by without being productive.

The "lady behind the counter at the dry cleaners" is named Joan, but Chad doesn't know that, even though he's been a customer for years. Their discussions only cover the day's temperature or impending precipitation. She wears a large plastic nametag on her polo shirt with the store logo. He's never noticed it.

In reality, Joan is scared to death of Chad. "Intimidated" is probably a more accurate term, but it sure feels a lot like fear to Joan. With his meticulously measured conversation, hurried manner, and smart, trim fashion sense, Chad always makes Joan feel inadequate. He is obviously well educated and very successful. Chad is never rude or unkind, just uninterested.

Joan knows she is just the "lady behind the counter at the dry cleaners" to Chad, and that she shouldn't take it personally. She loves getting to know her customers and takes seriously the faith they placed in her to take care of some of their dearest possessions. She learned quickly that Chad values speed above all else, so she always bolts through his counter transactions in an effort to please him.

Usually, this attention to customer needs pays off nicely for Joan and her husband. They own this store as well as a second one in a nearby suburb. They are profitable and have nine employees. Last year, the biggest guys in town offered to buy them out at a nice price. But Joan and Bob felt they were not done with what they were building, so they politely refused.

Chad would be shocked to know that this "lady at the dry cleaners" and her husband earned more money last year than he did. They have a nice bit of net worth, as well. Even with a depressed real estate market, they are still sitting on a ton of equity in their two well-run, prime location stores.

Chad's BlackBerry vibrates in his shirt pocket. He sees it is his wife, so he turns down Freakonomics, jams the Bluetooth Jawbone in his ear, and clicks the on button.

"Hi honey. What's up?"

"Hey, have you been to the dry cleaners yet? I wanted to make sure you picked up a suit I brought in the other day. The lady says it would be ready by yesterday. I want to wear it to the partner lunch tomorrow."

"No, she just gave me my shirts. Did you put it in under your name, or mine?"

"Oh, I just gave her our last name."

"Well, then she should have gotten it for me. I swear to God, service people really take no pride in their work these days. Jesus!" Chad swears when he is upset—mildly though, only when he's really angry. He never drops the F-bomb. He thinks it is overused and inelegant.

"Well, honey, I really should have given you the ticket, or at least told you to ask her for the suit. Don't get so frustrated. And don't be so hard on her. They do a good job for us."

"Whatever," Chad fumes. "I'm sick and tired of people doing just enough and, God forbid, not one bit more than they need to, just to get along. Would it have killed her to look harder for other items with our name?"

Joan at the dry cleaners would have agreed with Chad. She would also be mortified to know she had not done her best for a customer. Normally, she would have taken a minute to check the computer more carefully for other items with Chad's name. But he rattles her so much every time he comes in that she rushed through the transaction and missed the suit for his wife. She appreciates the business Chad and his wife bring to her store, and she would never want to disappoint them. But today she had.

"Get over it, babe," Chad's wife says. "It's not a big deal. . .I'll get it on the way home tonight."

"Alright, love you. See you tonight."

Chad clicks off the Jawbone and turns up the audio in his car to continue his self-improvement on the way into the office.

Once he hit the office, Chad launches into his Monday morning ritual. For about a year now he's taken up the deliberate practice of spending about 15 minutes first thing every Monday morning in the break room. He sits facing the door, sipping a fresh cup of chamomile tea with a dollop of honey, while perusing the front page of the Wall Street Journal.

The WSJ is merely an affectation. Chad would rather read it in his office. No, he is really there to greet employees and show that he enjoys touching base with them—whether or not they work for him. He believes that his being "out there" and making small talk display good leadership skills.

"Hi Lindsay, how was your weekend?" he asks the corporate receptionist who opens the refrigerator, looking for half-and-half.

"Oh, you know, busy as usual," Lindsay replies. "How was your weekend?"

"Great . . . great. Can't believe it's Monday already, though," says Chad.

"Yeah, me too. It seems like we just walked out of here on Friday afternoon. Well, have a good day." She pours the half-and-half in her coffee and turns to walk out.

"Yes, you too, Lindsay."

Chad repeats this exercise 10 times in the next 15 minutes. Turns out, everyone's weekend was "great" or "restful" or "busy." It is no different from the same shallow call and response of every other Monday.

Chad still has that disconcerting e-mail from the West Coast to contend with, but he proudly maintains vigil. He feels good about it. He demonstrates to all employees he is concerned and available.

Lindsay and the others don't think about the interaction that way, though—because they don't really think about it at all. It is too brief and meaningless to have any impact. If pressed, they might realize that Chad mans this post every Monday morning; but they never do. There is no reason to find it significant.

Undaunted, Chad calculates constantly. He likes to keep track in his head how many colleagues he greets in his Monday morning routine. There's solace in numbers and head count. The more people he greets in the break room—instead of reading the WSJ prop—the more credit, and perhaps productivity, he'll get during the week.

With his coffee room "meet and greet" assignment completed, Chad heads to his office. He approaches Mike, who is in the hallway leaving his sales manager's office. Mike is still talking to Louis, who is hidden from Chad's view. "Well, you make a good case for it, but Jackie Brown's not going to go in my Netflix queue. For the last 10 years I've been hearing would-be hipsters like you say it's all stylistic and cool, but I find Tarantino's violence just too gratuitous. See you in the conference room in a few."

"Your loss," Chad hears Mike's sales manager try to get in the last word, "Samuel L is definitely on the top of his game every time he and Quentin team up."

Mike shoots back, "Yeah, well, I'll still feel I've lived a full life if on my death bed Reservoir Dogs is the only Tarantino film I've seen."

"Well, it's still my mission to broaden your limited horizons," Louis replies, as he brings an end to the banter.

Chad and Mike walk down the hall side by side. Chad asks, "Since when did you and Louis become Netflix buddies?"

"Well, we're not. He doesn't need Netflix like I do. In the last 10 years Louis has amassed this huge DVD collection. He spends every spare dime and free minute watching movies. He was a film major at NYU."

"Wow, how did he get here then . . . I thought he had an MBA in marketing?" Chad asks.

"Yeah, you're right, he does. His folks offered him a bribe when he was getting out of undergrad. He could do the starving artist thing on his own, or they would pop for business school. He says he sold out and went for the money. He protests that they forced him into being a money-grubbing Capitalist—he wasn't born into it the way I was. It's a good thing for us, huh?"

"Yeah, good thing for us," Chad murmurs. Louis is a strong employee for Mike, with lots of potential. But Chad is really wondering how the hell Mike knows so much detail about Louis's past. That stuff went back more than 10 years or so.

"Yeah, I'm just a mainstream movie guy, but my wife likes the art house stuff every now and then. When I have questions about something a little offbeat, I chat with Louis. The guy's a Roger Ebert of movie knowledge. He knows all the background: who ripped off the script ideas, how much the movie grossed, who was sleeping with whom on set. He really studies this stuff. It's a riot."

Mike does not do the Monday morning walk-around the way some bosses do. And he doesn't wait in the break room to greet employees, the way Chad does, though he would readily admit it was a nice touch, if done right. Instead, Mike has a deliberate routine on Monday morning. Coffee in hand, he makes a point to visit with one of his employees for a good 10 minutes; in their cubicles, at the copy machine, or as they are setting up for a meeting in the small conference room, he has a brief but meaningful chat about their weekend. His consistent but noninvasive questions make sure he gets details about the weekend instead of just a single adjective. Mike figures, if he can probe a little to find out what people admit they like doing, they'll know that he values them as colleagues.

Mike consciously stresses the word "value" in all of his motives at work. He wants his employees to know he appreciates their strengths and diversity of interests. If they succeed, they are providing strong value to the organization. If they fail, they aren't living up to the value he knows they're capable of. It makes all workplace conversations easier when you are constantly seeking and measuring value.

Mike abhors the word care when it comes to professional relationships. He thinks it's creepy sounding. Worse, if he said it to an employee, it would be a lie. He "cares" about his wife; he "cares" about his nieces; he "cares" about his Nirvana vinyl collection. But he doesn't "care" about his employees; he "values" them. It is a huge distinction for Mike. Ironically, he rarely uses the actual word value out loud. He knows it's more important to demonstrate the meaning of the word value with his hard-won connections than to talk about it all the time.

During these Monday get-togethers, he shares something about himself, as well. He wants his employees to value their connection to him. Today, in Louis's doorway, Mike had been discussing the film noir kick his wife had been on for the last few months. That led Louis to push Jackie Brown on Mike, and not for the first time. It was like this every Monday, just with a different employee each time. He had created a brief but effective non-work-related connection session with someone in the office.

Mike did not run into Lindsay, the corporate receptionist, this Monday morning as Chad had in the break room. Chances are he would have guessed how hectic her weekend was, though. He already knows Lindsay and her husband have to deal with a big decision regarding their 11-year-old son. The kid is an all-star striker in soccer and an overpowering pitcher in his baseball league. The soccer coach wants him to play on a statewide traveling club team. The baseball coach is pushing for a spring AAU league, which means playing around the state as well. Lindsay and her husband think doing both would tear the kid and the family apart every weekend. But all of this would be news to Chad.

Though Mike's casual Monday conversations look off the cuff, they are indeed highly calculated. They never last more than 10 minutes. He has a little mental timer in his head that starts to ring at about the eight-minute mark, telling him to wrap it up. He also never allows the conversations to stray into his employees' personal relationship issues—positive or negative. That's not his interest, and it will not help him accomplish his objective. While he may know and even inquire about a sick mother-in-law, that's not what these discussions are for. The word in the office is that Mike is a great guy, but he won't tolerate drama in any form. He focuses on activities and interests that will allow him to connect with employees in an upbeat fashion. It's a leadership exercise that takes time and patience; he's determined to make it pay off.

Mike believes that the more he connects with his employees and shows he is interested in them in an authentic yet professional way, the better performance he'll get from them. On top of that, he likes the back-and-forth that he has with them and has learned a lot along the way. The whole Louis "film professor" thing is a good example of the type of delightful discoveries these sessions have yielded. Mike has never discussed this tactic with Chad or anyone else in the company; he doesn't even consider it a deliberate tactic. It's just part of his routine to get the most from his employees.

The weekend reports from the western regions are waiting for Chad and Mike after their computers fire up at their individual offices. Chad has known about—and has been fretting over—this e-mail since the dry cleaners. While Mike knew he had received an e-mail from the server on the West Coast—as he always does on Monday morning—he, unlike Chad, hadn't opened it up on his BlackBerry to see if it was positive or negative. He knew that it would be "whatever it was." He just checked his BlackBerry to see if there were any meltdowns. His intuition was right. The West Coast e-mail was disappointing, but it was hardly a business tragedy.

Both Mike and Chad have to deal with the same issue. The reports from the West Coast are incomplete and will therefore not be helpful to what they have to accomplish today as they stand. They are going to need more information from the West Coast teams, and they're going to need it by noon. That's going to be a challenge.

Chad and Mike both have an important meeting with a critical vendor after lunch, the purpose of which is to get better pricing from the vendor in the months ahead. Without the promised sales projections from the West Coast for the next two quarters, a difficult goal will become almost impossible to accomplish. On top of that, it will be embarrassing. Why would the vendor give these guys a discount when they can't even figure out how much they're going to be buying?

This isn't the first time the Phil in the West Coast office had let Chad down. Phil is a good guy and a real hustler, but he's sloppy. Follow-through is not one of his strong points. Chad quickly composes a professional but terse e-mail.

Re: NEED PROJECTIONS YOU PROMISED!!!

Phil:

I can't tolerate less than complete work from you and your team. You have to be accountable to honor your commitments to us.

Just to remind you, you said you'd include your purchasing projections in your weekly report. You didn't, which has us in a real jam.

Please get those numbers to me by 9 am your time.

I look forward to your immediate response to this critical issue.

Chad

Division Manager

Chad reads the e-mail over twice before sending it. He's still smarting from Friday's 360 and is being cautious. But, as he sees it, he is totally in the right—and Phil is totally in the wrong. No reason to tiptoe around this. He's the boss; and, in this e-mail, he's doing his job—and quite well, at that! No wasted words, just a strong directive.

Mike received a similar type of e-mail from his West Coast manager—a woman named Jeanie. Mike had exactly the same reaction as Chad: He was angry. He composes an e-mail, similar in tone to the one Chad had just sent to Phil. Not quite so strident, and a few paragraphs longer, but with the same message. Before he hits the "send" key, he stops and deletes it.

He picks up the phone, thinks for a solid minute, and then leaves this voice message on her cell:

Mike went through about five run-throughs of this voice mail in his head before he ever dialed Jeanie's number, editing and improving each version. The words he finally delivered to her voicemail were well-thought-out and designed to result in a specific action from Jeanie: She must send him the important documents right now. He also showed he understood the obstacles she would face, and that they didn't matter.

The self-description of "asshole" was not a term he spoke out of frustration. He used it to emphasize the predicament in which she had left him. It was just what Mike wanted Jeanie to hear because, without the information from her, the vendor wouldn't just think that Mike was unintelligent. It was worse than that. The vendor would assume that Mike wasn't considerate of other people's valuable time—hardly the opinion you want other people to hold when you're trying to get a concession from them. Yes, Mike thought "asshole" was the perfect word, and he wanted Jeanie to hear the concern in his voice along with the word.

This is the way Mike operates every day. He works and massages each communication that could affect his employee's behavior and performance. He'll use coarse (but not gross) language to get his point across if it's the best way to connect with his message.

Next, he turns to his computer and sends this e-mail:

Re: JUST LEFT YOU AN IMPORTANT VM YOU NEED TO CHECK RIGHT NOW.

Please to listen to the voice mail right now. I need your help on one item before you get to the office.

Thanks,

Mike

With that, both Chad and Mike head to their respective sales meetings. Both think to themselves that the day isn't off to a bad start at all. Could be better, but they had already taken care of business, caught a problem early, taken action, and were headed for a pretty good day.

Only one of them would be right.