‘Pay it forward’ should be way of life
While Kevin Spacey is one of my favorite actors, I have never known him to be a philosopher. This quotation of his has been impossible to escape, since I read it on one of those quotation desk calendars: “If you’ve done well in whatever business you are in, you should spend at least half your time sending the elevator back down.”
“Sending the elevator back down” is a sensational image to illustrate our debt to young people and to people who have not achieved the success some of us have enjoyed. I hope I have sent the elevator back down with some of these columns that reflect my 30 years of mistakes and lessons in a corporate environment. When I teach at universities and in the seminars I conduct I am trying to use what I’ve experienced to help others.
One of my closest friends enjoyed a sensational newspaper career, but often it seems he relishes the successes of the people he mentored or tutored more than he appreciates his own accomplishments. When he brags on the accomplishments of “his people,” it is obvious “sending the elevator back down” is one of the great joys of his life. His wife is proud of what he’s done for other people, but I know she has raised her eyebrows more than once over his intensity in helping people get jobs, promotions and honors.
My youngest son is about to graduate from college and he’s doing his final “for credit” internship. He’s on top of the world because he has encountered a reporter and a producer at a TV station who do not regard him as a mere piece of meat passing through their halls. They not only value him, they are intent on teaching him.
Both men have counseled Jeff about his career and helped him with his audition tape even when it requires a lot of extra time. They have worked hard to make sure Jeff has a variety of assignments and learns everything he will need in the work world. Both those men know that “sending the elevator back down” is rewarding for them and for Jeff.
This whole concept is similar to the one set forth by Catherine Ryan Hyde, the author of the book “Pay it Forward,” which was later made into a movie starring Kevin Spacey. My e-mail friend, Karen Hoffman from St. Louis, whom I have written about before, is an ardent advocate of “Pay it Forward.”
She said Ryan Hyde “had an experience with her old car catching fire, late at night, in a high-crime area. Her car was saved by strangers in that area rushing toward her. (At first she wondered if they were coming to harm her) then they left before she could thank them.” Hoffman says that was the beginning of the concept behind “Pay it Forward.”
Hoffman wrote me this: “Tim, if the premise behind ‘Pay it Forward’ were embraced, in your lifetime you would choose to do three significant things to help someone else (more than a random act of kindness) and the people you helped could not do anything in return for you, but you request that they pay it forward to three people in their life …”
Hoffman wrote, “Think of the math on this…3 x 3, 9 x 3, 27 x 3, 81 x 3, 243 x 3, 729 x 3, 2187 x 3, 6561 x 3, 19683 x 3, 59,049, 177,147 x 3, 531,441 x 3, 1,594,323 x 3, 4,782,969 x 3, 14,348,907 x 3, 43,046,721 etc.”
Both the math and the premise are staggering. In a “me-first” world the concept of truly changing other people’s lives with genuine kindness is not one that is easily embraced. Yet, think of what the concept could do just in your own workplace. An atmosphere that encouraged and accepted “sending the elevator back down” and “paying it forward” would create high-performance and spiritually rewarding workplaces, which could change American capitalism.
Dreaming can be good for the soul.
Resource for your search: “Pay It Forward” by Catherine Ryan Hyde (Pocket, 2000)