Nearly all men admit--or at least they like to say when they are properly approached, or when they make the approach themselves, that they make mistakes and that they are poor miserable sinners. Everybody is. They rather revel in it, some of them, in being in a nice safe way, miserable sinners. The trouble comes in ever going into the particulars with them, in finding any particular time and place one can edge in in which they are not perfect.
This fact which seems to be true of employers and employees, of capital and labor in general, brings out and illustrates another general principle in making the necessary excavations in one's own mind and other people's for new brain tracks--another working principle of technique for a man or a group in a nation to use in getting and deserving to get its way.
There are various Alexandering stages in the technique of not being fooled by oneself.
Asking others to help--one's nearest Alexander.
The way to keep from philandering with one's own self-love or with one's own group or party--is to look over the entire field--the way one would on other subjects than being fooled by one's own side, strip down to the bare facts about oneself and facts about others for one's vision of action and fit them together and act.
In getting one's way quickly, thoroughly, personally--_i.e._, so that other people will feel one deserves it and will practically hand it over to one, and want one to have it, the best technique seems to be not only to utilize self-criticism or self-confession, as a part of getting one's way, but self-confession screwed up a little tighter--screwed up into self-confession to others.
I need not say that I am not throwing this idea out right and left to employers with any hopeful notion that it will be generally acted on offhand.
It is merely thrown out for employers who want to get their way with their employees--get team work and increased production out of their employees before their rivals do.
It is only for employers who want their own way a great deal--men who are in the habit of feeling masterful and self-masterful in getting their own way--who are shrewd enough, sincere enough to take a short-cut to it, and get it quick.