WashingtonExec Series:
WashingtonExec asked the simple question to top area executives:
“If you could give your kids only three pieces of advice, what would they be?”
Today’s insight is from Bill Bodie, Senior Vice President and Manager of the National Security and Defense Division at Parsons Government Services.
Bill Bodie:
Polonius, the Danish Courtier of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, is normally played onstage as an pompous, old windbag. However, if one fairly digests his “neither a borrower nor a lender be” speech, addressed to Polonius’s son Laertes before he returns to the University, one can discern some fairly timeless advise that I would only hope my children would consider. Has there ever been more sound advice to college kids (or employees) then this?:
1. “Give thy thoughts no tongue, nor any unproportion’d thought his act. Be thou familiar but by no means vulgar…Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice. Take each mans man’s censure but reserve thy judgment.” In essence, keep your thoughts close, think before you speak or act, and understand your surroundings and context.
2. “Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, grapple them to they soul with hoops of steel; but do not dull thy palm with entertainment of each new-hatech’d, unfledged comrade. Beware of entrance into a quarrel, but being in, Bear’t that the opposed may beware of thee.” Or, don’t look for easy friends, or frequent battles, but be devoted and loyal to true friends, and make sure no adversary wants to engage you twice.
3. “This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as night the day, thou can’st not then be false to any man.” Like the ancient Greek precept, “Know Thyself,” this is among the most profound advice one can give a child, words that also hold one accountable for one’s own parenting (or managing). Because if you’ve done your job properly, and they really do know themselves, your charges will make you proud.
