When I attended my first party as a new pledge in my college fraternity, a few older members were acting like stereotypical drunken buffoons, yelling at pledges and generally embarrassing themselves.
A member I really liked and admired (who went on to become a successful pediatrician) motioned to the bad examples and said to me:
“Kevin, I want you to observe peoples’ behavior while you’re here. Then act accordingly in the future.”
It was his way of saying, “Don’t act like people who are idiots. Emulate those you like and respect.”
It’s good advice that’s apparently shared by billionaire Warren Buffett.
Last Saturday, Buffett hosted around 40,000 people at the annual meeting for Berkshire Hathaway, the company he’s headed for 50 years.
A seventh grader who’d traveled from Florida asked:
How do you make lots of friends? And how do you get people to like you and work with you?
This article described Buffett’s response:
“Buffett offered a longer answer [than his business partner], explaining that he was also obnoxious early on but learned to change his behavior as he matured. He did this by copying those he admired and adopting the qualities they possessed. He even gave the youngster an exercise to do: List four things he liked about kids in his class and four things he disliked about them and model his behavior accordingly.”
The advice holds up before, during, and after college.