It's 1975, and I'm back for my final round of interviews. Job of my dreams. Six final candidates, down to the last two. I have to have this job. I absolutely have to have this job. This is the third time I'm back-I must have seen fifteen people already. This day I see the Chairman, the President, and other senior executives; it's exhausting. And then I see Chuck.

Chuck is about to retire, and is going to be replaced by my boss-to-be, Doug. Chuck is about sixty-two, and he is on the interview list. And I know the minute I go in to see Chuck that he is not like the rest of the folks. First of all, he is sixty-two, when everybody else I've met is thirty-five to forty. Second of all, he is sixty-two. He's tired and slow and not cool and not sharp. And this, I think, is a waste of time. Because I'm a shooter-I'm a hotshot. I want this job, and this guy's a frigging shoe clerk. What am I doing here? So at the end of the interview, he says, "Do you have any questions?" And this has been a softball interview. He's been tossing me softball questions, and I've been hitting them out of the park.

Now, when you interview well, you know it. I get home that night, and my bride says, "How did you do?"
I say, "It's mine. It's my job. You're looking at Pepsi's new VP of Employee Relations."

The next morning I get a call from Doug, and I'm saying, "This is it! This is the offer! God damn!"

   "We'd like you to come in again."
   I was confused. "Doug, I've been in three times…"
   "We need to talk."
   So I come in. And he says, "We're very impressed with you. The Chairman liked you, the President liked you, the seventy-five other people who saw you liked you. So we're very impressed. But we have some concerns."
   "Really?"
   "Yes."
   "About what?"
   And he says, "About your interview with Chuck."
   And I say, "Chuck? Chuck who's about to retire? What…"

"Well, you didn't have any questions. Chuck asked you a few times if you had any questions, and you said no, and I think he said, finally, 'You have no questions for me?' and you said no. Let me tell you a couple of things about Chuck. He's a nice guy. And until I officially succeed him, he still heads this function. Yes, he's grown old in the service of the queen. Some day you will, and some day I will. Chuck used to be a pretty sharp executive. And if he's not any more, he's still a lovely person, and a good human being. And we're not sure what it says about you and your character, the way you treated him. But whatever the reason, it was wrong."

It was a seminal moment in my life. You know how you get a flash when people put up a mirror and you see what an idiot you are? Well, I got a very big flash. Chuck was a nice man -- not sharp, not cool, not young, not energetic-but a nice man, and I had treated him shamefully. I thought the interview said a lot about what was wrong with my character. People might not be as competent, or as smart, or as gifted, or as pedigreed, as you are (or as you think you are), but they have to be treated with civility and dignity. There's a critical difference between class and style, and High-Performance Leaders know this difference. It's easy to act with style -- the right schools, the right clothes, the right words -- when it suits your interests and when it fits with your ambitions. Class, on the other hand, is something that comes from within -- it's drawn from your inner core. You can't put it on when you get out of bed in the morning. It grows out of your fundamental conceptions of other people, and of how others should be treated. In my interview with Chuck, I'd shown plenty of style -- I looked the part and I had my answers ready to go-but no class whatsoever.

And the corollary of this law is that you should Never…Ever…Ever…EVER Treat Your Boss Like a Bumbling Old Fool (Even if He or She Is One). Two reasons here. First, it's the wrong thing to do-it's just that simple. People who know what class is simply don't treat their boss (or anyone's boss, or anyone else at all, for that matter) like an idiot. But if that isn't enough for you, consider the second reason: everyone in the organization will see you doing it and will judge your character accordingly as lacking class.

(In the same vein, and for the same reasons, you should also Never…Ever…Ever…EVER Upstage Your Boss. Among many high-profile casualties of this mistake is AT&T's John R. Walter, whose upstaging of outgoing chairman Robert E. Allen cost him the CEO's office. Allen had agreed, reluctantly, to bring forward his retirement so that Walter could join AT&T as heir-apparent, with a defined timetable for his succession. But Walter did very little to anticipate or assuage his boss's fears while he was in the number two position-rather, he eagerly took the media spotlight and appeared to spend little time getting to know the industry or its regulatory environment. He didn't show any appreciation of the fact that his boss might feel eclipsed or intimidated by his arrival. Allen's suspicions of Walter's disloyalty and ineffectiveness-fuelled by a staggering lack of communication between the two men-led to the AT&T board informing Walter that he would not, in fact, take the reins as CEO.)

The way I treated Chuck almost cost me my dream job. Pepsi's leaders knew how important relationships were; they saw my arrogant disregard for a senior employee, and they seriously considered not hiring me. A leader who understood the importance of values would have behaved in a very different way, and would have avoided taking a huge gamble with his career.