Career Advice from The Godfather
By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter
Watch the movie, “The Godfather” through the lenses of career management, career development and leadership. There is a lot to learn from it.
00:00 Intro
01:20 The Trusted Advisers
02:23 Chain of command
03:11 Know your strengths
04:37 Do favors for people
05:53 Outro
If you’ve never read the books or watched the movie of The Godfather by Mario Puzo, there’s some wonderful lessons in there, not talking about getting people killed, of course, about career management that will serve you very well, if you pay attention to the story from that perspective. I’m Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter. People hire me for no BS coaching and career advice globally. That can relate to job search, hiring more effectively, managing and leading better, dealing with workplace issues, career transitions, the whole gamut of you and your career.
I love this movie. And I’ve watched it many times. Every time I watch it, there’s something else I pick up on. And this time I watched it. I saw it from the perspective of how do you look at it from a career management perspective? What can you learn about how to run your career more effectively.
Now, again, there’s this the initial story about how Don Vito takes over the Lower East Side by killing the current Don for Little Italy; we’re not going there. There’s nothing to learn from that.
However, there are some things to recognize and number one is there’s a clear chain of command within the organization. Number two, where I’m going to connect the two in the second, you need to have trusted advisors to work with. Now, in the movie, and in the book, you have Tom Hagen as one trusted adviser. Tom is the stepbrother; he’s adopted by Don Vito. As it turns out, Sonny had found him homeless on the street, suggested to the Don that he take him in, goes to law school, becomes the family lawyer. He is trusted to do a lot of things for him. And you see that trust show up in in a number of different ways in a number of scenes early on in the movie that just let you know that he’s there to do the polite dirty work, to do the nonthreatening stuff. And then of course, the Don backs it up with force when necessary.
The chain of command stuff ties into that. And there’s a point where Michael replaces Tom with his father as the consigliere and his father warns him there’s going to come a time that someone from the family is going to take a run at you. It’s going to be someone close to you and just be aware. That happens in the movie when you see Tessio set him up to be whacked. And of course, Michael knows this. And there’s other episodes of that in the movie as well, where he’s aware that there are people who are close to him, who’ve done things that are harmful to the family. So that’s the second lesson here about career lessons to learn from The Godfather.
Another one is, know your strengths. What are you capable of? When is the right time to make a move? When do you need to be patient? Now, there’s a scene where the Don meets with the five families, and he has to make an accommodation. In general, he’s held the judges and the police close to him and hasn’t been so generous about doing favors for the other members of the family, primarily because he didn’t want to get involved with illegal drugs, which he thought the judges and the politicians would have problems worth.
But eventually, he uses this as an opportunity to learn about the threats to him and use that to the family’s benefit. He also makes accommodations at a particular point and thus, knowing what your strengths are is important. Knowing when to be accommodating is important, especially as a learning opportunity. And in the case of The Don, he really didn’t care about the money that he could make from the drug trade. He just thought of it from the standpoint of ‘I’m trying to wield power here. Where are the threats to my power and thus being accommodating at a certain point. And before that being very clear.
And the last one and this is the one that I think most of you will ignore. Just because I think it comes down to we don’t like to do this in modern US society– Favors. He builds relationships through favors. You know, there’s the opening scene at the wedding where on the day of his daughter’s wedding, he cannot deny any request that’s made of him. So even before that, there’s a scene in the movie, where an elderly woman comes to him for help with her apartment and her landlord and the fact that the landlord wants her out. And thus, the long and the short of it is, you do favors for people, and they owe you. Doing things to help others, doing favors for people and when they just try and come to you, there’s a scene ‘you never even invited me to your house for a cup of coffee and now you ask me for a favor.’ And, again, he can’t deny someone on the day of his daughter’s wedding.
No matter, I’ll simply say there’s lessons for your career that you can get by watching the movie through those lenses. I hope you enjoy this. Visit my website, TheBigGameHunter.us. You know, there’s a lot there to help you. My name is Jeff Altman, people hire me for no BS coaching and career advice globally. And you’ll just see a lot of great information there.
If you have questions, you can schedule time for Trusted Advisor Services where I answer your questions, or if you want me to coach you through a situation over the course of time, like I said, job search, hiring more effectively, managing and leading better, a career transition, dealing with workplace issues or, or what have you, you can schedule time for an introductory call with me which I call a discovery call or schedule time for coaching so I can help you. Also at the site, you can find out about my video courses, books, and guides. Again, there’s a lot there to help.
Also connect with me on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/TheBigGameHunter. Have a terrific day and most importantly, be great!
ABOUT JEFF ALTMAN, THE BIG GAME HUNTER
Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter is a coach who worked as a recruiter for what seems like one hundred years. He is hired to provide No BS Career Advice globally. That can involve job search, hiring staff, management, leadership, career transition and advice about resolving workplace issues. Schedule a discovery call at my website, www.TheBigGameHunter.us
He is the host of “No BS Job Search Advice Radio,” the #1 podcast in iTunes for job search with over 2500 episodes.
Website: www.TheBigGameHunter.us (schedule a paid coaching session, a free discovery call or ask questions using my Trusted Adviser Services)
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