His scientific and medical reputation grew. He kept meticulous notes of all his consultations, regarding each patient, to use a current phrasing, as a human being first but also as the potential hope for others through what might be learned from his or her ailments. He was considered reliable so that more and more he came to be relied upon.
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To this day, itâs hard to describe the power those simple words had. He could have said dozens of other things to make me feel betterââYouâll find a way through this,â âItâs not as bad as you think,â or âHere are some things to try.â But what he said instead was specific to me, and something I felt he genuinely believed. It didnât mean my opinions were always right, but his vote of confidence that they came from a principled place restored some of the confidence I had lost. By recognizing a strength of mine, Chris gave me a renewed sense of motivation.
In this chapter weâve seen that the most obvious sources of credibilityâexternal validation and statisticsâ arenât always the best. A few vivid details might be more persuasive than a barrage of statistics. An anti-authority might work better than an authority. A single story that passes the Sinatra Test might overcome a mountain of skepticism. Itâs inspirational to know that a medical genius like Marshall had to climb over the same hurdles with his idea as weâll have to climb with oursâand to see that he eventually prevailed, to the benefit of us all.
That was the source of so much of his and the companyâs success, and I had immense respect for Michaelâs tendency to sweat the details. It showed how much he cared, and it made a difference. He understood that âgreatâ is often a collection of very small things, and he helped me appreciate that even more deeply. Michael was proud of his micromanagement, but in expressing his pride, and reminding people of the details he was focused on, he could be perceived as being petty and small-minded.
Michaelâs natural pessimism often worked for him, up to a point. He was motivated in part out of a fear of calamity, and that often fueled his perfectionism and his success, although itâs not a very useful tool to motivate people. Sometimes his concerns were justified, and it was right to address them, but often a kind of free-floating worry had him in its grip. This wasnât Michaelâs only state. He also had a natural exuberance that was often infectious. But in his later years, as the stress on him steadily increased, pessimism became the rule more than the exception, and it led him to close ranks and become increasingly cloistered.
At first, I saw it as an enormous change in the man I knew, but that notion did not survive reflection. What presumption is involved in attributing change to him when all that can be said is that I had come to know something about him that I had not known before?