Larry Thornton believes that Winning Through Working Hard and Relating Hard requires taking a portion of the time that people devote to the grind of accomplishing tasks and instead investing it into building relationships with others. Not convinced? Listen to this episode and maybe you will be.

Winning Through People Skills requires engaging with others in ways that create mutual benefit.
In this episode, Larry discusses two women – Pat Greensmith and Walker Jones – who have taught him a lot about developing and using people skills. They have very different approaches– Pat tortured Larry with surprise inspections of his restaurants while Walker makes everyone she meets feel valued and appreciated. But both helped Larry become a better businessman and person.

When Larry Thornton started as an artist at Coca-Cola, a fellow artist went out of his way to orient Larry to the job. Six years later, that man’s job was being eliminated. Larry urged the man to work under him rather than take early retirement. When Larry moved on to McDonald’s, the man moved up into Larry’s former position. How these two individuals treated each other and mutually benefited from doing so can be captured in five short words: Winning by Lifting Others Up