Esquire magazine has an interesting interview with 77-year-old Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of News Corp. (owner of the Wall Street Journal, NY Post, FOX, and MySpace), and one of the richest people in the world, according to Forbes magazine.A couple of good quotes from the article with relevance to coaching:
On loyalty and work ethic: "You have to both give and appreciate hard work and loyalty. I think when you're loyal to people and they're happy, you can get better work out of them. It makes for stability in a company, as well as happiness. Whereas there may be more brilliant people wandering outside sometimes, you have to favor the people who are prepared and ready to give themselves to you. And you have to give yourself to them as well."
On what drives him: "I love competition. And I want to win. I love every day of my life. I can honestly say I look forward to coming to work every day. And I find it difficult on the weekends to stay off the phone."
On whether he'll retire soon: "So long as I can stay mentally alert -- inquiring, curious -- I want to keep going. I love my wife and my children, but I don't want to sit around at home with them. We go on safaris and things like that. I can do that for a couple of weeks a year. I'm just not ready to stop, to die. Somebody talked me into writing an autobiography about six or seven years ago. And I said I'd try. We talked into a tape recorder, and after a couple of months, I said, To hell with it. I was so depressed. It was like saying, 'This is the end.' I was more interested in what the hell was coming the next day or the next week."
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