Give to Get: A Senior Leader's Guide to Navigating Corporate Life

by Vishal Agarwal

deals with me. This helps my team and extended team members build their skills and gain experience, and it helps me forge stronger bonds with a wide range of stakeholders. It also reveals a lot about each team member. Who worked hard for the team? Who carried their own weight? Who contributed more than their fair share? Who was willing to make a personal sacrifice to win the battle? By the way, wartime analogies for business are not as exaggerated as they might seem. Corporate life can feel like a battlefield. The accountability that shareholders and your own organization place on you is something you must take seriously in corporate life if you’re going to be successful. Misses are rarely tolerated, and they’re not easily forgiven. The Uniform I once learned a valuable lesson from a charismatic senior partner named Juan Carlos Acebal when I was a young intern at PwC in Washington, DC. I went to speak with him on behalf of the other interns. We were asking whether we could stop wearing business suits on Fridays during the hot and humid summer. We wanted to be able to dress down on “casual Fridays.” Juan Carlos responded by saying, “How do you dress on the battlefield?” I replied, “In armor.” He said, “That’s right. On a battlefield, you don’t stop wearing your armor just because it’s Friday. Please don’t come to work in anything but a suit.” Since then, I’ve worn a suit and a pair of cufflinks to work every day. This incident shaped my principles and became a permanent par...