Is your manager like bacon?

Or are you, as a manager of others, like bacon?

"Sometimes, the true skill in leadership is the ability to quietly make those around you look better."

This great quote really struck me when I read it. What a great, succinct observation about a quality of leadership. Unfortunately, the author is referring to bacon. No lie.

I love bacon. Who doesn't? Seriously. Even vegetarians keep a little bacon stashed, like, in the glove box or something. They do. You know it.*

So my family has seized on my love of bacon and buys me the occasional bacon-themed gift. I have a bar of bacon soap. I had a container of bacon jelly beans.

Then I received an autographed copy of Ari Weinzweig's Zingerman's Guide to Better Bacon. And there, on page 63, finishing up a discourse on "Unsmoked Kentucky Bacon from Finchville Farms," is the management quote I'll be throwing around for a while.

"Sometimes, the true skill in leadership is the ability to quietly make those around you look better. I think Bill's bacon does something similar taste-wise. I've used it as a seasoning with squash, greens, fish..... It added a whole mess of flavor to whatever else went into the pot."

So, managers, be like bacon. (I cannot wait to put this in a PowerPoint.)

*Page 133 of the same book quotes an individual who was a vegetarian for 32 years: "Bacon was what made me not be a vegetarian anymore."