It may be too late to save Bobby Fischer but what about others?

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 17:50:00 GMT

What do we owe our acquaintances, our colleagues, and the people we bump shoulders with in the course of our days?

Dick Cavett asks this question in a New York Times piece this week. Cavett got to know Bobby Fischer, the chess prodigy, back in the 1970’s when Fischer was at the height of his brilliance and fame—before he descended into paranoia and hate-filled madness. Fischer died last month, and Cavett wonders whether there was anything he could have or should have done to help Fischer in his later life. Cavett says he didn’t make any efforts to help, and that he’ll regret it forever.

Cavett’s piece is moving in all the best ways. It has moved me to get up in the middle of the night-—it's now 2:52 am—to make a list of past colleagues. Not a list of the closest friends I’d never forget, but of the acquaintances I’ve genuinely liked and relied on at some point in my life—but lost track of.

I don’t know what many of these people are up to, and I don’t know that any of them need or want anything from me. But I’m going to find out and reach out if I can.

In our book, Influencer, we discuss “social ability” as a powerful source of influence. If you want to drive change, find ways to create social supports for the new behaviors. At a personal level we all owe our success to those who have supported us when we needed them. And this puts us in their debt. Are there people we owe who need us today? Probably.

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It may be too late to save Bobby Fischer but what about others?