I've hired about 1,000 employees over the years. It's one of the joys of owning a business -- giving opportunities to people who want to work and succeed.

It's also one of the challenges of owning a business -- hoping that you have been a sharp judge of character and ability. To me, ability is secondary to character.

Granted, applicants need to be qualified for the positions for which they are being interviewed. But I'm willing to hire someone who doesn't have perfect credentials, but is willing to learn, because skills can be taught. A finely tuned training program can weed out those who are not up to the job.

Character is a little more complicated. Multiple interviews expose different parts of someone's personality. For key hires, I always insist that candidates meet with an industrial psychologist to detect any red flags. Even then, we've had a few slip through.

Once that new person has started the job, it's only fair to be very clear about what is important to your organization. If you don't define your expectations, you can't fault someone for failing to live up to them.

I came across this spot-on assessment that I think can apply to any organization, business or nonprofit, from the late legendary David Ogilvy, who was chief executive officer of the advertising company Ogilvy & Mather. He was giving a talk at the company's annual year-end party. Speaking particularly to newcomers in the business, he said:

"I want the newcomers to know what kind of behavior we admire and what kind of behavior we deplore.

"1. First, we admire people who work hard. We dislike passengers who don't pull their weight in the boat.

"2. We admire people with first-class brains, because you cannot run a great advertising agency without brainy people.

"3. We admire people who avoid politics -- office politics, I mean.

"4. We despise toadies who suck up to their bosses. They are generally the same people who bully their subordinates.

"5. We admire the great professionals, the craftsmen who do their jobs with superlative excellence. We notice that these people always respect the professional expertise of their colleagues in other departments.

"6. We admire people who hire subordinates who are good enough to succeed them. We pity people who are so insecure that they feel compelled to hire inferior specimens as their subordinates.

"7. We admire people who build up and develop their subordinates, because this is the only way we can promote from within the ranks. We detest having to go outside to fill important jobs, and I look forward to the day when that will never be necessary.

"8. We admire people who practice delegation. The more you delegate, the more responsibility will be loaded upon you.

"9. We admire kindly people with gentle manners who treat other people as human beings -- particularly the people who sell things to us. We abhor quarrelsome people. We abhor people who wage paper warfare. We abhor buck passers, and people who don't tell the truth.

"10. We admire well-organized people who keep their offices shipshape, and deliver their work on time.

"11. We admire people who are good citizens in their communities -- people who work for their local hospitals, their church, the PTA, the Community Chest and so on."

I'm not sure whether these remarks were framed and hung in every office at Ogilvy & Mather, but I think the sentiments bear repeating for employees in so many organizations. Just imagine what company morale would be like if everyone followed these guidelines.

David Ogilvy seized an opportunity to share his thoughts on the corporate culture explicitly and publicly. Some organizations may not have the luxury of such an event, but they nonetheless owe employees a clear explanation of expectations.

When you've worked hard to hire and train the best people you can find, it only makes sense to help them succeed in your organization. Managers bear the responsibility for establishing policy. They serve as role models, cheerleaders and enforcers. They absolutely must set the example for all employees.

Believe me, your efforts will not go unnoticed by your customers -- or your competitors. When your shop becomes the company everyone wants to work for, it will be because you have made corporate culture a priority.

Mackay's Moral: Taking care of employees is taking care of business.

U.S. President Harry S. Truman once said, "A pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities and an optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties."

Which do you think will reach their goals, live a happy life and achieve their dreams?

Imagine interviewing two people who have identical skills, but one is always grumbling about how unfair life can be, while the other one talks about what wonderful possibilities exist. Whom would you want to hire? Whom do you think would do a better job?

Naturally, you would gravitate toward the optimist. If you choose the pessimist, you would be setting yourself up for plenty of aggravation and disappointment, not to mention the negative impact on your staff and customers. Pessimism can bring everyone down, not just the person with the negative attitude.

Pessimism is nothing more than self-sabotage. Expecting only the worst is not being realistic. Realists hope for the best but prepare for the worst. Pessimists can't imagine the best, so only prepare for the worst.

And then if the worst never happens? Pessimists often find the worst possible result simply to prove that their concerns were right.

The question becomes, would you rather be right than happy? That's not being realistic either. That's being self-defeating. Pessimism can rob you of your energy, sap you of your strength and drain you of your dreams.

Optimism is the remedy. Optimism doesn't mean pretending life is always wonderful. Optimism means embracing reality. You accept that there will be bad days, but also good days. When you're grounded in reality, you know where you are and how far you need to go. Once you know how far your goal may be from where you are, optimism can give you the motivation to make plans to get to where you want to go.

Pessimists see life as one problem after another. Optimists see life as one opportunity after another.

How you look at life can drastically affect how much you enjoy your life. Optimists expect the best out of life. If you were not raised with this attitude, take comfort: It can be learned.

Optimism is based on three basic tenets, according to Mary Kay Mueller in her book "Taking Care of Me: The Habits of Happiness":

-- Bad things do happen in life, but they are temporary.

-- Bad things in life are limited in scope and tend to be small or insignificant.

-- People have control over their environments.

Pessimists reverse the tables:

-- Good things in life are temporary.

-- Good things in life are limited -- small or insignificant.

-- People have no control over their environments.

Does it make sense that pessimists tend to blame others or circumstances for their failures?

Optimists help create some of the good they come to expect, so they are probably right more often than not -- and they don't waste time worrying about what they're not right about. Optimism relaxes people. When we're relaxed, there is better blood flow to the brain, which results in more energy and creativity in your life.

Consider how optimism turned this situation around:

Over the course of seven years, a woman's mother died, her husband divorced her, and she found herself living in poverty, just one step away from being homeless. In her spare time, she wrote a book that 12 publishers rejected. Finally one publisher accepted her book about a boy named Harry Potter. And then she wrote a few more books, which became blockbuster movies, and even spawned a theme park.

J.K. Rowling was an optimist who's now a billionaire. How far in life would she have gotten by being a pessimist?

There is virtually nothing that you can't do if you set your mind to it. You cannot control events in your life, but you can control how you react.

Do you want to be a pessimist and have no hope for a better future? Or would you rather be an optimist and believe you can achieve a better future?

There once was an old man who had many troubles. No matter what hardship life handed him, he faced each obstacle with a smile and a cheery disposition.

A friend finally asked him how he managed to stay so happy despite his challenges.

The old man quickly answered: "Well, the Good Book often says, 'And it came to pass,' but never once does it say, 'It came to stay.'"

Mackay's Moral: Attitude is the mind's paintbrush -- it can color any situation.

I recently came across a graduation speech by the valedictorian of a university law school. He began his remarks by acknowledging that he had difficulty deciding what "wisdom" to impart to his fellow graduates. He said he had consulted several quotation books and speaker's guides, but had come away uninspired. He reviewed all the cases of law the class had studied and had found nothing that he felt was appropriate on such an important occasion.

At a loss for any inspiring thoughts, he sat down at his kitchen table to eat biscuits. And right in front of him on the opened roll of refrigerated biscuit dough, he spotted the belief that he knew he and his fellow graduates had in common and that he felt was worthy of the occasion. The package, he said, had this message: "Keep cool. But do not freeze." And with that he thanked all assembled and returned to his seat amid rousing applause.

Freezing up -- also referred to as choking -- in important situations happens to all of us. We regularly hear about golf superstars who blow a tap-in putt or $16 million-a-year basketball players missing a crucial shot.

Choking also happens many times in business. How about the seasoned sales rep who botches a million-dollar sale? Or the customer service rep who makes a problem worse rather than fixing it?

Many times choking is triggered by thinking too much. Now neuroscience explains why. We used to assume that if the incentive is increased, the will to perform will automatically increase as well. Not so, according to a study that appeared in the journal "Neuron."

A simple arcade game was used for the test. At first, performance steadily improved as incentives increased. The extra money proved motivating. But this effect only lasted for a little while. Once the rewards passed a certain threshold, scientists observed a surprising decrease in success. The extra cash hurt performance, and the subjects began to choke. Brain activity became inversely related to the magnitude of the reward. Bigger incentives led to less excitement.

The study stated that: "The subjects were victims of loss aversion. That's the well-documented psychological phenomenon that losses make us feel bad more than gains make us feel good. Instead of being excited by their future riches, the subjects were fretting over their possible failure ... they care too much. They really want to win, and so they get unravelled by the pressure of the moment. The simple pleasures of the game have vanished ... The fear of losing is what remains."

That attitude is completely counterproductive. One of my favorite aphorisms is, "If you want to triple your success rate, you have to triple your failure rate." Fear of failure is paralyzing. It prevents you from taking the risks necessary to succeed spectacularly.

If you choke when you're in the spotlight or you start shaking, blushing or having shortness of breath when you're on stage, check out the story by Karen Haywood Queen in Better Homes and Gardens about pianist Miriam Elfstron. Elfstron suffered the jitters so bad that she had to wear mittens all day the days of her performances because her hands shook and became cold. Eventually, her piano instructor taught her how to control her anxiety. Her recommendations included:

-- Think positively. Practice making positive statements about what you are doing and avoid using negative words or self-talk. For instance, say, "I am confident," not, "I don't feel nervous."

-- Practice performing through the inevitable slips. It's a performance. If you mess up, the world won't come to an end. Get comfortable recovering from slips and memory lapses.

-- Practice in front of smaller groups first. Don't perform for the first time for a crowd of 500. It's too much pressure.

-- Reduce muscle tension to reduce mental tension. It's all connected, so if your body is relaxed, there's a good chance your mind will be relaxed as well.

-- Adopt a ritual. Carry a lucky charm. Wear your lucky shoes. Touch your nose before you begin. Dribble the ball three times before the game starts, like Michael Jordan. Whatever works for you is OK.

-- Don't be a perfectionist. Don't visualize a perfect performance, because then you will feel like you've failed if you make even a small mistake. Instead, picture a performance where you do well by overcoming small obstacles along the way.

Mackay's Moral: Don't let choking suck the life out of your career.