Hi Reader,

It's true. During my college years, I did spend one night in jail – the only one in my life – not overnight, but a good part of it.

Like we hear from all inmates – I was innocent. 🤓 (BTW, we were not charged with a crime of any sort.)

It was during a summer of intense racial tensions across the country. Where I was living was no exception and on a hot summer night, everybody was out.

Three of us were visiting the downtown summer music festival with no expectation of any trouble, but eventually riots broke out throughout the downtown.

When the fourth member of our Fearsome Foursome never showed up, and we saw the unfolding chaos, we started calling around (from pay phones back then).

Without success, we decided to take my friend's car and drive to the police station to see if they knew anything.

(I had driven my Dad's car, and left it parked several blocks from downtown. Oops. See the P.S. note.)

When my friend parked in a visitor's space in the police lot next to a police cruiser, our friend named Bill – who may have had a few too many cocktails – burst out of the backseat – banging the car door into the neighboring police car.

Unfortunately, there was a policeman standing watch. He saw my friend staggering around and motioned all of us into the police station.

There was such tension in the city and so much activity in the station that they put all of us in a cell until they could figure out what to do with us. Don't you know it was the same cell where our missing friend was already stationed.

We learned this was the second time he had been locked up that night. The first time he was released, but he was stupid enough to end up back there looking through the bars again.

I was optimistic and thought we had some leverage because his father was a police captain and knew all of us – but it looked like our friend had burned up most of that goodwill.

It didn't help that he also had a little too much to drink. His relationship with his father was not good and he was mad because his father put him back in a cell.

Nonetheless, he thought it would be a good idea to get his Dad's attention by taking off his belt and raking the buckle loudly across the bars, making as much noise as he could to get Dad's attention.

It didn't help that it was accompanied by him singing the traditional call-and-response refrain from the nursery rhyme:

Ad nauseum.

We tried to get him to stop. It didn't help that we couldn't stop laughing.

Ultimately, our "leverage" paid off, and his Dad, who seemed to like us better, released all of us.

It took me years to realize that what got us out wasn't influence. It was leverage.

I didn't appreciate it at the time, but that night taught me one of the most important leadership lessons of my career.

Relationships create leverage.

On Wednesday, I'll share with you 6 Critical Ways to Apply Leverage to Turbocharge Your Resources.

P.S. When I got home, I learned that my sister had reported my circumstance and my Dad had retrieved the car. When I saw it in the driveway, I breather a sigh of relieve – until I remembered the remainder of a case of beer in the trunk. Let's just say I wasn't driving for quite a while thereafter.