Transcript: What’s Your Story?

Hello and welcome to the Manager Mojo Podcast this is Steve Caldwell and today our topic is entitled What’s Your Story?   Unlike some of our other podcasts where I’ve talked about specific techniques, today I’m actually going to share a story with you.

You see, I’ve come to understand over the years that we don’t know how our lives impact others.  One of the biggest challenges that I believe leaders have is they believe people are only showing up to work because they need money.   I think it makes people take actions that are inconsistent with what successful leaders do.   I was thinking about this and wondering how I could actually help others today and concluded the best way is to demonstrate it by this story that I’m going to share with you.

The story is about a little boy, but I want you to understand that this same story is repeated by girls as well as boys.  So whether you’re male or female, I want you to think about what you would do in this situation and then see how it might impact your leadership style.   So let’s get right to it.

The story is about a little boy that I know.   He grew up extremely poor. Not only did he grow up in an extremely poor environment, he really didn’t have the advantages that other children may have had in that his parents were uneducated.  As a matter of fact, his entire family was uneducated. Neither his father, nor his mother had actually gotten through school past the tenth grade.  As a matter of fact, of all of his relatives, none had ever even set one foot on a college campus.  Very few had even graduated from high school, so there was no example to follow.

Yet this little boy had a desire to learn.  He was born with ambition and he had a desire to achieve, but he didn’t know where to look because his roles models, which should have been his parents, his family, weren’t there.  So what do you do?

Well, this little boy actually discovered a cool thing called a library. His school had a modest library.   Even though it was a very, very poor school district they had a modest library, and this little boy discovered in books knowledge, stories and things that he couldn’t have imagined if these books had not been present.  This library became this little boy’s path to the world.

He would read all of the books.  He’d read the classics.  He’d read sports stories, and by reading sports stories, he began to understand that in order to achieve success you had to compete.  So he learned in that library.

He also learned about the outside world.   The library had a daily newspaper, and that was when people actually read newspapers.  Long before any such thing as the internet, this little boy would read that newspaper.  He would learn that people really had a desire to achieve and those who achieved had learned stuff.

He began to understand that natural ambition, that natural desire to achieve, needed an outlet.  Sports became his outlet, as well as school, and this young man began to learn the concept of competing in order to get what he wanted.

Successful in athletics, successful in school and, then realizing from reading the newspaper that if you’re going to get ahead you’ve got to save money, he decided had to work for somebody.  He managed to convince a person to give him a job doing menial tasks and this young man excelled at those menial tasks because he was driven to achieve.

Because he was still young the adults took notice of this.  He actually started working at an incredibly young age – much younger than what you can legally do today – but that didn’t stop the young man from attempting to do his best.    Even when he found himself in situations where he was working alongside of adults he still wanted to achieve and to do his best, and this was recognized by his employers.

They were thrilled to have somebody who would work hard and who would take direction.  The one thing they didn’t care much for was that this young man asked a lot of questions.   But he asked good questions.  He asked questions like, “If you do this well, what’s the next step?  Where do you go from here with your career? How do you achieve?  What separates people from achievement to those who fail?”   They always answered, probably fairly accurately in their mind , but it turns out that it didn’t help very much.

Here’s what they told the young man. “Well, the fact is, you’re going to learn all of this stuff by experience.”  So the young man said, “Hey, what’s experience? What is that? What does that mean? Does that mean do this job? I’ve got experience doing this job – how’s that going to get me to the next step?”  Usually what the adults would tell him is, “Well, you really learn more from your mistakes than you do from your accomplishments.”   Consequently, this young man went away confused with no real path, nobody giving him specific answers about how he could get ahead.

The ambition was there, the drive was there and this young man decided it doesn’t matter what his parents did, or what his family did, he was determined to go to college.   Even though he did not understand what he was doing, he managed to go to college and actually got a scholarship to a reputable school because his academic work was good and his sports resume was good.

So this young man goes to college and yet he has no idea how to fill out any kind of paperwork in order to sign up for classes.  He has no one to help him, no mentor, no advisor that shows him exactly what to do.   The first day he goes to register, he walks up to one of the adults that are supervising to make sure the students know where they’re going and he says, “Can you help me? I don’t really know where I’m going or what I’m doing here. I don’t even know where to go to register. What do I do?”  Fortunately, this adult noticed this child didn’t have the best clothes, and he really did look lost, so he helped this young man get registered for college.

This young man continued to move forward in his life, but he kept looking for that person that would help him understand, “What do you do next? How do you achieve?”  But that person wasn’t there.

He goes through college and winds up getting a degree and he thinks, “Wow, this is cool. I’m now a college graduate. I should be able to go and get a job. I’ve been working since I was very young.   I’ve been successful.   I’ve got a successful academic record.”  So he starts to apply to companies.

Well, as life would have it, when this young man graduated from college the economy was poor and jobs were tough to get.   Companies were looking for people who had certain types of experience and this young man was confused.  “Well, what does that mean?  How can I get experience if I don’t get a job?  I need the job in order to get the experience.”  It’s like the chicken and egg –which one comes first?

He kept looking and he managed to get a job.  Even though it wasn’t exactly what he wanted to do he was able to begin to move in his career.  He began to observe and find out what types of experience he would need, but he learned by observation.  He still didn’t have anybody in the companies that he worked for that he could go to and ask what the next step was.   What did he need to do next in order to achieve?

He did well in his job and he got promoted.  He got his first management and he was excited.  He was promoted to be the manager of a team and his boss says, “We’re promoting you.  You get to manage this team.  Congratulations, we know you’ll do a good job. Good luck!”

The young man said, “Hey, where’s the training? How do I learn how to be a good manager? How do I learn how to lead people?”   Once again he was told the same thing, “Oh, you’ll learn that as you go along. You’ll learn it through experience and by trial and error,” and the young man just was dumbfounded.  Why did he have to continue to learn by trial and error?   He had been doing that all of his life.

So this young man would work diligently, read every book he could find because books were his solace.  Books were where he found knowledge when he couldn’t find it anywhere else. It wasn’t that he wasn’t asking, he just wasn’t getting any answers.   So he kept learning by trial and error, and over the years he learned what to do and what not to do but primarily through making mistakes.   This young man thought, “This is too difficult.”

He looked around and saw people that he liked and respected.  They had started in management when he did, and yet he watched person after person fail in management and leadership.   They didn’t succeed and wound up not being able to retain their management job.   The young man was sad about that because it seemed like such a waste of talent.    These people had just as much talent as he did.   Maybe if they had made fewer mistakes like he had done, then they’d be successful.  Unfortunately, a lot of them made mistakes that cost them their management career.

Well, I hope by now you’ve begun to understand that the little boy in this story is actually me.  I wanted to share my journey with you because I have a real passion for helping people succeed in their management and leadership careers.  I am tired of watching talented, brilliant people get into leadership roles, not understand what they need to do and consequently make mistakes that cost them their career.

Because I have the years of experience, I’ve been there.  I’ve done that.  I’ve experienced those mistakes and what I’ve grown to understand is that there was one ingredient that was lacking, and that one ingredient was having a mentor.

A mentor by definition is an experienced and trusted advisor.  In other words, it’s somebody that you can talk with, who has been through the hard knocks, made some mistakes, but somehow survived to come out the other end.   In my research with individuals in management, 95% of the people who complete the survey tell me that they value having a mentor, yet 70% don’t have one.  Think about that.  It is exactly what I experienced and I’ll bet it’s what you have also experienced.

In keeping with my goals for Manager Mojo, I want to solve that problem, so I have created a program that is a platform for those of you who really and truly want to take advantage of it.

Here is why I created it.  When I look back, I absolutely know I could have been so much more successful so much faster if I simply had that trusted advisor.  I knew I needed one.   I actually asked, but time after time got turned down.   I realized from watching what happened it was because I was asking people I was working for, and they were intimidated by my ability.  They were also worried that if they would mentor me that they would lose their job to me.   They didn’t realize that when you’re mentoring, it’s to help people grow.  It’s not about your own personal success, it’s about helping the other person be successful too.   So I wanted to solve that.

I have created the Mojo Insider program and it is meant to help people in a more personal way.   I am going to teach people every month on topics that are essential to success in business.   I am also going to have conversations with those people so they can get their questions answered.  People need a mentor who is not concerned about their own success, but concerned about the other person’s success.  That’s what I want for you.  I want you to be a success.

I’d love to be able to help you do that and, I’d love to do it for free.  I do a lot of mentoring and free training just on my podcast, Manager Mojo with Steve Caldwell, and I hope that you’re enjoying the experienced leaders I’m interviewing as well as the topics I’m teaching, but it needs to go to a more personal level.  There needs to be a personal conversation, and so with the Mojo Insider program I only want to deal with the people who are committed.  I don’t want people who are just lukewarm.  I want you to be committed and you’re only committed if you’re investing a little bit of money on yourself.  So for a limited time, you can become a Mojo Insider for $29.00 a month. That’s not much money and, yet your future and your career could be helped tremendously.

The fact is, I want to be your mentor.   I want to help you.   I’ve been blessed to help a lot of people over the years, and  because I have been able to help them I’m simply going to ask when you’re done listening to this podcast, go to managermojo.com/insider and check out all the details.  I’m going to give you lots of free information just to get started, but I really want those who are committed.  So if you know somebody besides yourself who is looking for a mentor make sure they know about the Mojo Insider program too.   If you’ve got people reporting to you that are struggling and they want to get ahead, let them know of this program.

I thank you very much for listening and sharing on The Manager Mojo Podcast.   I appreciate every single one of you and I want to see each of you succeed.  If I can help in that success in any way, I’m here to do it. You can always email me at steve@managermojo.com.   I read and respond to every single email.