Musician, Mentor, Mom

Speech for Advanced Toastmasters Pensacola 5/9/20

Pathways assignment – Speech about mentorship

As Mother’s Day quickly approaches – that is this coming Sunday for those of you confused on what day of the week it is due to the Corona virus – call your mom.  I’d like to take the time to discuss a mentor of mine, my mom.

My mom was the oldest of five siblings and grew up quite poor in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky.  She went through Elementary school in a one room schoolhouse.  Because her parents both worked very hard she essentially helped raise her siblings which required her to be very responsible, very early in her life.  In her teenage years she found her voice and began singing old mountain ballads and in college was asked to sing a Capello for her choir when they would travel around the region.  This love of mountain folk music and her unique style of singing led to her lifelong passion where has sung at festivals for most of her life.  

Tragedy fell when she was 19, she discovered she was Type 1 diabetic and would require insulin injections for the rest of her life.  Not long after her father died of massive heart attack at a young age.  

Soon after she would be married and leaving her home to go with her husband to Philadelphia to live as a military wife.  This is where I entered into the story.  My dad likes to joke that it cost $50 to have a baby at the hospital back then.  He said, he had to work 2 shifts for 3 months but finally got to take me home.  

Soon after my parents packed all their belongings into a VW Beetle, and moved to Oceanside, CA when my Dad was transferred.  Dad had one more transfer soon after, to Vietnam.  Mom and I then lived back in Kentucky near her parents until Dad returned.  

When Dad returned, we moved to Russell, Kentucky and family life when on a normal course from there.  My mom ventured into real estate.  She battled with the ‘good ole boy network’, sometimes to her victory and sometimes to her lament.  In the late 70’s early 80’s, women were really having a tough time being treated as equals in the workplace.  

I recall once when the head broker arranged all the men realtors pictures above the women’s.  I came into the office and my mom was standing on a desk rearranging them by top sales, she was like first or second I believe, but certainly on the top row.  It caused a big fuss there, but she won and proudly gloated about it.  I also recall many, many times, she would come home and silently cry over arguments held at work that she was treated unjustly.

The question then, is how am I, a boy then and a man now, her protégé.  Well for me, that’s easy.  My mom first among all things is a pillar of strength and determination.  There is nothing that can stop her once she determines it is a just cause, a fight for someone weaker, or God ever forbid, someone cross her.  She has led by example my whole life and has always moved forward even when I didn’t feel like it.  She has overcome adversity and still completed college, raised kids, had a great career and all of which suffered daily with tiredness and all the symptoms that come with type 1 diabetes.  She has since dealt with heart disease and cancer is still moving forward, albeit more slowly.

Second, my mom is ethical.  I don’t mean “kind of” ethical, I mean ethical like a saint.  She is deeply religious and ensured those foundations were burned into my DNA.  And to her credit, even though she is uber religious she always gave me space to explore and contend with my own spiritual journey.  As an adult we would, and still, have open discussions on religion and I always enjoy them because she pushes but doesn’t demand her way as right.  We always both walk away more enlightened.

Not only religion, but when I speak of ethics, she always tried to instill a strong sense of empathy towards others.  No matter what action was taken, it was demanded to think, how does that affect this other person, what is the impact of that decision, is someone hurting because of you?  I think this has really impacted my life.  Even during times when I was a less caring youth, it still circled back.  Maybe to my detriment as there are so many things in my past where I just give a big “Auuughhh” as I recall how thoughtless I might have been towards someone in the past.  Because of this, I do try to be a good and ethical person.

Last, and my favorite part, my mother is highly creative.  As I mentioned before, my mother was a wonderful folk singer.  I cannot tell you how wonderful it was to hear her sing every day for a huge portion of my life.  It was a gift given to me.  My mom also loves to paint, write, and garden and many other creative endeavors.  I love the fact that this is instilled into me.  Because of this, I continually seek and explore this side of myself and it has been my rock and stability when things were toughest in my life.  It has given me immense joy and peace in my life.

I can think of no one else who has mentored me more.  There have been many mentors in my life that I have served as their protégé. However, her voice is literally the voice I hear in my head of deciding right or wrong, her voice guides me to choose correctly.  She is often tough to please, but always proud of her son.  But no one has been more proud to have such a mentor for life as I am, in being her protégé, and her son.

A Survival Guide for the Painfully Direct

Speech to Gulf Breeze Toastmasters

4/15/2020

My speech assignment for Pathways is to discuss my communication style.  There is an evaluation and the results told me that I am a DIRECT communicator.  My response was a resounding, ‘Duh!”   

There have been a few clues along my career path that have indicated to me and others that this may be the case.  For instance, in the early 90’s I was working in Chicago at a phone office.  The Engineer had designed some overhead cable rack to go in where other structures that held up a fire suppression system above the equipment already existed.  These are huge iron bars, held up by ¾ inch threaded rods that hang from the ceiling.  I called the Engineer and told him about the problem.  The Engineer was very confident in his drawings was arguing with me that I was wrong.  I was looking right at it.  Back in those days, it was forbidden to ever have a wireless phone in the switch room.  So, I put him on hold, I set up the phone system by the area.  Then put my headset on.  On the other end of the line, the Engineer heard me on his headset, me grunting and gasping while counting pssssst 1…psssssst 2…psssssst 3.  He says, “What are you doing?”  I said I’m doing pullups on the structure that you say doesn’t exist. 

Direct Communicators like to get to the point with undeniable, unarguable results. 

A while later I was promoted to be one of the first roles as a Site Team Leader at Nortel.  This was a hybrid approach that the company was trying out where they wanted highly technical testers to also manage the projects.  Where before you had to be one or the other a tester, or a manager.  I loved that job, it was challenging and it also pushed me into managing large projects and people.  It also introduced me to a lot of soft skills training to be a manager.  More than anything it taught me how to interact with different groups.  Mostly, because I had walked in each of their shoes.  Contract Installers, these were normally less technical, less skilled, and high drama individuals.  Employee Installers, these were fairly technical, fairly skilled workers, fairly low drama most of the time.  Employee Testers, highly technical, highly skilled, and thought they were the real owners of the project.  Then there were the Contract Testers.  These guys expected trumpets to be played as they entered the building.  They were very technical, very-skilled, very, very, very, high-drama.  If they didn’t like the job, they could shut you down because they held the aces, they had skills that no one else had.  Then I got to play Orchestra leader and make sure all that mix of drama types got to the end result of actually finishing the project let alone on time and in the budget.   

Now I should say, it was still a project environment in the Telecom industry, so that is to say every single project was under the crisis of time and budget and very high pressure, and very chaotic.  As it turned out my communication style, Direct, is very well suited for this type of environment.  So I made sure everyone was aware of the problem, which was typically we only had so many days to complete something and that we couldn’t work overtime and that we needed it done faster.  Individually, by type, I discussed daily how we would reach the solution, adapting to how I explained to each.  Sometimes, adhering to one's ego, another being almost forceful about what I expected, to another through empathy. 

Direct communicators like to bring order to chaos, things to be efficient, communications to the point 

I later got promoted to become an Operations Project Coordinator.  That’s a fancy term for Project Manager for half the pay.  This was an entry to the big game.  I was on a temporary assignment from Chicago to St. Louis on the SWBT account.  The account was in crisis and they began snatching up a lot of us from Chicago to come there to fix the account.  I moved to Dallas, TX, and managed all projects for what was known as MOKA.  Missouri, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Arkansas.  I was now touching projects throughout the entire lifecycle.  I worked ridiculously long hours.  I wrote tons of work procedures, I built processes instituted metrics and KPIs, I set accountability standards and in after 2 very long years, that account was the best account in the business.  Again, this was all in crisis when I got there, not so much after a couple of years.  This is where I began to find my weaknesses which were a painful learning process for myself.   

You see direct communicators thrive in a competitive, goal-oriented, results-driven environments.  They struggle in day to day normal work that may be ‘boring’.  Suddenly the company culture was concerned about how people feel and how well people communicated in such. Are we rewarding people.  I’ll be the first to tell you I hated it!!   Why in the world would I reward someone for just doing their job?  That’s so stupid. 

I’ll admit I learned a lot in my mind at this time in my career, but I didn’t practice it.  I transferred over to the next crisis area, to the next, to the next.  Each reinforcing a style but slowed my growth a great deal.  But company cultures evolve and so did I.  Eventually, I had to be checked, put in my place multiple times, fired once, but eventually, I had to take communication skill development seriously.   

Fortunately, I’ve had a lot of good management training through the years and absolutely one of the most helpful was joining Toastmaster 9 years ago.  It’s taught me so much.  I still get queasy when other officers talk about getting balloons and all that for an induction ceremony   But I understand and I now see the value in that is how some others tick.  I remember when I was President of this club and one of our members when to compete in the Division contest.  She didn’t win at that level but she was sort of turned off by the experience because they didn’t get a certificate stating they were even in the contest.  I didn’t get the clues on this, but after Joetta made me aware, we made a certificate for this person and presented it to them at the club, thanking them for representing us so well.  The appreciation from this person really was touching to me.  It sort of crystalized to me these lessons of how other people communicate differently and have different personality types than I do.  It reinforced to me that I needed to change my style to try and be a better communicator sometimes.   

I know through my career where my communication strengths are per my direct style.  I’m decisive, confident in my decisions, and I’m very results-oriented. When the going gets tough and no one steps up, I’ll take over and IT WILL BE DONE.  It’s just my way.  But through Toastmasters I’ve also come to know my weaknesses, I need to slow down and do more to build relationships and be more empathetic to others needs for their feelings.  My ability to work on those weaknesses has provided me a very undeniable strength and that’s to be a better communicator.