Bridging Stories of Success: This season journey discussing Responsible Leadership

I'll never forget the day I decided to look into advancing my career to be a supervisor.  In the biting cold of the garage where I started out as a diesel truck mechanic, where not only my hands would freeze, but so would the recognition for our hard work. 

It's those humble beginnings that fuel my journey to leadership, which I, John Wandolowski, and my co-host Greg Powell, explore in this new season of Success Secrets and Stories. We're not just talking shop; we're celebrating the triumphs by leveraging Dr. Michael Durst's MBR program principles. Together, we're bridging the gap between the psychology of success and the impactful narratives of those who've climbed the ranks, embodying the very essence of leadership.

As we unravel the threads of success, we invite you to connect with us on a deeper level. You're not just a listener; you're part of this motivational tapestry. Share with us your insights, nominate a figure whose story deserves the spotlight, and be prepared for an interactive journey to maximize your podcast experience. Greg and I are setting the table for a feast of inspiration, complete with personal anecdotes, expert perspectives on leadership potential, and the power of acknowledging every role within an organization. Get ready to be part of a community celebrating success in its most authentic form.

Transcript

Speaker 2: 0:11

Well, hello everyone, welcome to season 2 of Success Secrets and Stories. Yeah, two seasons, that's kinda cool. I'm your host, john Malosky, and I'm here with my good friend and co-host, greg Powell. Greg, hey, everybody, yeah, and we're gonna talk about season 2 and how that's gonna start making a little bit of a change. So let me explain a little bit.

Speaker 2: 0:40

Season 1 really was trying to talk about the secret. So, just for those who haven't heard season 1, the secret is psychology. Psychology, exactly, and there's a whole ton of people that are right now going what, turning it off. It's like no, no, no, stay, stay, just listen. The person that I thought was most interesting in talking about psychology and how it is applied is a gentleman by the name of Dr Michael Durst, and he created a program called MBR and really the essence of what we were trying to get across is I've used those skills and those lessons and I wanted to try to discuss to others and share with others how that element of psychology really does help leaders to understand how to formalize, how to organize and how to move forward. There's a lot that has to be said from that format, but what we're gonna be doing for season 2 is really talking about success stories. We're gonna talk about individuals. We're gonna be talking about organizations I mean all of those things, that kind of influence, what happens with this concept and what we've heard over time. So a little bit of what Greg has experienced, what I've experienced in terms of professionals. We're also looking for input from audiences and we're gonna talk about that at the end how we would like you to email us and some other elements of you know. We have a book, we have the podcasters. There's things that we want to talk about in terms of improving the experience of our podcast and doing the best we can to answer some of your questions and maybe suggestions on how we can take to show and talk about how this podcast can grow. We are already lining up guests in order to talk. We've already talked to a couple people last year, but we're really looking at expanding that format of introducing you to managers and supervisors and organizations that either formally went through the MBR program or exhibit those skill sets.

Speaker 2: 3:05

And I think Dr Durr has made a great comment about MBR. He didn't dream up the concept. A lot of other people talk about taking responsibility. Everyone from oh, our fromting fathers to the leaders in the military to psychologists all of these people are basically taking responsibility as the key and developing trust as a key, communication as a key. These things aren't exclusive to Dr Durst, so he did a very good job of pulling it all together. But I think one of the humors that I've had when we've talked about stories and stories that make sense and trying to give an MBR experience was one of my stories that I talk about when I think about someone who did an MBR approach but never went through an MBR class.

Speaker 2: 4:05

Now, this was early in my career and I had spent, oh geez, like 10 years trying to go from supervisor to a manager and it's like anything else. The moment I relaxed and said you know what it's in God's hands, I'm just going to follow the path that is written. I'll just go down that road. I became a manager. It's kind of a wild, but as a newly appointed manager, I was learning every day and it's a different environment when you're at that level and you have supervisors reporting to you. And the first production meeting that I had that the plant manager pulled me into the office. I wanted to talk to him because I was having a problem with the production manager and the two of us were basically banging heads and I knew that he was getting input from the production manager because they were working together for years and I had just come on board. I had been there for like a year and I was newly promoted.

Speaker 2: 5:14

So the plant manager called me into his office and I was this is perfect, perfect timing. I really do need to talk to him. And he said John, before we get started with your question, I want to explain something to you. You are a person who has been working in the management team and it kind of reminds me of a garden. The management team is like the garden that I have at home and I'm very proud gardener. I'm a very good gardener, but there are elements of a garden that you need to understand. In my garden, in my management garden, you're like a rose. Now, a rose for a gardener is either a featured flower within that flower bed or it's a weed.

Speaker 2: 6:04

The question is do you think you're a flower or do you think you're a weed man? And as a new employee, as a new manager, I'm trying to think. Really, this is the kind of conversations you have at this level. You can see that look in his eye of. Okay, let me help you out here. I want to know whether you are going to be able to work with the people that you have been assigned to work with or if I need to find somebody else that can do the job, because you're clearly creating a problem and I am not a referee. That's not my job. You need to have the ability to communicate. You have to have the ability to work with others and work with peers and understand their point of view. Okay, no offense, but I got that like loud and clear. My response was trying to keep it within the vein of having some fun. I said I'm your, rose, I will work with the rest of the flowers in the garden. I will get this fixed Now.

Speaker 2: 7:05

My plant manager never went through the psychology or the NBR program, but he was a very good communicator and he understood the management approach wasn't to be a referee. It was trying to empower and trust the people that he had put into the department that they would work together, and he was looking for more the character of the people rather than their technical capacities. He wanted team building. He wanted team cooperation to understand that everybody has to be pulling on a rope in order for that rope to move, and I thought the Rose example was perfect for me because I got a gig, a lot of it. He laughed, I laughed, but I'll never forget that conversation and that's good communication and that's part of the kind of stories that we want to try to share on this podcast.

Speaker 2: 8:00

How do we give you examples of things that make some sense, that can help you lead others to build your toolbox, which okay, a shameless plug. I wrote a book called Building your Leadership Toolbox. A lot of what we've talked about during season one was discussing the things that I had written about, and it really is fun. I have found a lot of fun sharing the stories and helping people over the years and using the concepts that I have learned. Now, when Greg and I had met with Dr Durst recently, he told another story that I thought was pretty interesting. Greg, why don't you share that one?

Speaker 1: 8:43

Thanks, john. So, after listening to the management by responsibility program, a heart surgeon and let's be clear here, a heart surgeon has been through lots of education, lots of training and maybe even thought at some point there's not much more I can learn. But this surgeon wanted his patients to listen to the NBR program lesson to reinforce some values and concepts. Those values and concepts are we are responsible for everything in our experience, whether we like it or not. Now this surgeon, this doctor, was really impressed with that response. He received comments from his patients that wanted their families to hear the lessons related to taking responsibility. So now we're seeing a cascading effect here of the power of NBR. This began then to take a doctor's advice and improve their own health. To me that's just phenomenal. It's fascinating but phenomenal, and I think about something my dad used to say about stress will kill you. This will help take some stress off of your head following NBR principles.

Speaker 2: 9:43

And what was interesting about Dr Durst talking about it is I think it's really interesting that a doctor is trying to get through to people and he found this format as something that really really worked well and it helped people to not only understand what they were doing, but I think his comment that he said is that patients just ignore doctors. And it wasn't until he used this format where he kind of pushed of no, it really doesn't matter to me If you eat the wrong food and you never exercise, it doesn't matter to me, it matters to you, and until you realize the impact has got nothing to do with ignoring the doctor, it's really ignoring yourself, and I mean that's just a powerful tool and a half for me. The other part of what we wanted to do for this podcast in season two is talk about some of the things that are available that can help you, and there's a thing called Success Growth Academy, which is a system on the website that actually formalizes Dr Durst's program for both being the cause and MBR, and they're both self-study programs, wonderful programs. The president of SGA, carl Vendormon, has been invited. He's one of the guests we're anticipating for next year, and there's the training.

Speaker 2: 11:28

I don't know how to say this, but there's very few times that you can take a website and experience something as a teaching format that gave me the same experience that I had in the personal seminars that I dealt with with Dr Durst. That's kind of a hard thing to do and Success Growth Academy was able to do that. They spent some time having Dr Durst basically giving his lessons and it's done with some really good format, good visuals, nice way to bring you through the program. It's better than a lot of things that I have seen as far as a self-taught seminar. Now, greg, you experienced it. Maybe you can talk a little bit about seeing that program for the first time. Not having the experience of meeting Dr Durst in a seminar, you just gained the knowledge from the website. Maybe you can explain a little bit about that.

Speaker 1: 12:24

Absolutely, john. Obviously, in my career, and human resources in particular in corporate America, I've taken a lot of training classes, a lot of in-class training classes, online training classes, self-paced study classes, et cetera. But what I thought was really good about Success Growth Academy was how there were so many what I call teaching aids. There were so many reference pieces of material and definitely you could get Dr Durst's feel his sense of humor but his precision on how important it was to be responsible. The illustrations were quite quaint and again kept you going and again it was self-paced and so there was a test afterwards to make sure that you know, test for learning before you moved on, which was very, very helpful. But a lot of reference material, a lot of help for something that was self-study. So I was very, very impressed with how it worked together, how it fell into place and how it was fairly easy for me, the user, to get the learning.

Speaker 2: 13:26

So we're kind of taking advantage of a reboot of what we're doing for the podcast and I just want to share one more story to give you a little bit of background about how I used this challenge to go into leadership originally. And sometimes you have to ask someone why do you want to be in leadership? I had a very clear example of why I wanted to be in leadership. I started off as a diesel truck mechanic and I'm just going to frame the exact moment because I can tell you exactly the moment I decided to be in leadership. I'm working outside in subzero weather in the Chicago land area on trucks out in the yard, not in a service shop, because they hadn't built it yet, they were still building it. I was working 100% outside. They had a trailer that they call a warming trailer, but that was more like the suggestion of warmth rather than warmth. So, to frame it, they had a coffee shack on the dock that you could go in warm up, get a cup of coffee, and it was something that outside truck drivers. There was a bathroom in this coffee shop coffee shack and I had gone in to try to warm up because my hands actually, when they touched the table, they were tapping it. I had frozen the tips of my fingers, I just had to get warm.

Speaker 2: 14:57

And I'm sitting in the room and I'm overhearing the conversation of two managers from the warehouse, and you were talking about having an open house. Now, this is a brand new facility. The warehouse was done. Obviously, our shop wasn't done, but it was a very nice organization, a very nice building. And I asked the two supervisors because I'm working for a third party, I don't work specifically for the organization. My family and I attend the open house. I'd love to show them a little bit about what I do. The manager looked at me and he had his two assistant managers there and I had this just look at the stain. He said absolutely not. We don't have anybody from your organization, your kind of people, in the building. So, no, no, you're not invited. Okay, they walked out of the room.

Speaker 2: 15:56

There was a little bit of a giggle in the background of one of the assistants and there was just one of those moments in time where I just was. The fire was lit and I'm thinking to myself okay, I look like an Eskimo. My face has got sunburned. I've windburned. From the temperature, I'm clearly smelling like diesel fuel. I'm not exactly the image that they present.

Speaker 2: 16:23

But I didn't feel that moment in time that that manager understood what it is that I did. And I had that moment in time where I decided I wanted to be in leadership and I wanted to tell that warehouse manager not where to go, but what I really do and the importance of what I do and what the housekeeping teams do and what the roof repair people do and what the HVAC people do, because your warehouse really doesn't run magically and there's no such thing as a perfect warehouse that doesn't require people who are technical to repair those things. But it was an element of getting into the room. It's like that Hamilton moment. I want to be in the room when it happens. I want to be in the room when these management people talk about how important the maintenance team is and clarify just how important we really are.

Speaker 2: 17:20

We're not just an expense, we're a profit center, because if we're not doing our job you're going to have less profit. So we're expense avoidance rather than an expense, because you can easily spend two or three times the budget if you don't do it correctly. All this stuff is running through my head as a mechanic and it doesn't mean anything until you actually get into leadership. So that that was my crystallized moment of getting into leadership. But everybody Should have a moment in time where they decided to be in leadership and those moments in time are really what I think the podcast that Greg and I wanted to talk about and do was to highlight those opportunities and challenge some people to think about leadership. Greg, you spent a career in human resources and you've pulled people from the human resources environment and told them that they had leadership qualities and gave them assignments that would give them a chance to try to get some exposure. Maybe you can talk a little bit about that.

Speaker 1: 18:24

Thank you, john, absolutely, and you're right. There are certain traits that people display that let you know they can lead others, and one of the biggest traits is taking responsibility. Not pointing fingers to someone else, looking for solutions, looking for common ground to resolve issues, but getting work done with people and having people follow them. And when you see people like that, you got to grab them and keep them in the organization and put them in the right spot in the organization Because they're going to multiply the output that you would have gotten before. And so for some people, it's just that gleam in the eye. You can see that, yes, they want to develop people, they want to help the company grow and go, and they should be in leadership because sometimes they don't know it themselves.

Speaker 2: 19:06

Sometimes right, and you got a water, that flower, right, you got a water that flower you got to cultivate, nurture, et cetera.

Speaker 1: 19:14

And some of that is through training classes, like what you're hearing on the MBR piece and from John's book and those toolbox tools. But some of it is just identifying the right folks, getting them in the right combination of things and letting them rock and roll in leadership. Because we also know the other side. There's some people that say, oh, I want to be a leader. Why do you want to be a leader? Well, they get paid more money. Well, you know what? There's another track, there's a technical track that go down that path.

Speaker 1: 19:40

You really want people to lead, that want to lead and recognize that it's not a walk in the park sometimes and that they're willing to put themselves out and help grow and develop people and get things done with the team. So for me, from an HR standpoint, I still, even though I'm retired, still get excited about some of those folks that we found those diamonds in the rough, that we're just waiting for the opportunity and it were sponges. And then you look back and they got promoted up the ladder and up the ladder and up the ladder. Now I think some of them own the ladder right.

Speaker 2: 20:09

Yeah, anyway, I think leadership is people too. I mean, it's not that. That's the joy I've always gotten out of leadership is helping people and trying to be their voice for the ones that aren't being heard. That's really the reason that we're intrigued with this podcast and we've already heard some positive things from the podcast and it has had some positive effects on people's careers and that's awesome and just gives us more fuel for us to continue to do this. I have a book. It's called Building your Leadership Toolbox. It's available on Amazoncom and Lulucom.

Speaker 2: 20:52

Success Secrets and Stories podcast is available on what you're listening to, thank you. It's also available in a lot of other popular formats. Dr Duris' book and NBR program is available in Success Growth Academy. And we also started something new we are now part of Buy Me a Cup of Coffee. I kind of think it's kind of cool and if you like what we're doing and you want to try to help the podcast because it costs us some dollars in order to try to keep it on the air, we would appreciate a little help, and I love the idea of just a cup of coffee. If you like what you heard and you'd buy me or Greg a cup of coffee. It would be appreciated. And the music is brought to you by my grandson.

Speaker 1: 21:35

So, if I may add, john, if you want to reach me by email, I'm G-POWL374 at gmailcom. That's G-POWL374 at gmailcom. Where can you be reached, john?

Speaker 2: 21:48

And Wando75, period JW at gmailcom. So yeah, we're kind of open up. You also can get ahold of me through LinkedIn. There's a link on the website on Buzzsprout, in case you're on Buzzsprout and we want to hear from you. So, as we open up season two, take advantage of the time. You have our website, you have our email. Please let us know if we can highlight someone that you think is a success story that needs to get some airtime. We would love to try to help.

Speaker 1: 22:27

So Greg, thanks, thanks, john, as always, next time, next time, next time.