Life and Leadership Stories
Hear from various leaders about their personal journey, challenges and growth areas focused on formative experiences, how their experiences shaped their approach to leadership, and rapid reflections based on lessons learned, biggest failures, and advice to their younger selves.
Life and Leadership Stories
Life and Leadership - Nathaniel Noertker
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Nathaniel Noertker shares his leadership journey from rural Ohio to corporate executive, explaining how difficult leaders, faith, and mentorship shaped his approach to guiding teams and making decisions.
• Growing up in rural southwestern Ohio
• Attending post-secondary education during high school
• Surviving a toxic manager
• Learning from a supportive boss who tailored her leadership style to meet his needs
• Undergoing executive coaching that identified four growth areas: intentional vocalization, pushing his agenda, embracing the unknown, and creating a personal brand
• Prioritizing family over work demands after missing important moments
• Using local government meetings as resources to improve presentation skills
• Making connections sooner for career advancement opportunities
I hope you'll come back for future episodes where I'll be bringing on amazing guests—leaders with grit, stories, and wisdom that can help you on your own path. If this episode inspired you, share it with someone who needs encouragement today.
Introduction to Life and Leadership Stories
Speaker 1Hello and welcome to Life in Leadership Stories. I'm your host, nathaniel Norker. I'm really excited to have you with me today. This podcast is a passion project born from many years of leadership experiences, hard-earned lessons and a desire to help others grow in their own lives and careers. In this first episode, I want to share my story with you, not because it's extraordinary, but because I hope it's relatable. Like you, my life has been filled with moments of uncertainty, grit, faith and, most importantly, growth. I believe that when we open up about our own journeys and own them, we give others permission to own theirs too.
Speaker 1While this first episode will be focused on my journey and a few key lessons I have learned along the way, future episodes will feature other leaders and their journeys. We will focus each conversation around four key topics the leader's personal journey, the challenges and growth areas that they have focused on. Formative experiences like difficult managers, health scares, major transitions or their faith. Leadership lens, how their experiences have shaped their approach to leadership, decision-making and mentorship. And finally, rapid reflections, quick responses based on lessons learned, biggest failures, mentors or advice to their younger selves. Like I mentioned, today's episode is going to be focused on my leadership and life journey, although I will be talking through a few key lessons I have learned along the way. You can find out more about these and other key life and leadership lessons I've learned by reading my book Life and Leadership Lessons from Rural America to Corporate Executive. So let's start with that first topic, the personal journey, and really talk about my background, the hometown where I grew up, the high school that I went to and some early impacts by people who were in my life at that point in time.
Speaker 1I grew up in southwestern Ohio outside the small village of Newtonsville. When I was growing up, newtonsville was a small town with just one four-way stop right in the middle of town. I remember the Fireman's Festival, with the parade that went through the center of the village, grabbing candy being thrown out and riding the carnival-style rides in the middle of a field, grabbing candy being thrown out and riding the carnival-style rides in the middle of a field. The village grocery store on the corner where you could grab some essentials or visit the deli counter for some freshly sliced cheese, or what we as kids would call the fancy bologna, was a frequent stop to grab a drink and a snack. Pap Papaw, my grandfather would often get the KB bologna, kentucky, border, bologna, so anything with a national brand name, with what we would call the fancy kind, and that was from the deli counter there at the corner store. I remember mom stopping by the one gas station in town to get $5 in gas to get us through the next payday. At that time $5 would get you about a half a tank of gas. Next to the grocery store was the one-room post office, and on the other corner of the four-way stop was the general store where you could find just about anything you needed, although what you needed was likely stored in an old coffee tin that would be placed on a random shelf that only the owner would be able to locate for you. Of course. Behind the main counter of the general store was the long shelving rack of various guns available for purchase. Today the village has been officially dissolved and the general store and the corner store stand have been abandoned and are now falling apart. The gas station is long gone and the main source of anything within the former village is the Dollar General store.
Speaker 1Our home was located just outside the village. It's a ranch-style brick house three bedrooms, one bathroom, and it sat on just under an acre of land. Across the street was a cornfield or a soybean field depending upon the year, and it was meticulously maintained by a local farmer. Best of all, about two miles up the road was my mom and papaw's house. Pap was an over-the-road truck driver and was gone most of the time. Mam didn't work outside the home when I was quite young, so summers were mainly spent with her while mom and dad worked to provide for us kids. I'm the youngest of three kids to parents who spent their careers working in the grocery store. Working as managers of the meat department and deli department of the local grocery store provided for our family and allowed us the occasional road trips to various out-of-town locations. We had what we needed physically and we had lots of family and friend connections throughout our time as kids to really help us grow into the adults we are today.
Speaker 1As I went through school, I personally don't remember ever really having anything that stood out to me regarding what I wanted to be. When I was older, I took the career placement tests that they made you take in school, but the results for me weren't really overly inspiring. They said I should be a counselor or social. Results for me weren't really overly inspiring. They said I should be a counselor or a social worker, or I should go into accounting Of those. The latter of those three were the most interesting to me, so I decided to focus my schooling on business and accountancy. Looking back at my time in high school, I often wonder if the high school counselor knew how much she impacted my life.
Speaker 1School was a challenge for me. It was not challenging because of the work or studies that needed to be done, but because of the bullying I had to endure each day. I was a heavy kid in high school, which resulted in a lot of challenging interactions with others, especially in gym class. My freshman and sophomore years were miserable. It wasn't the jocks who you would typically think of as the instigators of the bullying, but rather a few who I now suspect may have had more challenging home lives. I hated being there, and other than spending time with a few close friends from the band, I tried to keep to myself.
Speaker 1Early in my sophomore year, the school counselor the high school guidance counselor approached me in the hall and told me that she needed to speak with me. I typically didn't connect very often with the counselor, so I was curious what the conversation was going to entail. Once in her office. She mentioned a new program called post-secondary that would be starting the next year, which she wanted me to consider. The post-secondary program would be available to Ohio high school students with a certain GPA who wanted to get a start on college classes early, and she felt that this would be a really good option for me. And she was 100% correct. I could go to school, learn, not have to worry about potentially being bullied on a regular basis.
Speaker 1However, there would be a challenge for me in taking this path Because this was a new program in the state and because I attended a very rural school district. The Board of Education in the district wasn't exactly supportive. I'm sure if the board had known that the counselor had approached me and informed me of the program, they would have likely reprimanded her. Why? Well, within the state of Ohio, if a student decided to utilize the program, the school's funding would be shifted to the college to help cover the cost of tuition, books and parking. Therefore, you can see the challenge the districts faced help their students lose their funding. One way the board tried to discourage students from participating was by removing the college GPA weighting of the courses taken in the program. This meant that any course taken at the actual university would be weighted the same as a basic course at the high school level. Any AP course taken at the high school would be weighted higher than the course at the college. Thus it becomes my first learning opportunity for public speaking.
Speaker 1I decided to fight the school board's decision. One of my classmates and I decided to go to the board meeting and object to the change in the class weighting policy. When the public comment portion opened, we both took the opportunity to speak. At 16 years old, I was extremely nervous to try and convince a room full of older adults that our view myself and my friend was the right one. We had to showcase the reasons why and the emotions behind our desire to attend college instead of high school. In our junior year, we talked about the challenges of trying to truly learn in a public school environment where teachers were being forced to focus their time on behavioral challenges in the classroom instead of instruction. We showcased our desire not to run away from the school we had grown up attending and where our friends were located, but to focus our efforts on true learning in an environment where students wanted to be and had paid to be there. In the end, we asked not to be punished for our desire to enhance our learning opportunities. Fortunately, our arguments were heard and the board reversed their decision. Lesson learned for me Put together your speaking points, back them up with facts and details and provide your audience with a compelling argument. Also, utilize the emotional connections to your key points to help your audience better relate to your point of view.
Speaker 1Thanks to the post-secondary program, I graduated with my high school diploma on May 31st and received my associate's degree on June 7th. During my last two years of high school, which were also my first two years of college thanks to the post-secondary program, I worked two jobs to save the money I'd need to attend college after graduating from high school. These two jobs that I was blessed to work in were very different roles from each other, each of which provided a great set of experiences. First, I worked for a grocery store called Biggs Hypermarket. This was an enormous grocery store focused on consistently low prices. While Biggs doesn't exist today, its closest comparison store would be a Walmart super center. In this job, I worked all the various aspects of the front end register service, desk, layaway, training, cash office management. The layaway department for me was probably my most fun job in the store.
Speaker 1Now, if you're a little bit younger and you don't know what layaway is, it actually is a department that provided an opportunity around the holidays for shoppers to purchase gifts for their kids or loved ones without using a credit card, for example. These customers would go through the store, pick out their desired items. They'd bring those selections back to the layaway department in the store. We would scan them into the system, box, label them and then we would store them in a marked location that was added to the computer for when the customer returned to pick them up. The shopper would make payments on their items throughout the season, with their final payment being due a week before Christmas. Working in an area where shoppers often struggled financially, the layaway department was well utilized. I remember my first Christmas season in the department. We had so many layaway orders that we had filled multiple storage rooms within the building, one room even being multiple stories and an additional 19 semi-trailers. Layaway was organized chaos, but it was a lot of fun. For a detail-oriented person, there was something satisfying about being able to easily locate one shopper's order among all those products.
Speaker 1Working in the stores, I learned about customer service, collaborating with challenging colleagues and training others. I would work with the company for the next eight years, staying with them even after college. My other job was with a large corporation that owned various other companies. They owned companies such as financial services, sportswear, insurance, logistics and more. I was provided with the amazing opportunity of working with the company's assistant treasurer, working on the company's SEC filings and various financial reporting. I only got the opportunity to work with this company by networking with their chief financial officer during a leadership program. I had been involved in my senior year of high school. This was my first experience with a corporate role and what an actual accounting job could be, as I worked side by side with many of the company's accountants. I continued to work for the company until a health issue eventually sidelined me for months.
Speaker 1The leadership program, where I'd met the CFO, was another instance where the high school counselor had impacted my life. While I was attending the University of Cincinnati as a member of the post-secondary program during my junior year of high school, my high school counselor reached out to ask me to stop by the school. I met her in her office, as requested. She mentioned to me that there was a new leadership development program that would be starting in the county and that she was recommending me for that program. The program was called Junior Lead Claremont and it took two students one male, one female from each high school in the county and put them together once a month for key experiences. In the program we would get the opportunity to interact with government leaders and the judicial system, learn about our county's history and meet with top business leaders in the area. Meeting with business leaders was what would lead me to connect with the CFO. In the session with the business leaders, I asked about what types of internship programs we should prioritize as students and when we should start to look for one. After the session, the CFO approached me and gave me his business card. He said he was impressed with my questions and that he would be willing to help me with an internship when I was ready.
Speaker 1The post-secondary opportunity at the University of Cincinnati and the guidance from my high school counselor likely changed my life. The post-secondary program allowed me to start classes during my junior year of high school, getting both college and high school credits for my classes, while the state paid for the college tuition. This helped me immensely, as I'm not sure I would have had the money to cover a full four years of college. So to my high school guidance counselor, thank you. Thank you for believing in me, not only to make it through the post-secondary program and provide me a full four years of college that I probably wouldn't have been able to afford on my own. And thank you for trusting me to be in that leadership journey, that leadership session through the county and representing our school, but which opened doors for me and internships and ability to interact with the business world that I wouldn't have had otherwise. I greatly appreciate everything you did for me.
Speaker 1Now let's talk about challenges and growth. In this portion of each podcast, when we talk to different leaders, it will be focused on some formative experiences that they've had, whether that be difficult managers, health scares, major transitions or any spiritual guidance that they've used in order to determine how they're going to proceed as leaders with their teams. For my journey, I want to focus on two aspects of this topic One, learning from a challenging manager and two, learning God's pull in my life and how to listen to Him, and the impact that that can make on my career and my journey through life. So let's start with that challenging manager. Like many, you may have had a moment in your career when you had to work for a challenging manager. Maybe they were a micromanager, or they determined that managing with an iron fist was the best way to get results, or potentially they just didn't know how to be a leader. What did you learn about yourself during that time and did it shape your leadership style Really? In this portion of my book and what I want to talk through today, I want to share about an extremely challenging manager that I worked for very early in my career and how that shaped who I wanted to be for others.
Speaker 1As I progressed in my leadership journey, my senior year of college didn't go exactly as planned. I had some health challenges that ended up stalling my efforts towards graduating and coming out of school. After those health issues, I found myself just two classes shy of a degree, but I needed to focus on making money so that I could finish those classes. So I decided to work full time at the grocery store, where I had work to pay for my schooling. I spent the summer learning more about training and scheduling, and I ended up moving in the fall into an amazing role within the company's headquarters. This new role required me to travel to all the various store locations the company owned, where I would train the store's personnel on new software and equipment the stores would need for the upcoming Y2K. In this position, I further learned how to train others, problem-solved critical issues and really saw store operations more effectively from another viewpoint. Additionally, I gained experience with corporate travel and had the amazing opportunity to help Grand Open multiple locations across the country. This was one of the few roles that I would ever regret leaving in my career. So why did I transition to a new position within the company? Well, during one of the more challenging Grand Opening events that I was working, I was helping troubleshoot and solve some more critical issues occurring during the first week of the store operations. What I didn't realize was that at that same time, the company's president was attending the grand opening of the store. I was informed later that he requested that I be placed back into a store to run a front end. So I left the role I loved and moved back into the stores as part of the management team.
Speaker 1The store I ended up working in was a location that had been declining in sales for several years. From the store's peak performance to the current sales level was a little less than half the volume, but the front end was still structured with associate availability as though it were a higher volume store. Additionally, the customer service scores were quite low. The challenge was to partner with the other front end managers and tackle employee availability, scheduling and overall customer service scores. The front end managers the three of us worked together quite well. In eight months we reduced front-end payroll to the lowest percentage of sales within the company while also delivering the highest customer satisfaction scores across all stores. We were accomplishing all the goals we had set for ourselves when the store director decided that I should move to the deli department to do something similar.
Speaker 1Shortly after moving to the deli department though the store director that I should move to the deli department to do something similar. Shortly after moving to the deli department though the store director that I had changed and things went very badly for me after that. I learned many life lessons during this time. The new store director was quite challenging. He ran a tight ship and had high expectations for each person on his team. I appreciated this expectation and I was actually initially looking forward to him being on board. I felt like there was a lot that I would be able to learn from him and his experiences. However, one thing I learned was that this director had a reputation for selecting a whipping person in each store who would receive all his frustrations, regardless of who the offending party to his mood was in that particular moment.
Speaker 1There was one incident where there was a challenge with the meat department in the store. It was either sales or payroll. I can't really remember which one was the issue on that day. Unfortunately, my role in the store had become that whipping person. Therefore, on this day, I was in the store director's office getting colorfully screamed at for the issues within the meat department. This was a memorable moment for me because I was in a situation where I didn't know how to respond. I wasn't aware of the issues that were happening and I had no solution for how this other department should change what was being done. I was still quite young, especially as a leadership role, and I had never experienced this type of management style. What was my role in this scenario? How did I or could I help solve the challenge? Do good leaders do this to motivate their team, or did they use this style of leadership to train younger managers on how to be more adept at the full operations of the store, I don't know.
Speaker 1Several months later, a front-end manager position became available at a brand new location that was not yet open. I reached out to the district supervisor I used to work with and expressed my interest in the role. She chatted with me about the store and the conversation went very well. Unfortunately, this coincided with an incident that took place during our store's total store inventory place. During our store's total store inventory, during inventory, with this challenging manager that I had, I took a break from counting to go to the restroom. As I exited the restroom, one of the front end managers with whom I had previously partnered was covering the operator's desk while the operator was taking their lunch. This manager stopped me and asked me a question about the phone system that she was using. As I was answering her, the store director saw me talking at the desk. Instead of coming over to inquire what was happening, he proceeded to scream at me from down the hall. While this was bad enough, the more challenging aspect was that the employee break room was between us. Therefore, every employee in the break room clearly heard what was happening in the hall.
Speaker 1I was shocked by this and unsure of what to think about the situation. How should I respond? What do I do? Instead of confronting him right there, I turned and went upstairs to my desk to grab something I needed to continue inventory. I decided I was going to deal with the situation later, when he would have had a chance to calm down and when I would be able to share the details about the question I've been trying to help answer.
Speaker 1Unfortunately, the store director went up the other set of stairs and cornered me at my desk, now nose to nose with me, red in the face and screaming. He let me have it. The other department managers who were upstairs at their desks all grabbed their things and left. Now I was completely alone with the store director. All grabbed their things and left. Now I was completely alone with the store director. Seeing his facial expressions red facial color and screaming, I truly felt like I was about to be punched.
Speaker 1At that moment I didn't say a word. I let him use his various adjectives, his colorful language, all while threatening my job. He knew there was another position open in the company and that I was interested in it, and he started to threaten me. He didn't like the idea of me leaving the store and he suggested that he would fire me before he would allow me to transfer. Once he finished screaming and threatening me, I didn't say a word. I gathered the items I needed for my desk and I walked out of the building and straight to my car. I was done. I couldn't take any more of his verbal assaults. I got to my car, I opened the door and I was about to get in when my mind went to my family. I was married and we were expecting our first child, little girl. I knew at that moment that if I got into my car I would never come back, so I shut the car door and told myself to get back to work. The responsibilities I had for my wife and daughter outweighed the challenges of dealing with this frustrating leader. I soon departed from that store and moved to another location, leaving both the challenging store director and the deli department behind.
Speaker 1After that day and the many challenging experiences over several months with that leader, I vowed that my leadership style would look nothing like what I had been subjected to. I vowed that my leadership style would look nothing like what I had been subjected to. I would do my best to treat people with respect. I would talk to them in the way I wanted to be spoken to, and I would challenge others when they created hostile environments. I would realize that each person should be held accountable for only what was in their control, and I would fully understand the situation before rushing to inaccurate judgments. Finally, I learned to always ask questions and be open to hearing the answers.
Speaker 1Now, thinking about a challenging manager you may have had in your career, what lessons can you take from those moments? How have they impacted you and what will you do differently for your team? Each person we work for provides us with an opportunity to learn what we want to emulate and what we want to avoid. Take the time to look back on each leader you've worked for during your career and map out the emulate and avoid characteristics you experienced. Which ones are you bringing to your team? The other thing that I wanted to talk through was really learning God's pull and the decisions that changed my life because of listening to Him.
Speaker 1Now, over the course of your life, what key decisions have you made that have impacted the direction of your life or career? What factors have influenced your decisions in those moments? Were they driven by guidance you received from a friend or loved one? Were the decisions influenced by experience, or was there an element of faith or belief in God that helped you determine your next steps? My faith has played a large role in my life and the decisions that I have made over time. While I often don't realize the full impact in that moment, looking back, I am always amazed at the guidance and direction that God provides when I'm open to hearing His guidance. So I want to talk about one of those key moments in my life when I felt like God gave me clear direction about what I needed to do. Without this moment, I know that I would not be where I am today. This one moment truly defined where I would be and what I would become in my career. Additionally, I want to talk about a deeply personal moment in my life when the leader basically told me that I wouldn't amount to anything in my career until I lost weight. The shock of that moment drove me, but it has also been the catalyst for a long-term distrust of others.
Speaker 1With my wife and I's first child about to be born, I came to the realization that management in a grocery store was not really the ideal scenario for our family. At this point, I had grand opened another store location. I was working back on the front end. This resulted in a mix of work shifts each week, bouncing between first and second shifts and, on many occasions, a partial third shift just to cover call-outs within the team. Therefore, it was time to see what I could find for work with a more standardized schedule. This was when I learned about the brokerage world of the consumer packaged goods industry. After working in the stores for many years, I knew we had vendors who came into the stores for various reasons. However, I didn't fully understand or appreciate what the vendors did while they were in the store until I learned more about the brokerage industry. The brokerage industry sits between the product manufacturer and the retailer. These companies often represent manufacturers across multiple disciplines, from selling new items to performance analytics, to order management and a variety of other areas. Brokers also have retail teams that help ensure items are on the shelf or the displays are on the sales floor for customers to shop.
Speaker 1Through a former co-worker and family friend, I learned that there was an opening in a national brokerage firm that could potentially fit my skill set, so I applied to the role. After the interview process, I was offered a job as an administrative assistant within the health and beauty department focusing on retail reporting. It was a pay cut for my store manager position, but my wife and I both felt like this was a good move. We made peace with the decision and we would make the finances work despite the reduction in pay. What I later came to realize was that I would not have had the career I have today, nor would I have been able to provide for my family to the level that I have been able to all these years, had I not taken that administrative assistant role. God was leading my steps, but I didn't fully realize this until later.
Speaker 1Once in the new job at the brokerage firm, I learned a completely new aspect of the grocery business I hadn't known existed. I worked diligently in my position to complete my work to the best of my ability, quickly learning that what was described as a full-time job during the interview process was nowhere near the amount of work the company had estimated. So I made the decision to ask for more work. This was also a key inflection point. Asking the company for additional responsibilities within my current role allowed me to dive into another aspect of the grocery industry. I'd known little about contracts and deductions. The brokerage company taught me how this process worked and how to be effective at writing these key documents, and they provided me with the insight that very few people are truly as detail-oriented as they should be. I got the opportunity to learn a great lesson on the importance of details from working on a very large manufacturer of kitchen gadgets. I took responsibility for both contracts and deductions on this large kitchen gadget manufacturer's account.
Speaker 1As I was getting into the details of the client, I realized that we were receiving multiple shipping holds on our orders because pricing was incorrect on the purchase order from the customer, so I requested updated price lists from the client to resolve the issues with the customer. This was where things got interesting. I found that not only did the customer have some incorrect pricing, but both my company and the manufacturer themselves had incorrect pricing listed for various items. I realized that the person working on the line before me had overridden price discrepancies to ensure orders would ship when needed, but she had not corrected the actual issue, which created multiple other challenges for both the customer and the manufacturer. After reviewing all three pricing lists, I determined the correct price for each item and submitted paperwork to both the customer and the manufacturer to update pricing on all sides. Once processed, my order started to flow with no issues.
Speaker 1Shortly after I resolved the issues, I received an email that the customer's buyer wanted us to meet with him at their offices to discuss. We arrived at the buyer's office and took our seats. Understandably, the buyer was quite upset with my client over the various issues that had been occurring. The buyer looked at my client and said you need to thank him, as he was pointing to me, because without the work he has done in correcting all of these issues, you would be discontinued from our stores. I was shocked by the call out, but also proud of what I had been able to accomplish for my client.
Speaker 1Key lesson learned be in the details. I had been able to accomplish for my client. Key lesson learned be in the details. My co-worker had previously been responsible for the client had not taken the time to understand or ensure that the key information had been correct, which had caused major challenges. If that person and our client had put in the effort to be in the details, the customer would not have had the major issues that they had with receiving products like they were experiencing. While you do not want to get stuck in the details, you should be familiar enough to fully understand and have confidence that the information you are relying on is accurate. The situation with the kitchen gadget manufacturer and other key work responsibilities allowed me to shine in my first role at the brokerage firm. I received raises when the company said they were frozen and I had strong client relationships by being willing to dive into those key details and nuances that others would often overlook. It was a fun and educational role, but I desired more.
Speaker 1Another aspect of the brokerage industry I didn't know existed was a department called category management. The category management team was responsible for analyzing data for the manufacturers at the retailer level determine what items should be on the shelves, what items should be on display, which promotions were truly effective, who was buying the products, how the shelves in the store should be arranged, and so on. I was fascinated. I'd always loved puzzles and the category management team was basically overseeing one giant puzzle. I think my fondness for puzzles came from my time as a kid. I remember being at my grandmother's house, ma'am, and helping her put together puzzles at the kitchen table. She loved them and I think this rubbed off on me more than I initially realized. Therefore, I had a need to understand more. To the company's credit. They allowed me to spend time shadowing the category team. I saw firsthand what the category team did on a regular basis and how they brought all the information to life for their key stakeholders. I was hooked.
Speaker 1After working in the administrative assistant role for almost two years, I decided that I wanted to try and get into category management. What I didn't realize was how many obstacles I would have to face in trying to do this. One, the company didn't want to set a precedent for moving administrative assistants into analyst roles. There was a traditional belief that administrative assistants didn't have the capability to work in more complex departments. Two, the company didn't want to take a chance on people who didn't have a four-year degree. As I mentioned, my senior year of college didn't quite go as planned and I needed to work to make up that money to go to school, but I hadn't quite done that at this point in time. And finally, the company absolutely did not want someone calling on a manufacturer or retailer who looked like me. The latter challenge would be made very clear to me in the months ahead.
Speaker 1Once a position opened in the category management department for an analyst role, I applied, the interviews went very well and I was already an employee of the company, I felt like I had a great shot of getting the role. Unfortunately, the hiring manager had no intention of allowing me to take the role in his department. Therefore, I was informed that I didn't get the role. There was no clear reason provided as to why I had not been offered the position, but I soon found out from his manager what the issue truly was with my candidacy. Within a week of being told that I did not get the position, the hiring manager's boss pulled me into an empty office to have a chat with me. Looking back, I appreciate the openness his senior leader had with me. Unfortunately, I did not have this appreciation at that time.
Speaker 1I had to learn over the years to try and let some bitterness go from the conversation that happened that day. Behind a closed door in a spare office near my cubicle, our office's senior leader informed me that my background was strong and that I would be a good fit for the role, but if I continued to look the way that I did, I would never get the job. He informed me that some people just couldn't bring themselves to read the book if the cover wasn't appealing. Did he just tell me what I think he did. Did he just tell me that my career would be determined by whether I could lose weight? I was shocked. The only thing I could bring myself to say was I understand. I felt gutted and betrayed. Why had I been working so hard in my roles at the company if the only thing that would determine my future was how I looked? The shock turned into anger, and the anger turned into bitterness. I would hold on to the latter for many years. However, the anger resulted in a weight loss journey I truly needed. I lost about 120 pounds over the course of the next 12 months. Sadly, but exciting too, I got promoted the same day. I hit the mark of having lost 100 pounds During my weight loss journey.
Speaker 1I was sitting at my desk at work, feeling miserable about the missed opportunity and the administrative work I was doing. When I felt a tug inside me to go back to school, I felt like something inside me was screaming. Why are you sitting here? Why don't you call the college and see what it would take to graduate that point in my life? I'd been out of college for several years and I wasn't sure what would be required to finalize my bachelor's degree. I was fearful about how many classes I would need to retake since it had been so long. So I reached out to the university and set up an appointment. I was able to connect with a counselor at the university relatively quickly. She pulled up my record and informed me that the only thing I would need to do would be to retake and pass two classes that I had failed due to my medical issues. So my wife and I made the decision that it was time for me to go back to school.
Speaker 1The challenge we both worked full-time, we had a young daughter and we had another child on the way. My wife, to her credit, said that I should absolutely do it and that we would figure it out later. A few weeks later, we drove over an hour from our home to the campus to finalize my registration and get the necessary materials. I will never forget the trip to campus with my pregnant wife and almost two-year-old daughter. We entered the registrar's office and approached the desk. I informed the woman behind the desk what I needed and she pulled up my information on her screen. She looked at the information and said I see, here, you are a non-traditional student.
Speaker 1Now, while most of the sentence was stated at that normal volume. That non-traditional adjective was spoken at a whisper, I couldn't help but laugh, and my wife and I still find a bunch of amusement in it to this day. A 26-year-old guy with his pregnant wife and soon-to-be 2-year-old daughter finalizing his college class registration Yep, that sounded like a non-traditional student to me, and I wore that label with honor. Actually, I still do. I achieved a 4.0 GPA and I worked hard for it. I maintained a full-time position at the brokerage firm, attended night classes over an hour from home two times a week, attended our doctor's appointments for our soon-to-be-born son and helped raise our young daughter. However, I look back on that time with a ton of fond memories. I only hope that I was able to show my kids that, no matter what happens in life, you can do anything you put your mind to. I hope they can realize that if they find themselves in a position or situation that they're not happy with, they have the power to change it. Now, while the classes didn't teach me anything about my current career, they were what was needed to get my diploma.
Speaker 1This piece of paper would open more doors for me in the coming years that would have otherwise been closed to me and I wouldn't have had that paper had I not been open to feeling God's pull. Understanding when he is leading and being willing to step out on faith to undertake the challenges he lays out for us are critical keys to growth. Be sensitive to His pull and be open to doing what is required of you to make it happen. It will be worth it. Finally, don't let others' opinions of you keep you from pursuing a dream. You can do anything you put your mind to if you are willing to work to get it. There will always be people who will judge a book by its cover rather than taking the time to understand the real person, but those people aren't worth your time and talent. I still deal with these perceptions today as I continue to struggle with my weight, but I remind myself regularly that I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me.
Speaker 1Now let's talk about the leadership lens and how experiences shape the approach to leadership, decision-making and mentorship, and there are two key areas that I wanted to talk through, and that was a manager that I had and how she worked with me. Her name was Lynn, her impact on my career and the way that she mentored and coached me and what I learned from that. But then the second one is the impact of leadership coaching on my career and what that meant to me in a moment in my career where things felt a little stagnant. So let's talk about Lynn's impact. First, having lost over 120 pounds in weight, I was permitted the opportunity to join the category management team with the brokerage firm. Now, on the category team, I had an incredible boss named Lynn. Fortunately, lynn, she was not the manager who had blocked my initial attempt to enter the department, while the other manager did have to see me every day. Lynn was incredibly supportive and challenged me in ways that stretched my skills. One of her leadership tactics that stuck with me throughout my career was how she interacted with me and helped me build the skill sets I needed in the future. Lynn was very good at understanding her team and tailoring her management style to meet each team member's needs. I like to believe that Lynn saw something in me that made her push my skills in a unique way.
Speaker 1Lynn lived over an hour from the office and often used her drive to think about the day and the various questions she had about each client's business needs. She was excellent at thinking through potential data. We would need to build a solid strategy for our clients, and several times per week she would call my desk line on her way home to leave me a voicemail with her thoughts. This became something I looked forward to each morning. I would come into the office each morning anxious to see if my voicemail light was on, because I knew who the message would be from and what type of message it would be. Lynn's voicemails were generally a couple minutes long detailing her thoughts for the day. I took detailed notes and dived in. Utilizing Lynn's notes, I ran various reports and researched her various hypotheses. It became a fun challenge. Each time she left me a voicemail, will I be able to answer her questions? Can I prove or disprove her various ideas? I would spend the day researching and would often end up in her office later in the afternoon to walk her through the findings. We built a fun working relationship of learning the business while sharpening my analytics skills at the same time.
Speaker 1One of the other parts of the category management's job was presenting to retailers and not only showcasing the findings of our various research topics, but also helping the retailer to determine the next steps for their category. My role in this process was to arm Lynn with the data that she would present with our client to the retailer's buyer. I had a strong desire to be involved with the presentations, but our company's senior leadership was skeptical of my ability, having never seen me present. The message was shared with me that I needed to join a presentation group or take classes from Dale Carnegie outside of work to help me get better with the skill set. To Lynn's credit, she was confused by this feedback as much as I was, since she had also never had the opportunity to see me officially present anything. While she shared the feedback with me so that I would be aware of the perceptions from our leadership team, she was determined to help me showcase what I could do. Lynn started taking me to retailer meetings and allowed me to help answer questions about the data, and she eventually provided me with the opportunity to present a slide or two of data directly to the retailer. The first time Lynn gave me the opportunity to present to the retailer, the presentation went very well and the retailer was quite engaged with me during the discussion. After I presented my portion and the conversation moved to another meeting attendee, lynn leaned over and whispered Dale Carnegie. I had to keep a straight face in the meeting, which was a challenge because I found her comment to be quite amusing. Afterward, lynn provided me with the good feedback on the meeting and reiterated her feeling that I did not need to pursue official presentation training, as had been recommended by our senior leadership team.
Leadership Coaching Impact
Speaker 1I enjoyed my time on Lynn's team and learned quite a bit while in the role. Some key lessons for leadership that I took away from this time in my career were ensuring that I supported my team members and provided them with the opportunities to learn through doing and ensuring that I pushed to control the narratives about my team to the leadership above me. The other topic that I push to control the narratives about my team to the leadership above me. The other topic that I wanted to talk about in this section is the impact of leadership coaching Over the course of your career. Have you ever considered externally sourced coaching, or has all your coaching and mentoring been from those inside your organization?
Speaker 1I found myself desiring more understanding of my capabilities as a leader and how I could shape my skills to further impact both my organization and my career path. While my company offered a 360-degree feedback process I could use, it was run by the HR department and results were shared within the leadership team. Therefore, all participants in the process were contacted by HR, with their input being captured by people who knew them. Although this process may work for some, I wanted a different experience. I wanted the ability for my participants to have a fully anonymous feedback loop to me, a process where the participants did not know the person collecting the data and where they felt secure, knowing that what they shared could never have an impact on them at all. For me, I wanted an unbiased moderator to avoid any industry spin or influence on the results that would be shared with me. Here I want to talk about the details about my process with executive coaching and the influence that it had on both my career and thought processes during key scenarios.
Speaker 1When I started my leadership coaching journey, I was at a different point in my career. Much later in my career, and I found myself with a direct leader that I absolutely loved working for, but I found in moments when I would ask for feedback on what else I should be doing to increase my influence, I would generally get keep doing what you're doing. Now. While I enjoyed working for him, I did need more, so I made the decision to approach an executive coach outside of the company. She was a tremendous person who had extensive experience with coaching leaders and helping others identify their strengths. Her first recommendation was to have a 360 degree feedback process completed so that we would have a starting point For my 360 degree process. I gave her 15 names of various people both inside and outside the company. This included a mix of people above me, at the same level as myself, and those whom I had or was currently managing.
Speaker 1I will give you a warning If you are not open to diving deep into others' perceptions of you, you a warning If you are not open to diving deep into others' perceptions of you, then this type of process is not for you. A 360-degree feedback process can be very challenging. By having my coach interact with these contacts in one-on-one conversations with a promise of anonymity, full transparency was achieved. If you don't go into this process understanding that there will be highly critical feedback of you, then you could be very hurt by the emotionally taxing process. Now, once my coach completed all 15 of the interviews, she compiled them into larger bucketed themes and we connected in person to review her binder of quotes.
Speaker 1We started the in-person review process with me reading the first section, highlighting areas that I agreed or disagreed with and then discussing what I had read in each of the sections. While I was reading each section, I would see my coach sitting across the table on occasion, bending down a bit and checking to see how I was doing. I may have surprised her a bit, because I was not having any feelings of hurt or bitterness towards the harder comments that I was reading, but rather I was excited In this moment. I was so excited to get exposure to the opportunities that any other potential emotions took a back seat. I almost felt free. I felt like I was being given permission to do things in the company where I had been holding myself back. It was a very liberating process for me.
Speaker 1Coming out of this meeting with my coach, I had some solid themes I could build on. I learned that I needed to engage in intentional vocalization. I needed to push my agenda within the company, I had to embrace the unknown aspects of the business and I needed to create and commercialize my personal brand. So what did these mean and how did they shift others' perceptions of me over time? Intentional vocalization was my personal branding of a speak-up mentality. There was a perception by others that when, in larger meetings, I was either uninterested in the topic at hand, not paying attention, or that I lacked the experience to engage. It was a bit surprising to me that what I perceived as meeting etiquette was being thought of in this way.
Speaker 1Within meetings, I had always held myself to the rule of thumb that I would speak when something needed to be said. If others had already made the point, I was not going to interject or repeat myself just so that they could hear me speak. This was a mistake. While I maintained my effort to avoid duplicative commentary, I started to ensure that I added on to the main thoughts or points I agreed with in the meeting. If I left a meeting without saying anything during the body of the session, I would have failed at my goal. Therefore, I began to intentionally look for ways to interact with others in meetings. While to me this felt like a minor shift, the feedback after six months was very positive. Additionally, I found myself better prepared for meetings, as I often spent time pre-gaming the topics to see how else I could engage. This started to impact my confidence in very positive ways.
Speaker 1The second theme from my coaching time was to push the agenda of the organization to include my priorities as a leader. I had very clear goals for my personal team and the broader department, but I had been waiting for permission to pursue them. I had been waiting for an official go-ahead from my leadership team, but I needed to view my hiring into the position as my green light. If the leadership team didn't believe that I could handle what needed to be done or didn't believe in my vision, they wouldn't have put me in the position in the first place. So I started to be bolder in my decision making and intercompany interactions. I set up meetings with key stakeholders to talk through key topics and showcase why we needed to adjust what we were doing. I actively started working to build the network of support for changes that I wanted to enact. This also went over quite well with the team. Over the next six months, not only did I engage and develop a support group for my changes, but the feedback went from a desire for me to push the agenda to a desire for me to ensure I close the loop on my ideas and changes. They were bought in and now they wanted to see how they would turn out. Embracing the unknown was born from feedback that, while I was very well known and regarded.
Speaker 1In my half of the company sales. The other half, marketing was hit or miss. There were some contacts in the marketing organization with whom I had engaged and gotten to know, but there were many more that I needed to influence. To fully enact my vision, I needed to embrace this challenge and start connecting more deeply with key contacts on the marketing side of the business. One of the ways I tackled this was through the consumer insights group within marketing. Since I worked in shopper reporting through sales, the consumer insights group reporting through marketing was a separate silo I needed to penetrate. So I began to actively engage with some of the key contacts on the consumer insights team. I connected with them a few times a year to try and share ideas and come up with better ways of working together. But there was always a hurdle there. It started to feel a little like running into a wall. I needed to change tactics if I was gonna be successful.
Speaker 1As time progressed, a need for understanding during COVID handed me a golden opportunity for integration. Before everything shut down in the country, I started compiling a plan of learning. I worked with our team to understand what they would want to know and how this could impact shopping. Additionally, we laid out plans for where we could source this information. I used this plan to start aligning with the consumer group. I wanted to understand what their needs would be and how they would go about obtaining the data. As it turned out, the week we aligned on all the topics and sources, the world changed. We finalized our plans on Thursday and by Saturday the US was in shutdown mode. Now, since we had a roadmap in place, we enacted it immediately and got working on gathering the needed information. Within days, we were learning about what we needed to do in the marketplace. Within weeks, the shopper and consumer teams were working deeply together to drive business knowledge and next steps. A year later, we looked back at what we'd predicted for the business in those first couple of weeks and we found that we had been incredibly accurate. We'd shifted how we worked and it had resulted in great collaboration. Additionally, the information we were compiling was leading in the marketplace. Our key stakeholders in the company were able to give what we were learning to their customers and we were quickly getting invited to larger engagement sessions that would help shape the business and our relationships.
Speaker 1My final pillar to pursue from my executive coaching time was to create and commercialize my personal brand. This one took me some time to put together. I needed to really ensure that I understood how I wanted to be perceived in the organization and how I wanted people to think of me when I was not in the room, so I leaned on what I thoroughly enjoyed doing and areas that gave me strength when I was engaging with them. The key theme I wanted people to remember about me was that I coached and developed others through challenging situations to help surprise and delight their key stakeholders. The pillars of the brand I wanted to relay included people thinking about my ability to fix broken processes, my skills in distilling complex information into understandable pieces, my focus on strategic change, my role as a credible source of information that was trustworthy and consistent, and my ability to often surprise and delight others with the information they were being provided. After creating my branding, my coach started to pressure test it among the same folks who had provided the 360 feedback, and their response was overwhelming to me. While I did not get to relay my brand directly to those coworkers, the quotes I received were, in some respects, validation that I was doing the right things. Some of the comments were these are spot on and he's always, always, always done this. This was exciting for me as I could continue to use this as a blueprint for years to come.
Speaker 1From the branding work I completed, the Mr Fix-It label stuck with me. My senior leadership contact, seeing the impact I was having within my role, asked me to connect with him directly about a key topic. So it turned out there were some challenges within one of the budgets he was influencing. He needed someone to dive into the key details and determine the next steps to resolve the issues being experienced. I agreed to jump in and I would report back once I had completed my review. I spent several weeks gathering information, communicating with the budget holders and gaining insights into the line items.
Speaker 1This budget turned out to be a very complex piece of work. Not only were there millions of dollars in line items included, but there were also multiple parts of the organization responsible for funding and approving the key pieces. This budget needed more people resources to manage it, and it needed a well-documented process for how it should be managed. Each year, I reported back on the findings and what the needs were in a clear and concise manner to manage it, and it needed a well-documented process for how it should be managed. Each year, I reported back on the findings and what the needs were in a clear and concise manner, thinking that my portion of this would be over after my report. However, the assumption proved to be incorrect.
Speaker 1Upon completion of the meeting to review the process, recommendations and key findings, I was told that the plan sounded great and that I should let him know what I needed to implement it as I moved forward with ownership of the budget. I was quite that the plan sounded great and that I should let him know what I needed to implement it as I moved forward with ownership of the budget. I was quite surprised by the assignment of ownership, but I was also looking forward to getting my hands into a new area of business that was more closely aligned with my college degree in accounting. While challenging, this was a great opportunity for me to learn even more about the business and capabilities within the marketplace, and it proved to be quite valuable to me personally over the next two years After my executive coaching process ended. I saw great success at work. I was learning a lot of new things, but I was also seeing the positive impacts from the changes I was making Unfortunately, an upcoming organizational leadership overhaul in my personal health emergency permanently changed my path within this company. The impact of executive coaching process was immediate and long lasting on my career and I highly recommend this to anyone in a leadership position.
Speaker 1However, don't do it unless you are 100% ready to hear the outcome. Finally, if you are a leader of leaders, do not force your team to undergo a 360-degree feedback process unless they are ready to receive feedback. Forcing a leader to undergo the process can backfire. If forced, the leader will be unlikely to listen to the feedback and the team members who provided the feedback won't see any change. This can result in resentment from the leader who was forced and low morale among those who participated.
Speaker 1Now let's talk about some rapid reflections, and this section is meant to be a fast-paced Q&A with other leaders when I have them on board for our future episodes on lessons that they've learned, some of their biggest failures that they've had, mentors that they've had or any advice to their younger selves. I want to do three of them A biggest failure, mentoring others, and then advice to my younger self. Let's talk about biggest failures. I have definitely had many of these in my life and I would say one of those goes back to a time when we were living in Colorado and I was laid off from an organization and decided to move back to Ohio to find a job relatively quickly. In order to do that, I moved before my family did, and in order to what we thought would be helpful for the kids of giving them some more time with school to finish it out their last month of school, I went ahead and moved and my wife and kids stayed behind in Colorado for their last month of school. Unfortunately, I allowed the organization to dictate what my travel would look like and I missed very key events for my kids during that time frame and they were very young and that's something I will never do again and something I can never get back as a father. So that was probably my biggest failure was allowing the organization to dictate my time to the degree that I missed those moments with my family.
Speaker 1That is something that your family should always come first, and something that I've always prioritized for my team members is to make sure that they are prioritizing the things outside of work over work, and you should be doing the same thing for your team as well. The second one is mentoring others, and one of the things that I have learned throughout my life is how to be a better communicator and presenter and how to help others think through that process. And one thing that I typically give to my mentees when they're asking me about communication and how can they be better presenters within their everyday life, for work, I always talk to them about there's resources that they can take. You can go to class, you can join groups like a Dale Carnegie to learn to better present. But there's also free things that you can go do that are actually very eye-opening.
Speaker 1Really, look at local government meetings, whether that be a school board, whether that be a township or a city meeting. Go visit one of those meetings and watch how those folks on that board interact with the public. How are they communicating what their desires are for the city or the school, whatever it is? How are they getting their points across? How are they communicating and how is that public? How are that? How is that audience receiving those points? Are they receiving them in a good way? Are they being influenced by that person that's on that board? Go watch how that communication is coming to life, because you can learn a lot from that. I actually ran my own campaign many years ago for a seat as a township trustee, had to go through debates, had to go to a session with the newspaper to determine who they were going to endorse within the race. Going through those scenarios of being forced in front of people and doing debates and these other things is very valuable to really learn how should you communicate, what's going to make you more effective at getting your ideas across and what's going to make you more powerful as far as influencing them to do the things that you need them to do. So when I'm talking through again mentees, when I think about better communicators and presenters, utilize those local government or local school meetings to really get a good understanding of what works and what doesn't.
Speaker 1Finally, advice to younger self Mine is definitely to make more connections sooner. That value of networking that is something that, unfortunately, I didn't learn until later in life is that the value of networking is so incredible, and what I mean by that is the good portion of roles that I've had in my career. I'd say about four or five that I've done I actually never applied for and it was because either the hiring manager or somebody within that orbit of the organization knew me, knew what I could do, and reached out and asked me to consider taking the role. Having those network connections, having those people that you can rely on and talk to and that know you, those can really progress and get you into your career much more than what you can even do on your own. Learning that sooner would have been very helpful for me.
Speaker 1So let's close out this first episode and talk about what's coming. So, as we wrap up this inaugural episode of Life and Leadership Stories, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for listening, thank you for showing up for your own growth. If my story resonated with you, I hope you'll come back for future episodes and hear from other leaders. I'll be bringing on some amazing guests, leaders with grit, stories and wisdom that could help you on your own path. If this episode inspired you, share it with someone who needs encouragement today. And remember trust your gut, be kind, lead with purpose and never underestimate your impact. Until next time, I'm Nathaniel Norker and this is Life in Leadership Stories. Thank you.