Talent be damned, the discipline and consistency in my work was building momentum as well. Around the same time Cindy and I were making all those plans, I was invited to serve on an all hourly steering team overseeing a new behavior-based safety initiative I had been volun-told to participate in. While I won’t pretend I was overly interested in the actual safety aspects of the process, I was indeed interested in any opportunity I could find to learn anything that could provide me with the slightest leg up as I looked for the next step in my career. And truth be told, I really didn’t care what direction it led as long as there was a potential increase in pay. I had interacted with Terry Ward through his portion of the initial behavior-based safety observer training and on occasion as he walked by the press I operated, often calling me out for doing things that put me at risk of injury, but serving on that steering team is where he truly became a mentor.

Before moving on, I’ll share that I still found opportunities to engage in occasional nonsense. Moving in with Cindy and doing all we could to plan our future together made those scenarios fewer and farther between.

In November or ‘99, we moved into what we thought would be a decent starter home. (We’ve lived there ever since…) Cindy and I were both in straight first daylight roles at that point, and we had decent salaries - considering neither of us had finished college. That said, we were both beginning to look for whatever resources we could get our hands on to open new doors. And believe it or not, I was loosely considering enrolling in college courses again.

To the casual observer, our personal and professional lives were gaining ground. That, though, was the mirage of early momentum. At face value, we were in a “steady” phase, but (at least speaking for me) some lingering habits were creating invisible drag. Early career “stability” often hides unresolved issues; recognizing the mirage is the first step to pulling leadership lessons from impending adversity. Before I share how my high hopes hit reality, I want you to reflect on one area of your current career or life where things feel “on track” but might be masking a deeper issue, then note one potential warning sign and one small check-in action for the week that follows.

When High Hopes Hit Reality

Late ‘99 and early ‘00 was, at least to that point, the busiest period of our lives. We had just moved into our new home on two and a half acres of recently subdivided farm land so there was a tremendous amount of work to do there. I was picking up any side work I could find, carpentering and picking apples for Cindy’s dad, because there’s never enough money when you’re starting out. Oh, and we were planning a wedding - which also requires money. Then there was work.

Both of our jobs were going as well as we had ever experienced. Since Cindy will tell her part of the story far better than I ever could, I’ll stick with mine. I was rolling right along in my regular role, churning out parts like nobody’s business. I don’t remember exactly when it happened, but somewhere along the line everything clicked and I went from working my tail off to meet the minimum productivity expectation to blowing it out of the water every day without thinking about it. I had also gotten far more involved in the behavior-based safety process, specifically through the steering team. I was (kind of) helping in some of the training sessions held for new observers and I occasionally attempted to lend a hand with the data entry required from all the observations being done across the facility. 

My involvement in that steering team provided me with the opportunity to interact regularly with Terry and the process facilitator, Dennis Nicholas. When the initiative was launched from the corporate level, each facility selected someone with a strong management background to ensure there was some chance of sustainability; the company-wide implementation was the largest the third party provider had ever done and the investment was significant. While everyone else on the steering team other than Dennis and Terry was hourly employees like me, I was by far the youngest. With it being a peer-to-peer initiative, this turned out to be a tremendous opportunity for me to learn from a great group of folks with much more life (and leadership) experience than me. And it became the catalyst for receiving direct mentorship from both Dennis and Terry.

That said, it wasn’t long until Dennis accepted a position managing a small just-in-time production facility, still within the company but halfway across the company - near where he had moved to the Shenandoah Valley from just a few years prior. As much as I (selfishly) didn’t want to see him go, I was happy for him and saw it as an opportunity to throw my name in the hat to be considered for filling the facilitator position he was stepping away from. Although I was indeed the youngest member of the steering team, I had quickly become the most involved hourly member and the only one actively looking for career growth opportunities - whether I was ready for them or not.

While I was showing signs of early career stability, that was hiding a few issues I had not yet resolved - or even acknowledged. My early momentum was indeed a mirage. I went into the interview feeling like I had the position in the bag. When high hopes hit reality, though, we’ll have to make a decision. Often, bad situations expose flaws we ignore in comfortable routines, but facing the pain head-on reveals the first seeds of growth. To have the slightest shot of doing anything with those seeds, we’ll need to own the role we play in our failures. We’ll look at that next. Until then, think about a rejection or setback you’ve experienced. Write down the immediate emotional reaction and one blind spot it highlighted.

Owning the Role in Our Own Failures

I’ll be completely transparent here, the only things I had going for me leading up to that interview for the behavior-based safety facilitator role was that I was willing to work hard and I had been actively involved in a few aspects of the process. I hadn’t touched a textbook since high school, and barely did then. While I was present for pieces of the new observer training, I contributed very little to the actual delivery. I had some very limited exposure to entering data from the observations that served as the backbone of the process, but that was only in a controlled environment where I could wreck the program; my exposure to computers at that point was almost non-existent. Oh, I had zero experience interviewing for a position that required anything more than physical effort. I went into the interview confident, but saying that confidence was ill-founded is quite the understatement.

I don’t remember bombing the interview, but I didn’t know what I didn’t know at that point. I’ll spare you the details, I barely remember them myself, but I was not offered the position. To my surprise, a fellow from the same department as me was. He had been through the initial observer training but hadn't really been involved since. Where he had a leg up, though, was having completed an associate’s degree and moving into an off-shift supervisory role a year or so before interviewing for this position. He had significantly more exposure to computers and had been interacting with a wider range of management team members daily.

I won’t kid you, him being offered a role to lead a process that he had limited familiarity with and almost no involvement in kinda pissed me off. At the time, I thought the primary qualification for supervising others was having expertise in the work being done. (We’ll look at that more later.) I can’t recall every aspect of what followed, that was more than twenty-five years ago. Not only has a lot transpired since, I was still engaging in the occasional liquid refreshment in those days so there are more than a few foggy spots.

Regardless, I have a very clear recollection of soliciting feedback from Terry and Dennis on how I could perform better in future interviews. To this day, I’m not sure if I shared my frustration about the other guy being offered the position with either of them. What I am sure of is that both gave me feedback that would help me not only interview more effectively, but on steps I could take to be more prepared for any aspect of the next position I had interest in well before being offered an interview. Their feedback served as some of the most significant seeds I’ve ever found from adversity, seeds that have provided far greater benefit than that position could have at the time - and I’ve experienced that benefit ever since.

Before going any further, I’ll share that I was never angry with the guy who was offered the position. He and I had always gotten along well before that and we have ever since. That undoubtedly played a key role in some of the decisions I made moving forward and we’ll work through those next. The reality, though, was the feedback I received from Terry and Dennis forced me to take yet another look in the mirror. The true pain in bad situations isn’t the failure - it’s knowing we contributed to; owning that unlocks seeds of personal responsibility and resilience. For now, I’ll challenge you to take a few minutes to list a recent stumble and honestly note your role in it. What’s one lesson it offers? What’s one seed of equal or greater benefit that will require nurturing?