The Role of Mentors in Closing the Leadership Gap

If I’m being completely honest, I didn’t like Terry Ward very much when I first met him. The limited interaction I had prior to his portion of the behavior-based safety observer training was adversarial at best and I thought his delivery as a trainer was incredibly annoying. Looking back, I know my opinion of both was heavily influenced by a few grumpy bastards that I worked directly with, none of which were interested in anything resembling career growth or had the slightest bit of desire to provide me with anything that could help me move forward. Once I had the chance to interact with him more regularly when I was invited to be part of the process’s steering committee, I quickly learned how passionate he was about making a positive impact. While his approach initially ruffled my feathers, the process facilitator explained to me that not everyone was as laid back as I was used to, having never really ventured out of the sleepy Shenandoah Valley much to that point. Once I got over myself, I realized how much value he offered any group he was a part of just through being willing to speak up even when his input went against the grain; I had seen far too many people stay quiet in meetings then bitch about something later on that they could have made an impact on had they spoken up.

Around the same time I started interacting with Terry more regularly, I had also started to read books and magazines focused on business and professional development. I learned to read early in elementary school but I only recall reading one book cover-to-cover by the time I graduated high school. I’ve always struggled to sit still, which has yet to change, and I had no interest whatsoever in doing so to read some random story that I couldn’t apply immediately in my own life - that’s what TV and movies are for… As I started digging into books by people like Napoleon Hill, Dale Carnegie, Stephen Covey, and John C. Maxwell, a whole new world opened up. I stopped registering for classes at the community college I was enrolled with just after I turned twenty, largely because English Comp was the next one on my list. I pictured that as being a semester of force-fed literary study and death by a thousand grammatical corrections. I had no interest in either. But what I was picking up from this newly found genre of books filled a hole I didn’t even know I had.

Make no mistake, I was far from being on a fast track to anything at that point, but just that initial exposure to voices who were beginning to serve as mentors in different aspects of my life started filling gaps I wasn’t even aware of. Be it through direct conversation with folks like Terry or Dennis (the behavior-based safety process facilitator at the time), or through more broad lessons I was picking up from the books I was reading, I was able to navigate challenges more effectively and I became aware of some blind spots that were between me and my next opportunities. It wasn’t until I understood the value of the (often unsolicited) feedback mentors like Terry offered that I even had a chance at any real professional growth or advancement.

While I accepted the input he was providing, I have to admit that it usually stung. Aside from an occasional beer-induced soapbox rant in front of friends, I had never done anything remotely resembling public speaking and to even say a few words from where I was sitting in a room full of much more tenured coworkers was already way outside my comfort zone. Outside of that feedback, there were a handful of times where I ran into minor issues while doing observation and needed guidance from Dennis and Terry on what I could do to navigate them appropriately. Those were likely more of a bother to those guys at the time, but seemed like mountains for me to climb. Each interaction with them, though, helped build a deeper relationship and showed me that I could trust the input they were willing to share. Had it not been for that, I may never have approached them for feedback after my unsuccessful interview - and I may not have been offered the other position a few months later.

I didn’t have a reporting relationship with either, but they both quickly proved to be colleagues I could trust for input and guidance in my immediate role, for how I could be more effective in that behavior-based safety initiative, and in most anything else I was willing to bring up with them. Soon after Dennis provided me with feedback on how I could present myself better in an interview, he moved to a facility in Missouri where he was offered a plant manager role. The gentleman selected to replace him (instead of me) took over but had very little experience in the actual process. Likely based on suggestions from Terry and Dennis (I truly don’t remember), I opted to do whatever I could to help him be successful in the role rather than bitterly stepping aside. When I was offered a training position in a new Lean Manufacturing initiative just a few months later, I had far more flexibility to help with the observer training. That presented me with even more access to Terry’s alliance feedback, and it provided me with perspective that would be critical in my new role and every role I’ve had since - I just didn’t understand how much I needed it right away.

As excited as I was to be in a position off the manufacturing floor, one that I viewed as the next rung up my career ladder, I didn’t quite comprehend the challenges I’d soon face. As I mentioned, I had just turned twenty-four years old, I was newly married, and I was still one of the youngest people in the facility. Going through the interview process, I perceived this new initiative as something that would be warmly welcomed. The logic behind it was solid so why would anyone push back? Logic be damned, few people ever willingly accept change. And those who do are generally the ones initiating the change. Upsetting the embedded status-quo, having less time on the planet than most of my peers had in their current roles, and the ZERO positional authority I mentioned before presented some significant challenges to work through during my first few months in that position. One of the concepts Terry covered in his segment of the behavior-based safety observer training was crucial in helping me get through it.

Influence, Not Authority, Defines Leadership

Here’s where I found myself: riding high and feeling mean, one of just four people selected to lead the implementation of an exciting new process throughout a nearly one million square foot facility with close to a thousand employees. What an incredible opportunity for a kid who barely graduated high school just a few years prior and had only hit college with a stick since. The executives based just north of Chicago had mandated the initiative so what could possibly go wrong?

What I hadn’t realized (yet), was that this was just another in a long history of initiatives pushed down to the plant level by the powers that be. This newest “flavor of the month” made sense to me but most of the employees I was tasked with helping put it into practice had been privy to such pomp and circumstance many times before, and they were far less impressed than I was. And that doesn’t even factor in their supervisors and managers who were held very accountable to maintaining their current productivity averages and department spending with no consideration for the time and resources I’d be asking for from them. The ZERO positional authority that I’ve already referenced a few times, that just made my exciting new role an even bigger challenge…

The material Terry covered during his segment of the two-day behavior-based safety observer training detailed the role consequences play in how we each decide what actions we’ll take as we perform our required tasks. While I found it only mildly interesting the first time I begrudgingly sat through the training eighteen months prior, I did everything I could to audit the material and study how he delivered it every time I could once I was in my new role. Since part of my responsibility was explaining lean manufacturing concepts to the groups I’d be working with, and I was still all but terrified to speak to a group of my peers from the front of a room, I knew I needed to learn as much as I could from every resource possible. The unintended benefit I got from watching him explain the “A, B, C’s of Behavioral Analysis” was that I developed a deeper appreciation for how influence guides behavior much more effectively than authority. It wasn’t until a year or so later that I first read The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership and became familiar with two of John C. Maxwell’s signature quotes:

• “Leadership is influence. Nothing more, nothing less.”
• “Everything rises and falls on leadership.”

During his segment of that training, Terry shared a scenario where he came into the facility on a day where only a select few of his maintenance team members were working. He just happened to enter through a door right beside where an electrician was working without the required safety glasses. Terry explained that he could have pulled the electrician into his office and administered formal discipline action but he chose to explain the potential injury that could occur instead. As you would expect, the electrician put his safety glasses on and continued working while Terry did what he needed to do and left the building. Less than an hour later, the plant manager came through that same door where the electrician was working, still wearing his safety glasses. If Terry would have used his authority to make sure the electrician put on his glasses - or else - it would have yielded an immediate change in behavior, but likely one that would have resulted in those glasses being tossed aside as soon as Terry left. Had the plant manager been the one to catch the electrician without his safety glasses, he would have insisted on disciplinary action. Since Terry chose to explain the potential risk of injury instead of relying solely on the authority of his position, he earned a level of influence that resulted in safer behavior.

As I watched Terry deliver that message in session after session, I began to realize how influence can achieve long term results, whether we’re there to oversee the process or not, where authority alone generally only drives results if we’re nearby and ready to crack the proverbial whip. If that doesn’t resonate, think about what kids tend to do when they’re unsupervised. To that end, think about what many adults try to get away with when they’re unsupervised! (How fast do you drive when you’re on an interstate and there’s no police cars in sight?)

The idea that consequences influence behavior was groundbreaking for me. Realizing that feedback was indeed a powerful yet seldom used consequence would soon help me more than I could possibly understand at the time. The kicker was that for any feedback to carry much weight, some level of relationship would need to be established. Maxwell’s statement that “Leadership is influence. Nothing more, nothing less,” is spot-on, but that influence is rooted in the relationships we cultivate. And cultivating any relationship requires having the confidence to establish a connection - so we’ll pick up there soon.