Your perspective your choice. Pt.6

Welcome to Leadership Sovereignty. I'm your host Terry Baylor along with Ralph Owens. On today's show, we'll discuss origin stories, the power of VQ, the treasure of connection with mentors and sponsors, who we are versus what we do, and in the end, we always win. Enjoy the show.

As well, I, I think about, Terry, what you said about reinventing yourself. And, one of my mentors so I'm really dating myself here. Back in 1998, I worked for Bank of America. I lived in Virginia at the time. And man, I was maybe 26, 27, something like that.

And, two things happened to me. I met two unique people. One person, and I will not say her name because she may listen to this podcast one day, but she was a little bit older than me. She had been with the bank for a while. And she was very she was an African American lady and she was very crisp and articulate.

And I remember being in a room with her and somewhat being intimidated because I was young. Man, this was like probably yeah. This was my first professional IT job. Right? So, you know, I was just trying to keep up with what was going on in the room.

And there was one moment where I needed to do something in Excel and I was not very proficient at Excel at this time. And I'll never forget after a meeting I was in with this person, she pulled me to the side in the hallway and said, look, you need to learn Excel and you need to get it together and don't ever come in that room like that again. And she didn't know me at that time, but she and I were the only African Americans in that whole department. And it spoke volumes to me. Number one, she treated me like I was her brother.

Right? She didn't talk to me like I was a stranger. She talked to me like I was her little brother. Like, hey, don't come in here again and underrepresent us again.

Right.

I took that very serious. And I made it my business to be the best person who understood Excel around me. And at the time I lived in Virginia, she lived in North Carolina but we still worked for Bank of America. So she would come up for meetings and things of that nature. So I didn't see her all the time, but she made such a tremendous impression on me that it made me feel like, okay, there's a standard I need to live up to.

So therefore I'm gonna work on myself. Right? So that was that was one person who I still am in contact with today. And she's done some phenomenal things in her career. And I think I remind her of this story all the time and I thank her for, you know, grabbing me by my collar and getting me together.

And the other person was when we talk about a mentor, reinventing yourself was I had a boss at that time, at that same job, at the same time frame. Her name was Nancy. Nancy, she was a Caucasian lady, is a Caucasian lady. I didn't feel like she had a technical background, but she was managing a technical team. But she had a very very interesting trait that I had never seen before in anybody.

She could sit in the room and even though she may not have fully understood all the ones and the zeros of the technology, she understood exactly what you were saying and she could repeat it back to you with you know articulation and understanding that you'd be like, woah she just got all of that out of that conversation? And everybody loved working with Nancy, right? So for years I couldn't figure out what was this quality about her that she had that caused her to work so well with everyone. It was like fifteen, twenty years later I realized it was EQ and she had it. I mean she had it like in bucketfuls.

Right? And she knew she had it and she used it. Well, fast forward maybe about two years ago, I just decided to just look her up and see if I could find her on LinkedIn. Now she's a celebrated author. She completely changed her life.

I mean retired from Bank of America, went out to write her own books. Now her books are like Hallmark bestsellers, things of that nature. I reach out to her on her public social channels. She responds back to me and we're able to meet at a book signing that she had here in Houston. And she just told me the story about how she decided to reinvent herself.

That blessed me. It gave me so much insight into what the possibilities are from my own life. Because I kept up with these mentors and these sponsors who really taught me a lot about good leadership. So just wanted to comment on that because I've seen that in my home life many times.

Yeah, Ralph, is again, right? I'm a tie that back to we are not what we do. We're not what we do, man. We are not what we do. Look, that's a part of who you are.

That's a

part of who you are. And I get it, we're the breadwinners. We have a sense of, if we don't get it done, it's not gonna get done. And again, that man is commendable. I feel that way sometimes but I have to remember and remind myself, this job that I do is not who I am, it's what I do.

It's a part of who I am. It's not all that I am.

And

so I believe when we can I believe that's one of the biggest things too that will allow us to be able to take a step back when something on the job doesn't happen as we expect it to happen or want it to happen in the way that we'd like it to happen? It doesn't encompass a 100% of who you are.

Right, that's right. That's right. And being to determine the difference in who you are and what you do is critical because you can get lost in what you do thinking that that's who you are. My wife has had to remind me a few times that, hey, you're not on the job right now. I'm not one of your

employees. Yes, sir. And here's the thing, we understand, high achievers. And I think that's just something that we have to just be aware of, just be aware of that. And when we do, and just again, I'm gonna veer just a little bit.

When we do come home, guys, come on man, we gotta put that down. Put the job down again because that would allow us again, this is all a part of the EQ. If we put it down, then we can replenish, we can refresh, we can revive. But if every waking moment that scenario or that thing or that project is on our minds, granted we understand that there are some projects that are bigger than others and there's a sprint and you're gonna have to get at it for whatever, a couple, two or three weeks, that's understandable. But that can't be the norm.

That's right.

It can't be the norm. Can't So be the Ralph, we've covered man a lot today. I really enjoyed kind of going down memory lane a little bit and really ultimately understanding that there was a victory at the end of this.

Absolutely, we a term that we say in church where we say, God will give you beauty for your ashes. He'll make your scars beautiful. And we can definitely say that we've lived that. Because those scars now are providing life to other people.

That's right.

You don't see it in the moment. You don't see it in the moment. But what's most important is how you handle yourself in those situations. Remember just tree topping some of the overview points. You have to when the situation comes to challenge you, you have to manage your emotions.

You have to get away and allow yourself to be human and process. Right? But you don't have to do that in front of people. You have to be intentional about how you're gonna show up every day. And you have to be open to what other opportunities come your way.

Find you a mentor. Right? Find you a sponsor, someone that you can bounce these ideas off of and how you feel in a safe place so that they can give you some good guidance on, hey, this is how you need to be looking at this situation. This is the way you you need to be processing your emotions as you get through it. Because a lot of times in those moments, they could be career impacting.

Meaning again it could wipe out many years of doing great things if you respond the wrong way. Just wanna give you guys some nuggets man, the things that's helped us over the years. We hope that it's a blessing to you all.

Great stuff, Ralph, man, great show today. I'm inspired as we started off, the gravity and the weight of quite honestly the mission that we've been given here. And I'm glad that it's us. I'm glad that it's us.

Yes, absolutely. Thanks

for joining today everybody.

All right, take care.

Thank you for being with us today on Leadership Sovereignty. Stay connected with us on X, formerly known as Twitter, and on Instagram by searching for Leadership Sovereignty. And just like this podcast, let's all collectively grow as we go. God bless.