Day 15 – What advice would you give a younger you?

Action Steps

Answer this question – How couple you better prepare for the inevitable challenging moments in your life and work?

Session Transcript

Lily: If you can go back in time, what advice would you give the younger you about leadership?

Michael: I think a lot of these things that we’ve talked about already could fit in to that. Let me tell you a quick story. My daughter, a couple of years ago, came home from work. I had planned on being home a little bit earlier, but when I came home, she wasn’t at home. She was across the street playing with another friend. I was standing there in the kitchen telling my wife about my day, and she was telling me about her day, and my cell phone rings. I answered the phone, that’s my neighbor across the street, it’s his number, but it’s my daughter on the other end of the line, and she said, “Dad! They’re getting ready to sit down to dinner and they invited me to stay for dinner.” My mind is probably like a lot of you guys, “You’ve got this neighbor girl that’s here, we need to sit down and eat before the food gets cold. We don’t want to make her go home and so we invited her to sit down to dinner with us.” I’m like, so I don’t pawn my kid off of my neighbor, “Babe, just go ahead and come home. We’re going to eat dinner, I’d like to hear about your day or whatever.” She’s like, “Dad! But I want to stay.” Again, I just said, “Hey, just come on home, you can go back over there and play after a while.” Then, there’s a click on the other end of the line. My daughter is like seven, she’s been the model child, she’s been the easiest kid ever. I’m like, “Sarah, I think she just hung up on me.”

Moments later, she kind of sulks through the front door, we sit down to dinner, it’s awkward. Being the good parents that we are, we let her go back over there and play, after dinner. Well, she’s over there for a couple more hours and then it gets time for us to get ready for bed, go to school the next day, those types of things, and I don’t want to be hung up on again. So, I walked over there, I knocked on the door, Madison answers the door, which was odd again, and I said, “Babe, it’s time to go get ready for bed so we can go to school tomorrow.” She said, “We’re just getting ready to go out and ride bikes!” I was like – oh man. I said, “Babe, we got to go get ready, we’ll come back tomorrow, they’re going to be here, they’re not moving.” She reaches back and slams the door in my face. Now again, this had never happened before. Our daughter, even to this today, this is a daughter that started a non-profit when she was nine, and I’m just like, “What the heck just happened?”

So, I walked back across the street because if I stood there, it wasn’t going to be a good thing. I walked through the front door and again, I vent to my wife, “She just slammed the door in my face!” She comes in the door, she goes upstairs and gets ready, and I tell Sarah, I said, “Babe, we’ve got to have a conversation with her and just say ‘Hey, what’s going on?’” Obviously, that can’t – that’s not acceptable.

After she gets ready for bed, we sit down together in the couch and my wife starts asking her these psychoanalyzing questions, she’s a counsellor. Our eyes are all starting to cross and we’re sleepy and all this stuff. I tried to take responsibility for my part as a leader, and as a leader in our home, and I said, “Madison, let me ask this one question. What could mom and I have done to help you respond better in those moments?” She said, with wisdom beyond her years, “If you had just given me a time, I would have been here. If you just tell me what time, I would’ve been ready.”

What she was saying was, “You want to prepare properly, I’ll respond the better in the moment.” For me, there are many times when I was sitting in a boardroom, somebody said something stupid, and I let them know how stupid it was in front of everybody else that was sitting there. Or, someone on our team did something silly, and instead of overlooking it and realize that we all make mistakes, I drew attention to it, and we’ve all done that.

And if we prepare ourselves for life’s moments, these incredibly challenging, painful moments in life, or if we anticipate them, then we’re better prepared for them or we’re better prepared to respond in the moment.[/text_block]