The speaker learned leadership mainly through mentorship and observation, not books. They picked up behaviors from role models like Greg Otis and a Johnson & Johnson manager, and admit their wife and 13-year-old tease them for never reading beyond children's stories. Real-world exposure to both good and bad examples shaped their approach more than any book could.
Chapters
But, you know, I think, I think maybe for me it's more mentorship. Yeah. You know, I've used more like being around people and looking up to people and trying to figure out, you know, I see them doing this and how do I get there? How do I do that? Versus let me read a book. Yeah, that's something I really never did a lot of. Yeah, my wife makes fun of me for that, especially my 13-year-old makes fun of me. I'm like, the only book I ever read was Barkley Come Home. And so they're like, what? Okay, so mentorship. Did you specifically go out and seek a mentor or did it just kind of happen? I think it just kind of happens. Yeah. And, you know, I've learned things from so many different people, whether it was good things or bad things, right? Like, oh, I don't want to be that way, but I really like that piece of what that person does. And so how do you build this together? I really like the way a guy that I worked for at Johnson Johnson. His name was Greg Otis. I really liked the way he spoke to people in a room, right? But I really liked the way— and my manager at Johnson Johnson interacted with everybody on a social standpoint as a team to bring the team together. Yeah, you know, and so you just pick up these little pieces from all these different people, and then you start implementing that into, you know, your life, your success, your goals.