Jim Bouchard quit drugs after smashing his face against a refrigerator door during a night of extreme intoxication. He went from two-time college dropout to black-belt sensei, and argues that leaders must first transform themselves before they can transform others.
Well, before we go too much further, I suppose I should give you my resume. I'm a 2-time college dropout and a former drug addict. Aren't you glad you came to see me this morning? I used to live in this old 1950s vintage trailer. You probably know the type. It had the heavy louvered glass windows in it. You know what I'm talking about? That's going to be important in just a second. Anyway, we named this trailer. We called it Stonehenge. We actually had a sign above the door that said, "We are the people our parents warned us about." Starting to get the picture? At that time, I was smoking about 6 to 8 bong hits a day. If you don't— and please be careful how you respond to some of these things, alright? If you don't know what a bong hit is, and I hope you don't, it's a water pipe, and you would stuff the bowl full of marijuana, smoke it all down in one gulp. If you didn't, you got a penalty shot. Alright? I had to do that much to get high. Oh, and I forgot to tell you, I had a job at the time. I was a test pilot. Not the type you're thinking about. All right? Someone would bring a bowl of pills out, put it on the table. "What's that green and black one do?" "I don't know. Let's give it to Jim. We'll see what it does to him." All right? So anyway, drugs to get up, drugs to go to bed, but we look at the whole thing. Somebody at one of our Stonehenge parties—that's what the local cops used to call it—passed me a joint. If you don't know what a joint is, it's a marijuana cigarette. Now, I never smoked joints because I couldn't get off on a joint. I couldn't get high on just a joint, you see. So when they passed it to me, I bogarded it. Sometimes I just smoked the whole thing down myself. I kept it for myself. As many drugs as I did, I was still pretty mellow usually when I got high. But something weird happened this day. Something kicked in. I started running around that trailer. My friends were trying to tackle me. I was trying to dive through the louvered glass window. Can you imagine what would have happened to me if I made it? I would have been cut to shreds. Anyway, my friends got me tackled, put to bed. But I woke up in the middle of the night because, hell, I got the munchies. When you're high, you get the munchies, right? Be careful, I see a couple of people looking, "Yeah, I know what you're talking about." The foolish thing was this: I was trying to get in the refrigerator, which is foolish enough. We never had money for food. We had plenty of money for dope, but never for food or heat or anything like that. But the stupid thing is, somehow in the state I was in, I thought I could stick my head through the refrigerator, the closed refrigerator door. So it turns out I was smashing my face into the refrigerator door repeatedly trying to get whatever was in there. They got me put to bed again. Woke up in the morning, I look in the mirror, I look like I went 4 or 5 rounds with Mike Tyson. I was a complete mess. And that's the day I said, "That's it, I quit." And that's the day I quit drugs. Now, what the hell has that got to do with you good people? And what's it got to do with leadership? First of all, the best type of leadership— how many leadership styles are there today? Anybody want to hazard a guess? I think in academia they're studying around 100 or so. But the best one's transformational leadership. You're hearing a lot about that these days. Why? Because the world is moving at such an incredible pace, isn't it? Your industry is moving at such an incredible pace. If we're not constantly involved, engaged with this process of transformation as individuals, as organizations, we're in trouble. We're gonna fall behind, right? So while I used to think that my resume was a pretty lousy one for someone working with leadership, I came to appreciate that it was a pretty useful one. Who better to share ideas about transformation than someone that had to do it in order to survive, right? And I had to transform myself in a number of ways. First of all, obviously I had to transform myself from a loser to a leader, from a dropout and a drug addict to a black belt, and later to sensei. So how can sensei help us become a better leader? Well, a sensei's job is really pretty simple, it's really pretty clear. It's to inspire, empower, and guide. That's it. We inspire, empower, and guide people, hopefully to their very best. Now isn't that what all effective leaders do? And I know today I'm preaching to the choir. Right? Think about it. When you're at your best as a leader, isn't that what you're really doing? Inspiring, empowering, and guiding. Right? Now, in the dojo, this means helping people get to black belt and hopefully beyond that. But today I want you to think about what does it mean in your life? What does it mean in your role as a leader? What are you trying to accomplish? And are you doing it alone? Right? The very fact that there's a leader means there are followers. Yes? So what's our most important job as leaders? Isn't it to get everyone pulling in the same direction so we can all succeed together, right? To transform "me" into "we."
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