Meet Mary, Powerful role model, born 1892

[Transcript]

Jan Griffiths: 00:50

It's Saturday, May 8, the night before Mother's Day 2021, and I'm sitting here in the studio alone. Dietrich is out at band practice, Gwen is doing her thing, and I'm alone with my thoughts. And I'm thinking about Mother's Day and role models, and how important role models are in our lives. And I want to take you back to my grandmother, Mary. Mary was born, I just figured this out a few minutes ago actually, in 1892. 1892! That’s a long time ago, yet she was such a role model to me. It's hard to believe all those years ago. I was very young when she died, I was about I think six years of age when she died. But let me tell you about Mary. Mary was a farmer in Wales.

Back in those days, you really went into two occupations, you either went into farming, or you went into the coal mines. And my grandfather went into the coal mines. And he was actually blind by the time he was 60 because of the dust from the coal mines, it was a pretty hard life. She ran the farm. And when I say she ran the farm, I mean exactly that. She ran the business of farming. She handled the negotiations for the grain, for the livestock, she sold the livestock, she sold the milk. She was the manager of the farm, it was her farm. And they earned enough money to buy a bigger farm, and then a bigger farm. And back then, that was so unheard of. You want to talk about breaking the mold, or as Kimberly Gardiner so eloquently put it. In our last interview, she said, you have to create your own mold. So for me, this idea of creating your own mold started way back in my family many, many years ago.

My mother followed in the footsteps of the farming tradition. And she took over the farm but she did not take over as the business manager, she married a local farmer. As you heard me many times talk about the fact that I was supposed to marry the farmer next door, well my mother actually did that. And she didn't run the business, she took the more traditional role of the farmer's wife, which was to clean the farm, cook, take care of the men on the farm that were helping out during peak season, whether it was hay, or whether there was increased demand in the dairy, whatever was going on in the farm, it was her job to take care of it. And she just didn't see herself as the business woman even though her mother was.

So I guess that's somewhere in my DNA, this drive to be a business woman and to lead, It came from my grandmother. She was a role model before I even knew what a role model was. And although my mother didn't step into that role, she knew somehow that I had the potential to do that. She talked to me a lot about my grandmother and my grandmother's accomplishments. And I chuckle in the dining room in my house. I have some of the original documents that my grandmother drew up when they bought the last farm that they had, and she does didn't even have a title. Her name is on there, but they say, a farmer and his wife. That's it. She was just the wife, even though she was actually the business manager that ran the farm. It's crazy to think how far we've come and how far we've evolved as a society.

We're going back to my mother. To be perfectly honest with you, her marriage was not great. They weren't exactly blissfully happy. And she wanted to be sure that I had a career, I had earning power, I could stand on my own two feet. And she knew that there was a lot of my grandmother in me. And so she made sure that I had the right education, and I went to college, I was the first person in our family in our long line of farmers to go to college. And she made sure that that happened. One thing that she told me time and time again, and as mothers and parents, we do this a lot with our children, we say, oh, you can do anything you want to do, you can do anything you put your mind to. But then sometimes our behaviors and actions would indicate that maybe we don't really believe that, because then we start to pull back on that right? And we say things like, well, okay, so you want to be an astronaut. So you want to be a ballerina, but make sure, you know, you get a degree and you get a plan B and so you can have a job that brings in some money, because that won't bring in any money, and that might never happen. So we say on one hand, yes, you can be anything you want to be. But when our children show that passion and drive for something that we think is a bit of a stretch, we tend to pull back. And that's not a good practice.

My mother told me even though she knew nothing about the automotive industry, she knew nothing about this country, about the US. When I came here, she had no idea where I was living. I was living in Indiana, when I first came here, she had no idea. I remember there was an earthquake in California. And she said, How is that far is that is that close to where you are? Yet, she knew that she believed in her daughter. And she told me time and time again, not only can you do anything that you put your mind to, but, and here's the really important part, she said to me, if it doesn't work out, it's okay, you can come back to the farm. And I thought of that over the years, and as I moved from job to job, and my career progressed, I didn't realize the power behind that statement. She was giving me psychological and emotional safety.

And when we talk about high performance teams, and psychological safety and emotional safety, that's what we're trying to get. That's what we're trying to as leaders, that's what we want to give all of our teams. And it starts with reinforcing that belief in people that they can actually do more. But then providing that safety net that says, you know what, if you make a mistake, it's okay. It's okay. We'll deal with that. One of the great joys in my life right now is interviewing people on the podcast. Because these are people who understand authentic leadership, they understand the power of motivation, of positive reinforcement of providing that safety net, that psychological and emotional safety. When people have that either in their personal lives or at work, they will do anything. It fuels and drives performance. And I know if you're listening out there to this podcast, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

We're now faced with a period of tremendous transformation. We're coming out of the pandemic, I hope. We're starting to talk about going back to work. And I see the announcements coming out from Google and in our beloved automotive industry from Stellantis and Ford and others. And they're talking about this hybrid work model where there will be so many days in the office and so many days at home, and we're talking about flexibility because we all understand that it can work now, we can work from home, we've all gotten religion, and we're not afraid that people are going to be sitting on the couch watching Netflix all day. And even if they are, as long as they produce the results at the end of the day, it's okay. So we've come a long way. But here's the challenge that I see. And this goes back to modeling the behavior and being a role model. I see a potential for C suite leaders, senior leaders in an organization who may want to go back into the office. I know not everybody wants to do that. But they'll feel this need to go back to the comfort zone to the way things were. And they may say, on one hand, oh, yes, flexibility? Yes, we've got that here. But they will model a behavior that will indicate to others that that's not really true. And our leaders in our organizations today, how are they going to manage this? How do you lead a team of people that every single person on that team has a different need, and a different requirement. Some people want to work in the office full time, someone a hybrid role, some want to work from home full time, and leaders will have to manage all of that, and keep the team together.

That's going to require, you guessed it, an authentic leader, a leader with gravitas. It's going to require somebody who's comfortable in their own skin, who knows how to connect with people at a deep, deep level, and yes, provide them with that psychological safety. And if the C suite is showing and modeling a behavior that is not in line with perhaps what the corporate mantra is, then that is not going to provide the safety that people need, and the flexibility that people need, it's going to be challenging. And remember, we're coming out of decades of leadership, where we were taught and told and behaved in a way that says, it's very much a one size fits all, you can't have one person that works from home and another person that doesn't, you've got to be fair, it's got to be equitable. Well, that's changed. That's another mold that's broken. It's gonna take a special kind of leader to lead us through this transformation. And I applaud all these companies that are talking about this new hybrid work environment that we're going into, but leading through it, that's not going to be so easy. It's going to put a lot of pressure on leaders, but I know that all you leaders out there are up for it. And if you're listening to this podcast, then you are an authentic leader, or you're close to recognizing your potential as an authentic leader.

The new gravitas workshop that we have will help you do that. We'll help you connect with the team have those difficult conversations, we'll help you figure out how to transform that work culture. My message today is simply this: Mother's Day tomorrow, think about the behavior that you're modeling. Think about the importance of role models in your life and the influence that they've had, and recognize the influence that you have and can have on others around you, by modeling the right behavior. It is about the words that come out of your mouth, that's important, but it's much more important to model the behavior that we want to see in our lives and in the workplace.

So I wish everybody a wonderful week, and we have a very exciting interview coming up for you next week. We are going to be talking about the word volition. Look it up. And the guy that I'll be interviewing next week is I consider him the expert in the automotive industry, practicing volition. I hope you enjoyed the last two interviews, I certainly did, between Jason Stein and then following that up with Kimberly Gardiner from Volkswagen. Wow, two very powerful interviews. If you have any content that you would like to hear on the show, anything, anybody you would like to hear from, then please reach out and let me know I would love to hear from you. I wish you all a good week, and much success on your quest for your Gravitas.