Events and Experiences That Mold Us
I just watched an episode of a favorite online video show, Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. In it, Jerry Seinfeld interviewed comedian, Kevin Hart. Here’s what Mr. Hart says about growing to manhood:
“You know what made me a man? Public transportation.”
“You wanna toughen a kid up? Throw him on a bus with the most random group of people he’ll ever see in his life.”
I had to agree that riding public transportation was a character builder. The Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) was my primary source of transportation in my teen years. It carried me the 4.1 miles to my high school and it was a safe conveyance as I made the 45-minute trip through some dicey neighborhoods to my summer job while in college. Riding the CTA taught me to plan ahead and manage my time effectively. Despite bad weather, traffic problems and quirky CTA bus schedules, I was never late for school, work or other appointments. And now, five decades later, I’m still punctual.
Kevin Hart’s pithy observation shows some healthy self-awareness and made me ask myself, “What are some of the everyday things I experienced growing up that molded me?”
Three others came to mind. And due to how our society has changed in just one generation, these are things my daughters never experienced.
- Attending a single-sex high school. I attended an all-boys Catholic high school with all the stuff, good and bad, associated with single-sex education in the 1960s. There was hazing, corporal punishment and the stupid stuff guys do when there are no girls around to “gentle our condition.” High school taught me how to get along, when to keep my head down and how to fly under the radar, skills that have served me well all my life.
- Selling raffle books for my high school fund raiser. My high school held an annual fundraiser. The grand prize was a new car; every student was required to sell four books of chances. Unless you came from a wealthy family, that meant reaching out beyond family and friends to sell those 80 chances. I sold mine in neighborhood taverns, going from one saloon to the next. It took courage to walk up to a stranger sitting at the bar drinking a shot and a beer and ask him to spend his drinking money on a chance to win a Plymouth. That’s where I learned how to summon the courage to try things that took me miles outside my comfort zone.
- Summer job. While I was in college, I spent the summer working second shift in a machine shop at International Harvester. The shop was hot and dirty; the work was repetitive and sometimes, in those days before OSHA regulations, it could be hazardous. My fellow United Auto Workers were veterans of three wars, and survivors of POW camps, slave labor camps and concentration camps. My machine shop was home to loan sharks, drug dealers, profane, ill-tempered shop foremen and corrupt union reps. I learned to work with people I didn’t like and make friends with people who were very different from me. Best of all, the work motivated me to earn my degree so that I would not spend my adult life working in a dead-end job that I didn’t control.
Though these experiences did indeed build character, they all occurred before I turned 21. I can think of five other significant experiences that occurred in the decades after college that molded me. I view three of them as positive and two as difficult times. I wouldn’t call those difficult times failures or regrets because ultimately I learned a lot from them that made me a better person and a better leader.
What’s the point of all this?
Simple. Self-awareness is the cornerstone of leadership. Reflecting on those character-building experiences increases our self-awareness. They help us understand how we’re wired, why we’re wired that way and how our wiring impacts our ability to lead and interact successfully with others. Time spent contemplating the experiences that molded us is time well spent.