What’s in it for me? Discover how our struggles bear us gifts.
Narrated by… Bobby Herrera is no stranger to struggle.
And the hardship didn’t even start with him – it was passed down across generations.
His father Jorge migrated from Mexico in the 1950s to work as a bracero, harvesting produce in the fields of the Western US.
The Spanish word means “someone who works with their arms.
” It was backbreaking work, and he earned less than $1 per hour.
But Jorge referred to the day he became a bracero as the day he won the lottery.
Why?
Because his one aim in life was to end his family’s cycle of poverty and give his kids opportunities he never had.
Jorge’s own mother had been orphaned as a baby girl and rescued off the streets.
As a kid Bobby would wake up at 5am to help work on the farm, before going to school.
He got used to working hard early.
Years later, when he joined the army at 18, he realised that his struggles had actually been a gift.
He didn’t even blink when he found out about the grueling training schedule, while his comrades started sweating in their seats.
Bobby would eventually come to study struggle more closely.
And this Blink presents some of his findings.
As you journey through them, you’ll realise that every struggle presents a gift, and that we should ultimately be grateful for it, as people and as leaders.
So let’s get going – we’ll start on a school bus.
Bobby and the bus
When Bobby was 17, he and his brother Ed played on the same basketball team.
One evening, on the bus back home after a victory away, they stopped in front of a restaurant, as they often did.
Everyone got off the bus – except for Bobby and his brother.
They couldn’t afford to eat out.
Instead their mom had prepared them her legendary burritos.
But this time something different happened.
Mr Teague, a successful local businessman, and the father of one of the other players, got back on the bus and offered to buy Bobby and Ed their dinner.
In return, he asked that, sometime in the future, they would pass on the favor to another deserving kid.
That moment on the bus changed Bobby’s whole outlook on life.
He found a new sense of purpose.
One day, he thought, he could be just like Mr Teague, and be able to help kids just like himself.
Years later, it would come to play a pivotal role in how he runs his business.
In 2002 Bobby cofounded Populus Group, or PG, which provides services to help companies manage their non-permanent workforces.
The company’s core belief is that everyone deserves a chance to succeed.
For Bobby, given his story of childhood struggle, that motto makes perfect sense.
But it took a moment of vulnerability for his team to really come on board with him.
One day, as he was filming a video presentation about PG’s company culture, the cameraman asked him: Why do you believe that everyone deserves a chance to succeed?
In response, and to his own surprise, he just launched into the bus story.
When the video eventually reached the rest of the employees, it was the first time any of them had heard it.
The story had a remarkable effect.
Bobby’s intensity and passion as a leader finally made sense.
The employees understood the meaning that the work had for him.
The whole company came closer together, aligned around the common goal of helping kids just like Bobby.
As a leader, you need to recognize that everyone wants to do meaningful work.
They want to feel like their input is contributing to a greater good.
And sharing your struggle is the key to helping them realize that wish.
Your struggle is what gives you your vision, your purpose.
When you share that with your people, their engagement grows.
They start to feel pride at being part of a movement for the good.
But a word of caution here, you can’t do this halfheartedly.
If you take the leap of sharing your vulnerability, you have to be all in.
Take every chance possible to share with your team how they’re helping you achieve your biggest dream.
And honor the stories that your employees share with you, or with one another.
Everyone wants to feel seen and worthy.
As a leader, you have the power to make that happen.
Bill and Dr. Joe
Bobby met Dr.
Joe, in his late twenties.
He was an industrial psychologist, a classic gritty Sicilian who had no time for excuses.
Bobby was rising up the ranks in the company where he was working, and Dr Joe had been sent to assess and improve the leadership structures within the organization.
His assessment of Bobby was straight to the point.
He got distracted easily, and his discipline left a lot to be desired.
If he didn’t change things, he was basically looking at his career ceiling right now.
Dr.
Joe gave Bobby a book to read and told him to report back to him with what he’d learned from it.
Bobby eagerly read the book, summed up its key takeaways, and met up with Dr.
Joe, full of confidence at having completed his task well.
But Dr.
Joe quickly pulled the carpet from under his feet.
He asked Bobby: How have you applied what you’ve learned?
How have you changed your behavior as a leader?
This was the crucial ingredient that Bobby had missed.
If he wanted to grow as a leader, it wouldn’t be enough to just learn new information.
He had to apply it.
The importance of this lesson would reappear for Bobby years later, when his company PG was already three years old.
He was, to put it bluntly, going through it.
Three of PG’s clients had gone bankrupt, and for every new account gained, they were losing two.
Bobby knew he needed help.
So he reached out to Bill, a retired CEO he’d recently met at a networking event.
When Bill gave his assessment, it might as well have been Dr Joe speaking; Bobby had potential, but it didn’t look like he had the right mindset to run a healthy business.
Just like Dr.
Joe had done, Bill gave Bobby a book to read as homework.
It was Patrick Lencioni's The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive, in which the author emphasizes the importance of building a unified organization that isn’t tarnished by politics and infighting.
This time, Bobby knew exactly what to do.
He read the book back to front, and specifically laid out how he would apply its lessons.
As he did so he realized he had lost sight of Dr.
Joe’s original advice.
When he’d started PG, he’d thought he could get by by sheer resilience and sharp instincts.
He’d forgotten that being a leader isn’t about having all the answers all the time.
Really, you need to know your strengths and work continuously on sharpening them.
Then, you need to find the right people whose strengths complement your own.
Dr.
Joe and Bill both showed Bobby the importance of being a perpetual student.
Since then he’s gone a long way in developing his own leadership style.
But he’s always on the hunt for new teachers.
“Stop” and “Go”
When Bobby’s eldest son, Santino, was four years old, he suddenly started acting up.
He was biting his nails until they bled.
He was frequently lashing out in frustration.
Something wasn’t right.
Bobby and his wife took Santino to a child psychologist, who recommended them a simple exercise.
He told them to draw a big ‘T’ on the top of a sheet of paper to make two columns.
On the left was the “Go” column.
And on the right was the “Stop” column.
Every time they gave Santino a “Go command”, one where they told him something he could do, they would add a mark in the left column.
Every time they issued a “Stop command,” telling him something he couldn’t do, they would put a mark in the right column.
The results of the exercise shocked Bobby to the core.
The tick marks just kept adding up in the “Stop” column.
“Don’t clean your hand on your shirt.
” “Don’t interrupt Mom and Dad when we’re talking.
” By the second day, Bobby broke down in tears.
Bobby and his wife knew they had to quickly change their approach.
So they started the arduous task of consciously replacing their “Stop” commands with “Go” commands.
“Please use your napkin to wipe your hands.
” “Please wait until we’ve finished talking before asking your question.
” After just three weeks, Santino was starting to be himself again.
Bobby’s struggles with Santino inspired him to reevaluate his leadership approach at the office.
He asked his team leaders how they felt during tactical discussions.
One of them said they felt like they were being quizzed and taken down a rabbit hole.
Another felt they were doing everything wrong.
Bobby was perplexed.
Like most good leaders know or learn to do, he asked a lot of questions and did a lot of listening.
He thought he was being genuinely open and supportive.
What he hadn’t realized is that there are two parts to every question: the “what” and the “why.
” The “what” is the words that come out of your mouth.
The “why” is the reason behind the question.
The words of a question might suggest openness and a commitment to individual autonomy.
But the way in which you ask it might have the complete opposite effect, making people feel like they’ve been caught in the wrong.
If this sounds like you, a great place to start is by looking at your body language.
90% of communication is nonverbal, so it’s incredibly important to keep tabs on it.
If your body language is screaming “Are you flipping kidding me?
”, that’s the message you’ll be sending, no matter what words your question is made of.
Your role as a leader is to instill confidence in people whenever you give direction.
Keeping your body language in check, and replacing “Stop” commands with “Go” commands, are two great ways to help you achieve this.
The resulting gift is a happy, engaged team.
The desert shower
Part of Bobby’s training in the Army was to spend up to eight weeks every year in the Mojave Desert.
The temperature often exceeded 120 degrees, and the soldiers had to move day and night in full gear.
To make things worse, they were only allowed to take a shower every two weeks or so.
Their collective stench rivalled that of a horde of zombies.
The first time Bobby saw where he would be showering, his heart sank.
It was just a barrel-shaped contraption and a container with a measly two gallons of water, attached to a shower head.
To make things worse, he was told he would have to leave some of the water for the next crew.
The soldier in charge of the shower told him that if he let the water merely drip from the shower head and immediately began scrubbing, he would come out clean.
Bobby was sure it wouldn’t work.
But he followed the advice, and within twenty minutes, the drip had done the work, and he was clean as a whistle.
What’s more, he’d only used up half of the water.
This particular struggle left Bobby in awe at the power of scarcity.
And he’s applied the lesson to his business.
Usually, as a business grows, people tend to start to throw more money at problems.
You’re making more of it, so why not use it and save yourself some headaches?
But the truth is you’re far more effective when you have less.
Constraints force you to be creative.
Growing up as part of an impoverished family in New Mexico, this is something that was embedded in Bobby’s DNA.
And the Mojave Desert shower drip only reinforced the idea.
The other major resource that often comes under pressure in business is time.
Bobby has an exercise that helps him and his fellow leaders at PG put the question of time into perspective.
What you do is write down every problem or issue you’re dealing with and place them into one of three categories: “day to day”, “six to eighteen months”, and “two to three years.
” Then you check your calendar and see how much of your time you’re allocating to each category.
Turns out, many leaders spend way too much time on their immediate tasks, while neglecting the longer-term bets that ultimately have the biggest impact on the company.
As a leader, what you should be doing is focusing on just a few problems, spreading your energy over longer periods, and delegating less important tasks.
Making the most of your resources also means challenging the way you’re operating.
For Bobby, the ‘E’ in CEO stands for ‘Edit’.
It’s your responsibility to edit or eliminate unnecessary or redundant work, and make your team’s job as easy as possible.
Ultimately, resourcefulness takes courage.
It’s tempting to grant your team every request for resources and bask in their resulting gratitude.
But ultimately, courage means knowing you can do more with less.
That’s another gift that struggle teaches us.
Something always happens
Not long after moving to Seattle with his family, Bobby decided to take on the challenge of climbing Mount Rainier.
At close to 15,000 feet, it definitely wasn’t just a casual Sunday hike.
Bobby trained in the pre-dawn hours for four months before he was ready.
When the day came, he made his way to Camp Muir, 10,000 feet high, with 11 other climbers and a handful of guides.
At 1:00am the next day, the group started their climb to the peak.
Within two hours, four climbers had called it quits and been led back down to base camp.
Later, with just two segments left to the peak, another climber got altitude sickness and was escorted back down.
The seven remaining climbers eventually made it to the top.
Bobby took the snap he’d been planning of him holding the PG flag he’d brought along.
But he also discovered something unexpected.
He asked one of the guides how many times all the climbers made it to the top.
The guide’s answer?
“I don’t remember a single time everyone made it to the top.
Something always happens.
” This stuck with Bobby, and it gave him new insight into how he thought about people joining and leaving his company.
Bobby would always beat himself up whenever a team member quit.
He invested a lot in his people at PG, and a departure always hit him hard.
But he realized that everyone at PG was climbing their own unique path toward personal and professional growth.
Yes, as a team, they were stronger and could accomplish more than they could alone.
But they’d all been climbing their own mountain long before they’d joined the company, and they’d keep climbing it after they left.
As a leader, it’s important to acknowledge that everyone is climbing for their own reasons.
Most people are reaching toward multiple life goals simultaneously, while also committed to relationships that demand sacrifice and flexibility.
You need to encourage your people’s own growth while also acknowledging their individual contributions to the company’s climb.
And never forget the words of the mountain guide, something always happens.
Or as Bobby likes to put it: We’re always a single phone call away from being on our knees.
Accepting this helps you stay grateful for your team while they’re there, and graceful when the day comes for them to leave.
Nowadays, when someone does decide to leave PG, Bobby looks for the gift behind the departure.
He tries to understand the reason behind it.
If it points to something internal that can be fixed, he fixes it.
And if there’s nothing to be fixed, he just keeps pressing on, knowing that someone new will come and bring their own unique strengths to the team.
We’ll close with a final piece of advice: Treat departing members like alumni.
Keep your connection to them as best you can.
You never know how they might help you climb in years to come.
Final summary
In this Blink to The Gift of Struggle by Bobby Herrera, you’ve learned that every struggle bears a gift in the form of an important lesson, and the author’s own struggles have taught him many.
A kind gesture from a stranger taught him that everyone wants to be a part of something meaningful.
Some blunt advice from a couple of honest mentors showed him that he should not only keep learning, but rigorously apply everything he learns.
And a difficult period with his son led him to question how he comes across when interacting with his team.
The drip from a shower head in the Mojave Desert reminded Bobby of the power of doing more with less.
And the wise words of a guide on Mount Rainier taught him to respect everyone’s individual struggles, while being grateful for the present moment with them.
These lessons apply not only to Bobby, but to everyone who aspires to lead well.
Okay, that’s it for this Blink.
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