Being grateful: Ben Wibberley

Hi everyone!

In the mindset of growing into a better employee, manager, and person, I’m thanking people that had a positive impact on my life. Today, I want to thank Ben Wibberley.

My first 3 years at Babel were also Ben’s last 3. I count myself very lucky of that overlap, and even luckier to have had Ben as one of my mentors back then.

From him, I learned the impact of both positivity and negativity on people around you, and their influence on outcomes. Being positive has an indiscriminate power, providing a vision to people, inspiring them towards a greater goal. There are a lot of things I’ve learned from Ben 15 years ago, that I’ve only recently reheard and relearned from people like Grant Cardone or Tony Robbins. One of the most useful thing he told me, and I’m likely paraphrasing him here:

“If you can do the work, even if you’ve never done it before, always tell a client “yes, we can do that”. Always find a way to make it work. The clients are contacting us because we are problem-solvers. We are hired because we make their life and their work easier. The day you don’t provide them with that benefit, is the day they go seek a solution elsewhere.”

Both by instinct and experience, he always knew what people wanted, and what they wanted to hear. Every time we were talking with a client or internal stakeholder, he knew what they were going to say even before we met them, and knew what was needed to get it through the finish line. EVERY D*** TIME. The level of emotional intelligence of that man is astonishing.

Ben knows when working smarter is better than working harder. Time and time again, he managed to give me an insight and approach angle that would make my work incredibly more useful and impactful. He also knew what he was good at and what he wasn’t, and made sure to delegate to others what they were better than him at doing, and solely focused on what he was great at himself, intensely increasing the positive impact he had on the company and the people around him, be it colleagues or clients.

From him, I learned to change the perspective of my work, from service-provider, to solutions-provider. To change my locution from naysayer to believer. To change my focus from working hard, to working smart. To change my approach from process-oriented, to results-oriented. People don’t care how you do it. People don’t care if you work 100h weeks. People care if you bring results, results that help them.

Ben was, and still is, a great mentor.

Thanks Ben!