Coming Full Circle, A Life Review

For the past 22 years I have been an executive coach dedicated to helping executives and organizations bet on themselves by developing their leadership and emotional intelligence.?Master of Business Leadership program alumni are living in the US, Canada, UK, Europe, Japan, Germany, Bosnia, Africa, Australia, Middle East and Saudi Arabia.?Career revenue $1.5 Billion.

I was born in Brantford, Ontario Canada on December 1, 1953.?Our family lived in a small 2-bedroom post WWII bungalow where my mom and dad raised 3 boys.?I was the youngest and quite a surprise as my mother was in her early 40s when I was born.?Three boys in one small bedroom with a coal burning furnace and no air conditioning.

My parents were born in 1909 and 1910 and went as far as grade 8 in school.?My father was a factory worker who never made more than $5.00 per hour.?During WWII he served as a Sargent in a mortar artillery platoon in North Africa.?His men used to call him “the old man” because he was 29 years old when he enlisted.?As a younger man he had boxed and played semi-pro baseball.?My dad made his own beer and I helped by putting the caps on the bottles.?My mother was a factory seamstress who left her job to take care of our family.?

I was born 6 weeks prematurely, weighing approximately 4 pounds.?My first 6 months were spent in an incubator at the local Brantford General hospital.?My dad brought milk to me each day on his bicycle because he did not own a car.?I have dyslexia.?It is a neurological disorder I was born with.?I notice it most when I am trying to spell, read and occasionally hear.?It can cause me to re-arrange words and numbers in my mind.?I did not realize I had the condition until about 35 years ago.???Back in those days there was no such thing as dyslexia, ADD or ADHD.?

I failed Grade 3 and I failed Grade 5 and was labelled as a “slow learner.”?I used to pray the teacher would never ask me a question and I rarely made eye contact.?Many times, the back of my shirt would be soaked with sweat by the time class was over.?Getting a “C” was a great mark for me, “As” and “Bs” were out of the question.

Some of my earliest childhood memories were that our neighborhood had dirt roads. Asphalt roads, TVs and private phone lines came several years later.?We also had a milkman, bread man, egg man and potato man that made their deliveries in horse drawn trucks.?

I started working when I was 9 years old pulling copper wire out of the back of factory dumpsters and selling it for 5 cents a pound.?That was my allowance.?By the time I was 12 I had a part time job working in a produce factory loading boxcars with crates of corn.?I also worked as a caddy at a local golf course and picked strawberries on a farm.

I had money and life was good!

A few years later my mother developed breast cancer.?She underwent radiation and chemotherapy which lead to a radical mastectomy.?On December 3, 1967 she died.???It was two days after my 14th birthday. I was in Grade 7 at the time.

One month later I made a decision that was to change the trajectory of my life.?My dyslexia and my mother’s death became the catalyst for my journey. It's really hard to be young.

It was a snowy January night around midnight and I was taking my dog Duke for a walk.?He was a Blue Tick hound my parents had given me as a puppy when I was 5 years old.?Standing behind a local factory I decided to “go for it.”?I was going to see what was on the other side of the hill and come back and help my friends that had already given up on life.??

That decision began the 55-year journey that continues today.?I became an “A” student throughout the rest of grade school and high school. My dad died in May of 1974 as I was completing Grade 13.?Four years later I graduated in the top of my class from the De Groote School of Business at McMaster University in Hamilton Ontario, Canada. I also played football and basketball.?I paid for my education through summer and part-time jobs during the year.?I received a partial scholarship as the son of a WWII veteran.?Later I spent 5 years studying Electrical Engineering while beginning what turned out to be a 20-year career in the semiconductor industry.?By the time my career in that industry had ended I had become a corporate executive. I was travelling over 60,000 miles per year throughout North America and the Pacific Rim.

In 1990 I remember talking with one of my older brothers and commenting “Is this all there is?”???I had accomplished more than I, or for that matter anyone else ever thought I would.?In the process I had become mindlessly focused on the drive to acquire and achieve conventional wealth and success.?But obtaining the "brass ring" in my career was not as fulfilling as I had dreamt it would be.?Along the way I had forgotten the promise I made to myself on that snowy January night in 1968.

I eventually decided to leave corporate America, breaking away from the herd in order to lead it in a better direction.??My dyslexia has enabled me to see what others cannot.?A short time later I turned down two Vice Presidential roles so that I could begin the creation of what has become the?Master of Business Leadership?program.

Throughout the balance of this century, we will be facing a future of rapidly accelerating global change.?The development of emotional intelligence has become essential for us to be able to turn the challenges we face into opportunities for better results.?I strongly encourage you to bet on yourself and your future by developing your emotional intelligence.

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