Translator: Lisa Rodriguez
Reviewer: Rhonda Jacobs When I was 22 years old, I took a job in
the chemical addictions unit of the juvenile corrections facility. I was a teacher. My students had various
criminal backgrounds, often drug addicts,
drug dealers, and gang members. Now, I knew this job would be a challenge. Matter of fact, that's why I took it. See, like many of you, I wanted to make a difference
in my community. I saw an opportunity to lead
these kids to a better life. And for the first few months, that's exactly what
it felt like I was doing, like, they were listening to me. They were interested in what I had to say. They were progressing
through their programs. They were getting out. Until I met Nathan. Nathan was a 15-year-old
methamphetamine addict. You could see the life he had lived through the gang tattoos, the scars from fights before, his emaciated body and issues
with his teeth from the meth. Was the first kid I'd seen like this. But there was something
unique about Nathan. Nathan was one of the most
honest kids I'd ever met. He had this, like, incessant capacity
to always tell you the truth. Now, don't get me wrong,
he tried to lie a few times. But all you had to do was stare at him
for just a couple of seconds, and he'd spill his guts
about whatever it is he was trying to hide. It made him super easy to work with, but also made him real easy to like. Now, for most of these kids, part of their program,
when they get to this certain point, they have to come up with a plan
for what they're going to do when they leave juvenile corrections. And as you can imagine,
this was a pretty simple process. I mean, they knew
what we wanted them to say, they knew what they were supposed to do. All they had to do was write it down
and say it out loud. Only, when we asked Nathan
what his plan was, he looked me right in the eye and said, "Mr. Fretwell, when I get back
in the community, I'm gonna continue using meth." He hadn't even tried
to come up with a plan. And as I told you, I liked Nathan,
so this was frustrating, and so I went to hard work
for the next two or three weeks of trying to convince him, like charts and graphs,
and showing him all of this, like telling him, like, you know
that you have family members that are dead or in jail from this. I would work all day
trying to get him to see the light, but the more I tried to convince him, the less it seemed to matter to him. As teachers, one of the best
parts of the job is those "aha" moments, right? It's the time when you see
the glimmer in a kid's eye, when they get all excited,
like their whole world can open up by just understanding
an algebraic equation or something as complex as maybe
the electoral college, yeah? (Laughter) For Nathan, however,
when it came to his future, there was nothing for him to learn, nothing he thought he needed to discover, nothing he didn't - that I could tell him
that he didn't already know. See, he understood the plan
he was supposed to create. He just knew he wasn't
going to follow through. Whatever leadership position
you've found yourself in, whether that's a manager,
or a teacher, or a parent, or just a friend, you've likely been in this situation. It's that time when you've told
somebody a thousand times what to do. When you've begged and pleaded with them, when you've come up
with a hundred solutions, but you both know they're
not going to follow through. It's like you do all the work
coming up with a solution, but they're not going to do
any solving the problem. When you come to these times, it's interesting to think about, like, it's sort of naive that we actually think an answer
is going to change a behavior. Because if it was simply
about having a solution to the problem, we could get
everybody to quit smoking by - and brace yourselves - smoking is bad for you. (Laughter) That doesn't work. I can't get you to start saving by just having you read
a pamphlet about compounding interest. I can't get you to go work out
just by telling you, "Hey, your body burns calories,
and if you move around a little bit, you can burn those calories." (Laughter) Now, as a leadership consultant
for the last 15 years, I've seen this week in
and week out all over the world. It's this point we come to when
the convincing no longer works. When we've come up with the answer, but we know there's going to be
no follow through. It's when we get to these points
that it's important to take a step back, to maybe reevaluate
our perspective of leadership, like the underlying definition. In Latin, they didn't have
a word for leadership. It was a limited language,
so they co-opted other words, and one of the words
that scholars believe they use in place of leadership was adduco. Adduco means to extract from, to draw out, or to grow from within. And it's this understanding
that I didn't have at the time. I didn't know adduco 20 years ago, but I was just about to get a crash course
on what it meant in application. See, I continue to struggle with Nathan. And this guy I was working with,
his name was Sal, he noticed I wasn't doing very well, and to this day, I don't know
if he felt sorry for me, or if he was just tired of me
making more work for him with these other kids, but he decided to intervene. And what he did was so simple. He asked me, "Hey, Brian, when's the last time
you asked Nathan what he wants?" And I said, "Thank you, Sal,
but I think what he wants is what's getting us
in this problem in the first place." I said, "I asked him what he wants.
He said he wants to do meth. I'm pretty sure we've run that road
as far as we need to." (Laughter) He patiently waited for me, and he said, "If there was an easier way, would you be interested in following?" And if I'm honest with you,
I wasn't interested. I was 22. I knew what to do. (Laughter) But I was, however, out of strategies, and so I decided, hey,
I'll follow this along until I can come up with
a new approach to convince Nathan. And Sal's instructions were simple: start with a question. Every time you interact with Nathan,
start with a question. Every time you talk to Nathan,
I want you to start with a question. Every time you and Nathan
are in the same room, I want you to ask a question. And I wasn't used to this. See, I was used to kids
asking me questions. I was the one that had the answers. And to make it worse,
Sal would approach me sometimes and say, "Brian, did you really ask
a question there or were ya kinda just
giving him the answers?" And as you can probably guess,
I got frustrated real quick. Like, my patience started to wear out; like, I felt insecure as a teacher; like I didn't even know what I was doing. I was just about to give up. Within a couple of weeks
of trying this out, I was just about to throw it away except I started to notice something. See, as uncomfortable as I was, Nathan was worse. Sal was giving me a PhD level understanding
of what adduco really means. Sal was a master at the process because of his dogged commitment
to asking questions. See, questions are the simplest
yet most powerful tool for extracting from. Your brain is biologically
hardwired to answer a question. It kind of can't not do it. See, all I have to ask you is, like, what was your first car growing up? Or, what state were you born in? And while you didn't say it out loud, there probably was
a little picture that popped up. For some of you, the car wasn't as cool. Now, we understand
the importance of questions; that's not new to us. Like, we've probably read,
we've probably heard something about, like, even as a teacher,
I had heard about the Socratic method. But most of us,
and certainly me at the time, we stop asking way too soon. See, we stop asking questions
when it becomes uncomfortable. We stop asking questions
when we get a little bit of a pushback. And luckily for me, Sal was there
to keep me on the process. I would ask Nathan questions like, "Hey, Nathan, what do you want
for your future?" And Nathan would respond
back sarcastically, "I want a million dollars. I want to be the president of the world." And that sarcastic response
was a defensive mechanism that was hiding something. I would ask him even more
pointed questions like, "Nathan, what is it that
really matters to you? What do you really want with your life?" And he would start saying,
"Mr. Fretwell, leave me alone. Stop asking me questions. Just get off of my back." Now, he was becoming frustrated and angry. And again, he was protecting something. And it didn't take me long to realize that what he was protecting was hopes and dreams
that had likely been battered before. Behind that defensive curtain was a part of himself
that still believed in himself, yet he'd had experiences
that showed otherwise. And as I thought of this, I remember thinking
about an old quote that says, "It's not our darkness that we fear, it's our light that we're most afraid of." And I realized he did not
need me to lead him, he had everything
he needed to lead himself. And I suddenly became
more committed than I had before. I'd suddenly decided I wasn't
going to give up on him this time. I went and found him with an intensity
that I didn't know where it came from, and I just found him in the room,
and I said something to the effect of, "Nathan, Nathan,
this can't be all you want. You've got to want something
more in your life than this right here." And I noticed in that moment,
I had him cornered, and that's a really bad place to be
in a correctional facility because it takes out the -
any choices for that person, and it takes out the choices for me,
but I didn't care, and I kept asking him questions, and I said, "Nathan,
why are you lying to me? Nathan, why won't you be honest
with me for one moment and tell me what you really want?" And there was a pause, and I looked at him, and he looked back at me. I wasn't sure what
was going to happen next. And as I looked down,
I saw his fists clenching and his shoulders getting tight, and his chin started
to quiver a little bit. And he looked up, and he said, "Mr. Fretwell, I don't want this! I don't want this life! (Crying) I want to have a family. I want to be the first in my family
to make something of this!" (Breath cracking) (Sniffs) And I remember when he told me that, that in that moment, I wasn't looking at a drug addict. I didn't see the drug dealer
or the gang member in front of me. What I saw was a little kid
Nathan had likely been hiding his whole life. When I discuss leadership with people,
we talk about confidence, we talk about courage, we talk about vulnerability. In that moment, Nathan taught me
what leadership really was. See, the answers he had given me before
were what he honestly believed. Yet somewhere in this process,
he found the confidence to set a new vision. He had the courage to believe
something different, even just for only that moment, and he was vulnerable enough
to say it out loud. It's certainly the type
of leader I want to be. Sal had opened me up
to a completely new way of looking at leadership. That's affected me
for the rest of my life, and what's interesting to note is he didn't try to convince me. He simply asked me a few questions. Now, whatever leadership
position you find yourself in, whether that's CEO of a company,
leading a team, or just a buddy at a bar trying to convince your friend
to make some better choices. (Laughter) We do best to take a step back
and remember: leadership isn't a "me" thing, it's a "we" thing, yeah? Most of the time people
don't need our answers, they need our participation. They need us to believe something is there
that we can help grow from within. I have no idea where Nathan is today. What I do know
is the kid I set out to lead has been one of
the most influential leaders of my entire life. And when we look at it that way, we see opportunity
for leadership all around us. We simply have to have
the courage to draw it out. Thank you. (Applause)
