Life Lesson #8 The Vulcan Years - Mentors

Remember this poem?

One night I dreamed a dream.

As I was walking along the beach with my Lord.

Across the dark sky flashed scenes from my life.

For each scene, I noticed two sets of footprints in the sand,

One belonging to me and one to my Lord.

After the last scene of my life flashed before me,

I looked back at the footprints in the sand.

I noticed that at many times along the path of my life,

especially at the very lowest and saddest times,

there was only one set of footprints.

This really troubled me, so I asked the Lord about it.

"Lord, you said once I decided to follow you,

You'd walk with me all the way.

But I noticed that during the saddest and most troublesome times of my life,

there was only one set of footprints.

I don't understand why, when I needed You the most, You would leave me."

He whispered, "My precious child, I love you and will never leave you

Never, ever, during your trials and testings.

When you saw only one set of footprints,

It was then that I carried you."

I acknowledged Gordon Mabee earlier as the guy who started it all for me. As I graduated college I interviewed only a few times and was lucky enough to have received an offer from Rockwell international and Avco Finance and I accepted the Avco job. Why? You ask? The company was owned by the holding company that owned Avco Finance but it had nothing to do with finance. It was a manufacturer of Foodservice equipment under the Moffat brand and the engineering department was only 2 people, Gordon Mabee and a draftsman, Casey Swinkels and both gents were 50 plus years old so I thought I would learn more in a small team of seasoned professionals and boy I was right. In the first 2 weeks on the job I burned all of the hairs on my arms learning how to light gas appliances and the learning continued for the next 10 years. 

Gord was also a guy who after 25 years with the company had reached a point where life balance was incredibly important to him and he was adamant about it. He would say "if I can't get the job done in my 40 hours a week then I am either overworked or incompetent". Now after so many years on the job for one company perhaps he earned that right a bit and I as a young buck just starting out should not have the same view. If I wanted to climb the company ladder or grow in my career I would have to make some sacrifices along the way but having my first boss have that mentality allowed me to grow into a place where I understood the value of life balance and when you had to put your petal to the metal to get the job done.

Probably 5 or 6 years into this job I can remember Gord sitting Casey and I down one day and saying that he decided to leave the company and accept another job. Shocked, because he was a lifer with the company we asked him why he was leaving. He then smiled and said, "you know this new company gave me a great opportunity and my paycheck will be exactly the same as it is now…. They just give me one twice as often…." Gord taught me so much and I owe him a lot. He taught me the industry and groomed me to become a respected engineer. Him leaving was my first exposure to the whole career choice dilemna and continuing to work for the same company versus exploring other opportunities out there in the market. For those of you just starting out in your career or even for those seasoned veterans who are wondering how to navigate the whole career path and the money versus job satisfaction versus life balance situation I offer one of my own personal experiences that helped me early on in my career.

I was a few years into my job at Avco/Moffat and making around $15,000 per year (true but this was back in 1980 remember). Some of my friends from high school who did not go to college were working at local factories making over $20,000 and I was beginning to wonder why I had gone to college and lost those earning years my friends got. When a foreman's position opened up in our plant where the wage was a hearty $18,000 per year I said, that's it, this is my chance for more money, just like my friends. How lucky was I that a seasoned veteran named Cecil Winder, who was advising the company during a transition to new ownership took the time to pull me into his office for another life lesson. Cecil was a class act. He was among the nicest people I had ever met and he opened his heart, his life and his family to me. I remember him inviting me to his lake house as I was doing some work with his daughter Michele on French translations and I spent a wonderful evening talking shop, learning and enjoying the company of his wonderful family.

He told me that I could indeed take that foreman's job and enjoy perhaps 3% raises for the rest of my life and maybe, if I am lucky could one day become a plant manager. The other alternative, he said was to stay in engineering, learn more about the business from him and others on the management team and perhaps have opportunities beyond my wildest dreams.

Well I took that advice and thank gosh I did. As each year went by, I inched closer to the annual income my friends who skipped college had until I ultimately passed them and left them in the dust, growing and learning so much along the way.

Life Lesson #8 There will be those you come across in your career who are willing to take the time to mentor you. Seek those people out, learn from them and someday become that same person who is sought after as a mentor.