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Transcript

Playing Head Games · The Talent Trade

• 0:00
  Stephanie Maas: Hi and welcome to today's Talent Trade podcast.
• 0:03
  This is Stephanie Maas, partner here at ThinkingAhead Executive
• 0:09
  Search. I am super excited to have one of our favorite my
• 0:14
  favorite partners here with us, Chris Gray. Chris is a true
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  Renaissance man, but today we are going to focus on one of his
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  specialties within the executive search practices here at
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  ThinkingAhead, specific within the energy practice. Chris,
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  thank you so much for joining us.
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  Chris Gray: Thank you, Stephanie. It's really an honor
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  to be doing this with you. And as you know, I'm a huge fan of
• 0:42
  yours and in the podcast, and that's meaningful to me to be
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  doing this here with you. And so thank you for having me a little
• 0:49
  bit about me and my background. So I did not start out in sales
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  or recruiting. I started out in music. I started playing music
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  in sixth grade, and my first instrument was the saxophone,
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  and I did that for a couple of years, but I was always really,
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  really drawn to the drums, and my parents did not really have
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  faith in me to stick with something. I was the typical
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  kid, you know, I had started and quit multiple things, like Cub
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  Scouts. I took karate for about three years, where I got the
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  crap kicked out of me Tuesdays and Thursdays for three years of
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  my life. Taught me a lot, but it wasn't that pleasant, so I
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  dropped out of that, and here I am telling my parents, hey, you
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  know, I don't want to play the drums. And they were like, yeah,
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  right, sure. Okay, whatever, buddy. But I just persisted. You
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  know when, when a kid wants something and they stick with
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  it? You know, parents are all over the place and unfocused,
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  but children, when they want something, they're very focused,
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  so they can sort of wear you down. And that's what I did.
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  Kept bringing it up to my parents over and over again,
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  and, you know, finally they agreed to get me a set, but not
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  before I basically practiced air drums in my room to MTV for a
• 1:56
  year, and then they finally got me the set. And the first set
• 1:59
  they got me was really cheap, and I beat it into the ground in
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  like six months. But that was the beginnings of a probably
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  close to 30 years in the music business. Got two degrees in
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  music, got a master's degree from the Eastman School of
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  Music, lived and taught music and played music and helped to
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  run a music business in New York City for about 12 years. And you
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  know, been talking with my family about New York. It's a
• 2:23
  very tough place to live, very expensive. Now, there's really
• 2:26
  two New Yorks. There's the New York that you go to when you're
• 2:30
  a tourist, and then there's the New York that you are in when
• 2:33
  you have to live and pay bills. And those are two different New
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  Yorks. Then it just became apparent that it was at the
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  time, it was time for a change. So we sort of started plotting
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  to get back to Tennessee, and we got back, and I'm kind of trying
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  to figure out, like, what am I going to do? You know, I had
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  done some HR functions within the company I was in New York.
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  But of course, there was nothing down here, like what I was doing
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  up there, which was traveling to schools all over New York City,
• 3:01
  Philadelphia. So I just kind of started applying to jobs online,
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  kind of what we tell people not to do. I did everything through
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  the internet. Got no results, got discouraged, and I started
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  going to a group in town called the National Career Transition
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  group. And I met a guy there, and I was talking to him about
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  my background and things that I had done, and he said, you know,
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  maybe you should go into recruiting, you know, like third
• 3:25
  party recruiting. And he goes, You know, I'm I'm not really
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  hiring right now, but I know somebody that it might be good
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  for you to meet, and it just happened to be thinking ahead,
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  and as I move forward now, after being here for over 11 years,
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  you know, this has just been a very good place to me that I did
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  not expect. And that's kind of how I got from music business in
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  New York City to head hunting in Nashville. I joined the energy
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  team because that was the opening that we had. I'd
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  actually interviewed for nonprofit a year before that. So
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  what we do here in the energy practices, we work with
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  substation and transmission engineers, and these are the
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  people that design the stuff. These are the people that build
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  it, highly paid people with PE licenses and bachelor's and
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  master's degrees. And we've also branched out into renewables
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  engineers and also environmental engineers. It's been really,
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  really fun for me, you know, working with all the people that
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  we work with, and clients and candidates, but also our
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  teammates. There's really no place like this. I've learned a
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  lot. So wanted to talk today about head game, you know, and
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  Stephanie. And when you're teaching and training, you break
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  down what we do into four categories, recruiting, biz dev,
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  planning and the head game. And I've had some definite doozies
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  and tests with the head game over the course of my life. I
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  broke down the head game into five categories that I think can
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  apply to almost anything or anyone, no matter what you're
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  dealing with, whether it's a personal thing, whether it's a
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  professional thing. Something at work. And so I'm just going to
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  talk about each one of those, and I'll try to include a little
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  example of how that applied to me. So the first thing in the
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  head game. So let's just assume that you're in a you're in a
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  you're in a pickle, you know, you're in a situation, you're
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  you're losing the game, you're you're back sliding in some way
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  in your life, the situation that you're in, it's not going the
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  way that you thought it would go and, you know, we go through
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  different stages of how we deal with that emotionally. You know,
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  the five stages of grief you talk about, I guess the main
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  three, you know, denial, anger and acceptance. That can
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  definitely happen when you're when you're going through
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  something difficult, you sort of deny that it's happening, or
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  maybe you you don't see that it's happening, and then you get
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  you get mad, you know, and you're just angry at the
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  situation or yourself, you know, a lot of people go into self
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  blame at that point, and then at some point, you accept that,
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  okay, this is real. I'm dealing with this. You decided that this
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  is real, and you're looking at this, and she said, Okay, I
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  gotta do something here. So I think the first thing I would
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  say is, get going. Get going. Get started. Move. One example
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  that comes to mind for me is, you know, it's teaching music.
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  And I was working for a company that provided instrumental
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  lessons and the instruments to Catholic schools all over New
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  York City. So it's our business. Had well over 12,000 kids that
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  were customers of ours. And one of the things we did was every
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  year we would get the best kids from the school, from each
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  school, and we'd get them together, and it was called
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  Honor Band. And in New York City alone, we had over 300 kids in
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  the band. When you think about 300 kids playing music at the
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  same time, these are six to 12 graders. They are at various
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  levels. Some kids are superstars. Some kids probably
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  got invited so their feelings wouldn't get hurt. They got
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  various stages of intonation, how to put the instrument
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  together, their quality of their sound, they're just overall
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  musicianship. And all of a sudden, you're standing in front
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  of these 300 kids, and they you start the first song, and I'll
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  never forget like and it was an easy song, and I could not tell
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  what was happening. It was such a monstrosity of sound. It was
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  such a wall of chaos. And all these kids were blaring into
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  their instruments at the same time, with no regard to playing
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  with each other, listening to the beat, watching my conducting
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  your knee. That was just total chaos. And I just remember, and
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  I had my superiors were watching me. You know, it's like I was
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  almost like being observed. I kind of felt like I was on
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  trial. I mean, it was super intense. You know, you stop the
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  band because it's terrible. It sounds awful, and you stop them,
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  and then the kids are like, all quiet. They're looking at you,
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  300 kids, 600 eyes, and they're like, what's he gonna say? You
• 7:35
  know, what's he gonna tell us to do? Is he can tell us it was
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  good. And I froze. I didn't know what to say. I just stood there.
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  And the more I didn't speak, the more pressure I felt, and I felt
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  my colleagues staring at me, and it was not a great moment, but
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  eventually I just said, You know what flutes are at a tune or
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  something's off, so let's just run the flutes. And then I said,
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  let's just run the clarinets, and let's just run the trumpets
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  and just the act of starting somewhere, I started to build
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  momentum off my own action. And that's one of the things I would
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  say, is what you need to do if you're stuck is, get going. Get
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  moving. Do something. Start small. Start anywhere but start.
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  Don't sit in the unproductive energy of inertia, but get
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  going. Next thing, I would say, is one day at a time. So when
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  you're dealing with a task, or you're dealing with a mountain
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  that you have to climb, it's really, really easy to look at
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  the totality of your task and get overwhelmed. And that's when
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  negative self talk can creep in. You know, wow, look at this huge
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  thing that I have to do. I'm not going to be able to do this. I
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  can't do this. It's not going to happen. It's too big. The odds
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  are against me. Logically, it's crazy to think I can do this.
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  And so we start convincing ourselves that we're not going
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  to be able to do what we need to do to fix the situation. So just
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  one day at a time, just kind of focuses on, okay, I'm here, I'm
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  present, I'm in the moment, and I'm gonna decide and figure out
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  what I can get done right now. And these are closely related,
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  you know, so get going is about the right now, and so is one day
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  at a time. It's about being present in the moment, not
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  overthinking the next week, the next week, or even, really,
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  tomorrow. And you know, my faith also tells me that I'm not
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  supposed to worry about tomorrow. And that is a skill,
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  that is a skill that will not come naturally. We are all
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  inclined to look forward and stress out. So the skill is, I'm
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  not going to do that. I'm going to stay here in the moment. But
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  one of the things I do is I make a list of everything that's
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  freaking me out. So it could be a Word doc. You scribble it on a
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  piece of paper. It doesn't really matter, but I make a list
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  of the things that are swimming in my head that are negative,
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  and I get really specific. So like, let's just say it was a
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  financial thing. Like, right? Let's say I was kind of worried
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  about money. And I will literally put not just I'm
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  worried about money, but I'm. Worried about paying XYZ bill,
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  and then I just go through and I make the list, and one of the
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  things I notice when I do that is that the list is never as bad
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  as I thought. You know, when I'm looking at it on paper, it's
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  never as bad as what I had swimming in my head. Is it just
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  gets it out of me, and I'm not sitting with that negativity. So
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  one day at a time, the next one is, remember your most
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  successful times, or remember your wins. And when I think
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  about that, I think about my time in New York. I'd been there
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  for about a year, and I was a teacher, so I was making like,
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  32k in New York City in the year, 2000 in a single income
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  situation. So of course, I'm looking at the summer, and
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  teachers don't get paid in the summer. And I'm like, What am I
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  going to do? So I started looking through the New York
• 10:37
  Daily News, like the hard copy, and I saw that there was a job
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  posting for a couple 100 bucks a week part time. I thought, well,
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  if I can start now, this was in January of 2001 I thought, if I
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  can start now, I can build up enough cash to get through the
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  summer. So I found out it was a paper route for the New York
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  Times, and I was waking up at two in the morning in Queens,
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  and I was driving to Hell's Kitchen to a warehouse. I was
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  putting together papers like 225 editions in the New York Times,
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  loading them in my car, driving across 23rd Street to the east
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  side to four buildings called waterside Plaza. Each had 37
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  floors. You need to take the elevator all the way up to way
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  up to the top stall the elevator with your push cart, run out and
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  toss all the newspapers at the doorsteps of the people so that
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  when they came out of their apartment, the newspaper would
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  be there and pretty on their doormat. And that was four hours
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  of work. And then I went and did my full time teaching job, and I
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  was working overtime with that. So I was basically working from
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  2am to 8pm I'd go home, eat a sandwich, go to sleep, wake up,
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  do it all over again. I did that for a year, and I learned more
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  about myself in that year than I ever have in my life, the things
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  that I was capable of doing, the ability to push myself, the
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  ability to believe in myself, and then again, tied to these
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  other two right, one day at a time, and get going. So I was
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  able to do that. And I remember that a lot when I'm in a pickle,
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  you know? I remember those times of of what that was like, and
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  sometimes what you feel in the moment is the worst times can
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  actually be the best times when you look back and you realize
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  how you grew as a person, how you strengthened as a person,
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  and and just the lessons that you learned and the memories
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  that you made. So the fourth one I would say, is visualize
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  winning. So remembering successes, that's about looking
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  back at winning. Visualizing winning is about looking forward
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  and saying to yourself, Okay, what's going to happen when I
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  win, not if I win, when I win, what's going to happen? What's
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  that going to look like? And you go through that, and you
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  visualize, okay, if I hit this goal, or if I get out of this
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  situation, or if, obviously, in what we do, you know, if I make
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  that placement, or if I get that billing, or if I win this new
• 12:47
  client, if I win the search, and you you start to let your
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  emotions fill in that picture in your mind. You start to
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  visualize what that looks like, and everybody will react to that
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  differently. You know, some people, that'll be great fuel
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  for them to move forward. Somebody like me, I struggle
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  with it a little bit. I'm not I'm not as good as visualizing
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  what the future is going to be and how good it's going to feel.
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  I do think that it's good to at least like. Think forward into
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  the future. Think about those positive pictures and what
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  that's going to look like when you overcome, when you pull
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  yourself out of this and when you win. So far, we have get
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  going one day at a time. Remember your success is in
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  visualize winning. And so that brings me to the last one, which
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  is tune out the negative as much as you can, even if it's real.
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  So an example might be that you're in a situation and the
• 13:36
  odds are sort of long that you're going to win, you know,
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  almost like an athletic event between a really good school and
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  a sort of a not really good school, you know, the odds with
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  that not so good school winning are slim, you know. And
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  sometimes you might be in a situation where you have a slim
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  chance, or a less than 5050, chance. And sometimes people
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  around you, even if they love you and they care about you,
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  they'll point this out, you know, they'll, they'll try to be
• 14:02
  realist with you here, you know, we call it being a billionaire,
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  and it's kind of like, hey, you know what? You got this thing
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  going on. It's kind of a long shot. But hey, you know, do your
• 14:13
  best. You know, give it a go. We're pulling for you, you know,
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  we're praying for you, and all that kind of stuff. And it's
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  like, sometimes you have to just tune all of that out, because if
• 14:23
  you focus on it, even if it's real, that's the key. It's not,
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  I'm not just talking about people being negative. We all
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  know that that's probably not good, you know, people being
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  negative, but I'm talking about people being realist with you,
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  and it's negative. You gotta tune that out, because it will
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  pull you back, and you'll start to give that life. You'll start
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  to give those long odds life, and you have to tune it out and
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  say, You know what? I'm not giving that anything. I'm not
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  giving it any of my energy. I'm not giving it any of my time.
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  I'm focusing on all these other things that are positive, and
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  I'm going to believe in myself even when it doesn't make sense.
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  Six if I don't believe in myself, why should anyone else
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  believe in me? So those are just some things that I have
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  developed over the years, and I'm definitely not saying that
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  I'm expert or sensei on that stuff, but I'll just hit them
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  real quick again. So it's get going one day at a time.
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  Remember success is visualize winning and tune out the
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  negative, even if it's real.
• 15:21
  Stephanie Maas: Well, I had planned on my brain not being
• 15:24
  able to keep pace, and I was literally hanging on every word,
• 15:28
  Chris, thank you so much. That is such good counsel. Thank you
• 15:32
  for the vulnerability and sharing some of who you are on
• 15:36
  and off the field with us. And you know the reality of it is we
• 15:41
  only learn these things when we have to. The fact that you know
• 15:45
  them means at some point you've had to learn them.
• 15:49
  Chris Gray: Well, I appreciate the opportunity. Thank you. Stephanie.