Latest / Project Candor: Ordinary People. Unexpected Stories / Cast Bold. Lead Bright with Mickey Fitch-Collins | Ship's Log #23

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Cast Bold. Lead Bright with Mickey Fitch-Collins | Ship's Log #23 · Project Candor: Ordinary People. Unexpected Stories

• 0:02
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: I had folks that I was interviewing that experienced heart attacks, that were experiencing significant, I mean significant other health issues, all this sort of stuff, because of this productivity, you know, uh busy Olympics sort of stuff, and this isolation and burnout sort of stuff that middle managers are having.
• 0:21
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And I talk about this as much as I can with folks because I just think that there's this idea of, well, if we just leave middle managers alone, they're fine, right?
• 0:30
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Like they're doing important work for the organization.
• 0:33
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: But they are, you know, people always say it's lonely at the top.
• 0:41
  Jeanne: Welcome to Project Candor.
• 0:43
  Jeanne: Today we have a fantastic guest, Mickey Fitch-Collins.
• 0:48
  Jeanne: Before we begin, I'm going to share a few of Mickey's highlights.
• 0:51
  Jeanne: But just know we're saving some really good surprises for the end when we play two truths and a lie.
• 0:57
  Jeanne: So stay with us.
• 0:58
  Jeanne: Now I have to tell you something.
• 1:00
  Jeanne: When I first spoke with Mickey about coming on the podcast, I was not prepared.
• 1:05
  Jeanne: I was not prepared to meet this wonderful on fire personality who absolutely exudes happiness and energy.
• 1:12
  Jeanne: She brings this combination of depth and joy that fills the room even through a screen.
• 1:18
  Jeanne: Mickey holds a PhD in leadership in higher education and has built a career that spans academia, educational technology, and corporate learning.
• 1:27
  Jeanne: She's worked from the front lines all the way to the C-suite.
• 1:31
  Jeanne: Her leadership philosophy was reshaped in the wake of 9-11.
• 1:35
  Jeanne: And during what she calls her great discernment, she made a bold pivot into learning and development.
• 1:41
  Jeanne: Today she helps people get better at their work, one relationship at a time.
• 1:46
  Jeanne: Mickey, thank you for honoring us.
• 1:48
  Jeanne: Welcome aboard.
• 1:49
  Jeanne: Oh my gosh.
• 1:50
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Thank you, Jeanne, so much for the opportunity.
• 1:52
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And I feel so warm and fuzzy on the inside with that intro.
• 1:56
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Um uh we we did.
• 1:58
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: We had such a lovely conversation in in, you know, our first opportunity meeting and and preparing for the show here.
• 2:02
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: So I've been thinking so much and I've been reflecting so much on that conversation.
• 2:06
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: So I I'm glad to know that the uh the energy exchange is mutual there.
• 2:10
  Jeanne: Yes, it definitely was.
• 2:11
  Jeanne: I was so happy after I got off that call.
• 2:15
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: I love it.
• 2:16
  Jeanne: All right, so what we'll do was start with some questions up first so we can get to know you.
• 2:20
  Jeanne: So are you ready to go?
• 2:22
  Jeanne: Absolutely.
• 2:23
  Jeanne: Let's roll.
• 2:24
  Jeanne: Wonderful.
• 2:25
  Jeanne: Um, I shared what stuck with me when I first met you, that joyful on fire energy.
• 2:30
  Jeanne: So when people meet you for the first time, what do you think they often get wrong about you?
• 2:36
  Jeanne: Oh wow.
• 2:37
  Jeanne: Goodness.
• 2:39
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: That is such a good question.
• 2:40
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: I think the thing that people probably get wrong about me is that um I'm a goofball all the time.
• 2:46
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Because I I come off as I'm kind of one of those like you get what you see sort of people, you know, and um, or you see what you get, what however that phrase goes, I'm a very authentic presence.
• 2:58
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And I like to uh joke, I like to have a good time, I like to look for, I think especially these days, you know, finding those moments of levity and bringing a little bit of humor, I think is really important to new relationships.
• 3:12
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And I think a lot of people, there's a lot of folks that get really nervous when they're meeting new people or they're in social settings or, you know, whatever.
• 3:21
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And and you know, I experience some of that too.
• 3:23
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And I think one of the challenges sometimes is that folks don't realize that I have this serious side to me too, that I'm not just this like playful teddy bear sort of person, but that I do have a serious side, that I'm not all jokes and and not all fun.
• 3:37
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And, you know, that's kind of bit me a couple of times in my role as a supervisor on different teams and stuff, right?
• 3:43
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Of like people being like, wait a minute, like what happened to fun, playful Mickey here?
• 3:47
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And I'm like, you know, there's I'm a Gemini, there's two sides, you know, the twins, right?
• 3:51
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Like there's two sides of Mickey.
• 3:53
  Jeanne: Right.
• 3:54
  Jeanne: I find it fun to meet new people, but I also find it, you know, like a little stressful.
• 3:59
  Jeanne: It's just you don't know that person really, but then you wish you could get through that first part and be at that normalization stage.
• 4:07
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Yeah.
• 4:08
  Jeanne: And when you just know them and you feel comfortable with them, but that's a great answer, thank you.
• 4:13
  Jeanne: Um, you begin building a professional career as a teenager.
• 4:18
  Jeanne: When we think about young prodigies, whether it's someone like Leanne Rhimes, or you know, she had blue at released blue at thirteen and then was a Grammy winner at 14.
• 4:28
  Jeanne: So I threw her in.
• 4:30
  Jeanne: Or Pablo Picasso, who reportedly was drawing before he could talk, or Magnus Carlson, who became a chess sh grandmaster at 13.
• 4:40
  Jeanne: And I had to throw in Magnus because that's my husband's name.
• 4:43
  Jeanne: There's obvious talent, but there's also enormous pressure.
• 4:47
  Jeanne: Without giving away your headline, what kind of inner backbone did you have to grow to hold your own in a room full of adults?
• 4:54
  Jeanne: And what did it require of you emotionally?
• 4:57
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: I think some of the greatest challenges are for you know, I I see this actually watching the Olympics right now, like the winter Olympics.
• 5:05
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Just last night, you know, I was watching, and you know, these teenagers flying down these, you know, slalom, you know, hills and on the ice and luge and all this sort of stuff.
• 5:16
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And there is a ton of pressure to perform, right?
• 5:20
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Everybody has a ton of pressure to perform, especially in the workplace, right?
• 5:24
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: But also in our personal lives, right?
• 5:25
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: We have a lot of stated and unstated expectations that we have of one another as human beings.
• 5:31
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And I think one of the greatest challenges is for young people, whether they're kid, you know, kid actors, athletes, you know, academics, you know, whatever it is, when kids are put in the same arena as adults.
• 5:47
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And there's that backbone that you mentioned, there's so much to that because there's a competence component of like, can you actually hold your own in conversations or whatever the task or whatever the thing is that you're supposed to do, whether it's acting or skiing or or whatever that might be.
• 6:05
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Um, so there's the competence piece, but there's also the confidence.
• 6:09
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And, you know, I mean, I'm I'm sure you've heard that phrase of, you know, fake it till you make it, right?
• 6:13
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Of like, oh, you know, people like just pretend.
• 6:16
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Um actually, you know, I I heard it stated really well.
• 6:19
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: I was listening to a podcast, uh, Tim Ferris, he's a fantastic guy.
• 6:23
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: I love listening to his podcast.
• 6:24
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: I had a guest on the other day and because kind of talking about the the importance of acting as if, because if we act as if, then the rest of our our traits and capabilities and skills might follow.
• 6:35
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: That was a really big thing for me as a teenager when I had to go into these rooms and I had that pressure to perform was okay, do I know what I'm talking about?
• 6:44
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Right.
• 6:44
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: So the competence piece, but the confidence was I just need to start acting as though I'm just like everybody else in the room, right?
• 6:53
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: That like I deserve to be here just as much as everybody else.
• 6:56
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And that was really hard because for for a while, like it did feel like I was faking it, right?
• 7:02
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And I hadn't necessarily at that time heard that phrase, like fake it till you make it, sort of thing.
• 7:07
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Um, you know, I feel like that's something that we don't really hear until we're, you know, kind of into our young adulthood or whatnot.
• 7:13
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: So I think the balance of the confidence and competence piece, but for me, to build that that spine or that backbone with strength really was pouring into competence and and really studying my craft and really, I mean, that that was my world.
• 7:30
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: I I became obsessive with the thing that brought me into the room.
• 7:35
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And so that I knew there were certain situations and places when I was in the room with grown adults, with people that were two, three, four times my age.
• 7:42
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: I knew I knew more than them, right?
• 7:45
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And so that knowledge piece, knowledge is power, right?
• 7:48
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Like knowledge does become a powerful component.
• 7:51
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And so, like, as I built that competence, that then brought this confidence piece into it as well.
• 7:56
  Jeanne: That's wonderful.
• 7:57
  Jeanne: It's uh amazing that you could hold your your still youthful nature, yeah, knowing that you as a young performer without giving anything away, I'd still try to, you know, see an adult and think, why are they not understanding this concept?
• 8:16
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Right, right.
• 8:17
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And and trying to, you know, I mean, I think at that time, you know, I was 14, 15, 16 years old, right?
• 8:24
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: I mean, you're still absolutely finding myself, right?
• 8:26
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: I mean, I was massively still in in identity formation and kind of discovering like who is Mickey and, you know, all this sort of stuff.
• 8:33
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: But what I realized in in those moments, and I I probably realized it earlier, but learning is such a core value to me.
• 8:42
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: You know, I mean, it is, it is absolutely, I mean, from the day I could read, you know, um, this this whole entire world.
• 8:50
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: I mean, I'm watching this.
• 8:51
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: I have a five-year-old daughter and a two-year-old son.
• 8:53
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: I'm watching this of my daughter as she's learning, she's kind of early stages reading right now.
• 8:57
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And, you know, you can see that broadening of like, oh my gosh, like there's this whole entire world of understanding and learning and knowing that's out there.
• 9:05
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And that was what gave me strength was I have the ability to learn and grow.
• 9:12
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And for me, this was pre-social media, this was pre-Youtube, pre-internet, you know, all of this sort of stuff.
• 9:19
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: But still I felt like as long as I build my competence, like as long as I learn and and obsess over my craft, over what I was performing in, that everything else will come with that.
• 9:30
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Right.
• 9:30
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And I remember kind of thinking like having those thoughts in in a more you know, rudimentary teenage sort of way, but I remember having those thoughts of like, I just as long as I continue to learn and grow, as long as I continue to learn and grow, I will be better, I can be better, I will continue to be better.
• 9:45
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: I still feel that way as an adult.
• 9:47
  Jeanne: Oh, good.
• 9:48
  Jeanne: Uh I don't know that I had that much energy when I approached something that I'm doing, but that is a fantastic attitude.
• 9:55
  Jeanne: So you spent time in competitive outdoor environments that are traditionally male dominated.
• 10:02
  Jeanne: So, what does it take for a woman, especially a young woman, to command respect in spaces when she's not the expected voice?
• 10:10
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Yeah.
• 10:10
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: That was that was really hard, right?
• 10:12
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: So, yes, this competitive outdoor environment that I was in, predominantly male, predominantly southern.
• 10:19
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: I was a kid at the time.
• 10:20
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: I grew up in the uh south suburbs of Chicago, so definitely a northerner.
• 10:24
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: So predominantly male, predominantly southern United States, very traditional.
• 10:30
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And for me, I'm coming into that as a 14, 15-year-old girl who's also going through the identity formation process of realizing, well, I am not like everybody else, kind of going through the process and recognizing like that, you know, that in those early stages, that was my earliest recognition of like, oh, I don't think that I am a heterosexual person, right?
• 10:50
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: So like one of these is not like the others, sort of thing.
• 10:53
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And, you know, there were women that were in that space, but they were mostly middle-aged women, mid-50s, early 60s, very much kind of this blonde bombshell, like very made up, you know.
• 11:09
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: I mean, just totally different sort of thing.
• 11:12
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And I was looking at that and I'm like, I don't fit that either, because the look, you know, this persona that these women were wearing, I was like, that's not my jam.
• 11:22
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And like, that doesn't make sense for what we're doing anyway, right?
• 11:26
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: I see this all the time too with again a variety of different sports of like, still, why are women expected to be fully made up and hair fully done and all this sort of stuff?
• 11:37
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And the men look like trash, you know, and and but it's the same sport.
• 11:41
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: So there was that piece.
• 11:43
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: I think the other piece too was for me was just building this capacity to own my voice and own my presence to captivate a room, to captivate a crowd.
• 11:54
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And that was one of the things that, in essence, that I that I compensated, and I put that in air quotes, but compensated for being a minoritized person in that sort of environment.
• 12:05
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: It was really hard, I think, too, because in this competitive outdoor environment, there were, as I would say, men behaving badly, okay?
• 12:16
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Derogatory comments about women, about other underrepresented folks, right?
• 12:21
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And I am a woman.
• 12:24
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: I am, again, going through this identity formation process of realizing that I'm a gay woman.
• 12:28
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And I'm also hearing comments about non-white people, people with disabilities, you know, all this sort of stuff, and realizing like this is a very uncomfortable environment, and I still need to be able to compete in this environment.
• 12:45
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And so some of that was just kind of learning how to thicken my skin, but also learning how to find the words to confront some of that stuff too.
• 12:54
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And when I started doing some of that, right, what happened was there was a ripple effect, right?
• 12:59
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: To the men that I was part of these different teams and different organizations, right?
• 13:04
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: There was a behavior change of like, hey, she's one of us, right?
• 13:07
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Like she's she's part of us, she's part of this team and a very cool part of this team, a very different part of this team.
• 13:13
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: We have in her, we have something very different than other organizations do.
• 13:17
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And so, like, let's prop her up.
• 13:19
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And there's so there was this shift that happened.
• 13:22
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Yeah, that was it was a wonderful shift, absolutely, right?
• 13:26
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And these guys were, I mean, some of the younger ones, I mean, kind of function as kind of like older brother types, but a lot of them were like my dad's age.
• 13:33
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And I was a minor at the time doing this sort of stuff.
• 13:35
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: So my dad was always with me at all of these things, right?
• 13:38
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: So, I mean, there were these guys that were like kind of like secondary, like uncle sort of guys, you know, that just became this crew that I was a part of that, and it did shift and change, right?
• 13:48
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: But it was hard for me, especially because people wanted to really, really headline on the girl thing, right?
• 13:56
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Like, oh my gosh, you're a girl doing this.
• 13:58
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Like, how can girls possibly do this?
• 14:00
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And I was always befuddled by that.
• 14:02
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And I still, you know, as somebody in my mid-40s, I still am befuddled by it because it's like girls can do all of the things that boys can do.
• 14:09
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Women can do all of the things that men can do.
• 14:12
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Like, why we think that there's this, oh, because you're this, then you can't do that, was always so confusing to me because I'm like, I was raised, I mean, the way that my parents raised me was like, yeah, you're you're doing this competitive outdoor thing, and like you just you're nailing it.
• 14:26
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Like, just do it, keep doing it.
• 14:28
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: There was no like, oh, maybe you shouldn't do this because you're a girl, right?
• 14:31
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: That never happened.
• 14:32
  Jeanne: Oh, that's so good that your parents were very supportive and that they did not put you down for what you wanted to do.
• 14:38
  Jeanne: Were they also involved without again saying what it was?
• 14:42
  Jeanne: Is were they also involved?
• 14:44
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Yeah, you know, my dad was very front and center, was always present again because I was under 18.
• 14:50
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: You know, there was kind of his presence was needed for legality sort of stuff and things of that sort.
• 14:55
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: He had to sign all the paperwork and like, you know, all that.
• 14:58
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And then there was, you know, finances and stuff.
• 15:00
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And so my parents were definitely involved in in all those pieces.
• 15:03
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: My mom was a huge support.
• 15:05
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: She, you know, was always making sure that I was like prepped and ready to go.
• 15:09
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And, you know, that she was a huge, I would call her like the operations specialist.
• 15:13
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Like she always made sure that I was prepared, I was ready to go, I had all of the gear that I needed, I had all of my specialized clothing that I needed to have, like, you know, all of those sort of things.
• 15:24
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: She was the operation specialist uh when it when it came to me doing what I was doing.
• 15:28
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And my dad was really there on the sidelines, you know.
• 15:33
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: I mean, and these were the days, again, this is about 30 years ago.
• 15:36
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: These were the days of, you know, buying film canister, you know, and putting in taking all these pictures.
• 15:41
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: He's just taking just dozens and dozens, hundreds of pictures all the time, putting together, you know, carousels, you know, slide carousels of photos and all this, that sort of thing, and really helping me a lot with a lot of like the business aspects and marketing aspects.
• 15:56
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And so, yeah, it was very much um, and you know, my my sister, you know, when I was doing this, she was, you know, late high school, early college.
• 16:03
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And so she was kind of doing her own thing, but she was excited for me.
• 16:06
  Jeanne: Oh.
• 16:07
  Jeanne: I guess I was asking from the aspect of who introduced you to this activity.
• 16:11
  Jeanne: Was it your dad or mom?
• 16:14
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Yeah, it was, I mean, where I grew up, you know, the again, without giving it away, the activity was very prevalent where I grew up.
• 16:20
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And uh, so it was just something that I did as a little one that my parents, it was, you know, kind of those things that you get into when you're kind of a young toddler and all that sort of stuff.
• 16:29
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And then I met some people that were doing this sort of thing professionally, and uh started kind of coming around, sniffing around and kind of saying, like, well, I think I could do that, right?
• 16:38
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And started kind of doing it in an amateur sort of function, as people do with these kind of competitive outdoor sort of things.
• 16:44
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: You start kind of doing it in an amateur kind of local sort of piece, and there started being some media coverage about me.
• 16:50
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And again, I I grew up in the Chicago area, and so you know, the the Chicago uh Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times, the big newspapers, again, you know, 30 years ago, you know, so I mean the newspapers started picking up and some of the TV shows and stuff like that.
• 17:04
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And then that's when things really catapulted for me to the national level, and I started getting pulled into some of these larger companies and organizations um to be doing this uh on a professional level, which was wild, right?
• 17:14
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Because I was just a teenage kid in high school, you know.
• 17:16
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Oh name some TV shows.
• 17:19
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Sure.
• 17:20
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Um, for anybody that's is in the Midwest that's watching or listening, Midwest Outdoors, this is gonna start kind of giving uh some of uh perhaps some of this stuff away.
• 17:29
  Jeanne: Okay, okay, maybe we should stop.
• 17:30
  Jeanne: Yeah.
• 17:31
  Jeanne: We'll wait, we'll wait on that.
• 17:33
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: But I was on, I mean, thinking about like networks and things like that.
• 17:35
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: I um was on ESPN and Fox Sports at one point, and again, this is mid-90s.
• 17:41
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: I had an invitation to uh meet Oprah and do like a small snippet on the Oprah show when she was still based in Chicago.
• 17:50
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And uh yeah, so I I I got the opportunity to do some larger scale media pieces.
• 17:56
  Jeanne: Nice.
• 17:56
  Jeanne: That's so exciting.
• 17:58
  Jeanne: I can't even imagine.
• 17:59
  Jeanne: All right, let's go on before I get into too much of your reveal.
• 18:04
  Jeanne: So two weeks into one of your early leadership roles, 9-11 happened.
• 18:10
  Jeanne: You said it reshaped your leadership philosophy in a matter of minutes.
• 18:14
  Jeanne: What changed in you that day that still shapes you and how you lead today?
• 18:20
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Yeah, yeah.
• 18:21
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: You know, all of us that were live, you know, which is, you know, what if it's it's funny sometimes to me that I'm interacting with people professionally that some some folks weren't alive, you know, when when 9-11 happened.
• 18:32
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: But for the rest of us, right, we all have our 9-11 story, right?
• 18:35
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Where were we and what was going on and stuff.
• 18:37
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: For me, that was the start of my junior year of college.
• 18:42
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And I had gotten, I had gotten a job as a student leader in the residence halls and the dorms on campus.
• 18:49
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And I had gotten this job kind of on the skin of my teeth.
• 18:53
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: I was a little bit of a troublemaker in college.
• 18:55
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: I was a good community builder, we could say, um, but I was building community around the wrong things and kind of outside the policies and all this sort of stuff.
• 19:04
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And I had applied for this student leadership role and kind of, you know, got the role, I think, by the skin of my teeth of like, hopefully you behave, right?
• 19:11
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Because now we're expecting you to lead other students and stuff.
• 19:14
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And so my job was essentially in this residence hall of, you know, three, four hundred people, was to be the leader on the floor to help kind of, you know, students navigate college and make friends and you know, have a good time, right?
• 19:28
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And we had gone through uh before the start of the school year in August, we had gone through a couple of weeks of training, right?
• 19:33
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And most of that training stuff was like understand like how do you build social gatherings and how do you get people to like meet one another, like learning icebreakers and you know, like all of those sort of super fun things, but it was it was about the fun and the social stuff.
• 19:48
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And then you fast forward to my second week in that job, and 9-11 happens.
• 19:55
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And you know, again, everybody has their stories and their parts and pieces of kind of where were you in and and what was going on and all this sort of stuff.
• 20:04
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: But in that day and the next 48 hours or so, what I realized was my job was not about beer float parties and getting people together to watch Packers games or anything like that for anybody who's you know listening and watching.
• 20:22
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: I live in Wisconsin, you could probably all already tell that on my accent.
• 20:26
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: But, you know, that was not my job anymore.
• 20:28
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: My job was to figure out with my peers how do we navigate what is happening in our country.
• 20:37
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Because nobody, again, within those first couple of days, I think everybody was like, is it gonna happen again?
• 20:43
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Right?
• 20:43
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Like, is this is there something else that's gonna happen today or or tomorrow, right?
• 20:47
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: I mean, I think everybody was kind of on pins and needles.
• 20:50
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And also, right, people were starting to find out the loss of loved ones and friends and family.
• 20:56
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: I also, what I share with people too, is that I I firmly believe that my generation of folks that were going through college, that was the last generation of kids that went through the ROTC programs as a way to finance their education, right?
• 21:11
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And so I had a number of students, you know, my peers that were on the floor that were in ROTC programs that were, you know, kind of part and parcel to National Guard that then started, you know, kind of becoming like pulled into National Guard.
• 21:23
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: I had other folks that were in National Guard that then were became deployed like very immediately in the in the weeks after, which was bonkers to me, right?
• 21:32
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Because I'm like, what?
• 21:34
  Jeanne: Yeah, you still have to finish your education.
• 21:35
  Jeanne: Where are you going?
• 21:36
  Jeanne: Right.
• 21:37
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: You know, and and too young.
• 21:39
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Yes, yes.
• 21:40
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And just realizing that like and somewhere in here, and of course, like most universities, you know, classes were paused for a couple of days and stuff.
• 21:48
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: But I remember our leadership team, you know, our our team of student staff with our professional staff member.
• 21:54
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: I remember us, I I can remember it like it was yesterday, even though it was you know, twenty five years ago, gathering up.
• 21:59
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And us being like, what do we do?
• 22:02
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And the conversation was just like, we just need to learn to be with people.
• 22:06
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And uh what that shaped for me was that exactly, is like, you just need to learn how to be with people.
• 22:13
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: How do you be with people when you don't know what to say?
• 22:18
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: How do you be with people when there isn't anything to say?
• 22:22
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: How do you be with people when there's no words to describe what you're thinking or feeling?
• 22:29
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: There's no solution to what's going on.
• 22:32
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And for all of us at that point, right, you know, we're we're 20 years old.
• 22:37
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: We had lived, I mean, we were tennish or so years old when Desert Storm and stuff happened, right?
• 22:43
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Wrap your yellow ribbon around your tree.
• 22:45
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: But that felt very far off.
• 22:48
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: It felt very distant.
• 22:50
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: It felt very much It was not in the United States.
• 22:53
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: No.
• 22:54
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Well, yeah.
• 22:54
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: I mean, it literally was distant.
• 22:56
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: But it was this thing that was on the TV, right?
• 22:58
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And this was a thing that was in the country.
• 23:00
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: This was a thing that was affecting our families and our friends.
• 23:04
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And it touched the biggest city in the United States, and it was devastating to watch.
• 23:10
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Yeah.
• 23:11
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And what changed for me in terms of my leadership philosophy was recognizing that it's not about how many people can I get to attend this program or attend this event or how much fun did people have, or, you know, whatever.
• 23:28
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: You know, how crazy were the shenanigans that we got into, right?
• 23:32
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: What changed in my leadership philosophy was I recognized that that one of the best skills, one of the best things that I could do for other humans is to just like share space with them and to talk with them and get to know them and be with them.
• 23:46
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And relationship building, right?
• 23:48
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: I mean, that to me has always been since then I am a relationship builder, I'm a bridge maker, I'm a bridge repair person, whatever it is.
• 23:57
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: I mean, that is my primary thing.
• 23:58
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: I I jokingly tell people is I can build a relationship with a sneaker if you put it in front of me, right?
• 24:04
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: But I think that it started with the teenage years, right?
• 24:08
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And what I was doing in my teenage years, but going through the crisis of 9-11 really codified my role is to lead other people one relationship at a time.
• 24:20
  Jeanne: Yeah, and some kind of traumas and stuff, I always learned that the best thing is is to just like you said, be with people, but just acknowledge we're breathing, we're still breathing, just keep breathing, just to be calm, just keep breathing.
• 24:35
  Jeanne: Because something like that was I mean, I have my own story, but I won't go into it.
• 24:40
  Jeanne: But it's um it's something that changes you.
• 24:43
  Jeanne: And if it doesn't change you, then you better think about yourself a little bit more deeply about oh yeah.
• 24:49
  Jeanne: It's like you're not if you're that numb to it, then oh, we've got a problem here.
• 24:54
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Yeah, I mean, I I think about and I'm sure there's thousands of people that are the same way, but I mean I think about that probably on a weekly basis, right?
• 25:04
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And what I've learned from that, what I've gleaned from that shifts and changes over the years, right?
• 25:10
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Like I'm still learning from that experience, and that really, really impacts kind of the way that I show up with other people and what I consider to be important, right?
• 25:20
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Like it's it's not, you know, how many people showed up and how again, like these other these superficial metrics of what we consider to be success, like that went out the window for me as as a 20-year-old, you know, and it and it redefined it got redefined by this crisis, this national crisis of just like what is actually valuable, what is actually important, and it's the people right in front of you, right?
• 25:46
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: It's the person sitting next to you.
• 25:48
  Jeanne: Yeah, it's kind of like that words in a song, I think, of it in probably not even just in a song, but they call it the age of innocence.
• 25:55
  Jeanne: It's gone.
• 25:56
  Jeanne: Totally.
• 25:57
  Jeanne: Absolutely.
• 25:57
  Jeanne: Yeah, totally.
• 25:59
  Jeanne: Well, that is a depressing thought, but it's it's good that it shaped you in a way to build you for the future because I know, like I read, you have your PhD now and you are working with people, so that's probably what's the start of that.
• 26:14
  Jeanne: Absolutely.
• 26:15
  Jeanne: So you talk about middle managers as the emotional shock absorbers of organizations.
• 26:22
  Jeanne: So why are so many of them quietly exhausted?
• 26:26
  Jeanne: And how much of that comes from what you call productivity theater?
• 26:30
  Jeanne: I've never heard of that.
• 26:31
  Jeanne: So, what are we performing instead of actually fixing?
• 26:35
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Yeah, yeah.
• 26:36
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Well, let me back up a little bit.
• 26:38
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: So, the middle manager stuff for me, like anybody who kind of you know is is working through different roles, I, you know, climbed the ladder.
• 26:45
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: My my first career, I always tell people my first career was higher education administration.
• 26:50
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: So I worked for a variety of different colleges and universities, and I sat in a number of middle manager roles, then I continued to move up uh the rankings or so to speak.
• 26:58
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And what I noticed, what I felt, what I was experiencing, what I was watching in other people, was yeah, that like middle managers are they're like the gumbies of organizations, right?
• 27:10
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: They're constantly be being pulled in all these different directions.
• 27:14
  Jeanne: I love Gumby.
• 27:15
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: I mean, that's that's the best visualization is Gumby or gosh, I forget the other character.
• 27:20
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: There's a character, a doll that you could stretch them all the time.
• 27:23
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Stretch Armstrong.
• 27:24
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Stretch Armstrong, thank you.
• 27:26
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Yeah.
• 27:26
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And when I started pursuing, I always knew that I wanted to get my PhD.
• 27:31
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And when I started pursuing my PhD, it was uh 2015.
• 27:34
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: I was working full-time.
• 27:36
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: I was a director level person uh at an organization at that time.
• 27:40
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And, you know, very early on in that doctoral journey, they want you to start thinking about what is it that you want to research, what do you want to do your dissertation on, right?
• 27:47
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Because they don't want people to be like in PhD programs for you know eight years and all this sort of stuff.
• 27:52
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: They want you to, you know, get onto this.
• 27:54
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And I just started thinking about all the time of like middle managers are always squished, right?
• 28:00
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: They're squished, they're pulled, they're isolated, they're lonely, they're frustrated, they're burnt out, all this sort of stuff.
• 28:06
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And that became my research.
• 28:08
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: What ultimately I looked at was how does people's self-efficacy, so middle managers, their self-efficacy, so like my view of my ability to get the job done, so to speak, how is that influenced by the supervision that they're getting, right?
• 28:23
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: So the boss's supervision that they're getting to them themselves as a middle manager, and then professional development.
• 28:29
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And what I found through that research process was really dark and dismal, which is to say that most middle managers are essentially having to create and craft their own support structures for them because there's this idea that, like, well, if you're a middle manager, you clearly know enough and you clearly have figured out enough.
• 28:49
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: You don't really need a ton of support.
• 28:51
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Let me just get out of your way and just like leave you alone, let you do your thing.
• 28:54
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Which on the surface sounds amazing, right?
• 28:58
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Like, get out of the way and let me do my job, right?
• 29:00
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Because nobody wants to be micromanaged.
• 29:02
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: The problem with that, though, is that these are still real human beings that have questions and they have concerns.
• 29:07
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: They have a need to be seen and see other people, they have a need to be in networks, like all this sort of stuff.
• 29:12
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And so there's this kind of dearth of support for these folks.
• 29:17
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And we see this across all different types of organizations.
• 29:20
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: This isn't just a higher ed thing.
• 29:22
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: This is across all industries, corporates, nonprofit, government, whatever it is, big, small, in between, is that middle managers are expected to wear a ton of hats, and they're in this constant push-pull between their supervisors and their frontline folks to be advocates and be supports and all this sort of stuff.
• 29:41
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: What I've done with that, right, is extrapolated that out to these different environments.
• 29:46
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: In fact, in my current role, I actually created a workshop that's entirely around this is like what do we do to prevent burnout for middle managers?
• 29:53
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: But coming to this concept of productivity theater, okay.
• 29:57
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Since it's Olympics time, I will go ahead and share this analogy.
• 30:01
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: I always tell people is like in the workplace, a lot of people are trying to get on the metal board of the busy Olympics, right?
• 30:08
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Like whether it's gold, silver, or bronze, is there's this idea that like just chase, chase the metal in the busy Olympics.
• 30:15
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Performative busyness, right?
• 30:17
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Performative productivity.
• 30:19
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: If I can just show you all the clicks and all the things and busy, busy, busy, how's things going?
• 30:23
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Oh, I'm so busy, right?
• 30:25
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: You know, what did you?
• 30:26
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Oh, I had 17 different meetings today, right?
• 30:28
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Like we start like just sharing this uh busyness as though this is what uh shows value, right?
• 30:35
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Like this is the stuff, these are the core ingredients of burnout, right?
• 30:39
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: This is the stuff that makes people hate their work.
• 30:41
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: This is the stuff that makes people chuck their jobs and say, I gotta get out of here.
• 30:46
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: This is the stuff, I mean, I actually in my research, I had folks that I was interviewing that experienced heart attacks, that were experiencing significant, I mean, significant other health issues, all this sort of stuff, because of this productivity, you know, uh busy Olympic sort of stuff, and this isolation and burnout sort of stuff that middle managers are having.
• 31:08
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And I talk about this as much as I can with folks because I just think that there's this idea of, well, if we just leave middle managers alone, they're fine, right?
• 31:16
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Like they're doing important work for the organization.
• 31:19
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: But they are, you know, people always say it's lonely at the top.
• 31:23
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And I've been in C suite, you know, I've been in a C-suite role, I've been, you know, in that, yeah, it is lonely.
• 31:29
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: But where it's especially lonely is when you're the middle manager of one, when you don't have a peer, when you don't, when you went from being one of the individual contributors and now you're the boss, right?
• 31:40
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: When you don't have people that are pouring on support structures and stuff.
• 31:43
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And so to me, I mean, that's one of those things I feel like I'm like evangelizing all the time is like we have to support, we have to be better supervisors to those middle managers, and we must give them better support in terms of continued learning and development.
• 31:55
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: I'm gonna step off my soapbox now.
• 31:58
  Jeanne: No, no, no, because I mean you're making me think about myself because I've been in program management for years and years.
• 32:04
  Jeanne: And so one of the things that I realized for middle managers, and I've been in that seat too, is just like the reason why they throw out all this busy, busy, busy, busy, busy, I believe, is because that is what they're asked to show, to show progress, but it's not even meaningful data.
• 32:23
  Jeanne: Bingo.
• 32:24
  Jeanne: And so it goes way up to the C-suite, and they're like looking, what am I looking at?
• 32:29
  Jeanne: They did 50 tasks.
• 32:30
  Jeanne: What that is not telling me strategically what I need to know to move forward.
• 32:34
  Jeanne: So you're causing all this busy work for no reason at all, and and for not being able to actually run a business effectively because you want your execs to be able to point out through what they see and what they've been informed of how they can make changes, how they can step in and help these people.
• 32:56
  Jeanne: But instead, it's just a sack of status reports showing all of this junk that everybody's got piled on them.
• 33:04
  Jeanne: And it's not effective.
• 33:06
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: You're you're absolutely right.
• 33:07
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And I mean, I think I think one of the greatest challenges, and especially, especially these days, you know, in in some of the economic conditions that we're in, I think, you know, moving into this, you know, not moving into, we're in this age of AI and kind of figuring out how this works for everybody.
• 33:24
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: But is, yeah, like stop chasing the busy Olympics, like these metrics that people are feeling like are report worthy or important or valuable?
• 33:35
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: It's like, but what is that actually doing?
• 33:38
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And and this is like the thing that like I ask people, and I I I drive this home in the work that I do day to day now, is like, what is that actually doing to help make impact for the business or the organization?
• 33:48
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: What does that do to show that you are valuable and you're bringing value?
• 33:54
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: How does all of these clicks and punches and reports and all of this sort of stuff actually move the needle on the strategy and the vision of your organization?
• 34:02
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: If you can't answer those questions with little to no hesitation of if this then that, right?
• 34:08
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Like if you can't answer that, all of those reports and all that stuff that you're doing, it's a complete waste of time, right?
• 34:14
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And the talent, whether it's middle managers, frontline folks, senior directors, you know, whatever it is, your talent pool is spending a bunch of time being busy doing stuff and things instead of actually pursuing strategy, instead of actually pursuing impact.
• 34:32
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And that's the stuff that I mean, human beings, like we are really intelligent folks, right?
• 34:38
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: This is the stuff that people, especially now as we're bringing AI into our work.
• 34:42
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: This is the stuff that we're recognizing.
• 34:44
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Wow, there's a lot of my day-to-day that's just a bunch of punch and click sort of stuff, right?
• 34:51
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Every single, I mean, I tell people this all the time, it doesn't matter your industry, it doesn't matter the type of organization, where in the world you are, most of us, our job is problem solution, problem solution, problem solution, problem solution, right?
• 35:03
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Like that's what most of us do.
• 35:05
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: But if in that process we're having to document the number of times that we click this or we're having to, you know, report this thing or whatever, and still instead of focusing on the solution and the impact, right?
• 35:16
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And the process that got us there, right?
• 35:19
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Like that's that's the critical thinking, that's the problem solving, that's the decision making.
• 35:22
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: That's the stuff that's impact and strategy.
• 35:25
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: It's not all the minutia of the busy Olympics.
• 35:28
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Yeah, the performative theater of busyness and productivity.
• 35:31
  Jeanne: Yeah, I love that concept though.
• 35:33
  Jeanne: You definitely could support and help businesses in that.
• 35:36
  Jeanne: And I think some of it they're doing this to themselves as well because they don't allow for these middle managers to understand how do I show what I do unless I click and check and I get a hundred things, right?
• 35:50
  Jeanne: Yeah.
• 35:50
  Jeanne: Because their metrics keep getting raised every year.
• 35:53
  Jeanne: Like you want to be a top performer, so it's all based on all of this drunkness worthless.
• 35:59
  Jeanne: And so it it just keeps generating the same product constantly.
• 36:04
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Yeah.
• 36:05
  Jeanne: And I yeah, so you've got a lot of work to do.
• 36:08
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: We all do.
• 36:09
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: We all do, yeah.
• 36:10
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: But yeah, this is the work I do now.
• 36:12
  Jeanne: Yeah, that's fantastic.
• 36:13
  Jeanne: I, you know, I like stuff like this because I always try to figure out what do you do, you know, and I always hated it at the end of the year when you're just trying to make your goals for the next year.
• 36:22
  Jeanne: Like, how can I go more than this?
• 36:24
  Jeanne: You know, how can I do more than I'm already doing?
• 36:27
  Jeanne: I can't, but then you always had to say put something down, you know.
• 36:31
  Jeanne: And then it was another measurement you had to check off and put on status, and it's like, oh my god.
• 36:37
  Jeanne: Okay.
• 36:38
  Jeanne: Well, Mickey, this has been a great conversation.
• 36:42
  Jeanne: I appreciate all that you've been saying.
• 36:44
  Jeanne: Absolutely.
• 36:45
  Jeanne: Before we dock this ship, though, we have to play our favorite game.
• 36:49
  Jeanne: Um, here on Project Candor, every episode we have a segment called Two Truths and a Lie.
• 36:55
  Jeanne: You've given me three headlines from your life, and now we get to dig deep.
• 37:00
  Jeanne: I'm going to read them and I'll take a guess at which one I think is the lie.
• 37:05
  Jeanne: Then you'll walk us through the story behind each one, uh, telling us uh without telling us, don't tell us the lie until the very end.
• 37:13
  Jeanne: Um, and then you'll reveal it to us.
• 37:16
  Jeanne: So are you ready?
• 37:17
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: I am ready.
• 37:18
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Let's do it.
• 37:21
  Jeanne: This episode is sponsored by Rebel 180, the home of brave pivots and fresh starts.
• 37:26
  Jeanne: Rebel 180 is all about helping you rediscover what's possible when you stop settling and start listening to that little tug inside that says, Life can be different.
• 37:36
  Jeanne: Whether you're navigating a career shift, dreaming about a new direction, or standing at the crossroads wondering if it's time for your own 180-degree turn, Rebel 180 is a reminder you don't need permission to change your story.
• 37:50
  Jeanne: And now, as we open the door to our second sponsor, we're stepping into the world of tech.
• 37:54
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• 38:02
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• 38:13
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• 38:20
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• 38:26
  Jeanne: Thank you to our sponsors.
• 38:28
  Jeanne: So there was a chapter of Mickey's life when her job description was literally catch bass.
• 38:38
  Jeanne: That's your number one story.
• 38:40
  Jeanne: Number two story, uh Mickey says getting fired from a job was one of the best things that ever happened to me.
• 38:49
  Jeanne: And number three, uh Mickey auditioned for Survivor.
• 38:53
  Jeanne: They said yes, and she said no.
• 38:55
  Jeanne: Okay, so I get to guess first, and I'm gonna guess number two, because I wouldn't like to get fired.
• 39:02
  Jeanne: I don't know if that would be the best thing that ever happened to me, because then I go through that emotional, why didn't they like me?
• 39:07
  Jeanne: Sure.
• 39:08
  Jeanne: So I'm gonna go through and I'm gonna say, that's your lie.
• 39:12
  Jeanne: So you start telling us what do you have about number one that we may not have already revealed.
• 39:18
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: So here's the thing.
• 39:19
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: I think I'm a pretty good storyteller.
• 39:21
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: So I feel like I could I could spin a tail on any one of these.
• 39:25
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: I think it goes back to that whole building relationship with the sneaker thing.
• 39:28
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: But all right.
• 39:29
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: I was a professional bass fisherman, and and my job was to catch bass.
• 39:33
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And so what I did all the time was go out and go fishing and uh uh travel all over the place and catch fish.
• 39:40
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Wow.
• 39:40
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And what was the biggest bass you ever caught?
• 39:44
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Ooh, the biggest one just shy of six pounds.
• 39:47
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: It's a big one.
• 39:49
  Jeanne: How big do they get?
• 39:50
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: So here's the thing is like the world record, um, they get huge ones in like places like Texas and California.
• 39:57
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And like I think the world record's like 21 pounds or something like that.
• 40:01
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: But like that's crazy business, right?
• 40:02
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: I mean, like there's a lake in Texas that like people regularly get, like 10 pound ones, and I really want to go there, but uh yeah, six pounds is a big one for me.
• 40:12
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And of course, as as you would imagine, and you uh I believe are in Florida, right?
• 40:16
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Like the warm states, you know, long growing season.
• 40:19
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: It's just like vegetables, right?
• 40:20
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: You know, fish can grow all year long.
• 40:21
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Where I live in northern Wisconsin, right?
• 40:23
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: They have about two minutes of summer to be able to grow.
• 40:26
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: So then they freeze, then they then they have to sit under the ice for many months.
• 40:31
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Yeah.
• 40:33
  Jeanne: Oh wow.
• 40:34
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: So did you get a lot of awards?
• 40:36
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Awards, uh, not really, because uh, you know, I was I was a youngster, and so I uh couldn't do some of these competitions uh legally.
• 40:44
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Um and so but what I did was I got a lot of recognition with like TV shows and you know things like that and magazine articles and you know things like that.
• 40:54
  Jeanne: Wow.
• 40:54
  Jeanne: So you just like saying in the West, belly up to the bar boy.
• 41:00
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Yeah, you just walked in there and started fishing with the big men.
• 41:03
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: I just started doing it, yeah.
• 41:05
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: I just walked in and um, yeah, I was I was with a whole bunch of folks that uh had uh entered into that industry in a totally different way than I did, and but I just kind of walked in and started owning it.
• 41:17
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Yeah.
• 41:18
  Jeanne: Oh, that's awesome.
• 41:19
  Jeanne: Well, I can see you doing that.
• 41:20
  Jeanne: So uh that was not my guess.
• 41:22
  Jeanne: So number two about getting fired from the job.
• 41:25
  Jeanne: Let's tell that story to us.
• 41:26
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Sure, sure.
• 41:27
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: So I was working a job and uh I got uh a call on a Tuesday morning and I got fired.
• 41:34
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And uh it was a big surprise to me, especially because um just about a week prior, um, I had a conversation um with one of the senior leaders in the organization that wanted to create a whole new portion of the business and wanted me to be in charge of it and hire a staff and kind of build this whole thing out.
• 41:51
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And then uh that following week on a Tuesday morning, what I thought was going to be a strategy call about that ended up me being fired.
• 41:57
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And I think what what we had put up on on the headline there was that it turned out to be one of the best uh things in my life and certainly was was not immediately, as as you said, right?
• 42:08
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: You know, that uh people there's that grief process, right?
• 42:12
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Like the stages of grief and you know, anger.
• 42:14
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Yeah, yeah, anger rejection, frustration, all that.
• 42:17
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: I mean, I went through all that stuff.
• 42:18
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: It was ugly, but ended up being one of the best things that happened to me professionally because what it did for me is it set me up, and this is gonna sound a little backwards, but it set me up to never be dependent on my employer for anything other than me serving the organization in the way that I want to.
• 42:38
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And what I mean by that is not being dependent on an employer as my identity or as uh being dependent from paycheck to paycheck, and obviously benefits.
• 42:49
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: I mean, that's the big thing that a lot of us, I mean, we need jobs for, you know, pay and benefits and all this sort of stuff.
• 42:54
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: But to be in a place where the recognition, if we come down to brass tax on this, is that um we owe each other nothing um in a workplace because we're in a transactional sort of role, right?
• 43:06
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And that's kind of that is the one end of the spectrum, but that's like the best way for us to operate because what we can do is we can work backwards from there, which is like we can have deep, meaningful relationships and feel really passionate about our work and you know, loving all of the things that we do, which is absolutely where I'm at in in my role today.
• 43:26
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: But I can also say this is not my identity, this is not who I am as a person, this is not the whole of my being, and I can move on, right?
• 43:34
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: So, in that sense, I I hope that makes sense.
• 43:36
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Like in that sense, you know, kind of it was one of the best things that happened to me professionally in my life.
• 43:41
  Jeanne: Very good.
• 43:42
  Jeanne: Yeah.
• 43:42
  Jeanne: So I'm having a might not be correct on that one.
• 43:45
  Jeanne: Okay, let's go to the third one, which I think is very cool because I do watch the show Survivor.
• 43:50
  Jeanne: So you applied and got accepted and you said no?
• 43:53
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Yes.
• 43:53
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: You said no.
• 43:55
  Jeanne: Yeah.
• 43:55
  Jeanne: So here's what happened.
• 43:57
  Jeanne: Okay.
• 43:57
  Jeanne: Um maybe it was the I don't want to get.
• 43:59
  Jeanne: bitten by mosquitoes, be starving for a week.
• 44:03
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: So it was the late, I guess would we call it the 2000s when it was still in single digits, like 2008, 2009 time.
• 44:10
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And I was going through a horrendous uh relationship dissolvement, all this sort of stuff.
• 44:16
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And I mean it's kind of funny to like look back on it.
• 44:19
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: You know, I I had decided I needed to quit my job.
• 44:22
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: I needed to move away from the area because I needed to get away from this person.
• 44:26
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And I was in this very prominent public relationship and I was like, I just need to get away from this person.
• 44:32
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And I always loved game shows.
• 44:35
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Like I mean I think like a lot of kids I grew up like watching like Wheel of Fortune and like Jeopardy and all this sort of stuff.
• 44:40
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: But Survivor was huge I mean it's still huge.
• 44:43
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: It's in season I don't even know it's coming up 50 I don't know why.
• 44:47
  Jeanne: 50 which is crazy.
• 44:48
  Jeanne: Yeah.
• 44:50
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: So this would have been I don't know season 20 something or whatever.
• 44:54
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: It was when they were in uh Samoa and there was a call for applications um and I had always felt this draw to the Pacific Islands.
• 45:05
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Like I would love to be out you know not just Hawaii but like Guam and Samoa you know you know kind of all the way over there.
• 45:13
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: You know I I had always been drawn towards the Mariana Islands and you know just this idea of I you know I I think I am kind of a World War II sort of buff and so like Guadalcanal and like all the you know just all of these island cultures that people don't even realize like all these tiny little islands.
• 45:28
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Yeah Bali.
• 45:30
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And so I knew that Survivor was you know they always advertise like these are the next couple of seasons Samoa.
• 45:37
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Okay.
• 45:37
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Cool.
• 45:38
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: I'm in this crazy time in my life and I'm like basically kind of like screw it let's do it right and so I did my audition tape.
• 45:47
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: I did all the paperwork like all this sort of stuff you had to actually send like an actual tape um you know so I had to have some of it like that's crazy too.
• 45:55
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: So I did like the audition tape and I said here's all these different skills that I have and that I've developed over the years and here's why I would be the best survivor.
• 46:05
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: I mean you fill out the whole application.
• 46:07
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And for anybody who I you know I haven't applied a second time but yeah I don't know if it's still the same thing.
• 46:12
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: But it is a very extensive process to apply to any of these reality shows or anything like that.
• 46:18
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: I submitted it basically just as a kind of a screw you universe sort of thing.
• 46:25
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: I applied to survivor because again I had decided like I'm gonna leave this job I'm gonna move across the country like all this sort of stuff which I already had those plans underway.
• 46:35
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: I did not expect to hear anything and then I got an email and like we want to set up a call with you all this sort of stuff right and it was Skype back then right so like we have this Skype call and I meet with these folks and it's like a screening and I'm like oh this is like serious right so I have this call with them and they're like this is great.
• 46:54
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: You know it was like half an hour or so they're like we want to pass you on to this other person.
• 46:58
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Can you meet again tomorrow?
• 46:59
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: I met with that person they're like this is really awesome all this sort of stuff we're gonna send this on to you know this other group you know we're gonna record this we're gonna send this on to this other group all this sort of stuff and I'm like okay sure whatever I move I start this new job all of the sudden I get this phone call and I'm like I don't recognize this number or whatever and it's a producer person and they're like hey so this is you we want you to come and be on this next season do you have the availability so it's like six weeks you have to you know like you have to be able to get yourself there and then once everything you know once you're on the island everything else is taken care of you know blah blah blah can you do this?
• 47:37
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And I was like are you serious?
• 47:38
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Like I wasn't like a hundred percent serious about applying for this and I said no because I had just established myself in this new job this other part I I had moved out to Maine all this sort of stuff and so I said no but they were like we want you to be on the show like we want you to be on Survivor.
• 47:54
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: So they said yes I said no.
• 47:56
  Jeanne: I so would have rooted for you what you're like the kind of person I like to watch.
• 48:02
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And then you could have finished because you know there's yeah well that was one of the things that I said to them I was like listen like I got these nature skills you know I I have you know this ability to you know build relationships with people and or you know like work with people you know so yeah but kids you have lied that's the thing I get of like oh man some of these lies these guys throw on that show it's so horrible it's so horrible it is yeah yeah and here we are playing two truths in a lie but just sometimes most of these stories are just bent a little bit yeah yeah so which one was a lie did I get it right or wrong you did not you did not the lie was the survivor story yeah okay well what is there any truth uh on it at all there is no truth no absolutely I've I've always thought that it would be cool to apply for survivor or something like that.
• 48:54
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Now I'm too old and I have two young kids and I'm married and you know all this sort of stuff but no there's no truth to it all the well actually I did move to Maine and I did have a new job and all that sort of stuff.
• 49:06
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: So that was true.
• 49:07
  Jeanne: Yeah and I was getting out of the bathroom so you couldn't have gone anyway but it was a dream in your mind.
• 49:11
  Jeanne: Yeah but you you know people go on there I think they've had people in their 70s on Survivor.
• 49:17
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: So what you're saying is there's hope yet there is hope and he's always asking that Jeff Prost he's always going hey please apply and my husband and I watch it and then we just like no thank you Jeff ...moving on...
• 49:30
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: What I really want to do I actually have a a a friend of mine that was on Wheel of Fortune and she actually like won the show you know and she's like you really should apply you know I mean because I I watched uh you know I watched Wheel of Fortune and and Shepherd and all those shows as a kid and now that I know somebody that was on the show she's like oh yeah like I'll I'll coach you through the process you should definitely do it like people would love you.
• 49:51
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Yeah they would they would maybe there's a little bit of future for me in in a game show but in a game show reality show.
• 49:59
  Jeanne: Yeah that would be so much fun.
• 50:01
  Jeanne: Well it's been so fun having you on.
• 50:03
  Jeanne: I want I know people want to know how to get in touch with you so I'm gonna share another screen here and just show a few things.
• 50:10
  Jeanne: First thing is is that you gave me a quote that you kind of like and that kind of relates to you.
• 50:17
  Jeanne: So do you want to talk about that?
• 50:19
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Yeah yeah so anybody who's familiar with the coffee shop chain caribou coffee I know that they're in some parts of the country and not yes I love love love caribou.
• 50:28
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Yeah so life is short stay awake for it that's uh kind of one of their slogans and you know for anybody who's watching obviously you've been seeing me kind of sip on um my cup of coffee and the other thing that I have in front of me here is chocolate covered espresso beans so you can tell I love my caffeine.
• 50:44
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: So yeah I love I love that uh you know sleep and sleep hygiene is very important to me.
• 50:50
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: I love my sleep and I protect my sleep as much as I can being a mom of a five year old and a two year old but but I also I try to look at my awake hours as what can I do to maximize every single moment.
• 51:01
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And so that quote has always spoken to me life is short stay awake for it.
• 51:05
  Jeanne: I love it.
• 51:06
  Jeanne: And then you have other links down here and she'd like you to reach out to her on her website or LinkedIn these links will be put in the show notes so you can make sure you connect with her and then you had a call to action that they could join you on your Learn It Lounge.
• 51:22
  Jeanne: Yeah.
• 51:22
  Jeanne: So I'll also put that in the show notes.
• 51:24
  Jeanne: I don't know if you want to talk about that.
• 51:26
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Yeah absolutely so there's a couple of things I I host a podcast so the organization I work for is Learn It um and uh what we do at Learn It is we do upskilling for people in all different industries.
• 51:35
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: And so my job is to help other people get better at their jobs.
• 51:38
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: So we uh teach a variety of different uh workshops a variety of different topics all virtually um we do some in-person stuff too and so one of those calls to action is if you go to learnit.com and forward slash Mickey, you and up to 20 people on your team can get access to our Learnit team pass for 45 days.
• 51:56
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: So for a month and a half you can take as many workshops you can check things out see if it would be a fit for you in your organization.
• 52:02
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Doesn't matter if you're a mom and pop shop or if you're a huge Fortune 100 company that's a way for you to kind of experience us to take some workshops with me and some of my teammates.
• 52:11
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: I also have a podcast that I host called the Learn It Lounge which is um all about kind of the the process of learning and development in the work world and so I welcome people if you want to listen to that go ahead and do that too.
• 52:21
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: But LinkedIn is the best way to get a hold of me and be in touch and I would welcome folks to get connected send me a message I I love LinkedIn and I love all those ongoing conversations that I have with folks there.
• 52:31
  Jeanne: Wonderful wonderful well thank you so much for being on the show it's been really fantastic.
• 52:36
  Jeanne: For those that are listening please stay tuned for the episode next week that's coming out and from your Admiral of the unexpected I wish you smooth sailing.
• 52:48
  Mickey Fitch-Collins: Thanks Jeanne so much for the opportunity.
• 52:51
  Jeanne: Bye Thanks for joining me on Project Candor where the doors are open the stories are unexpected and the treasure is always real if today's episode made you laugh or think follow the show and share it with your crew.
• 53:04
  Jeanne: Otherwise I might just make you swab the deck.
• 53:07
  Jeanne: I'm Jeanne Andersen your Admiral of the unexpected see you on the next voyage