142. Leadership Lessons From a Paralympian: Values, Resilience, and Developing People with John Register

Transcript – Episode 142: Leadership Lessons From a Paralympian: Values, Resilience, and Developing People with John Register

Joe: Welcome back, friends, to the show that is Food for the Boss’s Soul. Here on Boss Better Now, we talk with leaders, experts, and change makers about their experiences in the workplace, all in the name of helping you understand how to create the conditions at work for people to thrive. Today, I am joined by John Register. And where do I start with this impressive man? John is a decorated Persian Gulf War combat U.S. Army veteran. He is a Hall of Fame professional speaker. He is the Chair Elect of NSA, the National Speakers Association. While qualifying to compete in the 110-meter hurdles in the 1996 Olympics, a devastating injury led to the amputation of John’s leg. He learned to walk again with a prosthetic, and not only run again, but John eventually became a two-time Paralympic Games silver medalist. Later in his career, he served in a leadership position with the United States Olympic Committee and ultimately helped create the USOC Paralympic Military Program, which uses sports to assist in the recovery of wounded, ill, or injured service members. I just finished serving a four-year term with John on the National Board of Directors of NSA, so we know each other quite well. As you listen to our conversation, be on the lookout for John’s advice on the mental steps for navigating adversity and setbacks when they show up. And listen for the one thing we have to do for people every single time when we ask them to take on more. And now here’s our conversation. John Register, welcome to the show, my friend. Thank you for doing this. I am so looking forward to this conversation.

John: Joe, you’re like one of the most amazing humans I’ve ever met, and I’m so honored to be on this show, to have this conversation with you for your audience.

Joe: Oh, thank you, my man. I just finished sharing in the introduction that we had the opportunity to serve on a national board together for the last four-plus years. And so it’s just always a joy to get to know someone in that kind of role and in that kind of service and get to hear how your mind works, and just get to be alongside you and go from being colleagues to being friends. So I am super excited. Thank you again for doing this. I want to start out by asking you about your first real job. The first time you got a paycheck from the man. The first time somebody took taxes out. Tell me about that first job and what you remember most vividly about it.

John: All right, so I have to say, thanks for the question. I have a lot of things going on in my head right now because my first real job was actually selling lemonade. So I was an entrepreneur and I didn’t even realize it. On the street outside, 300 blocks south, all the L traffic from folks that ride the L from downtown Chicago would walk down that street. And so for like a nickel or a dime, I would sell those little Dixie cups from my red flyer wagon outside. What happened is a customer of mine came down a couple of weeks later and said, behind a bush about a block ahead of you, there’s another person selling lemonade and he’s catching people before you, so he’s got a better location. I was like, man, why would my friend do that to me? And he said, here’s what you do: take your red flyer wagon, go down the alley, go up to the L stop, and sell your lemonade there, because you’re going to get them going south, north, east, and west. And was he ever right. So that was like my first entrepreneurial experience.

Joe: How old were you in that moment?

John: I want to say I was probably nine.

Joe: Wow.

John: And so what happened after that, I started understanding and beginning to understand how you could actually make some dollars, right? If you work, you kind of get paid. So I wound up becoming a paper boy through the Chicago Sun-Times, the Chicago Tribune, and the Wednesday Journal. I was a paper route kid. I got up early in the morning and folded my papers. I can still fold them right now, throw them on your porch without a rubber band. From there, I wound up going back into entrepreneurship because my customers, when I would go collect money from them, I would see that their lawns needed mowing or their walks needed shoveling. And a couple of those folks would ask me to come shovel their walks or mow their lawns. So that became another little side hustle. When I listened to your question, I was like, man, I was a little hustler all the time.

Joe: Oh yeah. And I’m sitting here thinking, my nine-year-old at home, John, spends most of his time looking for his shoes. But at nine years old you’re running a business.

John: I was in Oak Park, the first west suburb of the city. And the horrible thing is, you can’t just do that anymore without all these licenses. I mean, can you just teach entrepreneurship and just sell some lemonade on the corner? That was a huge experience for me.

Joe: So you started out with a lemonade stand, went into the paper route, you did lawn care work. You had this entrepreneurial streak early on. Was there a moment when you realized, oh, work is more than just a paycheck, or work can be more than just a paycheck?

John: Yeah, I think that came later on because I was always just moving and working and kind of getting some money in. But I found some restrictions, actually. I found that people didn’t honor the work that I had done equally, and that was a very early lesson for me.

Joe: Tell me about that. What do you mean they didn’t honor it?

John: So I wanted to be a lifeguard because I could outswim everybody in Oak Park. I was a pretty fast swimmer, but at that time in Oak Park, folks that look like me, we weren’t the lifeguards. And so I never got picked up for that. But they made me a bicycle guard. And the only reason I wanted to be a lifeguard or bicycle guard was to earn enough money to go buy my first major purchase: a black Schwinn Continental 10-speed bicycle that was in the proprietor’s window. I would see it every weekend. I would go up to check if anybody had bought that bike because I wanted that bike. It cost $275. Might as well have been a million back then. I saved that money and I scrimped and I made sure that I showed up on the job and did great work. I remember I had my cash in hand. I went up to the proprietor and he’d been waiting for me because he knew I wanted this bicycle. He sees me coming every Saturday and he’s smiling and beaming, because I have earned this opportunity to purchase this bicycle. I get the bike, he gives me a lock for it. I’m going home, about eight blocks, almost a mile back to my house. I’m kind of weaving down the street on my Schwinn, and I get across Ridgeland Avenue and I’m about to turn into my alley when I hear the rollers behind me. And squawking over the loudspeaker: “Hey kid, where’d you steal that bike from?” There was no thought at all that I could have worked all summer for this bicycle. I was probably 14 or 15 years old at this point. Mr. Jones from across the street, he’s working in his garage and he sees this. He’s also an African-American man who owns a lot of apartment buildings. He comes across and he accosted the officer and said, “This kid has been working for this bicycle all summer long. I haven’t seen you around here. Everybody on this block knows this kid has been trying to get this bicycle.” And the officer leaves, but he leaves me with a warning: just be careful where you ride it. Even after all that, knowing that this is my bicycle. So the lesson is not anything about this officer. The lesson is about how we respond to situations that are not agreeable, how we showcase the best of humanity, the best of ourselves. And what it taught me was: no matter how anybody else might view you, always show up as your best self.

Joe: There is so much we could unpack from that story. What stands out to me is, my goodness, what would have happened if the older gentleman hadn’t spoken up for you, hadn’t known who you were, known your character, and said something in that moment to turn that situation around. It’s such a reminder that we need people around us who know us and who speak up for us. Talk to me about what you would have done in that moment if he hadn’t been there.

John: I don’t know. There are different scenarios, of course, but there are too many variables. I don’t know if the officer would have tried to take the bicycle. I don’t know if he would have listened to me. And even when I’m keynoting right now, I rarely go back unless I’m teaching a lesson that was learned and what we can learn from an experience. What I forecast forward is to say: okay, if this happens again, what might I be able to do with the information I now have? Who do I need around me? Who’s my support structure? Who do I need in my corner? I had to teach my son that. He got stopped several times down in Texas, and fortunately he got stopped in a town where he was the basketball coach. He was coaching the chief of police’s son in basketball, but the other officer didn’t know that. When he dropped the name, he got off, even though he’d been followed for ten miles in a Texas town. I don’t know what would have happened if he hadn’t been coaching there at the time. So I think the lesson is: who do we need around us? Can we always operate at the highest level of excellence? Because then, someone’s going to have to make something up in order to catch you.

Joe: I was sharing at the top of the show some of your incredibly impressive accolades. U.S. Army veteran, Gulf War veteran, Olympian, Paralympian, silver medalist. I told our listeners about your training for the ’96 Olympics and this devastating injury and how you became an amputee, and eventually how you came to be in a leadership role with the U.S. Olympic Committee and created programming with the military. You have just led such an impressive life in so many ways and worked in so many different kinds of environments. If you think about all of those different stops along the way, I can imagine you’ve worked with some incredible leaders. Tell us about one of the best bosses you’ve ever had and what made them a great leader.

John: That’s easy. There are two, but I’ll pick one for the show, though they came out of the same era, back to back. The first is Mick Workman. What made Mick great? He’s passed on, but when I was working for the United States Army’s Community and Family Support Center, I had just come back from Belgium with a young soldier. I was telling Mick all about the trip and how I’d kind of quickly zipped through Paris and all that. And he shut the door, sat me down, and chastised me for twenty minutes. What he was saying was: you might not ever get a chance like this again. Take that young soldier and really do an in-depth explore of where you are, in this part of the world. Slow down. So now every time I go out, I do my best to try to learn something about the location I’m in. Who settled it, who came there, who doesn’t get talked about, who does. What made this group of people come to this location. The second person is Colleen Amstein. I love this woman. I was actually relieved from another position for something I would not do because it was unethical. I stuck to my guns and the Army moved me to a different spot, and I got the chance to work for Colleen. What I saw this amazing woman do before she put me out to do those rejuvenation workshops: she made sure I understood every single aspect of the job that was required of me. She sent me out to an installation and had me learn the bowling alley center, how to do a daily activities report, how to run the arts and crafts area. Everything that soldiers and their families do outside of soldiering. She sent me to a three-week MWR Academy that all the general officers went through. By the end of that, I was so well-versed and so clear on what my role and responsibility was. Then she went out with me for a couple of those rejuvenation workshops to make sure I could do the training, and then she set me out on my own. She set me up for so much success. And what she was doing was trying to replace herself with me. That’s the lesson: always try to lift another person up who can replace you, because you should always be trying to elevate yourself and always be trying to replace yourself with someone else.

Joe: What do you think she understood about people and what people need to learn and do to be successful that led her to show up in that way for you?

John: I think what she sees in people is the great potential they have, and how can we unwrap it. There’s this beautiful gift wrapping around a person, but you don’t know what’s on the inside until you actually open it up. You unwrap it with care. You make sure the ribbons are right and the paper is folded right instead of just ripping the whole thing open. She showed so much care in unwrapping the package and the gift she was given. And I’m sure it was modeled for her that way. In the military, we’re always trying to ensure the person who replaces us has enough information to do the job as we move on. If you think about it, in Vietnam, a second lieutenant who came off a helicopter in a hot landing zone had a life expectancy of sixteen seconds. So you get everybody off the chopper and you keep moving because you have to take the ground. You don’t have time to wait, and the next person starts leading. They have to be ready to step into that leadership role. If you haven’t trained them, they’re looking around for everyone else. If we take that lesson to all the jobs we’re in, we can always be working to make ourselves replaceable. Always put the other person up.

Joe: What I hear in the Colleen story, and it’s a beautiful one, is something we talk about in our Boss Hero School leadership master class and in some of my keynotes: the importance of bringing a mentor mindset to your leadership, and seeing people for who they are capable of becoming, not just who they are in the moment, not just the knowledge deficits or the gaps they have. She saw you for who you had the potential to become and started thinking about how to sequence what you needed in terms of learning and support and experience. She understood it’s a journey, that you’re not going to be the person she needs you to be on day one.

John: And I think the other thing she did, which I still use to this day, is what she modeled with performance reviews. It was ongoing. There was never an end-of-year review because we were always checking in, at least every two weeks: how are things going, what do you see out there. It was a team effort. So now I don’t want to do a performance review at the end of the year. I want to talk about what we’re doing all year long. And I need you to tell me where my blind spots are. What’s my 360 review? Because I have them and I know that.

Joe: I want to talk about your work now. How would you describe what you do to someone who is meeting you for the first time?

John: I am a strategic advisor who is trapped inside a keynote speaker’s body. In my life, I’ve had to make some very hard, tough calls. I became an amputee. That was a call I had to make. I could either keep my leg and use a walker or a wheelchair for the rest of my life, or amputate and wear a prosthetic for the rest of my life. I lost two careers with one wrong step. My military career was gone. My athletic career was gone. Building those things back up, I chose to go into the pool and start swimming for physical therapy. Those are all transformations. Our friend Crystal Washington educated me on this word. Most people don’t want transformation because you go from one thing and become something else. Most of us want transition, not transformation. But I’m a transformationalist. I am the person who is going to show you a pathway. You might see a myriad of paths, not just a binary choice, and you’re going to have to commit to one of those paths that you have chosen, one of the visions you have chosen. That’s the first part of who I am. I get people to make that decision. And then after they make the decision, they are in a space they have never been in before. When the doctor amputated my leg, I had never been an amputee before. So I have to give myself space and grace to grow. We see the world’s best athletes take themselves out of their sport to work on their serve or their golf swing, and then insert themselves back in to elevate and dominate. That’s the position and space I want people to be in, to give themselves that space and grace, knowing they’re going to have some phantom pains back to a previous state that no longer exists for them, in order to elevate to their highest self. I put this in a model called the Resilience Action Model: the Reckoning, acknowledging we’re not going to get back what we desire to have back; the Revision, creating multiple visions; and the Renewal, where we give ourselves space and grace to grow. I wrap all three in Resonance. All three have to be working in concert together at the same time.

Joe: When you think about all the leaders who are listening to this show and how many of them face change constantly, how many of them are asked to adapt constantly. Sometimes it’s in small doses, a leadership change or a crucial employee leaving. Sometimes it’s really big stuff. Life throws a curveball and adversity shows up in more significant ways. So much of what you just said is filled with richness when we think about navigating those situations. What advice would you give to leaders who need to help the people around them show up in more adaptable, resilient, and courageous ways when adversity shows up at work? Give us some granular tips, some scripts, some moments to use.

John: The work I generally do is on the individual first, so they can impact the team. There are so many people out there who work on the team, and that’s great, but I really hold on to the individual, because once you get yourself right, now you can breathe into others. I come off the Latin word inspiro, which means to breathe life into. As my creator breathed life into me, I want to breathe that life into others. Once we have that, now we’re able to use some tactics to help others. My wife is a flight attendant, and she’ll say: put your own oxygen mask on first before you help somebody else. Once we have that, a few things I’ve done tactically: one is walking around and making sure your people are okay, checking them in. What’s the water cooler talk? Make sure you are in tune with what is going on as that first-line leader. The second thing is your open-door policy. If something is coming, you need to know it’s coming. An open-door policy helps you see what is going on in the workspace. If there are disagreements and arguments, you can be a mediator and bring HR in faster to mitigate those things and cut them off at the pass, because when things fester, we begin to tell ourselves stories that align with who we are and not the other person. We have to get ahead of that fast. But the challenge with open-door policies is that we must adhere to the values of our organization. And I think this is what trips up leaders and companies most of all. Because if you don’t adhere to the values, people sniff it out very quickly. I’m reminded of a woman I saw in action when I had just taken over as interim CEO of the Amputee Coalition. I was struggling with values alignment internally with our team, with our clients, with our key stakeholders. Everybody had different opinions and you can’t get work done in that environment. It’s too toxic. But what I saw this young woman, Mercedes, do was remarkable. There was a tenure employee of fifteen years who no longer wanted to adhere to the values and had done some egregious things. So they terminated his service the night before my keynote. I was floored, because usually we say, “Oh, that’s just Jim. That’s just how he is. He’s been here fifteen years.” And we do not adhere to the values. What Mercedes spoke to me in that moment, without realizing it, is exactly how I was going to handle my interim CEO role. I went back and got my board of directors together and said, we’re going to make sure these values are aligned so that our staff can agree to them, our stakeholders can agree to them, and our clients can agree to them as well. And that’s our die-on-the-sword line. I think that’s the one thing we can do as leaders that begins to create cohesion in our teams.

Joe: So much there, my friend. I want to get you out of here on this question. There are so many leaders today who find themselves overworked, under-resourced, and navigating a workplace that’s constantly changing at a breakneck pace. Give me thirty seconds. What is something they should remind themselves of when work starts to feel like too much?

John: We need to strategically subtract. Amputate. There are things we’re doing that we probably don’t need to be doing. Just because there’s a new project coming on, one of the phrases I began to use was: when someone added more work to my plate, I would say, “That is fantastic. Happy to do it. Which of these three things would you like me not to do in order to make this happen?” What are we taking away? Because we can’t do it all, and then we get overwhelmed. Standing on the values once again: I want to do the best job I can for this company, and my best job is not doing every job. It’s focusing on the one task you’ve given me and prioritizing that with the other tasks I have to do for the rest of the week or the month. So we need to strategically subtract and hold to that line so that we can operate at our best self.

Joe: John, where can people follow you, get more information about you, or contact you if they want to work with you? How do we get more John Register?

John: Thank you. That’s very kind. JohnRegister.com is just the website, and you can find the footprint there. If you want to follow the podcast, it’s at JohnRegister.beehiiv.com, and you can get all the podcasts from all of our leaders we’re interviewing as well.

Joe: Man, thank you so much for doing this today. I love having these conversations with you. And for everybody else that’s been listening, my sincere thanks to John Register for this great conversation and for spending this time with us today. If you like this conversation, be sure to hit that subscribe button so that you don’t miss an episode of our show. And of course, I am always grateful for your reviews, your shares, and your feedback. I would love to hear what you thought of this conversation. You can drop a comment in the box below our episode here on YouTube, or you can email me at any time for any reason at bossbetter@gmail.com. In the meantime, don’t forget: commitment comes from better bosses. Visit joemull.com for more information. See you next time.