Guest
02. Become the Most Trusted Person at Work Instructions During the follow-along video, make note of each time a mirror or label is used. Then, in the play-by-play video, see if you guessed correctly once the answers appear on screen. Script DEREK: Hey, Sandy. SANDY: Hey. DEREK: How are you? SANDY: Good, how are you? DEREK: Happy Monday. SANDY: Happy Monday to you. How was your weekend? DEREK: Busy. It was really busy. How was yours? SANDY: Too short. I bet yours was too short, too. DEREK: I mean, I spent a lotta time with my—with my team, my basketball team. We practiced— SANDY: Basketball? DEREK: —and then we went out to lunch afterwards. SANDY: Oh, out to lunch. DEREK: Yeah. They’re a good group. I like those guys. I like them a lot. Challenging at times, but it’s rewarding nonetheless, because I get an opportunity to provide them with life lessons and provide them with—a role model in their lives that they are obviously missing. SANDY: It seems like providing them with someone to look up to is really important to you. DEREK: Yeah, because—I mean, it’s an immigrant community that I coach in, so, you know, you could actually spin the globe and then punch your finger on it to stop the globe, and you would land on the country where my—one of my kids is from. So— SANDY: Wow. DEREK: I say that to you to say that they’re behind the eight ball already. SANDY: Behind the eight ball? DEREK: Yeah, I mean—you know, they’re coming into a country and a culture that’s not—that they’re not familiar with, and so they don’t have some of the same opportunities that—native-born American kids have. And so that means they’re behind the eight ball. And so it’s important for people like you and me, adults, to reach back to those people who have less resources, less opportunity to provide them with some advantages that they otherwise wouldn’t have. SANDY: Sounds like you may have some personal experience with the disadvantages. DEREK: Well—you know, most of these kids, they’re in single-parent households. And the single parent is a mother. And she’s outta the house for 17 hours a day, 18 hours a day ’cause she’s holding down three jobs just—just to keep a roof over their head. And I can relate to that because I grew up in—a single-parent household, led by a mom who was outta the house most of the time because she was providing for us. And if it wasn’t for some of the other—adult males and my neighborhood providing me with an example, I could have gone left instead of right, and there’s no telling where I would’ve ended up. Probably in the system. SANDY: In the system. DEREK: Yeah. And the system is not designed to help these kids thrive. They either wind up incarcerated or worse. SANDY: Worse. DEREK: You know, they wind up injured or dead, because they’re gonna look for those mentors, if you will, out in the street. And there are plenty of ’em out there that will fill that role. But it’s gonna lead to them on a path of disaster. SANDY: So it seems like you’re very invested in making sure that these young men go in the right direction. DEREK: Yes. They’re not gonna go to play pro ball. Most of them won’t go on to play college ball, which means they’re gonna make their bones in life in an arena other than sports. So it’s important for me to teach them some life lessons that they’re gonna be able to call back—or call upon once they get older. SANDY: It seems like your job has basically afforded you opportunities to see what can go absolutely wrong for a young person, and it gives you that desire to give back and make a difference. DEREK: True. That’s very true. That’s exactly right. I think, as I mentioned earlier, it’s incumbent upon all of us as adults to reach back to the generations that are coming up behind us and providing them with—our experiential knowledge, providing with some guidance in order to keep them on the right path. And if we could just—if each one of us would make that commitment to one kid who is not our own, how much better would the world be? And that’s a convoluted story, but that’s why I love coaching basketball. SANDY: Derek, I always knew you were an amazing person, but I never realized how much depth you had and how much concern you had for doing the right thing for people in the community, and that’s just amazing. And thank you so much for sharing that with me.
