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Destined for Greatness

My little journey

By David PerrottaPublished 5 years ago 3 min read
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Creating my destiny 

It was exactly 22 years ago when I got a job. I was managing a small call centre with 40 employees. I hadn’t had any management training, didn’t have any role models around me, as we were a satellite site, but I accepted the job and went for it.

The roller coaster struggle was real. Here I was, 22 years of age and with a team that had a median age of 35. For the first two weeks, nobody spoke to me. They chose to ignore me and spoke amongst themselves for help with their work. I sat back and watched this unfold in front of me. I recall running a team meeting and gave my updates and asked for each person to contribute. My manager was on a call listening in to the meeting. One of the team members, who for the sake of this story I’ll call Mary, spoke up and said in a loud voice to my manager, “Excuse me George, I’m sat here with the whole team and want to share something. We all met and believe you made a mistake with David being the manager. We believe that Steve was a better choice and we would like you to reconsider.” I need to point out that Steve was in the room with us, as he is part of the team. George simply listened and said thanks for sharing. I wasn’t sure where to look, but what I was sure of was my gut instinct. I knew I had to win these people over, but didn’t know how as I’d never been shown.

Oddly enough, within the coming week, two of the team came to me asking for help. I could feel this was out of guilt from the meeting we had and I sensed they were embarrassed. I chose at the time to direct them to someone else for help, as I’m sure they were better than me. I could see the sorrow in their eyes and knew I was on to something. My manager called me in that same week and we spoke about what had happened.

He simply said, “You are destined for greatness.”

I thought, “Wow.”

I had someone who really believed in me. I didn’t know what it meant, but I continues listening to my gut to make decisions. Within two weeks of that meeting, I made an effort to greet everyone first thing in the morning, find out something awesome about them and their favorite dessert. I had one on ones with everyone and was ready for my second meeting. I started the meeting saying how amazing everyone was and shared what I thought was awesome about them. I also brought in their favorite desserts. I asked them to share with the others what specifically they loved about it. I could see the team opening up, laughing and sharing. They truly learnt something about each other that day and 22 year old me facilitated it. The highlight was when Mary stayed back and apologized to me about what she had said. She left the meeting room and I broke into tears. I felt I had conquered a small battle.

Within a year I was leading 900 people and went on to win Global leadership awards for the next three consecutive years that was based on nominations from my people. The best learning was to trust my gut, even if I didn’t know enough about the business. One thing I did know was that my emotional intelligence was the secret to helping others be destined for greatness!

I won’t reveal other stories just yet as this is only the beginning.

Stay gold!

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About the Creator

David Perrotta

Well travelled individual who is fascinated by human psychology and has a service to others life approach. A practitioner in customer experience and leadership.

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