It takes a lifetime of midnight oil to build a resume like Sean O”™Neil”™s, featuring his own consulting company ”“ Pelham-based One to One Leadership ”“ national status as a management adviser and author, and possessor of multiple graduate degrees from Boston College (in social work) and Duke University (law and business).
Yet, in addressing the recent Dutchess County Regional Chamber of Commerce contact breakfast at the Poughkeepsie Grand Hotel, O”™Neil also displayed a keen sense of humility dusted with self-effacing humor ”“ even hinting at a bit of keg-fueled delinquency in his past ”“ while seamlessly imparting a three-part management lesson. He may have surprised some of the 180 attendees by confessing some of his best lessons come from grade schoolers.
O”™Neil said he detests the word “guru” since it implies one person knows it all. It is far better, he reasoned, for him (or any adviser) “to make sense of your world and not pretend to be above it.” He suggested a three-part approach to management that focused on what he terms “drivers, leverage and my stuff.”
Common elements like being a Millennial ”“ a person born between 1975 and 1995 ”“ will only “drive” a relationship so far, O”™Neil said. And there is a risk of categorizing large groups. He wondered how much two Yankees fans really have in common and concluded it was not enough upon which to drive anything meaningful; drivers are individual concerns and they can matter most.
O”™Neil asserted a common bias, that Millennials are needy and selfish, and then said, “Really? Is that true?” His point: “The more I know about the individual, the better I can drive them.” He related how his young daughter knew how to be a better driver than he was regarding bedtime; his edicts were falling flat in the face of her needs.
O”™Neil called personal baggage “my stuff” and suggested the process of identifying it involves perhaps uncomfortable soul searching and is essentially lifelong. “My own stuff still interferes daily.”
O”™Neil defined his “stuff” in the tale of the young Boston boy with whom he clashed as a social worker. He confessed his own sarcasm and frustration had led to an edge in his voice and an eagerness to cancel appointments with the child. When O”™Neil consciously abandoned his positions ”“ his stuff ”“ the boy softened and spoke of Santa and magic. A home visit later revealed the re-emergence of a fun-loving boy where a combative youth had previously held sway.
“Only when I”™m in touch with my own stuff can I act effectively,” he said.
The goodness and honesty of O”™Neil”™s telling moistened more than a few eyes in the room, doing proud by his former Our Lady of Lourdes teacher Monsignor Francis Bellew, head of St. Mary”™s parish in Wappingers Falls and vicar of Dutchess County, who offered the benediction to begin the breakfast. Some dozen alumni of the Roman Catholic Poughkeepsie high school were in attendance; O”™Neil was in the class of 1987.
Besides “my stuff” and “drivers,” O”™Neil addressed what he termed leverage, the thrust of which was knowing where the individual stands in a relationship. An NFL Oakland Raiders executive he advised on the issue thought the hierarchy of the workplace dictated her leverage. Reality, she learned, was to be found in sales results, which trumped position.
O”™Neil lives now in Westchester County with his wife and four children.
TD Bank was the event sponsor.
