Introduction and Host Transition
00:00:01
Ken Freire
Welcome back to another episode of the Exponential Mindset. You do not know who I am. I have hijacked Ron Minitri's podcast, but I am Ken, a good friend of Ron's. And we've been doing this whole initial series of...
00:00:16
Ken Freire
getting to know Ron. And it's sometimes kind of weird for Ron to just like interview himself. So he's asked a a couple of friends to come interview him and we are excited to do that.
Ron’s Early Career and Leadership Challenges
00:00:26
Ken Freire
The first episode we talked about the exponential mindset and Dan Sanchez, of my best friends interviewed him. And now I get to interview you, Ron.
00:00:35
Ken Freire
And we're going to actually walk through your story, right? Because everyone has this origin story of like, how did they get to where they are today? And I want you just take us back before you created the exponential mindset. And what was your career like before this idea ever even entered into the picture?
00:00:52
Ron Minatrea
Well, it it was good. In fact, I think things were going well. Sometimes I think I figured out what happened is they got to going too well. I mean, I had started very young with, right out of high school. So I had a high school education and I was a field technical representative, but in that job, things went well. And so I was promoted and then that job went well and I was promoted.
00:01:16
Ron Minatrea
And the, you know, I think we mentioned this last time, but every time that happens, each new assignment, you run a little bit harder, little bit faster. And I kept doing that. Eventually I began to lead teams.
00:01:29
Ron Minatrea
And again, my mindset didn't shift. as those roles shifted. And so I still ran harder and faster with that very assignment. And also remember my first management class, right after people started reporting to me, this and person said, management is getting work done through others. And somehow in my mind that created this thing that I was the manager and I was reaching out and touching all these people to get ah ah essentially what I thought of as my work done.
High Potential and Rotational Assignments
00:01:59
Ron Minatrea
And so what that meant was with every new assignment, I was reaching more and taking on more and more responsibility. And I'd actually pretty good season. In fact, I had been identified as a high potential, and that meant they started putting me into these rotational assignments.
00:02:16
Ron Minatrea
So I was in one and about 18 months, and and then they said, you go to this next one. And I was growing there and did well, and about 18 months, they put me into the next one. And that's great.
00:02:27
Ron Minatrea
When it didn't go well. And was the moment that I began to sense something's wrong and something's got to change. Right. And that's where the whole exponential mindset really came out of my failure, if you will, in that assignment.
00:02:45
Ken Freire
Okay, so what happened during that moment where you started to feel like things were unsustainable, Because in an outside perspective, you were crushing it, you were successful, but internally, you were like, I cannot keep doing this and keep going.
00:02:57
Ron Minatrea
Yeah, what happened was, like I said, this is like my third rotational assignment and just everything is rocking along and going well, but there was a subtle shift in
Leadership Identity and Imposter Syndrome
00:03:08
Ron Minatrea
First off, it was my first national assignment. I was responsible for everything to do with quality and customer satisfaction in North America. The subtle shift was that all the resources that were going to address any of the issues with quality and customer satisfaction in North America They made the decision that all that should reside in the divisions.
00:03:30
Ron Minatrea
So they didn't actually report to me.
00:03:33
Ron Minatrea
So I felt responsible for everything. And I had the ability to control absolutely nothing. And because of my leadership, oh, it's a rough feeling.
00:03:40
Ken Freire
That's the worst feeling.
00:03:43
Ron Minatrea
Because my, I mean, i wanted to do a good job, but I didn't know how, because in my mind, with no team, with those people not reporting to me,
00:03:53
Ron Minatrea
I couldn't manage, you know, I couldn't get work done through others now. I couldn't reach out and touch them. So I stopped seeing, I didn't see myself as the leader. And what I learned, obviously, if don't see myself as a leader, no one else does either. I mean, people sense that in you and they were sensing the people who, you know, were maybe supposed to help me with these things didn't see me as a leader because I didn't see me as a leader.
00:04:21
Ron Minatrea
And so that was, that was, and the funny thing about that, Ken, is because I sensed I was failing, I also learned later in reflecting about this, that I had great confidence and and not cocky. It was, it wasn't, it wasn't bad, but the confidence I found out was rooted in all those successes because, you know, every time I would succeed, I would go, oh man, I can do this. It was building my confidence.
00:04:51
Ron Minatrea
The problem with that is when you don't succeed, suddenly now you lose all that confidence.
00:04:57
Ron Minatrea
And so that really started happening inside me. And and I struggled. I didn't know what to do. I just knew. I thought I, you know, I said this a lot. I thought, I think I've been promoted beyond my ability.
00:05:12
Ron Minatrea
And so that's what's broken here. And then I got afraid. I thought they're going to find out that I don't belong here in this role. And then the spiral kept because I was thinking they're going to find out I never belonged here at all.
00:05:27
Ron Minatrea
And so that whole imposter syndrome really started to sink in because again, go back to, got a high school education. I'm a kid from a small town in Texas. I got married 10 days out of high school.
00:05:40
Ron Minatrea
What was I doing? you know, in a Fortune 100 environment, you know, responsible for quality and customer satisfaction in all of North America. I don't even know how that happened. And so all those doubts came rolling in.
Learning from Successful Leaders
00:05:53
Ron Minatrea
And that really led me to going, and something has to change.
00:05:58
Ken Freire
Wow. You know, Ron, I know a lot of managers, directors, even C-suite people, right, who will feel that same feeling of the imposter syndrome. Like, I have to hide what I really feel like I'm struggling.
00:06:11
Ken Freire
And if you were anything like me, Ron, I remember these moments where I would actually see other leaders and it looked like they were doing everything with ease. So that actually made it feel way more like a cognitive dissonance, like, oh my gosh, I have to even work harder and put in more hours and struggle.
00:06:30
Ken Freire
How did seeing those leaders work with ease exacerbate this feeling of what you were going through?
00:06:38
Ron Minatrea
Well, i guess it happens on a couple of levels. One thing is you... I did not immediately assume that they knew something I didn't know. just thought they were better and I wasn't good enough. Right. It was, it wasn't like, oh, they've learned something. And if you learn what they learn, that'll, that'll change you.
00:06:57
Ron Minatrea
Right. I, I thought, I just don't measure up here. But what I saw, and this was what really brought this whole thing home to me is, again, I'm in a rotational assignment my first staff role kind of thing. And I saw all these other people who were general managers running huge operations. And in my mind, and I think in reality, I go, wow, what they're responsible for way harder, way more expansive than what I have.
00:07:26
Ron Minatrea
And yet, they don't seem to be struggling. They don't seem to be working the hours that I'm working. They vacation well and often. They have this calm, and non-frantic pace about them. In fact, one of the things that stood out about the really good ones was And you may have sensed this. There are sometimes you sense a leader or someone walk into a room and there's a presence there that sort of shifts the atmosphere in the room.
00:07:57
Ron Minatrea
Everyone, there's a calm about them. They know who they are. And that automatically shifts things. They're not trying to prove something. You know, they're not drawing on you for affirmation or to tell them they're okay.
00:08:12
Ron Minatrea
They already know that. And it lets them focus on the other people in the room. And that atmosphere change, that was like, what is it that's different about those people? So I really began try to understand that. In fact, what happened, I guess, really drive the shift was one day I'm walking down the hall. I'm in the midst of this kind of quandary of what do I do? I'm failing here.
00:08:40
Ron Minatrea
And as I'm walking down the hall, ah ah one of my old bosses says, hey, how things going? And course, he really didn't want to know. a rhetorical question.
00:08:49
Ron Minatrea
But I hesitated just long enough that he
00:08:54
Ron Minatrea
And he was like, wait, what is it? And I told him, I said, Jim, I feel responsible for everything. And I have the ability to control nothing. And I'll never forget his response was essentially, that's easy.
00:09:07
Ron Minatrea
And I'm like, what do you mean? What do you mean? And he he this is when he said to me, and this was the shift, people follow you for who you are and how you treat them and how well you can connect them to work that's meaningful to them.
00:09:22
Ron Minatrea
And so what I realized, that was the thing that started this spiral for me to understand, who am I? Who is it that I'm there asking them to follow?
00:09:32
Ron Minatrea
And eventually I began to understand that because I wasn't seeing myself as the leader, that they didn't either. And so when I made the shift to begin to understand who I was, apart from my successes, apart from what I do, then could see myself as the leader.
00:09:50
Ron Minatrea
And remember one of the things he told me, he says, if, you know, because I was, I got into the details of understanding, nobody reports to me. And he said, you know, if you treat everybody like they report to you, good people will follow you.
00:10:05
Ron Minatrea
he said, but what I'm talking about is I'm not telling you to go give them, you know, delegate to them and all that report to you. I'm talking about taking care of them. If you care about them and bring out the best in them and to see yourself as a leader, they'll follow you.
00:10:20
Ron Minatrea
And he was right.
Transforming Leadership Style
00:10:21
Ron Minatrea
and that, but that was the beginning of that shift for me.
00:10:26
Ken Freire
You know, ah ah it's fascinating to hear that because as I'm listening to the story, right from the beginning, I see this undercurrent of identity. Like, who are you? What's going on?
00:10:35
Ken Freire
And it took one person to just for a moment, right? Like you guys are going down the hallway to just stop and say, hey, it's not about your successes or your failures.
00:10:44
Ken Freire
It's who are you? Like that question, think we all wrestle with and
00:10:50
Ron Minatrea
Yeah. I think we do. Yeah.
00:10:52
Ken Freire
And whenever we get into new roles, I think it comes up even more. Right. So, so for those who are listening to this and they're you're hitting chord in their heart, right?
00:11:04
Ken Freire
What are some of those small shifts that they need to start making? One of them is recognizing who they are, but what are the other small shifts that they need to start making to move from running harder to leading differently?
00:11:17
Ron Minatrea
Yeah. So, you know, the key is that's where we start is, is understanding who we are apart from what we do, what we do matters.
00:11:26
Ron Minatrea
We don't want to minimize that. Right. Pardon me. But we want to understand who we are and value who we are, you know, even before we talk about what we do.
00:11:37
Ron Minatrea
But the other thing is, again, people follow you for who you are and how you treat them. So now we want to understand how we see others. and And one of the key shifts was for me, i began to see my role as leader.
00:11:50
Ron Minatrea
No longer am I a functional discipline practitioner. in other words, I'm not an engineer. I'm not a salesperson. I'm a leader. And my role is to lead and facilitate other people and to see them and get more of who they are understood within them. You're trying to pull out things in them that they don't see about themselves.
00:12:13
Ron Minatrea
that's the beauty. And that's what those people do when they walk in the room, right? They're able to see, oh, Ken, I see you're really super at this. I see this as part of who you are. And the more you can bring that out in them, it's like you're launching them to be themselves, the best version of themselves. And that actually becomes fun for me as a leader, because now you're seeing your role not as getting all this stuff done.
00:12:39
Ron Minatrea
That happens. in the process of bringing out the best in others. that to me is one of the, one of the most fun, exciting parts about leading.
Work-Life Balance and Personal Fulfillment
00:12:49
Ron Minatrea
So that shift, you know, we want to, we want to understand who we are and we want to understand how we treat other people and that our role as a leader has changed.
00:12:57
Ron Minatrea
Our style changes, right? that that Instead of that old do direct and delegate, I want to now envision and equip and empower people. I'm leading not from control,
00:13:08
Ron Minatrea
but i I want to lead influentially, right? So those core shifts happen in us. But there's a couple of others, and one of them ah goes back to that same role.
00:13:20
Ron Minatrea
I remember one time, it was Thanksgiving, and i I hadn't yet figured that job out. I was struggling and running, you know, the 80 hours a week and doing that that scene.
00:13:31
Ron Minatrea
And just as the Thanksgiving holiday was coming around, we were finishing up a staff meeting, and one of the guys said, who was about my dad's age, actually. He said, what are you doing for the holidays? And I said, well, I think I'm going to maybe find a way to get back and see my folks. You know, I haven't seen them in over a year, maybe a year and a half now. And haven't seen my brother in three years.
00:13:53
Ron Minatrea
And I will never forget what he said. He came over and he was He was a little shorter than me, so he was almost like looking up to me, but he started tapping the button on my shirt, and he said, that's wrong.
00:14:04
Ron Minatrea
Fix it. like, whoa. And so that sent a strong message that, you know, that kind of dovetailed the earlier message, something has to change.
00:14:16
Ron Minatrea
One of those is we have to balance our life. We have to have a family life. We have to have a ah ah ah ah life away from our work. And and actually came to learn that the more we invest our life away from the office, the better we can be at the office.
00:14:34
Ron Minatrea
And if you shift it all one way, and and was doing that because that's, you know, the funny thing is our work typically has a a very robust system of goals, accountability, deadlines, all that is there and it demands so much of us.
00:14:54
Ron Minatrea
On the other hand, we look at our life plan and we look at who we are away from there and we hardly ever have that sort of robust thinking around our goals or accountability or the things that are truly important to us.
00:15:08
Ron Minatrea
So that's the other shift we start to make. We start to begin to put a plan together to understand we want to bring that sort of understanding and clarity and discipline to the whole of our life, not just the work part of our life.
00:15:24
Ron Minatrea
And that's that I think is is is maybe one of the most empowering things that we can do. And the last one that I would mention too, in fact, we just finished up a session on this with one of our clients, and that is to feed faith and not fear.
00:15:45
Ron Minatrea
You know, what we feed grows. And so what we've learned is this. If we go through all of the shifts of this mindset, you know, value who before do or put we before me or choose influence before control or rest before you run.
Principles of the Exponential Mindset
00:16:04
Ron Minatrea
The one thing that can keep people from behaving and believing the way that we're trying to empower them to think is fear. Because a deadline's coming and you're like, oh, I can't afford to rest.
00:16:17
Ron Minatrea
Or, oh man, this project has gone south. I better dive in and reach in and take control. And so what we want to do is practice a mindset of feeding our faith in what we're doing and not allowing our fears to dominate us. So that really, those are the five key principles really that we talk about in this mindset.
00:16:38
Ken Freire
I'm sure this is what the whole podcast is about is we're going to go through each one of those mindsets, share stories, all that fun stuff.
00:16:45
Ken Freire
But what I want to do is I want to look at all those and ask you more kind of like from a personal experience, when did you start to see those and recognize, wow, these aren't just struggles that I'm having, but everyone around me is having it.
00:16:59
Ken Freire
Because when you said those, I'm like the whole time, like, yep, that's me. That was me.
00:17:02
Ken Freire
That was me. That was me. I know directors like that.
00:17:06
Ron Minatrea
I think we saw that all along. I mean, I grew up in an environment career-wise with a group of people. I met with one of them yesterday.
00:17:17
Ron Minatrea
I hadn't seen him in over 15 years and he was in town. And so we we grabbed breakfast together. And so the camaraderie that we had of all of us growing into the next role and the next role and all that said, we were all experiencing the same sort of, sort of thing.
00:17:35
Ron Minatrea
But, but one of the things I noticed over time was some of them stopped growing. Some of them, you know, they landed in a a role that took everything from them, and they never were able to grow beyond that. they Their career plateaued. Some of them rotated out into other things.
00:17:57
Ron Minatrea
And what I began to see... was the term we came up for it was the workplace was full of walking wounded because all of these people in their life situations were, you know, about my age, they're all trying to raise a family. They're, they're all trying to grow their career. They're all putting all of it in all the time and, and working these hours and they're good people wanting great things.
00:18:23
Ron Minatrea
And they hit this wall and it it just, it,
00:18:27
Ron Minatrea
if they're not able to overcome that, they stay stuck. And some of them, you know, it has an impact at home.
00:18:37
Ron Minatrea
It may challenge them at home or or hurt hurt their family life. So they lean even harder into their career and still they're not making the progress that they want. And so I looked around And it was easy to see from the people that I was growing with, you know, I was not alone in what I was challenged with.
00:18:59
Ron Minatrea
And then I realized, and not everybody's figuring out, there's this shift that you have to make.
00:19:06
Ken Freire
You know, the picture I got was if you ever hiked a mountain, there's sometimes in certain mountains switchbacks. Right.
00:19:12
Ken Freire
And and the picture I got, Ron, was you were with your your colleagues.
00:19:17
Ken Freire
Right. You guys were going through the switchbacks and you were at the top like you were getting to the top. So you could see how much more they needed to get to you. But for some reason, they decided to stop.
00:19:27
Ken Freire
They're like, this is too far. i can't see. i can't see the future.
00:19:30
Ken Freire
I can't see the end goal. So I'm going to right here. And you're like, no, no, no. You're hitting a wall, but you're close. Right.
00:19:37
Ken Freire
And is that how exponential mindset was born? Or was there a different phase where you started to realize, no, no, now I need to start sharing this?
00:19:46
Ron Minatrea
Yeah, so I took a course. Around the same time all of these transitions were happening in my life, I took a course and it asked me a question and it says, if you could close your eyes or snap your fingers and know you couldn't fail, what would you do?
00:20:03
Ron Minatrea
And I still have the journal entry that I wrote to answer that question.
00:20:07
Ron Minatrea
And what I wrote was I would move to kind of a quieter place in life,
From Corporate Life to Teaching Others
00:20:13
Ron Minatrea
rural setting or kind of a retreat setting where I could have time to reflect more and think about and write about all of the life and leadership lessons that I've been blessed to learn.
00:20:25
Ron Minatrea
And then i would go around sharing that message with other people to help them unlock those same things that I'd been facing. And so I actually put a plan together because at this time I was starting to learn, hey, you you need to understand where you're going, right? I was putting those plans together.
00:20:42
Ron Minatrea
And it took me 14 more years at Motorola before I was able to enact that plan. that's when I actually left my, and did exactly that, right? I was able to leave my corporate career and then begin, you know, kind of going down this road of how do I get this message out? How do I hone this message so that other people can benefit from it?
00:21:07
Ken Freire
So you started doing that. You started kind of paint a picture of your future. Now let's fast forward to the present, right? There's obviously some crazy journeys that you've been through that we're not going to talk about today. But as you now look at it, do you regret going on this journey? And if not, what was the beautiful benefit? And almost kind of speaking to that director right now or manager who's like,
00:21:31
Ken Freire
I'm you, Ron, 20, 30 years ago. I'm stuck and I need to get up to the mountain. What do I do?
00:21:36
Ron Minatrea
Oh, there's no regret.
00:21:38
Ron Minatrea
There's no regret. Absolutely. You know, everyone... My belief is we all have a vocational DNA that is is as unique as our biological DNA.
00:21:54
Ron Minatrea
And every one of us deserves the opportunity to kind of realize that to the full, to understand how we are, what it is that we do that's unique and that we're passionate about.
00:22:07
Ron Minatrea
And what we want understand is we understand that's what I'm unique at and that's what's important to the people I serve, if you if think about combining those two, that's how everyone makes their most valuable contribution because it's the law of supply and demand. Nobody can do what I got to bring.
00:22:25
Ron Minatrea
And it's really important to the people I serve. So the more we can pull that out and position people, that's what we're trying to do. So I don't regret that. I love that. And i think because of that, you know, I, as you say, there's twists and turns. You know, we have to have systems to keep reminding us.
00:22:45
Ron Minatrea
Because even in the business I'm in today, doing what I'm doing, you know, things can get really full and I have to have something that continually reminds me, time out, you know, and other people.
00:22:57
Ron Minatrea
We all need those systems. But when we have them, we're actually then living the life that we wanted and taking time to understand what it is we want. And I think that's a lot of times the whirlwind of what's going on when things are such a frantic pace.
00:23:14
Ron Minatrea
We forget to ask ourselves what we want. And therefore, we grow, as I say ah I think we c c grow accidentally and incrementally.
00:23:25
Ron Minatrea
And what we want to help people do is to grow intentionally and exponentially.
Podcast’s Aim and Mindset Exploration
00:23:32
Ken Freire
So Ron, we wrap up and people are listening to this podcast and they're like, really like Ron. I really like the things that he has to say. What's a final word you to encourage them of what's the path that you're going to be taking them through?
00:23:45
Ken Freire
Cast some vision of what does the intentionality look like so that they could come back to the next episodes?
00:23:51
Ron Minatrea
Yeah, what we want to do throughout the series that we're starting here is we want to, as you said before, start to peel back all the layers of all these mindset shifts that we have to make. Those things, the way we think become invisible barriers that we don't even know are there, and yet they're what's holding us back, and we push harder and work harder against them all the time, and it frustrates us and exhausts us.
00:24:17
Ron Minatrea
So what we want to do in this is each time we get together, we want to peel back one app aspect of that. It says, look, here's maybe the way we're thinking about this issue or this problem.
00:24:31
Ron Minatrea
But if we would shift the way we think about that, we would begin to behave differently. In fact, one of the joys I've had as I began to develop this is my daughter is a clinical psychologist.
00:24:44
Ron Minatrea
So I've been able to take those 30 years of practical applications that I've learned in those lessons, but also get her perspective. So we want to blend that practical with the science of psychology.
00:24:59
Ron Minatrea
And one of those is this idea that we can how we think. If we change how we think, we change how we behave. And and so what we're really going to do is one by one begin to change how we think and develop systems and practices around us that will serve us to make that success sustainable.
00:25:18
Ken Freire
I love it. I love it, Ron. And the joy, even if you guys were listening carefully to this podcast, you kept throwing a bunch of little truth bombs. And I'm like, we could talk about that for 20 minutes. We could talk about that for 20 minutes.
00:25:30
Ken Freire
Right. And and that's the exciting thing about this podcast is that there's these limiting beliefs that we all hold. But what I want see people to listen to is like, and not gloss over, is that when you were being intentional about overcoming those limiting beliefs, you've gotten to the place in your life where you had these rules of life that you wanted to live and you're there, right? And you're enjoying it and it's exciting. So if you're a director or manager who's struggling and you're like,
00:25:57
Ken Freire
I feel stuck in this situation right now, man. Like there is hope and there is joy the future that you could say, man, I'm living the life that I want to.
00:26:07
Ken Freire
could both enjoy success and also enjoy my personal life. And Ron, that's what you have to offer.
00:26:14
Ron Minatrea
Yeah, absolutely. what What we want to do is help everybody perform at the highest levels in their work, be fully present at home, and enjoy lasting success in both.
00:26:24
Ken Freire
Yeah, that's awesome. Well, for all of you who listening, man, stay tuned. Jump into the next episode with Ron where he's going to be dropping whole bunch of truth nuggets to us every time. So, Ron, thank you for allowing me to host your podcast. until next time.
00:26:41
Ron Minatrea
Thanks for doing it. See you.