Disabiliy and Progress-February 29, 2024-Mom Dad Not Hear

[00:00:02] Speaker A: I wonder, Mickey, what do you want the average person or non average to take away from this book? [00:00:13] Speaker B: So there's a couple things that I want them to take away. I want them to take away. First, the positivity that lies within the deaf community and being raised in a household that had English as a second language, that's number one. When I look around at peer groupings, there's a lot of negativity centered around the books and the storylines. My sole purpose was to yell from the rooftops, the positivity that there was and how I was raised, that's number one. The second piece is understanding and having a little bit of empathy as to what different people go through, and understanding that, hey, when you work with someone who's either been raised by deaf adults or a deaf person, maybe you'll educate yourself a little bit through these stories and these lessons. And then the third piece that I really want to impress upon is the ability for us to become more inclusive and accept them. So I wrote it from a positive perspective, and then I wanted to educate, and then I wanted to include, yes. [00:01:45] Speaker A: I do feel, I must say that. I guess I feel like you really contemplated over the lessons you learned growing up by reading this book. I could almost see that, and it feels like you were very humbled by your experiences, and I found it awesome. Some of the lessons that you had learned and imparted in the book and were great. It didn't matter. It's a great lesson to talk about growing up with deafness, but even if you don't have experience with deafness, reading this book just has super valuable lessons with treating people and running a company in general. And it feels like you got a ton of experience learning about things like that when you were climbing the ladder in your companies. [00:02:40] Speaker B: Yeah. When you look at it and you peel back the onion, some of the situations that I deal with in the current role or as I progressed within the company really happened to me when I was six years old, eight years old, twelve years old. I was immersed in some of those negotiations early on, so I was no stranger to some of that. Now it's a matter of what can I take from the lessons that I've learned and apply it, and how does that influence the way I lead? I'm real big on the culture of my team and making sure that while there's different dynamics and different noises around the world, intra company, you name it, I'm very big on controlling what we can control within the team that I lead. So that's the big influence that I have from my parents is they had zero control over their deafness. [00:03:50] Speaker A: Right. [00:03:51] Speaker B: What could they control? [00:03:53] Speaker A: Right. [00:03:54] Speaker B: What they controlled that is carried over into how I can lead. [00:03:59] Speaker A: So is there any other big things you feel like you learned about yourself during the writing of this book? [00:04:09] Speaker B: You learn a lot when you write a book. It is therapy. It is eye opening. It can dust off potentially a lot of great memories, can dust off some memories that were tucked away in the closet for good reason, you name it. Right? But for those that are contemplating writing a book, understand that the entire journey of emotions they are going to happen. But realize this, every single person has a story to tell. That is one of the things. There's a lot of folks that say, oh, I wish, I'd love to write a book. And then they say, but I don't know what my story is, just general. I don't know what would be out there. And every single person has a uniqueness to their story. But just understand when you start to write it, that uniqueness is going to come out. Good, bad, ugly, you name it. Right? So that was the biggest learning for me is how therapeutic. And it really was. [00:05:33] Speaker A: Obviously during the time when you were a child. And now if you think of all the things that have changed, a huge change in technology. But I'm curious to know what kind of advice you would give a child of deaf parents growing up in your situation today. [00:05:56] Speaker B: So the first piece would be to embrace it, and then the next piece would be to lead, live and love. And I say all that, and it's taken apart from the subtitle of my book. But you have an opportunity to be a leader, and you have more opportunities to be in situations where you can develop those leadership moments. You may think it's corny and you may not want to hear about it when you're 13 years old, but I guarantee you another 13 year old is not going to be in situations that you're going to be in. Let me take it a step further. Live your life. You've got your parents, their death. Live your life. They want what's best for you. They want you to be a productive person in society, and they want you to grow up, and they want you to love. And then that's the third piece. Love your parents just as much as they love you. That's the one thing I look back at my teenage years. I was a good kid by all purposes, but some of the pushback that I gave my parents, they didn't deserve that. And when I look at it if you're a coda listening to this, I'd encourage you to learn how unique and cool your situation is earlier than I did. Like I said, it took me 40 plus years and loss of my father to realize, wait a minute. That was a cool experience. That's what I say to the younger generation. [00:07:52] Speaker A: How can one get your book? [00:07:55] Speaker B: It's available all over the place. You can grab it from your local independent bookstore. They can order it from a wholesale distributor. You can grab it from Amazon, Barnes and Noble. What's the million? It's all over the place. I've got my website, Mickey carolyn.com, where I do book speaking engagements, author visits, you name it. [00:08:18] Speaker A: What have people said to you after reading your book? [00:08:24] Speaker B: The first thing is, I'm sure you've. [00:08:26] Speaker A: Gotten all kinds of things, but what are just some of the top things? [00:08:32] Speaker B: They told me they underestimated how funny some of the stories were. And I go back to I used a laugh, laugh, cry model. So I tried to take the journey, people through a roller coaster emotions. I will tell you that my sister read it because she's much closer to the book, had some teary eyed moments in it. I can tell you that there's been other folks that they learned what a kona was. They took what pieces of access that they took for granted. So there's been a lot of learnings from it and a whole lot of respect from people that I took it upon myself to share the story. [00:09:24] Speaker A: I'm wondering what your mom thought, and did she have any feeling of that? She leaned too heavily on you growing. [00:09:32] Speaker B: Up, so she would say that the teenage years were the problem. Right. That's when I started to feel the weight of it. That's when I started to push back and not handle myself properly. [00:10:00] Speaker A: You wouldn't be the first teenager, by. [00:10:02] Speaker B: The way, she hasn't said much about it. She doesn't feel terrible about it. But I bet you if you were to ask her point blank, she would say, yeah. She didn't want to always have to put me in those situations. That's how it was. [00:10:26] Speaker A: Yes, she did read it, right? [00:10:28] Speaker B: Yes. Okay. She's low vision now. She's got diabetes. It's impacted her sight, and she has to use this big old magnifier computer screen to read it. But, yeah, she has read it. [00:10:53] Speaker A: Charlene, I'm wondering if you have any thoughts or any questions for Mickey in regarding his book or anything else. [00:11:02] Speaker C: It was a very interesting book, and I want to share one quick story. I worked for the veterans in north Chicago. And I had one gentleman one day. He had dementia, and we were singing and he still remembered how to sign. Both parents were deaf, and he still knew how to sign the Christmas songs. It was just really a really deep moment. For know. It was just amazing. [00:11:37] Speaker A: Mickey, can you give your website one more time for us? [00:11:41] Speaker B: Yes, gladly. It is mickeycaroline.com mickey and then carolan.com. [00:11:52] Speaker A: I want to thank you so much for being on and sharing your story. And I really encourage people to read this because it's a, as I said, it holds so many great lessons in regards to managing teams and managing partnerships. And I really found it very valuable. So thank you so much and good luck in the future. [00:12:20] Speaker B: It was my pleasure, and I'm so grateful you had me on. Thank you very much. KPI.org.