Seeing Potential: How Great Teachers Change Lives with Clint Pulver

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Biff

Welcome to Educating the Human Potential, a podcast about optimizing education for a better society through a montessori lens. I’m Biff Maier

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Nicole

And I’m Nicole Coman, and today on our show we have Clint Pulver. Clint is an Emmy Award winning keynote speaker, professional drummer, and author of the best selling book. I love it here. Clint is known for his work on employer engagement and mentorship, though his journey started in the classroom, where one teacher’s belief in him shaped the course of his life.

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Nicole

Welcome, Clint, to our show. And so let’s get started with kind of that journey and how it started for you. And so maybe you can share with us and walk us through that moment of why that stuck with you so deeply when you had that interaction with that teacher?

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Clint

Yeah. So I was the kid in school that always just had a hard time sitting still. I would just move. I would just constantly tap. And everybody saw that as an issue and an annoyance.

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Biff

And I can relate to that as a teacher.

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Clint

Yeah. You know, it’s someone’s clicking the pen or tapping the foot and it’s disruptive. And I got sent to the principal’s office. I was in trouble. I was constantly told to sit on my hands. I got teased in school a lot. Kids would call me the Twitter or the Tapper, and it just happened continuously for a long period of time until one day there was a teacher.

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Clint

His name was Mr. Jensen, and in a moment while I was tapping, he said, stay after class. We’re going to we’re going to talk. And I’m like, okay, well, this is it. Like I’m getting kicked out of school as a ten year old. Like, this is where it ends and everybody leaves and it’s just me and Mr. Jensen.

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Clint

And he sat down and he said, listen, you tap a lot and you’re constantly moving. And he said, But I’ve watched you and you can write with your right hand. You can write with your left hand. You have this ability, these this independence with your hands and your feet. And he said, can you tap your head and rub your belly?

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Clint

And I just I gave it a go and I could just do it. And he looked at me and he said, listen, I don’t think you’re a problem. I just think you’re a drummer. And I remember like, what is that? What does that even mean? And like, where are we going with this? And he reached back at his desk and he opened up the top drawer, and he reached inside, and he took out my very first pair of drumsticks, and he put him in my hands and he said, listen, I don’t know what’s going to happen here, but I want you to just take the sticks and just keep them in your hands and let’s

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Clint

see what happens. And that was a moment that changed everything. And that was 20, almost over 25 years ago. And from that moment on, for this 25 year span of time, I’ve I’ve toured and recorded and played drums and been a professional drummer. And my whole life has changed because of that, that singular opportunity where somebody looked at me and said, he’s not a problem, he’s just a drummer.

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Clint

Wow. And it changed everything one moment.

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Biff

And he he has to have strategized that.

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Clint

I mean, it was 100% designed. Yeah, it was a design drumstick moment. Yeah. He went down to the music store the day before and they just had this, this, this old five, a pair of Vic for sticks. And he said, those are the ones. And he bought them and yeah, it was designed, it wasn’t just happenstance. It wasn’t just a it was very thought through.

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Clint

It was very purposeful.

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Biff

He’s been seeing you for a while.

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Clint

Correct. 100%.

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Nicole

And Mr. Jensen is not a drummer.

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Clint

He’s not a drummer.

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Nicole

Interesting.

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Clint

Not a drummer at all. Yeah.

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Nicole

And did you know you were ambient? Dexterous?

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Clint

No, I had no idea. I just I just I just had that ability. I just had the independence, and it was just. Wow. Yeah. Kind of a natural, a natural thing. And it just felt right to be able to use my right hand, to use my left hand and just kind of who I was.

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Biff

What did you say when he said, I think you’re ambidextrous?

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Clint

I, we say it in the show, but I was like, no, I’m Presbyterian. He’s like, he’s like, that’s not what it means. No. Yeah, yeah. We say that in the show. I’m actually not Presbyterian, but we say in the show it’s a great bit. It’s a great bit. Yeah.

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Nicole

Wow. You learned a lot about yourself that day.

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Clint

Oh for sure. Yeah. Changed everything. Yeah.

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Nicole

And that’s so fascinating. And I think that’s, you know, inspirational for educators all across the country. Right. Because he took the time to pay attention and there was some reoccurring thing happening for you. But instead of punishing you for it, he thought, what can we how can we make this be something that he can use or something useful for him?

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Nicole

Or maybe it’s something he’s interested in that he doesn’t even know about. So their observation of you really did change the course of your life,

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Clint

Totally. And I think he was the perfect person that in a world where everybody just saw the problem, they saw the annoyance, they saw the dysfunction or the loudness, and he just. He saw an opportunity. He saw a gift. He saw what was right. And then how do we how do we accentuate that? And he built upon it.

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Clint

And then what was really neat is what nobody else knows in the story is then how he continued to advocate, and even still to this day, he’ll call me and be like, how’s my drummer? Like he just he was always like, are you taking are you taking lessons? When I got my first drum set, he came over and looked at the drum set like he was.

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Clint

He was invested in the journey. It wasn’t just one moment and one and done. It was going to advocate for you throughout this journey as long as you’ll let me. And that to me has been the most significant part of it to this day, because he’s still one of the greatest mentors in my life. He’s still alive, still a part of the story.

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Clint

And it wasn’t just a one and done moment as a as a ten year old in the fifth grade.

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Biff

Did you have friends who Mr. Johnson also advocated for?

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Clint

Yeah, 100%. I mean, I will if I speak in my hometown or if I speak in that area, everyone will come. My gosh, Larry did the same thing for me. And Larry was that guy like, everybody knows Larry, everybody. And there’s. So I’m not the only one. There were thousands of kids impacted by Larry. Yeah for sure.

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Nicole

And so mentorship. So that became something for you later on down the road. Is that how you came to the next part of your journey when you’re looking into, you know, engagement, employee engagement and those sort of things and looking for mentors and becoming a mentor? How did that. How did you fall into that next?

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Clint

So actually, I was I was going to be a professional musician. Went and did that toward recorded worked in that world for a while. But I also realized that I wanted to have a family and I wanted to be present. And I being a touring musician is very difficult if you want a family and I, I actually wanted to be a helicopter pilot, had an eye disease that ended that whole career for me.

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Clint

I was going to go blind by the age of 31, and so I couldn’t renew my driver’s license and therefore I couldn’t fly anymore. So I lost my flying privileges. I ended up going into the medical field. I worked for five and a half years in the operating room as an orthopedic specialist, was miserable in that career, and I was a part of a mastermind group where we were meeting with other CEOs and leadership, and we were actually in New York City meeting with an executive.

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Clint

And he talked about his business, and he talked about what they were doing and how they were thriving. And if you don’t adapt, you’re going to die. And he was just giving us all these leadership business lessons. And I just asked the question in that conversation. I said, so what about employees? Do you feel like you’ve had to change over, over the years how you traded employees 20 years ago versus how you treat them now?

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Clint

And he fired back and said, no. He said, I, we do it all the same and we get results. And I just thought it was really interesting how he constantly was talking about how you need to adapt in business, but there was no need for adaptation when it came to people and or in his store. And I look around and all of his employees were my age or younger and I, they’re all millennials.

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Clint

And I just thought, I wonder if they would say the same thing. I wonder if they’d have the same perception that he does. And so we think to him, for his time, we had a little bit of time left until we needed to be to our next destination. And I just in the time that I had, out of curiosity, I just walked up to the first employee that I saw and I said, hey, I’m just curious, what’s it, what’s what’s it like to work here?

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Clint

And the employee was like, dude, we’re all numbers. We’re all just cogs in the will. Like probably one of the worst jobs I’ve ever had. I’ve already applied to three other places, and I’m out as soon as I get an opportunity. And then I went to another employee, asked the same question. I went to another. And at the end of that, at that time, I had interviewed six of his employees.

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Clint

Five out of the six of these guys employees said they would not be working for him and his store in less than three months. And that was a light bulb moment for me, where I really that was a that was another Mr. Jensen moment. It was another defining experience in my life where I realized that the perception of leadership, or the perception of a teacher, or the perception of even a parent, right, versus the reality of of a kid’s experience and a reality of an employee’s experience.

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Clint

Usually there’s a gap because it’s hard to understand. It’s hard to especially in the business world, there’s no incentive for an employee to walk up to a boss when things aren’t going well and say, hey, listen, Steve, every time we win, you take all the credit or every time we lose, you blame everybody else. Happy Tuesday Steve. Like they’re not going to tell Steve that.

00:09:22:17 – 00:09:48:08

Clint

And so instead they leave or worse they mentally check out and then they stay. And that was the moment that started the undercover millennial program. And it led to a six and a half year research study where I would go in undercover into organizations as someone who was looking for a job, and we were able to find the hidden truths behind what made people head for the exit door.

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Clint

And then the the most pivotal point of all of it was what kept people. Why why would why would somebody say, you know, I don’t just love the job, but I like I love who I am while I’m at the job, like I’ll never leave. I love it here, I love it here, I love it here. And now it’s 698 organizations we’ve interviewed over.

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Clint

I’ve interviewed over 11,000 employees undercover. And the coolest part was those trends, those principles that teachers to executives, to mid-level managers, to parents, what were they doing to create an environment where people like themselves best because they were there. And that’s what led to the book and now what I do professionally for my career.

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Biff

So talk about those principles. What what is it that makes a teacher say, I love this school, I want to stay here.

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Clint

Yeah, it was always the foundation is always built on mentorship versus management. We could always tell very quickly whether or not that leader was surviving or thriving. That culture was surviving or thriving based off of two things standards and connection. So standards in business are standards in the classroom, or standards and parenting are things that you can trace.

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Clint

I need you to show up on time. We have a curfew. I need you to listen. I need you to hold still. I need you to perform, I need you get from a grade C to a grade A, and we need to be more profitable, right? We need to grow. Those are things that we can trace. Those are standards in these industries.

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Clint

But the connection piece is the intangible side of it because you’re dealing with people. So this is when people feel seen, they feel heard, they feel understood. It’s when again, you realize they have a life outside of class, they have a life outside of work. And so we would use these variables and this kind of gave us this, this, this pedigree or