Hey Everyone!
I’m Brian Harrington and I’m a Marketing and IT Manager for a mid-sized industrial distributor. I live and work in the best city in the world, Cleveland, Ohio. I’m sure I could make a witty sports reference about having the losing-est team in football or about letting the Cubs win the World Series if I knew anything about sports. I co-host a podcast about Cleveland with my buddy Dan called The CLECast. We interview people who are making life in our city appreciably better.
Professionally, I’m at an inflection point. I’ve been with the same organization since I was 20 years’ old. I’ve grown a lot there, from a cocksure and arrogant near-teen to, I hope you’ll end up agreeing, the well-adjusted adult I am today. However, I’m limited there. There’s really no more potential for growth. I effectively report to the owners and it’s a third-generation family business. I’m here to finish my degree. My hope is that with credentials in hand, I’ll be able to secure a position at another organization that will allow me to grow.
Last year, before taking the jump back into college, I was actively involved with our local LGBT center. I served on the Board of Directors. One of my assignments was to help lead one of our local pride celebration, Pride in the CLE. It was the second year for this festival and march. In our first year, we were able to throw it together in thirteen days after the original Cleveland Pride was canceled. I was lucky to have thirteen weeks to pull the second one together. With a committee of volunteers and staff members, the executive director and I lead the event to a net profit of $33,000. We had over 5,000 people in attendance for the festival, over 1,500 marchers, and a whole week of allied events. I’m still amazed at what we did. I stepped back, resigning the board, to focus on this degree. While I may be able to do both at the same time, I know I can’t do both well at the same time.
I don’t know if this is a quote, as it were, but my favorite leadership maxim is: “If you’re going to talk about it, be about it.” It’s the same as “walk the talk” or “live what you say”, but I like the wording of this better. I’m also certain I could hunt down a quote in almost any religious or mythological text that has this same sentiment. The important thing to me is that we communicate what we believe by our actions and the impact of those actions. This is true for individuals and organizations, we are what we do not what we say. We can extend this to our thoughts, our internal “talk about it”. We can believe ourselves to be doing good while, actually, not doing good. When we “be about it” we have to consider the impact of our actions, not just our intentions.
Do I have an unusual hobby? I don’t taxidermy salamanders or collect only oblate spheroid hen speckled granite pebbles. But, I do enjoy running long distance, like marathons and half-marathons, rowing, and playing dodgeball and kickball in our local LGBT sports league. Our dodgeball team just had its first practice last night. We use the racquetball courts at our local community recreation center. In Cleveland, we have free rec centers and they serve as an after-school space for older children, like eight and up. I showed up with our team balls, rainbow-colored of course, and started unpacking. There were three kids on the racquetball court we were assigned. They saw these bright balls and were immediately intrigued. They ask why I have all these balls and I told them, “For dodgeball, obviously”. They pick up the balls and start playing their own game. It was a sight to see. They ended up hanging out and “practicing” with us for the first thirty minutes. Then, when more of our team showed up, they cheered for us outside.
I hope everyone has a great semester!
