The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 494: Mayor Eric Adams - Authenticity, Honesty, & Changing From Within... A Conversation With The Mayor Of New York City

Duration: 33m
Broadcast on: 09 Oct 2022
Audio Format: other

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Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com

Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12 https://twitter.com/RyanHawk12

Mayor Eric Adams has served the people of New York City as an NYPD officer, State Senator, Brooklyn Borough President, and now as the 110th Mayor of the City of New York.

Notes:

When Eric was 15, he was beaten by a police officer.
- "Instead of saying woe is me, I said why not me?" He became a police officer...
Mentor, Reverend, and Civil Rights Leader, Herbert Daughtry, encouraged him to change the system from within.
If you have a problem with a system, try to change it from within. Instead of complaining about it, do something about it. Take action.
A mindset shift: "There is something I'm supposed to learn from this." – Shifting our minds from blaming and complaining to asking ourselves, "What can I learn from this?"
Mayor Adams became President of a Black officers association before founding his own group, 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care.
The New York Times has called Mayor Adams, "The mayor who never sleeps." - He's known to be up early working and go out late at night… Including going to clubs like Zero Bond (a private club) and not being afraid to take pictures with fellow New Yorkers while holding a vodka/soda in hand…
- Being perfectly imperfect. Authenticity, being genuine. Mayor Adams goes out to clubs and drinks with his fellow New Yorkers. He doesn't hide it. So many politicians put up a facade. An image that isn't real. Part of his appeal is that he's real, he's human… We all want that.
Cleaning up his diet – After 9/11, he relied on comfort food (quarter pounder or a bucket of KFC). One day in 2016, he woke up blind in his left eye and suffered nerve damage in his feed, which could have led to amputation. His diabetes was killing him. He switched to a plant-based diet and lost 35 pounds. (and wrote a book about it)
"I would rather be a person that is authentic and make mistakes than robotic and be a fake," Adams says, sitting on the couch in his office. "Folks are tired of just these terrible fake leaders. They're always trying to live up to someone. Always."
What does Mayor Adams think about those who use the phrase, "Defund the Police?"
- "They don't get it."
- "After protests, you must do something to protect. You cannot simply protest, you have to protect."
"All I can say, have your haters become your waiters when you sit down at the table of success."

This episode is brought to you by one of my favorites. It is Storyworth. Storyworth is an amazing gift for you and your loved ones. Essentially what it is is you sign up for Storyworth and they help you supply a loved one with a question a week. So, for my case, I did this with my dad and Storyworth would send him one question per week and he would answer them and sometimes even add some cool pictures to make it more visually appealing to go along with his amazing writing. And then at the end of 52 weeks, Storyworth puts this together in a beautiful book which I now have on my bookshelves at home. Along the way, I also got to read my dad's answer. So, this is something that my family will treasure forever. He actually printed a number of copies and gave them to each of his kids. I would highly encourage you to do this. I even got to ask some of the questions each week for Storyworth. So, to take advantage of this amazing offer that they've put together for you, go to storyworth.com/leader. You'll get $10 off your first purchase that's storyworth.com/leader. Welcome to The Learning Leaders Show presented by Insight Global. I am your host Ryan Hawke. Thank you so much for being here. Text Hawke to 66866 to become part of Mindful Monday. You, along with tens of thousands of other learning leaders from all over the world, will receive a carefully curated email from me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right. You'll also receive details about how my book, The Pursuit of Excellence, will help you become a more effective leader. Text Hawke to 66866. Now, on to tonight's featured leader. Wow, this is so good. Mayor Eric Adams has served the people of New York City as an NYPD officer, state senator Brooklyn Burrow president and now as the 110th mayor of the city of New York. So good. During this conversation, we discuss why the New York Times called him the mayor who never sleeps and the importance of being with the people you are leading. And then he shares how he handles being criticized by people in his own party. Then we talked about the value of authenticity and being real and how to treat every situation as a learning moment, including the mistakes you make in public. Ladies and gentlemen, this one is so good. It's Mayor Eric Adams. Mayor Eric Adams, so great to have you here on The Learning Leaders Show. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you. I always enjoy being around life long learners. You know, I always believe I heard somewhere some people go through life. Some people grow through life. I like to believe I'm I'm going to continue to try to grow. Well, speaking of life, I want to go back to when you're 15 years old. I know this was a big moment in your life and you're arrested and beaten by police officers and and I can imagine I can only imagine the type of impact that would have on somebody. What happened after that day and how did that change the trajectory of your life? And it's interesting because issues or incidents can break you a building and I watch people that have negative encounters and it breaks them and they never really get back on track and probably what kept me on track was when I came home from the precinct the next day after going to a juvenile facility. My mom sat down in a small, modest kitchen and she stated that, baby, you're going to go through some dark moments in your life and you have to make the determination if they're they are burials or plantings and you have to learn how to turn pain into purpose. She was not aware of the beating. She knew of the arrest and she was speaking to that but it just made me really think and I just decided that that was not going to be a burial so it was going to be a planting and it really just took me in another direction. I read that a mentor of yours, Reverend and Civil Rights leader Herbert Daughtry encouraged you to change the system from within. How did you go on to do that? I became aware of Reverend Daughtry after a young man named Clifford Glover was killed. It was a ten-year-old child shot in the back by an officer named Officer Shea and that was the first time Reverend Daughtry was on my radar because Clifford Glover was shot blocks from my house and later in life he was involved in an incident with a businessman named Arthur Miller and he was killed by a police with a chokehold and he started a a march and a call for justice because of that and I joined an organization that Reverend Herbert Daughtry created called Black United Front. It was a sort of an umbrella group for various organizations to come together and during that time we were dealing with many police issues, negative encounters with communities and one of them involved a young man named Randy of Evans who was shot by a housing police officer and shortly after that Reverend

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