As one of thirteen siblings in a family of migrant farmworkers, Bobby Herrera woke up at 5:00 a.m. to harvest the fields for onions, potatoes, and sugar beets. “Growing up, I thought it was normal for every kid to work ten hours a day, six days a week,” Herrera told me.
At the age of seventeen, something happened that changed the trajectory of Herrera’s life and laid the foundation for the corporate culture he would create years later at his own company.
Bobby and his brother, Ed, played on a high school basketball team. They were returning home from a game on the team bus. Along the way, the bus stopped at a restaurant for dinner. Bobby and Ed stayed behind as the rest of the team filed off. The brothers couldn’t afford to pay for the meal.
“A few moments later, one of the dads stepped on board the bus,” Herrera recalls.
“He said something that I would never, ever forget. He said, ‘Bobby, it would make me very happy if you would allow me to buy you boys dinner so can join the rest of the team. Nobody else has to know. To thank me, you just have to do the same thing in the future for another great kid like yourself.'”
A wave of gratitude washed over Herrera. “I’ll never forget how I felt at that moment. It became the force that drove me to build something that would allow me to pay it forward, to repay that kind act to kids like me who were born on the wrong side of the opportunity divide.”
Today, as the CEO of Populus Group, a $600 million a year HR-staffing firm, Herrera openly shares his ‘bus story.’ The story opens the first pages of his new book,The Gift of Struggle. But Herrera told me he didn’t always have the courage to tell the story.
“I didn’t share it because I was afraid to. Sharing it exposed my biggest source of vulnerability. I bought into the alpha-myth that leaders don’t show kinks in the armor. I was wrong. What my team really needed to see is that I was human. I wanted the same thing that they did. I wanted my story to matter.”
Once Herrera began to share his story, it “resonated in a remarkable way.” People began sharing their own stories with one another, deepening workplace bonds and building empathy and compassion among the teammembers.
“We all struggle,” Herrera told me. “Every struggle teaches us something. That’s the gift. And leaders are called to share their gifts. As entrepreneurs or leaders, we can either use struggle as a source of empowerment and to build strong communities, or we can put it aside and pretend it’s not there.”
Herrera’s core philosophy guided his company’s mission statement: Everyone deserves the opportunity to succeed.
“Once everyone understood my purpose for creating the company, it gave their work purpose, too. Everyone saw the value and promise of a company committed to underwriting opportunities for kids who started out like me. The detachment I had felt from my employees started to diminish as we all aligned around a common goal.”
The Human Brain Is Wired For Story
According to neuroscientists and anthropologists, storytelling is in our DNA. We are hardwired for story. Thousands of years ago our ancestors gained control of fire; a major milestone in the development of our species. People cooked food with fire, warded off predators, and shared tales with one another. Those stories educated the other members of the tribe. Stories informed, inspired and sparked our collective imagination.
In short, storytelling is fundamental to who we are. Leaders who are reluctant to share personal stories of overcoming hardships often miss an opportunity to connect with their teams on a deeper, more meaningful level—and to connect their employees’ work to a bigger purpose.
Purpose drives ROI (return on investment). Herrera runs a company that’s seen a considerable growth in sales, wins awards for its workplace culture, contributes to children’s charities and veterans groups, and boasts a customer-service metric (Net Promoter Score) of four times the industry average. But Herrera doesn’t use ROI as a measure of success.
“If you put your ego aside and muster up the courage to tell your most important story, you’ll get more than ROI, you’ll get ROL and that’s a higher return on life,” Herrera says. “I would rather have a higher ROL than a higher ROI because that means you’re getting both fulfillment and economic success.”
We all want our work to matter. A key step to building a true purpose-driven organization is to recognize and share your pivotal story—the turning point or ‘aha’ moment—that gave your life purpose. If you’ve turned tragedy into triumph or adversity into victory, share it. Your teams are craving it.