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When a High Value Fraternity Brother kept me from making a High Value mistake


 Many years ago, I had a situation where at my job I found myself in a unique position of being very pissed off. The circumstances there made me so angry that I almost did some things that were probably not the most professional in the world. And it was during this time when I was ranting and raving about what was happening, but one of my fraternity brothers encouraged me to speak to one of my other fraternity brothers, Lynwood Bell.


Let’s be clear, I hold all of my fraternity brothers in high regard but I have to admit that every fraternity brother is not similarly situated. Brother Bell is what I would call a high-value brother. He worked as a corporate executive in a large insurance company. He was the southern regional vice president of the largest region of my fraternity which is Alpha South. He had a boatload of connections. Which is why I didn’t really think he would be interested in helping a brother like myself.


Fortunately, his chapter was literally in the neighboring county and the chapter president happened to be a brother who pledged in my chapter from college.  And fortunately for me, Brother Bell knew who I was because I interacted with him before but I just did not want to bother him with my problems.


To my surprise, he agreed to go out to lunch. And while we were at lunch, he sat there very patiently and quietly as I ranted raved about my issues for about a good 10 minutes. After I was done, he did exactly what he was supposed to do in terms of providing guidance to a young brother who was on the road to trying to become a high-value brother. 


He didn’t discount my feelings.  He didn’t brush off my concerns.  He didn’t dive into the circumstances that I was sharing.  


His focus was on de-escalating my emotions and arming me with a perspective that would benefit me professionally.  He shared a lot of words with me that day but the effect of his words which truly resonated with me was “the short term gratification of acting on your emotions may have a long term impact on your reputation.”  


After that conversation, I was able to make my moves in a more strategic manner, The short term benefits of his conversation were readily apparent.  However, all these years later, what I didn’t realize was that Brother Bell was teaching me that this was going to be a part of an ongoing journey as opposed to a short term encounter.


On that day, I learned a few things:

  1. During the course of your professional career you’re going to be put into a compromising situation when you must remember that you must protect your professional reputation at all cost.

  2. You may choose to leave an employment situation under a blaze of glory but the reputation from the way you live will also go out with you as well and others will be mindful of that when they engage you.

  3. You can actually build on to the reputation by the affected ability you displayed in handling a situation that shows a significant quality of your Pedigree.

  4. Your ability to attain a certain value is also predicated on the sum of your experiences and those people who wish to interact with you and the future are going to weigh the cumulative body of your experiences and they may view this one anomaly as more than an anomaly but as a warning of future problems.

  5. As you ascend to higher levels of value and the value based jobs, your ability to establish a process by which you effectively deal with conflict resolution in situations like this can go a long way towards enhancing your reputation or damaging it.


I was once told by my Martial Arts grandmaster that lessons that you learned from people who are of a certain caliber you’ll be dissecting for years to come. If you have the opportunity to interact with a high-value professional, and they give you guidance, trust that they are not merely giving you something for the moment. They are giving you feedback that you can build upon and come back to you and enrich yourself in the future. 


Brother Bell taught me a lesson but I am so glad that he did. But I never truly appreciated it until many years later.  What he was doing was giving me a high value professional lesson.  


I hope this helps you, too.

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