“‘What do you have to lose?’ is really the question.”

Adrian Ohmer

Michigan, USA

Investment Director at major philanthropic institution

Clinical Professor of Law (Adjunct) at a public university

Summer 2020 cohort of Heroes Journey

“If you're ready to interact with a group of people who are all incredibly well accomplished, let your barriers down, let them have an opinion on you in a dynamic and constructive way, and you're willing to learn, this can be of significant value.”

What drew you to Heroes Journey?

“Before I even entered it, I was at an inflection point where I'm at the cusp of almost senior… What that meant for not just my career, but me as a gay person, me as a person of color. I was wanting and knowing that a next step was soon imminent, but also wanted to take that next step fully in myself, and not because it's the logical next step of your career.

“And if there was a stepping off point, I'm wanting to step off that career path to go explore something else. But again…with as much knowledge as possible about myself to make that decision. So that it was genuinely a decision made of myself by myself, not because of inertia. And that was it. That's where I was before I even heard about the program or met Dominic.”

“So, when you're at that inflection point where you're getting those headhunters reaching out, it can feel very overwhelming.

“I was talking to a lot of friends in the [finance] industry, who have various perspectives, I was just reaching out, saying, ‘How did you guys deal with this? How did you manage this?’ And the question that kept coming up in those conversations was, ‘Well, what do you want?’ And it's the most basic question. And that was the kind of place where I entered the program: ‘What do I want?’

“In one of the earlier sessions that we had, I asked the question, ‘I might have an opportunity to step off and do something really different, and I don't know if it's quite a fit. Or I have an opportunity to hypercharge where I am and go into the next position.’

“And it was really interesting getting the group's feedback on that point. One was, ‘Take the risk and go!’ because of their own experiences in their career. And it was really good to hear it from people who don't have 10 years of personal history with me, who don't have anything to gain or lose, right? They can just kind of be like, ‘Here's my advice, take it or leave it.’”

“At first really scary! I think we all have a face which we know how to put forward in professional settings. We all have a face that we know how to put forward in personal settings, depending on who the friend group is. We all have the ability to code switch – that's just part of who we are. It's even more magnified as a gay person, and it's even more magnified as a person of color – we understand it intuitively."

“But to be confronted with other gay men, some of which were [also] people of color, like you couldn't really put on that face without it being obvious to everyone else what you're doing. Like, they know the game, that internal game and struggle that we all go through, regardless of what your coming out story is, or when you came out, or when you became your full self. It's part of just dealing with society. And so going into a place where you couldn't even day one – if you're going to do it right and do it well – you couldn't really go in and do that. That was stripped from your toolbox.

“And for me, that was the exciting part. But it's also scary.”

“The conversations got real a lot quicker. The discomfort got real a lot quicker. It made me question myself as to why certain things made me uncomfortable versus comfortable to talk about in a setting of people who were relatively like-minded. So, why did someone's experience in the professional setting make me uncomfortable as their experience as a gay person versus what I would have done and what does that say about me?

“You had to wrestle with that tension, if you wanted to get the most out of it. You have to grapple with that tension. You can also not, but what's the point?”

“Oh, yeah. I mean, look, there were sessions in Mastermind where I didn't talk at all or my contributions were limited. And those were some of the sessions I took the most from because I thought to myself, ‘Why does this perspective or why does this story relate so much, or why am I so put off by this? Why am I really apprehensive about what's going on right here? I need to think about this.’

“In the moment when you're going through the session, you're kind of in real time. But then when you step away and, the group session is over – in our case, the camera turned off and Zoom is done – you have to process that for yourself. And that was some of the more insightful parts. Like, why is this uncomfortable with me? Why am I impatient?

“You have to do that work on your own. But the session plus the time in one-on-one coaching with Dominic was helpful in that information gathering process.

“Part of the experience is learning. Like learning when to shut up and just be uncomfortable. And let that be a reflection on you and figure out what work you need to do with that discomfort.”

“At one point I took the Leadership Profile output [the 360º assessment used in Heroes Journey] and sent it to my new CIO [Chief Investment Officer]. And I said, ‘Look, this is what you're getting. If that is not something you want, this is not going to work out, let me know.’ And his response to that was, ‘Thank you so much for being brave, and just sending this to the person who could be your boss,’ because at that point, I hadn't said yes. But he said, ‘Reading this makes me want you even more.’ So that might have helped a little bit with some competition.

“But, let's fast forward now to being on the job for some months and I raise my voice about something and afterwards my boss pulled me aside and said, ‘Thanks for speaking up.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, you kind of knew that this was what I was going to do. You saw my Leadership Profile, so there is no secret that that was going to be a likely thing I would do.’ And he was like, ‘And that's exactly why we need you in that room. That's exactly what I needed to have happen in that space with my team.’ So that was incredibly refreshing. I didn't have to enter that moment on weak footing. There is no secret that I'm going to speak up in certain scenarios. And that was highlighted. And I deeply appreciate that.”

“I was excited by, ‘Hey, here's a professional who's been trained’ and so…the one-on-one part was like, ‘Oh, yeah, sign me up!’ Like, no doubt. The group was the part for me that was going to be the harder thing to grapple with. And, with Dominic as the coalescer, the convener, it was interesting, in that Dominic is a peer of all of us.

“It's not like he is this 80-year-old wise man who speaks from above and we're all ‘Oh, yes, thank you, Socrates.’ That's not who he is, or I wouldn't have signed up, I'm not looking for religion here…So, he has this ability to navigate that peer setting that is unique.”

“The thing that I took the most from it is: I can't look at the current role I'm in now and, where I am today with saying yes [to it], after doing this personal development and this deep searching, and blame any of it on anything other than myself. And that's important for me. I need to have full accountability for where I am in life. And that means something deeply important to me.

“No matter how good this last thing might have been, this thing was better. This thing was the next thing that made sense on my own path. And I took it with information, I did that on my own, it wasn't some headhunter trying to sell me the moon.

“This was me, sitting down working with people I did not know. And they had no stake in the game other than wanting to talk it through with someone else And I took what I took from that, and for me it was of immense value, because it helped me in that path….I wasn't looking for a new group of best friends, I wasn't looking for a change to my social life. I was looking for information. And I came at it with that goal. And I got out of it more information about myself.”

Was there anything that got in the way of you saying yes to this?

“I just was not sure that you can do this remotely. And what I would say for the remoteness is in fact it still allowed for intimacy in the important ways that we need it.”