Trench Leadership: A Podcast From the Front. EP64 hosted by Simon Kardynal. Putting Fear Into Perspective featuring Richard Blank
HELPING EMERGING LEADERS BUILD UPON THEIR LEADERSHIP FOUNDATION.Emerging leaders carry the burden of leading ‘in the trenches’, often feeling overwhelmed as they travel along their new role as the leader. In Trench Leadership: A Podcast From the Front, I use my personal and professional experience, my education (Master of Arts in Leadership), and guests to provide advice, inspiration, and practical tools to help emerging leaders find their path right in the trenches, helping them be the leader they want to be.
Fear is the most basic of human instincts. We need it to tell us when to be cognizant of impending danger.
The challenge with fear is that it can, and wants to, take over. Fear wants to keep us inside our comfort zones, keep us safe, secure in the knowledge that if we don’t push ourselves, we can’t get hurt.
But the question is, how can we, as leaders, harness the power of fear to not only survive, but thrive?
And so, in this episode, you’ll hear from Richard Blank, CEO for Costa Rica’s Call Centre, who will talk about his experiences with fear in the workplace. Richard will use his personal and professional examples to talk about how emerging leaders can live with their fear, use it to create strong and powerful teams. Lastly, Richard will give practical advice to leaders so they can use their fear to help themselves and their teams thrive.
https://youtu.be/T6NFa3z5Xgc?si=Wc8z-QiLXTwd7FNk
My Professional Background
I’m a Canadian, eh! who retired from the Canadian Armed Forces as an aircraft maintenance superintendent at the rank of Master Warrant Officer. I completed 26+ in the regular force, experiencing multiple postings, exercises, and domestic and international deployments.
I’ve since joined the RCAF Reserves, humbled to be the Squadron Warrant Officer with 412 (T) Sqn, located in Canada’s national capital city, Ottawa, Ontario.
I also work as a contract manager at a Canadian contracting company called Calian Group Inc., providing contract management services to contractors and clients.
I hold a Master of Arts in Leadership degree from Royal Roads University where I found my passion to help emerging leaders create strong foundations as they embark on their leadership journey.
About Me Personally
I’m a father and husband who lives in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. My daughter is in university and she wants to become a veterinarian. Her intense dedication and passion for wanting to help animals is fuelling her, and she is on her way to achieving that goal.
My wife is a Senior Non-Commissioned Member in the Royal Canadian Air Force and has split her time between being a reservist and regular force member, and putting up with my non-stop ideas.
My passions include being a private pilot, runner, building custom poker tables, and riding my motorcycle.
I also enjoy speaking to anyone that will listen about the benefits of education (formal and informal) for leaders at all levels.
Formal Leadership Education - Royal Roads University and the Master of Arts in Leadership Degree Program
Listeners of the show will have heard, often, that my path to creating this podcast, my passion to help emerging leaders, started with my acceptance in the Master of Arts in Leadership program at Royal Roads University.
A fun fact is that many people have seen part of the Royal Roads campus without even knowing it. How so? If you are an MCU or Deadpool fan, then you have seen Royal Roads. The X-Men’s secret headquarters is none other Hatley castle, which is one of the centrepieces of the campus at RRU. Google it, you’ll see the castle, pretty neat, huh?
The International Society of Military Sciences (ISMS)
The purpose of this organisation is to build a network for the creation, development, exchange and diffusion of research and knowledge about war, conflict management and peace support efforts. The society hosts an annual conference, and one or more workshops per year.
The ISMS is helping to strengthen NCM corps, providing a means for international military academies to cooperate in the development of Non-Commissioned Members (NCM).
For me, the ISMS helps me continue to advocate for NCM, specifically within the Canadian Armed Forces.
Mindfulness Techniques
Listen, we get it. Everyone says that to be an effective leaders, we need to manage our stress. And ‘they’ aren’t wrong, but the missing component is that relieving that stress usually means a release long after the stressful moment has passed by.
Trench Leadership: A Podcast From the Front is humbled to have been listed as #8 for Canadian leadership-themed podcasts for 2022.
I have spent my professional career in the Canadian Armed Forces for over 26 years in the regular force. In 2020, I retired to take on a new role with the Calian Group as a Contract Manager. In 2022, I re-joined the CAF as a Primary Reservist, humbly taking the role as Squadron Warrant Officer at 412 (Transport) Squadron.
I joined the Canadian Armed Forces in 1994 as an infantry soldier; however, in 1999, I switched to the Royal Canadian Air Force as an Aircraft Structures Technician (think auto body for airplanes but much cooler). In 2021, I retired as an Aircraft Maintenance Superintendent with the rank of Master Warrant Officer, employed as a Career Manager. I was responsible for the career management of approximately 1,145 people. I was also responsible to ensure that the right people, with the right qualifications, were placed within the right squadrons at the right time.
Due to my organizational skills, I excel in high-stress environments where I thrive on the challenge of solving complex problems on time and within budget.
I am adept at drafting clear and concise documentation. I am a skilled orator who is often requested by my higher chain of command to deliver briefings and speeches to small and large groups of people.
I am officially bilingual (French and English). I hold a Government of Canada accredited second language profile (French) of C- Comprehension, B - Writing, B - Oral Interaction. I am able to easily converse in both languages and I can prepare comprehensive reports in either language.
I have experience as a program manager where I was responsible for budgetary requirements, project milestones and collaborating with stakeholders from many different organizations.
In 2021, I completed a Master of Arts in Leadership from Royal Roads University. It is this education, coupled with the extensive leadership experience that has made me the adaptable, clear thinking, reliable leader and father that I am today.
Richard’s vision quest journey is filled with twists and turns. At 27 years old, he relocated to Costa Rica to train employees for one of the larger call centers in San Jose. With a mix of motivational public speaking style backed by tactful and appropriate rhetoric, Richard shared his knowledge and trained over 10 000 bilingual telemarketers over two decades.
Richard Blank has the largest collection of restored American Pinball machines and antique Rockola Jukeboxes in Central America making gamification a strong part of CCC culture.Richard Blank is the Chief Executive Officer for Costa Rica’s Call Center since 2008.
Mr. Richard Blank holds a bachelors degree in Communication and Spanish from the University of Arizona and a certificate of language proficiency from the University of Sevilla, Spain.
A Keynote speaker for Philadelphia's Abington High School 68th National Honors Society induction ceremony. In addition, entered into the 2023 Hall of Fame for Business along side other famous alumni. Paying it forward to Abington Senior High School is very important to Mr. Blank. As such, he endows a scholarship each year for students that plan on majoring in a world language at the university level.
Costa Rica’s Call Center (CCC) is a state of the art BPO telemarketing outsource company located in the capital city of San Jose, Costa Rica. Our main focus has been, and will always be to personally train each and every Central America call center agent so that we may offer the highest quality of outbound and inbound telemarketing solutions and bilingual customer service to small and medium sized international companies, entrepreneurs as well as fortune 500 companies.
https://costaricascallcenter.com/en/outbound-bpo-campaigns/
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Trench Leadership: A Podcast From the Front. Hosted by Simon Kardynal. EP64 featuring Richard Blank.
https://youtu.be/T6NFa3z5Xgc?si=Wc8z-QiLXTwd7FNk
