A Conversation With Suzanne Scheideker Cook, Author Of A Mentor At Your Fingertips, by Ernesto Chavezvaldivia
When did you discover you had the gift of being able to connect with others and provide mentorship?
Well, I think that everybody has the gift to connect with others and the ability to provide mentorship. A lot of us don’t do that for various reasons. I know when I was first starting out, and climbing the ladder, I felt that if I shared my knowledge, I wouldn’t be “powerful,” for lack of a better word, or I might be giving my competition a leg up on some sort of secret that I had that I was going to reveal to the world, but was just me being silly. To share knowledge is a great experience for yourself, but also having knowledge is power. If you are truly learning and growing as a person, both personally and professionally, then everyone has their own unique set of gifts, so you don’t really have to compete with another person. We all have the ability to connect with each other as well as the ability to share with and inspire others. I just don’t think a lot of us tap into that like we should.
That requires some humility doesn’t it?
I don’t know if it’s humility but I just learned the hard way, and then there are people that touch you, and make you want to pay it forward. I do think that kindness and joy, if you share it, like when you smile at somebody, even now, they smile back. I remember a talk show that was on PBS, and the gentleman was a Yale professor I believe, and he wrote a book called On Tyranny: 20 Lessons of the 20th Century. One of the lessons he discussed, which I found interesting, was that in totalitarian governments, people stopped making eye contact and forming personal connections with others. That human connection is really important. It’s great to text and be on a cell phone but there’s something about hearing the human voice and connecting. We all have that gift.
Right. It’s so crucial to try to identify with others, even if you think there’s nothing there you could possibly connect with. You’d be surprised. We’re all human. We all go through similar experiences such as pain and joy. Being able to share that with somebody else opens up the relationship.
Exactly. One of my weaknesses, and I think one of the weaknesses of our world, is not being a good listener. I work at it. Actually, my husband is 85% deaf. He’s gotten to the point where hearing aids no longer work for him. So, we took sign language classes together for nine weeks, and it was very intense. It was four hours of complete silence, and we were very rank beginners. The gentleman who taught the class was deaf and mute, so we had to communicate through sign language and lip reading. I prided myself on that but it took it to a whole new level! You realize very quickly how little you pay attention to people’s facial characteristics, and how little we truly listen to each other. Since we don’t have challenges with our hearing or speaking, we’ve taken it for granted and become lazy communicators. In this day and age we tweet a lot but lack real communication such as listening, asking questions, and finding those common grounds you spoke about so eloquently a minute ago such as pain, joy, and great experiences. I think if we found more common ground it would be a great win for everybody. The people who are the greatest communicators are great listeners.
Absolutely. We’re all looking down at our phones all the time, so remembering to look up and look someone in the eye is crucial. Who were some of your mentors and how did they shape you?
My parents, my aunts and uncles, and my grandparents on both sides. My mom’s side of the family have pretty much everything in them as far as their faith. Catholicism, Orthodox Judaism, and Presbyterian, while my grandparents on my dad’s side are Old Order Mennonite. Even though they saw their faith in god differently, there were huge commonalities between them and their faiths. My mom also happened to be close friends with someone who was Buddhist, so she was never worried about us because we were either always at a church or a temple. The older folks in my family taught me the value of hard work. They’d grown up during the great depression so they weren’t keen on complaining. Yet, they were very kind, they listened, and they treated everyone with respect. I also started in music when I was in kindergarten. I started on the accordion, and my music coach taught me to look at things differently. When you’re studying music, they can give you tips on how to solve the problem but music is very personal. You use all of those tips and techniques, and you figure out which one works best for you.
I would imagine by having that strong foundation, it gives you the freedom to add a little bit of personality to the piece you’re creating, or the sheet of music you’re working with.
I was a professional musician for quite a number of years. In all of music, regardless of what style, there are rules or boundaries but within those boundaries there are a lot of ways you can make it truly yours. In some of the big competitions you’ll hear the same piece of music being played a number of times but each person plays it differently. Same thing with drama, the same monologue can be delivered in twenty different ways.
You mentioned your music coach. What was the best piece of advice he gave you?
When I get my mind set, it’s pretty set in stone and I don’t want to back down. So, Mr. Monty, he was my accordion teacher and the person who got me my first playing gigs, had told me to learn “Mack The Knife,” and I hated that song. He’d tell me, “It’s a great song, you’ll get a lot of tips, and you’re going to get a lot of requests for it. You need to learn ‘Mack the Knife.’” and I would say “I’m not learning that song. I hate it.” So we’d go back and forth every lesson until finally I gave in and learned it. He said, “You’re going to be very happy you learned that song.” One of my music contractors got me this posh job in Beverly Hills, and it was French themed, so they wanted an accordion player to play for a lot of who’s who. There was this one gentleman who comes up to me and asks, “Do you happen to know ‘Mack the Knife?’” and I say, “Yes.” HE asks, “Would you play it for me?” and I respond, “Certainly!” So I play it for him and he gives me a twenty dollar bill and I’m thinking, “Wow, Mr. Monty was right!” About fifteen minutes later he comes back and says “That’s my very favorite song, would you mind playing ‘Mack the Knife’ again?” So, I play it again. He gives me another twenty, and I say, “No, you already tipped me.” He says “No, I insist.” So, as the evening progressed, he kept asking me to play “Mack the Knife” and every time I played it for him he’d give me another twenty dollars. I’m thinking, “Wow, this is a great song. I’m so glad I learned it.” As people would see him come over, they were getting sick of “Mack the Knife,” so they’d beat him to the punch and request a different song. But if they didn’t tip me with a twenty he’d say, “Well, she’s not going to play your song before she plays mine because I’m tipping her a twenty.” So they’d be looking everywhere for a twenty. I’m trying to get them to stop but he’d say, “No, if they want to request and bump me out, they need to pay you a twenty.” Eventually, he got tired of being bumped because by this point there were a lot of people asking for other songs besides “Mack the Knife,” so he tells the crowd “Well, now we’re up to fifty, and if you can’t come up with fifty, I get to hear ‘Mack the Knife.’” I made almost $1500 on tips just on “Mack the Knife,” in addition to what I got paid for the job but it taught me a very important lesson. I fought against something a mentor of mine was very right about. I wasn’t respecting his experience and his knowledge, but because I took his advice, it worked out better for me than I could’ve ever even imagined.
I’m sure you probably like the song now?
I love it. I have very fond memories of that song. Every time I hear it I think of that gentleman from the party.
So now fast forward, you’ve had a great career, and you decided to write A Mentor At Your Fingertips. What was the inspiration for writing the book?
During my 30 years with the city of Los Angeles, I sat in hundreds of interview boards. That was a way of, in the city, paying it forward since so many others had sat in interview boards for me as I was promoting up the chain. There were things I saw that I actually did myself during interviews which made me cringe. I learned that most of the answers you give during an interview aren’t wrong. They’re looking for common sense, how quickly you think on your feet, and how well you can express yourself in a tough situation. Sitting through those interview boards made me realize how important it was to have a solid closing statement. I had been fighting off adding a closing statement every time I had participated in practice interviews. My colleagues had asked me to work on one but I insisted they sounded fake, and that I didn’t need one. I was just being stubborn, similar to the time I refused to learn “Mack the Knife.” But sitting on the interview boards made me see the difference it makes for a candidate, and how it’s really like adding a cherry on top of a good dessert. Eventually, I retired and I started a consulting business, where I kept seeing bad advice on LinkedIn for professionals. One in particular kept advocating for professionals to argue with their bosses. And I thought maybe he or she means presenting a different viewpoint but no, they meant starting fights.
That sounds like a troll.
At first I thought “Is this some sort of a prank?” but no, it was a post on LinkedIn. There’s also advice the television career folks give online. They’re in the entertainment industry which means they have a different standard of dress. For example, when I was riding the train into Downtown LA, you could tell who worked in the fashion industry, was being picked up by a studio, worked in IT, or were executives based simply on how they dressed. So, I got tired of yelling at the computer screen, and I decided to write A Mentor at Your Fingertips, and become a mentor at the University of Redlands, in the hopes of helping people not make career mistakes that could possibly handicap them.
And now you’re launching your blog. Tell me a little bit about what you plan on sharing with people?
Well, I’m hoping to share some of the resources of the book because I think it contains some really good advice, and it took two years of my life to put it together. I know what it’s like to have hard experiences and feel stuck in your career. There are times when it’s really hard to not get stuck in a rut, like when I was diagnosed with cancer, or lost my first husband. So I think it might be helpful for me to inspire others to look for opportunities and help them not feel sorry for themselves. I’ll also have guests that’ll contribute and offer different perspectives on a certain topic. That’s going to be part of the messaging of the blog, which is to remind you to get up and keep moving forward.
Well Suzanne, this has been great. What would be the best way for someone to connect with you?
I can be reached at strategicventuresbuild.AMAYF@gmail.com.
Thank you so much!
