March 30, 2015
My Story
In my last blog post I wrote about my audition for Those Outspoken. Below is a draft of my "story" that I presented to the group. It is not the exact presentation I gave as I did not memorize this. Instead I developed an outline from this and followed it. As you might expect, I have spent quite a bit of time over the past several months trying to figure out how I got here. I think I mentioned that I saw a psychologist for several weeks starting last summer primarily because of my concern that I was drinking too much.
One of the things he recommended is that I take a couple of personality tests. One of the most interesting things that came out of that is I scored WAY above the norm on the people pleasing/need for recognition "vector." Of course, he wanted to explore this by going back to my childhood. I have never been a fan of this. I am more in the "get over it and move on" group. However, since I clearly veered off course, why not explore?
As you will see below, there were some triggers that he said typically result in a need to please and seek recognition. My relationship with my Dad was clearly a key trigger and we never did develop a great relationship. However he is not here to defend himself and I do want to believe he loved me and was proud of me in the best ways he could. Also you will notice that I don't specifically go into how growing up knowing I was gay factored in to all of this but it was clearly a big part of being "different." I did not think it should be part of a presentation to at risk kids. So here we go. Apologies for the length of this post!
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My name is David and I am currently serving a five year sentence at Taft Correctional Institute for accounting fraud. I was a Sr. VP at a publicly traded company in the medical device business where I was in charge of a division. Along with other executives, I participated in what is referred to as channel stuffing which is where you ship more product to distributors than they need in order to inflate revenue and profit. Essentially we lied to investors. Prior to this I had a very successful career in the medical device industry and even managed to continue this success with another company while the FBI investigated me and the DOJ indicted me. I know what I did was wrong and I accept full responsibility for my actions. But the reality is that I did not make any money from this fraud. Usually greed is the motivation in these types of cases but it was not for me. In fact, none of my friends and colleagues could believe that I was indicted - and many said I was one of the most honest people they knew. So what happened that made me go off the rails this one time?
To get a clue, you have to go back to my childhood. Isn't that always the case? I have not been the type of person to blame my parents for issues I've had as an adult. I think its better to accept responsibilty for your actions and problems and just move on. But sometimes things that happen in childhood can create patterns that you aren't aware of as an adult that can cause problems. From the time I can remember I never got along with my Dad. I was the oldest and he wanted a son like him - great at sports, great with tools, knows his way around a car. But I was different from most of the other boys and I felt like I was constantly disappointing him. Even though I got straight A's in school, I felt like an idiot a lot of the time.
As a result of this I became an overachiever and almost a pathological people pleaser. In grade school I was always the teacher's pet. Always trying to win favor and often bullied. This pattern continued as I began my professional career where I thrived on recognition from my peers and bosses for exceeding my objectives.
In 2001, when I was hired by the company where the accounting fraud was committed, for the first time I was given the opportunity to run my own business unit. I did very well. So good in fact that the CEO put me in charge of the division that was struggling the most and put objectives in place that were impossible to achieve. The pressure to achieve the objectives quarter after quarter was intense. I was encouraged to push the envelope to achieve them and the people pleaser in me kicked in big time. Even though I was not comfortable, I convinced myself the people I worked with and for knew what they were doing. I was the ostrich with his head in the sand. Because of the fraud, I was fired and nearly ended up bankrupt.
So greed is not always the motivator. The lesson in my case is that if you are an extreme people pleaser, you need to step back and take a hard look at what you are doing if you are asked to do something that makes you uncomfortable especially if you are working for or with people you love or trust."
Thank you for listening.
David Applegate
