Dr. Henry Cloud's Intro

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Today on the Servant Leadership Podcast, we're joined by Dr. Henry Cloud, one of the most influential voices in

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leadership and psychology. For decades, he's coached top executives, advised Fortune 500 companies, and helped

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leaders navigate the toughest challenges that come with influence. Henry's books have transformed the way millions of

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people approach leadership, decision-m, and relationships. In this episode, Henry breaks down what separates great

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leaders from those who struggle, why trust is a leader's most valuable asset, and how setting the right boundaries

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creates space for what truly matters. He also uncovers the hidden patterns that keep people stuck and the mindset shifts

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that unlock real transformation. Henry, thank you for joining us on the Servant Leadership

Welcome Henry Cloud

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Podcast. It's good to be with you. uh our audience has probably read your

Henry's Journey To Become A Leadership Writer

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books or for sure been impacted by your books, but your journey to start writing

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is a very interesting journey. Can you talk our audience through how you even got into writing in the first place?

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Um do I write? I I didn't I wasn't aware of that. It's not actually what I do. Well, I'm a clinical psychologist by

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training. Um, and when I went knocking on doors, um, for my first job, I got

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hired by a list a leadership consulting firm. And so this was kind of before,

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you know, you have formal executive coaching and all this kind of big, you know, industry you see now. But they

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noticed something. They noticed, you know, they work with CEOs and teams and organizations and and they noticed that

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leaders sometimes had issues. So, I don't know if you've ever noticed that or not, but it happens. So, they wanted

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a shrink in the house and so, you know, to work on their stuff and their interpersonal stuff. A lot of it, uh,

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you know, centered around their work space. Um, and I fell in love with

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leadership. And this was, sorry, I'm I got something in my eye a second ago.

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Um, I ended up doing my doctoral dissertation in leadership personality.

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And so from day one, I had two I have had two parallel careers. One kind of in

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the clinical world and the other in the business leadership space working with

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businesses. And it, you know, it wasn't too long

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into that before I discovered, you know, you got this leadership development world over here because

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people, they're good at marketing or finance or something. Then all of a sudden they have two jobs. They're doing

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marketing, but also leading people. And that's its own science. And they had to get trained for a career that they

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weren't trained for because leading people is a it is a science of its own.

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And so they learn all this stuff, but then they go out there in reality and they find out they have to

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do it. And so that's when their issues get in the way. You know, um they got a direct report that's impossible or a

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board member or a an investor and and so this interpersonal things get difficult.

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Getting people to do what you need them to do gets difficult. go get a performance review from your

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board and they say nine good things and one bad things and they lie up at night

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obsessing about the bad one. And so this, you know, their issues affect

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leadership. So then they go to therapy and so they go see a therapist and start

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talking about this and the therapist goes, "Yes, I I I can see you're you're struggling in

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your job. seems

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painful. Well, that's all our time for today. And you know it and and I'm a big

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big proponent of of of therapy. But the problem is in the business context, a

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lot of a lot of personal growth and therapeutic stuff doesn't understand the

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context of of leaders and how they have to operate. So, so I I started hanging

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out in this niche um kind of in between. It's really about how people perform and

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function um in an understanding of how humans are constructed in the context of you know

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business performance. And so that's where I was coming from. Well, in that context,

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um I was working with an organization that and I was doing some trainings,

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some leadership trainings and development and they said, "Is this

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where's this written down? We need to scale this around the world." Um I said,

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"Well, it's not written down." They go, "We need you to write a book on it." And

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so, long story short, I said, "I don't know how to write a book."

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and they literally hired a consultant to lock me up in a room with and and sort

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of really teach me how to write a book, how

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to get it all in a book. And that's when I started and so um there was a section

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of my first book um uh called boundaries the section was and so go

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speak on it and all the questions were about boundaries. So we decided well let's write a book on boundaries and then that one sort of hit a nerve

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and that kind of started the whole thing and then um I was writing a lot of

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personal growth stuff and then um years later I I I had built a healthc

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care company um and had treatment centers, hospital units and um about 45

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markets in the western United States and ran that company for a long time and and sold it when managed care started to

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change the industry. And at that point, I said, well, what do I really want to

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do? You know, how do I want to spend my time because I could sort of do what I wanted at that point. And it was working

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with leaders and working with CEOs and their teams and and businesses. And so I

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just set up a little boutique uh leadership consulting practice, but I

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never had published anything on the leadership side. I I'd done a bunch of

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personal growth in relationship and you know, life's hurts and all of that. And

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so I I wrote my first uh leadership book called Integrity. and New York Times got a hold

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of that and did this big spread on it and called it, you know, the best book of the bunch that year. And all of a

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sudden that started the leadership u publishing kind of platform and brand if

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you will. But I I've never seen myself as a writer. That's not I'm a practitioner. So I always say my work

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writes the books. At some point I just need to type it, you know. So that's kind of how I look at it.

What Makes a Great Leader?

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I mean, over the years, you've worked with many of the best known leaders in the world. You you coach so many leaders

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that people from our audience know. Um, what separates great leaders from the

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average leader? Uh, who they are, how they're constructed? I mean, what what we're talking about, you know, if you

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take two computers, um, you can go down to whatever store

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and buy one and it can be a great high performance computer that does most of

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what you need. Um, but you get one of these supercomputers that does the crazy

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stuff. It It's a different piece of equipment now. It does kind of all the

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same things but it does it in a different way with different capacities and and so really it's not

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you know it's really interesting it doesn't come down it's not about IQ or business background or

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education or how many MBAs somebody has because when you get to the seauite all

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those people look the same really in terms of how you know the smarts and the experience experience and the business

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acumen that. But the great ones, you know, you see this delta from where they

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are to what they create. And it's it's

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really how they're glued together. And that's that's where I've focused um is

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is the components. You know, for leaders to lead

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people, they've got to lead people in the way that the people can follow them and the way that their brains can work.

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And so what I've always focused on is is, you know, the psychology, neurology,

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physiology, anatomy of how people are constructed.

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So, we're leading them in a ways that in ways that they can actually perform and

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in ways that makes them better than they would be if you weren't leading them. And to me, that's the difference. It's

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all about the person, how they're glued together. When you're working with leaders at such a high level, are there

Common Leadership Blind Spots

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common blind spots that you see that consistently come up that are hard for people to get over? you know, the

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biggest blind spot is to is to to and I don't mean this in any weird way. Um,

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but the biggest blind spot is to really not know that you have

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blind spots. And and if you if you boil that down to the construct that that runs it,

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it's it's when a leader's thinking and ways of

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operating is is is really a closed system. Now, that doesn't mean they

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don't have people that they're interacting with. Obviously, they do. They have multiple stakeholders non at

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them all the time that they're feeding. But but their their reality of of what

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they're doing and how they're doing it with whomever.

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Um they operate kind of in a closed system of who they

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are. And so I've got a a Doberman doorbell rings. She's wired to

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do a certain thing and she just goes and does it. you know, she runs to the door and barks and the FedEx guy jumps in the bushes. You know, it's it's like she's

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scary. But I've never seen her run to the front door and bark and then stop and

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go, I wonder if that was helpful. Did I bark loud enough? Did I

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bark at the right time? I wonder and I wonder if that'll get me where I want to be on Thursday. She doesn't do that.

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And and so that that that basic capacity to be able to open the system

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of who you are to the two factors that reverse entropy to new intelligence and

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new energy from the outside. that develops sort of, you

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know, an observing what we call an observing ego where where they are

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really really beginning to um be an open system for their own change.

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That's that's a big one to realize that all of

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us operate out of our wiring and until we get above the wiring and begin to see

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how it needs to be tweaked or what we're missing, then that's one of the big things that that separate people and and

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that gets into how they utilize and develop the talent, you know, around

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them. And that's a big deal. And so that's why they hire coach, you know,

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hire coaches and and others. It's just

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um I have a saying, leaders will build their

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companies and teams in their own image. So if you're good at vision,

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you're going to have a visionary company. But what if you suck at structure and accountability? In fact, I

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was talking to uh the wife of an entrepreneur that started a big tech

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company uh a couple years ago and it just is

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like booming. But now that it's

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booming, they're in real they're at a precipice of trouble

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because He loves the boom and the deal and the creation and all of

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that. Really, really, really not good and bored at the weeds

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and the details and the operations. So, the company has the weakness that he

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has. And so for leaders to understand how I'm

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wired has got some incredible strengths, but my company needs more than what I

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love to do or am good at. And they have to be the air traffic control that make sure the company's getting everything it

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needs to work. So that's a big one. We talk a lot about servant leadership on

Servant Leadership Perspective

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this podcast and I'd be curious to know how would you describe servant leadership and is there a place for it

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in great in great leaders and how do you see it play out? Well, you know, it's a term that's been around for a long time

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and um I mean, in the beginning,

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um you know, it's great to for people to wake up say, "Oh, I'm not supposed to be

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beating people up, you know, and this whole thing doesn't exist for me." And and you know, I'm not supposed to use

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people and throw them away. They're not all here to serve me, you know, and all of a sudden people went, "Wow, I'd

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rather work for that guy." Um, but it it it kind of a little bit and this is a

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big deal. I think it it kind of got morphed into at least the way people

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would hear it sometimes that it it got morphed into almost a

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diminishing the leader's power and authority and

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um really in the good sense psychologically of the term they're

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aggressive drives drives. You know, we humans have two two

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basic drives. One is our relational drive to connect and the other is our aggressive drive to move and structure

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and create and take things down a linear path. We call it results and relationships, right? And so you you you

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start talking about servant leadership and it's sort of like

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uh it can get a passivity and it could can get a de diminishing the power that only that

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chair has of a position. True servant leadership in the way that

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it's good is it is that when somebody realizes the power of the chair that

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they possess is really to the power of that chair is

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to serve the organization. And you know it's like Kim Blanchard was probably one

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of the first um that that did this. He, you know, took the pyramid where you got

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the leader at the top, everything, and he said, you got to flip the pyramid. And where leadership serves the

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organization is a transcendent uh reality above them. And and really in

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my view, it gets down to the the it's really the ontology of the leader. Do do

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I exist in an egocentric um

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somewhat self-centered reality or do I exist? I wrote a book

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called integrity about the the way that integrated leader integrity means whole or to be integrated. It's more than just

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I don't lie, cheat and steal. But the the the integrated leader is driven by

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something called an orientation to transcendence. And so it's not about

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just them and their interests, but it's about things that

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transcend their own interests and they're able to give themselves to

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certain, you know, to bigger things, including people. And because servant leadership is about serving the mission,

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it's about serving the stakeholders. It's about serving, you know, the industry. It's it's it's not about me.

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But what you can't let servant membership do is castrate, you know, the

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drive of, you know, we we need power in

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order to execute stuff. And position has power and influence has power.

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And so servant leadership is about the utilization of power in the service of

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things that transcend me. That's how I would look at it. It's not about being a

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wuss and you know kind of oh whatever you want to do, you know, kind of um can

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let me get the coffee for you. Well, you're supposed to be at a board meeting. Yeah, but I want to be a servant leader. You know, it it's not

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about that. Not in the good ones. Now, that doesn't mean that the

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CEO wouldn't go get the receptionist coffee. That would be a normal human,

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non-self-centered, non-narcissistic thing to do. But we're here to serve.

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You know, why does this entity exist? Well, if it's just here to make somebody rich, then, you know, go to Vegas. Who

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cares? You you bring up how Ken Blanchard kind of changed the way people view

Leadership Struggles With Boundaries

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leadership and flipped the pyramid upside down. Uh uh in almost every book you've had, maybe all of them, you've

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had such game-changing ideas that have shaped the way I I think culture as a whole uh has viewed life. Uh maybe it

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started with boundaries. Um it feels like it. I don't think anyone

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has not heard of boundaries or necessary endings or integrity just at least in the circles I run in. Um on the

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boundaries side, why do you think leaders especially have such a hard time with boundaries? Because that's it seems

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simple but it's not. Well, you know, boundaries is the if you

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take the pure construct itself because I always the way I've always looked at

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everything is there the in my view and as a person of faith um I don't believe

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all this just happened by accident. anybody that you know come on look at

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the human body there's a design to this thing right and and so so I believe that life

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and the universe and performance and functioning is constructed with an order

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to it there's there's a created order the way things work and so I've always

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come at um at looking looking at anything trying

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to trying to understand if you're going to build an airplane you got to understand the laws of physics and if you work with them then things work well

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and if you design an airplane that didn't ask that question it's going to fall out of the sky well leadership is

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and performance is the same way and there there's a there's a created order of how people function okay so once you

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understand that when we're talking about boundaries everything that's

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alive. Everything that has volition, everything that has, you know, forward energy, executive functioning, all these

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things, everything that's alive exists with a dynamic tension of being part of

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something other than itself, okay? Where everything that's alive exists in

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relationship because we have to draw life and all of that from outside of ourselves. So we exist in relationships.

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So say two people get married. Okay. Now

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they have there is this we there's this entity. Well everything that exists also

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that is a we has there's two individual parties in

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that. So there's this property line that defines where one person ends

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and another person begins. It's like your house that you got a property line with your neighbor. But what a boundary

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does is it defines ownership and self-control and freedom within a

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relationship from the other person or the other party.

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So, it defines the property of who I am and who I'm not and who you are and who

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you're not. Well, why is that important? Well, because we get into relationship and people forget the fence. They forget

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the property line and they reach over into your yard and start trying to paint your house green. Well, you don't want

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your house painted green. Well, if you don't have the construction to be able to say, "Hey, dude, you know, green's

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nice, but that's not for me. That's your deal. You do it." We have to have

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boundaries in order to do that. Another one is what if they don't take care of their trees and they grow up and they

23:02
don't cut them and they now they're falling on to your roof? We have to set limits on other people's bad behavior or

23:10
irresponsible behavior because you're so you're reaping the consequences of what

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they're sowing. If a team is working together and one person is not performing, everybody's suffering and

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the leader doesn't have boundaries enough to stand up and say, "Dude, you're not taking care of your yard and

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it's affecting all of us and it's affecting the company or a house or a home or a marriage or anything else." So

23:33
a boundary is really a limit as well. So why do leaders

23:39
struggle? Well remember boundaries exist in the

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context of relationship. So what if you're conflict

23:52
avoidant? You know what? If it's difficult for you to walk over to your neighbor and say, "Hey, uh, buddy, your

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uh, you know, your dog's eating my rabbits," or whatever it is. In my in my

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house, it' be the opposite. But it's hard for you to, you know, it's hard for you to confront people. Okay? You have

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fears. Or maybe you've got a big heart and you

24:18
overidentify with the struggle that somebody's had. Well, you know, it's just start. Let's see. You know, you see

24:24
people that I've gone in organizations before and and and started

24:30
to look at what's going on and you know, and I come back to the executive team, I go, "What do I have to do to get fired

24:38
around here? You got It's unbelievable. Some

24:43
people that are what are they doing? I don't I don't know what they're and everybody knows it because they're

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talking about it. the but they've been here for and I have literally seen teams

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look around the table and go when's the last time we fired somebody and then and then they'll

25:01
especially in nonprofits or you know some other you know companies that want

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to be a family and all that they're nice right and and I have literally had them

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say well I think you got to either sleep with somebody or embezzle money if you

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want to get fired Well, that's not protecting the yard against non-performance, against

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divisiveness, against people that hurt the culture. But it's hard for leaders because it's an interpersonal

25:33
um dynamic that gets into our back again to our own makeup. Now, I just talked about all the not being able to stand up

25:39
to the to the bad stuff side of boundaries. The other side of boundaries is you have

25:47
a lot of people who don't mind going into somebody else's yard. They're they have

25:54
boundary problems, but the boundary problems they can't say no to themselves or they can't hear no from someone else.

26:01
So, it's just a big issue and leaders, you know, struggle with it. And and and

26:08
it gets into when you get into leadership in business, you're getting into getting people to take

26:14
ownership, getting people to control what they have, the ability to control

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and not control. People to own the again the power of the seat that they sit in.

26:26
Being able to set limits on non-performance and bad behavior and things that destroy the culture.

26:34
Being able to design, and this is a big deal, to design a team and to design a

26:42
company in a way that augments humans

26:49
agency, their sense of agency that they know if I wrote a book called boundaries

26:55
for leaders and one of the things, one of the big constructs in there, the boundaries the leader have to has to

27:01
have are the the the bound boundaries of

27:06
of what I call the control divide of each seat has got to be able to divide

27:13
the world into here's first of all have you defined it here's what every person

27:20
knows that they have the power to pull the lever on every day that moves the

27:26
needle what do you have control of that moves the needle that we're trying to

27:32
control. That's a big deal. And when people every day are operating in every

27:38
minute moving levers that you that you've had the your boundaries are good

27:44
enough to where you've been able to let go and let them do what you hired them

27:50
to do and more where you're not controlling them, stepping into their yard all the time. and you're limiting

27:57
and defining it enough so they know every single day I'm doing something

28:02
that moves the needle that we care about. You're going to you're going to have an add organization or team or be

28:09
scattered or you know all of that. So it's a big deal. Yeah. It's so interesting and I love how you started

Importance of Letting-Go/Ending Things

28:16
with boundaries and you expanded on boundaries with multiple additional uh

28:23
boundary series if you will for various aspects of life. And then you took it another step further too talking about

28:29
when is the right time to end things. How do you know when a good thing has gone bad or when should you step out of

28:35
something or or it season is over? Yeah. Yeah. And just that perspective is

28:40
sometimes it's just it's past the season. Uh and it served a great time

28:45
and place for a season of life and now it's a new season. Leaders have a hard time letting go of stuff. I was a you know I always say I

28:54
don't write books, my work writes the books and then you know I have to type it. But I'd be in these war and the the

29:01
way that book came about. I' I'd you know, I'd be in the war rooms with CEOs and their teams and it it started to

29:09
amaze me. These are powerful people, powerful leaders. They're not scared of,

29:16
you know, doing stuff. But how many times I'd see a powerful

29:24
leader get stuck in having to end something or shut

29:30
something down whose time was over? It might be a

29:36
It might be a product line that that why don't they throw it away? Why did it

29:41
take GM 40 years to shut down Pontiac? It hadn't made a profit in 40 years.

29:47
smartest executives in the world and you got a bankruptcy judge that shuts it down. Why? Well, because

29:57
the ending that was necessary, they got stuck. And it's

30:02
basically because of emotional and psychological ties to either the people

30:08
or the product or false hope that I can turn this around or you know I just you

30:15
know love a what was the a

30:20
GTO it it's emotional and it's psychological and and

30:27
so we humans love hope, you know, this thing isn't working

30:34
or this person's not working and well, I think I can turn it around and we can do

30:40
and and in in the book, it talks about a diagnostic framework to know when

30:47
hope is hope versus a wish. There's a difference in hope and a

30:54
wish. Hope has objective reasons for continuing to keep going with something

31:01
or with somebody. In the book, I say hope

31:07
spends time. Hope. If you have hope, you're going to spend more time in this. If you

31:14
have hope, you're going to spend more money. If you have hope, you're going to spend more opportunity cost. Hope spends

31:22
stuff. Well, we don't mind spending stuff if there's real objective reasons

31:29
to have hope. Otherwise, it's just a wish. You know, I I hear people say, "Well, you know, this, that, and the

31:34
other." Well, we're hoping, you know, our hope is next next quarter is going

31:40
to turn around. And I go, "That's great. I hope it turns around, too."

31:45
Um, answer me a question. What is new or

31:51
different that's coming next quarter that would make this any different than

31:56
it is now other than you want it to be and you're going to try harder. Good luck. So the book's called

32:04
Necessary Ending. So what that means is it's for you to get where you want to be

32:11
or where you want to go. It is necessary that something end in order for that to

32:16
happen. And it's kind of a sort of the the biochemistry of those decisions. As

Henry's Book - "Trust"

32:23
people hire you to come into their companies and help coach their team, help coach them one-on-one and help just

32:30
look at how they're doing as a business. One of the things that you are looking at is trust. And you came out with a

32:39
book called Trust. talk about how that book came about because I know it's one of the themes of something from the

32:44
beginning but now is one of the books you've written. I finally wrote the book

32:50
um somewhere recently. Um you know I you don't get

32:58
hired to come in and say, "Oh, we got trust issues." You I've never gotten that call. I get hired in three

33:06
scenarios. you know they're great and they want to do greater. Second scar of

33:12
this. There's a known issue or dynamic or morale or performance or culture or

33:18
whatever it is and it's a known issue. Won't you come help us solve this? And then the third scenario is just, you

33:25
know, about to be a fire sale, right? It's a crisis. And I've never gone into any of

33:32
those scenarios. And once you open up the hood and you get down very far into

33:37
it, you don't run into the issue of there's a breakdown of trust.

33:46
And I mean as simple as some people are sitting on

33:54
billiondoll companies that are much smaller than that and they will never be what they're

34:02
going to be because the leader or some of the leaders and they wouldn't because

34:09
they're nice people. They wouldn't think they have an issue in trust, but their trust muscle is broken

34:18
simply because they cannot let go of

34:26
stuff that they should not be doing. And you will never scale

34:32
anything without trust. Now the problem

34:39
is you trust the wrong people, you're going bankrupt. You know how many how many

34:47
Starbucks are there in the world? Was it what is it

34:52
like 50,000 or it's it's a big number.

34:57
Well, how do you go open up Europe if you can't

35:04
truly not have to worry about who you send out there to do it? See, that is

35:11
trust is the only way to scale anything or you're going to be operating in a phone

35:17
booth. But trust has an algorithm to it. And people make big blunders in withholding

35:26
trust from people they should trust or trusting people they shouldn't trust.

35:33
And that doesn't mean you can't trust them as a person. They're not going to lie, cheat, or

35:38
steal. But there's a lot of people that you know, you trust them with your life

35:44
and have in this in this scenario, but you shouldn't trust them in that one.

35:50
and you're not checking the boxes on all the the you know the components of trust. In in the book trust, I've got a

35:58
a model. I've used it in companies for 20 years probably. And and to get people

36:05
to look at, am I checking all the boxes before I invest in this person or before

36:11
I invest in this new product line or invest in this new

36:17
idea or after I've done it and it's not working. Why isn't it working? The

36:22
person's a genius. They're a nice person. and this that and the other. Well, you checked three other boxes, but you missed a

36:28
couple. And and you know, trust is contextual. For example,

36:34
um a friend of mine, I think I put this in the book. He he called me. He said, um, hey, I need some advice. And I said,

36:41
what? He said, "My daughter's boyfriend called me, wants to take me to dinner."

36:46
And he said, "I know what that means. He's going to ask for a hand in marriage." He said, "What do you say in

36:51
that conversation?" I said, 'Well, I got two daughters. I know what I'm going to say. He said, 'What? And I said, 'I'm

36:58
going to tell him great and I'm going to tell him, show up with your last two years tax returns and your credit

37:03
report. And he starts laughing. Yeah, like you're I said, I am as serious as

37:09
sin. I am not kidding. He goes, you're not. I said, I promise you I'm going to

37:15
do this. He said, that's so intrusive. I said, I don't care. He can white out the

37:22
numbers. I just want to know if he can find

37:27
them. Do they exist somewhere? And here's why. My daughter

37:34
trusts this young man with her heart and to care about her and be empathic and be

37:41
for her and all that. Yeah, that's couple of the boxes.

37:47
But the job description of a husband is very different than the job description of a

37:53
boyfriend. And I want to know if he has the ability to run a complete life because

38:01
her life is going to be connected and joined with this guy and I don't want

38:08
her going down with the ship and her heart going down with the ship. And so,

38:13
you know, it's like a company I got I got called in one time that do CEO coaching and I said, "Well, tell me

38:18
what's going on." Our new CEO, he's been here about been doing it about a year and things aren't going like, you know,

38:24
the momentum's down and it's just uh and so I went and did all the interviews and I come back said, "So, how did you how

38:32
how did this happen?" And they go, "Well, he's been here about a year as our CEO." And I said, "Well, how did he

38:38
become the the CEO?" And they said, "Well, he was our COO for 10 years and

38:43
he was awesome. I mean, he just knew new knew distribution channels and and and

38:51
supply chains and infrastru and everybody loves him. Our CEO retired and so we made him the

38:57
CEO. And I said, so where did he get the E? They said, what do you mean? I said,

39:03
he was the COO, now he's the CEO. Where did he get the E? And they said, well, we promoted him.

39:11
I said, "I know you put him in the chair, but where did he get the E chip

39:16
that's required for that context, for that chair?" And they said, "We promote him."

39:24
I said, "Here's what I see. I see a company that's being operated really

39:29
well, but it's not being led." So you could trust him with your life in

39:37
one context, but you haven't asked the question are the real abilities that are

39:44
going to be required from that seat. Can we trust him with that? And so trust is

39:51
a is an algorithm. What I did when I wrote the book is I went through all the, you know, trust literature in the

39:57
universe on psychologically in business and deals and failures of deals and and

40:04
all of it and kind of did a factor analysis of all these thousands of articles and books and all this. You

40:11
know, if you factor analyze them, what are you talking about? And really there's five components that they all,

40:17
you know, if you do a regression analysis on it, they all the co-variance. really you're talking about five things, not a million things. And

40:24
then, you know, the neurology and psychology and relationship stuff of how all that

40:30
works. That's what the book's about. And and what I'd love to do with teams and companies is to get them to work through

40:36
the paradigm in looking at how not only they work, but how they're running everything. And it's really powerful.

40:44
You know, trust, the the construct of trust is really powerful. Yeah. I'm I'm going to make sure because

Henry's Book - "Why I Believe"

40:50
I think people people have already read boundaries necessary endings. Hopefully people have seen trust, but we're going

40:56
to add that link so that people can especially find that and a link to your site when we actually go to publish this, too. Um, well, one thing I'm

41:04
curious, you you wrote a book that was I I'm not sure if it felt off topic for you or perfectly on topic, but called

41:11
Why I didn't know there was a topic, so I can't be off topic. So, seriously, I've never had a plan for

41:18
this. It's the work writes the books and it's just how I just try to how things

41:24
work and you know something will stand out. So how did why I believe come

41:29
about? Oh now that one is off [Laughter] topic. You know I'm a person of faith.

41:36
Um, I'm a believer in Jesus and

41:42
um I have a lot of friends that know

41:48
that and they it's like yeah, you're one of

41:53
those and you know a lot of people in business because I work in public companies, right? Not going to church

41:59
every day in a business. And they, you know, you Google me, it's going to come up. I had a guy one time from u one of

42:08
the Hollywood studios. We were doing a project and we had two meetings and everything's going well and he comes in

42:14
the third one. He's looking at me like like weird. I said what's wrong? He says

42:19
you're one of those. I said, "One of what?" And he

42:24
says, "I Googled you." And he said, "A 19 foot spinning Jesus comes up over

42:29
your head." Meaning all of this faith stuff. He goes, "What is he said? I thought you were a real doctor. I said,

42:36
I am. I have a license, you know, but yeah, I'm a person of faith.

42:41
And and so I it's a hard thing to talk about really. Well, you know, it can be

42:47
divisive or people think you're crazy or you know what about all this? And so I

42:54
just have so many friends that we never had really talked about how I can be one of those

42:59
weirdos. And so I said, you know what? I'm going to answer that question. I'm going to write a book. This is why I believe this

43:05
stuff. And I wrote it to be able to give to my friends. That's why I wrote it. And um

43:13
and basically, it's not theory. It's my story. How um you

43:19
know, he there's a verse in the Bible where Jesus heals somebody and he comes back

43:25
and starts telling people about it in a passage and and they go, "Well, who

43:31
what?" you know, they're asking this question. He goes, "Look, I don't know. I can't explain all this. All I know is

43:36
I was blind and now I see." And so that's that's kind of my story. It it

43:41
was the uh when I hit bottom long time ago in college and and

43:49
how um the subtitle of the book it's psychologist thoughts on

43:55
suffering, miracles, science, and faith.

44:00
And I was in deep pain. Life wasn't working. And I reached out to God and um

44:08
miraculous things started. I found out I cannot deny that he's real. Wow. Well,

44:15
and then all the healing that happened, you know, the way he brought me from the

44:21
gutter. But then that brought up a lot of intellectual questions. And so that's why it's suffering, miracles, science,

44:27
and faith because I get into the big intellectual quandies about how does all this go together. So I could give my

44:34
friends so they know, you know, you might be weird, but at least you're not crazy, you know, and that's where that's

44:41
where the book came from. Well, Henry, I want to hit you with 10

10-Rapid-Fire Questions

44:47
rapid fire questions where you just say the very first thing that comes to your mind.

44:54
B. All right. B is the right answer. Have you ever seen that video? Yeah,

45:01
I've seen that video. Yeah, that was I feel like during COVID that was going around like crazy. It was for those of

45:08
you who don't know this old man and he's sitting there and he's he you know they're going to ask him a question.

45:14
He's waiting and they go, "Okay, you have two choices. A you can spend the

45:20
rest of your life with your wife." And he goes, "Be." So my my wife and I have a joke

45:26
now. So what do you want to do for dinner? You want to go here? And they go, "Be." We always say that. So B. I'll

45:32
choose B on the rapid fire. All right. Well, first one is who's the per first person you think of when I say servant

45:39
leadership? A, I think of so many. And B,

45:45
um, a bunch of them are clients and so I don't

45:51
can't mention I can't mention their names, but I you know I'd kind of like to put the question on everybody when

45:58
you just ask yourself this question. Um who have you ever been led by when you

46:05
saw that? Um wow, it's really not about them.

46:12
everything they do is about something bigger than themselves or the people or

46:17
the stakeholders. You know, there there there is one that I could say

46:23
um because this this comes up a lot, you know, in leadership circles that I found

46:30
myself, you know, start talking about leaders. Um, so I've worked with Chick-fil-A for a long time and um, Tim

46:38
Topoulos, if anybody looks up Timopoulos,

46:44
um, one of the greatest examples, you know, he was the

46:50
uh, sort of um, you know, all those years when when Dan was the CEO

46:57
um, and Tim was more in the operational, you know, leadership side of it.

47:03
You you you can tell a leader from their wake, the wake they leave behind them.

47:09
And you talk to you talk to people in people's wake who worked in their wake

47:14
for a long time. And and one of the things that that they always everybody

47:20
says about the most respected and the most loved leader they ever worked for.

47:26
So that is one I could say that even though he's not a you know famous but you could look him up and that's a good

47:33
one. All right. Five words that describe you.

47:41
Scattered. [Laughter] I think the biggest word would be

47:48
curious. [Music] I've always kind of had this h how's

47:53
that word? you know this kind of

47:59
um is it okay if I just do two curious and scattered? Yeah. I I the reason I

48:07
say this is a deep question because you you think of a lot of things all of a sudden. All right. Favorite author or

48:14
book. Oh, come on. You can't really do this. You can't get It's like

48:20
saying, "Okay, air, water, or food? Which one? You got to choose one.

48:27
Otto Karnburgg. And if I had to pick one

48:32
book, um, borderline conditions and pathological narcissism. All right.

48:38
Favorite movie? Being there. I'll check it out. All right. Favorite food? Um,

48:45
Italian. Favorite thing to do in your free time? Play golf. Why would anybody do anything else? All right. A

48:50
surprising fact about you. I spent prom night in jail. You shouldn't be drag racing in between prom and after

48:57
prom. What was the last one? Favorite place you've been? Prague or the Amalfi

49:02
Coast? All right. Is there anywhere you want to go that you have not been to before? Asleep.

49:10
All right. And the final question is, what's the best advice you've ever gotten? Trust in the Lord with all your

49:16
heart and in all your ways acknowledge him and he will direct your paths.

49:22
Wow, that is so good. Well, Henry, I can't say thank you enough. Uh, you have

Closing

49:29
inspired me and our company uh over over a decade. Um, and I'm so thankful for

49:35
you personally and I'm grateful that our audience gets to hear from you as well. Well, thank you. It's been so much fun

49:42
to talk to you. I love what y'all are doing and um I'll just have tell everybody go tune in. Thank you for

49:48
listening to this episode of the Servant Leadership Podcast. If you enjoyed what you heard, please give it a thumbs up

49:55
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