Mike Sharrow Intro

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today on the servant leadership podcast we're joined by Mike Shero the dynamic CEO of C12 the largest network of

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Christian CEOs and Executives across the country Mike's story isn't just about leading one of the most influential

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faith-based business networks it's about reshaping how leaders think about success purpose and impact under Mike's

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leadership C12 has empowered thousands of Executives to use their businesses with Integrity faith and servant

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leadership in this episode Mike shares eye- openening lessons on building cultures of accountability Innovation

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and purpose and some amazing stories of transformation from some of the most successful Christian Business Leaders in

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the country if you've ever wondered how to lead with bold faith and create lasting impact in your business and

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Community this conversation with Mike is packed with insights you don't want to miss Mike thank you so much for joining

Welcome Mike Sharrow

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us today on the podcast been looking forward to it Chris I I'm excited for our audience to hear

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from you because you probably work with more servant leaders than anybody I know

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um I would love for you to share a little bit about your journey and how you got to

Mike's Remarkable Life/Career Journey

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C12 uh like most of our stories it makes it only sounds cool in retrospect you

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know walking through it it would made no sense in fact I found uh I just found like one of my eighth grade journals if

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you can think back to what you thought your life was going to be in e8th grade I grew up in Alaska and in my eighth grade Journal I said um I think I want

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to open an art studio one day I'll be an oil painter and maybe my little brother could be the business manager because I

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don't know anything about business so if that tells you like where I was thinking in eth grade versus you know today um

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yeah so thumbnail sketch would be grew up in Alaska um with school Chicago near

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you and uh which was great for meeting a fantastic woman who I convinced to married me while she was young and

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didn't know her options and I really didn't know what I was going to be growing up I I had grew up in a family

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that was not College was not a thing so was the first person to go to college didn't really get exposed to entrepreneurship or business stuff very

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much really a military family actually and had a lot of health issues and such I really had kind of a foggy view of the

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future I jokingly said the two things I knew I wanted to never do was never live in Texas because if you live in Alaska

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that's like the little brother State that's like so cute wants to be big um and I never wanted to work for a church

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I was like otherwise I'm open God whatever um and I fell in love with

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Jesus got real involved in all kinds of volunteering serving things got to college started working for a um helped

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an 79y old man with a startup my freshman year of college I bumped this 79 year old guy walking around campus

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and suit I thought he was a professor and he said he's trying to hire some kid to teach him the computer so he get

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start new new business and I went uh you seem a little old for

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entrepreneurship and he went well I've retired twice and I realized retirement will kill you and business is good and I

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like I enjoy business and I want to do another business but I don't want to do all that techie stuff so I want to hire

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some kid to do that for me and he hired me so I got to help this 79y Old World

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War II vet started a business and learned about just kind of the passion for production and making stuff happen

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in relationships and then um big company was launching a new subsidiary and I got

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to be part of the Walgreen Corporation right there in Chicago for a while so I kind of discovered this passion for

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business stuff um and actually began wrestling honestly because I had this

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passion for my faith for Christ and for w to like live a life that matters but I was like good at business enjoyed

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business and they felt like competing things in my life and I had this kind of Crucible moment where I actually thought

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about tapping out a business like do I go work for a nonprofit do I go do something something quote unquote Ministry

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related and as I was wrestling with God in my desk one night I realized I was letting my vocation Define my

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identity instead of letting my identity inform and transform my vocation and and

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I didn't know what that all fully meant I just realized I had a problem and I went I don't think running away from the problem will solve it I think I need to

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figure this out so I kind of went on a journey of trying to figure out like what does business mean and God just bur

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a passion for uh leadership for business for how to affects us and how it affects

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others and what it can be and so did that for a while ironically my wife

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wonderful Iowa farm girl had family that moved to Texas and so we moved to Texas to follow them so reluctantly I left

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Chicago for Texas then ironically the church we were attending for a while was

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going through a multi-site kind of expansion deal and they asked if I'd come on staff and leap for a couple of years and so I I worked at a church for

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a couple years like gez the two things I said i' never do Texas and church like I I'm really bad at prophecy and

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forecasting apparently um they did a bunch of other entrepreneurial things started some nonprofits around foster

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care and missions and leadership development started a healthc care company and I I found myself actually as

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a customer of C12 about 14 years ago I was a member 2010 and then ear about a year and a

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half after that my coach or models these full-time coaches who run forums Ashley said hey Mike you love this so much you

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ever thought about joining me and so I joined him as a coach and then I led a region of Texas for a while about eight

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years ago the parent company is doing succession and I by God's grace because I'm probably the youngest least qualified least educated candidate they

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had I got the CEO job crazy enough so that's kind of the I'm a girl Dad I've

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got married 22 years with two amazing teenage girls that are just a delight

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and uh and I'm an I'm an Alaskan immigrant living in Texas that is such a crazy journey and

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just crazy that you end ended up uh in Texas and being a pastor somewhere in there too I guess yeah yeah yeah briefly

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briefly so as you think through it explain C12 to people just so that they

What is C12?

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understand what it is and what like a peer group is and all of that sure and and then I want to know why did you feel

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like you even needed C12 back when you were a customer well let me start with that part because I didn't I I actually was

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like a horrible customer Prospect uh a buddy of mine joined he ran a Roofing

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and window sighting company and we' done a lot of stuff around like leadership conferences and fundraising together and

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he joined the first group for me in my area I'd never heard of C12 and hey Mike you love business you love Jesus this

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you should join this group with me and I went no I'm I'm good like I got a great

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church got Consultants I got coaches I I don't need one more thing to do I think

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I'm good and he just literally nagged me and he he drew a VIN diagram on a napkin

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he said do you ever feel the tension as a leader of wanting to do work that

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honors God like would would God say Well done and Beyond just not doing bad things like how do you know you're

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actually really building a business that glorifies God another circle of business

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as Ministry do you ever like are we meant to do more than just write checks and give money away could business be

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are we accountable for more in the world than just funding things and then the Third how do you keep your life in order

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how do you not lose your soul in the process of trying to build a great business and change the world and Tackle all these things how do you be a a

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faithful husband mik A's father and have like your soul be alive he's like do you feel the tension those three things it's

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yeah of course he said well I think this group like pulls those three things

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together and deals with them with Excellence so I event I literally went Scott if I go to a stupid meeting will

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you stop nagging me and he went yes I'm like okay fine so I went to a I visited

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a group in Austin Texas and I literally was that annoying Prospect who at the

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guests at the breaks was like going around the table like why are you here who are you what do you really do what's the real game game here like is there a

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time share sale like what's this all about um and by the end of the day I was really perplexed because I didn't really

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have a mental category for a peer group where these 12 business owners from around San Antonio and Austin met for a

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full day they got super transparent about their business they worked on real business issues they talked about how to

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do ministry through their business they challenged each other spoke truth to each other held each other cannibal solved problems with no networking no

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air of kind of like kind of Showmanship and I found myself been like

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I I want this and so I joined the next month um and really was like I and then

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I was surprised at how I was growing transforming and the growth I was seeing happen among these business owners

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around me and just kind of drank the Kool-Aid so so what is C12 it's this Global community of business owners CEOs

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entrepreneurs who are followers of Jesus non-denominational who run gross stage

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companies anywhere from a couple million to five or six billion but most are in that five million to 200 million

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range agnostic industry they meet once we meet we run these professionally

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facilitated forums where typically 10 to 12 business owners will meet once a month we'll go through NBA level

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business training leadership development how to impact the world and do ministry through business wise counsel

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accountability action planning a bunch of it's a really rigorous day working on the business instead of in it with a

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professional facilitator we called them a chair we've got about 210 of these

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chairs on five continents now leading groups serving a little over

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4,350 or 60 members right now that and I well like to think about is those people

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join a group it's kind of like joining a fitness program for your leadership in business they stay for like seven to 10

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years and it transforms the business into a platform for doing good in the

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world changing the world and and also helping every leader really part of my

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passion is that same holy discontent I felt in Chicago 20 plus years ago of

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identity vocation helping everyone kind of reconcile that and then see their

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business just be an expression of that C12 is such an interesting concept to me um when you think throughout how many

Why Leaders Consider C12?

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people are in the same shoes you were where they they have a friend nagging them and they're like I don't need this

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uh or do you find the majority of people are like already thinking about this now

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our non-scientific data would say because we talk to thousands of people every year about this about 85% of the

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CEOs we talk to we are introducing and giving language to the kind of inner

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tension like often times that first conversation they're like whoa whoa whoa I didn't know this I didn't know about

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peer groups I didn't know faith and work was a thing I didn't know there's Christian peer groups like slowy old let me catch up here a second and yeah I do

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kind of feel this tension but you know I think we're taught even if you go to Christian schools and love you go to a

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great Christian church we often times just kind of bifurcate our lives and and business is kept separate from you know

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politics and religion like let's keep all those three things separate and so usually we're actually helping

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introduce the idea of what we call business as a Ministry that God cares

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about what you do how you do it why you do it who you become in the process and the impact it has on the world that's

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usually something we're introducing for people how often do you bump into people who have heard of things like YPO or

How is C12 Different?

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vistage or other groups that aren't in the faith space and they they haven't heard of C12 and how does it differ is

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it purely the faith or is it totally is it is it totally different yeah great I'm always excited when someone is

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familiar with like YPO which is the young president organizations or vistage or EO or tab there's uh the peer group

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space has been around since the 1950s for CEOs and professionals and honestly

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C12 got its inspiration from those models was hey could you take the best of those merge it with like almost like

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a Bible Study Fellowship biblical worldview and a Chick-fil-A consistency model and get those have a baby together

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um so probably about 30% of our members come from those programs where they go

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hey I value peer learning I love masterminds and learning from other CEOs and being in accountability but I I want

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more and so our big differences would be the Eternal perspective that we anchor

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that in everything we that actually fuels us to have a higher engine around

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business excellence and business growth and strategic planning and stewardship and a big emphasis around accountability

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and then part big couple of the distinctions like our chairs are full-time just running Forum so there's

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no it's not like a lead genen thing we're running a for to then do additional consulting or upsell of the

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pieces they're just former entrepreneurs who now give back in this full-time role

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of being what we call Mission preneurs helping people through these form experiences so it'd be kind of a it's

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probably more like vistage in YPO YPO has a bit more empasis on on kind of networking and a bit more the community

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side so we're a bit more like a Christian vistage with this whole dimension of spiritual integration and

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business as Ministry so on this podcast we we talk about servant leadership and and we talk

Servant Leadership Perspectives

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about leadership in general but how do you see servant leadership playing out or what do you think of in terms of how

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it relates to C12 I think every everything um you know

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when I you talked about when I first got invited to see 12 what I think about it honestly part of my aversion was when I

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moved to Texas which is in the south in the Bible Belt area I found some kind of wacky Christian circles and sometimes

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sometimes people um like most people just kind of compartmentalize their life but some people bring their faith to

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work and they think that should give them like a dominance like I'm here to conquer the world I'm here to um have my

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way and I think the way of Jesus is not about Dominion he's got Dominion it's about it's about serving it's about

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loving when I was wrestling with my whole faith and work stuff in Chicago I got one of my first mentors who was a

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guy named Tony Barrett former Apple computer Xerox executive he came in lead

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our division of the company and he actually saw me as this young 20-some wrestling with my faith and work he said

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hey you're trying to figure out this whole faith and work stuff aren't you I said yeah he's like I think you're I think you're over complicating it he's

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like can I challenge you to just do two things so please he's like first just be

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genuinely in love with Jesus like be so in love with Jesus that when people squeeze you that's just what oozes out

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it's not a program it's not something you're trying to do but just be saturated in your love of God and then

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be really really good at your job it's like be so excellent at what you do that

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it R it lifts your influence your ability to serve people and be above approach if you just focus on being

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really excellent and really loving I think the other stuff will kind of play out and what I part of what gets me

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passionate about business and one of the metrics we look at in the way work we do is we spend a lot of time at work

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typical person can spend like 80 90,000 hours at work and business has a chance

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to shape the lives of people to shape communities to shape Industries really is a is a pillar institution in

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society and with that comes responsibility and I think we're I think

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sometimes in in my Circles of Christian business the big emphasis is on philanthropy can what are you doing with

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your money which is great which should be wildly generous but I think the bigger call is how are you serving

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people how are people better how's your community better how's the world better through the influence and Leadership and

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power that you've been entrusted with and so um servant

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leadership is fundamental because at the end of the day it's it's about it's not about what's in it for you it's about

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how do you get to help lift others up and and that's that's part of the fun

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game that I get to work on is how do we help propagate that idea I could be totally wrong on this but let's hope you

Measuring Leadership Excellence

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are but is there a metric that um that people in C12 use or some rubric uh to

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help them measure am I actually leading well how do people decide are they leading well are they good servant

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leaders are they running a great business what does that look like yeah

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so we do have a bazilian metrics I'm I'm a I'm a nerd so I like I like my numbers and kpis and stuff so we do have lots of

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metrics at the highest level um we like to think through stewardship of a

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business through three categories of capital or three Roi types different

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types of value ad so one would be just economic every business has that like are you running a good business is it

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actually profitable and valuable and sustainable does it get a good return on Capital

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um that's a that's a table Stakes but we don't think um we don't think good

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intentions excuse poor business but then the other one is team value ad and the question we'd ask there is hey if you're

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entrusted with 20 employees 200 employees whatever it may be are you a good Steward of the human capital are

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people more valuable when they leave than when they came are you are you growing them and their skills their

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character are they flourishing and that that's one of the value ads and we also look at another

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one called spiritual value ad and that's this eternal impact we're having with people so on the are we doing good

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servant leadership we look at a couple different pieces we look at literally third party surveys we've worked with

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tons of our companies over years to see are people flourishing and there's ways you can quantify that are they engaged

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at work are they um are they testifying to experiencing love and are they

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feeling um like them as a human are doing well and so we can quantify that

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and we what we find is that when companies when the leader engages intentionally we typically see see twice

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the rate of human flourishing of people saying man I I don't just survive my job but I feel loved cared for grown um then

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we look at other other ways of of driving that I don't think there's a single metric I've seen I'd love to ask

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if you've seen a good one for how do you know someone's an effective servant leader because I think that is both

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what you do which we can quantify the outputs of but there's also a motive piece of do do it for a claim I think we

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look at we do look at things like how much are people let's say

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philanthropy we would look to see people do four five six times the philanthropy that a typical business would do but not

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do it for the media publicity and so in fact most of ours are wildly generous in

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their Community but they're not necessarily getting things named after them or have big you pictures with checks because they're

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they actually doing because they really want to lift up those people in fact a lot of it's even done secretly because

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they don't want a claim they just want to be a conduit of good so I think

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that's part of the composite have you seen any good measures for quantifying Servant leadership I think it's hard because it

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means so many different things to different people right I I came into this podcast thinking very specifically

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like this is servant leadership and after talking to so many people like yourself I've heard so many different

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definitions in a good way of servant leadership um that it's also changed how

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how I view what it looks like to be a servant leader just based on people's contexts um so I think it makes it hard

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to measure but I do think it's it's one of those things that when you see

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someone uh in leadership you can you can gauge are they a servant leader or not

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um very often and it's a lot of intangibles so

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yeah I'm thinking about like I've met thousands of leaders I think about ones who are

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they're constantly learning they're constantly they're they're constantly trying to figure out where they need to get better they're constantly looking at

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how um I remember this one SE in Colorado he had this transformational

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kind of moment in his life where he said he he had hundreds of employees in a very bluecollar

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industry and he realized he looked at people but he wasn't seeing people that was the the verb difference for like I

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want I want to see people he begin to see people his heart began to break for different challenges and needs and

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instead of being annoyed by things like one of my big themes we try to hit in C12 is um the problems are your

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invitation that like the problems in the world the difficulties in this in our society are the invitation we have and

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it's part of why we're here in businesses so whether you see um I can think of one guy in Dallas who was clothing young people these days and

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these their work ethic and whatever and then he began realizing well so many of them came from fatherless homes or

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didn't have mentors or weren't really equipped with the right kind of Heritage and so what's my chance to speak into

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that and lead into that as she began to have a heart for transforming this New Generation Um this other guy in Colorado

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he he had a predominant immigrant Workforce and while he was annoyed by their language their dialect their um

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vulnerability their instability he went went from looking at them to seeing them

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as humans created in the image of God and went how do I love them meet them there so I think servant leadership is

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whatever that heart changes to how you see people and how you see your your

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role as a steward yeah it's it reminds me so clearly of uh and you brought up

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Jesus earlier right and a lot of the people are in C12 or maybe all of them are Christians um is that true all of

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them or some of them or on a spectrum yeah okay great so one of the things that I think through is when uh when the

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religious leaders asked Jesus like what's the most important commandment talked about love love the Lord your God

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with all your heart but also love your neighbor as yourself right but then later as he was leaving uh and the last

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supper and all of that uh in John 13 He talks about love he tells the disciples

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instead of love your neighbor as yourself love others as I have loved you

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and to me that's a great example of servant leadership because it's a whole another standard um imagine loving

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others like Jesus loved you it's like it's that exactly what you're saying

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reminds me of that radical radical idea yeah when when

Decision Process To Become A C12 Chair

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you when you were at the stage where you were consuming C12 MH before you started

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leading the organization you decided at some point to be what you mentioned is called a chair like leading a cohort if

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you will um of people or a group what was that decision process like because

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when you joined it doesn't sound like that was anything on your radar and I'm sure people who are going to be

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listening to this are in situations where stuff is coming up opportunities come up that aren't on the radar how did

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you even process should I do this should I not my wife would say it took way too

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long um um yeah I did not see this coming like it clearly I'm not very good

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to seeing the future as I told you like all my forward plans have not quite worked out so when my my chair called me

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one day and he's like hey have you ever thought about being a C12 chair he like no he's like would you like to explore

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it it's like no he went well I've been praying about it and I just I just think you're I think you're wired for because

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our to be a chair they're typically people who have owned a business led a business been an executive passionate

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about faith and work and then but don't really know this is the career path I could go on so he's like he would you

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very Christian thing to say he's like would you at least pray about it for a week and I was like man yeah I can pray and then tell you no but the answer is

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no like I'm not looking for a new thing right now and so he's like you have to pray I'm like okay yes I'll do the Jesus

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thing I'll pray so I prayed for a week and I didn't I didn't get a yes but I also couldn't quite say no like there

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was something where I was like I don't think I want to do this but there's there's something and then honestly a

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whole hallway of doors kind of opened up like a bunch of business opportunities opened up some and I was really

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paralyzed in the analysis of all these great things like do I go run another Healthcare company do I go do this

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nonprofit thing do I go do this business and I got stuck there for a while until

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I did a um one of my personal disciplines is once a quarter I try to get away for a silence Retreat Solitude

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Retreat and I'll I'll Journal I'll pray I'll walk I'll talk I'll I'll just spend time with God and so I went there

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honestly hoping God would just give me like a FedEx envelope with an assignment like if you could just tell me what to do that'd be great um and I didn't get

25:32
that but I did feel like God led me through a journaling exercise where took out a sheet of paper and I wrote all the

25:38
options like okay I could do the C12 thing I could stay where I'm at I could launch these other things I had my six

25:43
or seven options and I like God prompted saying well what else could you do you're just playing defense so I

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actually list out like 16 business ideas and I was like but they're all mutually exclusive you got to choose one and then

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he's like okay what are you afraid of so I made another sheet of paper and I listed fears I listed all the fears that were

26:02
getting the way from failure to Losing My Edge to disappointing mentors like

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providing for my family I a baby at home at the time we just bought a house so my fears were actually pretty long and I

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got brutally honest with myself about them and as I looked at that I like maybe I'm too carnal to even do half

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these jobs like that's a lot of fear and then the third column God led me to do is but what's true about my

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calling about my identity about what matters about how he works and I went

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back and I looked at my job opportunities and I said what if I looked at my job list not as what mitigates my fears but maximizes the

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truth and when I put those lists together it shrunk it from 16 options

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really down to about two and then it became kind of a debate around security so I basically could go do a cooed gig

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with a ton of Financial Security or do this entrepreneurial Endeavor and I went home and told my wife and I remember

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sitting in the kitchen with her and her going I'd rather go bankrupt with you in the middle of God's will than to

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compromise trying to preserve security and control I think we both know which one's most true to what God's been

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preparing you for in your life it's just scary because it's unknown and new and uncertain but and let's go for it so

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that was a that was a six-month process collapsed to a couple of points but that's what caught me off guard didn't

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see it coming and launched me and I'm actually I'm still he said consumer I'm a a member of a form I'm a d paying

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customer actually back up in Austin Texas I've got my form this Thursday oh

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wow and that Journey from going from chair to then because even you never

Becoming The Leader Of C12

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expect it to be a chair for sure right did not see that coming you definitely expect to lead the organization at any

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level so what was that Journey like then of another God what are you doing kind of

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moment yeah man my wife and I have come to realize the safest place to be is in the

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middle of God's will but it oftentimes is outside of your will like the most dangerous prayer a lot of people have heard the famous prayer when the

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disciples asked Jesus how should we pray and he said Our Father who art in heaven Hallowed be your name thy kingdom come

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thy will be done I've come to realize that second part's really scary when you say thy kingdom come thy will be done it

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oftentimes does not look like yours so yeah I didn't see becoming a chair became a chair and then I have a real

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passion for growth for scaling things for impacting cities and if if you can

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imagine I I was very young to be a chair I was the youngest chair they'd ever had by like 15 years and so with that came

28:41
naive Zeal and a real passionate like let's go build something and that led me

28:47
to innovate and do some things in my market in Texas that were disruptive and created some good effect and so I was

28:55
loving what I was doing here when the parent companies going through a succession process the second CEO is

29:00
retiring and they said they're going to first take candidates from within their Community before they went externally I

29:07
tossed my name in the Hat knowing like I said literally lowest education level age qualifications I'm like I know

29:13
they're going to have way better candidates than me but I knew they'd probably humor me with like a first interview and I really wanted to get in

29:20
front of the board of directors and challenge them some ideas so I wrote like a 19point Manifesto of ideas to

29:26
change and grow the organization and they they weren't all flowery like probably was even like half the board

29:32
should retire there should be board succession there should be this change we should like it was a little audacious

29:38
and so I got my first interview submitted that and remember one of the founding board members going this is a

29:43
very uh unusual application he said were you are you not trying to get hired

29:48
because this is not a very wooing application and I was like I figure you're have better candidates but I'd

29:54
love for the interview to allow me to challenge your thinking and then whoever you hire hopefully it helps shape what you guys

30:00
do with them and so fast forward four months later and they're like hey uh

30:06
here you go here's your marching orders go do all those 19 things you said and I'm like oh Sho that's a long list of things I said I should

30:13
have little more uh measured in my prescriptions there but um honestly God

30:20
prepared me in advance for it so even at the time my wife are involved in foster

30:26
care we just got taken in a foster BAS baby I was I was on a bunch of boards in

30:31
in retrospect right before I applied I really felt God led me to get off of

30:38
like I was on eight boards I think at the time to get off all those boards um the court end up doing this

30:45
flip of a move and and our foster child got removed from us and restored back to family which is which is the plan all

30:51
that happened like the week that these things started H falling in motion and there was a nonprofit I founded where I

30:57
couldn't figure out how get off the board because I feel like I was super needed and I was talking to my wife

31:02
about it and she's like well who else could do this I like there's like one guy I know but he lives in California

31:07
and the next day he called me like hey I'm moving to Texas I really want to get involved you know any like nonprofit boards I could serve on I was like hey

31:13
take my seat so Lally God kind of clear the deck so I could jump in and because

31:19
I jumped in and moved the business from North Carolina where was headquartered to Texas and we kind of rebooted the

31:24
whole organization refreshed the products and the staff and the process and a couple years later took it

31:31
International so there was a a bunch of things that were going to consume my bandwidth and God kind of prepared me

31:37
without me even realizing it in advance so you mentioned this concept of

Finding God's Will

31:43
God's will which to some of our audience they might relate some of it some of our audience they might not relate at all uh

31:51
first what does that even mean which might be challenging in of itself to explain how much time do we have this is

31:56
a great webinar podcast where we going to go now okay and second with that uh

32:02
how do you know if you're actually in it it seems like something you might never know wow okay Chris um yeah so that is a

32:13
b big hairy question there's actually a tool in C12 in fact we're actually creating some

32:18
curriculum on this topic that we're going to roll out in February of 2025 and the founder C12 had this idea

32:26
that was probably the most clear I've heard of it if you think about when you're trying to find God's will maybe it's a Kindle like

32:32
trying to find your coordinates on a map if you're trying to figure out where you are today we live in a world of Google

32:38
Maps and GPS and GPS essentially triangulates where you are in relation to multiple satellites or stars or data

32:45
points right like you get a compass like okay I'm a mile from that point a mile from this point so I must be here and I

32:52
think similarly while God is not a magic eightball where you shake and be like

32:57
okay okay is the answer you know red or yellow there is a an equivalent idea of

33:03
triangulation by which he begins to confirm answers and so well there's The Sovereign will of God and the big will

33:09
of God that is beyond my understanding I mean I I I didn't pass calculus so I I don't expect to fully understand the

33:15
ruler of the Universe and everything we can look at different modalities we can look at what God says

33:22
in the the Bible so the Bible is a source of Truth and is living and breathing and it's got Ive relevance but

33:28
there's not a book of the Bible that you go Google search like should I buy this company should I move to Texas there's

33:34
not a verse for that but there's a lot in it that can shape and guide there's prayer and there's the

33:41
indwelling of the Holy Spirit and him guiding Us by the fruit of the spirit on things that are right there's wise

33:47
counsel so God God speaks through um through other people who are followers

33:52
of his and shaped with his thinking so um we literally have this worksheet where be like what's the question okay

33:57
what does God's word say about this that can put some boundaries on it what are you sensing through prayer and time with

34:04
God okay do you have Godly mature counsel that you're asking what do they watch saying watch out for you should or

34:11
shouldn't my wife's got a big seat in that table um she likes to say you know the Holy Spirit sounds a lot like me um

34:18
which is what most wives would say um and then there's experiential wisdom of

34:23
your experiences and Circumstance and you can kind of begin to sift through those things I find is that God begins

34:28
to speak in Stereo where multiple things begin to confirm that this is consistent

34:34
with his character consistent with what he's called me to do and and then things

34:39
just begin to align and triangulate and we've got freedom so I don't live in

34:45
this paralysis mode of like should I eat Froot Loops or Cheerios do I drink you know decaf or Caffe like we make a lot

34:51
of decisions but if I'm abiding in Christ which I think is the key like often we

34:57
want to go to God just to like um I mean you run a company right um the pressure of running a

35:05
company is a lot of people come to you to want you to have the answer you're like have the answer for everything and

35:11
isn't it great when you're like well what do you think like I you're I I hired you for a reason I want you to

35:17
know what our company needs what matters to me what our values are what our guidelines are and I'd like to see you

35:23
make some decisions within that so show me what you would do and I believe God is the father actually similarly goes

35:29
well hey Mike here's my truth here's what I want here's what I care about I like to see you wrestle with that and we

35:36
get some freedom in there but then if I'm abiding with him and actually in relationship um it's less the big like

35:44
let me just do my life and then hit a Google Search and get an answer as much as him shaping and guiding me knowing

35:50
the answer along the way that's a that's a great answer and I think that that's actionable steps for

35:56
people to follow too uh regardless of where they are in the spectrum that they can proberly relate

36:01
to which is great I I I was just reading in the Bible this morning I do every day

36:08
um in fact our founder mentored me in this he has a website called Theos important hour.com that's all about just

36:14
how do you begin to spend time connecting with God and knowing his will daily this morning I was in James

36:20
chapter 1 and I love in fact I journaled on this this morning it's funny you bring this up we didn't talk about this in advance uh it says that if anybody

36:28
lacks wisdom or lacks knowledge if you don't know if you don't know the answer ask God because he gives freely

36:36
without any condemnation and I was processing I was like well how great like it is not wrong to be ignorant in

36:41
fact God knows we're ignorant the question is what do you do with your ignorance who do you ask and sometimes

36:47
we we spin out saying I don't know something and we go to bad sources and

36:52
so don't compound ignorance with stupidity like take your ignorance to a good source and see what he does with

36:58
that like in my marriage my wife and I um both come from histories of divorces

37:03
and broken families and so I had super anxiety on marriage and one of our conclusions was hey I don't know how to

37:10
be a good husband she doesn't know how to be a good wife if we actually embrace our ignorance and then flip that to go

37:16
seek after wisdom we just become voracious consumers of books and conferences and counselling and coaches

37:22
and assessment tools and said let's let's seek after wisdom and not assume we have it it and that's been

37:29
transformative for my marriage and really it's kind of a principle try to operate in life is I don't know but I

37:34
want to learn more yeah transformative in every area if people follow that for

37:39
sure yeah as you think through one thing I'd love just as as we wrap up I have 10

Why Does A Peer-Group Matter?

37:46
rapid fire questions that I want to ask you but before I do okay before I do I

37:52
want you to make the case for why why a peer group at all matters even if it's not C12 but why does it even matter why

38:00
should people be thinking about that and is it only for CEOs yeah great question I I believe if

38:08
you're a leader doing anything you should try to find peers to run with and learn from at every stage of my career I

38:13
have informally or formally embraced a peer group of some kind because you

38:18
don't know what you don't know and the rate of knowledge uh demands in the world is so rapid you need to augment

38:24
your learning with others having other people who can kind of see your blind spots and think differently than you but

38:31
help you think better just multiplies Your Capacity to lead well um we all

38:37
need people who don't report to us who do we don't have power over who can speak truth to us and so I would tell

38:44
anybody I don't care what you're doing where you're doing it find Qualified peers who have similar context similar

38:52
perspective similar values and engage in some degree of intentional regularity of

38:57
of learning processing getting ideas you know what's my part in this what are you doing it makes us better as

39:05
Leaders that's good all right 10 rapid fire questions I want to hit you with

10-Rapid-Fire Questions

39:11
okay first one who's the first person you think of when I say servant leadership Wayne Lynch uh a guy who

39:19
taught me to drive was a school teacher in Alaska and was always helping other

39:25
people with a giant smile on his face and just radiated joy and had a way you'd never know he was battling cancer

39:32
or he had family issues he was always lifting you up if you're in front of him

39:37
wow that's powerful I hadn't thought of Wayne in a little while yeah that's cool you did uh five words that most describe

39:46
yourself uh nerdy intentional uh um

39:55
analytical driven and

40:01
um passionate yeah favor author or

40:08
book uh CS Lewis everything he wrote favorite book that's a hard one I

40:16
love books um on the topic of leadership and servant leadership I think a good one that comes in mind is leadership and

40:22
self-deception by The arbinger Institute that's a that's a good one all right favorite movie

40:28
uh Lawrence Arabia W favorite

40:34
food that's hard I live in Texas we got so much good stuff um I mean I love a

40:39
good steak or love good barbecue all right uh favorite thing to do in your free

40:46
time I love to travel and explore places with my family I love being in foreign

40:52
cities or foreign places and just figuring things out or going on a a nature hike um yeah anything with my family that

41:00
involves nature and walking somewhere where's the favorite place you've

41:05
been I loved um I hiked Mount Si with my daughter a couple Christmases ago on

41:11
Christmas Day and I think walking through some of the very places of ancient stories did Egypt through Jordan

41:19
into Israel that whole stretch of place where you kind of walk through history is there anywhere you want to go that

41:24
you have not been Lots I want to go to Switzerland I want to go into mainland

41:30
China I want to go to um interior of Africa there a bunch of places I want to

41:38
go it's a big world yeah all right surprising fact about

41:43
you surprising fact about me I my two truths and a lie kind of uh

41:51
answer is when I was 12 years old my little brother and I caught 36 red R

41:57
salmon in a river with our bare hands because our net broke and so we stood in

42:03
the water learning how to gill fish so at one point caught 36 red salmon with my bare hands wow all right and finally

42:11
what's the best advice you've ever gotten best advice I've ever

42:19
gotten you know I think as a general broad application i' go back to the thing I already quoted Tony bared on um

42:27
be so in love with Jesus and be don't be focused on what to do for him and how to plug him in but like actually know him

42:33
be thinking about him be abiding in him such that it just permeates who you are

42:38
and be really really good at what you do to where it's such a benefit and blessing to other people that you get invited into more of that and that the

42:46
convergence of those two things uh that could be true in my marriage like if I focus on loving Jesus and how can I be a

42:52
better husband if I loving Jesus and being a better father loving Jesus and

42:58
like in any context if I appli those two pieces It generally pushes me in the right field of play W that's good advice

Closing

43:07
well thank you for your willingness to be on the podcast and share some of your journey with our audience and and talk a

43:13
little bit about what leadership looks like as you've worked with so many leaders thank you Chris it's been a fun

43:18
conversation thank you for listening to this episode of the servant leadership podcast if you enjoyed what you heard

43:25
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43:32
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