Marks of a Leader

[00:00:00] Good morning, afternoon, evening to everyone that is attending. And welcome to the Kingdom at Work webinar. We are so glad you’re here wherever you’re tuning in from. I’m Amanda Bullen and I’m the manager of Kingdom at Work. And our mission at Kingdom at Work is to inspire, ignite, and equip leaders to find their why.

So before we dive into today’s content, let’s go over a few housekeeping items to ensure a smooth and productive session. So first and foremost, we want this webinar to be as interactive as possible. So please feel free to use the Q& A feature down at the bottom to ask questions and share your Thoughts throughout the presentation.

We value your participation. And so about the questions, we will have a dedicated Q and A session at the [00:01:00] end of the presentation where we will address many of the questions you’ve submitted. So if you have a burning question, um, don’t worry. We will get to those. And if for some reason we can’t address all the questions during the Q& A, or if your question requires a more in depth response, fear not, we are committed to providing valuable content.

And so some of the unanswered questions may be featured in our upcoming Q& A. blog. Um, and you want to keep an eye out for that blog for more insights and answers. Lastly, this webinar will be recorded and the recording will be available for you to review, um, and share with your colleagues, friends, family.

We’ll send out an email with the recording link shortly after. Thank you again for being here today. Um, today we have Cal Zant. I want to tell you a little bit about him. Cal [00:02:00] started his career with Beaten Bow Homes in 20, actually in 2006 as a programmer. Over the next few years, he built a team. That design custom software to automate many of the company’s processes.

After joining the executive team in 2012, Cal was charged with leading the ministry team and became more involved in strategic operations of the company. In 2016, Cal was knighted president of Beat Bow Homes and has grown the company from 600 closings annually to more than 2, 000 annually, setting new records for profitability year after year.

He is a passionate student of leadership and his favorite thing has become developing people and helping them stand up and who God created them to be. Cal lives in Lubbock with his wife, Davida and their two daughters, Joey and Hattie. So without further review it, without further ado, here is Cal [00:03:00] Zant.

Hey friends, I’m so excited to be with you today to join and talk about, uh, some of the stuff I’m really passionate about. We had done a survey. Uh, to see what topics you guys wanted this, this session to be focused on. And I’m very excited about, uh, what everybody picked, which is, uh, marks of a leader. Um, you know, As soon as we knew what that topic was, it reminded me of the time I was a board member for vapor sports ministry reason I was at their headquarters one time, and one of their staff members came up to me during a break and said, Hey, What do you look for in an emerging leader?

And I’ll be honest, uh, I think we were in a buffet line and getting food at the time. And that question just hit me because it’s such an important question. Um, do you [00:04:00] know, there’s only a couple of instances in scripture where it tells us that Jesus spent an entire night in prayer. We know of several times like he would, he would go off by himself to pray, but he only pulled an all nighter a couple of times that we know of.

And one of those was the night before he chose his 12 apostles. The people he developed into his leadership team that would continue this after he was gone. So it seems like Jesus thought this was a really important question too. And I’m excited to share some of the lessons we’ve learned here, how we view this, and then also do a Q& A and hear what you guys think.

I’d like to start with a story from Exodus. I really like Moses. And honestly, if you’ve led for very long, I bet you can identify with this story. Just to set it up a bit, we’re going to be in Exodus 18. Uh, and in this story, uh, Moses had already led the Israelites out of Egypt and they’re now [00:05:00] in the De Desert.

And his father-in-law, Jethro had come to visit. And, uh, I’m gonna read, we’re not gonna put this on the screen, I want you just to listen to it if you would. Uh, this is Exodus 18, uh, versus 17 to 23. It says, The next day Moses took his seat to serve as judge for the people, and they stood around him from morning till evening.

When his father in law saw all that Moses was doing for the people, he said, What is this you are doing for the people? Why do you sit, why do you alone sit as judge while all these people stand around you from morning till evening? Moses answered him, Because the people come to me to seek God’s will.

Whenever they have a dispute, it is brought to me and I decide between the parties and inform them of God’s decrees and instructions. Moses, his father in law replied, what you were doing is not good. You and these people who come to you will only wear [00:06:00] yourselves out. The work is too heavy for you. You cannot handle it alone.

Listen now to me and I will give you some advice and may God be with you. You must be the people’s representative before God and bring their disputes to him, teach them his decrees and instructions, and show them the way they are to live and how they are to behave. But select capable men from all the people.

Another translation says it this way. Keep a sharp eye out for competent men, men who fear God, trustworthy men who hate dishonest gain and appoint them as officials or, or some translations say leaders over thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens. Have them serve as judges for the people at all times, but have them bring every difficult case to you.

The simple cases they can decide themselves. That will make your load lighter because they will share it with you. If you do [00:07:00] this and God so commands, you will be able to stand the strain and all these people will go home satisfied. I bet that’s, uh, one of the verses, uh, most of us have probably read and are familiar with, but I believe it shows a great way of how God wants us as leaders.

To have the load shared and not all of it, burden us down with it. Um, but before we get too deep, when I say leader, there might be a few things that comes to people’s minds. So, so what am I talking about? Uh, for us, leaders are someone who is responsible for a team, uh, or a small group of people, someone who has direct reports, I’ve heard it said.

Uh, leadership is really just influence and everyone has influence. I agree with that second part. Whether you are a CEO of a Fortune 500 company or a stay at home mom, you have influence. And in that sense, you are a leader. But there’s a big difference between general influence and organizational leadership.[00:08:00]

Leading an organization or department or team isn’t only about influence. It’s also about taking responsibility and casting vision and developing people and accountability and a bunch of other things. Uh, here at Beaten Boat, we believe the Bible teaches that organizational leadership is a spiritual gift.

And like every other spiritual gift, some people have it and others don’t. Nobody has all the gifts. Uh, in fact, leadership is listed, uh, as a spiritual gift in a few places in scripture, including this passage in Romans 12. It says we have different gifts according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith.

If it is serving, then serve. If it is teaching, then teach. If it is to encourage, then give encouragement. If it is giving, then give generously. If it is to lead, do it diligently. If fit to show mercy, do it [00:09:00] cheerfully. Um. Leadership is not more important than, than any other spiritual gifts. I actually love how Paul listed it out here.

You can see it’s kind of in the middle of his list. It’s not the first one. It’s not the last one. It’s simply one of many. Uh, in fact, the verses that precede this exact passage specifically warn us to not view other, uh, some gifts as higher than others. And, uh, the NIV, which is, uh, this translation here, it actually provides a specific footnote to the word there that is translated lead, uh, in that passage, and the footnote says that means to provide for others.

Um, the original Greek word used in that passage means to govern or oversee others, or to, to be responsible for the management or arrangement of an organization or an activity. One biblical scholar suggested it might be better translated as if your gift is organizational leadership, lead [00:10:00] diligently, you know, it’s a common mistake for us as leaders to try to grow everyone into organizational leaders, but not everyone has has that gift.

And if we wish, everyone would take that path. It doesn’t work. likely means that we value it more than the other gifts, which God warns us against. God wired each of us uniquely with different strengths and skills, and our job is to help everyone become, uh, all that God created them to be. Some will become leaders and others won’t.

If we want someone who doesn’t have the gift to be a leader, uh, to become one, we’re basically saying God got it wrong with that person. It’s extremely arrogant to think we know better that we should try to rewire them, uh, to go down the path that we want. So as, as leaders, we believe we’re charged with developing people, not just other leaders.

Uh, it’s about catching the vision of who God created someone to be [00:11:00] and coming alongside them and helping them step into that. That’s what our role is as leaders. Now, when someone has the spiritual gift of leadership, we believe that simply means God uniquely wired them, uh, for capacity and giftedness in that area.

He gave them the raw ingredients necessary for that role, but leaders must still work to acquire skills and, and mature and how they use that gift, which is a lifelong process. We believe great leaders aren’t born, but people with a gift can become great over the course of time, often after experiencing many setbacks, continually leaning into uncomfortable situations for the sake of their people and also humbly, humbly accepting feedback and correction from those around them and from God.

And while God gives us the raw ingredients. We need to become great leaders. He takes great joy in [00:12:00] watching his children, learn how to use the gifts he’s given them. Um, I believe organizational leadership is a gift from God, but what we do with it is our gift back to him. So back to our original question, what do you look for in an emerging leader?

The answer I gave at the time when I got asked me in the line, getting our food, uh, was humility and courage. And if I’m honest, those lessons came through pain. Uh, You know, there’s this Will Rogers quote, uh, that I think about a lot. It might not be completely appropriate, uh, but those might be my favorite quotes.

Uh, there are three kinds of men, ones that learn, uh, by reading, few who learn by observation and the rest of them have to pee on the electric fence. And find out for themselves, um, you know, humility and courage came to my mind because I’d already learned the hard way that if those two weren’t already in someone to a large [00:13:00] degree before we nodded them as a leader, the fruit from their leadership was not going to be good.

And maybe I had to learn those the hard way, uh, more than once, but eventually, uh, I started to recognize the pattern. Uh, we simply couldn’t help someone that we placed in a leadership role, develop those two things quickly enough for them to continue to lead the team because without humility and courage, their team was eventually hurting and ultimately we had to remove those leaders for the good of the team.

When someone asked me, uh, that question, you know, it got me thinking a lot and, uh, I actually created a note in my phone that I started referring back to, but also going back and adding to over time, reflecting on. Anytime we had a leadership failure and sometimes when a leader fails, it wasn’t for any reasons that you could have anticipated or seen before you made them a leader, but I did start to become [00:14:00] intentional at trying to recognize patterns, uh, and what made someone a successful leader in our organization and what were the things that we felt so strongly that we’d consider it a leadership failure if we didn’t see them and we, we felt we, we would have to make a change.

Um, What were those things that we couldn’t grow people fast enough to be able to leave them in the position while they were shepherding a team? Uh, our senior team here at Beaton Bow, uh, discussed this too, for a while, like anything, when I, when I brought it to team and said, Hey, what do we think about this?

It became better. And, uh, Here’s the list we eventually came up with for our organization. It’s humility, courage, confidence, and improver. We think of these as prerequisites to be a leader in our organization. What we’re saying by that is that we must see evidence of someone already exhibiting each of these things.

Before [00:15:00] we not them as a leader. If I can’t tell you two to three stories where someone demonstrated each of these in their current role, then maybe I should start helping them develop, uh, one or more of those in their current role before I make them a leader. Now, we aren’t saying that, uh, on a scale of one to 10, someone has to be a 10 for all of these, uh, I mean, who’s, who’s a 10 when it comes to humility, but they also can’t be a two on these either.

And what we mean is, is they’re clearly committed to each of these and you can see it in their actions. They, they understand the importance of them. They, they even value those traits. And that’s why we refer to these as leader values. Uh, and those four words alone are really pretty meaningless or even propaganda if you don’t flesh them out, uh, flesh out what you mean by each one of them.

So, so we did that. We basically define [00:16:00] what each of those meant to us and how we expected those to play out in a leader’s role. We also came up with questions to help our frontline team members do an honest self assessment. Uh, about whether those were things they valued or not. So if they did aspire to be a leader, they could better understand what we were looking for and what we expect from our leaders.

We also aren’t saying those four things are all someone needs to be a successful leader. There is much more they have to learn on the job. We’re we’ve simply learned through enough trial and error, uh, in our organization, if someone doesn’t have each of those to a large degree, they won’t be successful longterm as a leader here with our unique, uh, Uh, and maybe even quirky personality and culture at Beat and Bow, we celebrate leaders who embody these kinds of things.

And if somebody doesn’t, it’s like a burr under our saddle. Um, we might can abide it, uh, for a short term, but really long term, it’s not going to [00:17:00] be healthy for either one of us now, I want to be careful here and say, That doesn’t necessarily mean that this should be the list for your organization, which is why I’m actually not going to unpack what we mean by these.

Cause I don’t want you to take these and say, these are now my leader core values. Uh, we aren’t saying we found some kind of universal truth here. Uh, those are what we discovered ours to be really out of like a reverse engineering approach or. More like an archeological excavation where we did a lot of honest retrospective conversations after a leader failed or, or looked at ones that we thought were wildly successful.

And we’re like, what is it about that that made them successful? I’d suggest that it’d be helpful for you to come up with your own answer to what do you look for in an emerging leader in your organization? I feel like. That wrestling with that for us was immensely helpful. Uh, us trying to articulate those things and say, what is it [00:18:00] exactly?

Uh, what is it we feel in our guts sometimes that make us feel like they could be a good leader, getting those out into the open, increased our success rate of identifying leaders. It actually. Our organization has grown. So we have people identifying leaders in cities where we aren’t. And how do we help them know what someone, um, they would need to see to, to increase the odds someone would be successful as a leader here, and it also helped fuel our growth and, and, uh, my guess is your list would be a little bit different because every organization is a little bit different.

Okay. Can I be honest? About a big mistake that I made early on in this whole process. Um, you know, I started talking with Rick, uh, Beatonbo about this. Uh, my, my job behind this was honestly, I wanted to try to do my best to not make bad calls on who was, or wasn’t going to be a good leader for our people.

So this was on my mind a lot, but [00:19:00] we were also a rapidly growing organization. And we’ve had, we’ve been growing by 30 percent year over year for more than 20 years. If you could get better at scouting and cultivating future leaders, um, that could have a massive impact on your ability to scale an organization and not just scale in an organization, but do it in a way that is healthy for the people within it.

Um, and I see Rick as an exceptional leader, one of the people I trust most in the world. So why wouldn’t I ask him, what do you thought about all this? And at one point, the two of us, we started describing, Whether these attributes were present or not, uh, as the bone structure of a leader. You know, we had heard, uh, NFL recruiters who would say they were not looking for a professional athlete.

They were looking for athletes who had the bone structure they needed to make them into a professional, to build them into a professional athlete. They might ask, uh, something like, can you hang weight off that guy? And by that they meant, does he have the bone [00:20:00] structure, if he really worked hard in the weight room and had disciplined nutrition, that his body composition, his natural build would allow him to grow to be a professional linebacker in the NFL.

And some people simply don’t have the bone structure for, um, and no matter how hard they work, they will never be capable of becoming a linebacker in NFL bone structure analogy into our view of whether someone could be a leader or not, and it was not the right thing. Um, it sounded good, maybe, I don’t know, maybe that’s even a stretch, uh, but it led to a very judgmental view of people, um, either you or you aren’t, um, and there is nothing you can do to change that.

If we don’t think you have it, uh, that call was like a scarlet letter you’ll carry for life. And honestly, we hurt some people with that mindset early on. [00:21:00] I get emotional because their faces come to my mind when I say that, and I care a lot about them. And. Man, as leaders, this is some of the hard lessons of being a leader.

You, you learn by practicing on people like a doctor practices medicine, and that doesn’t always mean that people aren’t hurt by it, and this is one of the things we did, uh, in that way. But who are we to say God could or couldn’t, what God could or couldn’t do in someone, you know, if we believe leadership is a spiritual gift.

Then God might choose to give that to him in the future. Who are we to say he couldn’t do that? All we say now is that we have to see evidence of these things before we’ll entrust a team for someone to lead. And if someone tells us they aspire to be a leader, we try our best to be honest with them about where we’d need to see growth and then lean into developmental conversations with them, uh, when we see a [00:22:00] missed opportunity for them to demonstrate one of these values.

We want to do our part to help them try to develop these values or at the very least see the gap between their behavior and what we hope to see in an emerging leader. And in addition to these values, uh, we believe someone must first be a motivational fit. That’s how we say it. Motivational fit to become a leader.

And honestly, that normally comes into conversations when somebody, someone raises their hand for a leadership role. Um, why do they want to be a leader? That’s a great question that you should actually ask them. Um, remember ambition and, uh, confidence are not bad things, but they can’t have self interest at the root of them.

If their confidence is that they believe they can make a difference. If their ambition is that, uh, they. It’s to help the team get a different result, or if their passion is to create a better environment for the people they might [00:23:00] lead, then, uh, you know, they have a motivational fit for our style of leadership, but if power, pay, or prestige is what, why they want to lead, the answer is not now, and we must seek to repurpose their ambition.

Um, it can’t be that they want to be in charge so they can call all the shots. There is actually a reason that humility is our top value. Our view of leadership is not about being in charge, but directly supporting and taking care of those. In your charge, your leadership and authority exist for them, not for you.

We believe great leaders set out to make a difference. Uh, it’s never about the role. It’s always about that goal and fundamentally, uh, they must not view leadership as power, but as a responsibility to help others, if that isn’t the driving motivation, but instead it’s ego or self interest. [00:24:00] You will certainly regret putting that person in charge of others.

Ask me how I know. Okay. So those are things we all look for before some we, not someone as a leader, they’re kind of evidence that, that they could be successful as a leader or at least can be trusted to start that journey. And then, uh, but how. Ready should somebody be before you make them a leader. You know, there are some corporations that have years of extensive leadership, uh, development curriculum.

Before somebody becomes a manager for the first time. But I bet that is not the norm and probably not what most of us do in our organizations. If you ask an executive or anyone who led other leaders, how ready does an emerging leader need to be before you give them a shot at their first leadership role?

What do you think they’d say? What would you guys say? Actually, I would like to do a poll, uh, [00:25:00] right now and and hear what you guys would do. Um, so what I mean by that is, uh, how ready are they? 100 percent would mean they can do the major parts of that role independently. 100 percent doesn’t mean they’re like a seasoned veteran.

They’re hit out of the park, but they don’t make rookie mistakes and they don’t need daily or weekly support. So, so how ready do they need to be?

All right. We’ve got a lot of people chiming in. I don’t see anybody say a hundred percent. We’re all smarter than that. Right. Let’s see, we got.

Looks like somewhere between 50 and 80 percent, maybe 80 to 90 percent, a few there.

[00:26:00] Okay, I appreciate you guys chiming in. This, this was aligned with how our conversation about this started. I actually remember Rick and I were having this exact conversation over coffee one Thursday, uh, during our weekly one on one. Um, we both said, man, it’s definitely not 90. Uh, in fact, we didn’t even think it was 80%, maybe not even 70%.

Then I remember Rick asking, what if that number starts with a five?

What if they’re only 50 percent of the way there, or maybe even a little less? What if most of the learning happened on the job? Hey, I don’t know what the experience all of you guys had stepping into your various leadership roles over the years, but if I’m honest, I’d say I wasn’t even 50 percent of the way ready when I got my first opportunity to lead.

I, I wasn’t even 50 percent of the way ready when I was knotted with the most recent [00:27:00] role as president of Beaton Bow Home seven years ago. Um, most of the learning happened on the job, and that that might sound reckless or or maybe even negligent to some business people. But I think there’s a key to this kind of approach, um, and really, there are two real common and often catastrophic mistakes.

I see senior leaders make when they not a new leader. Uh, one is they throw them the keys and leave. And the other is they stay and they don’t give them true authority. They keep calling all the shots. Um, and I’ll unpack what I mean by each of those. So the first one, they throw them the keys and leave, you know, I have a friend who runs a mid sized business and everyone reports directly to them.

Uh, similar to our story about all the people coming straight to Moses, right? You know, it didn’t take. A ton of wisdom for Jethro, his father in law to say, what you are doing is not good. [00:28:00] So why does she do it that way? Well, she actually hired a general manager, uh, at one point in the past. And she told me a year later, it was all so screwed up that she had to step back in and take, take back over control.

And after that experience, she’s convinced that she can’t really trust anyone else to run it. She has to be in control. I would say that if she was shocked by the state of the business after a year, it was because she had largely been absent since she hired that GM. That’s how it goes for a lot of owners.

Um, they hire someone to watch over their business so they can leave and go do other things. They toss the leaders, the keys, and they leave and just hope they figure it out at the very least. They, they hope they deal with all the problems so that those problems no longer make it to them. Right. Uh, and sometimes.

They want to retire and not be in the business every day anymore, or they might still [00:29:00] be in the business. This is maybe more common, but they want to focus on other things and they don’t check in, uh, or stay engaged with the new leader. They say, I trust them. They’ve got it. They might even throw in a, Hey, call me if you need anything, but they both know that’s not true.

They abdicate their authority. And if you’re like me, maybe you had, you haven’t heard the word abdicate used very often, but that’s when a King or like a head of state inappropriately renounces or gives away their power or, or otherwise like evades their responsibility. And that is precisely what a senior leader is doing.

If they throw someone the keys and leave, and it’s often a recipe for disaster. So the other mistake that is common is the second one. When, when a senior leader, not someone as a leader, the senior leader doesn’t leave, they stay. But they continue to make the calls over the shoulder of that new leader. Um, they don’t give them real [00:30:00] authority to make decisions that are different than they would make.

I mean, how do you know you can trust them, right? They continually invade the territory of that new leader and they give direction and they make corrections instead of helping that new leader take charge. Every time they do that, they undermine the authority and charge of that new leader. And they chip away.

at their confidence also. Uh, it’s emasculating. They said they empowered that person, but then every day they steal some of that power back. And ultimately the new leader feels like a glorified puppet, uh, that does what he’s told. And over time, if that leader, if they were right, and he really is a strong leader, they’re going to leave, which is not a better result.

So how do you know if you’ve given someone true authority? They can mess it up. That’s really the only way that’s the only true test. Craig Rochelle says when you are leading people, the best way to [00:31:00] know if you can trust someone is to just trust them. There’s not another way. You have to take the risk and trust them, even though you’re ultimately responsible for the results.

That’s that’s the paradox and the hard part of leadership. You can have control or you can have growth, but you can’t have both. So what, if we know these are two things we want to avoid, right? These two extremes of throwing them the keys and leaving or staying, but not really giving up true authority.

What, what is doing this in a healthy way? It looks like, uh, let’s turn to the best business book ever read, written and, uh, read, uh, numbers eight. Uh, this is versus 23 to 26. The Lord said to Moses, this applies to the Levites, men 25 years old or more shall come to take part in the work at the tent of meeting, but at the age of 50, they must retire from their regular service and work no longer.[00:32:00]

They may assist their brothers in performing their duties in the tent of meeting, but they themselves must not do the work. This then is how you were to assign the responsibilities of the Levites. Notice God didn’t say that after a Levite turns 50 years old, they should just go home and relax and leave the work to the younger generation.

No, they, they were still needed, but they did have a role change. God was explicit in saying they couldn’t do the work themselves anymore. They may assist their brothers in performing their duties, but they themselves must not do the work. That’s what healthy looks like. By that point, you know, these, these people who were 50 years old had been performing services in the temple for 25 years, and they had a lot of wisdom that they could share with the younger generation, but if they went home, all of that wisdom would be squandered.

And the next generation wouldn’t have the benefit of it. [00:33:00] They were supposed to stay, but they were supposed to let the others do the work. They were supposed to be there to help them, to encourage them, to counsel, but not to take over. Honestly, what a hard thing, but what an amazing revelation of God’s right order of things.

How we often refer to this concept around here is you should go with them. That’s how we say it. Senior leaders. Should be regularly engaged with leaders on their team, but resist grabbing the wheel and becoming the backseat driver. You encourage them. You have regular conversations with them. You ask them about things, but you also give them space to lead and you don’t overrule them unless it’s absolutely necessary.

And I’ll be honest, it rarely is. I am a recovering control freak, uh, who is trying to lead this way and it’s very hard for me. Um, I think the Lord probably gets a good laugh as he watches me squirm in my seat and, and try to walk this out with those I’m leading and I don’t [00:34:00] do it perfectly as any of them would tell you.

But one helpful way for me to think about this is if I’m not always a little uncomfortable by the amount of independent decision making and power that each of my team members has, Then I’m not doing this right. If I can’t remember the last time they made a decision that’s different than what I would have made, I’m, I’m smothering them.

If I can’t remember the last mistake they made that I encouraged them through, but, but also held them accountable to clean up or to fix, then I’m not doing this right. Uh, now that might not be good advice for all of you, but if you can identify with being a control freak, maybe that was for you, here’s what I can tell you.

For sure. I’ve experienced this kind of leadership. And it has helped me develop as a leader. Um, and as a person, as a dad, as a husband, uh, this close engagement and the ongoing conversation helped mature my view. [00:35:00] Um, without having to learn every lesson the hard way. And it kept me from making some really big mistakes too.

Uh, but I also was given enough freedom to try things. And sometimes those were mistakes that I had to clean up and sometimes they led to huge breakthroughs in our business. Uh, That we wouldn’t have discovered if we didn’t, uh, try something new. That it was different than what the previous generation would have done.

I think the best leaders must have some form of autonomy and the ability to try new ideas. That doesn’t mean they can’t also benefit from the wisdom of the person who did it before them. As I said, many leaders throw a new leader the keys and leave, and others stay but don’t relinquish true authority.

Choosing to stay engaged but not take over can be hard, but it’s the right thing. It’s what healthy leadership looks like in the kingdom of God. Okay, at this point, uh, we’ll answer questions, spend the rest of our time in Q& [00:36:00] A. Amanda, do we have some questions? We do. Thank you, Cal. That was very impactful, I’m sure, like most everybody else.

Just hearing all that to some areas that I need to look at really good. So we will start with some questions from some things that you talked about in the beginning, um, someone has asked what the chapter in Exodus that you talked about Moses, if you could share that. Yes, uh, it was Exodus 18 verses 17 through 23, and that was the NIV translation that I was reading from.

Yeah, the Exodus passage, uh, yeah, it’s, it’s, I’ve read back through that a lot of times because that is great advice and it applies in business so much. Absolutely. You also shared in the beginning about an original Greek word, um, in one of the scriptures. Can you, um, say that word again? Yeah, it was [00:37:00] the word that’s translated lead.

I can’t say it in Greek. I’m not going to try, but if you look at the interlinear coordinates, it’s that word lead and Romans 12 is what I was talking about. I think we all want you to pronounce it in Greek. But yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay. So here we go. Um, with the next question. Um, I love that beat and bow has prerequisites as a leader. Can you provide some examples of that of an improver? Yes, I can. Uh, so. We, we’ve left out that probably one of the ones that honestly might be one of the quirky ways leadership plays out here. I think in some organizations, improver in particular might not be a requirement for leadership.

In fact, it might make you, if that’s in you, you might not fit there as a leader or not. But for us, uh, Improvers are constantly, they’re [00:38:00] trying to enhance and develop their territory, whether it’s a process or a product. Uh, this, this, we, we have a value of growth, but for any position, that’s one of our core values for any position to be hired in Beatonville companies.

We need to see you have. Value and demonstrate that before you join. And this is like a more amplified version of that. Um, these people are always on the lookout for like better methods or they’re, they’re, they’re eager to test new ideas. Um, sometimes we say they’re incessant tinkers. Uh, for example, if you gave them responsibility for an area and then you left for six months, when you come back, it would be different.

There’s going to be something that’s different about it. They would have changed things, taken risks in pursuit of like progress and improvement. This is more than being a gardener or like a park ranger. Uh, the goal of a park ranger is to leave things exactly like they are, but the gardener is trying to [00:39:00] cultivate the land to its potential.

Does that make sense? And we have a lot of other questions and stuff that we ask team members, but they basically are trying to improve everything in their area. And you can usually see that in their personal life, too.

Good deal. Thank you. All right, moving on. Next question. And he’s going to refer to another book. So give me a second while I read it. Um, he says for those that haven’t identified specific leadership attributes for their organization, the five practices of leadership by Kuzis and Posner are solid. He names in there, um, the five attributes that he has are encourage the heart.

The second one is enable others to act. The third is challenge the process. Number four is inspire a shared vision and [00:40:00] number five is model the way which one of five do you think is the most important. Those are really good. Could you name them again. I thought you might ask that you couldn’t remember all those.

Yeah, let me ask again. The first one was encouraged the heart enable others to act challenge the process inspire a shared vision. And the fifth one is model the way. And which of these do you think is the most important?

I’m going to say, encourage the heart, which is interesting as I’m saying that. So, so my background is as an engineer, uh, that actually makes me, uh, just realize how much I’ve grown in my time here, you know, the thing that, uh, I’m going to get emotional as I say that the [00:41:00] thing that probably has triggered the most growth in my own life.

And help me develop as a leader is someone being close enough to me to know my heart and to encourage the unique way I see the world. And to draw out the most healthy version of that, um, there, there are good things that people have inside of them. And I had somebody that I could be really open with about what I was thinking, what was inside of me.

And they could help me sort through that and find the healthiest version of what that was and encourage that. And it’s actually what helped me stand up and who God created me to be. They helped me see gifts he had put in there that honestly, I didn’t think were there when they first told me. So them speaking directly to my heart, all those other things are beautiful as well.

So I’m not trying to take away from them, but I think if, if I was thinking back on my [00:42:00] own journey of what has been most transformational in my own leadership, that’s the one I would say, which feels funny for an engineer to say.

Thank you, Cal. Thanks for being vulnerable on that. All right, next one, you know, we like to make you squirm as you like questions. So, what is a good course of action? Once you realize you’ve prematurely promoted a potential leader. I don’t know if there’s a formula or hard rules. You know, how I always think about it is we’re trying to do the right thing for everyone involved.

Uh, and so oftentimes when, you know, it’s not the right thing, uh, the team is suffering because of it. And is that suffering of those of that group of people so great that you can’t optimize for the good of the one leader to try to help them develop? While they’re still in that role. And so that really comes [00:43:00] down to like, how far off are they?

Do you have hope that they could develop in whatever areas that they’re struggling in, in a short amount of time. And if you don’t have hope in that, you need to remove them today. We really mean that like today’s the last day we say, when you know, you go, if you don’t have hope that it’s going to be different, if you don’t have a plan for how you’re going to help them, today’s the last day you can’t, you can’t Uh, leaving them in place and letting people languish under underneath them is never the right thing.

Now, not every situation is that extreme. We, we have tried to be super diligent to get really close to someone and try to help them learn the one thing that they were struggling with. And we even went to the team and said, Hey, I know the situation here. You should know we were very engaged, but we were also trying to be gracious with this person we believe in our heart, they can develop it.

And so you’ll see us more regularly. We’re trying to help them, but please give us some [00:44:00] grace as we’re doing that. And there’s been times where that worked and there’s been times that we tried and it didn’t work and we had to make the same thing, but I’m not saying that’s the wrong thing. Uh, what I would say is the wrong thing is if you don’t have hope that they can improve there, you have to make a change, which is hard.

Great wisdom. Thank you for that. Hey, you got several more. So how do you ask for accountability from people that you lead if you’re not really giving them authority? Oh, a relationship. Uh, do they really believe you want to know, do they really believe in your heart, you want to give them authority. And that if you’re asking them, Hey, how could I do better at this?

That you really want to know the answer to that, or do you just want the pat on the back? And I would say everyone is going to be hesitant to that, especially at first. Over time. Hopefully they. [00:45:00] You develop a relationship with each of the individuals you lead, and you actually are vulnerable with them.

They, they, they see your heart and they get to know that you really do want to do that. And to me, I, if somebody doesn’t give me feedback, I never have a full view of the whole, whole picture. You know, who’s the only person in this room that can’t see my face? Me, everybody else can see my face in the room.

So if somebody doesn’t give me feedback, then I probably don’t know something that’s going on. And, you know, I also feel like leadership is one of the most humbling things in the world. Nobody does it perfectly, but there’s comfort in that too. Just because I’m doing something wrong, doesn’t mean I’m not a good leader.

It means I have room to grow there. And so feedback that you could have done better here, or you are still struggling to give me authority here, isn’t a judgment against me. It is. [00:46:00] They, they’re saying that to help me because they believe in me, because they believe my heart. And so how I respond to that is really important.

Uh, when somebody brings you something that sometimes is hard to hear. Uh, I’ve, honestly, I’ve had this within the last two weeks. I’ve, I’ve had someone bring me something that is one of the hardest things I’ve had to hear since I’ve been here. And they’re, they’re one of the directors that are on the Beat and Boat Homes team.

So ultimately, they report to me. And you know, I actually feel like they were a friend to me in that moment, them not saying that I would be less of a leader for it. And actually, I needed to take accountability for my own actions and have since then, and I also apologize to them and someone else that was involved because it was the right thing.

I didn’t realize the impact that my actions were having on people, except this person revealed it to me, and that was a gift. It did not feel like a gift at the time. Uh, it was hard to hear. It really [00:47:00] was, but how, how I responded that moment, uh, I’m proud to say what was gentle and gracious, uh, and, and, and really sometimes all I can say is, okay, I hear you, can you give me a minute, uh, and I just, I think when real feedback comes, all of us want to go, well, but you, or, or, or explain it away.

And I’ve learned the more you want to do that, the, the more you need to lean into it because it’s true. There’s something in there that has triggered you. So the more you want to push away, I think Craig Rochelle was the one that said, said, said something like this. The more you want to push away from feedback, the more you need to lean in, which is not natural.

It’s like a boxer leaning into a punch. Your body never will do that naturally, but I do believe that it makes me a better leader and I do want to be a better leader. I want to care about people better. Uh, and this is a humbling thing. That’s why [00:48:00] I often say, I don’t believe I’m a great leader. I’m a student of leadership.

I’m trying to get better. And I think that helps me receive feedback better too, knowing I’m still on the journey like everyone else. Uh, no one arrives on this. Uh, you just try to get better as you go.

Good stuff on accountability. Really good. All right, jumping back in. What is your advice on key things to promote a current leader to a higher level of leadership, like a director to a vice president? Well, that gets into a whole another conversation. So, so to be honest, I talked about some of the prereqs to become a leader here.

Those were the prereqs we think about to become a frontline leader. And we have a whole another set of those to become a leader of leaders in our organization, because we noticed the same pattern that at every level of leadership, if you couldn’t develop something else in [00:49:00] someone quick enough to leave them in that role.

And honestly, we learned it here. The hard way. Every single one of them, uh, every single one of those values, I could tell you the names behind because I was there and it was painful and we had promoted someone to a position that we, we were so excited about and it turned out to not have good fruit and we would look at it and go, was there something that we miss?

And that honest retrospective conversations. I do think one of the things I think if if somebody’s level of authority ever outpaces their level of humility, you have a recipe for disaster. Um, I know humility is something that’s hard to quantify. I would just say, if that’s something you can’t look at that person and say, no, they, they’re, they’re one of the most humble people in their current role, then you should not [00:50:00] elevate them to higher responsibility.

Uh, that’s at least the way I would think about it. Um, we’ve just seen that an ego out of control, uh, as a leader can just do so much damage and sometimes it’s really tricky. To spot the team sees it, but that person’s leader doesn’t see it. And sometimes it takes a lot of time to pass and a lot of damage is done by the time you uncover that that’s a problem.

So I would say if you have any inkling that that their humility isn’t at the level that it should be, I’d be really hesitant to ask the Lord if that’s the right thing that he would give you clarity on whether you should promote them or not.

Thank you for that input. Yeah. Um, I love this next question. Um, this is so sweet. Uh, what do you think is the best way to pay tribute and give thanks and honor to the leaders and mentors in your life? That’s a good [00:51:00] question. You know, I think lots of times We think back on all the impact that somebody has had on us and investment they’ve made on us.

And we just think they know that, that we don’t say it to them out loud. Um, I don’t want that to be my legacy. And so I try, I try to tell people when I, when I’m thinking about, man, I would not have ever grown in that area if it wasn’t for this person. Honestly, like my friend that gave me feedback the other day.

I circled back around to him saying, man, thank you for that gift. And I’m sorry, I processed it in kind of an awkward way when you gave it to me, but I see it as a gift. And honestly, I wouldn’t have been on the road to become healthier in some ways in my personal life, as a dad and as a husband, because of his feedback.

I want him to know that. [00:52:00] Um, But man, there’s been so many people that have poured into me over the years. Um, I try to be intentional to tell them that and tell them, thank you, and, and the specific ways, uh, you know, my actually, uh, over the past couple of weeks, there was something, uh, my brother in law, Travis, he, he’s a dentist here in Lubbock, one of my best friends, also a kingdom leader.

And there are two specific things that he, stories he told me, um, in his own leadership, this specifically encouraged me and really helped me process some stuff over the last couple of weeks. And so I sent him a text message and said, Hey, I want you to know how much you’ve impacted me. But I want to, I’m going to tell you these stories because I don’t, I didn’t want to say it all over text message.

But the next time I see him, I’m going to run down here. Here’s the two things that you said. And here’s specifically how. It helped me think through what I was going through, and thank you for that gift. Uh, I think [00:53:00] sometimes we’re just not intentional to circle back around to those people, because we think, we think they know.

We have this, like, high view of them, uh, as a leader oftentimes, but, you know, the most senior leaders almost get the least encouragement at times. And everybody needs encouragement.

Yeah. The power of words and whether you do it in person or in a note. Um, I think it’s such a, such a great way to honor that. Thanks for answering that. Yeah. Two more questions. Um, next question. Whenever you talked about the Levites not working at age 50, what was the chapter and verse of that? Yes. Uh, it was

numbers eight, 23 to 26. Perfect. Thank you. All right. Last question. Uh, from your input, [00:54:00] Cal, I’m starting to look at leadership as discipleship. What the world calls leadership is really discipleship to us. So it’s not a question, but a really great thought that I thought you could end on. You got it, man.

That’s it. That’s, isn’t that what Jesus’s leadership was like? I think that’s the ultimate example of it. That’s it. It really is. Uh, discipleship means a lot of things, but one of the things that means is you see the good parts of them, you see greatness in them, and you’re trying to help them stand up and who God created them to be, and that is the highest calling of leadership.

That’s what it means and the business operations and all the other stuff is a reason to have interactions to have those kinds of conversations. Um, I’m not downplaying the importance of them or the operation. We’re serious about operations, but really, it’s the reason to get to meet them and spend time with them every day.

But the discipleship [00:55:00] is absolutely the mature way to view leadership.

Awesome. Thank you for that. All right, y’all, um, we’re done with the Q and a part, but we want to know, um, in December, we are going to be doing another webinar. So I’m going to put up another poll that we would love to hear your input on. And so if you could vote in December, we will be having a webinar.

Would you like to hear about leaders that forgive Calling first career or growing a healthy organization. All great topics. One is not more important than the other, but, um, all areas that we’ve had feedback on and people ask questions, um, either through our blog, through these webinars or through emails and conversations we’ve had with other kingdom leaders.

So it looks like I’m going to let people keep [00:56:00] going. Keep going. Put your vote in. It looks like calling verse career is going to be what we talk about in December. So, calling verse career. So, that’s great. Did you guys see those results? So, calling career was at 56 percent and then growing a healthy organization at 33 and leaders that forget.

So that’s great. Hey, um, last thing I want to tell you is that we have some workshops coming up. And so we would love if you are a CEO or a business owner, we would love to have you and your team come to the beautiful city of Lubbock, Texas, um, with us. Any of those three dates, February 6th through the 8th, May 7th through the 9th, or October 1st through the 3rd.

Um, if you scan that QR code, it would take you directly to that. We are asking that, um, you must be a CEO or a business owner, and then you can come, um, [00:57:00] with you, with those leaders, if you would choose. If you scan that and if you have any other questions, um, you can talk to myself and my team and we would love to help you.

Um, we pray that you have a great day and that this marks of a leader. It, it marks your heart and you spend some time with the Lord and ask him in areas that you could grow. So thank you guys for joining us. Um, have a great day.