The Importance of Leadership: A Conversation with Executive Coach Brock Simmons

The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny God. As such, we need thinking Christian to become as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast. I'm Dr. James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful, theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now, on to today's episode of Thinking Christian. Everyone, welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I'm Dr. James Spencer, and I'm joined by my co-host, Nate Giarrantano. Giarrantano. I say it wrong every time. It's so sad. I don't know what my problem is. Anyway, we have a special guest here, Brock Simmons. I'm going to let Nate intro him. They are friends. They know each other. And so, Nate, go ahead and introduce Brock for us. Yeah, I've been really blessed and fortunate to find Brock in my life through a men's group at my church the last year and a half or so and serving with him at church. Just an amazing guy, but one of those people that when you leave a conversation with him, you just always feel inspired or challenged to want to be better. And so we're really excited to have him on here about what he's done and what he is doing with his new venture, Always Present. So welcome, Brock. Thank you. Brock, man, just tell us a little bit about what you're doing. You talked a little bit in the pre-interview about your background. So maybe let's start there. Where are you coming from? And then maybe we'll talk about what you're headed to. Yeah, that's great. Well, thank you. Thanks for being here. I'm blessed to hang out with you guys. So this is fun. So my background has been in training, leadership development and training for the last 20 years. Started in Vancouver, Canada, a small little retailer, then grew and we expanded. And we were at, I think, 41 retail stores when I started. And we ended up at 1405 locations in four countries and we're doing over a billion in sales. And I headed up the learning and development part of that. So that was a big learning curve for me in my career. And then specifically in software and training people on how to be great leaders, which, as we all know, it's a tough one, right? And I think what I love to talk about is technical competency. It's a strange word, but somebody that is technically very good at what they do. And I love looking at plumbers. I don't know why I love plumbers, but if there's any plumbers out there, I love plumbers. They keep the world going. But if you're a really strong plumber, you get promoted to be the leader of plumbers. But it almost works against you. And I've seen it. Recently, I did a thing with an architectural engineering firm. They have great architects, some of the best in the world working for them. And they take those people that are really technically strong, technically competent at what they do, and they make them the leader. Who trains them on the leadership skills? Because they're really good in sales. They're now the sales leader. And is it because you're very strong technically, are you really good at being a leader? And it's two different skills. It's completely different. And I think we overlook that in business over and over and over again. We pick the highest technical competency in their specific field, whatever they happen to be in, radio announcers or podcasters or whatever they're doing, and they make you the leader of podcasters because you're very technically competent. It doesn't make you a leader. And so what I've been doing in my career over the last 21 years is training people what those skills are to be an effective leader. And unfortunately, I've ran across a lot of train wrecks, as we all have in our careers, right? We've all seen those people. You think, how did they become a leader? And the truth is they were technically competent. They were very good. And they got promoted up because they were really good architects or really good at sales or really good at a plumber. They're the best plumber. And then all of a sudden, the leader of the plumbers. And it's unfortunately kind of a train wreck over and over and over again. It definitely can be. I mean, I remember being promoted from an assistant dean where I was under a couple of other people who were directing and leading the organization I was a part of to a vice president. And having this, you know, almost like little miniature mental crisis, just saying, okay, yeah, I feel competent that I could do this, but I have no idea even where to start. And so I was at least blessed the organization was allowing me to get a executive trainer, executive leadership trainer for a year. And I worked with her and she helped me clarify my values, helped me understand how to lead and operate a team, you know, broke me of some of my bad habits, not all of them, but some of them. So there's so much you can do in a year. But I think it was really one of those moments where exactly what you're talking about. I was actually pretty good at my job as an assistant dean. Yeah. And so that's why you got promoted, right? Right. And yeah. And then you're just sitting there in the VP chair. You're going, well, I don't understand what I'm. Or, or you do. And, and why don't these idiots that work for me just do it like I did? I just put my head down and got it done. And it just doesn't work, does it? No, it doesn't. I mean, I think that's one of the interesting things that she noted for me was that as an assistant dean, I could put my head down and work and I was good at that. And I could get a lot of things done that way. As a leader, you don't run that way generally. Like it has to be delegated. You have to be coaching. You have to be. Yeah. It's actually paradoxical that the more you're technically competent, it actually works against you in delegation or accountability. A lot of the they're, they're diametrically opposed. And so I like to say the dumber I get, the smarter my people get. And so we've got to get this dumb thing going and we're, no, I'm technically really good. Hold on. And, and, and really, honestly, the dopamine hit hits and the feel good drug because we were so good at sales or the plumber or whatever, we get that dopamine hit returning because yeah, I fixed the job. I did it again. Right. And it's like, ah, crap. Oh, I wasn't supposed to do that. Yeah. Leadership's almost a longer payoff. I mean, you really, it really is. And part of the delegation is how do I, how do I look long-term on developing my people and not that immediate dopamine hit for fixing the problem immediately. And unfortunately, it's diametrically opposed. How much are you able to intertwine ministry, like maybe behind the scenes when you're talking with people? I know it's not probably always, but I know you and you're very much, you know, heart driven in that way. And, and so you probably get entangled in these people's lives and God's able to use you to inspire, to encourage, lift them up. If you want to speak a little bit to that, that'd be great. That's a great question, Nate. So what, what I, we've in, in this new thing I'm doing right now, we break into three different areas is, is bronze, silver, and gold. And a bronze is all about filling up before you pour out. So it's personal leadership. If you don't lead yourself, how possibly can you lead other people? You just, it's bad math, right? And so, so the question is, how do you fill up before you pour out? And as you guys know, with leadership and I'm sure every listener here, leadership is, it's exhausting. I don't know, you guys like you spend hours and hours pouring into your people and you think, how do I fill up? Because an empty cup can't, can't pour out. So, so my question is to, to people all the time, how do you fill up? And in personal leadership, we go through a significant talking about what are the processes of filling up or processes. Sorry, but my Canadian comes up. So how do we actually fill up? Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free Retirement Defense Guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. And that's really the trick. And I go back to Dr. Peter Atiyah. He talks about the four levers. And they're physical levers. I don't know if you guys are fans of Dr. Peter Atiyah, but he talks about levers. And the more you pull on the lever, the more response you get from it. And the four levers that I refer to in the bronze is taking those

I've been able to bridge that. Super excited. What is, you kind of referenced you're doing the new thing, but what is the new thing? It's still in the realm of training and development, I assume? Training, leadership development? Yeah, so, so we have all these leaders, you're, you're James, you started a plumbing company, sorry. You don't look kind of like a plumber, so I'll give you that one. And so you started this plumbing company, and now you're promoted to be a leader of plumbers, or you're promoting some of your people. How do you actually train them? And, and being in, in training and development, we've all been to those five-day training seminars, you know, or, or three days. And day one, you're kind of, you know, you're excited and the, the trainer is really good. And then by day two, you want to blow, you know, your ears off. And by day four, you're just, you're lost. And, and it just doesn't soak in. So interesting, I, I lived in Israel in, in the 80s. I lived on a kibbutz. It's south of Beersheba, and it's about 250 miles south of Beersheba. And we brought water from the Sea of Galilee all the way down to this desert. And in, in, in talking to this Moshe, who was my boss, he was talking about how when they, in 1948, when they first landed in Israel, they started to water the desert. And they literally took sprinklers and tried to water the desert. And it was, you know, it just evaporated. Down in the Negev, it's so dry. It's like Arizona. It's just dry, nothing grows, right? So how do they water? So in 1965, they invented a technology called drip irrigation, which were small tubes of drip irrigation and they would drop small droplets of water directly on the root of the plant. And what they found is they reduced the amount of water by 75% because they didn't have any evaporation. But the actual vegetables, we were growing cucumbers, the actual vegetables got 30% larger. So this process of drip irrigation, I take the training, instead of going in with a fire hose, oh, we got to do training. Let's train everybody on coaching, right? Take the fire hose, you fire hose the crowd. Well, we trained everybody. How come they're not coaching? Well, hold on. Let's take a look at the drip irrigation directly on the root of the plant, small amounts over a large period of time. And that drip irrigation, what I found, it just works. And small micro trainings over a large period of time. And James, you talked about it in your career, is taking a year, is really transforming. And we're not talking about information, it's transformation. How do I transform my behaviors so I lead differently? And so this new thing that I'm doing, instead of doing an eight-hour class on how to be a great leader, I'm doing small virtual trainings, and they're micro trainings on leadership. And I start off with bronze, silver, and gold. So bronze is small, two days a week for an hour and a half, little tiny micro trainings on how to transform yourself. So then you show up the best version of how you fill up so you can pour out all day long. I can't help but think when you're sharing that, we work a lot in discipleship, and we're trying to really, you know, encourage churches to do discipleship. They're very much like in tandem, kind of like right next to each other. So there's so many similarities there when I hear you describe that. I'm thinking about what we're trying to do with discipleship. Oh, yeah. And it is, it's right in this firehose. It would go into a church and yell at people for four hours, and they wonder why they don't change. Well, it's behavior change, you know? I often think of a player guitar. I don't know if any of your listeners play guitar, but if you were taking a guitar and play a guitar for eight hours straight, you just hurt your fingers. It doesn't work, right? It's transformational. How do we change? And it's this drip irrigation over a large period of time. How do we drip, drip, drip, drip small micro trainings to transform the way we do business? And that's the key. So you have a young leader, you're in your business, James, a plumber, and he's technically one of the best plumbers you have. You promote him to be a leader. How are you gonna train to be a leader? And what I believe is small virtual micro trainings over a three-month period, starting with bronze, helping him develop who he is on the inside so he can pour out. And then silver is all about team leadership, how he develops his team and grows his team. And then gold is organizational development. And breaking those down, so then over a three-month period, like you had, James, is that transformational drip irrigation over a period of time to transform his leadership or her leadership skills is really what it's about. I've done a fair amount of consulting in higher education, and so it's not exactly the same as leadership training and leadership development. But one of the things that I've found is that you, well, the way I usually structure my consulting reports when I get into a school, I try to give them some really easy wins. I try to give them those things that aren't gonna cost them any money to do, and they can be implemented within, let's say, the next 30 days, even if it seems fairly trivial. Because there's something about that institutional momentum and the realization that knowing this is different than doing this. Right, and so how do you pivot and get somebody to go from micro-learning, a concept or a principle, to actually implementing that principle and having that sort of participatory effect, right? Where now they're not just, yeah, I agree with that principle, it's interesting, I like it. But now they're going, oh man, I just saw this principle work. You know, how do you cultivate that? Yeah, so that's a great question, I love that, James. So it's how do you actually do this? So this, what we do is we do small virtual classrooms. And only eight to 10 people per class. So they're small, really intimate classes. And it's, okay, so this, here, here's behind the curtain, little behind the curtain on a trainer dude. So I've been doing training for years. I send out these, these post-training assessments. You know, how good was I, and did you like the trainer, all this stuff. It's interesting, when we do small micro trainings, nine times out of 10, across the board. I mean, it's almost, what were the best things you learned in the training? They come back and they say, I learned more from my colleagues, from the cohort I went through, than anything in the class. Wow. Isn't that crazy? So yeah, so I think, you know, all this wisdom that I have and all these years of experience. And they learn more from their colleagues. Isn't this crazy? And, and, and what, what I try to foster is, is they have their own chat room. So I have a, each classroom has their own chat and discussion. Every week they have homework, and then they meet with me for one hour, their mentor. And, and this dripping, and then they, they, they talk with each other and they have to cope. And, and like, you can't cheat in your homework. What I do is I go on, guys, cheat in your homework. Talk to each other. Let's share. And in the homework, they, they, they discuss and that colleagues have, it's again, we talked earlier about not what to do, why to do it. It's the how. And how is 75% of it. How do I apply this on my job? Like you're talking about, James. How do I actually implement this? And they can talk to other colleagues and other people going through this. Oh, that's how I can do it. Oh, that's how I hold Fred accountable to show up on time or whatever you're, you're dealing with, right? I play softball with Fred. He's my best buddy, and now I'm his boss, right? And I got to get Fred to, to show up on time. And he goes, forget it, dude. I'm not doing it. Oh, hold on. How do you hold him accountable? And you, and weekly talking to other people that are struggling in that, in that thing, it's magical. It really, it's unbelievable to watch where they start using these skills. And what you talked about, James, is they start using it and all of a sudden they get, whoa, whoa, whoa. It works. And then they come back. It actually, whoa, I did it. And what I try to do in the virtual microtraining is, is we have a ton of participants center training. So it's not just me talking for an hour. I do a lot of talking here, but try to get them to do a lot of the asking them, so how do you implement this? What work, what didn't work? And, and seeing that change, it really is fantastic to see. Yeah. You know, one thing that I've been kind of interested in, my wife's involved in healthcare, so she's a chief pharmacy officer at a hospital system here in St. Louis area. And one of the things they have, it's Catholic health. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look

People understand the sort of Catholic background, obviously, of the hospital system, what the values are, but not such that, you know, you couldn't have, let's say, you know, non-Catholics participating in the healthcare system. So, but it's a way for them to keep their mission aligned. And it sort of strikes me that a lot of what you're doing is somewhat similar to that. But I've always been struck by the mission integration and the amount of money that the Catholic healthcare systems tend to invest in that versus what we see in, let's say, at least what I see in like non-denominational churches or even denominations where there just is this assumption that we're all going to stay on mission just by, you know... They firehose. They're just firehosing, right? And so, how would you, you know, how do you think about that? How do you think about the significance of staying on mission in relation to leadership training and making sure that not only are we, do we have a well-defined mission, but that we have the blocking and tackling necessary to stay on mission? Does that make sense? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. So one thing is going back to drip irrigation. Yeah. It's firehosing doesn't work. Right. You do it, it doesn't work. It's a really great analogy, by the way. Isn't it? Yeah, it's really fantastic. Yeah. Cause I mean, and you sit there and how many times have we've seen it? You know, let's train everybody on this and let's all get aligned on this new, how about this one? The new book I read and you got a CEO who reads a new book and everybody has to align to the new book. And I got a whole stack of them. Yeah, I know. We've all done that one, right? And, and it's, it's firehose. It just doesn't work. So in, in, in the goal level, which is, is the organizational leadership stuff, we talk about a power of alignment and how alignment, can I tell you a quick story about alignment? So I was with a, a, a, the cell phone retailer and we were bringing on a TV. Um, I'll tell, I don't know if I can say we're bringing on dish network and, and, and all our retail stores. So I don't know if I'm allowed to say all these brand names, but anyway, so I'm, I have all these retail stores. I have 435 retail stores in, in the United States, and we're bringing on dish network in all these retail stores. And so how do you, you're selling a cell phone in a Verizon store and you got to sell somebody hold on to, to transition into how do they watch TV? How do you do that? Like, how do you actually do that? Right. And so what I did is I said, hold on, we have some really smart people working in our stores doing this for eight hours, 10 hours a day. Let's ask them. And what we'll do is we'll put together a video contest and you guys take your cell phone and film your own commercial or, or short training. And it could be a three minute video on how to transition from a cell phone to, to a cable provider. Yeah. It doesn't make sense. How do you do that? It doesn't make sense. So we put out as a, as a, you guys design your own training. So we had 435 stores and they fit, and a number of, and I think we had like 52 people putting training videos that they filmed on their own iPhone and they filmed it and stuff like that. It was incredible. It was the best training that I think I've ever done because I didn't do anything, which was really cool. Like the dumber I get, the smarter my people get. Right. But it's, they actually filmed their own commercial and guess what? We had them view all the commercials to see which are the, not commercials, but the small trainings. They were three minute trainings on which one they learned most. They were learning how to do it, by the way. And so they were, and then they voted to the top 10 and then we had the top three and then we had a reveal of, of the top one that was, that won the award. And the president of the organization flew out to their store and took them all for lunch, the people who did the best small little training on it. That's cool. Isn't it? Isn't that amazing training? I mean, I thought this is the best training. I don't have to do anything. They're, they're filming their own video on, and, and it was actually, they filmed on their own iPhones and it was, it was amazing because it was in a store. It was just totally practical. It was the real thing. Here, here's a real story. The VP in charge of the entire organization. He wasn't being comped for selling DISH network. Isn't that crazy? So the whole thing we launched, we had actually people lined up in the store on launch day, ready to buy DISH network in all our 435 stores. The, the staff was jacked, training like crazy. It launched and the power of alignment, the comp plan for the VP. He said, guys, don't push this. We're not really too. And I'm going, why? This is things like from an LED perspective, learning about, we're super excited about it. And crazy enough, he wasn't being paid on it. The whole thing went down the toilet. No one, it was like the thing just died on the vine. So why would I tell you that stupid story? Well, I mean, I think for a few different reasons. Number one, I mean, I love the idea of having the frontline people participate in the training. I think one of my exciting, one of my most exciting moments as a consultant was when I had a board of trustees, members of the boards of trustees meeting with recruiters at one of the higher ed institutions that I, that I was at. We met once every week. They were listening to the recruiters, understanding what they were saying, getting a deeper dive into admissions and really not just sending things down by fiat, but actually understanding what the recruiters were dealing with. So that was super cool. And I also think there's this idea of when we think about alignment, you've got to have so many components aligned to make sure that it's not just, you know, it's not just, Hey, here's the culture and this is what we're going to do. The policies, the procedures, the, you know, the infrastructure, all those things have to be aligned in order for anything to really work. Otherwise you end up with gaps that can be mission critical. And, and James, you nailed it. That's what it's the power of alignment. And in the goal, we talk about the power of alignment, how you with goal setting, often people set goals and they're not aligned with the organizational goal. And if we're not alignment and going back to drip training, we can set up. Actually, why don't people do drip training? Because it's so hard. The alignment is so hard. It's so difficult. You know, the manifolds that we had to, and this is what my job was. I'm working, you know, young kid out there in, in, you know, blazing heat in the negative desert, setting up manifolds and the tubes. It's a lot of work. It's a lot of work. Why would we do that? Because the payoff long-term and we talked about it, the long-term benefits, how I can actually do that or, or the short term. Let's just firehose everybody. And we did it. No alignment, no hard work, right? It's all that alignment and hard work. And so going back to your original question, how do we actually tie all this together? It's the power of alignment. It has to start at the top. And, and honestly, I've worked for organization after organization and, and the senior leadership. Yeah, we do training, but they don't know what it is. And they don't, and they don't care. Yeah. And so what I often do is get senior leaders come in, participate in the training, come part of it. I was with Angie's list. I had Angie Hicks show up at our training. She was in a virtual training. She did it with us and talk about alignment. Get the CEO of the organization in the training going, this is really valuable guys. And making sure that everybody, we're all talking that same language and we're all, and that, that commonality of how we hold the people accountable, how we fill up before we pour out and that filter downward. It's so powerful. And, and, and we talk about culture and organizations talk about culture all day long, right? Culture is not what you say. It's what you do. So it's, it's in, in that power of alignment. If we get everybody saying and doing the same thing, filling up before you pour out, right? The priority is not you. It's your team. How do you prioritize your team? Right? And so, and how do you actually do that? And Silver, we talk about it. And then, and then the power of alignment is gold. And so these small virtual trainings that I'm, I'm looking at as covering all three of these that are really going to nail for, for a young, your new James, your new plumber is going to be working for you, Bob, how you're actually going to get him, you know, first off taking care of himself. And then, and then it's, it's about his team and then how does he align and, and all that process of alignment. Yeah. I think anybody that hears this is going to be able to relate to it because at some point in their life, and if it hasn't happened yet, it's going to happen where they

Hold up, and then you're finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free retirement defense guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. It's a situation where you're ill-prepared and you need to kind of go back and, you know, add some lungs to the ladder that you skipped over. Yeah, and I talk about skin knees, and I love to pulp my knees on this podcast. I have so many skin knees. You're falling face-first in leadership, and oh, man, it sucks. I don't know about you guys, but like mistakes you made, and you fall face-first and you skin your knees, and you don't die, but boy, it's brutal, and we've all done it. So how do I learn from other people's skin knees? And that's what this is, right? Information is, I mean, we have ChatGPT. You can ChatGPT all this information. It's how do I apply it on my life so I don't skin my knees. And so I like to look at scenarios and how do I walk through a scenario. A lot of the stuff we do is scenarios and helping us really drive that. Do you tend to use, again, this is something I've kind of found helpful, so I guess I'm picking your brain on improving my consulting practice, but one of the things I've done, I try to keep three or four different models and frameworks that I always use, you know, just finding something really simple. When I was in leadership as an academic dean, one of the things I used was Lencioni's Four Obsessions of a CEO, right? Right, and I didn't have everybody read the book. I just used those four obsessions, and I'm like, well, I'm using this model, and this is what we're going to do, and so here's the way this looks, you know, and I could lay that out and reinforce it with the teams I was leading without saying, hey, you need to go get this book and read it, and we're going to discuss it, and whatever. In your spare time. Right, I could just keep that framework and say, no, this is how I'm going to do it. This is how I'm going to run the organization. I mean, Failure of Nerve, when I'm thinking about personal, you know, internal feeding, Failure of Nerve by Morgan, not Morgan Freeman, but by Friedman, is, I think, fantastic. I love that book, but it's not one that I usually refer people to because it's really heavy. It's very detailed. It's not easy to get through, and so those are things that I use, but when I consult, I do try to give the organization certain frameworks for them to think through that are simple, really easy for them to implement and understand. You don't need all the theory behind it. They just need that, like, here's what it is. Do this, and then let's revisit if this doesn't work, and then here's this other framework I'll give you. Does that ring true to kind of how you operate? Yeah, and so one of the things you're talking about is being a curator, and we think of a curator of a museum, and what a museum curator does, goes off to all these artifacts and brings it to the marketplace and says, this actually piece is really important because here's, so you know, if you go to a museum, oh, this is why, and they give the background of why this particular piece of artifact was so interesting, right? That's what a curator does, and so we curate information to bring it to the marketplace. And so, James, you're bang on there. And I look at the definition of intelligence is somebody, they take something very complicated and make it real simple. And so that's, so you're saying it from the song sheet there. So one of the things that, the frameworks that I love is people, purpose, process equals high performance. And we all want high performance. Any leader in any organization wants our people to perform high, right? And like, I don't know if you're a plumber or a sales guy, we all have performance metrics, and in this world of private equity firms, they all are increased by 20% over last year. I don't know about anybody else. I'm like, you want a 20? We just busted our earlobes and made a huge gain last year, and now you want a 20% increase? Yeah. Okay, so how do you drive performance in an organization? And so people is the, has to be the number one priority. And are we training, mentoring, coaching, developing our people? One of the programs that I, on Always Present, we use is time management. How are we showing our people how to manage our time? And often, we just assume they know how to do that. Yeah. It's one of the biggest gaps. So people, purpose, do we really define what the purpose is? So going back to what we were talking about alignment, are we all aligned on drip irrigation? Are we all aligned on the goals and a directive? So people, and then what are the processes involved? And then last one, it equals high performance. If you try to supersede any of these ones earlier, you know, like, I want high performance over my people. And we have all worked in that company, haven't we? I want high performance, but I don't care about you people, right? That doesn't work. So, and so really, and do we have alignment with this? Are we really doubling down on developing our people? Do they know what the purpose is? And then do we have the processes to follow? And now we can expect high performance. And if you drive that high performance anywhere earlier in this equation, it just doesn't work. So James, to circle back to your question, one of the frameworks that I use is this one all the time. And how do we, okay, so what does it mean? Let's keep it real simple here, guys, because we got to understand what people, purpose, process equals high performance. We all want high performance, but we got to work the long game. And what is the long game? Is investing in our people. And one of the things is our leadership mastery program. We're going to put every leader through the leadership mastery program. It's just, they're strong, technically competent people, but we haven't trained them on the leadership skills. Let's give them those skills so they know how to fill up before they pour out. They know how to align their team and they know how to love what the priorities are. So how to actually do that. So that's the long game. Yeah, that's helpful. And I think it prompts another question because, you know, a lot of times, so when I was in higher education, I was over distance education. And so we were sort of a for-profit entity within a nonprofit entity. We weren't technically for-profit, but distance learning had to make enough money to help subsidize the parts of the institution that weren't working. So we were, you know, every eight weeks, we're worried about enrollment, worried about retention. We're worried about persistence. And when I frame it like that, worried, what I found was that created problem. That worry was a sign that I was putting performance over people, purpose and process. And so what I had to try to do was cultivate a calmness within the, I think this is why I gravitated to Failure of Nerve, that book, is because I needed to be the non-anxious present. I had to be the antidote to that anxiety. And if I was worried about the performance, then it was going to show. And so you had to create this sort of relaxed atmosphere where we're all sitting back and saying, what levers can we pull? And that was part of that process. You know, who can pull these levers? Do we have, like, all those kind of things. And then, and then we're constantly pushing toward a purpose of, in that case, was educating students. And that would lead to higher performance. And so the whole model was constructed like that. But until I figured that part out, and I'm verbalizing it using your categories now, but I mean, until I figured that out, it was an anxious, high pressure. It wasn't like there was no stress after I figured it out either, but it was far less. It ratcheted back so much because now we're not worried. Like I used to say, like, we can't really affect what the performance is actually going to be. There's too many variables there, right? What we have to do is we have to hone in and just focus on our purpose, our processes and our people. And if we can, I didn't say it like that again, but it's like, if you can get there, all that other stuff sort of, it's not like there's no stress, but there is a lot less anxiety, I think. Is that right? At the top. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Do you find that, like, once people grasp that system and they actually, like, the anxiety level in the organization just like, Deplete. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. So I grew up in Vancouver and I spent a lot of time on boats, boating. And my first job was at a marina. So, you know, boating was my whole life. I've

The last thing you should be doing as a president, I'm scared and worried. I don't know what's gonna happen. No! Right? What are the practical things I can say, guys, I know where the goal is. I know what the direction is. Let's go. And what you talked about, the calmness and some levers we can pull to drive that and really do that. And in the Silver Leadership Mastery program, we talk about the paradox of motivation. I can't change the motivation of my staff. Bob, who works for me, you're a plumber, you're Bob. I think we changed the name out of his Bob or Fred. Okay, so, but I can't affect Bob's motivation. The reality is, is he motivated to be a plumber or not? Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free Retirement Defense Guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. I can't. You can't do it. I can't get him more excited about his job than he's willing to. So what is the paradox of motivation? But how can I create the environment so Bob is highly motivated to be the best plumber he can? And so we talk about driving motivation. How do we actually do that? And it starts with us, right? The calmness and the goal and the direction. And am I full and am I centered and ready to go? And going back to bronze, am I filled full before I pour out and creating that environment of the calmness and the centered and I'm on the boat and I'm going up the top of that wave and I know that we're gonna get through this storm and on the other side, there's safe harbor. And I'm gonna get my team there. And that's part of leadership, right? That's what we need, that courage. And if I'm honest with you, it's really hard. And like as brothers having people around us to say, guys, I'm on the boat and I'm really scared right now. This is hard stuff. You know, pressures galore. My dad had a heater manufacturer in Mississauga, Ontario. And he passed away. I was 26 years old. And he had a heart attack. We were watching the Super Bowl together. And I took over the company. So at 26 years old, I'm a president of a heater company. It's stupid, right? And I remember on my knees crying out to the Lord, 26 years old, God, I can't do this. Like, how do I do this? It's scary. And luckily I had mentors and coaches and friends that helped me in that time. And brothers that said, hold on, we can do this, Brock. And I didn't turn to my kids. I didn't turn to my wife or the colleagues or the employees saying I'm scared. But having those, and Nate, we talk mentor all the time. How do we turn to men of faith, men that hold us and can say, hey, I need help today. I'm scared. So it's powerful stuff. Yeah, absolutely. It's interesting to think about this. I mean, maybe we can pivot the conversation here. You know, Nate had mentioned that we do a lot on discipleship and there are a lot of commonalities between discipleship and mentoring. Although they're not, you know, discipleship isn't as organizational as sort of leadership training and those kinds of things. But it just strikes me that maybe we don't quite understand as a people of God what our purpose actually is. And because we don't have that purpose, we can't develop the processes, at least not a full range of those processes. I think that's sort of one of the things. James, we know what it is. We know. Get people in the front door. That's it, right? Get people, invite your friends and neighbors. Don't worry about the back door. It's huge, and they're like eight of them. They're leaving faster than you can shake a stick. Just get them in the front door, and that's our purpose. That's the purpose for the church. Get them in the front door, and the pastor will take care of everything else. It's a scary thought. It is. It really is. It is. It is. So go back to play the guitar. It's not an eight-hour lesson or a four-hour sermon of playing the guitar. It's drip irrigation over a period of time. Discipleship. It's the long game. How can I mentor and coach? And how? How do I do life? How do I be a better husband? How do I work really hard and then come home and be always present with my kids? How do I always? And that's where we named our company Always Present because I want to be always present in this conversation with you guys. My cell phone's not going off. I'm worried about, no, how can I always be present in every conversation and discipling and mentoring on the long game? Because that's what we're about, right? And James, you're bang on the church. I think we've lost that focus. It's not about getting people in the front door. It's about how do we develop relationship for long-term mentoring and coaching that I'm with you on how to do life. Yeah, and I think the... I teach a leadership course for Wheaton College, and one of the ways that I describe leadership in there is that it is just a specialized form of discipleship. And so there's part of me that wonders if we haven't inverted that in the church to some degree, that we're actually looking for leaders. We're not looking for disciples. And it's not that I think... I mean, we've had a really great conversation about leadership, and I think in organizations all across the planet, leadership is crucial. Like 100%. I don't want to discount it. But within the church, leadership has to be tempered by discipleship. It has to be shaped by it. Otherwise, you're going to lead people into something that looks less like conformity to Jesus Christ and more like conformity to your particular vision of what this organization should look like. And so it just feels to me like we have... We've sometimes... It'd be too broad-brush about that, but I do think sometimes we've inverted those two. We've said, let's get a leader who can drive discipleship, but really what we need is a disciple who understands how to lead through discipleship. Yeah. Something you said, Brock, that really stuck with me and stood out to me was you said culture is not driven by what we say, it's by what we do. And anybody that's ever spoken to my life that has been significant and like for a long period of time, it's not just the words they say. It's how they show up and I'm watching how they interact, if they practice what they preach, you know, all those kinds of things. So I think that's awesome. And James, what you were just saying, I was sitting here thinking, like if you took a hundred churches in America right now and asked them what discipleship was, you're going to get probably a different definition across the board on all hundred. And it's really not that complicated. Like you're saying with leadership. And I think there's so much... When we first started talking about doing this, I was like, it's not just ministry, but there's ministry in all of it because it's all people and God is using on both sides. And so... But yeah, that was right on. That really stuck out to me, and I think it will to our listeners too. Yeah. And I think the essence is that it's not... We always want to scale this, right? The North American church. Let's scale it bigger. As soon as we start scaling, we lose intimacy. And this is where always present, we have small virtual classrooms, eight to 10 people, small. I don't want to get this big. Literally, we want to have small virtual classrooms where we have that intimacy where we can share one-on-one the long game. How do I connect and teach you the skills, the skin knees that I've gone through that hurt? And how can you avoid those in your life? Because boy, it sucks falling face first. And as soon as we start scaling that up, we lose all intimacy and it just doesn't work, does it? So it's all about small scale stuff. And that's very similar to what you're doing with your Bible study, James, the guys in Virginia. At some point, there's more impact there or different impact than maybe you would get even from doing a show like this that's going to go out there to way more people. It's just different because of that intimacy, like you're saying, Brock. I hear them talk all the time about his Bible study, and I got to sit in on one of them. But I think that's the model that God laid out for us over and over again. And we just, churches especially, like you're saying, I've seen stuff that is so funny the other day. It was like, it's all about Jesus, but then it was like also megachurch pastors and the pastors got wires on them and he like goes out into the crowd and is doing all this stuff. And I'm just like, oh my gosh,

I lost that. We got to come back to the small, intimate. And I remember you saying that even when I first met you, Brock, like, you know, we don't need to make this big, our mentorship. It needs to be powerful, you know, but coming from an evangelical world, like I have, you have to really take that out of your mind because it's always there. Like you have to have something big, but it doesn't need to be more than a few people sometimes. Yeah. I would say it's interesting because I just did a video yesterday on 1 Corinthians 9 and Paul's statement that he is seeking to be all things to all people that he might save some. And so it's not like I'm against mass media. I mean, we're doing a podcast here. It's gonna go out to a lot of people, but the reality is that if we're not careful in settings like this, we can't avoid not being all things to all people when we're doing it like this, when we're doing it in mass audience. And so I think part of what you're talking about, Brock, is like that small setting allows you to adapt to the people you're working with, to say that incisive thing, right? It becomes surgery as opposed to blunt force trauma or something like that. You know what I mean? Like it's an incision. It's not a hammer. And I think a lot of times what we've defaulted to is we've said, no, let's just use the hammer. Let's get as big and as broad as possible and be as general and generic as possible and say, you know, platitudes and things like that. But at the end of the day, the real work in and the harder work, I think, is in the concrete situations where we find people. Yes. And it's just not the sort of work that a lot of times people are willing to support. It doesn't have the sizzle that, you know, reaching millions of people does. Sure. Reality is it can be just as powerful, if not more, if done correctly. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, people like employees, and they can tell us, is you have a leader who is authentic and cares or is he doing this, like you said, the sledgehammer or firehose? Right. How do, like, really? In one of the trainings we do is, so you have an employee and Bob works in a warehouse for you and he unloads all the trucks so you can feed your assembly line. Bob's a star employee. Never misses a day. Solid warehouse is running great. All of a sudden he starts showing up late and the production line is running short. And then you call Bob in the office. What's going on? And he tells you his wife, Carol, has cancer. What do you do? How do you manage that as a leader? And these are the real world things that, what do you do with Bob, who is one of your employees, and his wife, Carol, has cancer? What do you do? That's right. How do you hold him accountable? As a boss, I have a production line with 15 people in it, and if Bob doesn't show up at 7 a.m. to unload the trucks, my production line stops and 17 people and I go out of business. How do I have that conversation with Bob and sit down with him? And that goes back to what you're talking about, James, authentic. How can I have an authentic, caring conversation with Bob and have empathy and understand and have a heart for him, but at the same time hold him accountable that, Bob, you've got to be here. And just because your wife has cancer, it's horrible. And I know. But I need those trucks unloaded. How do you actually walk through that? Yeah. And authentically. And there's no real way to genericize that. No. It's a heartbeat. Care, love, respect. But it's also laying out expectations. Here's the expectations. Here's what we agreed to ahead of time, Bob. And can you meet those or not in the difficult situation you're at? And walking through. And if you haven't laid out the expectations, Bob going, well, I'm doing a great job and I've done a great job and they don't really care. Yeah. Whoa. Right. And so this goes back to the church. Do we have laid out expectations for what discipleship is, what mentorship is? Have we laid that out? And I don't think we have. Clearly defined what the expectations are. And then coach through the bottlenecks. Mentor through the bottlenecks. Yeah. We talk about that all the time. Like, that's why we really want to focus on true discipleship and helping churches. Because every church thinks that they're doing a good job at it, but most of the time they're not, you know. So I guess it's just the filter that you look through. But always present dot institute. Your open enrollment right now for the bronze level starts in October. Right. Is there anything else that you want to share? Check out my website. Actually, we're launching today. I've kind of pushed off launching on LinkedIn. So today is actually my launch day. So I'm really excited. Yeah. So we're launching on LinkedIn. If you know anybody that wants to go through leadership training or they were a really good plumber and they want to step into leadership. Again, I'm not marketing to HR, to the training departments. I'm actually going directly to the supervisors, managers, team leads who are in that role and saying, convince my boss with a piece of, actually on my website, it says convince my boss and go convince my boss and say, I need leadership training. I'm a great plumber, but I need to lead my people. And I'm at the whole goal for this is to get 10 people to a small group of bronze, silver, and gold starting October. And that's our launch date. And I've done this in another life in a form of high-tech firm. And it was magical to see the transformed lives of those leaders, that their lives changed. And the way they led, it was like Matrix, the red pill and the blue pill. And literally I gave everybody a red pill. It changed everything in our lives because they, again, the small drip and really understand how to have that empathy for Bob and Carol, you know, how to actually do that, have those really hard conversations that you care and you lead because it's not about a paintbrush. It's not about hammering people and firehosing. It's really having that heart of compassion and care and love for people. That's awesome. I appreciate your heart. And thanks for sharing all that and excited for you for your launch. Yeah. Yeah. We have much success. Yeah. I'd love to come back and let you know in the middle, how's it going and introduce you to somebody and did their lives change? And that's what's right. Do we see transformation? And that's what it's about. Right. Leading with effects. That's awesome. Very cool, man. I love, I love the approach. I love the, I love the work and I love the ministry. So thanks for being here. Thanks for sharing this with us. It's awesome to have you. It's great to meet you. Yeah. It's great meeting you guys. Thank you very much for your time, guys. Thank you very, very much. Thanks, Brock. Yeah. Good luck there. Bless you. All right, everybody. Well, take care and we will catch you on the next episode of Thinking Christian. I just want to take a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian Podcast. If you go to lifeaudio.com, you'll find dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more. This, this is my sky ship, Dreamer. My cargo is stories and our destination, dreams. With Abide Sleep Stories for Kids, you can help your children fall asleep fast and learn about God. To find these kids' bedtime stories, go to lifeaudio.com or search your favorite podcast app for Abide Stories for Kids. You can also download the Abide app for more biblical meditations at abide.com.