EntreLeadership - #218: Stephen Mansfield — Avoiding the Fall

Episode Date: August 21, 2017

New York Times best-selling author and leadership guru Stephen Mansfield has seen his share of powerful leaders crash and burn—and the fallout is pretty brutal (think reputations destroyed, careers ruined, billions of dollars lost). Find out what destructive mind-set Stephen has seen plague leadership and why confrontation is the key ingredient to success. entreleadership.com/podcast Team Communication Field Guide Summit 2018 Send Ken's Mail to: Eric Cieslewicz 1749 Mallory Lane Brentwood, TN 37027   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

helping business leaders grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is Andre Leadership. Now, here's your host, Ken Coleman. From the Music City, this is the broadcast of leaders, by leaders, for leaders. Thank you so much for joining the conversation. Our feature conversation is with Stephen Mansfield. He's been a guest on this podcast before I told you about this last week. I teased it.

We gave you a sample. I think this is must listen. It's about the signs of a leadership crash. We're going to walk through some very specific signs. Don't miss this. Don't check out. Really important stuff. I don't ask you to share this podcast very much.

This is an episode that I believe you need to share. And we're going to have some great free stuff things you need to know about. And we're going to start off with an appeal that I made to you folks several episodes ago. We love Ken's Electronic Mail where you email me. And by the way, continue to do that. The email is podcast at entreleadership. But it was a couple episodes ago, I think it was, that I said, hey, you know, it would be fun if somebody just wrote me a letter because I was really having fun. Sometimes this will come as a shock to many of you.

I just say things without thinking about it. And I was kind of what I was doing. But the response has been fantastic. People are mailing me handwritten letters. Now, I will tell you the inspiration behind this was, is that I think, you know, we've gotten to the point where everything is email, everything is text. And, you know, the whole funny little play we make on Ken's electronic mail is that that's what email is, obviously, right? That's why we call it email, electronic mail, email. So snail mail is what we're dealing with this episode, and you all responded.

And that's why I love you, folks. When Will the engineer handed me a stack the other day, I laughed out loud, partly because I didn't remember saying it. Eric the producer's like He's like a bobblehead doll All of a sudden behind the glass shaking his head so hard And then the other reason was I was overjoyed Because when was the last time

You people got a handwritten letter I'm not talking about a thank you note I mean I do handwritten thank you notes all the time I mean like Like I got three pages right here on notebook paper And this is really cool stuff and this is why handwritten letters are so powerful.

And I'm so glad that Tim Hiltraman shared his heart with me. Now, I'm not kidding you when I say he wrote me two full pages, so it's two full pages. And I'm holding it in my hand right here. And I'm going to read just a portion of this. Because this is really cool. And Eric, the producer, has not heard this. This blew me away. So he writes several nice things, and he's saying,

how much he loves the podcast, and I actually got to meet Tim in the lobby of our world headquarters recently, great guys, a fireman, just an all-around super-passionate dude, and I love super passionate men and women. But I'm going to pick up about halfway through the letter when all of a sudden my eyes started to leak the first time. He says, I get that life is short. In 2007, after one year of marriage, I was diagnosed with inviagnosed with inviating. malignant melanoma.

God chose to spare me, but I haven't looked at life the same. Jim Collins wrote in the Forward to Half Time. This is a book by Bob Buford. It's been a guest on this show. We only get one life, and the urgency of getting on with what we are meant to do increases every day. You know, that's worth reading one more time for you, folks, because I know you're doing something else right now.

Jim Collins wrote in the forward of halftime We only get one life And the urgency of getting on with what we are meant To do Increases every day Two years ago My wife and I got to know a cute

4-year-old Who was on dialysis 12 hours a day Because she had lost both kidneys to cancer At the tender age Of one Now folks This is one of our listeners.

He goes on to write, I had one of those, if not me, then who moments. And after some prayer, decided to find out if I was a match to donate a kidney. In God's providence, I was, and now part of me is giving Briel a chance at a normal childhood. Wow. So, I'm going to stop. reading there because I honestly don't want to snot into the mic any more than I already have. He finishes by saying thanks for opening your life and helping us extract the treasures from all

your guests. Thanks to your team and you for pursuing excellence in crusading week after week. It makes a difference. Tim, you are a hero. I don't belong in the same room with you, but terrific emotion there really comes from just blown away by your sacrifice and life is so precious, this little girl. and your decision to do this, just unbelievable stuff, and that you would write a letter and somehow say that we are a part of that

just is ridiculous, but it is appreciated. And so there you go, folks. The first installment of Ken's snail mail. Unbelievable stuff. But, you know, it's important. It's important that we share with each other in this community, how we spur each other on. So, Tim, one more time.

Thank you so much. And again, if you'd like to email us at any time, you can do that podcast at Entras. Andetrae Leadership.com. And hey, if you want to keep writing the letters, come on. That one encourage my heart so much. You just can keep on sending the stories. We love it.

We'd love to share them if you will allow us. If you want to do the old snail mail, we have the address to the office in the show notes at Entreeleadership.com. Click on the podcast tab. Many of you will remember episode 135. Stephen Mansfield was our guest. And we had a great time talking about a book that he wrote called The Search for God in Guinness, a biography.

of the beer that changed the world. A great story as you talk about a lasting legacy and building a business and family business. It was really fun. We wanted to have him back because he's going to be teaching at our summit event. If you haven't heard about that, that's in the things you need to know a little bit later. But he's going to be doing a full talk, a full workshop on the conversation you're about to hear. And I already told you about it at the top of the episode, signs of the leadership crash. If you will allow me 60 seconds to challenge you before you hear this.

just days ago, as I'm recording this podcast, just days ago, a college football coach, major program, major news, falls from grace in a moral failure that is beyond embarrassing. And if you know the story, and it doesn't matter, you've heard stories like this, you're like me, you hear it, and let's just be blatantly honest, the first thing you think is, how in the world could he be so stupid? That's what you think. But if you're being honest and I'm going to be honest with you, I did have that thought. But then it's immediately followed by, whoa, pal. No man is above stupid when it comes to moral failure. It didn't just happen. The thing that he did that is getting the headlines didn't just happen.

And it reminds me of something John Maxwell taught me in my time when I worked with John and he wrote about it, it largely comes alive in the book Today Matters that John Maxwell wrote. But I heard him say this on stage the very first time he said it when he was working the book out. And I was sitting in the crowd and I went, ooh. And here's what he said. He said, big decisions, you need to make those early on in life and then manage against them. So in the midst of this conversation, don't think for a minute that you are bulletproof. But can you avoid the big failure?

Yes, you can. How? Make the big decisions, the non-negotiables early in life and manage against those decisions. Guard your heart, guard your mind, get people around you who will tell you the truth, get some processes in place that keep you immune to this kind of stuff. This is important. Without any further ado, here is Stephen Mansfield. Well, it's always fun to have Stephen Mansfield with us back in studio because you're a part-time

Nashville. So it's always great when we get you in. That's right. Right, I love it. What are you doing in town these days? Well, I'm here to do some training of some congressmen, do a lot of media training, doing some speaking, and then I'm flying back to D.C. Wow.

Folks, pray for Stephen. He's training congressman. That is a Herculean task. And he also lives part-time in Washington, D.C., so what I appreciate most about you is you don't let Washington rub off on you too much. No, no, I go to Washington to get schizophrenic and come back to National to get normal. No question about it. Oh, this is so fun.

We're going to talk about a very, very sobering topic, but important. And it occurs to me before we dive into this, because I want to set the mind. lines and hearts of our listeners, Stephen, that this is sobering and it is important. Boy, this is uncomfortable. This really makes me stretch. Why do we not want to step into that even when we know it could save our leadership life? You know, the stuff that really will change us and make us better leaders is the stuff we're often, like you say, is afraid to talk about. But think about the times when you actually have heard something that changes your leadership. Man, it's almost like you go skipping out of there. So I actually don't know why we're afraid of it. I mean, it's like I want to embrace every

tough thing all at once so I can be a better leader. So here it is. Why do leaders crash? That's a huge question. It is. It is. So why do they crash? Well, this is what's interesting. I have consulting firm and we work with a lot of leaders and we got a reputation for helping with what are called leadership crashes. And everybody knows what I'm talking about. You know, the CEO who, you know, sleeps with the secretary, steals the money and the company crashes and they would call us in to help clean it up. Did it for years, got a reputation for it. And what happened was that I was happy to help clean up the crashes. I was happy to help put family. companies back together and help companies restore and all that kind of thing. But what I began to realize was that there were some common signs of the leadership crash and they were all what I call soft factors. Cashes weren't happening because some guy didn't understand the IRS code or he was shipping things wrongly or, you know, I mean, leadership crashes didn't even necessarily happen because we'd have an affair with somebody in the typing pool. Crashes happen because of soft factors. And yet leadership crashes in America are embarrassing. They're humiliating. They destroy

reputations, they cost billions of dollars in corporate America. So, I mean, I know that's what we're going to be talking about, but the fact is that leadership crashes happen for very avoidable reasons. And I thought rather than specializing and cleaning up to crashes, I'd rather specialize in teaching people what the signs are so that they can avoid them. Well, and one of the most powerful tools you use there is this idea, this lesson of the termite. And I think when you hear that, you immediately go, oh, man, we all get termites. They just slowly eat away. Yeah.

But powerful little bugs. Statistically, termites do more damage in America than massive storms. But the storms get the press. They get the media. The termites just quietly work away. Same thing's going on in the human soul. So in a company, it's the stuff that's under the surface that's going to do the damage, not so much the stuff everybody's focused on.

And that's why I'm trying to get leaders to be a little bit more focused on the soft factors. And so when we call out the, because we got a company we call out, and they're looking for all that. They're spraying for spiders and all sorts of bugs. and looking for termites. But the process of looking for termites is, in fact, quite a tedious process, I'm guessing. I've never even seen them do it, but I'm guessing they're really getting underneath the house. They're looking in the little crevices.

And, boy, that's a great analogy here. So things seem to be going well right now. We have people listening right now, and they're going, oh, amen, Stephen. Tell those other leaders. And it's like, wait a second. You might have termite damage and not be aware of it. And, by the way, that's not an excuse. No, no. The fact is for many people, there's an ugly, ugly little bug. Look them up on Google and have it, look at it, look at a large ugly little bug eating your house. He's eating your house and you're not paying attention. So that's, you know, the parallel, of course, is obvious. So what do we start to do? Let's just start to start to unpack some of the thing. But as the leader, what's the mental, emotional approach to making sure that you're ever vigilant, I guess is the question. How do we remain vigilant to make sure we're always looking?

Well, in the same way that when you're dealing with your house, you have to suddenly come to the realization that the most dangerous thing to your house is something you can't see. In a corporate situation, you have to realize that all the stuff you focus on, the policies, the pay, the HR, all of that, that's certainly got its place, but it's the unseen things. It's the things lurking in people's souls that people are not detecting, that people are not paying attention to. That's what's going to do the most damage. I mean, a leadership crash in a major American corporate situation can literally cost billions of dollars. It can cause the company to completely shut. down. That's more extreme than if we don't buy the right vehicles, we don't have the right insurance, or we don't invest correctly. And so it's a shift in mentality. Think in terms of the soft factors, not just in terms of the normal procedures and policies. Right. And let's throw some big bulletin board kind of causes of these soft mistakes. What are they? Is it insecurity? Is it greed? I mean, give me some of the things that you see a lot that maybe, and where I'm going with this is it's a heart issue, a mental issue, and then that begins to create this decay, and then these soft behaviors are a result of that mindset. Is that making sense? Yeah, I know we'll go

through the list in just a minute, but I'll tell you what the main issue is. The main issue, and I can't tell you how many times I've heard it in the consulting that we've done, the main issue is that the people around the leader who fell detected that something was wrong. Sometimes they can even identify it. They can actually put a name to it, but they didn't know how to respond. They didn't know it was a signpost of destruction. They knew he'd isolated him. They knew he'd become bitter, but they didn't know what to do. And my goal is to inject into their family culture or their corporate culture the language and the awareness of these danger signs that actually give them an ability to talk about it.

It's fantastic. All right. So we're going to run through some of these. Sure. Let's start with surrendering to bitterness. Richard Nixon is our case study. Yeah. You know, it's amazing.

Every single debrief that I've done, we call them postmortems. every single post-mortem we've ever done on a leadership crash. Bitterness was always part of the issue. The soul has a memory like an elephant. It remembers everything. Unless you deal with the offenses against you, unless you deal with the things that make you bitter, your soul will hang on to it.

The reason I use Richard Nixon is that Richard Nixon is there. He's in his 60s. He's in the White House. And he is going through Watergate, but he gets down on his hands and knees and starts beating on the floor with Henry Kissinger in the room. And what's he talking about? The Democrats, the FBI,

something going on on Watergate? Oh, no, no, no. The way his Quaker family was treated back in California when he was a little boy. He's still bitter. He's still ticked. It's still shaping his soul. And when you feel bitterness, you begin to allow yourself to feel entitled. You begin to want to medicate. You begin to feel a kind of an area. If I'm bitter against you, it doesn't really matter how I treat you. And by the way, I'm entitled. I'll tell you what, I'll just take some of this money out of the safe. I'll just spend the money the way I want. I'll just do what I want with his resources or what have you. That's where these crashes start to happen. So, every leadership crash I've ever dealt with, bitterness over something past was part of the issue.

I've sat with men who have destroyed their companies. But when I started to probe a little bit, they started talking about the way the coach treated them back in high school or the way the first of five wives treated them or the way their dad treated them or their uncle. And that bitterness is cycling back through their soul. It's one of the great cancers of great leadership. Is it that cancer because when bitterness becomes the lens by which we see everything? Because you said entitled. Did that lead to Nixon's entitlement of saying it's justifiable? An act, a way of thinking, is now, which was normally wrong, but because I'm so bitter,

it's justifiable, therefore it's okay to do. In Nixon's case, the attitude was kind of a paranoia. They're coming for me, and they're wrong, because that's what they were in his childhood. They were wrong to treat his family that way. Right. But the Democrats or the other side or the FBI or the special prosecutor, when they were not coming for him and they were not wrong. But that had been coded into Nixon's soul. So he dealt with every enemy as though they were coming to destroy him and they were wrong, morally wrong before God.

And that's why he responded the way that he did. And it destroyed him. I mean, look at Richard Nixon. I mean, really a brilliant man and in many ways a good president. But absolutely a byword now in American politics. All right. Let's look at another big fall from grace, arguably the greatest fall from grace in sports. I'm not going to say it is the, but it's up there. This is a sports talk show. Yeah. If you spend an hour on that. Sure. But let's look at Tiger Woods, a stunning fall from grace. After a very obvious moral failure that the whole world found about, he's never gotten back. What's the lesson to learn from Tiger Woods? The sign always of someone who's heading towards a leadership crash is that they are distancing their friends or making a massive shift in who their

friends are. So Tiger's decline happened after his father died, after he'd fired his management, after he got rid of his coaches, after he distanced everybody, basically, from his life. And then guys like Charles Barkley and, you know, others began to be his buddies, well, they were taking him to Vegas and introducing him to porn stars. And that's when the decline happened. He fell apart because the people who had been his primary band of brothers, the people around him, who kept him straight, who kept him working hard, who stoked his motivation, they were distance. And that's always an issue. I'll tell you what,

one of the greatest fuels of great leadership is to have a band of brothers, a band of sisters who know who you are, who aren't afraid of you, who will speak truth to you, who will hold up a mirror, who will hold you accountable. When you distance those people, anything's possible.

And usually it's negative stuff. And even more so when we're in a leadership position, right. Because most people are going to treat us with adoration. Right. And so when you don't have anything but empty adoration coming at you, You start to believe all that. Well, the illustration that I use is I'm almost six, five.

So I throw a darker and bigger shadow than somebody around me who's shorter, right? Just because, I mean, okay, so on the one hand, I'm rising to a greater height. I'm not bragging. I'm just saying physically. I rise to a greater height. I throw a bigger shadow. Well, it's in the shadows that things go wrong. It's in the shadows where moral failings begin to dominate your life.

So the bigger you are, the higher you are, the more prominent you are, the more famous you are, the more powerful you are, the greater the shadow around you and therefore, the more surface space for things to go wrong. All right, folks, again, and there's 10 lessons of the age. Okay, we're not going to go through all of them, as I've got some exciting news about where you can hear all of these in depth, but we'll tease you with that and come back to that. I want to go to a big fall that I think is such an important topic,

and this is from my childhood. If you're listening in it and you have no idea about Christian television, there's a guy by the name of Jim Baker. Now, Jim Baker was at the time in the 80s. He was a huge deal, massive empire, charismatic pastor, television. And I'll let you fill in the rest of the story. But the idea here is, is the lesson is perpetuating an image and how that can create a big fall. Yeah, especially in business, especially amongst leaders who move around with different companies and with all of our social media today, we can build a brand.

We can build an image that's beyond who we really are. So let's say I rescued one small company one time as a leader. But suddenly I am the world's expert on rescuing big companies and when they're in trouble. Well, that's branding way beyond my skills. So that's exactly what Jim Baker did. In his autobiography, he said, I grew the image. It got bigger than reality. I got to the point where I had to raise a couple of million dollars a day.

Now, that may not sound like much today, but we're talking 40 years ago that he was having to raise a couple of million dollars a day. And it destroyed him. It burned him out. He eventually had moral failings. He did things that were illegal. He admits that now. And all of it, because he allowed the branding. And the box, he calls it, to get bigger than the reality within.

And that's what we often do. We need to make sure that our branding, our billing. You know, I've actually been introduced by people I had never communicated with before they introduced me as America's greatest living author. Now, that is a load right there, man. That is completely untrue. But you just look and go, how in the world could you might even say that? But you know what?

I suppose it's possible in my sinfulness. I could start to buy into that kind of silliness. Well, if I go around believing I'm the world's great. living author. I mean, I'm dead. I mean, I'm just going to be deceived and deformed and messed up and feeling entitled and bitter because I'm not honored by the people as I should be. That kind of thing just starts to happen. Somebody just looks at a guy and just says, you're the most awesome leader I've ever seen. And suddenly, he's being set up for a fall. That's exactly what happened with Jim Baker. Absolutely. It was all about the image. And we're chasing this image. We're no longer making any

core decisions. And here's what's tragic. You know, we all are gifted if we stay in our lane. You've got a certain lane, whatever it is, the things that you're good at, do them, do them well. But, you know, I often joke, you know, I can probably teach the Bible, for example, at my church. But if you put me in charge of the worship team or you put me in charge of the nursery, that church is closing. I mean, by Friday, it's closing. I mean, I have no gift for that at all. So stay in your lane, do what you do well. Do it to the glory of God. Do it with excellence. But don't let yourself get so broadly branded and it's such expansive branding that it's nothing but pressure and destruction. All right. Another huge lesson. Dodging confrontation. And we go from maybe one of the biggest

falls in sports with Tiger Woods to maybe one of the most tragically sad cases. And that's Joe paterno. Yes. Who, I mean, you're talking if there's a Mount Rushmore of college football coaches, he was in that list. Yes. And for integrity. Yeah. And doing it the right way, the old school way. That's right. And then the Jerry Sandusky case literally. killed him. I believe that. No, no, there's no question about it. I give the rest of that story to you. I helped Chaplin the Washington Redskins a little bit, and so I know a bunch of guys who went to Penn State and who then went on to the pros, and I have sat with them while they wept over what happened to that program. I think we all know the story. There was child abuse

going on during summer camps that Penn State held in its athletics program. And the problem was that you had all these professionals, all these coaches, all these administrators and so on, but none of them ever actually acted. They all knew it was going on. Jerry said, Sandusky said, on the stand, no one ever confronted me about child abuse. So again, this issue that we're leaders, we're running fast, we're hitting hard, we got a lot of esteem, got a lot of people paying attention to us, but we've got to have people around us who can confront us. People, we've got to give permission to people. You know, you and I just sitting here, we don't think we're any great shakes. I mean, we've got our role to play. But if we don't have someone, a group of people around

us who can see us in 3D, know who we are, love us but aren't afraid of us, and can confront us, then we are heading for trouble. And I use the Jerry Sandusky case as an example. What would have happened is the first time somebody saw him showering with a little child, they went and confronted him and jacked him up, make sure he went and got therapy. Penn State would not have suffered like it has, but it got worse and worse and he got more perverse and nobody confronted it. And finally 15 years after it began, a coach finally reported it and the whole thing blew up And that program's been almost destroyed. So you've got to have, again, a band of brothers, a band of sisters around you who are willing to confront.

In fact, I believe that if you don't have the small explosions of confrontation, you'll have the big explosions of tension. And I got here in a car, which is powered by a series of small explosions. I'm going to get on a plane this afternoon powered by a series of small explosions. If you have small confrontations, small explosions in your relationships and in your company, that'll power everything for it. People will get better. People will be confronted. People will be helped to improve. If you don't have the small confrontations, then pressure builds, nobody says anything,

and finally you have the kind of Penn State explosion that we're all grieving. We all get the Sandusky part, but I actually started by setting up the Paterna thing, so I want to go back to it. Yeah, sure. Because of course we get the lesson on Sandusky. But teach us because Paterno knew something. He had to have. And there's no question you did. And his integrity.

Yeah. And I believe he resigns and he dies quickly thereafter. I just believe that that's all tied in. But here's the point. Here's the leader. And had he just dealt with the problem, his legacy would not have been tarnished. Why didn't he? What's the temptation that Paterno, he stood by his friend, he was disgusted by it.

But he enabled it. He was of a generation and from a culture that didn't confront. Right. You'd yell and scream at a player on the field. Oh. But you wouldn't turn to a colleague and say, you know, your language is atrocious. You're diminishing yourself. for you and what you're doing sexually, the way you're treating your wife or your drinking or whatever

it is. He just couldn't confront. We know that he knew. We know that most of the, I mean, the president of the university just recently went to, was convicted of a crime. He's going to prison. Why? Because they couldn't walk down the dang campus and say, Jerry Sundiske, what you're doing is wrong. It's illegal. It's immoral. You are fired and you'll be talking to our attorneys. Or you're suspended until we get you help or whatever it is. They didn't do anything. Correct. But I'm asking. you. I want to know the why. And I'm going to, I'm going to throw this out here for you to knock around. Go for it. The president didn't confront. Paterno did not confront because they were so concerned about the effect it would have on their image, on their university. It can't be that they

just didn't want to confront. I don't think, I'm not accusing them of moral cowardice in every situation. I'll tell you what I think it was, is more a matter of idolatry. Okay. Right. So let's say you and are sitting in this massive company right now, we'll call it Smith Company. And let's say we're so enamored of Smith Company. We would never want anyone to thank you'll of Smith Company. So I know you're coming to work drunk every day. By the way, there are rumors. No, I'm just playing.

So you're coming to work drunk every day. But I don't want it to get out that anybody might be in Smith Company might be misbehaving. So because I'm this, I'm sort of idolatrously worshipful of the massive company that must be preserved at all costs. I don't confront you to make you better. And thus, by the way, to make the whole organization better. But if I confronted you and might be other people that say, well, I'm having the same problem. Now we all get over it. We all get better.

We're a better company in six months. People don't do that. They think that somehow to hide it is better. But if you hide it, it just becomes a cancer beneath the surface. That's it. That's what I was pushing for. And I knew you had it. I had somewhere.

You just had to ask four times. Well, but I just think that's the huge temptation. Yeah. You know, because again, you know, did paterno do anything wrong? Absolutely. he did. And it was all because, you know, and I'll tell you what it was, Penn State, Penn State, Penn State, Penn State, Penn State, Penn State, Penn State. I built this. Fifty years, hundreds of victories, Penn State, Penn State, Penn State. Well, at some point, somebody's got to have some moral courage and say, you know, Penn State, excuse the language, be damned. What's more important are these boys? That's right. Is this morality of this coach, is the purity of our program, is our integrity. And that, quite frankly, just simply wasn't there as much as I reviewed, Joe.

All right, moving forward. But folks, a great warning sign there. Great warning sign. Here's another one, Bill Clinton. Now we're going to stay kind of in the political history books here, which I love. Building a third world, it's in quotes, a third world. Now, so you're not talking about third world countries. Bill Clinton, what's the lesson here? We know that when Bill Clinton was having his affair with Monica Lewinsky, that Ms. Hillary was up in the residence. Bill wasn't in the Oval Office. He was in the private office with her. So literally, between his business office and his home, he created a third world. He met with his young lady in his private office, which is literally physically between the two rooms. Well, this is what men will do. When men get bored, when men want to misbehave, they've got a bar, they've got an apartment in Paris, they've got a hunting lodge, they create something that's not home and work that they go to. Now, I'm not saying that's inherently wrong. It's fine to have a club and a Y membership and whatever. But normally the misbehaving for these senior executives comes when they create a third world that's out of the scrutiny of the company and not around

the wife. So if they're feeling tension between the pressure of work and misery at home, they'll create a third world. Every man will do it. It's a bar. It's an apartment. It's a hunting lodge. It's an RV where he gets with the guys and drinks too much whiskey and they get strippers in there eventually or whatever.

There are 50,000 different variations. It could even be the golf club where they're misbehaving afterwards. Good things can be turned negative. But that's what a third world is. And men do it more than women. Women don't tend to do this. But men, especially men of means who have money to do this. They'll have the, oh, I've got to, you know, I do a lot of business in London.

I got to have an apartment. And when somebody finally goes there at an unexpected moment, there's, you know, 15 strippers. and two executives and they're all misbehaving and spending the company money. And so that third world is always a danger. I'm not saying it's wrong to have apartments and jets and RVs. I'm saying when they're used as a way to escape the two primary axes of business and home, that's when you get in trouble. And so in the deeper lesson, though, is when you start to feel this temptation to, I need to escape instead of I need to get messy.

Yeah. I need to double down and get healthy. Right. Be very careful about the escape. Right. Well, I have some third worlds physically in my life, but they're not moral third word. That's right. I'm taking my wife with me.

I'm taking my kids with me. I'm taking people from my business with me. If you're using it as an escape, if you're blocking that off. You know, and I hear that an executive is jetting all over the world going to these luxurious places. And his wife's not going with him, I dive in immediately. And our consulting work called us because they have to sign a statement says I can ask any question. I'll go to that guy, sit him down and say, tell me what's going on. You have been flying to magnificent locations, hide all.

hotels, casinos, awesome things, your wife has not been with you once. But Ms. Tutsi, your secretary, has gone 50 times. Tell me what's going on. I mean, that's just how it goes. Absolutely. That's what men do. I'm not saying all men are dogs, but when men want to be dogs, they create a third world. That's right. Oh, that's true. Listen, you know what? It's so true. Guys, you just don't think for a second that you can't become a dog in an instant. That's right. That's the lesson. We all have to just. Yeah. Whether you want to approach it spiritually and say we're all sinners or not. The point is, you know, I assume that any bad thing, any human beings ever done in the history of the world is at least somewhere in my

microcosm in my soul. That's right. I mean, I'm not dominated by any of it. I don't have any big addictions or whatever, but I'm not stupid enough to think that I, you know, I guess the issue. I've never wanted to kill somebody. I guess I could, right? I've never wanted to steal anything from Walmart.

I guess I could, you know? And so when you think that way, then you're always killing the weeds in your garden. So the right thing is grow. Yes, that's good. All right. Next, Winston Churchill, I know he's one of our favorite people. Oh, yeah. And I actually love him.

But, you know, it's why I love reading about men who the world considers to be great because you find out they actually weren't all that great in other areas. Right. Let's talk about forgetting fun. Now, this isn't some whimsical idea here. No, no. Churchill actually, I mean, of course, who could be busier, who could have more pressure on him than Winston Churchill. And yet he said, you know, a change is as good as a rest. He said that all the time. A change is as good as a rest. So he painted and he hunted and he went swimming. And he was. hiking and he learned how to fly. And he did a hundred different things in his life because he didn't have a lot of time to sleep and he didn't sleep that well. He did take naps in the afternoon. But he always knew he wanted to have something that refreshed him. And I love what he said, this is one of

my favorite quotes, although it ticks off my engineer friends. He said, we want engineers in the world, but we do not want a world of engineers, meaning we don't want everybody to be boring and just about systems and not be alive and creative. So Churchill urged us to remember that we are full body human beings, that we have bodies, that we have minds, that we have emotions, that we have souls. He watched movies. He went for hikes. He raised animals. He did other things than what he was doing in politics because here's the lesson. Leadership roles have the power to deform. Unchecked, the leadership role that you are in will deform you. It will dry you out. It will dumb you down. It will shape you. It will cause you to gain weight, cause you not spend time with your family, cause you not to have

enough, whatever, fun, food, sex, whatever you want to talk about, all the things human beings ought to have. So what we have to do is remember fun. And we do this naturally when we're young, you know, but when we get a little bit older, we forget to do that. So men especially need the controlled violence. They need some wildness. They need to blow off.

Men need to bark at the moon and pee in the sink and, you know, do all the stuff that men do to kind of blow back. And women have their version of it. I just not qualified to speak to that, but they have their version of it. So I love the example of Winston Churchill. Yeah. Now, I want to put out a little. cautionary note. I rarely disagree with our guests, but I would just caution you maybe not to

pee in the sink unless it's in your hunting lodge. I think that just undoes my entire message, but that's fine. You go right ahead. That is so great. I love it, love it, love it, all right? Moving on to a figure that any red-blooded, God-fearing American certainly holds in the highest of esteem, and that's the American soldier. Yes. And you call this serving the schedule. Yeah. I had the privilege of being embedded with the troop. in Iraq. I wrote a book called The Faith of the American Soldier. And I was there for quite a while. And I was, of course, paying attention in addition to other things to post-traumatic stress. And an army psychologist said, you know, most soldiers are not enduring post-traumatic stress

just because they've seen violence or they've seen people die, although that's traumatic. For most of them, the burnout and the parts of post-traumatic stress come when they are required to do things and they don't know why. The schedule's driving them. They're being forced to go to this village, shoot this, do that, blow that up, but they don't know why. The schedules are take it on the life of its own. And I bring that back to the American corporation or, you know, leadership of every type. And I say, you know, many times schedule becomes an entity of its own. I got to, you know, even in my simple little life, I got to be here, do there, ride there, get there, do this other thing. I mean, it happens all the time. And what happens is if you don't know why you're

doing it and I know where I am and why I'm sitting here and what I'm doing and I know what I'm doing next and I care about it. But if I'm just going through the schedule, as many CEOs and leaders do, that produces burnout, that produces resentment, that produces, you know, a loss of the poetry, a loss of the inspiration. And that's always a warning sign that we're heading towards a moral crash of some kind that then destroys the company. So, yeah, I think it's extremely important that we remember why are we doing what we're doing? You know, one of my favorite images from an American movie is about a television network. And in the very first scene, we see the actress Holly Hunter, get up and try to cry. And you can't quite figure out why. And later you find out that she has said,

look, I see horrible things. And when I get up one morning I can't cry anymore, then I know my soul's in trouble, that I'm hardened of heart and I need to leave. And she does. She resigns when she can't cry anymore over what she's seen. Well, it's the same way with us. If you can't find the inspiration for what you're doing,

if you're sitting here, I'm not so much speaking to you, but if I'm just sitting here right now, and I'm just doing what I'm doing by rote and I'm like, please God, get this over with, let's just do it, let's just give you. I have no inspiration. I have no desire to touch lives.

I have no excitement. I have no energy for it. I have no sense of calling. We're heading towards burnout. out, we're heading towards stress, we're heading towards resentment, and that's when people start to medicate. And Medicaid is not just with little white pills. It can be, you know, with the woman we're not supposed to be with, or the chemicals we're not supposed to be shooting up with or drinking or whatever. And that's where you start getting in trouble. Yeah, I could not agree

more with that. All right, so we just kind of walk through some of the lessons of the age, and now we're going to talk about the tragic result. And you word this, losing the poetry. Yeah. Every time I talk to anybody who's had a leadership crash, what has happened. The big thing that's happened, whatever the other signs are, is that they have lost the poetry of what they do. And we were just talking about that, but I can take it larger. Everybody who does something for a long period of time, there was a moment when they got excited about it. There was a moment when they heard that professor talk about, who knows what, you know, business and the power of business to change a community, or make a difference in the third world, or what your gifts are. Somehow there was a moment when they

had the poetry of business or the poetry of leadership or the poetry of a church. Or the poetry of a church. or the poetry of, you know, a school, being an educator, whatever it was. And the art of leadership is to keep that sense of poetry, my word, that's my choice of word rather than inspiration, keep the sense of poetry of what you do. If I can't get up in the morning and say, you know what, next week, I get to get on an airplane and fly to Saudi Arabia and teach students in a country, by the way, most people can't even get into. If I can't get moved by that and get excited about that, if my family's not going, that's

awesome. Man, that's fantastic. And if we don't have that sense of the poetry of what I get to do, well, then you're just heading towards burnout. You're heading towards stress. You're just becoming robotic. And it's the robotic nature of the human soul, especially in men, that leads to these moral issues that cause destruction. It's really true. It is when we lose meaning. I hear this all the time. People talk about the why and you know why. And it's brilliant. It's a great question. I'm a professional question asking. You ought to be asking why. Right. But for the purpose of understanding, we as human beings, you and I have the same theology. We believe there's a creator who created us to do good works.

That's meaning. We lose meaning when we forget the why. And then it's just kind of, I'm wandering. Instead of wondering, what should I be doing next? Yes. What is the poetry of what you do? You might be sitting in a keyboard all day. You might be driving, even a forklift.

I know a guy who loves what he does because he drives a forklift for an organization and called Feed the Children. And so even though he basically works as a warehouse worker all day, you can look up sometimes at this guy and he's got tears coming down his eyes. Because this load that I've got in my great big old fortlift that I'm putting on this semi, you know, that's going to take care of kids in Appalachia or what have you. And he's just one of the most motivated guys I know. Well, if we can do that in the senior levels of leadership and then make it infectious,

you know, by inspiring everybody else with that same sense of poetry, that's the art of leadership. Well, folks, this is just a snippet of what Stephen Mansfield is going to teach at our 2018 Entree Leadership Summit. I'm so excited about it. It's going to be in San Antonio, Texas. We've told you about it, Ed Nausee. We'll tell you more about it, remind you. But you're going to be teaching on why leaders crash, and you just gave us again a nice overview.

It's going to be great stuff. And here's what I'm really excited about. So if you've been listening to this podcast for a while, and you've heard Stephen on the podcast before, you know that he and I are both history nerds. I want to be like Stephen when I grow up. Now, I'm younger than him, but we're not going to reveal any ages. But I love history. Easy.

I know, I know. But I love history. But this man has forgotten more about history than I've learned. And that's saying a lot because I am, you know, I'm higher up the ladder than most of you people. Okay, I don't mind telling you. You got game. I've got some serious history knowledge. Now, all that being said, on a recent podcast, I said, we are going to have a podcast hangout.

I just made it up because I'm on the mic. And they didn't edit it out. So it's happening and people are responding. What is this thing I'm talking about? For you podcast listeners that are coming to the summit in San Antonio, Texas, right across the street. And I mean, Stephen, right across the street. You can literally throw a rock from the door of Minger Bar and hit the sidewall of the alamo. And it's an easy throw.

Anyway, the point is that I revealed that, Theodore Roosevelt, one of the great American presidents, one of my heroes, recruited the Rough Riders, which was probably the most famous part of his life prior to the presidency. Anyway, he interviews these guys in this bar, which is fashioned after an English pub, and you can walk into it right now in San Antonio, Texas, and you feel like you've stepped back in the history. So I said, we're going to have a podcast hangout. So then Stephen Mansfield walks in the studio a little bit ago, and I find out that he's going to be speaking, and I was excited. Then I said, well, will you come hang out with us in the Minger Bar because I just assumed that you knew about it?

And of course you did. Of course I did. About Minger Bar. Oh, I knew about in the binger bar. Yeah, I didn't know you were gathering. I'm excited. And so then I said, will you give us a little history lesson or two or three, depending on how many beverages are passed around? And cigars will be had.

Beverages will be imbibed. But I want you to tease him a little bit. So you shared a little nugget of history about Teddy Roosevelt from his preschool days, essentially. Yeah. You were talking about the fact that you were with a friend up in New York and you were telling him, you know, Peter Roosevelt was from New York. And I said, by the way, a little tidbit. Roosevelt's on the great big building on a main avenue when Roosevelt was a little boy, five, six years old.

On a certain day, he went to the window, looked out the window, and looked down. And what he saw going by was the funeral procession of Abraham Lincoln. Unbelievable. And by the way, that kind of connection is amazing. And he said to his father, you know, I think maybe one day, I'd like to, if God will allow, I'd like to be a great president and do good in the world. Full circle for you, folks. two of the

buss, if you will, in the Mount Rushmore are Abraham Lincoln. Theater Roosevelt. Theodore Roosevelt. A full circle. A five-year-old looking down on a funeral procession

and they end up carved in America's most famous, I don't know if it's granite or rock or whatever. The point is, it's just really amazing. That's right. I love the connection. Oh, I know. One more for you history nerds.

This is completely off topic. This is a little bonus. When you read history and you realize it in the formation of our country, certainly the revolutionary time period, the independence period. It's amazing the personal connections. Many of you probably don't know a lot about Patrick Henry, but you've heard the phrase, give me liberty or give me death, and now it's kind of starting to seat back in your mind. When he gave that speech in St. John's Church in Richmond, Virginia,

a young law student from William and Mary was leaning on the doorpost of the church, Thomas Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson. Now that will blow your mind when the man who penned the Declaration of Independence. The third president of the United States is a law student at William and Mary

and he comes up because of the gathering there of the House of Burgesses. And he leans in on the doorpost and listens to one of the great speeches in America history. Unbelievable. I just shared something with you. You did not know. I did not know that.

It was worth coming today for that alone. I'm taking the rest of the day off. Somebody, I have managed to stump Stephen Mansfield, so I'm done for the rest of the day. Oh, that's easier than you know. That is easier than you know. The point is great connections in history. And you know what? Here's the point. You leaders have no idea how you may be changing history right now. Fun stuff. We appreciate your brother. It's going to be so fun in San Antonio. I'm looking forward to it so much.

Well, folks, I hope you enjoyed that. Things you need to know, our Entree leadership team is giving away the team communication guide. So we care as deeply about the health of your team as we do our team. And we're just been talking about leadership crashes, and a lot of that can be avoided if you are communicating properly and there is true, pure, healthy communication going on in your organization. You don't have a bunch of yes men and yes women. You've got people who will stick their finger in your face and go, you're wrong. Chump?

never that disrespectful, but in theory, that's what we're talking about. So, the team communication field guide, how to keep your team engaged and productive. There's so much more in this, again, giving you the playbook from Ramsey Solutions on the top methods for communicating well. A very clear list that you can consider and then apply. All right, so you don't want to miss this. Very easy to get. do it every episode, you can text the word communication to 33444. Communication to 33444, or we have a link in the show notes at entreleadership.com.

And hey, I want to remind you, I did mention that Stephen is going to teach on that, really unpack that in-depth at our Entree Leadership Summit. This is our crown jewel event. You hear me talk about it all the time, but it really is a lot of fun. And I also want to point out that on this podcast recently, I just threw it out there, that we should do a podcast meetup at the Minger Bar in San Diego, Antonio, Texas. This is one of the coolest places you've ever been in, and it's right across the street from the Alamo. So the Entry leadership team is going to help organize that and make that happen on the last night of summit. But if you want more details, what is this summit? Who are the speakers? It's unbelievable. Just email us. Will and Eric will take great care of you. The email is podcast at ontreleadership.com. Oh, my gosh, I just glanced at the calendar this coming weekend and into next week is the start of college football. Oh, ho. Ho! Ho! Good time. are here again.

Now, we're always having a good time here, but we certainly do love college football, and boy, I tell you, it couldn't be better timing next week, bringing back a regular guest of ours, John Gordon. He's got a new book out called The Power of Positive Leadership, and we're going to do a deep dive into some of the coaches that he has spent a lot of time with. These are men who have figured out how to create a winning culture and sustain a winning culture. When I say winning, we're talking championships. So you don't want to miss that. On behalf of Eric the producer, our engineer Will Rudder and the entire Entree leadership team, thank you so much for listening.

We'll talk with you again very soon.