Monthly Archives: February 2024

February 26, 2024

Dr. Daniel Lattimore: DEIA And How To Better Connect The Generations At Work [Episode 465]

The Voice of Leadership (Podcast & YouTube) /Dr. Karen Speaks Leadership (TV Show and iHeart Radio) | Dr. Daniel Lattimore | DEIA

The Voice of Leadership (Podcast & YouTube) /Dr. Karen Speaks Leadership (TV Show and iHeart Radio) | Dr. Daniel Lattimore | DEIA

 

Dr. Daniel Cruz Lattimore, an independent consultant and millennial leader, provides coaching, consultation, and assessment to executives and their teams in higher education, healthcare, and other organizational settings. His consulting emphasis is effective communication, purposeful diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility, organization development, and empathic leadership.

A graduate of the University of Memphis Counseling Psychology Doctoral program, Dr. Lattimore recently completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Cincinnati Veterans Affairs Medical Center. He also uses his creativity to innovate research with underrepresented populations.

Today, he speaks with Dr. Karen about workplace issues such as Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA), ways to connect the generations, and unique challenges for people of color.

Contact Dr. Lattimore at Daniel.c.lattimore@gmail.com or find him on LinkedIn under Daniel Cruz Lattimore.

Listen to the podcast here

 

Dr. Daniel Lattimore: DEIA And How To Better Connect The Generations At Work [Episode 465]

Dr. Daniel Cruz Lattimore, an independent consultant and millennial leader, provides coaching, consultation, and assessment to executives and their teams in higher education, healthcare, and other organizational settings.

We’re talking about how to better connect the generations in the workplace. The workplace is multi-generational, and often, the older generation speaks a different language from the younger generations. What can all the generations do to better connect and bridge the generation gaps, and what are the advantages of working together? My guest is a millennial leader who has valuable perspectives on how to better connect the generations and also understanding the unique challenges for people of color in the workplace.

Dr. Daniel Cruz-Lattimore specializes in organization development, interprofessional team-based care, and social networking in education, healthcare, and organizational settings. He graduated from the University of Memphis Counseling Psychology doctoral program and recently completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Cincinnati Veterans Affairs Medical Center. His mission is to encourage relationships through compassion and strategy and use his creativity and consideration to innovate research with underrepresented populations.

As an independent consultant, he also provides coaching, consultation, and assessment to executive leaders and their teams on effective communication, purposeful diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility, and empathetic leadership. He is passionate about helping individuals, groups, communities, and organizations thrive. When he’s not working, Daniel engages in pro bono services to local community-led initiatives in the greater Cincinnati area. He also enjoys improvisational theater and time at home with his wife and two cats. Welcome, Dr. Daniel to the Voice of Leadership and to Dr. Karen Speaks Leadership.

Thanks for having me, Dr. Karen.

It’s a delight to have you here. I know that you have a lot of great information to share with the community. I’m going to start out with just our first question. Are you ready?

I’m ready.

The Power Of Organizational Development For A Thriving Workplace

Dr. Daniel, you’ve worked at at least three different VA hospitals, Memphis, Iowa City, and most recently Cincinnati. As part of the time at Cincinnati VA, you worked in their National Center for Organization Development. What is organization development first? Tell us that. What was the nature of the organization development work that you did while at the VA?

Thank you for the question. We’ll first address the organization development. That is really highlighting an organization’s techniques or structure as it pertains to organizational change. It’s really the inner mechanisms that could look like key work, that could look like selection and hiring processes, that could look like just trying to get a pulse on how the group is doing, how your organization is doing, and its work groups. How its leadership is connecting with its managers or with its front-facing team. It’s really all-encompassing.

Leadership Challenges: Understanding The Generational Divide

You mentioned that organization development is about the processes and systems that are in place and particularly during a change initiative, or something of that sort. Tell us a little bit about the leadership challenges that you have seen, particularly between the generations, whether it be at the VA or even other work settings where you may have worked. What was going on between the generations and what was causing some of those divides?

What a number of organizations might experience is the communication of leadership, of its vision, of its mission, and of its values. When you’re in that onboarding process, is that conveyed to the employees that you’re onboarding is that embedded in all of the tasks, any projects that are being done amongst the team is that transparent, is that a way that people can connect it without having to do much mental math? I think what happens in terms of problems is that it becomes a disconnect. People don’t see how their tasks are meaningful to the organization or they don’t see the meaning in it for themselves. A lot of it really comes down to the communication of what’s being done and doesn’t connect.

One of the pieces that you’re talking about is that sometimes maybe the generations might communicate in different ways. Of course, whether you’re dealing with a multi-generational workforce or not, communicating in such a way that people see themselves and how they fit into the bigger picture is important. Say a little bit more about the generations themselves and how they might communicate and maybe sometimes be like ships passing through the night. They might miss each other because of different communication styles.

What we’ve seen from more seasoned leaders is that the work is the value. That just hard work might be the value and don’t you get merit, don’t you get a sense of purpose from the work? What we’re seeing amongst just millennials or even Gen Z is that they’re hoping to see more of a connection to what their values are, to see if they can bring authenticity to the workspace. I’ve seen a number of organizations ask for their authentic selves, but what they really mean to say is that they want it as it serves the larger mission and value of the organization. That might be a piece of the passing shifts you’re talking about is that we might be using similar words, different connotations.

Millennials or even Gen Zs are hoping to see more of a connection to what their values are, to see if they can bring authenticity to the workspace. Click To Tweet

That’s a great one because in terms of the older generation, which I always refer to as the baby boomer generation, which is my generation, but even I think X is getting up there too as well. A lot of the baby boomers are gone from the workplace and those of us who remain are pretty much older folks for sure. In any case, but what I’ll say about this is that younger leaders, you’re saying they want to connect in terms of the purpose or meaning to their own purpose and meaning, not just to the work itself and to the organization. Say a little bit more about what younger leaders are looking for and what they want and maybe how the older generation can talk about these issues in a way that connects better.

I know that not all leaders are the same and that’ll sit across the board for seasoned leaders and maybe up-and-coming leaders. More oftentimes than not, I think we’re looking for what is the need that we’re trying to fulfill in this moment. If people see that more external motivator that, “We’re here to get the wicket or here to get the cogs.” It’s not tied to a larger sense of purpose or meaning that it fulfills you internally or even advocates for the people it works for that might be a disconnect.

When you think more broadly, what else do younger leaders want when they’re in the workplace? They clearly want some sense of meaning and purpose. What else do they want?

Meaning and purpose. I also go back to connection and connectivity. I have had a lot of life events that have, I would say, erred on the side of being siloed or disconnected from one another. Here we are talking on an online platform and we are connected and this is getting the job done. Also, other facets of connectivity that cannot always be met through a scheduled session or meeting. What are some of the ways that season leaders are communicating that connection is important?

How much investment do you have into my personal life as well as my professional life? We know that people are spending at least eight hours on work or work-related activities per day. They’re actually spending time away from their families or outside of their personal spaces. They could be even at home but if I’m locked away in a corner for eight hours or so, might need to find that work-life balance more. I really think leaders now could at least be transparent on ways that they are considering work-life balance and work-life integration.

I think that’s really significant. You’re saying that in essence, the younger generations are looking at life more holistically. They’re not just a person at work doing work and they want the workplace, their leaders to care about their whole lives, whether that be work-life balance, something that might be going on in their personal lives, and the meaning that we already talked about. There’s a deeper, if you will, connection, a way of relating to people that’s important from what you’re saying to the younger generations.

Although it’s great to be on Zoom, there are other ways they want to connect besides that as well. It’s a bit more intimate along the way. When you think about it, what is it that drives the younger generations? When you think about clients you’ve seen, people you saw in your other workplaces, what is it that drives them crazy, the younger generations about the baby boomer leadership?

I say it drives them crazy. I think there is listening to understand, and then there’s listening to respond. More leaders are starting to open themselves more to a vulnerable space or that empathic space of connection. Sometimes when we consider factors like employee voice, and then there is no voice, so you might see a survey for your company.

It’s like, how are you communicating that you are implementing that feedback because you might see dips and you might be scratching your head to say, “What’s going on?” If people have a voice, what’s going on and then nothing becomes of it or you’re not seeing that change or not seeing it addressed in real-time. It’s possible that people are listening to respond rather than understand. I know it’s been a headache for several leaders that I’ve consulted with. I’ll probably stick with that answer.

One of the things I’m hearing in what you said is that younger generations like to participate really in the work environment and to shape some of what happens. They don’t want to be in the old school thing of like seen and not heard and they want their voice to matter. If they’re recommending something or suggesting a way forward, they at least want to hear back about how that input was considered. How it was implemented or if it wasn’t implemented, maybe some of the reasons why it wasn’t implemented. They don’t want to just be in a black hole where somebody in the corner office made some decisions and never reported back about what they heard and what they did.

I have a mentor that talks about a thermometer in the room. He says, “Let’s say it’s 70 degrees. In the room, you have someone that’s saying it’s too hot. You have someone saying it’s too cold and all of that can be data, right? It’s not that you want to change the temperature, but you’re at least getting how people are responding to it.” One of those kinds of flagships of good leadership are what are you doing about it? You might not have changed the temperature because you had to land somewhere and there was no making everyone happy, but at least illuminate people to your process because if you don’t say anything on it, people just see that you didn’t act.

The Value Of Younger Generations: Fresh Perspectives And Adaptability

That conveys a different message than what you want to have conveyed. They’ll make up their own stories about why you didn’t act. It won’t even be close to what the truth is in the situation. Since we’ve been talking about younger generations, what is it that the younger generations are bringing to the workplace that’s valuable? Let’s find out what that is. What have you seen?

I think with younger generations, they are interacting with this new world, whether that’s through technology, whether that’s through new laws that are passed. I’m in my early thirties when I hear things about social security and things that are on my schedule for another 30 years, all I can do is sit and watch and hope that the people in place will leave me something that I can jump into. It’s a want to be involved.

It’s a want to have a voice. It’s a want to say like, “I’m a part of this too.” Whether that be my identity as part of the company, whether that be my identity as a family person. It’s just that I matter and I hold space. If leaders can make time for that platform in space so that they’re listening to their younger counterparts or even maybe adjacent counterparts, that is a flagship for what we see as organizations that thrive.

Let’s say a little bit more about what it is that the younger generations are bringing. They are looking at the new world through the lenses of different tools, more techy type tools, for example, and they’re in different places and spaces, so they can see where the market is moving. Talk a little bit more about some maybe specific examples of what they’re bringing to the workplace. That somebody like me, I might not see it. I might not be paying attention to it because I may not be on those same tools or be in those same spaces.

When we talked about organization development, we talked about organizational change. I think that leaders who have established practices are not there because of their strengths. They probably have things that they’ve learned. They have things that they wouldn’t do again. They have things that help them to build and grow. I think with younger generations, there is that willingness. There’s that willingness to build and grow. Additionally, if you’re wanting a sense of legacy, you want to in continuation, you’re going to want someone who experiences those changes in real-time.

You’re going to want someone who knows how to interact with a younger fan base, a younger customer base. You’re going to want someone who has a different point of view than you because that has been proven to cultivate growth and expansion, which I would imagine is what leaders want. Now, if you don’t want that, if you want things to stay the same, then I would say, don’t engage the younger core. If you like things just the way they are, that’s what it will be. I think there’s a lot of merit and growth in interacting with younger generations.

There's a lot of merit and growth in interacting with younger generations. Click To Tweet

As you were talking about, if you don’t want things to change and to grow and be different, I was thinking about the buggy whip organization, because after a while, people no longer need buggy whips. You got to move with the times, if you will. One of the things you’re saying is that younger people are willing to learn, they’re willing to grow, to step into these new places, to look down the path, to see what might be coming that maybe someone else might not see what’s coming down the pike and therefore wouldn’t prepare for it because they’re not looking at it.

They don’t have a line of sight on it. You’re also saying that there are younger customers in businesses and having someone who can relate to the younger customers is also critical and important. Share maybe Daniel some examples with us about what you have seen, let’s say in the workplace about let’s say some younger generation people that really did make a difference. If they hadn’t been there, the organization would have missed it.

I would say one organization brought up questions of how to increase with customer base, and how to increase its membership. The board consisted of, let’s say on average people who were, I’ll say 55 and up. They were scratching their heads, “How do we address this?” Everyone on that board likely had twenty-plus years of experience and was saying, “This is how I would tackle increasing membership, increasing our revenue, our customer base.” 1 or 2 people suggested, “How about we get some younger minds into the space into our board meetings or what have you?

As you said earlier, we don’t know. We might be having blind spots.” What happened was you had two people be brought on at the student level. They mentioned just bringing in a wealth of knowledge about existing social media platforms, but also that they themselves are taking share in the services, but just from a student level. That gives you insight into what are these students experience. Everyone on the board had been a student at one point, but what might’ve differed was about 40 years, just understanding that those trends can differ.

If you can align, what your purpose is and then be open to hearing the voices of students that you bring in these new ideas. That organization saw a significant percentage of increased membership from their students alone. While it might not have increased the revenue as they would have thought, they started to focus more on what is the longevity of our organization. What might that look like for programming in the future?

Where might be able to partner with students in a way that still gives them pays them their worth, but it might not look like capital. It might look like it’s opportunities for exposure. Now you also get to use that as part of your own branding that you are open, that you’re increasing your sense of accessibility across your population. That you’re increasing your sense of belonging.

The example that you’re sharing is about a professional association. It’s always a challenge for associations and thinking about membership. How do they remain relevant? How do they keep the members they have, but attract new members and maybe new members from different demographics? What you’re saying is that bringing the younger voices into the room brought up new ways to reach people and to connect so that those other demographics could be more easily reached. If I had been in the room, I might be talking about email and there may not be one email or maybe I’d be talking about landline phones if not paying attention to landline phones.

There’s a very different way of communicating and connecting in the different generations and having the people right there at the table. They know what those ways are top of mind for them. Rather than guessing, having the people at the table could make a difference for the future is what I hear you saying. You also in your case served as a community domain leader in that organization. You really had to think about how do you connect with people in the community. What did you learn about that and what did you see in that role?

As it serves for the community domain, I really thought to ask all of our members what was important to them and just by attending these sessions from people of all ages and creeds. What was the need that needed to be filled by our board, by our division? I think by and large, it was one resource people are always open to being lifelong learners and resources, these resources might have existed, but where they connected to them, did they know where to find these resources? That would be a short answer of, “Check this website or stay plugged into our Listserv.”

What we were also finding was a sense of connection is that a lot of people are navigating this road into maybe constructing their own businesses, feeling like it might be too late to transition into consulting psychology. What we can do is connect you to other people who are doing this work. People who have similar interests. That does not feel like it’s burdened so much onto your shoulders to figure out but to understand that you have a community of people who scare that mission and vision and might just approach it in a different way. Rather than saying, “But we said and.”

Mentorship And Legacy: The Benefits Of Cross-Generational Collaboration

I love that said and recognizing that if you have a diversity of people in the organization, you really can connect them so that they can partner together for mutual benefits. Suppose you’re really looking at one of let’s say older generation members of the association who’s now connecting to a younger member who’s trying to build their practice or business. We can see very easily the advantage for the younger person because they’re going to learn what to do, some landmines to avoid and so on. What about for that older member? What might be some of the advantages for them and making these kinds of connections?

It really ties into the value that older leaders receive from being in the profession. Got to talk with some students about what I consider art. The art being when you’re up and coming, you’re hungry, you’re trying to make your way, you’re trying to get your feet so that you can make the money and get your position. Once you’ve gotten the position, once you’ve gotten the money, what else is there?

You might feel fulfilled. You might feel some step back from, “I did those things. What else is there about? Why did I choose this? What’s the why for me?” What you’re alluding to Dr. Karen is really mentorship. It’s a sense of being able to pass this on to future generations. It’s legacy. It’s a sense of I’ve put in this work and I want to share it with someone because again, I think with a sense of community, it can feel isolating. Ultimately, I feel that we all have that human capacity for connection.

We all have that human capacity for connection. Click To Tweet

You’re talking about something very important to those of us who are in the older generations because we know we’re not going to be in the workplace forever. It’s just a matter of a few short years in our cases before we’ll be out. I think that the legacy piece is important and the knowledge transfer to somebody who can carry the baton onto the next X number of years. Particularly, I’ll share this from a personal perspective.

I’m particularly interested in the consulting psychologists who have a Christian perspective, which is a smaller group and those are people who I’m prioritizing to mentor going forward so that therefore they have what I didn’t have. There were no mentors back in my day for going in that direction. In fact, people say, “What? Christian psychologists, that doesn’t even go together.” It was a hard way to go back in the day. I’d like to be able to share with those who are wanting to do that now going forward.

Legacy is important to those of us who are exiting sooner out of the workplace. Thank you for even mentioning that. We’ve been talking a little bit about what the issues are. What else would you like to add about what either the younger generations could do to connect more, let’s say corporate settings, to add value? Walue that the organization would see as value. What can they do to facilitate, let’s say, greater and deeper connection or anything else more that you think the older generation can also do to facilitate connection?

I first start with younger generations. I think that oftentimes because there can be a power dynamic in the room younger generations are tending to look to make their way or make their space so that insinuates that they are on the outside looking in and trying to get in. I would first advocate for younger generations to really own what they bring to the table. Just learning to advocate or market themselves.

If I cannot see the value in myself, I don’t know how I can convey that to others. I see it from experience, it’s a thing a lot of imposter syndrome you fight at first, but once you do a lot of self-awareness and a lot of understanding of why you do it, you can bring that version of you to the forefront. In turn, I would say for older or seasoned leaders what is it that they’re wanting to bring? If you can convey that you’re open to hearing other voices or that you’re wanting to hear these fresh perspectives, it’s almost like a manifestation.

If you say it enough times and believe it enough times that it might exist in your space but we cannot get past it, no one can read minds. It’s that you have to say it and you have to be transparent with that message across your organization, across your work group, that you’re looking for this, you’re wanting to hear more perspectives, you’re wanting to involve folks. I think that’s a two-way street in communication.

There’s the openness to hear the new perspective and inviting the perspective. There’s also for the younger generation of people to recognize they have something to offer and to stand in the power of that, not hide out if you will, along the way. I’m going to add another little tidbit that I think can be helpful and for the younger generations to think about in the workplace. If let’s say you have a baby boomer boss, they’re caring about something that’s related to the mission of that organization.

Baby Boom was very work-focused. That’s the heritage that we have. I think if whatever you’re suggesting and recommending as a younger generation team member, find a way to demonstrate and connect that new idea with what that baby boomer person really is trying to make happen. When you are able to say, “I see that you want to do X. This is what’s really important to you.” Now you show how your A, B, and C gets to their X.

That gets the baby boomer’s attention because they know that you’re on the same wavelength. You may be using different tools, but they see the alignment in wanting to go in a similar direction or even if it’s a different direction. You have a reason for that different direction that you’re able to articulate that still achieves the end goal for that baby boomer person. Whether it be increasing customers or increasing members of the professional association or whatever it might be. I’ll just fill that in.

Well said. If our younger generations can discern for themselves what their value is and what they get out of working or what they hope to accomplish, if they can identify where those overlaps are, I think there could be that willingness from the seasoned leader to work collaboratively on this mission to share that vision. Again, I think we use these in the caveats that we have a leader that’s open to hearing it. We have a younger worker that’s open to collaboration. Sometimes it works. It happens where they’re not in alignment and we don’t want to try to use an icebreaker or team building exercise when people are very daunch into the value that they have. Sometimes it’s needing to let that go but it just comes to expertise and listening to your intuition to decide.

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, And Accessibility (DEIA): Creating A Welcoming Workplace

You have to use the right tool at the right time. Sometimes pre-work is necessary. You cannot always jump in at the deep end of the pool. We might have to start in the three-feet water for a little bit in order to get up to the 10-foot or the 12-foot. Absolutely. Dr. Daniel, you and I were talking about diversity and diversity work in organizations. I can remember back in the day when we just had one letter, that letter was D and it was diversity. Now it’s diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility. Break that down for us. What do those words mean? Tell us a little bit about what you’ve worked on in the DEIA space.

When we talk about diversity, it’s acknowledging the individual pieces that make up an organization, so person A, person B, person C, person D. They might all come from different backgrounds and different creeds. They might work for the same organization, but it’s a recognition that they’re four different people. When we talk about equity, we’re talking about, yes, you might think of a hiring practice that you’ve brought them all on, that they’re working for your organization. Maybe C had to work twice as hard to get to the same place that A did.

When we talk about diversity, it’s acknowledging the individual pieces that make up an organization. Click To Tweet

That’s where equity comes in. It’s understanding that with their backgrounds or understanding what might be some of the barriers that some folks came in with that others did not. More often times than not, the example is with race. If you look into the percentages of what someone who identifies as Black or African-American is making or the same job as maybe a White counterpart, is that an equal standing? Is it unequal? That’s something that we have to take a look at. That’s what we talk about equity is just being aware of what people are bringing in and their experiences.

When we talk about inclusion, it really gives a kinship to the sense of voice we talked about. If we’re all in the room, man understanding that everyone in the room could get voice to what this idea or thought process is just as high as the head of a board could be or head of an organization and some of the youngest members. It could be someone with 30 years of experience, it could be a student, it could be someone early in their career but understanding that you’re wanting to hear all the voices in the room. Simply put, one person cannot know everything.

We all have our blind spots. When we talk about the A, accessibility, just understanding that some people have areas to even getting to that space. A little different from the equity piece, but understanding that if there are routes that you might take, other people might take a separate route. One example of that is being the presence of an elevator. If we have a meeting on the fourth floor and the elevator is broken and someone is needing that elevator to get to the fourth floor, who can make that space and who cannot?

That’s just an example of consideration, or does everyone have accessibility? Even on this Zoom call, this could be a way that if people have standing Wi-Fi if they have a laptop with a good screen and good lighting, then we can talk accessibility across the board, but just being mindful of making sure everyone can access these resources.

Good. What are some examples about the DEIA work that you have done in organizations. Give us a story of something, an example.

I think it really comes in terms of advocacy for hiring and selection processing, I did work within higher education and consultation. What it looked like was they were looking to hire another professor for their team and just looking into traditionally what the makeup of the workgroup of our college. We’re looking to increase hiring or diversity within our hiring practices.

That can be an in-depth look at what does selection looks like. What does retention look like of people who might identify as minority or underrepresented? What policies and procedures exist for that faculty, for that group? What does the school say about it? What does the university say about its retention and its mission and its value? Do the actions align with the mission and vision?

If we’re looking into, “We’ve not had someone who identifies as a minority, as a professor for the past ten years.” If the people that we’ve hired are not staying longer than two, then we might need to look into what those hiring practices look like. What the culture look like? What our organization’s mission and values are? Just revisiting those. What does leadership look like? I think that is one example of the DEIA work.

What if the organization says back to you in the example you mentioned like it’s been ten years or people are leaving and say, “We have our practices in place and our objective is to get the best people. We’re using tools, their state-of-the-art. These are the people who are coming.” Suppose they say that.

I have heard that. I think it’s a revisit to how dedicated are you to truly making this a diverse, equitable, inclusive, and

accessible space. Some people do say the buck stops here. We’ve done everything. You’ve looked into our practices, but bring it back to, we don’t know what we don’t know. We all have blind spots, but sometimes it can be who organizations to look externally.

Sometimes they say, “We’ve used internal practices.” If this is something that you’re dedicated to and you do and you want to make part of your mission and vision, it might look to be an external investment. Just understanding getting with self and understanding or asking, “What is my own level of self-awareness? Have I done any outside work to continue my own competency in these areas? Am I comfortable where I am?”

That’s an answer too. If you are comfortable where you are, then people are fine leaving it at that. I would say if people wanted to continue to understand more about making this a more diverse, equitable, inclusive, accessible space, you do need to focus even on the I part of including more voices that are not similar to your own.

The Power Of Diversity: Why It Matters For Business Success

That’s a very good point. The point is that it may look to you like you’re using the best tools and that you’re doing everything possible. However, there may be things you don’t know, and there could be some other tools out there. It’s interesting thinking about it in that way because people don’t always see themselves in the mirror as they are. I guess I’ll put it this way. They may not understand the value of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Just say a word about that. Why is it important for me to have this diverse organization? What am I going to gain as the business executive with a diverse group as opposed to maybe a group that’s less diverse?

I think there is an internal and external answer and I will expand. Externally, people will say, “What? Does it matter? What this component is.” We are seeing more and more companies. We’re seeing the effects of them not investing in diversity, equity and inclusion. We see news stories come out about people who are underrepresented either walking away from their position or bringing up all kinds of liability because they didn’t feel like it was an inclusive space.

It wasn’t DEIA-aligned. That’s one reason is for the press. That’s why I say it’s external because it’s something that is an outside force. Now internally, it’s going to require some vulnerability. I would dip into the empathic leader. If you want to be growing, evolving if that is a value of yours constantly grow. People don’t look at to themselves and say, “I’ve done all the growing I can do. There’s nothing else that anyone can teach me.” It’s a question of, “What don’t I know? What might else be out there? Why would it be important for me to do DEIA?”

I don’t know if I can give an answer to folks except to say that would be an internal process. I know that a lot of what you and I talk about is just becoming lifelong learners. A lot of self-awareness. Knowing why we do the things we do, whether it’s faith-led and faith-motivated, or if it’s just that growing is one of your values is that I would challenge, or gently challenge folks to ask that question of themselves, why might this be important?

I know, a lot of business executives, they care about the success of the company. Let’s say my company is successful so far and we’re financially where we want to be, we’ve got customers that we love and everything’s going great. What do I need diversity for? We’re pretty much 98% White and then it’s okay.

I sitting here as a Black male couldn’t tell you that your strategy isn’t working or it’s not that it’s the difference seems to be successful by those measures of revenue or through keeping your business alive. I would then ask, “In what capacity would they seek this out? This is my own personal thought process. If people are seeking these resources, they’re watching a Dr. Karen episode and where they can make space for young folks. It’s that they’re open to the process.

They’re open to knowing what I might like, “Dr. Daniel, I don’t know about it.” I won’t hold it against you if you don’t know about it. I appreciate you coming to the space to educate yourself further on it. I commend you. I think that what gets in the way of people moving forward is this anxious mindset that they’re going to get it wrong. I would say that it’s not about getting it wrong, but it’s that you try. Not that you tried, but that you are trying. It’s that you’re wanting to understand. You’re wanting to learn.

What gets in the way of people moving forward is this anxious mindset that they're going to get it wrong. It's not about getting it wrong, but it's that you are trying Click To Tweet

In psychology, there is this principle that we have with kids or babies and maybe those who are outside of psychology, if I hide my face from a baby, they cannot see it. We might play peekaboo and we know that the face is there. The baby might not. At some level, isn’t it possible that there are things that we cannot see, but they still exist? I think that it really pulls on that curiosity, that willingness to learn, willingness to grow.

What you’re saying now makes me think about this reality. Although I’m doing very well in my business, this 98% right today, what I don’t know is to what extent that will continue into tomorrow. I have to be willing to look at the future and will I continue to be able to attract all the talent I want to attract? Will I be able to continue to get all the customers that I want doing what I’m doing today? Maybe I need to that curiosity you’re talking about. Maybe I need to tap into it because there’s probably something I don’t know that would make me even more successful tomorrow. It’s being willing to consider, that could I be missing something. By the time I figure it out, it might be too late to turn the train around, so to speak.

For sure. I mean, it’s a risk. There’s a lot of risk. There’s a lot of unknown leaders often have to make that decision of, do I stay, do I keep things the same or do I look to change, I look to evolve. Do I look to grow? It is something that leaders have to weigh out for themselves, for the good of their company. It comes to that risk and reward. Maybe this does tap into serving more than a homogenous group or a group that’s very similar. Maybe there is some merit in expansion and looking at ourselves in a different way or reinventing our brand.

Additional Challenges For Young People Of Color In The Workplace

I want to get to something before we end, when we’re talking about the generations earlier and the different generations, what about people of color who are in the younger generation, what additional challenges or issues might they face also in dealing with the baby boomer ex-generation bosses and so on? What other layer might also be there?

Younger generations are not without looking at our steamed older seasoned mentors. We see how you operated and we say, “There’s honor. There might be respect for the way they did it. It may be not that long ago that you went your own way. You did your own thing.” I think for younger leaders of color, there’s just a recognition that we want to do things our way. We want to be self-starters or we want to continue that process.

It might not look like the way you did it, but the roots and the bones are still there. I think of like dance crazes now, people are putting all kinds of things together, but there are also TikToks of older generations saying, “That’s not we call this. It’s the same thing. It’s just got a different twist.” I think we’re a lot similar in ways and people give credit for and we just have to honor the growth process that we’re looking for change. We’re looking to have something that we can take a stake in, make our own.

The corporate executives who may have younger generation people who are also people of color in the organization, what else do they need to be mindful of that those individuals may be experiencing that’s even different from their younger generation white counterparts?

Something that we could get people into is that concept of microaggression. We talk about historical when we think of racism, we think of maybe an over blatant act that is discriminatory based off of someone’s race or their gender, etc. When we talk microaggression, it’s that it’s this more nuanced way of existence, or it might be this nuance messaging that’s not still overt. If you have a policy that talks about hair, that’s one that we’ve seen is that you have to have your hair in a professional space because it conveys a certain message to customers.

It’s just being able to question that and say, “Does someone’s hair really take away from a messaging or am I willing to have that conversation because this is how they’ve chosen to express themselves? Does that expression sit outside of the values of the company? Does it throw off the mission and vision because they decided to wear it in a natural pro or to wear it bravely?”

I speak mostly off of African-American culture because that’s where I come from but just an understanding that there are different walks. There are different experiences between the two. I would say like a good captain-engaged leader would understand back to that there’s a person A, person B, person C, and person D that people have different experiences. Just maybe being open to the question of what are these different experiences of my team.

One of the things I’m hearing is that a person of color might face that the organization has already defined professional as excluding something that is natural and common to them, whether it be like I’m wearing my hair in locks or this is in a locked setting. What if I came to work and they said, “We don’t allow locks whatever.” Again, it’s the subtlety of how a majority perspective can have people thinking that one thing is professional and another thing it’s not. That may not be true. You may have to question some of those assumptions is what I’m hearing from that example. That’s a very good example about something different that people might have to deal with that the White counterparts don’t have to deal with. Yeah, absolutely.

An example I could give real quick is, if a leader decided to give their team a toiletry bag and the toiletry bag had mouthwash, toothbrush, you name it, a fingernail clipper, and then also a comb. You might think, “This is a nice gift or gesture to give to all my people, to people on my team, but is this one of the fine-toothed combs or is this a pick? I don’t know if the small comb would work with my hair, but if you had something that was considerate of my hairstyle, or if you asked me, then that might convey that you’re at least considering how I might be different than my other counterparts.”

That’s a really good example actually, about the comb. The first thing I’m thinking about is, “Is there any lotion in that thing?” Certainly, as African-American people, that’s important to us, but other people might not need it. You know what I’m saying? Just to be considerate. I won’t take too much time with this, but I know that when I was at West Point and the women were at the Academy at the time and still in relatively small numbers and they would receive their little toiletry kit at the beginning when they checked in and it had an athletic supporter in there which they didn’t need.

Some things they did need were not in the bag. When I was there in my role as the psychologist for the cadets, we addressed that issue and made some changes. Let’s just put it that way. That’s a really good example of how not considering the different needs of the diverse people who are in your organization.

If I may point out with that example, you not only spoke to the gender differences but also being the level of a cadet to your superior. I think that’s a great example of how younger generations can add to the effectiveness of the organization.

Daniel, how can people get ahold of you? Suppose they want to know more about this subject or engage you to help them with what’s going on in their organization? How can they reach you?

That’s a great question, Dr. Karen. First I would say they can find me through my email, which is my first name, Daniel.C.Lattimore@gmail.com. They could also find me on LinkedIn under Daniel Cruz Latimore. Dr. Karen is a connection so you can start with her.

Final Thoughts: Embracing Diversity And Fostering Connection

Absolutely and it’ll definitely be in our show notes and Cruz is Cruz in case people want to know because it’s more than one way to go up with the Cruz. What additional words of wisdom Dr. Daniel do you want to leave with my community of executive business leaders and please include any final recommendations for current and future readers of this episode. What do you want them to take away and to remember?

First, I just want to express gratitude for reading. I think oftentimes we look for the now what instead of sitting with the just what. Thank you for giving this a space and platform. I would recommend to folks to just really sit with what is the need that they’re trying to fill. If you can start there, whether it’s a self-need or a need of the organization, that will help you be able to identify what it is that you need to fill that need. Additionally, I would say to allow yourself grace in this process that it is something that we’re growing competency in. It’s not something we become fully competent in, and it’s not something that it’s too late to try. Just a willingness, some grace, and just being able to sit with self.

Thank you very much, Dr. Daniel. I think you’ve issued an invitation for people to consider what maybe they don’t consider every day. That’s an important perspective as well. We’re going to close with a reading from First Corinthians, the 12th chapter, starting with verse 15, “If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I’m not of the body?” Is it therefore not of the body? If the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I’m not of the body?” Is it therefore not of the body? If the whole body were an eye, where would be the hearing?

If the whole were hearing, where would be the smelling? Now God has set the members, each of them in the body, just as he pleased. If they were all one member, where would the body be? Now indeed there are many members, yet one body, and the eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you.” Nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” No, much rather those members of the body that seem to be weaker are necessary. Those members of the body which we think to be less honorable, on these we bestow greater honor.

Our unpresentable parts have greater modesty, but our presentable parts have no need. God composed the body, having given greater honor to the part which lacks it that there should be no schism in the body, but that the members should have the same care for one another.” In a way, this is a picture of the church, and all the gifts that God has put in the church through different individual people. There’s a principle that also applies to what we’ve been talking about in terms of diversity of generations, and diversity of background in an organization. We all have a role.

We all collectively together are better together than we are by ourselves and because I’m not like you or you’re not like me, doesn’t mean we don’t have value. We all have value and when we bring it together, just what we can do. That’s what this segment is about. Think about your organization and what you can do with all the generations engaged and interacting together. All the different ethnic backgrounds engaged and working together you will be rock stars because your body is whole and not rejecting another piece of the body. Thank you for being here and we’ll see you next time.

Spirit Wings Kids Foundation

This is Dr. Karen here and I want to share some important insights with you about Spirit Wings Kids Foundation, a 501c3 organization that’s doing wonders across the globe and especially in Uganda. I have with me Donna Johnson, who’s the founder of Spirit Wings Kids and a member of the board. She’s going to tell us about the permaculture farm that they have started. Donna, tell us all about it.

Thank you, Dr. Karen. For decades, we’ve been supporting the orphanage and family network in Uganda. In 2018, my son is a permaculturist and we had acres that we dedicated to his planting. It was just amazing. He also taught them how to do permaculture. It’s flourishing. In fact, during the pandemic, it saved lives. 203 families were fed during the pandemic. It’s such a miracle that God just called us to plant that garden at the time that we did.

Thank you so much, Donna. Thank you so much for your work in Uganda and a couple of other things I want people to know as a permaculture farm is self-contained in many ways, depending on how they’re growing the crops. You don’t have to use pest control. You don’t need fertilizer. It’s a very sustainable way to provide food for the community. That’s a blessing. If you want to be a part of this wonderful work out there, 100% of all of your donation goes to the people in Uganda to help feed them and their families. Go to SWKids.Foundation and give. Make a difference in the world. Thank you for doing so.

 

Important Links

 

 

February 20, 2024

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February 19, 2024

Giji Dennard: What Corporate Executives Need To Know About Father-Child Relations [Episode 463]

The Voice of Leadership (Podcast & YouTube) /Dr. Karen Speaks Leadership (TV Show and iHeart Radio) | Giji Dennard | Corporate Executives

The Voice of Leadership (Podcast & YouTube) /Dr. Karen Speaks Leadership (TV Show and iHeart Radio) | Giji Dennard | Corporate Executives

 

Fathers affect how their sons and daughters show up at work and also how they relate to their own children. Giji Mischel Dennard, the CEO of Well Fed Resources, articulates a definition of the Father’s role that builds on the strengths and gifts men already use in their corporate jobs. She expands the definition of “Provider” to include more than financial provision.

Giji debuted as a voice in the fatherlessness movement in 2012 after publishing the first edition of “Hungry for Wholeness: A Call to Pursue Healing & Restoration in Your Father-Child Relationship.”  She was also the opening keynote speaker for the inaugural Father-Shift Conference. In today’s episode she shares her insights about Father-Child relationships from personal experience, her research, and her consulting work with sons and daughters. She invites fathers to conduct a “Benefit Analysis” and to experience the ROI from stepping up to Biblical Fatherhood. Giji speaks with Dr. Karen about the role of fathers in identity development, unconditional acceptance, achievement, honor, and mentoring their children.

Contact Giji Dennard at Well Fed Resources.

Listen to the podcast here

 

Giji Dennard: What Corporate Executives Need To Know About Father-Child Relations [Episode 463]

Many successful male executives have profound stories of challenges in their father-son relationships. It’s as if their great corporate success is a way to prove their value and worthiness to fathers who were distant, unsupportive, and sometimes abusive. In other cases, fathers were physically and emotionally absent. All of these scenarios affect how sons and daughters show up at work. Some of the most tyrannical and difficult bosses have adopted their interaction patterns from their difficult fathers.

Our special guest shares her insights about father-child relationships from personal experience, her research, and her consulting work with sons and daughters. How do fathers impact their children? How do adult children relate to their children, given their father-child experiences of origin? What are the implications for business executives?

Father-Child Relationships & Executive Success

Our topic is How Father-Child Relationships Impact the Success and Failure of Corporate Executives. Giji Mischel Dennard, my special guest, is the CEO of Well Fed Resources. Her areas of personal development expertise include father-child relationships, identity cultivation, effective communication, and kingdom living. She debuted as a voice in the fatherless movement in 2012 after publishing the first edition of Hungry for Wholeness: A Call to Pursue Healing & Restoration in Your Father-Child Relationship. She was also the opening keynote speaker for the inaugural Father Shift conference.

Giji speaks before corporate executives, federal policymakers, college students, church congregations, radio listeners, and nonprofit volunteers. Her compelling desire is to see everyone within her sphere of influence break through impasses to achieve their full potential. Her focus is 360-degree wellness in spirit, soul, body, and business. From state champion orator in high school to director of training at Capital Concierge to workshop leader at the Kickoff Women in Leadership Conference, she has engaged and inspired audiences for almost five decades with her transparency and empathy. Welcome to the show.

I am so delighted to be here. I look forward to this conversation and thank you so much for having me.

You are so welcome, and I’m very delighted to have you here too because your topic is an extremely important topic to my audience, whether they know it or not. We want to unpack that now, and a lot of the work that you are doing right now is rooted in your own experiences with your father. I want to start there and have you tell us maybe the cliff notes version of the highlights of how you grew up without your father and tell us a little bit about how you ultimately met him.

Growing Up Without A Father & Meeting Him For The First Time

I grew up without my father because my mother when she got pregnant, left my dad at six months pregnant, and then she felt it was going to be better for me not to be pulled between parents. She denied him access to me. That’s why I didn’t see him or know him, and then I asked her when I was sixteen if I could invite him to my high school graduation, and that led to my meeting him. I sent an invitation to his father, who sent it to him, and then two months afterward, we had an opportunity to meet finally.

Tell us a little bit about that first meeting that you had with your father. What was it like?

That was it’s hard to even find words to describe it. It was exciting, and overwhelming, all at the same time. I was a little nervous because I wasn’t sure how my mother would treat him, let the dynamic was interesting, but it was also affirming in many ways. I could see myself in him in so many ways. I’m so much like him. It filled a lot of holes for me that had been in my psyche and identity in meeting him.

I love that part where you talk about how meeting him filled some holes that had been there before. Say a little bit more about how your sense of your life and your sense of yourself changed after you met your father.

I knew that I missed him, but I didn’t know what I was missing if that makes sense. In that void, I didn’t know exactly what it would be like, but that sense of acceptance for who I am, exactly as I am, was something that was missing. It created in me a very strong performance-oriented bent in a way that was unhealthy. Experiencing that unconditional acceptance from my father healed a lot of that, and I no longer had a need to find acceptance in my performance.

That’s a great picture of what a father can add to a daughter’s life in this situation. Let’s talk a little bit about your relationship with your mother in this sense. Why was the relationship with your mother, absent your father, not exactly enough in your case? We have lots of people who are in those scenarios where they may be in single-parent homes, being raised by their mothers. They don’t have the benefit of their fathers in the home or even in their lives.

A lot of it is just that parents are designed to be a yin and yang, and when you are missing a piece of that, whatever that parent would have brought into the relationship is not there. In my case, the roles were a little bit different from what’s typical. My father was more of a nurturer. My mother was very authoritarian. There was a gap in terms of emotional support and understanding, and that’s something I didn’t have with that one parent. That was challenging, particularly because I’m a very empathetic, emotionally wired person, and my mother could not relate to that. That created a big gap in our communication and our ability to relate to one another.

Thank you for personalizing it in the sense that this was the narrative for your family. There may be other kinds of gaps that occur with other people as far as the yin and the yang, and what the specific yin and yang might be. We also know that a lot of times, because of how we have been raised ourselves, it impacts how we then parent our children. When you think about your mother, what did you ultimately learn about her father relationship that probably impacted the choices she made and how she showed up with you and with your father?

That’s very much related. My mother also grew up without her biological father. Now, there was a father in the home who was a very solid man. He raised my grandmother’s seven children that were not his. He was about to need sainthood. He was a great father, but not knowing, that separation from her biological father, and not having that relationship I could tell there was something missing. As I got older, I could see something missing even in her relationship with the grandfather that I knew, who had raised her. She never got that hole filled either. I do think that impacted everything in her decision-making and probably, to some degree, even in her choice of a husband.

Why Fathers Are Important To A Child’s Development

Very important concepts. When we think about it, it’s clear that boys and girls need their fathers. From your perspective, why do they need their fathers?

It’s because fathers are designed to help you develop your identity, help you grow into being confident in who you are, know who you are, helping bring out those things about what your dreams are and where your course in life should be going. It’s not that mothers don’t participate in that, but fathers are wired in a different way to bring a voice, a vision, guidance, and a sense of security along that journey. They are the ones who tend to push you out like, “You can do it. You can, you can make it happen. Go ahead, try it.” Mothers tend to be more protective, don’t want you to get hurt, “Don’t do that crazy thing over there.” Dads tend to be more like, “Don’t worry, go do it. I will catch you.”

When fathers aren’t present, it is often the case that both boys and girls grow up either insecure. They tend to be unsure about who they are in the world and how to navigate the world. Boys who don’t see a father treating their mother well don’t know what that looks like and then pass that on in their relationships. A lot of times, depending on the type of father if you had an authoritarian father and that was hurtful when you get into the workplace and you end up working with somebody who’s authoritarian, all of that plays out in our psyche, and it ends up influencing us subconsciously in ways that we are often not aware.

How Father Wounds Show Up In The Workplace For Men And Women

You started talking about something that I want to get into next, which is that man who does have a father wound. How does he show up in the workplace? What are we likely to see?

It depends on the type of father. I will very quickly go through this. I look at five archetypes. You’ve got an absent father, like I had. If a father isn’t there at all, a lot of times, if that man has not had a male influence to show them how to grow up and develop, they can often be lost in relationships. They don’t know how to interact and engage properly because they were never taught.

Let’s say you had an abusive father, though. Then it’s a good possibility that a person will mimic certain patterns of behavior. They may be very harsh in their communications with their colleagues and employees and stuff like that, and that also might be the case for somebody who has an authoritarian father. You may have had an apathetic father, someone who was at home but not paying attention to you at all, and if you were that child who grew up with an apathetic father, it’s a good possibility that you don’t know how to connect with people. You may be physically present, but you don’t know how to engage and develop relationships. Those are some of the ways that might look in the workplace.

Thank you and we have been talking a lot about males in the workplace. That’s a lot of the audience that I have who are reading now. I have a passion for father-daughter relationships. I was very close to my father. He certainly was a very affirming influence in my life, even in terms of me taking risks, going out to do things that my mother certainly didn’t want me to do, like you said but my father said, “She can do that. She can.” He felt like I could do anything.

Me going into the military was certainly out of pattern for our family, and yet he supported that and everything else that I have done in the business sense, in the corporate world, and in entrepreneurism everything that I have he’s always been a strong supporter right there by my side to say, “I know you can do it. Go out there and take the hill.” That would be my father’s approach.

When I was studying clinical psychology, my doctoral dissertation was about father-daughter relationships and how important those are and their impact. Let’s talk about females in the workplace. Let’s talk about women and if there’s a father wound for women, how does that show up for them when they are now in their corporate executive roles? What do you often see?

What I see often is that they are still looking for that affirmation. It transfers that affirmation that you can do it, that cheering you on, that confidence in you and your abilities. It’s very important for them to get that from their boss. If they end up with a boss who doesn’t provide that, it tends to be very unsatisfying for them. Unfortunately, sometimes, depending on how they have also developed in romantic relationships, there can be a misplaced affection tendency toward male bosses because they are still looking for that affection from a father figure. It can be very subtle and often not intentional, but it goes back to missing something and trying to get it filled another way.

Sometimes it doesn’t come from a wife-husband relationship because you are looking for a leader and somebody more of a mentor, but you are still looking for affection. This can create awkwardness and inappropriateness in relationships, and women may not even understand that’s what’s going on. They may find that their bosses want to create more distance, which may hurt because they are trying to get closer to fulfill an unmet need from their father. They don’t understand that either. They think, “Something about this doesn’t feel right,” and so they create boundaries. That’s the danger of people not being aware.

They would probably misinterpret those boundaries. Maybe take it personally and not understand that this might be an appropriate boundary in the workplace when it could feel like rejection to the woman who’s seeking that father figure and doesn’t know that she’s seeking the father. I also think that some women may be very vulnerable because, as they are seeking the father, there may be some I’ll say less wholesome kinds of men in the workplace who could take advantage of them. Talk a little bit about that and the other side of the coin and what might happen.

I have probably experienced a bit of that in my journey because, even though I met my father when I was seventeen I was already dating. I ended up in a relationship with someone much older. They did take advantage of that. Everybody ends up looking for something. They had a need I had a need. They had a need to be admired and adored that they weren’t getting at home, and I had a need for this affirming, affectionate, caretaker-provider-protector person in my life but it was a bad idea, to say the least, and it did not turn out well.

That’s very easy to happen because you don’t always have the wherewithal to read between the lines and see what everyone’s intent is. You can get trapped in something before you realize that you are in something you weren’t looking for. I have seen that happen for sure. I have seen it happen in Corporate America, and I have also seen it happen in university settings in academia with professors and young women.

It’s making me think about the Me Too movement in general and all of these stories that are coming up about men being in positions of power and women. It’s like the old casting couch scenario in Hollywood. “Yes, I want to be a star and get to my next level as an actor or whatever,” and you think that this relationship is maybe going to help you get there when it’s an abusive agreement. The charter between the two people and their boundaries gets crossed in ways that probably should not happen.

That happens much more often than is recorded. That’s the other issue that is a barrier to healing for both men and women. If you find yourself in that situation, it can become very difficult and embarrassing to talk about it. You don’t want to tell somebody, but at the same time, you still may not know how or why you got there. The likelihood that you’ll repeat that is much higher. It’s very important that people understand that there is a relationship between your experience with your father and your other relationships so that you can at least look at it. Take a look, and think about, “I wonder if that might be why I have this relationship with that person or something.” People often exist without exploring how these dynamics might have a wider impact.

That’s a good point. Just because we don’t know something or we are not examining it doesn’t mean that it’s not affecting us. When we do examine it, it gives us an opportunity to see the dynamics in place and make choices about what we want to do going forward into the future. This gives us more agency because we understand and we know that.

It’s very important to understand and be aware of how things are affecting you, why you do what you do, and why you are interested in this thing or that thing. It can stem from so many different realms. A lot of times, we don’t understand the connections, and so we don’t get healed. We don’t become our best selves, which is my real desire. We don’t become our best selves because we are carrying baggage we don’t even know we have.

This brings me to the next thing I’m going to talk about which is why is it, specifically, that men will continue in broken relationships with their children without seeking healing, especially given all the damage we are talking about that can take place. There’s a lot of misconception that’s part of it. A lot of times, men think their children will grow up and they will be okay.  They will get over it. Sometimes, it’s a mirror of their own experience, and they may feel like, “It turned out okay, so they will be fine,” not realizing that not only are their kids not necessarily fine, but they are not okay either.

Men, in particular, are much more likely to devalue some of those relational parts of themselves that are important. They might even think, “That part belongs to someone else.” I know a lot of men feel like all that “touchy-feely stuff” is the mom’s role. “You do that.” They pull themselves out of the process of engaging in communication that might bring up questions like, “How can you help me?”

I have seen this repeated. They don’t understand generational wounding either. There are far too many men who were wounded and don’t know it. They were wounded by men who were also wounded and didn’t know it. There are these long strings of wounded men who repeat this pattern because you can’t give what you don’t have. I don’t think that a lot of the time, this is part of the achievement and success men are looking for. They don’t understand how much more fulfilling their lives would be if healing were part of the equation.

I’m seeing situations where women are in relationships with men who show evidence of this father-wasting experience. However, as you are saying, the men don’t see themselves as wounded. They don’t think there’s anything to fix. Very often, they project onto the woman whatever the problem is, thinking she’s the problem, rather than looking in the mirror to see, “What contribution might I be making to the situation?”

They don’t know they are battle-scarred and wounded, and they don’t know there’s anything for them to address. The finger keeps pointing outward to the people they are in relationships with so they never get to see that they need to make some changes. Very often, they go from relationship to relationship, and none of them work because who can live with this wounded warrior who’s not getting help?

They fail to recognize that they are the common denominator.

God’s Intentions For Fatherhood & Lessons From The Bible

You and I both have a Christian perspective on life and on relationships so share with us a little bit about how you see what God intends for men to demonstrate in fatherhood.

This is so important that if men would look to God’s instruction about fathers, to God’s demonstration as a father, that would make such a big difference. I think that men who desire to be good fathers have to look to the creator of fatherhood and what that is supposed to look like. God so clearly demonstrates this throughout the world. When you think about David being a man after God’s own heart, it’s the heart of God as a father that is going to shape men into being great fathers when they have a relationship with God embrace God’s father’s heart, and learn what that looks like. I was reading the prodigal son story. When the son came back, the father didn’t say, “I always knew you were going to mess up and squander the money,” or he then said, “I’ll let you back in if you do this and this,” which are often reactions.

Men who desire to be good fathers have to look to the creator of fatherhood and what that is supposed to look like. Click To Tweet

There’s a condition. There’s that whole notion of embracing the child in all of their mess is not typical. It’s countercultural. If men want to be strong fathers, then they have to understand that it’s going to look different. It’s going to look different than the world does it, but the Bible has a lot of guidance to offer about how to father, what that looks like, and what those responsibilities are.

Somewhere in Western society, we just adopted this whole thing of fathers as providers and then stopped there somewhere, and it was intended to be so much more. They are supposed to be the spiritual guides of the house, and for children, their fathers are the ones who typically will determine their spiritual direction. It’s fascinating to me that a lot of times, and I see this a lot, where a mother will go to church so the kids will go to church to the mother, but what the father doesn’t understand is that his not going to church tells the kids this isn’t important.

Honestly, if they see that thing, they will make a determination, “This must not be that important because he doesn’t go,” and you can take them but it’s like what you are living is contradicting what you are teaching and that modeling of being a spiritual head. If you’ve never seen your father pray if you’ve never seen your father get in the word, if you’ve never had a conversation with your father to talk about integrity and forgiveness and those kinds of principles, or why aren’t we seeing more the fruits of the spirit in your life? If that’s not happening, then that’s a big gap. We are missing a big part of what fathering should look like because, and that’s the stuff that’s going to make a difference down the road. When the kids are 25 and 35 and struggling, those life lessons and the experience of watching a father walk that out are priceless.

What I’m hearing you say so far is that it’s important for the father to meet the child where they are, and they may be in an imperfect place. They might be down in a foreign country, squandering money or whatever, or coming back having lost everything. You meet them where they are. You show unconditional love because your intention as the father is restoration and getting that relationship right.

I also hear you saying that even though a lot of fathers, even in Christian homes, are abdicating the spiritual responsibility, what you are saying is that this is the father’s primary role to be the spiritual leader and what he participates in and what he signs off on is what they are noticing whether this is important or not. Those are very important aspects that we have covered so far. What may be another example or two principles from the Bible that you would say are important for fathers to acknowledge about their role?

In a lot of ways, fathers are depicted in the Bible as teachers. They are often, and it’s so not spiritual things, but other things, teaching about life lessons, teaching about how to make good business decisions, teaching about how to do a business or a trade or whatever. There’s a lot of that example. That’s another place where too many men have abdicated in the home by not teaching their children and seeing themselves as a mentor for their children.

Most kids want their dad to be like the hero in their lives, and that thing. The other part is to show honor. Honor is a part of a culture that also is bereft often, but that’s a big part of what the Bible teaches about fathers teaching their children honor by demonstrating honor the way they honor leaders, the way they honor even when they are leaders themselves, and the way they honor people that are supporting them.

When you think about military leaders in the Bible. Every time the strong leaders led men into battle, they also took care of them. There was an honor and respect for each other as a community that is a big part of what fatherhood should look like and the men’s roles in the home and the community when there’s an honoring of one another. I think about Bathsheba’s husband, when he came home and didn’t want to eat or sleep with his wife because all his fellow men were out in the field, he said, “I’m going to stay outside.” That respect and honor for each other is another part of what that leadership looks like.

Yes, you are talking about Uriah. He was very committed to David and very committed to the nation of Israel at the time, above even his own personal pleasure, enjoyment, or benefits. I’m hearing several things here. You are talking about fathers as teachers and, beyond the spiritual things, teachers in general. I believe it’s in the book of Deuteronomy where God is instructing fathers to teach their children along the way, and in everyday life, use lessons as you are walking along the road, as you are traveling together. He didn’t say that to the mothers. He told fathers to do that. That’s that teacher role that you are referring to.

You are talking about fathers as being like caretakers in a bigger sense of honor in the community, whether it be the military and how they show up there, or at work, or when about the fathers who were respected at the gate. When you think about the Proverbs 31 woman, it says her husband was respected at the gates of the city. There’s a bigger picture or bigger role in that sense.

Yet we know that, as you indicated a lot of fathers out there know that they are to be providers for the family. They understand that role. Some of them get fixated on being the rockstar financial providers and they don’t always stop. Think about, “How am I falling short as a good father if that’s the only thing I focus on is the provider role? Which is important so we don’t want to minimize it. However, if it’s the only provider role, what would you say about that?

I’d say they need to read your show because somewhere we bought this image of that’s what’s supremely important. I think that men who are fathers need to understand that there’s more to it and that there’s a balanced approach. You can’t provide at the sacrifice of the relationship with your children. If all of your life and time is at the office, on the golf course, or traveling to meetings, then something is out of whack, and there’s a heavy price to pay for that down the road. That’s the other thing for all of us, there’s a tendency to not pay attention to things sometimes when the price that we pay is delayed. We don’t see it, we don’t see the consequences right away, and that gives us a false sense of security.

You can't provide at the sacrifice of the relationship with your children. Click To Tweet

Sometimes men even think, “I’m going to do it for now, but after I get to this level, then I will have more time,” and then they get to that level. “After I get to this, then I will have more.” There’s always this pushing out, when I will get to it and all this while, there have been children not being fathered even though they may be provided for well. It’s a conversation that needs to be had much more often, particularly in this space with executive men who may be achieving all kinds of success in the workplace but need to ask themselves, are they rock stars at home? What does that look like?

I hear you extending a broader invitation to a broader definition of provider. There’s financial provision, but there are also providers in all these other ways that we are talking about. Whether it’s leadership, acceptance of the child’s direction in the child’s life, or whatever, if the father’s absent on those pieces of the definition of provision, he’s not being a provider. He’s only providing a narrow sliver or segment of what God intends. Inviting men to think about the broader definition of provider is probably helpful in terms of the conversation that we are having.

I agree, and I also think that it would resonate with them more, and that’s important. It’s being able to speak the language of the hero to connect wherever they are in terms of where they are in their journey, and what this looks like but if they are willing to ask the questions, then they will get there. They will be able to identify gaps and see where “Now that you mention it.” I haven’t been doing that type of thing.

That’s an important point you made about speaking the language of the men. Men understand being providers, and if we can talk about these issues in that language, that’s probably going to have more traction than talking about nurturing, caretaking, or things that are maybe not naturally a part of their lexicon in terms of the role. Yet everything we are talking about is about being a provider, and so that’s a very important point to mention.

We know that the workplace is a strong competitor for relationships on the home front, particularly for men who are in executive leadership. His responsibilities are huge. They are legendary. He’s got a whole company that he might be the president or the CEO of a lot of work, a lot of responsibility. There’s also immediate feedback often in the workplace for success.

Prioritizing The Father Role Despite The Demands Of Executive Life

They can measure their success by financial indicators. They can measure their success by promotions and so many other things. Given that competing interest, if you will, for an executive man, how does an executive man prioritize the father role more than this successful businessman role when the rewards are so high on the successful businessman side? You already said sometimes the downstream implications take a while to be realized on the family side.

Sometimes it’s interesting to me because those same men will be very strategic about how they approach business success. If they use some of those same tools and tendencies being strategic, being intentional I hear that from a lot of male executives, talking about the importance of intentionality. It is very true in business, but it is also true in relationships. I also think that sometimes there’s confusion about time spent. They are worried that, they say, “I don’t have time,” and most of the time, children are not nearly as focused on how much time but on the quality of the time.

If you intentionally decide to once a week have a special breakfast with one child and another day of the week do whatever that child wants to do ice cream after school or whatever. You’d be amazed at how a 30-minute interaction that’s designed around that child’s interests and needs would fill that child in a way that buying them all the gaming equipment in the world will not do. There’s a benefit analysis that needs to be done that if they would approach it like that and look at the ROI on this, it is so much higher than what they understand.

I love what you are saying because you are saying that the same way that they approach their business in a strategic fashion and think about and plan out how they want to show up over a quarter or a year, bringing those same tools to the family how important that is, and understanding that there is an ROI on that investment. That is huge. Thank you for saying it in that way so that fathers can use what they already know how to do in the family situation and start to see some of the results.

In my early childhood, there were a lot of things I could say, but I will say this. Even as I got older and I was in high school, and I’m the oldest of four children, we curated times when I would take the bus, go down to his workplace, and he would take me out to lunch. We continued that all through my college years. Whenever I’d come home, those are things that we did, and those special times are still meaningful to me. We still talk about it, and that was years ago. It’s a long time ago. What you are saying is important. Those deposits, matter. They make a difference.

What you said is interesting because there’s the other side. It’s not what the child gets out of it, it’s what he will get out of it. It wasn’t important for you, it was important for your father too. He recognized that value, and it’s a memory that he likes to resurface because it meant something to him too. Men who would invest that time and create those special situations with each child would find a richness there that they haven’t tasted before and would probably get an appetite for it when they find it.

Men who would invest that time and create those special situations with each child would find a richness there that they haven't tasted before. Click To Tweet

Amen to that because we know God doesn’t work in one direction. He works in both directions at the same time for the mutual benefit of those who are participating in the relationship. Let’s add another piece. Fathers who are in the workplace and who have been wounded themselves when they were younger and growing up. How does this impact the fathering of their children now?

That’s probably what I see the most, and it’s sometimes the hardest to get to because men opening up about their father relationships can be challenging. It’s often not something they are taught to do. It’s often not something that’s considered. They almost associate it with a disability or something, or if it’s serious enough that I have to talk about it with somebody, then that’s a melody. That’s part of the problem getting them to talk about it because if they don’t talk about it, a lot of times, even if they are aware there’s a problem, they are not aware that it’s affecting their relationship with their children.

Many men can talk to me about troubles that they have had in their father relationships with their fathers but don’t see how that’s playing out in their relationships with their children. They don’t see the connection because they are not trying to repeat it. They don’t understand that often they are repeating because that’s simply what they have been around for decades.

That’s what they have seen, that’s what they have known, and don’t understand that it takes work to then get free from that so that you can pass something else on, pass something different on. That’s the hardest part. It’s getting them into the conversation to see that there is a direct correlation. Whether you see the implications right now or not, I promise you that there’s a correlation because we all pour out of what we have poured into us.

We have been reframing things all along, and so let me say this one of the reframes perhaps that we are bringing to this piece of the conversation is rather than thinking about it as disability for the man, think about it as his continuous education in life, the continual learning cycle, and adding to his wisdom and fund of knowledge as he goes along.

You can be great at something, and you can also get better at whatever it is. You don’t even have to be deficient in order to “get better.” Having a lens like that could be helpful rather than saying, “If I’m working on this, it means that I’m in deficit mode,” and that’s not necessarily true. You may be trying to get to the rockstar level in the family like you are in the business world. That’s one way perhaps to think about it.

Hungry For Wholeness: A Book And Workshop For Healing Father Wounds

In our time remaining, I know you have some profound tools. You have your book, which you and your father wrote together, and I want to hear a little bit about that and what that collaboration was like. You also have a virtual course Hungry for Wholeness that will help people to get this continual education and step up to the next level. Tell us about these tools, and how they resource people.

Hungry for Wholeness is a book that I started with the story of me and my dad. We found out, one of the things I discovered when I met him is that we write alike. That was fascinating, and so we thought that we would tell our story of reunion from each other’s perspectives, and that’s at the beginning, that’s all it was going to be but I had a professor who suggested that we get some other people’s stories and make it a book. It took a decade, but eventually, I did that and it was good. I got a chance to tell stories of people who had other kinds of experiences to widen the spectrum. It also points to everybody needing to come to know God as their heavenly Father and embracing that relationship to help bring them wholeness. That’s where Hungry for Wholeness comes from.

I also discovered, as I started doing conferences and sharing with people, that people needed more personal attention around this that a conference presentation wasn’t going to get it, and people wanted more and were asking me for more. I ended up developing a workshop where I walked through some things. There are three steps that I take people through recognizing, repenting, and releasing, and then receiving. I walk them through a journey to jumpstart a healing process for them.

I’m very clear about the fact that it is a process, it’s not an event. It’s not going to happen in two and a half hours, but I can get you started, I can get you going, and I have also created a twelve-week companion diary to help them follow up in that process after they leave. That’s how we have come to that, and those tools can be helpful for they have been helpful for fathers, they have been helpful for adult children, whether male or female.

How would people get a hold of the book and also the invitation to the virtual workshop?

My website is Well Fed Resources. On the healing page, you can do both. You can order the book and sign up for the workshop, but the book and the companion diary are also available on Amazon.

Lots of ways to get in touch and get engaged. You are still speaking on the subject of father-child relationships. If someone has a conference or a corporate event and they want to have you as a keynote speaker, that’s something you also do.

I do that as well, and again, there’s contact on every page of my website, so it’s very easy to reach out to me and I would be happy, and delighted to talk about those opportunities.

Thank you, Giji. Your wealth of information, inspiration, and also healing for people to jumpstart their journey as they go along. As you think back over the people who have benefited from a workshop that you’ve done, what’s a brief example, no names or whatever, of someone who has gotten a transformation or an impact from participating?

One of the interesting things is, sometimes when I go speak, I’m thinking that I’m going to go in one direction, talking about this father-child relationship thing, and then sometimes I get an impression that this audience needs a slight twist. I was speaking to a younger audience, young adults, and thought that I was going to be focusing on their father-child relationship, but there were a number of young men in the room and I had a sense to ask them, “How many are fathers?”

At first, they had not been very open, but when I asked them how many were fathers, most of the room raised their hand. I pivoted and started talking to them as fathers, as opposed to sons, and the engagement increased. Several of them, just opened up things for them that they had never considered about their own fathering experience.

There was this real desire to get it right, and they had no idea that all these things were a part of fathering and hadn’t considered where they might need help or even that this was something that could have a long-term impact. That was exciting to see. It’s the awareness that healing is even needed that brings me great joy, and when I see that when I can get people to see, “This is something I needed to understand to see how to move my way forward,” that’s the heart of what I like to do.

It’s beautiful that you are catching them in the early stage of their fathering experience so that they have an opportunity to impact their children in a different way. That’s divine right there. That’s what I would say. As we are wrapping up, what are your additional and final words of wisdom that you would like to share with my community of corporate executives?

It’s important for them to be open to reframing their home life in the same way, some of the same terms, some of the same metrics that they used to frame being successful in business, and that would go a long way to helping them improve in their fathering journeys and bring great benefit to both themselves and their children.

That’s wonderful and one of the things about that is you are acknowledging the strengths, talents, and gifts that they already are bringing to the table and that they are leveraging heavily in one arena or they wouldn’t be successful executives, and you are saying, “Let’s use that over here too.” That’s a wonderful thing. I appreciate that. Thank you so much for being with me and having this conversation about father-child relationships and their impact on business executives.

Thank you so much. This was delightful. I was glad to have the conversation. It’s much needed in this space, and so thank you to an audience that would read this context.

Amen to that, and so we will close with a final Bible verse, which comes from Ephesians 6:4, which says, “You fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord.” Fathers, go forward as the warriors that you are. Teach your children, love your children unconditionally, and be the father that God is calling you to be, and we’ll see you next time.

Fathers, go forward as the warriors that you are. Teach your children, love your children unconditionally, and be the father that God is calling you to be Click To Tweet

I’m here with Terence Chatmon, the president and CEO of the nonprofit organization Victorious Family. They are committed to family, discipleship, and transformation. Thank you for being here. Terrence, tell us about your big goal, and what it is that you are going for at Victorious Family.

By 2030, we see reaching 9.2 million families here in the US.

You are reaching these families because you want to see children grow up and truly continue their faith in Christ. Tell us about one of your resources. Do your children believe the book you’ve written?

Ephesians 6:4 says, “Fathers, don’t exasperate your children, but bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.” We are being faithful to that calling. In order to do that, we train coaches, and we provide workshops and content to train parents on how to disciple their children.

How can people find out more about the ministry and the other tools and resources you have available, and also how they can donate to support the ministry?

One of those two is Do Your Children Believe?, a book that we have published by Thomas Nelson and you can find that at Victorious Family.

If you want your family to be victorious, go to Victorious Family.

 

Important Links

 

 

February 19, 2024

Bass Reeves: One Of The First Black US Deputy Marshals West Of The Mississippi [Episode 464]

The Voice of Leadership (Podcast & YouTube) /Dr. Karen Speaks Leadership (TV Show and iHeart Radio) | Bass Reeves | Black US Deputy Marshal

The Voice of Leadership (Podcast & YouTube) /Dr. Karen Speaks Leadership (TV Show and iHeart Radio) | Bass Reeves | Black US Deputy Marshal

 

Bass Reeves, one of the first Black US Deputy Marshals west of the Mississippi served with distinction from 1875-1907. He was known for his knowledge of the languages and cultures of five indigenous native tribes especially the Cherokee and for his expert handling of weapons. Dr. Karen shares his fascinating, uplifting, and inspiring life as a leader, a learner, a boundary spanner, and a man of great courage and integrity. We can all learn from his pursuit of excellence and community service.

Contact Dr. Karen at Dr.Karen@transleadership.com

The post Bass Reeves: One of the First Black US Deputy Marshalls West of the Mississippi [Episode 464] first appeared on TRANSLEADERSHIP, INC®.

Listen to the podcast here

 

Bass Reeves: One Of The First Black US Deputy Marshals West Of The Mississippi [Episode 464]

The Untold Story Of Bass Reeves: The Real Lone Ranger

I want to talk about someone that I hadn’t heard about before and didn’t know about. Those of you who are more media-oriented probably have heard about him before, and his name is Bass Reeves. He was one of the first Black deputy US Marshals west of the Mississippi, and this was back during the time of Reconstruction. He was first appointed in 1875.

There’ve been a lot of movies made about him, TV shows,s and series that have snippets of information about him, and it’s also rumored that he was the prototype behind the Lone Ranger. You’ll understand why as we cover more about him. For those of you who may not see it in this way, I want to note that Black history in the United States is also US history and American history. It takes so many different groups of people to create this country and to serve this country, and Black Americans, and  African Americans, also have a big part in the success of the United States and have built a lot of it as well.

Bass Reeves was born in Crawford City, Arkansas, and that was back in July of 1838. Given that timeframe, he was born into slavery. He and his family were enslaved, and he was born into a family where the slave owners were Arkansas State legislator William Steele Reeves. This family, along the way, served in roles that had to do with the law and the government and legal matters. Here he was in slavery, and so when the Civil War started and we had the war between the North and the South, the ownership family fought on the Confederate side of the Civil War.

It’s believed that Bass Reeves went along with the slave owner because he was his bodyguard. I’m sure you can imagine that, to the extent that he was there during the Civil War and having to accompany the slave owner who was fighting on the Confederate side, that would have been challenging. It turns out this is believed to be when he decided to run away from slavery. Somehow he gets out of the slave situation, and he’s now a runaway.

What is he going to do as a runaway at this time in his life? You can’t be in the public eye too visibly, or you might be re-enslaved and recaptured. He goes to what’s known as the Indian Territory at the time, and that Indian Territory was predominantly in Kansas and Oklahoma. Many people had been relocated there under President Andrew Jackson.

Many Indian tribes had been relocated to all of this territory, and there were five nations that were described as the Civilized Five, and those were the Creek, the Cherokee, the Choctaw, the Seminole, and the Chickasaw. What was interesting is as Bass Reeves moved into their territory and lived among them, he’d stayed isolated. He learned the languages, particularly the Cherokee language. He learned their culture, and he also learned tracking skills. The Native Americans were very good at tracking animals and prey and so on. He learned from them while he was living in the territory.

A Life Of Service: Becoming A Deputy US Marshal

At the time when the Emancipation Proclamation occurred, he was able to move from the Indian Territory and go back to Arkansas. He was back in Arkansas in 1875 when he was 37 years old, and this is when he was selected to be a deputy US Marshal. He was one of 200 men who were selected for this job. I’m sure information about him had spread prior to this selection because he was known as a man who could handle weapons. He was a sharpshooter. He was able to do a lot. He was also physically strong. He was 6’2”.

As a Marshal, he had to deal with all kinds of criminals, people who were horse thieves, people who were murderers, people who were cattle rustlers, gunslingers, bandits, and swindlers of all kinds. Those were the people he had to deal with. What was interesting and unique about him in comparison to the other Marshals of the day was that he would go out and round up large groups of people to bring in, maybe 14 or 16 at a time, which was a lot to handle.

The average Marshal only brought in about 4 to 6 people at a time. This was a significant difference in terms of what he did and what he was able to do. What’s also interesting is, in the course of his career, it is purported that he made at least 3,000 arrests and he did have to kill about 14 people to preserve his life. In all the years when he was a Marshal, he never sustained a wound, a gunshot wound, or anything of that sort. That in and of itself was pretty amazing.

He ended up serving in this capacity from 1875 to 1910. That means he was successful for a very long time. What was also interesting is that, at that time, because he was living in the areas of the territories and these areas were not yet states he had a lot of freedom. Just like we talked about before when we were talking about Tulsa, Oklahoma, during the Reconstruction years and before the Jim Crow laws came in, people had a lot of freedom, and the races had a tendency to live more together than they did apart. You will see photographs of him with the other Marshals of the day, and they were all there together doing a job together and having partnerships to bring in the criminals.

He had to arrest White men as well for conducting crimes, and sometimes he often was alone as he was doing this work. He was very good at it and very successful at it. Now, life wasn’t 100% perfect. There were challenges along the way. In one case, he accidentally shot a man who was a cook in the posse. As the story goes he purportedly shot the man accidentally when he was cleaning his weapon, and as a strong gunman, you would think that wouldn’t happen. However, somehow it did. He maintained that he did not murder him. He maintained his innocence, that this was an error and a mistake. One of the things to know about him is that he had a great reputation for being an honest man and a man of integrity.

One of the things to know about Bass Reeves is that he had a great reputation for being an honest man and a man of integrity. Click To Tweet

Family And Forgiveness: Bass Reeves’ Personal Life

He did have to go to court over this situation. As a Marshal, he worked for the famous “Hanging Judge” in Fort Smith, who was Judge Isaac Parker, and he had to show up in Isaac Parker’s court to be tried for this crime. As it turned out, he was very credible in his testimony, and therefore he was acquitted of that crime and did not have to serve time I should say, acquitted for this alleged crime because, in reality, he did not murder the guy. He said it was an accident. Interestingly, Bass Reeves was married twice. His first wife was Nellie Jennie, and he was married to her from 1864 to 1896 when she died. That was what ended their marriage. He later married Winnie Sumter from 1900 until he died. He had a total of about eleven children.

One of the other things that happened in his life is that one of his sons was up on charges for killing his wife, so he went out as a lawman and had to track down and bring his son to justice. This was part of his history, and people knew he had done that. In terms of being honest, he operated in the same way, “If this was somebody other than my son, I’d have to bring them to justice,” and so he did not let the fact that this was his son stop him from bringing his son to justice. His son was tried for this crime and ended up having to serve about eleven years in prison. Supposedly, as the story goes, once he got out of prison, he no longer was involved in any problematic behavior but lived as a model citizen.

Bass Reeves was very effective with weapons, and it’s believed that some of his favorite ones to use were the Winchester models, the 1873 and the 1892. He also had a Colt 45 Peacemaker as well. He would track and often had to kill some of the people who were outlaws that he went after, including some famous outlaws along the way. Some of the outlaws were people such as Jim Webb, who purportedly had killed eleven people. Then there was Wiley Bear, who was a murderer and a horse thief, along with his gang. Bass Reeves brought him to justice. Then there was Frank Buck, who was a Creek desperado. He shot and killed him as well.

As I mentioned earlier, Bass Reeves himself was never wounded in the line of duty in the work that he did. Later in his career and his life, in about 1907, Oklahoma became a state. That was problematic because that’s when the Jim Crow laws came into the region, and African American people did not have the freedoms that they had before to mingle with all the other races. Once the Jim Crow laws came in, his service as a Marshal ended with statehood. He served in the Muskogee Police Department until the time of his retirement and ultimately his death.

What was interesting is that he stayed employed almost until the time of his death, which was in January of 1910. At 71 years old, he died of nephritis, which was called Bright’s Disease and that was in Muskogee, Oklahoma. He was pretty robust until he got ill. After his illness, he was no longer able to serve in the role.

There are a number of honors attributed to him that came much later in his life. He never lived to see these things, but he was inducted into the Texas Trail of Fame in 2013. There’s a statue of him in Pendergraph Park in Fort Smith, Arkansas, that was put up in 2012. There’s also a Bass Reeves Memorial Bridge in Oklahoma, US 62, that spans the Arkansas River between Muskogee and Fort Gibson. That was named in 2011.

When you think about his descendants, some of them were also interesting. It turns out he was the great-uncle of Paul Bragg, the first Black man appointed as a federal administrative law judge in 1972. His great-grandson was part of the National Football League and the Canadian Football League as a player. His name was Willard Reeves. Another great-grandson was part of the National Hockey League as a player, and his name was Ryan Reeves. Then, a Canadian Football League player, another great-great-grandson, was Jordan Reeves. His descendants went on to also do exceptional activities in their lives.

Leadership Lessons From Bass Reeves: Excellence, Courage, And Integrity

What I want us to take from this brief account of Bass Reeves is to look a little bit at the leadership components of what he was doing. There are seven things that I want to highlight about his leadership. Number one is that he pursued excellence. He made sure he had an understanding and training in weapons. He had weapons expertise. He was a sharpshooter deluxe if you will. Pursuing excellence in his craft would be the first thing I would say.

Number two is that he was a continuous learner. While he was in the Indian Territory, he didn’t stay away or isolate himself. He became a part of that community and learned from them as well. He spent a lifetime as a continuous learner. As part of that, being a boundary spanner, he had White colleagues when he was a Marshal. He had Indian associates and colleagues throughout his life, in the territory and beyond. That’s a great thing when we think about diversity, equity, and inclusion. He was already into DEI back in the day and certainly lived among lots of different, diverse people.

Bass Reeves was already into DEI back in the day and certainly lived among lots of different, diverse people. Click To Tweet

Thirdly, I would say that preparation was a large part of his life. He had to prepare himself for the work he was doing. He became a farmer. I didn’t mention that, but once he had run away from slavery, he went into farming, and that’s what his family did. He had to learn there too and prepare himself for the farming work in the farming industry.

I would also say that he was a man of great courage. To go out after those outlaws, to be unafraid and bring them to justice with 14 and 16 at a time, was an amazing feat for that time when most people did not do that. He was a man of courage. I would also say he was a man who was fair and honest. He had integrity. The fact that he knew he had to stand trial for the killing of the cook and stayed in town to stand trial for that shows his character. He knew he was innocent, and he was acquitted. He also knew that his son had to be found, arrested, and trial for the murder of his son’s wife. That’s being fair, that’s being honest, that’s applying the law to yourself, not just to other people. He was a person of integrity, which helped in his court case and trial because people knew that was his character.

Number six, I would say, is that service was important. He wasn’t doing things for himself. He was thinking about the greater community, and service to the greater community, to remove the criminals, would make life easier and safer for everyone who lived in the region. He took it very seriously, this job of tracking down, capturing, and, if necessary, killing the criminals he was after.

The seventh thing I would say is the fact that he was married twice. He did have a number of children. He embraced life. He was about more than the work itself. He also lived, if you will, and attended to his farm and the other things that were important to him. We can take a lesson from that in terms of how we live our own lives. We can live our own lives, even in our business pursuits, with excellence, being continuous learners, preparing for the task that we are called to do, showing courage in what we approach, being fair, honest people of integrity, people who have character, and rendering our service to the broader community and for the broader good while embracing life in a holistic and full way. Life is more than just work.

Life is more than just work. Click To Tweet

I hope that you have learned something from Bass Reeves and this short account of him. Feel free to look online and find lots of resources about the media, films, TV shows, and everything else that has been done as inspiration from the life of Bass Reeves. As already mentioned, the Lone Ranger also purportedly came out of inspiration from Bass Reeves.

Whatever You Do, Do It Heartily

I’d like to close with Bible verses that come from Colossians 3. This is starting with verse 23. It says, “Whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance for you to serve the Lord Christ. He who does wrong will be repaid for what he has done, and there is no partiality.”

These scriptures remind me of the life of Bass Reeves because he was doing his work for a greater purpose, a greater meaning, and a greater good. He did not respect people in the sense of being unfair. When his son committed a crime, he also pursued him, tracked him down, and brought him to justice. That last part “He who does wrong will be repaid for what he has done, and there is no partiality,” is how Bass Reeves lived his life and honored his commitments and, therefore, was a credible and believable witness when he was on the witness stand himself. Take that with you, and I hope it helps you to live as an upstanding citizen in your workplace, in your community, and your life. See you next time.

Lead Yourself First: How To Run Your Race

Did you know that you can mine the lessons from your own life and work experiences to inspire your teams and your people? In my book, Lead Yourself First!: The Senior Leader’s Guide to Engaging Your People for Greater Performance and Impact, I share snippets of my life experiences from childhood up to adulthood. I also share what I learned from these experiences, and how that learning informs how I lead, and I include examples of how I facilitate my clients’ success using these same principles. I invite you to apply the same methodology to your life with reflection questions at the end of each chapter. When you lead yourself first, you then have a foundation for leading others.

In chapter two, which is called Run Your Own Race, I share stories from my days as an active-duty Army officer. My approach to running the 2 miles for the physical training test and my approach to the 12-mile forced road march had to be different from what others did. What I would say is dare to be different. Find your success formula. Sometimes what works for you is different from what works for others. Remember to run your race, and be sure to get your copy of Lead Yourself First!. You’ll find resources on how to run your race.

The Power Of Cross-Cultural Friendships

We live in a world with so many divides between groups of people. I am with Dr. Clarence Shuler, the President and CEO of Building Lasting Relationships. Dr. Shuler knows that cross-cultural friendships are part of the necessary healing journey. Dr. Shuler, tell us more about the power of cross-cultural friendships.

Dr. Karen, I love to do that. Maybe one of the most important relationships we can build is cross-cultural friendships. The reason is that we have so much racial tension, and we’ve found that if people from different cultures become friends, it lowers the racial tension in America. Dr. Gary Chapman, the author of The 5 Love Languages, a New York Times bestselling author, and I have written this book, this resource, called Life-Changing Cross-Cultural Friendships: How You Can Help Heal Racial Divides, One Relationship at a Time. We believe that if people get that book, read it with a friend, and talk about it, or make a cross-cultural friend and read through the book together it can change lives forever, and change the racial tension in America, and make it a better one. That’s our goal with that resource.

Thank you so much, Dr. Schuler, for sharing that. For those of you out there, if you would like to donate and contribute to creating cross-cultural friendships in our world, go to Clarence Schuler. Make sure you pick up a copy of the book for yourself and start a new cross-cultural friendship.

Victorious Family: Raising Faithful Children

I’m here with Terence Chatmon, the President and CEO of the nonprofit organization Victorious Family. They are committed to family discipleship and transformation. Thank you for being here, Terrence. Tell us about your big goal and what it is that you are going for at Victorious Family.

By 2030, we see reaching 9.2 million families here in the US.

You are reaching these families because you want to see children grow up and truly continue their faith in Christ. Tell us about one of your resources, Do Your Children Believe?, the book you’ve written.

Ephesians 6:4 says, “Fathers, don’t exasperate your children, but bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.” We are being faithful to that calling. In order to do that, we train coaches and provide workshops and content to train parents on how to disciple their children.

How can people find out more about the ministry, the other tools and resources you have available, and how they can donate to support the ministry?

One of those tools is Do Your Children Believe?, a book that we have published with Thomas Nelson. You can find that at Victorious Family.

There you have it if you want your family to be victorious, go to Victorious Family.

 

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February 5, 2024

Biblical Principles For Resolving Conflict At Work [Episode 462]

The Voice of Leadership (Podcast & YouTube) /Dr. Karen Speaks Leadership (TV Show and iHeart Radio) | Resolving Conflict

The Voice of Leadership (Podcast & YouTube) /Dr. Karen Speaks Leadership (TV Show and iHeart Radio) | Resolving Conflict

 

At times we say or do things that offend other people. How can we walk in love to effectively resolve conflicts with colleagues in our workplaces? One important step towards reconciliation is to talk to the person who you offended or who offended you rather than to talk about them to others. God is the source of our strength and direction so pray to God before you do anything else. In this episode, Dr. Karen shares 7 key principles to overcome conflicts in the workplace. All of these principles require courage, respect, and humility. God’s storehouse is full of everything we need when we choose to trust Him.

Contact Dr. Karen to address workplace conflict: Dr.Karen@transleadership.com

The post Biblical Principles for Resolving Conflict at Work (Episode # 462) first appeared on TRANSLEADERSHIP, INC®.

Listen to the podcast here

 

Biblical Principles For Resolving Conflict At Work [Episode 462]

How To Walk Through Conflict With Someone In Your Workplace

This is Dr. Karen Y. Wilson-Starks, your host for The Voice of Leadership and for Dr. Karen Speaks Leadership, and we’re going to talk about the biblical process for walking through conflict with someone in your workplace. Wherever you have people, there will be conflicts that emerge because none of us are perfect, and sometimes we do things that offend other people, not on purpose.

However, the offense occurs anyway. The principles I’m going to cover are really for people generally who share the same worldview. If you are a Christian person and you have a conflict with another Christian person, you should have a meeting of the minds on some of these issues. Most of us, however, are in settings where we may not necessarily be in conflict with someone who values a Christian perspective.

I believe that these principles are still relevant, and you can make an effort to follow the principles anyway. If the other person accepts and is willing to go along with you in applying the principles, great and wonderful. You’ll probably have a better outcome. If not, then you’ve done all that you can do from your end, and that’s what we’re talking about.

Principle 1: Pray To God

The very first principle, as you know, with anything, is to, first of all, pray to God. You might say, “Why is that important?” There’s a lot going on in conflict situations, and only God has all knowledge. He’s omniscient, He knows everything. God has all power, omnipotent, and God is also omnipresent, which means He’s with us all the time and in every circumstance. God can see what we can’t see, and we want to access divine wisdom, divine intelligence, and the ability to see through God’s eyes what is going on and also what we should do about it.

This really makes me think about Proverbs 3:5-6. It really talks about how we are called to trust in the Lord with all of our heart and to lean not unto our own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths. When we pray first, we’re acknowledging God. We’re asking God to direct our paths because we don’t necessarily know the way to go.

When we pray first, we're acknowledging God. We're asking God to direct our paths because we don't necessarily know the way to go. Click To Tweet

Also, I’m reminded of Jeremiah 10:23 that talks about how that it’s not in man that walketh to direct his own path. We must ask for guidance and direction, and it shows that we really trust God and we are depending on Him for our next steps and how to walk through a difficult situation. That’s number one.

Principle 2: Look In The Mirror

Number two is look in the mirror. What I mean by look in the mirror is whenever there’s a conflict, there’s responsibility, in most cases, on both sides of the fence. It’s very easy for us to look across the fence and identify clearly the fault of the other person. However, before you even consider reaching out to the other person, look in the mirror.

Ask God to examine you through His divine mirror so that whatever your contribution is to the conflict, you are taking responsibility for. There is a scripture that talks about this. It talks about the whole notion of the plank, sometimes, that’s in our eye that really prevents us from taking a look at the speck that’s in our neighbor’s eye.

This is in Matthew 7:3-5, and it says, in essence, “Why are you looking at the speck in your brother’s eye, and you haven’t even considered the plank that’s in your own eye?” He says, basically, what you want to do is, first of all, remove the plank out of your eye. Keep in mind, if you have a big board, a big beam, a plank in your own eye, it really limits what you can see in the other person. If you take the time to remove that plank, it then says, “Now you will be able to see how to remove the speck in your brother’s eye.”

There’s an implication that sometimes what’s in our own eye is even bigger than what’s in our neighbor’s eye. We must remove that before we can even see the little speck in our neighbor’s eye to remove it. Looking in the mirror is really important, and it actually prepares us to be able to see with greater clarity and to see better when we remove any impediments in our own situation.

Ask God for revelation about your own role in the communication, the two-way process. Sometimes it’s not because you’ve done anything that’s truly wrong. However, when you consider the optics of the situation, there may have been a better way to say what you wanted to say, a better way to operate and to act in that circumstance, given the other person that you are relating to.

Principle 3: Talk To The Person Privately

God will reveal to you those other options, what else you could have done that you weren’t thinking about. That’s why number two is important is look in the mirror. Number three is really to talk to the person with whom you have an issue and to talk to them privately. A lot of times, we don’t want to go to people privately, and we want to talk in public. We want to dress them down in front of other people. However, privately is very important.

When you speak to people privately, they’re more inclined to hear you, to listen to what you have to say, and there’s less defensiveness. If you say a lot of things that are difficult in a public setting, the shields go up, and people have a sense that they must protect themselves from the incoming artillery. They’re not really prepared to hear you. They’re not prepared to listen. In fact, they may not be listening. It’s really hard to have a heart-to-heart conversation in a public setting.

When you speak to people privately, they’re more inclined to hear you, listen to what you have to say, and exhibit less defensiveness. Click To Tweet

This is really a major biblical principle that comes out of Matthew 18. I’d like to just share a little bit about what this says. This is Matthew 18:15-17. Those scriptures say, “Moreover, if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he hears you, you’ve gained your brother. But if he will not hear, take with you 1 or 2 more, that by the mouth of 2 or 3 witnesses, every word may be established. If he refuses to hear them, tell it to the church. But if he refuses even to hear the church, let him be to you like a heathen and a tax collector.”

Basically, we want to give people an opportunity to be heard and to hear us in a safer setting. The public is not safe for most people. Take the time to go and share with them one-on-one. As it says, if that doesn’t work, take 1 or 2 more. If that doesn’t work, that’s when you go to a larger body or a larger group, like the church congregation. If they don’t hear you, we’re talking brother to brother now, then that person is not following the principles of Christ. In many ways, you’re waiting for them to return, if you will, to God.

They’re like the heathens, they’re like the tax collectors at that point. I know you’ll be practicing this and offering that olive branch with people who do not share a biblical perspective. They may choose not to speak with you one-on-one. They may do something completely different. You, however, can ask for and attempt to pursue this biblical approach, knowing that for most people, that works out better. That’s a better way to go.

I just want to remind you that a lot of conflict is really rooted in misunderstanding. One of the reasons to have this dialogue and conversation with the person whom you may have offended, and you may not fully understand how you have offended them, is that you want to be willing to engage in the conversation, to listen, to really understand from their perspective what’s happened and where they’re coming from.

Here’s what we have to remember. We all have filters that we bring to every situation. Those filters come from our age, come from our gender, our ethnic background, and our life experiences. Those filters affect how we communicate and also how we hear and how we interpret what’s being said. Having filters is not a problem, necessarily. You just have to know that you have them. Because you have the filters, it may be that what you say is heard differently by the receiver because of their filters.

Sometimes it’s the sharing together that helps to get past the differences in the filters and the life experiences. To say, “I never thought about it that way. I didn’t realize that this is how that might land with you or how you might hear this.” That sets the stage for a deeper and greater understanding. You really want to listen to understand. The Bible talks about being slow to speak and spending more time hearing and understanding. You don’t have to agree with what the person is saying. You want to understand it, however, so you know what your next steps may be in the process.

Principle 4: Talk To The Person Rather Than About The Person

Number four is to talk to the person rather than about the person. Often, when something happens, we don’t want to go to the person who’s offended us or the one with whom we have a conflict. Instead, we want to call up our neighbor, talk to them about it. We want to blast them, in today’s world, on social media or in some other public forum. In reality, the last thing you want to do is talk about them rather than talk with them. Have courage.

Show respect by talking to the person rather than about them. If you talk about them, here’s what’s going to happen, you’re going to get further entrenched in your own viewpoint about what’s going on. It’s going to be harder to shift to an alternative perspective and viewpoint as you’re listening to understand, once you do engage that person, which hopefully you ultimately will do. The other thing is that by talking to others, you may unnecessarily damage the reputation of the person with whom you have the conflict.

Later, hopefully, when you work it out, you don’t necessarily circle back to the cast of thousands that you’ve maligned this person to, to correct those perceptions. Those individuals go forward, continuing to think that there’s an issue and there’s a problem. I would say, take the time, first of all, to work out the issue and don’t talk to others.

Talk to the one who you need to talk to about the conflict. That’s really an important aspect. Continuing on with number four, James, the third and fourth chapters talk a lot about this whole issue of what we say about people. I think I’m not going to read this whole aspect, but I want to share a couple of points from James, the third and fourth chapters.

First of all, it says that if anyone doesn’t stumble in what he says, sometimes that’s a perfect man. He’s able to control his whole body if he can control his tongue. The tongue, being small, can actually cause a big bonfire, if you will, and set things aflame. You want to be careful with the tongue because of all the damage that it can do. It sets a great forest fire.

That’s what the tongue does when we just have it unbridled, saying whatever we want to say. It says the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity, and it can defile the whole body and set on fire the whole course of nature. Even though we can control great animals because of the bridles we put on horses or great ships because of the rudders that we put on them, James, the third chapter, says no man can tame the tongue.

It’s an unruly evil, full of deadly poison. With that one tongue, we bless God, and we turn around and curse men, the men that God has created in His own image. Out of that same mouth, we’ll have blessings, we have cursings, and all kinds of difficulties. The point is, we want to be careful about what we say and be slow sometimes to speak, and fast, more so, to listen. We don’t want to use our tongues as weapons that damage people and then tear them down in the process. That’s number four.

Principle 5: Show The Fruit Of The Spirit

Talk to the person rather than about the person. Read in your own time chapters three and four of the book of James for more about the tongue. Number five is to show the fruit of the Spirit in how you deal with the people who you are talking to. This is really important. The fruit of the Spirit, that’s love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. That comes from Galatians 5:23-24.

It takes intentionality to speak to someone with that kindness and love and forbearance, patience. That’s why you’ve got to pray first so that God can fill your heart with that, so that God can give you the fruit of the Spirit in the moment as you are working out whatever the conflict is. Remember to bring that heart attitude to the conversation.

Principle 6: Apologize and Ask for Forgiveness

Number six, after you’ve heard what your neighbor is saying and you understand things from their perspective, their vantage point, it gives you an opportunity to understand if you were the one who offended them, how you offended them. Number six is to apologize and to ask for forgiveness. Matthew 5:23-24, talks about how if you’re approaching God and you come to His altar with a gift that you’re giving to God, and you remember that your neighbor has something against you, it says, leave your gift at the altar. Go back to your neighbor and be reconciled to your neighbor. Then come to the altar to give your gift to God.

Principle 7: Forgive The Other Person

That’s how much God cares about this. He wants us to have short accounts with Him and then short accounts with each other. Be sure to apologize. Be sure to ask for the other person’s forgiveness once you understand how you may have offended them and what your part is in the conflict. I would say number seven is that it’s also important to forgive them. If they have offended you, and that’s also the issue, you have had this conversation with one another to try to work it out, and you’ve been harboring some resentment or whatever in the meantime, it’s time to forgive them too. Forgive the other person.

Be sure to apologize. Be sure to ask for the other person's forgiveness once you understand how you may have offended them and what your part is in the conflict. Click To Tweet

Very important. Matthew 18 talks a little bit about this. It says, in Matthew 18:21-22, and we talked about in Matthew 18 about going to the person individually. In this part of Matthew 18, the disciples are wondering, “How often should we forgive these people?” Jesus was saying, you’re going to forgive them 70 times 7. In other words, so many times you can’t count it. He also told them in Luke, the 17th chapter, verses three and four, if a person comes to you on the same day, they’ve offended you. You rebuke them for the offense.

If they repent and want to be asked for forgiveness, you forgive them, even if they come seven times in the same day. Each time they repent, you forgive them.  God’s forgiveness is unlimited. He’s forgiven us so much, far more than we’re ever going to have to forgive each other. We want to forgive each other with the same generosity that God has also forgiven us. That’s why Jesus says 70 times 7.

He didn’t mean for you to put it in a black book and count up all of those offenses. He meant make it limitless. We know that seven is the number of God, this number of completion. It’s almost like an infinity of sorts. Forgive them as many times as you need to. We know that God’s forgiveness of us is also unlimited. We want to keep that in mind.

The Importance Of Civility In Conflict Resolution

One of the reasons why it’s important to talk about this right now is because, in our world, there’s so much less civility than we used to have. In our current world, people are talking a lot about people in public settings, whether that’s in person or on social media. We know that many young people, especially, have jumped off bridges, killed themselves, because of things that were being said on social media. We want to be cognizant of this plan that God has given us for how to walk through conflict.

First, number one, I’ll review, pray to Him, seek God’s face first. Number two, look at yourself, look in the mirror, understand what your contribution is to the conflict. Very important. Number three, speak privately to the one who has offended you or the one who you have offended. Speak privately to try to work it out. Number four, talk to the person rather than about the person. Very little gets resolved when we talk about people.

In fact, greater chasms are created. People who really are our friends and who we can call friends, a lot of times distance is created, and those relationships are destroyed unnecessarily when we could have built a bridge back to each other. Number five, always showing the fruit of the Spirit, the love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Number six, remember to apologize for your part. Remember to ask for forgiveness for your part.

Number seven, forgive the other person so that when you leave this process, there’s a clean slate, a clean account all the way around. That’s the way you want it. I want to end with the scripture of Romans 12:18. It says, “If it is possible, as much as depends on you, live peaceably with all men.” Notice it says, as much as it depends on you.

As we know, there are some circumstances and situations where people are not going to follow this process with us. We may not have all of the choices that we want to have, and yet I encourage you, in your workplace, in your home, in your neighborhood, continue to hold out the olive branch to other people. Continue to reach across the chasm, reach across the aisle, mend a fence, and gain or regain a friend. Blessings to you as you are a peacemaker in your workplace and in your life.

Spirit Wings Kids Foundation: Making A Difference In Uganda

It’s Dr. Karen here, and I want to tell you a little bit about Spirit Wings Kids Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. It’s an organization that provides profound services for orphans and for widows and families across the globe in many ways, and especially in the country of Uganda. I’m speaking with Donna Johnson, who is the founder of Spirit Wings Kids and also a board member. Donna, tell us about some examples of the profound work that you’re doing in Uganda.

Thank you, Dr. Karen. We were just there a few weeks ago, and it’s incredible. It’s more than an orphanage. We have a soccer academy that keeps the boys off the street. We have a widows program that matches them with children, and it’s just a thriving network of, really, entrepreneurs. It’s just been such a meaningful blessing to see the work that we’re doing there.

Donna, what I love about what you said just now is you’re really talking about their whole lives. You’re creating families between the widows and the children, and you’re also making sure they have recreation and something to do with the soccer academy. You’re looking at the job situation and the entrepreneurial aspect, and as a businesswoman yourself who’s very successful, you’re right in line with being able to make that difference.

Thank you so much for the difference that you’re making, and I’m inviting everyone who’s watching and listening to go to SWKids.Foundation and donate now. One hundred percent of everything you donate goes to those people who are in need and who are receiving those services. Thank you so much for donating, and Donna, thank you for this ministry.

Empower Your Leadership Through “Lead Yourself First!”

This is Dr. Karen, and I want to tell you about my book, Lead Yourself First!: The Senior Leader’s Guide to Engaging Your People for Greater Performance and Impact. This book is about playing the music that only you can play. Leadership is about more than following clever techniques. You are the instrument of your leadership. People are inspired by you and how you show up. In chapter three of the book, which is called Forge Your Own Pathway, I share many experiences of creating a pathway forward when a pathway didn’t exist beforehand.

Sometimes that path is created through service, such as a time that I was taking a train every week from Wiesbaden to Frankfurt, Germany, to volunteer at the Army Hospital, the 97th General, and I was volunteering once a week as a psychologist. Little did I know that this volunteer job would later become a full-time employment opportunity for me. Because of the volunteer service, I was in the right place at the right time when the doors opened up. The metaphor that I often use for creating opportunities is the ability to see possibilities where none are visible, and I call this creating blizzard food.

Just imagine, just like in Colorado, this could happen at any time, there might be a raging blizzard outside. You haven’t gone to the grocery store yet. There’s no obvious food in the refrigerator or the pantry. Yet, if you look hard enough, there is hidden food, and you can use it to create delicious meals for you and also your guests. I encourage you, get your own copy of Lead Yourself First!: The Senior Leader’s Guide to Engaging Your People for Greater Performance and Impact. Forge your own pathway forward. Create your own opportunities. Be the instrument of your leadership and create some delicious blizzard food.

 

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