Transcript: Leadership Insights with Dr. Gene Habecker: Soft Skills, Trust, and Employee Development // Gene Habecker

Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast

“Leadership Insights with Dr. Gene Habecker: Soft Skills, Trust, and Employee Development“

July 1, 2024

Gene Habecker

Intro: Effective leaders are continuous learners who are growing their leadership competence and relational skills. And how do you incorporate this softer side of leadership into your own leadership and organizational life? Today on the Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast, we'll look at how you can grow the essential soft skills of leadership for personal and organizational transformation from leader and author Dr. Gene Habecker.

Welcome: Welcome to the Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast, your home for open, honest, and insightful conversations to help develop your leadership, your team, and build a flourishing workplace culture.

Al Lopus: Hello, I'm Al Lopus, the co-founder of the Best Christian Workplaces and author of Road to Flourishing. You’d be happy to know our book is now a key resource in Christian universities’ guiding leadership classes, from undergraduate to doctoral levels. I’m dedicated to helping Christian leaders like you create engaged, flourishing workplaces.

I’m delighted to welcome Dr. Gene Habecker to the podcast today. Gene is the author of The Softer Side of Leadership, and president emeritus of Taylor University.

Throughout our conversation, we'll hear Gene talk about the importance of developing and maintaining strong marriages, creating sacred spaces to get away, the leadership secret of asking good questions, the gift of 360 reviews to gain self-awareness, and insights on building trust and how we can love our employees by offering developmental opportunities to help them grow.

I think you're going to love this interview with Dr. Gene Habecker. But before we dive in, this episode is brought to you by BCW’s Leadership 360 and stakeholder-based coaching. Are you ready to transform your leadership? Well, we can help. Learn more by going to workplaces.org/coaching and check it out today.

And hello to my new listeners, and thanks for joining us as we honor your investment of time by creating valuable resources and episodes like this.

But let me tell you just a little bit more about our guest today, Dr. Gene Habecker. Gene graduated with a BA at Taylor University, an MA at Ball State University, and a PhD at the University of Michigan. He also has a law degree from Temple University, a certificate from the Institute of Educational Management at Harvard University, and nine honorary degrees. He's an author, speaker, and educator, and has served for 35 years in president/CEO leadership roles. His leadership roles include serving as the president of Taylor University, the American Bible Society, and Huntington University. He served in other administrative functions at George Fox University and Eastern University. Gene and his wife, Marylou, have been blessed with three married children and seven grandchildren.

So now, here’s my conversation with Dr. Gene Habecker.

Gene, it’s great to have you back on the podcast, and I’m looking forward to our conversation today.

Dr. Gene Habecker: Well, it’s great to be with you again, Al. Great to connect with you.

Al: Gene, you have a rich well of leadership experience. And today we want to focus on what you call the softer side of leadership, the soft skills that aren't always in focus, as people are being trained as leaders. But before we dive into those specifics, you wrote the book The Softer Side of Leadership with your wife, Marylou, and I've heard you refer to Marylou on a regular basis as you've served in different organizations. And throughout the book, you're clear about how your relationship and your life are a partnership and how that partnership has been essential. And you've also been very honest about how you've worked together and focused on your marriage relationships. So our family relationships, as we all know, are so important, but we don't always talk about them, and so let's talk a little bit about that. Do you have some examples about how you and Marylou have focused on strengthening your marriage and how that's played out in various seasons of your life together?

Gene: I want to emphasize, Al, the important statement that you just made: you can't keep your marriage relationship and what happens there outside of the workspace. If things are going well in your marriage, it's going to flow over and impact positively what's going on in how you work. But the reverse is also true. If it's negative, if there's strife, if there's hurts, that's going to be carried over into the workplace as well. And so I think having a healthy marriage is, for a variety of reasons, is fundamentally important to effective leadership.

But truth be told, leaders—and we've seen leaders struggle with this, and Marylou and I have struggled with this at various times. You know, in one position that I've been privileged to serve in, I was in some other part of the world almost every other week. I'd fly to New Delhi for the weekend, or I'd fly to Bogota for the weekend, or be in Peru or someplace in South America or Cape Town or Johannesburg. I mean, a lot of ministries have that kind of global focus, and that takes a toll in marriage. We ended up at one phase, during that tenure, becoming married singles. You know, we loved each other, but I was into my own thing, she was into her own thing, and we lost the ability to— how do I want to say this?— engage in marriage spirituality, that oneness, that couple oneness that is critical, I think, to the maintenance of a healthy marriage. If you lose the ability to connect soul to soul, you're going to get in trouble. And we needed help. And fortunately, the Lord provided a really wonderful, we call him a marriage coach to help us do some and attend to some long-overdue marriage maintenance that we needed to deal with.

And it’s interesting, Al, that people will attend to preventive maintenance in almost every other area of their lives. If the roof starts to leak, or before the roof starts to leak, you put on a new roof. Or if the car has a mechanical issue, you know, you fix it, or you try to take care of things before it happens. But are people engaged in preventive maintenance for their marriage? Probably not as much as they need to be. That's one thing that we try to, on a regular basis, do is have appointments with our marriage coach.

And I remember once, you know, we looked at each other, and our marriage coach would smile when I tell you this, lives in Nassau in the Bahamas, which is a great place to work on a marriage, I would add. And I remember one trip that we were planning to go down there to see him, and we looked at each other, said, “Why are we doing this? We're doing well, aren't we?” And we said, “Well, yeah, but let's go anyway.” And so we went down, and what we got hit with was just a treasure trove of really good things that weren't even on our radar. And we come back and it's like, wow, is this a blessing. So that's one thing and example that I would give you.

A second one is I want to talk a little bit more about this whole marriage-spirituality idea. I do some executive coaching, I work with leaders, I've served in board roles and board-chair roles, and so I've had a chance to work with a lot of leaders. And of course, you see a lot in a lot of other connections. And it's amazing to me how many Christian leaders, they don't, with their spouse, they don't pray together. They don't spend time spiritually. They have a private spiritual life, but it's separate. And that's the kind of thing that we're talking about when we talk about marriage spirituality.

So I think taking steps to do what's appropriate so you bring that oneness, that soul togetherness, and put that in play. And I think even from an accountability standpoint, my wife is my chief accountability partner. And if that marriage begins to waver or to somehow we remain married singles, I've just marginalized the primary marriage-accountability partner that God has built into my life. And so again, other reasons, but another reason to stay focused and making that a priority in the life of someone who reflects and wants to reflect godliness in their leadership.

Al: Yeah. So each of us need a CAP, a chief accountability partner. That's—

Gene: There you go. Exactly.

Al: Yeah. Okay. There's a new acronym for us, but, yeah. Well, Gene, thanks. This is really good already. You know, for us leaders, do we have marriage spirituality for those of us that are married? And I love the idea. What a good idea. A marriage coach that we would see on a regular basis. That's good feedback.

Gene: And as a couple, you know. I mean, so we have coaches for a lot of other things, but marriage coaches?

Al: All right. Well, we've got a checklist already, created for own personal development. Thanks for helping.

But let's talk a little bit more about soft skills and how they are really important for transformational leadership. Let's start, as we talk about soft skills, with definitions. Our leaders probably have some ideas of what “soft leadership” and “soft skills” mean, but, yeah, tell us a little bit or help us define “soft leadership skills.” And why are they essential for personal and even, then, organizational flourishing?

Gene: You know, thank you. I became alert to this needed differential and understanding in my own life. And again, I learned this from Marylou. I was seeking to hire two new senior leaders, and we put them through the leadership grid and asked them all kinds of appropriate questions. And we had them interview with all the appropriate partners in an organization. And I bring this person to my house at the very end because the person has the highest scores and answered all the right questions, and we have dinner together. And of course, I'm very excited about this candidate. And the person leaves and goes home. They had their spouse with them. And we get to the end of the session, and I kind of smile at my wife and say, “What do you think?” expecting her to affirm with great joy, you know, my excellent choice. And her simple words to me were, “That person will never work out.” And I was, like, “What do you mean? I've just had three days of interviews,” and I really got defensive, Al, you know.

Then it happened again, you know, with another interview that I was looking for a senior staff member. The person was really well qualified, you know, had a bachelor's degree in finance from University of Chicago, had an MBA from Northwestern. I mean, the right kind of credentials. Same response: “That person will never work out.”

And a couple of years later, when both of them, in fact, did not work out, I said to myself, “Okay. There's something going on here that I am missing in my leadership.” I was focusing primarily on what leaders do, and I was focusing less on how leaders lead. Soft skills are preoccupied with how leaders lead. Hard skills tend to be preoccupied with what leaders do. So when you think in terms of soft skills, I think the definition that we use in our book The Softer Side of Leadership, we talk about skills, primarily qualitative skills, behaviors, practices, habits, disciplines, attitudes that you bring to the workplace. All that speaks to how leaders lead. And of course, the Scripture is loaded with example after example in what Eugene Peterson refers to leading, reflecting the Jesus way, whereas hard skills tend to go a different direction. They tend to be more quantifiable, and they're more capable of easy measurement. You know, things like change management, process development, strategic planning, financial analysis are all examples of hard skills.

Now here's the situation. It's not hard versus soft; it's the combination of hard and soft. You know, you need to have skill mastery to be effective in leadership. You need to be able to deal with those kinds of tasks. What leaders do is very important. But how leaders lead is equally important and maybe even more important. Somebody has said it this way, “The hard skills will get you the corner office; the soft skills will keep you there.” So it's hard and soft together in combination, and I think you and I are together on this, that really optimize the likelihood or probability of effective leadership that honors Christ.

Al: And in my book Road to Flourishing, we talk about inspirational leadership. And you've just defined the two key elements of inspirational leadership. It's the soft skills, the Christian character. What you've described are the Christian character skills, in a lot of ways. You know, the mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience. I'd put in compassion, for example, integrity, even. Yeah. As well as those hard skills of strategic planning and analysis and so on. So yeah, Gene, that's fascinating. That's fantastic. What a great definition. I appreciate it so much. And I know our listeners can relate to that. And even you introduced, yeah, Eugene Peterson the Jesus Way of leadership.

So, you start by encouraging leaders on their inward path. All of us are asking ourselves, “Of course, well, we want to have these soft skills. Well, how do we actually acquire them?” And you talk about the inward path, focusing on an idea of sacred space. And this includes the concept of Sabbath and also a space where you can think deeply. So, tell us a little bit about a starting place for leading well, and why do you include space for deep thinking, Sabbath, and maybe even a sacred space as well?

Gene: Let me begin by approaching it this way: let's look at the life of Christ. He lived the reality of being the God-Man. Fully God, fully human. But He basically would say, “I could do nothing apart from my Father. I and the Father are one. If you've seen me, you've seen the Father.” So when through the contemporary culture somebody is asking the question, “Well, what is God like?” the answer is read the Gospels. You know, we see God in the flesh doing all of those things. And so He lived and ate and breathed fully, always in the presence of His Father.

But yet, the biblical texts are also clear that there was more that He did, that biblical texts say that He went away from time to time, got away from the crowd, by himself, and went to a remote place to be with His Father more in depth. And I began to be intrigued by that idea. Like, well, why was that essential? Why was that appropriate? And I think it was, you know, I want to contrast that with what He said in John 17:4. You know, the one, He would get away from time to time to be alone with His Father, even though He lived that moment by moment, spiritual breathing, you know, with the Father. He said in John 17:4, “Father, I have given You glory by completing everything You gave Me to do.”

Now think about that. I read that verse the first time and Marylou asked me, “So what did you think of that verse?” And I said, “Well, I have to be better managed. I have to take care of myself better. I want to be a more effective leader. I need to rework my schedule and my to-do.” She looked at me and she said, “You missed the whole point of the verse.” And I said, “What do you mean by that?” She said, “Read it again.” This time I read, “Father, I've given You glory by completing everything You gave Me to do.” In other words, He didn't say, “I've completed everything that needed to be done,” which is where a lot of leaders live their lives. They want to complete everything they want to get done. The focus point, I think the pivot point for our Lord was He was focused on completing God's agenda for His calling, if you will, to complete “everything You gave Me to do.” And that, I think, makes all the difference in the world in how leaders lead. If my agenda is to complete everything that I want to get done, I'll never celebrate the Sabbath. I'm going to work 24/7 because there'—no leader ever finishes everything that needs to be done in an enterprise. I don't care how long they've served or how long they've been there.

But that's not how the Scripture defines faithfulness. The Scripture defines faithfulness is, am I focused vocationally, missionally on what God has called me to do, what He's called this organization that I lead to do?

Now, I want to stay on mission so that every minute, every hour of every day, I'm focused on the mission God has called me to do. But I want to also reflect Christlike character in my life. And my point here is this: unless I go deep—from time to time, get away and go to a remote place and spend that quiet time that I need with the Father—I'm going to lose my way. I'm going to get caught up in the wrong agenda. I'm going to move to the left rather than moving to the right, or I'm going to move to the right rather than moving to the left. And I'm not talking about politics here; I'm talking about focus, staying missionally focused. Jesus was never in a hurry to get to the next place. Jesus was never driven to meet the next important person. I'm thinking of my life and leadership. I often was driven to get to the next place because of my schedule commitments, and to meet the next important person because of my fundraising, you know, my need to raise money, totally forgetting that God sees everything from the beginning to the end and every spot in between, and He owns all the cattle in a thousand hills.

So, I think there’s freedom—this circles back, Al, to your beginning point—there's freedom in having that focus that our Lord modeled for us, but that we so often forget, which is why, then, we argue in the book, that sacred space, it's not an accident that that's chapter one. That sacred space is the place to start, you know, with our leadership. We need to be—a lot of us are not even aware of God's presence in what we do, let alone seek His presence for what we do. And we need to live in that awareness at all times. I mean, Paul talked about the need to take every thought captive. That's a challenge to me, but there's the standard that we aspire to.

So, those are some of the reasons. And then, of course, in that process of creating time alone with the Lord, I think the Spirit gives guidance in ways within that space that can inform better decision making. I'm thinking of a couple of examples of sacred-space moments. You know, Moses and the burning bush, or Jacob and the wrestling match with God, or you think of Esther fasting to know God's will and for her action in defending her own people Or look at Elijah. He was really frustrated, and “It's only me and no one else.” And God says, “Hey, let me get you to a different place here.”And He brought him to a place, and there was the earthquake, the spectacular. There was the wind, there was the fire, but where was God? He was in the quiet space, the quiet place, which may be one of the reasons we read in Psalm 46:10 about, okay, slow down, calm down. “Be still and know that I am God.” It all fits together, I think, with our Lord’s example. That’s the starting place for leaders.

Al: Yeah. Sacred space, I love it, Gene. And the beginning of each year, I'll take three days and go away. And what I find—and I'll also take quarterly spiritual days—and what I find is I need to be quiet, to let other people's voices that are in my mind disappear, so that I can actually get down to listening to what I think is God's voice speaking to me. You know, I've got my father's voice, you know, still in back of back in my mind, I've got other voices, I've got those that I'm leading, their voices, and into actually get away, as you're suggesting, in a sacred space so you can actually get down to hear the voice of God.

Gene: Think about the Mary and Martha story. Martha was the consummate servant leader. Hospitality. You know, I Timothy 3, hospitality is one of the qualifications for leadership. Martha was being very hospitable, attending to all the details for Jesus’s visit, and she got frustrated because Mary wasn't “helping.” And Jesus goes, I mean, my words, obviously, “Martha, chill. Mary has chosen the better thing.” And so there's more to leadership and just being engaged and serving and reflecting servant leadership and a variety of other kinds of things in our leadership. The key question is, have I chosen the better thing? Have I chosen what Mary focused in on? And that empowers everything else, to your point.

Al: To be faithful. He never asked us to be successful, right, Gene? We need to be faithful.

Well, another important practical skill you emphasize is the ability to ask the right questions. How have you developed in this area of asking questions? And over your years of leadership, how have you done this? How can a leader grow in this skill and also encourage others to have this posture of asking questions?

Gene: We begin with the assumption that leadership is never about the leader. It's about all the rest of the enterprise that you're privileged to work with. It's about the people that are there and the mission that you're called to serve. Doesn't start with a leader, you know, start in leadership by saying, “What's in it for me?” David got this in II Chronicles, where the text says that David realized that he had been made king for the good of the people. And so I'm suggesting here that part of leadership is having that concern for the other and for others’ opinions and others’ thoughts and others’ insights. And you do that not just because you're a nice person, but you do that because you believe that God's Spirit doesn't lead only one side of the enterprise. God's Spirit is liberally given to everyone in the enterprise, the leader and the follower. And so a wise, perceptive leader, knowing that God doesn't lead people who are committed to Himself in opposite and divisive directions.

Think about Acts 15 and Jerusalem Council for a minute. After they had the meeting and the decision, and they decided it, the message to the apostle Paul and others who would take the message to the Gentiles was this: the Holy Spirit, and we are in agreement. So there's safety, in fact, maybe others validating what you think the Spirit is saying to you is an affirmation. So, it follows, then, that I'm going to ask good questions. I should ask good questions as those that I'm privileged to serve. And they could be questions in any number of areas, you know, organizationally, financially, culturally, spiritually. I mean, a lot of what you do in your work with Best Christian Workplaces is ask questions, which is a necessary skill. But there's simple questions. There's complex questions. A simple question like, can I invite you to lunch? to the person who's not expecting the CEO of the enterprise to ask them that question.

But here are two other observations that I think drive how to learn to ask good questions. The one is very basic. It comes from Fred Smith, Sr. No longer with us. His son, Fred, Jr. has been very active in the past, in The Gathering. But his father would say, “What kind of questions should I ask people? Ask the questions that people want to answer, but they're never asked.” People in organizations are filled to the brim with all kinds of answers that provide counsel or wisdom or insight into what's happening in the organization, but they're never asked. Leaders fall prey to asking the questions, only the questions to which they want answers. They're not asking the question that people want to answer. So that's the first thing I would say. Ask the question that people want to answer.

But here's the second thing. One of the reasons why you learn to ask questions. I remember when I was doing my PhD studies, I was doing some research. I was at the University of Michigan at the time, and I read these words, and I have them in the book, where people were talking about organizational development issues. And the quote goes something like this, “Few are the organizational misadventures that aren't foreseen by somebody in the enterprise.” In other words, I am the leader, and I go with my senior team and we have a board retreat or whatever process that we engage in, and we come back, so to speak, with the answers from on high, and we begin to distill that information, spread that information with the staff. There's going to be people in that staff meeting who hear that say, “Well, you haven't thought about that,” or “You missed this,” and they're right. You know, one of the basic questions that a leader should always be asking staff so I get it right is this one: what have I missed, and how do we make it better? because they're going to see things that we totally forgot about that consideration. You get the point. So, you need the questions to be asked in order to get a complete picture of what you're trying to deal with. And if you don't, if you only ask the questions you want to ask…

There is a great Harvard Business article entitled “Being a Strategic Leader” is about asking the right questions. And that would be another one that I would reference it, and somebody could read and go a deeper dive in this. But, boy, asking the right questions is just so essential.

Just compare and contrast. I used to ask in leadership the question, “So, what's wrong with the idea?” And I would get a boatload of responses. But that's the wrong question because a better one is, “What have we missed, and how do we make it better?” because now I'm inviting that person into the dialog. “Help us think through what it is that we've missed. How would you handle the response?”

I mean, so I think to me, asking the right question is a fundamental leadership skill that effective leaders develop.

Al: Yeah, I love that. So, yeah. What have I missed, and how can I make it better? And what you're doing, you're inviting people into the conversation. You're asking a question where they feel like what they're saying is being listened to, and then, many times, you'll then act on it. I mean, that interaction, that engagement is really great. I'll have to say, for a long time I thought leadership was all about telling people and not asking people. You know, that’s exactly right, Gene.

Gene: And we haven’t even talked about all the biblical examples that model this. One of the ones I like is Nehemiah, where he felt he had all of the answers. You know, he prayed. He went to the king; gave him an army, money, you know, resources, supplies to go. And you think, “Well, let's just announce to the people that I'm going to do this,” and hop to it. But he did his own verification and validation. You know, walk around the city, didn't tell people what he was doing. And then he came and brought the people together and shared the idea. “Here's what God has put on my mind.” You know, the inference there is that he was seeking their input, their feedback. And the response was, “Let us do it.” Now you have empowerment, and importantly, you now have ownership, where everyone now owns the task. And it's no longer Nehemiah and his idea. It's the we; it's the our-ness of the idea, which I think is so essential to effective organizational leadership.

Al: Bringing them right into the mission, where they're owning it and helping you take it to a whole new level.

I trust you’re enjoying our podcast today. We’ll be right back after an important word for leaders.

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Al: Welcome back to my conversation with Gene Habecker.

Well, Best Christian Workplaces, Gene, we've encouraged our ministry partners to use Leadership 360 assessments to continue their growth as leaders. And you talk about 360 reviews for personal self-discovery and also for organizational accountability. So, why is being able to give and receive feedback an essential leadership skill? And how have you seen healthy feedback loops make a difference for leaders, particularly senior leaders, and also, then, also for younger leaders as they're coming up?

Gene: When you talk about the topic of emotional health, which probably all of our listeners and viewers are familiar with, the very first component of emotional intelligence is self-awareness. But the reality is that almost—well, I won’t say almost—every leader has blind spots of which they are unaware. And a device like a 360 instrument creates the opportunity and invites the opportunity for the person who is the subject of the 360 to gain valuable new insights into their learning about who they are, how they are perceived in their leadership.

I remember when I was doing some research on this topic, and I think I had this quote in the book, I reference Chris Hargis, who is a leadership heavyweight, no longer with us, but written extensively in the Harvard Business Review and other places about leadership. And he said one of the shocks of his lifetime was how unaware he was of how he was perceived in his leadership role. And a lot of leaders never get that. And a lot of leaders, because of their personality types, they don't want to know. I mean, they can't handle the feedback. And so, you know, the best situation is what we were talking about on another occasion, that we read in Proverbs 25:12, where wise correction to a receptive ear—that's really the dynamic that we want. We want the feedback from a 360, which often amounts to wise correction, be heard from a receptive ear. Somebody who's, like, “I need to know. May not like what I hear, but I need to know it so I can grow. I can learn about how to be a more effective leader.” And again, the Proverbs finishes that verse by saying, it's like getting a bar of gold. I mean, very valuable insight. So, my goal, my desire is that leaders will run to this kind of accountability, that they'll seek these kinds of 360s.

Now, interestingly enough, Al, I think there's a potential danger, though, in the possible overuse of 360s, because here's what my experience has been with leaders. They start playing their leadership game to position themselves for a positive 360 review. And they know that if I have to make a tough budget decision or I’m not able to give good salary adjustments for a variety of reasons, I'm going to get hit negatively on my 360. So I think 360s are very valuable insights, but I think if they’re overused, a board can, in essence, force a leader into doing what pleases the people, then doing and making the decisions that best serve the enterprise. So I would counsel, use the 360s. Absolutely, 100%. But be judicious that you don't create a scenario where they become overused and, in essence, become meaningless to what we're trying to get at with the 360.

Al: That's great advice, Gene. Yeah. And overuse. Give us some guidelines on what's overused, in your mind.

Gene: Well, let me give you an example. In most of the three different CEO roles that I've served in, I had a leadership term, you know, three years, four years basically tends to be and then you have a renewal. But within that three- or four-year period, you have an agenda that a board will give you to say, “Here's what we need to do. We need to downsize the staff,” or when I was at Taylor, “We need to close a campus,” or “We need to take 20% out of the budget.” All of those are negative. You know, those are not going to generate high positive scores on the board, a lot of people in a 360. So a board needs to give an appropriate time for you to make that run, to make the hard decisions, knowing that's going to create difficulty. You know, right in the middle of that difficult run, “Okay. Let's do a 360.” So I think periodic adjustments, you know, like, say, for example, if there's no hard decisions that a board is asking, “Hey, just run the ship. Make sure it continues to be sustainable and to have a healthy culture,” and you're not going to have to deal with those hard things that maybe more frequently than less frequently. But if you’ve got hard decisions like of the type I've just illustrated, to do a 360 every year, I think it's going to be counterproductive. So think maybe periodic, maybe once or twice during that term of four years. That's an acceptable frame.

Al: And as you say, there are times not to do 360s, and you've mentioned a number of them, because, yeah, the feedback won't be helpful. But most of the times, you know, I like to describe it, feedback is a gift. And if we have that attitude, that feedback is a gift from a 360, then we'll have that receptive ear to receive the wise correction, because as a leader, don't we really want to know how our leadership is being experienced from those that we're leading? I mean, that's how we know how we're shepherding, which is what Christ is really asking us to do. Yeah.

Gene: You would think that should be the case, but there's tons of leaders who don't take the same position. It's, “Well, they don't like me,” or “I don't like…” Well, of course they'd say that about me, because we've had some difficult… I mean, we rationalize to explain it away. And the whole chapter on accountability in the book gets after some of the ways that we don't see feedback as a gift, but rather feedback as a frontal attack, you know. And so, yeah.

But I think that verse, again, in Proverbs is the good one. It's careful, wise correction and a receptive ear. Hopefully, that's the case. That's a win when it comes to feedback as a gift.

Al: You know, we hear a lot about the importance of creativity and innovation for organizational health. And we've also talked with Jon Hirst with SIL International about innovation on the popular topic of artificial intelligence. But in this area, you’ve stretched as you've grown as a leader with this topic of innovation. How can leaders cultivate a culture of creativity as a systematic focus and not just an activity that they know and they do when they're building a team?

Gene: Let me approach it this way. When I was a student at Harvard many years ago, I was listening to a Harvard business professor talk about the need for organizations to be aware of where the organization was in terms of its organizational life cycle. He was making the point, as does Jim Collins, many of the organizations, the names of which we knew decades ago, are no longer existing. They've gone off the map. They've closed. They've folded. And we won't have to look far or dig very deep to find that list of names. And the question is, what happened? What was the catalyst that programed, in essence, or predicted their demise, their closure? And the question that you raised is part of that answer. They failed, one, to know where they were in their own organizational life cycle as an organization, and not being aware of where they were. They chose not to innovate or to practice creativity, to reinvent themselves, to renew themselves. Or John Gardner has a whole book on this. It's a classic book called Self-Renewal. And as a result, they get lost. I remember the professor's advice. He would say, “Be aware of where you are in your organizational life cycle, and substantially before you see the peak coming, you drive deeply into innovation and creativity.” It's a little bit like Wayne Gretzky's famous adage, “You don't skate to where the puck is; you skate to where the puck is going to be.” And that requires innovation and creativity.

So I think it includes the wise use of SWOTs in terms of how we think about strategic planning. A lot of organizations miss on this point. They'll sit in a room, and they'll talk about a lot of things, and they don't really database it or whatever, but they miss it on the point of external threats and opportunities. We tend not to be candid about the threats that are coming our way or the opportunities that might be there, A.I. being one of those opportunities, as an example, for new ways of working, new ways of serving, new ways of doing programing, new ways of working with people.

So I think it's being aware of the organizational life cycle and maybe having a holy discontent for the status quo. I mean, one of the phrases that I've heard in the past that I really like is if you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got. Now, is that what you want? Well, the reality is if you only focus on what you've always done, you're going to get less than you got last year because people are not the same. Culture is not the same. Technology is not the same. It's ever evolving. And if we don't keep up with it, we're going to miss the opportunity. Someone else has said it this way: we have to change a lot to stay the same. Well, let me add to that. We have to change even more if we want to advance. So I think it's that kind of thing.

And then looking for the opportunities, making steps. And some of them are very simple. I mean, innovation and creativity will likely not take place in an unhealthy culture for a lot of reasons. Amy Edmondson and others have written extensively about you're not going to have healthy teams, you're not going to have engaged workers. And obviously, if you don’t have a healthy culture, that contributes to employee engagement, and engaged employees contribute to organizational success, you’re not going to have any of that. So in some ways it's back to basics, but it's, in another sense, it's taking the self-awareness that we talk about in emotional intelligence and apply that to organizational awareness. And that takes good listening, back to asking the right questions, so on and so forth.

Al: But I love your advice for us. Where are we on the organizational cycle? Leaders, you know, where are you on that organizational cycle? We all know what that looks like. And we're oftentimes, in the early years, we're growing, and we're going up that mountain. But then we get to the top of the cycle, and it's real easy to slip right down if things haven't changed.

Gene: Well, if you haven't engaged the innovation earlier than its peak, you will slide down. That's too late. Here's the other thing, too, that I think a leader needs to—this is where that self-awareness and emotional intelligence comes into play. I've got to ask myself, you know, leadership role, given where we are in that organizational life cycle and where it's going to be five and ten years down the road, do I have the skill sets or the potential to make changes in how I lead that'll help get us there? And that's also a very critical assessment. That's key. I mean, John Gardner talks about in the Self-Renewal book that he writes about is self-renewal starts with me. You know, it starts with a leader. You're not going to get it if I don't model that in my own life.

Al: Oh, that's great advice. Yeah. And innovation starts with a healthy culture; I couldn't agree with that more.

Well, let's talk about a little more about healthy and even flourishing cultures. Your emphasis on building trust certainly resonates with what we've experienced. And we ask a lot of questions that indirectly and directly relate to trust in our Best Christian Workplace Survey. And at the core, an inspirational leader builds trust, which is essential for flourishing. So, in your experience, how do leaders earn and nourish trust in their workplaces? You also talk about seasons where leaders have to make hard decisions. What's the role of trust? Even in those times where there's hard decisions and people experience, “This is a hard decision, but it's important for the organization,” and trust is then maybe interrupted a little bit at that point. But so, what's the role of trust in all of this?

Gene: That's a great question. A couple of ways to approach that. I want to start with the understanding that trust is the ultimate glue that holds the organization together. When trust is lost, a leader's not going to get very far in almost any effort. When trust is there, bring on the world. I mean, trust has that kind of power. And if you read the the words of Covey, he has the Speed of Trust. I mean, it's a great illustration, and he goes into it far deeper ways than we've had time to deal with in the book. But it's just understanding the importance that trust plays in an enterprise.

Now, how do you build it? I mean, there's a variety of ways to think about this. And again, a lot of it's related to topics we've already discussed so far. For example, if you're not a person of good character; if you're not a person that is a person of integrity, that is to say the walk and the talk are aligned, you're not going to do a very good job of building and valuing trust in the enterprise. And again, character has everything to do with what we've talked about in sacred space, and, you know, that Christlike character that's been validated and verified, that it's not just Susie come lately to the party. This is, you know, you've demonstrated this over a period of time, and people have heard about it; people have seen it.

But there's one other element that's really critical, I think, to developing trust, and that is the issue of leadership competence. I think we undervalue, oftentimes leaders undervalue, and maybe boards to some extent, undervalue the fact that people perceive that you don't have the competence to lead the enterprise, it's going to be very difficult, even in the face of good, solid character and a life lived of integrity, to gain a following. You know, again, if you think in terms of medical areas, I don't want anybody doing surgery on me unless they have a rock-solid track record of having been a person of good character, a life lived with integrity, you know, good reviews, but also demonstrated competence over time. And I think that's often overlooked. We just focus on the first two: character and integrity. Critically important, but demonstrated and perceived competence all the way along is something that's essential for good leadership.

Now, you raised the question, what do you do when you have to make hard decisions? How do you get people to trust you? Here's the way I think about it. I want people to think about the idea of a leadership-trust bank account. You know, we have checking accounts, we have various cards that we use, cash cards and social media, etc., but most, a lot of leaders never think about the fact that they have a trust account into which they make deposits on a regular basis and out of which withdrawals are made on a regular basis. Now, if you’re not aware of the fact that you have a trust account, you're not going to be alert to the fact that you need to be making deposits into that trust account on a regular basis, because you will be having others make withdrawals out of that account. So that, again, goes back to self-awareness, that we talked about on the emotional intelligence side. Be aware of where you—how much trust do you have in your account? The idea is that when you have to make a hard decision, then timing becomes a really important issue here. You've got to be aware—you want to time the hard decisions, too, when you have a full trust account, because difficult decisions of the type that we've talked about: laying off a major percentage of employees, closing a campus, which we had to do at Taylor. And you’ll take a hit, you know, on that. And unless your trust account has enough trust in it to sustain the hit, it could be potentially threatening, if not damaging, because when your trust bank account is empty and the likelihood of it being replenished, you need to prepare your resume. You know, just because you're a nice person, trust is everything, you know, to being able to do effective work. So, those are the kinds of things that I talk about on that whole idea of trust. It's a really important variable that you've got to be alert to.

The other caution here that some leaders do, and we see this in higher ed a lot, a leader will be tempted to average trust across constituencies. You know, so the leader says, “Well, my board really likes what I'm doing,” and so what you see often—particularly in higher ed, you see this—you see on the one hand a board saying, “That's our president,” has the full confidence of the board while the faculty are voting “no confidence in the leader.” You can't just average that and say, “Well, I've got average trust here. I'm making it.” No. You've got to be alert to know all the constituencies that are important to your work and serve, and then make sure you're engaged in activities that build trust in each of those. I mean, in the university world, you've got the students, who don't necessarily want what the parents want. The parents don't want necessarily what the alumni want. The alumni don't necessarily want with the faculty want. The faculty don’t necessarily want what the administration wants. The administration don't necessarily want what the church wants. Church doesn't want what the community wants. You can go right on down the line, and you've got to balance. It’s why leadership is, in those kinds of settings, is such a difficult enterprise. But nevertheless, I think, again, with that emotional intelligence, that self-awareness, welcoming feedback, making corrections when you need to make, being alert to your trust account, and obviously, guided by the Holy Spirit, you know, know what to say and when. The leaders of this occur, they knew what to do and when to do it. I mean, that's how you get through it.

Al: That’s it. I love that, Gene. The character and integrity, the competence, I mean, both of those are really important.

But let's talk about one more thing that I think is also related to trust, and that is love. That's a topic that you cover in your book. You talk about the culture of love and the care for people. Even in Christian workplaces, we don't really talk that much about love as a core quality in workplaces. And you say the commitment to growing people for their own sake, not just for the sake of the organization, is a crucial element of demonstrating organizational love. So flesh out this idea.

Gene: Yeah. It's a massively missed opportunity for organizations because a lot of organizations are more concerned about, from an employee standpoint, what value I can add to the enterprise? than they think about how can we as an organization add value to you, both personally and professionally?

I remember when I was in our presidency at Taylor, I would say something like this. We would be invited to attend a lot of retirement parties. People retired after 30 or 40 years. I mean, very long tenures. That tends to be the average at a lot of those kinds of Christian institutions. And if all they talked about at the retirement party is the topic of, you know, “I'm really glad I had to make a major contribution here to the university,” and, you know, we think we've done that, if that's all they talked about, I'd want to hear that, obviously, because what staff members add is an important value. But if that's all they talked about, I'd be disappointed, because what I wanted to hear, also, is, “I can't believe the various ways I've grown personally by being at this place, the various ways I've grown professionally. I’m a better husband. I’m a better wife. I'm a better professor. I'm a better administrator, because of the way the university has invested in me.” Very few organizations—or let me put it this way: not nearly enough organizations have that kind of focus when it comes to caring and loving their staff. We talk about, “We love you. We're grateful for you,” but then it's all about what you can add to me and how you can add value.

So, I became aware of this through a very wise president when I was a young leader at George Fox University in the Pacific Northwest, and I had just gotten a really good job offer from another institution—more responsibility, better salary, great position. And I remember he and I had the kind of relationship where he was interested in that, which itself says something about him as a leader, because a lot of organizations, if the president or the CEO hears that you're looking, you're pretty much out the door. You know, it's viewed as an act of disloyalty. This president, fortunately, did not have that view. His name is Dr. David LeShana. And I was telling him about this new opportunity, and I was expecting some “love” from him, like, “No, you can't leave. We need you here. You're a great loss. You're doing…” He didn't have—he didn’t say anything to that. His answer was, “I think that's great.” And I went, “What? You think it's great that I'm considering the possibility.” Here is a line, Al. I'll never forget it. “Why would I want you on my staff if nobody else wants you on theirs?” Now you think about that. He communicated a lot of values right there in that statement. Number one, he was saying, “I don't see you as my property; I see you as God’s property, who I have a responsibility to steward in my leadership.” Oh, that more leaders would have that kind of perspective when it comes to their staff. That's number one.

Number two was he was stating, “You know what? I want people on my staff that perform at such a high quality that everyone else is going to want them to come and join their staff,” you know, which was his commitment to growing people personally and professionally. Well, truth be told, I never left George. I mean, I did. I did not leave George Fox for the other opportunity, because I felt called by God to be there and because of the way the university expressed love to its staff by building into our lives personally and professionally, and not just being concerned about the value that I would bring or the value that I could add to the organization, which again, is important, but it's not the only thing in terms of developing people. That's one way of expressing love.

Al: That’s fantastic. I love it, Gene. Yeah.

Gene, this has just been such a great conversation. We've learned so much. And I'm just thinking back of where we started. We started with marriage and the idea of marriage spirituality and even focusing on that, and then looking at Sabbath and the sacred space that is helpful for us, to actually be alone with God, to understand and hear the voice of God, and to be faithful to that. And then the whole topic of asking questions. How important questions are and how as leaders, oftentimes, we're so one-way directive but not asking questions. The importance of 360s, the importance of creativity, and how we need to make sure that we're very focused on reinventing our organizations and focusing on SWOT analysis. The importance of trust. And then, of course, I think perhaps the keystone, and that is love. And somebody said that you'll know that you're My disciples by the way you love one another.

Gene: Yeah, you got it. Yeah.

Al: You know. Yes. Shouldn't our workplaces just reflect the love we have for one another?

So, how about one last thing that you'd like to mention, Gene, based on all that we've talked about.

Al: I want to encourage leaders to think about, and I guess it's more than just leaders, but people to think about the idea of leadership discipleship. The way that we develop—the chapters in The Softer Side of Leadership, every single one of those chapters is a discipleship study. How do I deal with forgiveness? How do I build trust? The Scripture has a lot to say about all of that. And what I see in leadership is that there's a focus on leadership development that goes one way, and then there's a focus on discipleship that goes another way. What I'm saying, what I think the need of the hour is, is for leadership discipleship to be better integrated and merged into a common strand that cannot be broken, because I think if you go back to the Eugene Peterson book, the Jesus way precedes the Jesus truth, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” But the Jesus way, coupled with the Jesus truth equals, I think, or demonstrates, the Jesus life. And I think getting that whole idea of soft and hard, working together in a close symmetry together, bonded together, is what I think increases the likelihood that leaders will be effective where God places them.

Al: Yes. Listeners, let's focus on leadership discipleship. That’s great, Gene.

Well, thanks so much for your contribution today. And most of all, I appreciate your commitment to exhorting leaders to the high calling of transformation, not only in their own lives, but also for those they lead. So, thanks for taking your time out today and speaking into the lives of so many listeners.

Gene: It’s a joy, Al. Thanks for the invitation.

Al: Thank you so much for listening to my conversation with Gene Habecker. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

You can find ways to connect with him and links to everything we discussed in the show notes and transcript at workplaces.org/podcast.

And if you have any suggestions for me about our podcast or have any questions on flourishing workplace cultures, please email me at al@workplaces.org.

And leaders, if you want to improve your leadership, expand your organization's impact for good, or see greater faithfulness in our broader culture, help us achieve our goal to see more flourishing Christian-led workplaces. To help, please share this podcast with another leader or launch a project in your own organization to discover and improve the health of your workplace culture. And if you're interested in learning more, go to workplaces.org and request a sample report.

Outro: The Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast is sponsored by Best Christian Workplaces. If you need support building a flourishing workplace culture, please visit workplaces.org for more information.

We'll see you again next week for more valuable content to help you develop strong leaders and build a flourishing workplace culture.

Al: And join us throughout the July and August period as we feature some of our best and most recent podcasts. Whether you're catching up on a podcast that you've missed or you want a refresher on a particular podcast topic, keep listening throughout the summer and grow.