Transcript: Leading Like Christ: A Key to a Flourishing Business and Kingdom Impact // Mike Sharrow, C12

Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast

“Leading Like Christ: A Key to a Flourishing Business and Kingdom Impact“

January 13, 2024

Mike Sharrow

Intro: Leaders, what if embodying the fruit of the Spirit could transform the trust, resilience, and success of your team? Well, in today's episode we'll explore how leading with character and integrity, modeled after Christ, can create workplaces that truly flourish. Join us for powerful insights with Mike Sharrow on building an integrated life and leadership that inspires trust, drives purpose, and brings Kingdom impact to every corner of your organization.

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: I'm Al Lopus, the co-founder of the Best Christian Workplaces and author of the book Road to Flourishing. My passion is to equip Christian leaders like you to create engaged, flourishing workplaces. And thanks for joining us this season as we're dedicating our Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast to the most powerful driver of flourishing cultures, and that's inspirational leadership.

Well, today I’m delighted to welcome Mike Sharrow to the podcast. Mike’s the CEO of C12.

And throughout our conversation with Mike, you'll discover how character-driven leadership builds unshakable trust. We learn practical ways to embody the fruit of the Spirit in your workplace. We gain insights on integrating faith and purpose into daily discussions and decisions. And we unlock strategies to inspire resilience and unity in your team.

I think you're going to love this interview with Mike Sharrow. But before we dive in, this podcast is proudly sponsored by the Best Christian Workplaces’ Employee Engagement Survey. We say don't wait; now is the perfect time to gather vital insights from your employees, to assess the health of your workplace culture. Mike Sharrow mentioned in the podcast today that using the Best Christian Workplace Survey consistently leads organizations to meaningful insights, even if they reveal, at times, uncomfortable truths. Ready to transform your culture? Visit workplaces.org to learn more and to start your journey to become a flourishing workplace today.

And hello to our new listeners. Thanks for joining us as we honor your investment of time by creating valuable episodes like this.

So let me tell you a little bit more about Mike Sharrow. Mike's professional journey includes several entrepreneurial ventures in financial services, health care, and management consulting, along with pastoral work. He started with C12 as a principal chair in the Central Texas region, spearheading strategic growth in that area. And since 2016, Mike has been the CEO of C12, leading growth in membership and revenue, along with international expansion. C12 is the world's largest peer-learning organization for Christian CEOs, business owners, and executives. Local groups offer peer connection and accountability to equip Christian CEOs and owners to build great businesses for a great purpose.

So, here’s my conversation with Mike Sharrow.

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

Mike Sharrow: Always surprised you invite me back, Al. Thank you.

Al: Oh, there should be no surprises.

But Mike, today we’re going to talk a little bit about character and competence. Those are two keys that are essential for inspirational leadership. And I want to particularly focus on Christian character, that aspect where character, and what would you say is evidence of this type of character, when there are specific behaviors and practices as a leader that reflects Christ. So, well, let's just start off. When you describe someone as a leader with strong Christian character, how would you define it? What would you mean by that?

Mike: I'm glad we're having that be the focus this time because I think you and I know there's such a great liability in leadership to have this dichotomy of allowing “Christian doing” versus “Christian being.” And if you're really, in my space, working primarily with for-profit leaders, I’ve never really even confessed that if you are running a big business and you're the biggest giver in your church and you're giving lots of money away, no one checks you on your character. It's almost a pass because you're doing so much good for the community and Kingdom that you can, frankly, have a pretty big liability. And then, you have the other side. You and I both know you get some people who are just salt-of-the-earth, bless-your-heart souls, but they don't run good businesses. And I really think God cares about what we do and who we are in the process.

When I think of character, I think it's the fruit of the Spirit. I think those are the highest form to look at. I think it's things like consistency, that you are who you are everywhere you are. I love—was it Henry Cloud who wrote that book Integrity, about the wholeness of things? I think about who you are and how you are doesn't flip-flop by environment and situation. And we try to talk about, and even celebrate, in some honoring programs in our organization, what is courage under fire? do you stand for truth? do you show love? are you compassionate and responsible when things are hard and bad, when you're losing money, losing customers, being sued, whatever it may be? I think, well, the attributes, I think the attributes of leadership in the church, as we see in the epistles, would probably a good place to think about leadership in any organization and very little that seem to say what Pharisee you studied under or what degree you had. It seemed to be a lot more like marriage, character, temper, heart, all those pieces. I think these are probably more relevant in business and nonprofit leadership than not. Do you?

Al: I absolutely agree. Yeah. And Mike, as I was in a marketplace leadership role, I believe that I if I acted like Jesus, you know, if actually people saw the fruit of the Spirit, as you say, that I'd be more successful than if I didn't in my marketplace role. I believe that Jesus understands humanity. He, you know, God created humanity. He understands it. I remember taking classes in psychology in college thinking that I was going to learn the answers of why people behave the way they do. But then I realized, no, God’s the one that created people. He understands.

So I believe that the fruit of the Spirit actually works well in human relationships. So in your work—you're always in touch with Christian leaders and marketplace settings—share an example or two of a leader who actually exhibits the fruit of the Holy Spirit and how that's helped them transform his or her business.

Mike: Yeah. I agree with you. Neither of us are a prosperity message, so, folks, I don't think you’ll follow Jesus and you get rich. But I do think the wisdom of truth is truth, and truth works.

So I think of, actually, there's a leader who I've been in a forum with for 13 years named Mark McClain. He's built up three businesses. His most recent business he took public for a billion dollars, and then got bought into a private for $7 billion a couple of years ago. Last time I checked, he’s got, like, 3,000 employees in a dozen countries, a tech company that is certainly much, if not mostly, not people of his own faith. He wrote a book called Joy and Success at Work.

But I've actually met with some of his leadership team who are not—they don't share his faith. And I’ve asked them, “Hey, what's it like for you to work with a guy like Mark?” He got rated the number-one CEO in Austin, Texas, one year; number-two tech CEO in a country by Glassdoor. And he's not loud. He's not, like, this crazy dynamic. He actually is a very quiet leader. And when I asked them, they said, “Well, I've never met a guy who's so high integrity, who cares so much for all of our success, who treats us with such dignity.” One of them said, “I know him, and I disagree deeply on faith, politics, and a lot of things. But his faith has always been a blessing to our relationship, never a burden to our relationship. And I believe his faith holds him to a higher standard to us rather than making him expect more of us to him.” And they talked about, “Trusting that we know, when he pushes on something, man, he's not greed driven. He's not in it for self.”

And so they essentially, without knowing the Bible, they were describing all these marks of Christian leadership. And that created such trust in his motive and has been consistent that, you know, he'd say, “Aw, shucks. I'm just being a good guy.” But there's a reason why he's got unbelievable retention, loyalty, scale, resiliency, no lawsuits, no things messing up his company. I mean, he's ran a business for 18 years without a single employee lawsuit. Thousand employees. Why? He's created a culture that really is anchored in his own goodness and virtue.

Al: Yeah. And you mentioned the, I think, one of the magic words, and that is all of that creates high levels of trust in relationships. And, yeah, with that, good things come. Yeah. High integrity; dignity; he's a blessing to us; he's not greed driven. I mean, you know, in many business situations, he's not in it for himself. What an example right there of somebody you’d want to follow. Right, Mike?

Mike: Yeah. He wrote a series on LinkedIn a year or two ago of posts, articles on LinkedIn that essentially actually unpacked the fruit of the Spirit and said, “Hey, one of the greatest teachers I follow is a guy named Jesus, and this other great teacher, a guy named Paul. And they wrote about these ideas.” And he essentially, after each fruit, would be like, who wouldn't want more of that at work? Who wouldn't want a leader with more gentleness, kindness, self-control? And a lot of nonbelievers are, like, “These are great ideas. Wouldn't it be great to have more of this at work?” I mean, who's going to say—

Al: Yeah.

Mike: “—less of that, please”? even though our world celebrates leaders who crush it and have toxic wakes.

Al: Yeah. My marketplace setting, I'd often talk about having a jerk-free environment.

And so let's continue this. It's great when a leader embodies the fruit of the Spirit. And on a whole organizational level, the flourishing workplace certainly is a compelling, provides compelling evidence of God at work among people, even in a marketplace, maybe especially in a marketplace setting. So talk about how you see the impact of a flourishing workplace culture in the businesses that you serve through C12. So, what differences does it really make? I'm often asked this question, so “Why would I be interested?” What difference does it really make in business terms of employee retention or customer service or financial goals or KPIs or whatever the term is? What difference does it make?

Mike: So, there's some pretty consistent corollaries, and then I’ll give an example or two that’s, like, specific “here's the business ROI.” But I mean, in general, we see that member companies that get serious about this stuff generally see a marked difference in retention, engagement, productivity. Initially, that sounds like soft stuff, but then, usually the second year, if they sustain that and it's not just a good week, a good month, a good moment, but it becomes a cultural norm, they then usually see, well, gosh, my cost of training’s down; my cost of hiring’s down; my customer-service rates are improving because I've got longevity in my team. And that, then, creates more margin for either competitive talent, acquisition, or investment, innovation, business execution, whatever. And then that plays out—we saw it in COVID, the pandemic time—that companies with higher cultural of going into it had way better resiliency, kept the teams, the creativity of the team, the team feeling a sense that this is our problem to solve, our moment to lead into was dramatic.

And then, I can think of, there's a woman who leads a commercial cleaning business in Boston, where a journey of loving people and creating a culture around this stuff resulted in a 65% reduction of turnover, which actually allowed her to completely cut her marketing-ad spend. The retention of people made her service level so good at customers that all their business now comes from referrals. And so she just focuses on keeping their people really great and then fueling referrals. And it blew her business model upside down in a good way. We’ve seen it in construction and trades, and we've seen it in white-collar places as well. So I think nothing in the near term makes you money, like date tomorrow; but year two, year three, you start getting a compounding dividend on that that usually actually—like, a lot of our people do this out of a love motivation, a Christ conviction, and like you said, they're like, “I don't know if this is going to make much business sense, but okay, I'll do it.” And then a year or two later they're like, “I feel embarrassed. We're way more profitable when our culture’s healthy,” right? You're like, “Well, of course you are.” But if you do it for greed, I think—back to the fruit of the Spirit, though—I know people who try to manipulate. I know a CEO in town of a secular company, where he is trying to force the best-place-to-work-award scores or get things because he wants the notoriety, and he doesn't get any of the benefit, because it's greed motivated.

Al: That's upside down, yeah. I was doing the “best companies to work for” in Seattle, Washington, several years ago, before Best Christian Workplaces. And I remember an organization got a bad score, and said, “So tell me what happened?” And a leader closed the door. It was a face-to-face meeting, and he closed the door. He said, “Well, one of our marketing VPs said, ‘We're going to win this. And so all you have to do is answer these questions, you know—

Mike: The right way.

Al: “—very strongly agree. Yeah, the right way.” And it was an integrity-based organization. And the employees said, “No. We're going to answer this the way it really is.” And so it really worked against them.

But, so, let's continue on. It isn't necessarily easy to be a Christian leader in a marketplace setting in our culture. You know, we're in this polarized culture. So what would you say to a business person who feels like they have to be careful about how they express their Christian faith in the workplace? How do you find the confidence and boldness to live out a transparent and compelling faith in the workplace, Mike? Give us some advice.

Mike: So I generally find leaders live in one of two ditches, and both are costly. One is either ignorance about the liberties you have. The other is reckless disregard for the law. Both are dangerous. Our friends in Alliance Defending Freedom like to say, “Being stupid for Jesus is still stupid.”

My first mentor in business was an executive at Walgreens. And he pulled me aside when I was 21 years old, and he said, “Hey, you're a Christian, aren't you?” I said, “Yeah.” And he's like, “You seem like you're frustratedly trying to figure out how to be a Christian.” And he said, “I think you're over complicating. If you want to be successful in business and be a Christian, can I give you two pointers?” He said, “Just be so in love with Jesus that it's like a sponge, like Jesus oozes out of you authentically, when people ask you about life and what you're thinking about. Don't make it a program you're trying to inject.” And second, he said, “Be so excellent at what you do that you're really above reproach and above criticism for anything other than someone who may not like that Jesus oozes out of you.” And he’s like, “That’ll take you farther than you think.”

And I think we're in a moment where—we try to encourage leaders to know this—we've got incredible liberty in America. So your issue is not prosecution, it's persecution. And the key there is character. If a CEO is authentically living out the fruit of the Spirit, it gives you permission to speak to the motive and the reason for who you are. But if you are a Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde—like, I know a CEO of a tech company who, his employees one day went, “We know he loves Jesus because he’s always trying to create these awkward Jesus moments. But then he’s cussing out customers here and angry over here, and we’re not sure, like, ‘Which one’s the real you?’”

So I think if we share the reason for the hope we have, that presumes that people are actually seeing us live with hope. And if they're the beneficiaries of our hope, we live in a land at a moment that I think gives us tremendous freedom to share that. And I think if I'm focused on making sure everyone receives the love of Jesus as a prelude to me telling them who Jesus is, it doesn't make you bulletproof, but I know very few people who've been crucified for confessing Christ within a healthy-character context, more so it's the ones who it just suddenly came out of the box and like, “Oh, what’s this Jesus stuff you're suddenly breaking out on me?”

Al: One of my more-disappointing moments, Mike, I'll say, was somebody I'd worked with for 15 years. Not closely, but across geographies, but somebody I’d worked with for 15 years. And he found out I was a Christian, and he was surprised. And it's like, ouch.

Mike: And I've been haunted by the other side of the ditch. I worked at a place, a department, where I knew there was anti-Christian sentiments, a bunch of people with wounds and beliefs. And so I was convinced, I was determined to love them to Christ. But I never mentioned Christ. And when I left that department, a friend of mine went to work there, and I said, “How’d it go?” And she said, “Well, it was a little awkward. One day one of them were saying that you were the nicest guy they'd ever worked with, and they knew you were coming in, that you had a reputation of being a Christian. But then all the months of working together, they’d never heard you mention Him. And so they concluded it must be not real, because how could you have not mentioned it? Because you had so much late nights together, so many big projects, and it never came up.” And here I was, trying to be so “I'm going to be good and never say it.” And they were like, “Well, how could you never talk about something that's that important to you?” So I'm haunted by being on that ditch as well.

Al: Well, let’s talk about this, because community is important, I think, in this conversation. And as a Christian business leader, you know, running a business, finding a peer group is important, you know, to our own personal development. And I think it's even beyond just our personal development from a business perspective. But share an example of how a peer group, such as the C12 forum, can support and equip a Christian business leader for ongoing growth and development. What can a leader get from a peer group versus maybe a mentoring relationship, you know, or just another important relationship? What can a leader get from a peer group? I know it's a softball question, Mike.

Mike: Thank you. I’m going to come up with an answer. I probably should quit my job. But I have some credibility in that I came to this organization as a customer, and then, I'm a customer of my own business today. So I think the power of peers is you get continuity and shared context, where you don't give each other an excuse or an out. You can know where to push. We add some things in our context where we look at each other’s businesses. We talk to each other's teams. We even talk to their spouses and ask, like, “Hey, what's the blind spots?” And it leads to interventions around things.

So, for instance, I’m a customer. And my forum, I was presenting an issue last spring, and “Here's my issue. Here’s how I’m thinking of solving it. What do you guys think?” And one of them went, “Well, hey, Mike. You've had this issue three times in the last eight years, and each time, you told yourself this, you told us that, and then it’s played out this way. So what's going to be different this time? And what's the reason?” And that's inconvenient. That's awkward. I wanted the easy answer. And they really pushed to the thing behind the thing that needs to change.

And so I think sometimes the guy who founded C12, Buck Jacobs, used to say, “We oftentimes go to groups or consultants, wanting to get the answer to our questions, which is valuable. But sometimes we actually need to have our answers questions first.” And I think the confidentiality of me being able to go to my forum and say, on a good day, “Here's my great idea,” and have them tell me, “You're delusional;” and on my bad day, maybe frustrated, say, “I don't know if I want to do this anymore. I want to quit. I'm frustrated,” and have them be able to ground that, process it back, and know that they're not going to fire me, there’s no collateral damage there, and they can walk with me in the wake of that.

So I think peer accountability is really key, particularly for the other character pieces, because they'll also call out things like, why are you seeming so anxious? Or why are you seeming so angry? Or why are you so fixated on that? Or, “Mike, you're traveling a bunch. What about your marriage? What about your kids?” Like, that stuff.

Al: Excellent. Yeah, I was just talking with and did a podcast with Tammy Heim—

Mike: Mm-hmm.

Al: —of the Christian Leadership Alliance. She said she had a mentor that kept asking her the same question, so what is it about your leadership that caused that outcome?

Mike: Next question. Next question.

Al: Yeah.

Mike: Yeah.

Al: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So yeah, a great benefit, you know, to have your answers questioned. I love the way you said that. Yeah.

Mike: I was in a meeting a couple of years ago with a CEO who was not in C12. He was visiting to kind of check it out. He ran a $9 billion company, 16 subsidiaries. There was a CEO of another company who was getting critical feedback from the forum. In fact, they were confronting an anger issue. This “Hey, you get angered when you get disagreed with. And what’s that doing to your marriage, your kids, your team?” It was charged because he got angry at the feedback.

Al: Yeah.

Mike: And were like, “Hey, ding, ding, ding. We got something here.” And so we're working through that and peeling back the onion. And the $9 billion CEO started crying. And I looked at him, and I said, “You’re not the one in trouble. Why are you crying?” And he went, “Because I'm jealous.” He said, “I've got more Deloitte and Accenture consultants than I could ever pay. I've got fantastic boards. I've got limitless talent. But I don't have a single place where I would expect to receive that feedback and trust it. And I'm jealous of this little, small business getting that kind of feedback.” So I think every leader needs that.

One last little piece you’ll appreciate. So Nathan confronted David, right, about, and I always wondered what happened to Nathan's relationship with David? Well, we know that later, when David's old and dying, Nathan's, that’s Sheba’s advisor to the whole coup that’s about to happen. And then we see later, when Solomon is becoming king, and he’s established putting in place his cabinet, he actually hires Nathan's son to be counselor to the king. So something in Solomon, at a young age, when “I need what my dad had. He had people in his circle who could speak truth to him. And his name was David.” And I think we all need Davids in our life.

Al: Amen. Amen. And so to our listeners, who's the David in your life right now? And what's a group that you can be a part of, where you can have those kind of conversations and that kind of prophetic voice into your life?

Well, as we're talking about Christian character, Mike, and the fruit of the Spirit, and it's not like there's any new formula to this. And even 2,000 years after Jesus walked on the earth, still there's no formula. So as you interact with Christian business leaders, what do you see as some of the most-important practices that keep them grounded in their faith, and maybe even how do you keep your own faith fresh in this season of life? What are some of these habits and practices? And as, you know, we talk with leaders, oftentimes great leaders have regular routines when they wake up in the morning and so on. So what are some of the routines, what are some of the practices that you've seen that are really successful and that you even might practice yourself?

Mike: A friend of mine just wrote a book. He's the dean of the business school at the Catholic University of America. He wrote a book called Super Habits. And it's really based on the virtues of Thomas Aquinas’ writings and such. That's a fun piece. But I’d say practically, I’m going to say four things, and, frankly, me entering C12 is what solidified most of these in my own life.

The first is—and these are going to seem like basics. Like you said, they're not new—but I think we sometimes get sloppy agape, sloppy grace, and we don't create really good—and I don’t mean disciplines from a legalistic perspective. I don't think we create the right priority rhythms. The first is vibrant time with God every morning. We actually put out a resource a couple years ago in a website called themostimportanthour.com, just on a framework of how do you turn that into a can't-miss meeting? And honestly, we’ve had probably more legacy changes from that single thing than any other thing we've done, because how can you and I say we want to lead organizations for God if we never meet with God? If we say He owns everything, but we never talk to Him about the business He owns, we're probably not going to do it right anyway. So I think intimacy, and we find that less than 20% of CEOs who identify as Christians and join C12 come in actually having a daily time with God. And so we usually, within a year, we moved that to 60% and then to 80%. And that's usually the single-most radical shift. So I'd say that.

I'd say second is retreat rhythms. We found that 90% of CEOs have never had a personal retreat, have never done anything beyond a quiet-time moment. So if 20% do quiet time, less than half of those have ever done more than a quiet time. So I do a quarterly retreat, getting away, fasting, silence, solitude, walking, praying, journaling, Sabbath. I used to think I Sabbathed because I went to church on Sunday and took a vacation here and there. It wasn't till six, seven years ago I actually discovered in practice actual Sabbath. And I now can't not see it throughout Scripture is it just being this, like, a big deal. Like, it's a big deal.

And I think fourth is a mechanism of—this’ll sound self-serving in C12, but I do this in my small group, I do this with friends, for my whole life—accountability with reflection. Something’s going to force you to take inventory of the fruit of the Spirit versus the fruit of the flesh in your life, the fruit of abundant life versus the wasteland of a treadmill in your life, and make you do something about it. In my board of directors—you and I share a board member—our board of directors this past year added an exercise of taking the fruit of the flesh listed in Galatians and actually asking ourselves, where are we showing any evidence of that? because when greed starts creeping in, when disunity, when anger, like, those are the beginnings of dysfunction. And we start actually asking our spouses to be part of that 360 process with us as a board. I think active reflection, accountability, and rhythms of actually spend time with the Father will increasingly bring revelation of gaps. It’s kind of like—and honestly, I've done your guys’ BCW Survey, like, I don't know, nine times now. And I appreciate it. But every year, there's some sort of annoying revelation that I don't like. Like, darn, there's a problem. I don't like being true. And my option is to this, well, don't look at it, or to go fix it. And the same is true of time with God. Like, I can't spend more time with God and not have it reveal opportunities to deeper formation.

Al: Well, Mike, you’re not alone with that reaction to the Best Christian Workplace Survey. We practice our own medication here, our own medicine. Yeah.

But let me ask you, Mike, you mentioned Sabbath. Let me just dig into that and ask you, so what changed six or seven years ago? I mean, I know, you know, a lot of us would say, “Yeah. We go to church on Sunday, and then we have lunch afterward. And then football after that, or something.” So what changed for you?

Mike: Similarly, to daily quiet time, a mentor called out that a touch-and-go devotional or Christian music here or there in the car, and a periodic reading at the end of the day is nice. But that doesn't follow the example that David described, Jesus modeled, Paul modeled, or any great Christian leader. And dared me to try it for 90 days, and it changed everything on Sabbath. I think I read a book called Take the Day Off. I read a book called Sacred Pace. I got challenged to, hey, Sabbath isn't just a day we go to church and watch football and such. It is a day set aside. It is a day of recreation and rest. It's actually a statement of, like, do I trust God?

And as I begin to look at it, my first reaction was Sunday was actually not very Sabbath for me. Like, getting up early, go to church, teach a class, get family lunches. Like, I was worn out, frankly, by my Sabbath. So I actually made Saturday my Sabbath, which became totally different, and I began to find a different kind of rest. I don't mean that cheekily. And it became a battle zone. And, like, when COVID and business gets stressful, I kept finding I'm too important. Things are too busy. Like, God, you don’t understand. And I kept hearing from God and be like, “Hey, I'll be fine. Like, you know, God is not at risk of your Sabbath, but you need this, Mike.” And I think the Messiah complex of the leader to think, like, “I hold the whole world together, and if I take a break, it'll fall apart,” is a toxin. And I need a once-a-week detox for my own soul.

Al: Thanks for sharing that. You know, your point is, and for many Christian leaders, Sunday's a busy day. You know, you've got responsibilities of church, and Mike teaches Sunday school. But then, Saturday. Maybe that's somebody's Sabbath. Yeah.

Mike: So, I do no email. I do no texting. I don't do any work. It's a big deal.

Al: Thanks for sharing that. Yeah.

So, Mike, let's just talk a little bit about our future, so—

Mike: Do you know something I don't?

Al: No. Not yours and mine personally.

Mike: Oh, okay.

Al: But, you know, here we are in a country. We've just had an election. I know this is going to come out, you know, in January, sometime after New Year's. And I'm not asking about New Year's resolutions. But, you know, as we look at the next five to 10 years—you’re a strategic, forward-thinking leader, which I appreciate greatly—but as we look ahead five to 10 years and the landscape of Christian business and leadership in Christian businesses, what do you see as the challenges that we need to be facing? What new opportunities are you excited about, for example, or what trends do we see going forward? I appreciate your thoughts on this.

Mike: I try to recite the mantra to myself and to everyone around me that I believe every challenge is an opportunity, and it's actually, I believe, an invitation as Kingdom leaders. So I think the problems of the future at present validate our calling and assignment at this moment. So are there challenges? Sure. There's a bunch. I think the increasingly post-Christian, post-truth, politically polarized, this battle between Left and Right is a problem. I think we know five, 10 years from now technology will only be bigger. Big data will only be bigger. But I think that only means an accelerated access to information and knowledge, not to wisdom.

In the world of AI, there's something called the DIKW principle—D-I-K-W. There's a difference between data, information, knowledge, and wisdom. AI and the world of innovation is accelerating the access to D, I, and some of K. But deep K and W is still elusive, and more volume of data and information does not translate to wisdom or true knowledge. And so we actually have a growing disparity there. So I think we have to accept that as business leaders, we're going to be swimming in a pool and swimming with fish who don't know wisdom and who increasingly don't know the meaning of the very words we use, whether those words are religious or political or ideological. So I think the opportunity there is it's our job to meet them.

A friend of mine, just yesterday, took me to John 6:44, where it says, “No one comes to Jesus unless the Father draws them.” But the word draw is literally drags. And so we think about the Incarnation. Jesus came down to speak in our words about the truth of the Father so we might know Him. He didn’t say, “Climb the mountaintop, and come find Me.” He came down as a baby for us. And so we're here to continue that incarnational. I think Gen Z is incredibly spiritual. They're just not Christian. I think millennials and Gen Zs are purpose driven, curious. They want authenticity. They lack mentors. They lack elders. They lack wisdom. And we are here. So I think it's going to be a mess. I think there's going to be chaos. And I think that we are incarnationally sent into that chaos to meet people. And I've got to realize, like, they won't even know the meaning of the words we use. And I don't want to defend. I think the tension—I'm a big champion of religious liberty in terms of legally and politically. But practically, we're called to be interventionalists, who come and connect with people and help deliver the very thing they want. They want love, authenticity, truth, meaning, dignity. We should trump at that. I didn't mean trump—better word, probably.

Al: Yeah. Yeah. I understand.

Mike: We should be great at that.

Al: Yeah.

Mike: Trump could be better at that. Okay, back to topic.

Al: Yeah.

Mike: So I think we've got a lot of challenges. I think those are the very validation of the call upon leaders today. And I'm excited for that.

Al: True opportunities as we go forward. And I love your DIKW: data, information, knowledge, wisdom. And, you know, with a deep relationship with Christ, we should all be bringing a lot of wisdom to the table. You know, I think about the next generation and, you know, I've read Proverbs, you know, for a long time. And Proverbs has such deep wisdom, and people don't understand it. And we have a lot to offer. No question.

Well, Mike, this has been a great conversation. Thanks so much for sharing. I love the just where we started off, fruit of the Spirit. That's a conduit that people should be experiencing. Our leadership, they should be experiencing the fruit of the Spirit in our leadership with consistency, integrity, you know, love, compassion, and so on. And that creates truth, and it also creates trust in relationships. So, yeah, I love your example of your colleague Mark McClain and his experience in the workplace and how people really did trust him as a leader, even though they may not have believed in his Christian faith, but how that was really an important part. And how, again, I love the way you described being in a peer group. And, you know, as leaders, we oftentimes will hear, you know, the higher you are in leadership, the more lonely it is, thus creating the need for a peer group, like you said. And spiritual disciplines. I loved the conversation. You used my favorite term there, sloppy agape. We don't want that. We don't want sloppy grace. And the statistics you mentioned of the number of CEOs that start the day off without a quiet time, without being energized by God, and how they're coming, I think of them coming to work with an empty cup. And we all know what it feels like when we got nothing. But when we start off the day with a vital experience with Christ, our cup is full, and we're able to perform. And not only that, but just be who we need to be. So this has been a great conversation even as we think about the next five to 10 years. So thanks so much, Mike. We've learned a lot.

Is there anything you’d like to add to what we’ve talked about?

Mike: I maybe add with one thing, and we'll see if you like this language as much as you like the other one. You may not. I think, back to the original conversation about character and fruit of the Spirit, I think we're in an era where a lot of people talk about balance, work-life balance. I think the better word is integration and wholeness, because I think the danger of compartmentalization is from lanes that allows us to think too much in boxes when the reality is our lives are much more biologically and organic than they are mechanical. And I use the example of, you know, little kid. You take your kids to the pool, and there’s swim lanes. If you've ever been to a community pool or when you see the kid who pees in the pool, well, if a kid pees in pool lane three, it doesn't matter that it’s lane three. It’s just in the pool. Lane four, lane five. Like, it's diffusive. The same is true about character issues in our life. And so I think if we think compartmentally, like, “I'm good here; I’ve just got issues over here,” I don't think that's actually how our souls work or lives work. And so I think the treasure of pursuing whole-life character at work, at home, everywhere is compounded benefit because integration is more important than balance. Because we’re one pool, and when there's dysfunction in one, it affects the whole; and when there's fruit and goodness in one, it affects the whole.

Al: Integration and wholeness. I think that is absolutely right. I think back at key times in my own life, and I felt the lack of integration, and I realized this is time to integrate who I am in all aspects of my life and, yeah. Amen to that, Mike. Thanks so much.

Gosh, I want to thank you again for your contributions, Mike, and I really appreciate your commitment to equipping leaders who will reflect Christ in the marketplace, business as mission. It is critical for the Kingdom of God here on Earth. So thanks for taking your time out today and speaking into the lives of so many listeners.

Mike: Thanks, Al. Appreciate you.

Al: Thank you so much for listening to my conversation with Mike Sharrow. 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 any questions on flourishing workplace cultures, please email me, al@workplaces.org.

And are you ready to uncover the hidden truths that can take your organization to the next level? Well, engage with Best Christian Workplaces for an honest, impactful assessment that will reveal opportunities for growth and alignment, insights that can transform your workplace culture. Visit workplaces.org and take the first step toward building a flourishing, faith-driven organization.

And be sure to keep listening next week as we continue to learn from leaders who are proven inspirational leaders exhibiting Christian character and excellence in their leadership.

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.

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