Episode 182 - Joan Anderson - Leaders On Leadership
"Success is not measured by how many people serve you but by how many people you serve."
For Joan Anderson, that success was not served on a silver platter because it took her great efforts to deliver that success to herself. In this episode, Joan shares how her efforts blossomed into Good Flights, no matter what she faced as a leader. Putting her worldview in place allowed her to combat different problems and stay on course. As we move further into the conversation, Joan reveals the persons who made her stay through her vision. She also takes us into the value Good Flights provide towards animals. So, join Joan Anderson in this episode if you want inspiration to soar higher towards your journey.
---
Watch the episode here
Listen to the podcast here
Joan Anderson - Leaders On Leadership
I am here to welcome you to another Leaders on Leadership where we pull back the curtain on leadership and talk with leaders of all ages and all stages about what it takes to pay the price of leadership. I am tremendously excited to welcome my guest, the tremendous Joan Anderson. I want to tell you a little bit about Joan. Joan has been greatly blessed by being able to participate in the worlds of corporate IT and corporate management, and to serve overseas I'll tell you a little bit about that's where we connected.
She believes that one of life's greatest opportunities for deepest fulfillment is being able to serve others and positively impact their space. This yields deep joy for Joan, which you're going to know about and is her primary motivator. She reflects on Christ. She's a sister of ours and one of his models for success, “Success is not measured by how many people serve you, but by how many people you serve.” Joan, welcome to the show.
Thanks, Tracey. It’s such a blessing to be here and see you again.
To our readers out there, I'll always like to give people context. I met you in 2016. I went over to the Kosovo Leadership Academy, and that's where I met Joan. Joan was overseas teaching, and I went back several times since then. I’m always connected with Joan. In addition to loving to teach and serve the people in Kosovo and teach leadership, Joan also is huge into pet rescue. She's going to talk with us at the end about that. I would connect with Joan and bring pups back from the streets of Kosovo, and I would land in BWI and somebody would pick them up. We serve God and a lot of God's creatures together. Joan, I'm thrilled to have you here. It's been many years we've known each other and you're one of my heroes.
That's humbling to me. I don't know if you remember, but I'll share it with your readers. We first met getting on the bus from the hotel and Christina went to the ribbon-cutting ceremony at this school. I remember vividly getting on the bus and saying, “There's a mom and a handful of puppies in the back of the hotel. It's July. They have no food and water.” Tracey turned to me and said, “We're going after them when we get back. We're going to feed them and get them water,” then thus began our relationship.
That was wonderful. We went back there. We brought them some food and you can share what's going on. It's getting better, but there's still a long way to go, but one street dog at a time. That was a fabulous ribbon cutting. We'll talk a little bit about a KLA and the work there that you've done and what you're doing now. Joan even lived with me for a time a couple of years ago and helped me set up and get the show and the office. We keep crossing paths, and it's exciting. She's back stateside. I'm sure she'll tell you about what she's doing. When I thought about the show and all you've been through, I want to unpack my father's speech called The Price of Leadership, where he talked about the four things you're going to have to experience and pay if you are going to be a leader and not a leader in name only.
The first one he talked about is loneliness. We've all heard the phrase, “It's lonely at the top. Heavy is the head that wears the crown,” even Christ toward loneliness. Can you share with our readers a time in your life when you encountered loneliness, a season of it, and what words you would give to our readers out there perhaps if they are in a season of loneliness?
Thanks for sharing your father's writings. I learned much from him. This particular speech that he gave, reflects upon loneliness, the way he describes it, I remember being in Kosovo, being able to embrace the students, and being impacted by their uniqueness and how special they were. I wanted to do all that I could to bring home to them how valuable they are and even perhaps instill in them a belief that they can bring change to their country. One of the assignments that I was given was to teach a STEM course for a full year for the eighth to twelfth grades. I didn't know STEM. I was a Math person. We dug in and exploited together.
One of the comments or things that the students would always share with me is how embarrassed or frustrated they were with the state of the pollution in their country. They have water, air, and street garbage. That's everywhere. I started looking around and I read about Sweden's transformation. Stockholm, one of the major cities in Sweden, was given the Green City of the Year Award in the world. We started to study and I said, “Let's start looking into this. Let's study Sweden and see what was their transformation and how it transpired for the country.”
I started to get this idea in my head, “Wouldn't it be great if we did a multimedia presentation and we took it to Sweden and we gave the kids the opportunity to travel there and learn from the experts?” This was a crazy idea. That's where the loneliness part sets in. Not from a negative standpoint from anybody there, but I knew to pursue this path that I was going to be out there on my own trying to make this work.
Lo and behold, the kids set off and they worked on building this presentation. I did some research and I contacted a think tank in Sweden. I arranged a meeting with them in the summer. I flew over. The director was going to come. She had some other obligations where she couldn't come to the last minute, flew, met with them, and proposed the idea. The director of the think tank was moved to no end he said, “Please bring your students here and we'll give them a week of touring and education.” Long story short, in October of that year, we took fourteen students. They got a grand tour of all that Sweden had done to go from where they were to where they were back the time when we visited them. It was transformational not only for me but for the students too.
One of the leaders who had been in the transformation of Sweden for many years spent so much time with the students, talking to them, and taking them to different waste management facilities. The tour guide of the research facility said to me, “I've done over 100 of these and I've never seen him spend so much time with a tour group. Out of those 100, this group has been the most impressive that I've ever done.” She had done tour groups. To have a student tour group was very rare, but then to have that accolade was something else. What was neat was when we got there, they asked if our kids would do a presentation. We pulled it together. We pulled very late-night sessions and picked the students nominated for the team to present.
One presented at the school and one presented on Kosovo, and they nailed it. They did a fabulous job, then we started to get requests from other Sweden businesses for them to come and present their story. It was truly remarkable. The kids got home. Not long after that, that gentleman who had been in Sweden for 40 years emailed me. He said, “Here's something you need to go to.” It was a business or leadership seminar created in Macedonia by some leading entrepreneurs for the transformation of Macedonian and the neighboring countries.
That developed a relationship that blossomed later. She invited our students to Macedonia to attend seminars on entrepreneurship. From that, we took eight students to that one. One of the young men who was very bright said, “That was one of the best weekends of my life.” It all came because of this passion or this urging that God gave me, “No matter how lonely you are or nobody's standing beside you, you need to do this.” That initial trip to Sweden came out of my own pocket. I had to just go with it. That was the story of professional loneliness, stepping out there, and then the rewards that came from that.
I love that. Remember, if you are the first one doing this, by nature of the fact that you're the first one doing it, you're going to be the only one or alone. I know it's a different form of loneliness, but I love it. You're in a different culture with a different perspective of, as you said, clean water and a different language, yet you still, all the times, feel like, “I'm alone in many ways. Not just in concept,” but also you were not from this land. You're a sojourner over there but trying to help. I love that even if we're in circumstances where we are alone from how we look, speak, and where we come from, if it's laid on your heart, you got to go for it.
You followed it. You put your own sweat and wealth equity in there to make it happen, which is a big deal because a lot of people are like, “Nobody's going to fund it,” then you fund it. You may be the only bank account. A lot of times in entrepreneurship and ministry, we are self-funding. Thank you for sharing and your bravery in doing that. He talked about, as far as loneliness, is weariness. I know some of the things over there. You are working to make things better. It's a seed like a starfish. I say that one little starfish, but there's a gazillion starfish or dogs or kids out there. How do you stay strong? I know a lot about your health and how you take care of yourself, but how do you combat weariness?
The most pivotal season of my life was when I came to faith in Jesus. I was introduced to Christian apologetics. That has been the anchor for my life. One of the leaders who taught me so much said, “We all have four basic questions that we need to answer. They are origin, ‘How did we get here?’ Meaning, ‘What is my purpose?’ Morality, on what foundation do we determine right from wrong, and destiny, ‘Where are we going?’”
From that, if we answer those questions honestly, and then our answers are measured with integrity against the test for truth, we begin to shape a worldview from which provides a lens for us to view the world. Once I grasped and pursued that, all of these questions that your dad has presented and talked through, I kept coming back to this framework as being my solution and foundation for getting through.
Our answers are measured with integrity against the test for truth.
For weariness, very rarely my weary from the standpoint of discouragement or despair. We all deal with physical lonely or physical weariness because we get tired. Even that, when I'm pursuing my passion, the physical weariness side is much less than if I didn't have that drive. I can go a lot further. I switched from two different roles in my work. One was very much focused on my team. I was in a supervisory role.
I could work 12 to 15 hours and look at the clock and say, “Where did that go?” I'm helping solve problems and I'm helping people. I've found that gives me so much energy. I switched now to doing more of a staff-oriented role in reading and research, which has always been my passion. I found that I do get tired much more quickly than when I'm serving people. That's been enlightening to me. I like them both. When I'm serving people and meeting their needs, I can go a lot further. For me, weariness can be combated by having my worldview firmly in place and making sure I'm sticking to those principles.
Good Flights: Weariness can be combated by having your worldview firmly in place and ensuring you stick to those principles.
One is weary. Is it that cognitive work tires you more physically? Your brain is a muscle, too, or do you think it's more you're in your gifting more with serving others? I'm sure you're excellent at both, but where do you think the different level is weariness? That's the other thing. Is it just actual weariness because we're mere mortals, or is it your body telling you, “This is the weariness where you need to adjust something?” If you're assigned at work, you're assigned at work, but what do you think?
I have seen that with pure cognitive work, get there and log, you start your day and end where you end much more drained from a cognitive exercise, constantly reading manuals. My job is to create a teaching curriculum. I'm reading the product manuals and shaping it. It is more draining. I am older now, too. It's not like I'm fresh in college and I can do much more, but I could do twice as many more hours if I'm helping solve problems for my team than when I'm pure cognitive effort.
The mind is a muscle too.
I'm sure age factors in there too.
Loneliness and weariness. My father talked about abandonment. Typically, abandonment has a very negative connotation, fear of abandonment, or in the world of pet rescue like Joan and I are, that is the unforgivable sin, but that's not what he's talking about. When he talks about abandonment, what he means is pruning away what is not your highest and best calling. Stop doing what you like and want to do and favor what you ought and need to do. It's a tight, singular focus. I'm sure you get called many ways to serve. You're good in many ways. How do you stay on point?
I like how your father phrased the concept of abandonment. It comes back to a sharply focused worldview because that provides a filter for what we allow into our space and what we say no to, even though there's a flood of honorable efforts in which we can place our time. Once we understand our purpose and the framework that God has given to us, both generally as Christian people but also individually, those things are much more easily handled and addressed.
I love that honorable efforts and that filter. It's all good, but remember, God knows everything. Don't say, “If I don't do it, it nobody will.” That's not true. God already knows who's going to do it because he's already seen it to the end. It's good to let go of that because sometimes we beat ourselves up like, “If I don't do it,” trust me. You are not indispensable. Even the bad stuff, God reworks. I love that honorable efforts, honorable in whose eyes, it may be honorable, but is it your best? I love that sharply focused and then the filter can weed out the stuff that somebody else should be called to serve to do.
I like what your dad said that the power of a single book at the right time in a person's life is unlimited. Keeping my mind in the right books and the right content helps shape things and provide perspective so well. In addition when I go to bed or put my head on the pillow at night, I want to know that he would say, “Well done.” That's a driving factor. that helps filter out a lot of the items that I used to not be focused on that I'm not particularly called to. That helps a lot. I also learned that there are some things in life that give my worldview a kick. I used to teach Sunday school for kindergarteners and first graders. I would come out of there and I would be humbled. My world would've got a reshaping because kids and animals can set your course right back in gear. They're simple and humble. Their perspective is so clear. Those kinds of things helped me focus on the right things.
You brought up the thing about the books. I did hear a sermon and they talked about, “We're in this artificial construct of time that God put us in for now, but he is eternal and everything beyond. Once we're out of these suits, we're back into the eternal phase. There are pieces of us that are eternal.” They said, “Whenever you are in the word or reading a great book from somebody that has gone on to glory, you step out of the temporal world into eternity.”
That's why these books can transform you. I thought, “We can be in eternity ahead of time and get a jump by the more grateful.” That's such a great way to put it because that's where you do get transformed. You don't just learn more from this, but you lead this world and you get to start tasting glory ahead of time. I'm glad you brought that up because with abandonment, we need to stop and, “You're tired,” or, “You're working all day and researching. You need to read fiction or watch a silly show for a little.” Be very intentional about not being on a steady diet. It'll rot your mind like too many sweets rot your teeth and abandon the time where it's not good in the overall picture.
I'm glad you brought up that thing that he talked about. It says at the right time. Loneliness, abandonment, and then vision. I can remember growing up with these greats that I sat under. I'm like, “That's them. They're visionaries. I'm a doer.” Like you, I like fixing things. I like researching. My dad was like, “Vision is seeing what needs to be done. We can do that. We got a discerning eye, and then doing it.” He was very pragmatic about it. I'm like, “I get it. You have to be like Nostradamus or Elon Musk visionary.” Vision is going out there and being very strategic but then having a call to action and being very tactical. I've watched you go through many changes in your life and we're always calling each other up and saying, “What's the next chapter looking like?” How do you craft your vision?
I loved what your dad said and many aspects of it. He first said, “We can't pay the price of leadership without knowing where we're going and what we're doing. Perspective is vital.” He quoted scriptures in Proverbs 29:18, “Without vision, people perish.” I remember sharing that with some of the students in Kosovo. It's profound. In that, it says that it's a mandate. God wouldn't say that in that way if it wasn't something that we were supposed to pursue and follow. Plus, he gives the tools to pursue it. What I took away profoundly from your dad was he said, “Vision is being able to see things as they are.” What rang true to me was the definition of truth in Christian apologetics is reality as it is. Truth is what corresponds to reality.
That always made me think. What the Christian worldview provides most clearly is the profound way to see what we experience day in and day out as it is. It gives us an unusual vantage point. Your dad says he learned so much from great thinkers like Lincoln, Patrick Henry, and some other profound people. My go-to men are CS Lewis and GK Chesterton. They helped me stay true to my vision. Alister McGrath wrote a lot about CS Lewis in a biography. His comments on this concept of vision, if you don't mind, I'll read.
Good Flights: What the Christian worldview provides most clearly is the profound way to see what we experience day in and day out as it really is.
For Lewis, the Christian faith offers us a means of seeing things properly as they are, like your dad would say, “Despite their outward appearances, Christianity provides an intellectually compassionate and imaginatively satisfying way of seeing things and grasping their interconnectedness, even if we find it difficult to express in words. Lewis's affirmation of the reasonableness of the Christian faith rests on his own quite distinct way of seeing the rationality of the created order and its ultimate grounding in God. Using a powerful visual image, Lewis invites us to see God as both the ground of the rationality of the world and the one who enables us to grasp it.”
He says, and this is a popular quote of Lewis, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen. Not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” He offers us a standpoint from which we may survey things and grasp intrinsic coherence. That is one of the tests for truth, too, in coherence. I keep two to my vision if I align myself that particular day by focusing on God's word, his truth, and his portrayal of reality as it is.
Thank you. For our readers out there, if you want to learn more about apologetics, which is Lewis is another one of my top five, he was the master of it. It is the way he would unpack the truth. I always say unpacking truth, but you called it the test for truth. I heard a sermon and it said, “Love, unless it's rooted in truth, is not love.” I love that you've hit on truth because a lot of people are always, “Love.” No. That is a poison love if it's not grounded or rooted in truth. If you tell somebody if you're a life coach or, “I can change your life,” if it's not rooted in the reality of what's going on, you're enabling, you're setting them up for failure, or you're setting them straight on the pathway to hell. You got to have truth always into it. I love that. That's what vision is. We got to be honest with ourselves and before God. We got to let him shine the light through us and see all the things that we don't want to see or can't see. I love that you pulled Lewis and Chesterton into it. I love those two.
They are profound thinkers. We've been blessed by God putting them on this Earth.
I even read one page of anything CS Lewis. One page takes me half an hour because I sit there and I'm like, “I can't wait to meet him. Out of all the people I'm excited to meet, he's in the top twenty. There are others before, but he is definitely a runner-up.”
Even a quote, I have a book on The Quotable Lewis and I sent you a picture of my cat sitting on top of the book keeping his thoughts.
Thank you so much for unpacking what these four concepts mean to you. Is there anything else from a leadership perspective? Could you bring us up to speed on where you are now? I'd like for our readers to read about what you're doing because you are still reaching out even though you're living stateside with impacting the lives of the street dogs in Kosovo.
I came back a few years ago now. I came back first because one of my students got a scholarship at a top school here, then I've stayed and I'm back in the corporate world, back in technical education. I'm enjoying that. I've also kept in touch with some special people over there. Do you remember I introduced you to my vet over there who's one of the leading vets in the country? We went out of her way to come with us and we looked at some property for him to build a state-of-the-art facility. He ended up building one in the city of Christiania, which is where his client base was. He's there, but the animal situation is very dire in there and Kosovo still. Tracey, you were one of the ones who said, “I can't go anymore. It hurts too much.”
Good Flights: The animal situation is very dire in Kosovo.
I've seen a lot of bad things. I've been to war. The dog thing is difficult.
All the readers should know that every time Tracey came, she took 1 or 2 dogs back with her. You were stranded in the airport once with one of the dogs.
Thank goodness it was Frankfurt. The Germans loved their hunds. I was like a rock star in the airport. If I had been in England, they liked their cats. In Germany, I had this beautiful shepherd mix and I'm like, “I know. This dog is cool.” Bella was her name. If you're going to get stranded with a dog, Frankfurt's a good airport to be at.
In fact, I brought two Kosovo dogs back here and they were oddly enough rescued by two German women who were working in Kosovo. They ended up at Lousim. Lousim is a fine young man over there. He's like us. He can't say no. He's got about 100 dogs that he has on his property and it's immaculate. He knows how to do it. He runs it, but it's never-ending. He is trying to build up to 200. Long story short, we formed an NGO in Kosovo and they wanted some strategic people on that. One is my vet and one is Lousim, and then a local man who is the director. He has built many animal facilities for me on my property. The goal is to try to influence the government and have a strategic operation from the government down to try to rid of the stray population of Kosovo. There is something you said when we were driving around in Kosovo one day, “America was like this once years ago, and this can be fixed.”
We treated animals like property and dirt, and street dogs too.
That stuck with me. I have this belief that similar to embarking on a trip to Sweden on a much smaller scale, we can impact. It takes the right people, somebody where it's not an impact to their budget to invest. We'd like to tactically get as many dogs and cats out of Kosovo until we can have a countrywide solution but build shelters there too. We have a building plan for a shelter on the property where I live.
Once it's seen how it can be done, we can replicate it. The goal would be to go out of business, not to have shelters, but to spay-neuter effectively. Money is given for spaying and neutering, but it doesn't go to the animals. One of my dogs that I brought home was tagged, but he wasn't neutered. You'll see pictures of female dogs with tags but they have a litter of puppies. The money is not used properly. It needs great oversight. Strategically, we'd like to rid the stripe population by having an effective program to influence the country. I’m trying to impact the suffering that's going on through different mechanisms.
Can people reach out to you if they're interested in supporting you?
I have my personal email address.
You talked about that. Are they called the Anatolian Shepherds?
Yes.
You have two of them.
I have a Shar.
Are they similar to the Anatolian Shepherds?
No, the Anatolians have shorter hair, but I did have one of those over there. It's amazing, but these are the Shar dogs and that's a shorter nickname for the Albanian name, but they are like a Great Pyrenees Newfoundland.
I was at a Christmas market. A lady had two Anatolian shepherds and I'm like, “I never knew anybody stateside.” She's like, “There's a lady that brought back these from overseas. Eleven dogs and she breeds them, but if you're interested in rescuing one, there's plenty of them.” I've never seen anybody stateside that even knew the breeder had one. it was fascinating.
Let Joan know because they have this transport going back and forth. Usually, it gets into Maryland or the DC area and picks the puppies up. It makes an impact. It teaches the youth, too, that these are God's creatures. They deserve love and compassion, too, because until you're taught that all things from the planet, everything on the planet to include the planet, need care and tending to by a man and woman, you don't intrinsically get that.
Animals are God's creatures, and they deserve love and compassion.
I've come across this. There have been two organizations that do flight rescues with dozens of animals. I've reached out to them. They've been stateside mostly, but they said, “We'll keep it as an option.” That would be a way to get through the winters particularly.
For anybody that travels overseas, before you go over, if you're going with anybody, ask them, “Is there a local vet or rescue?” You're going to show up early. The rescue pays the money. You would tell people, “I'm a pet mule. I'm not smuggling drugs, I'm bringing a pet.”
We call them flight volunteers. All the paperwork is done. You just show up.
I just take my dog if it is small enough to carry on. Otherwise, they'd transport it. If you're flying overseas and you want to add the blessing, they need an escort. Ask people over there, “Is there a local shelter or vet clinic that they show up?” You pick the animal up at the airport and get it through. That's another fabulous way to serve.
We're grateful for people like you, always taking animals back.
That was a lot of fun. You brought back great memories. Joan, I can't thank you enough. I look forward to connecting with you in person, especially now that you're stateside again.
I’m grateful to you, Tracey. Thank you for your time. It's been a blessing.
You are so welcome. To our leaders out there, remember. You're going to be the same person five years from now that you are now, except for two things, people you meet and the books you read. You got to meet the tremendous Joan Anderson. Please connect with her. If you like what you heard, please make sure you subscribe so you don't miss another episode. If you would do this in honor of the review, that help other people see what they need to read. We hope that you've been blessed with paying the price of leadership. I thank you all for paying the price of leadership. Joan, thank you again, and to our tremendous readers out there, have a tremendous rest of the day.
Important Links
About Joan Anderson
Joan has been greatly blessed by being able to participate in the worlds of corporate IT, and corporate management, to serve overseas. She believes that one of life's greatest opportunities for deepest fulfillment is in being able to serve others and perhaps positively impact their space. This indeed has yielded a deep joy for her and is a primary motivator for daily sustenance and motivation. Reflecting on Jesus and one of His models for success, someone once shared that "Success is not measured by how many people serve you but in how many people you serve." This is her motto.