Episode 151 - Cynthia Zhai - Leaders On Leadership

Leadership comes with many struggles but what matters is how we deal with them. Joining Dr. Tracey Jones today is Cynthia Zhai, Certified Speaking Professional, TEDx speaker, voice coach, and trainer at Full Voice Consulting. Cynthia shares valuable insights for leaders on overcoming the hard times within themselves and with their team. You don’t have to carry all the burden and keep the frustrations to yourself. At the same time, there is a right way to communicate these things. Listen in and get enlightened by her wisdom as they tackle loneliness in leadership, maintaining your center, and practicing assertiveness. 

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Cynthia Zhai - Leaders On Leadership

In this episode, I'm excited because my guest is Cynthia Zhai. She is a voice coach. She's a professional speaker. She has the CSP abbreviation after her name. It's a credential. She's a bestselling author and also a TEDx speaker. I had the pleasure of watching her TEDx speech. She has helped professionals from over 46 countries across 6 continents to speak with a powerful voice. Cynthia has been a professional speaker and coach for years and her engagement spans 5 continents and 18 countries. Cynthia, thank you so much for being on the show.

Thank you, Tracey. I feel very honored to be on the show.

Cynthia, we connected on LinkedIn through a fellow friend, Bob Brumm, who I have interviewed on the show. Could you share how you became aware of all things tremendous?

In my early days of college, that was where it led me to Charlie "Tremendous" Jones’s quote. Ever since then, I was not only developing my leadership skills but also helping other people develop that.

The quote that Cynthia is referring to is, "You will be the same person five years from now that you are today except for two things, the people you meet and the books you read.” I love that you not only did that for yourself but then you helped others encourage that. I'm amazed. I had a mother of ten order off our website. She remarked the same thing that in her early twenties, she heard that quote. She had issues reading but that impacted her and she went on. She's a prolific reader and so are all ten of her children. It's phenomenal the whole transformation power of books.

Also, the quote changed my life. At the time when I heard the quote, as a college student like many others, I was feeling depressed and I didn't know what to do. That was initially a quote shared by my dad in the Chinese language. Later on, I found out the English quote, which had not only guided me throughout my only college days but my career days. I always share that with my clients and friends.

“Always speak the truth but soften your words.”

That was the spark that ignited this. Isn't that interesting how we can be in such a bad spot but then you hear something and you are ready to take, infuse and then apply it because it doesn't do any good if you don't read great books and meet great people? It's a sweet little quote. You were at that point where you needed a solution and you acted upon it. That's fascinating. Let's get down to talking about leadership. Thank you. That so encourages me. I know it will inspire and bless our leaders because I know they all love that quote too and share that repeatedly.

One of the things that my father talks about in a speech that he gave many decades ago called The Price of Leadership is that if you are going to be a true leader, there's going to be a price that you have to pay. He outlines four different things that are going to happen to you and you are going to encounter. The first of those is loneliness. We have all heard the phrase, “It's lonely at the top. Heavy is the head that wears the crown.” Can you unpack what loneliness might look like for the leader and perhaps when you might have been in a season of loneliness?

These are also some of the concerns that my clients were sharing. They said, “Now, I am in this leadership role that I don't want to get too close with my staff members. There are also times that there is the so-called bad news that I don't want to share with them.” In that way, it does create a lot of loneliness, especially when you have to face all this bad news and challenges on your own. It's almost inevitable that you will feel lonely at the top.

What do you recommend for some of the people that you are working with? As you said, it is inevitable. I always tell people and they are like, “I have never felt that.” I'm like, “You haven't set the proper boundaries because it is a part of leadership.”

I would recommend two things. One is that there are times when we do need to be authentic. It doesn't mean that we don't share the bad news. We do share the bad news but there's a quote, “Always speak the truth but soften your words.” Authentic leadership is also something that many people are after nowadays. Authentic leadership does mean that there are times when you do need to share the so-called bad news and what is the frustration you are going through so that people can understand you more and work with you. It's to be more authentic and honest.

Voice Coach: Develop the quality or the state of equanimity. Whatever storms are happening outside of you, you need to develop that inner solidness, that inner centeredness that will not be affected.

The second thing is if you feel that there are things that you cannot share with your staff members, there is a way that you will want to join people who are outside of your company. There are many executive networks. You can join them so that you can share your common frustrations. We cannot suppress these things in ourselves and our bodies because one day, it will become some disease. It cannot be bottled up all in your body. It needs a channel. Have like-minded people to share with and that will be a very good way.

You get that wise counsel too and you are so right that stress kills. Your body can catch a disease of the mind and that's one of the main things that are causes of death. That's outstanding advice. We talked about loneliness. Along with loneliness is weariness because if you are at the top and you have all these responsibilities, even if it's not physical, it's a lot because if you don't perform and not everybody performs, you may not be in business longer. You've got shareholders and all these people looking at you to see if you are able to deliver. How do you combat weariness? What should our leaders do if they are perhaps feeling the effects of weariness?

The philosophy that is in the way we speak and the voice as well is what I recommend my clients to develop the quality or the state of equanimity. Equanimity is that whatever storms are happening outside of you, you need to develop that inner solidness and centeredness that will not be affected by whatever is happening.

You know that tornadoes, typhoons or all these natural disasters can take out an entire vintage or town but in the center of a tornado, there is peacefulness and stillness. It’s because of that stillness, it has this massive power and that's something that leaders need to develop because when we are centered and have that stillness, then we can act with vision, with the right strategy, and cope with whatever is thrown at us.

That's so amazing that you talked about the eye of the storm because I had never thought about it like that but I also thought as far as shelters, they always tell you, “Go to the center of the building where there are no windows.” It's almost like you are going to the center of yourself where you are at the deepest of your own core and the most protected. Stay away from the stuff you can stay away and seek shelter. I will never forget that one because I speak a lot about crisis leadership. I am going to use that.

There's loneliness and weariness. The next thing he talked about was abandonment. Typically, abandonment gets a negative connotation like fear of abandonment. When my father spoke of it, he used to tell me, “Tracey, I do more in a day to contribute to my failure than my success.” I’m like, “What?” He is like, “It’s because I tend to think about what I like and want to think about in favor of what I ought and need to think about.” He was always very intentional about this and hyperfocused that if we cut out and abandon the things that aren't going to move us forward, as a leader, you are going to have to keep doing that. Can you explain abandonment? How do you stay focused and on point?

You need to share the frustration you’re going through so that people can understand you and work with you.

First of all, you need to be clear about what is it. It’s not what you need to do. As your father said, the wise words. When I started my business and even now, the word that I hear the most is, “Cynthia, you are very focused. Since day one, you have been focusing on one thing and one thing only.” That's something that I love to do. It's the same for the leaders. The reason that you are in this leadership role is there must be something in being a leader that draws you. You need to focus on that.

For example, some of my clients love making strategic decisions. They love to see things from a bigger point of view. Focus on what you love. The second thing is don't get distracted by all these other things that might be shining or more than. There may be something new that comes out. Know what you love, what you want to do and at the same time, don't get distracted by all those things so you still stay on track.

It's tough now. There are so many good books or podcasts. You are like, “I never thought about that.” As you said, you have to get dialed in. When I coach people, this is the thing that we struggle with the most. There are so many things we are good at that we could do. As my father always taught me, “There's that one thing that you are put here to do better than anybody else. The joy is discovering that and staying on point, so you don't start drifting.”

How do you recommend the people that you coach to get clarity on identifying that? This is something that a lot of people even leaders struggle with. You heard the age demographic and who I work with. They are still like, “What do I want to do with my life?” They are still dialing it in. What do you recommend for them to help them find that?

One is that we can use the method of ruling out. A lot of my clients know what they don't want but they do not know where they want. I said, “We rule out what you don't want first and we look at the opposite.” That's one way. The second thing is very important. In a post I shared, I mentioned that struggles are blessings in disguise. The reason I'm doing my work is because of the struggle that I went through. As your dad was saying that we are put on this planet for that one thing that only we can do.

How do we know that thing? It's from our struggles because, with the struggles that we are going through, no one would experience the exact struggle that we have experienced. If you are learning the lesson from the struggles, you will see why you are going through the struggle. In my early career, I was not heard and assertive. I went on a journey to be more assertive, to be heard and now I teach people how to be heard. My struggle became my calling. It was a blessing. Look at your struggles.

Voice Coach: A lot of people know what they don’t want but not what they do want. Rule out what you don’t want first and then we can look at the opposite.

My work for 2022 was speaking more with my authentic voice. People are like, “Have you had trouble with that?” I’m like, “Yes.” It's being your most authentic version of a leader and speaking the truth but softening your words. Do you find that people sleep better and get such a sense of release? I don't mean that it doesn't matter how it's received but you feel so much truer to yourself.

I was even having some heart issues like pain and I'm like, “I can tell what's going on. I'm not being authentic in my voice when I share with people.” The more I dialed that in, I don't have sleep problems anymore and it's not fine. You deal with it but I am being true and speaking what needs to be said. Have you found that with your clients?

Yes. It's a sense of liberation.

It can combat weariness because I was finding that I was getting very tired emotionally and spiritually, not physically because there was this constant tension. I was holding back and not saying what needed to be said. It was draining me.

I was sharing that earlier on in my career. I was not assertive. Whatever I felt, I didn't say it. For example, someone did something that upset me but I didn't say anything. I will carry that with me for as long as it can go and then I will stay away from that person. There are only so many friends you have and if you stay away from every one of them, at the end of the day, you are lonely.

What I have learned was when someone says something that upsets me, I would tell that person, “What you said made me feel sad.” The response that I’ve got was, “I'm sorry. I didn't know.” I then knew they didn't mean it at all. It was me who was overthinking. Once I said it, I never resent that person anymore so we can keep this relationship. I didn’t need to become lonely eventually.

There must be something about being leader that draws you. You need to focus on that.

I love that because you allow them to explain themselves rather than jumping to conclusions like you know their motives because we all say some brusque or pretty stupid things. I love that you approached it that way. Would you recommend being able to use that method in the workforce too if a coworker, a colleague or a boss says something? Do you approach the same thing and say it the same way?

The example I was giving was with a coworker when I was working for a corporate in the past.

If they go, “Yes, so what?” versus, “I'm sorry,” then you know this is not somebody you need to worry about anymore. That's abandonment. The last thing he talked about was the vision. A lot of people have different aspects of vision. Some people are like, “I'm not a visionary. I'm a doer.” My dad always said that he was pragmatic. He had these big picture ideas but it was always very much every day, every person could work this out.

He used to tell me, “Tracey, vision is nothing more than seeing what needs to be done so there's that future aspect but then doing it because otherwise, it's just talk.” Can you share with me what your idea of vision is? How do you continue once you’ve got clarity on what you wanted to do in this experience of where you weren't assertive? How you continue to hone your vision because you have been doing this for quite a long time?

Vision, to me, is also a big picture. It's not only a big picture but also a big picture down the road. In a few years, what can we do? What will happen? At the same time, I like that we are drilling down this big vision into something actionable. People say, “I want to hone my body. I want to get fit,” but you cannot just think about it. You want to do the very first thing. The first thing is not, “Tonight, I'm going to go jogging for twenty minutes,” especially if you haven't been jogging for twenty years. The first thing might be, “Now, I'm going to go down and jog for five minutes.”

Especially with leaders, if there's no vision, you are not a leader. You do need a vision but at the same time, break that vision down into small actionable steps like assertiveness. The small thing I did was how I was ending my sentences. When I was not assertive, I realized I was saying, “I want to do this.” It sounds like a question. That was the small actionable step I was taking which is, “I want to do this.” Instead of making it sound like a question, I'm making it sound like a statement. That one small change made me sound more assertive. That was one of those small steps.

Voice Coach: We need to not only upscale ourselves but also elevate ourselves in terms of not only skills but also mentally, emotionally.

I love that you talked about breaking it down to small steps or chunking as I call it but you hit on something. Leaders create something out of nothing. Something that wasn't there, they create. Managers are the ones that execute making things work. It's important as a leader. You can't just be showing up and watching things run. You have to be this blue-sky person whereas the flip side of the coin is the blueprint people. Both are very different skillsets.

I love that you brought that up because as a leader, I had to look at this and go, "Am I leading? I'm leading myself but am I engaging in leadership?" which is a whole different realm. I love that you touched on that important nuance. We have talked about loneliness, weariness, abandonment, and vision. Can you share anything else that you would like? We have an open floor. I'm fascinated with working with people. What is the demographic of most of the people that you work with? Is it male, female, young or old? What is it?

Most of my clients are in the C-Suites so they are the senior executives in the companies. The loneliness problems and all these problems that we are talking about, they do experience and share. In my early career, men will account for about 60% to 65% of my clients. Now, it's about 50% male and 50% female. One of the main reasons is because more and more women are going up and showing up in the C-Suites as well, which is a good thing. In terms of age for my clients, the average age is about 45 and above. I don't have younger ones in their 30s. I also had old ones. I always mention him. My oldest client, when he was working with me, he was 82. In 2022, he's 90.

I've got authors in their 80s. For our readers out there, as you go through each stage, evolve as a leader and get more clarity in your vision or perhaps you have had changes. You are done with this career or the next one, I can't tell you how important it is to continue to hone your leadership voice. When I came to 2022, I'm like, “This is the voice I'm using.” It isn't that I haven't already been back here for years running the company.

It's that now is the time for the next phase. I'm rolling out something different and I have to find that voice. How do people get in touch with you because I can't encourage our leaders enough to consider continuing to craft their leadership voice? You want to do it up here with tremendous books and update your circle with tremendous people but that voice is such an important part of sending out and communicating all the tremendous things that are coming into you.

The best way is to connect with me on LinkedIn.

Instead of making it sound like a question, make it sound like a statement. That one small change makes you sound more assertive.

That's where we met.

That's one. The second source is my website. My website is PowerfulExecutiveVoice.com.

Cynthia, you gave me quite a bit of wonderful things to think about. Are there any last thoughts or parting words from our guest?

Everything we do for the leaders is not just learning about the skills and techniques. The most important thing over the years that I have realized is that we need to not only upscale ourselves but also elevate ourselves as a leader, in terms of not only the skills but also mentally and emotionally. Once we are able to elevate ourselves to the next level, you will see things start to flow. Even though I haven't been the CEO, I have led nonprofit organizations and my small team. That's what I felt. Whenever I elevated myself to the next level, I started to feel that things are flowing. That's what I would recommend to our leaders.

For our readers out there, this was Cynthia Zhai. We have the connections that you can reach out to her. Cynthia, thank you so much for everything you shared with us, for your wisdom, and for helping make a difference in other people's lives so they can go out and be the leaders that they and the world need. To our tremendous readers out there, if you like what you read, be sure and hit the subscribe button and leave us the honor of a review or a comment.

We answer all those comments personally. Please share this with a friend as well. Come on over to TremendousLeadership.com and check out all the tremendous books, resources, DVDs and CDs. We will introduce you to a world of tremendous people to help you continue your upward trajectory. Thanks so much for being a part of our tremendous tribe. Have a tremendous rest of your day.

Important Links:

• PowerfulExecutiveVoice.com

• TEDx speech - The Transformative Power of Your Voice

• Bob Brumm – Past Episode

• LinkedIn - Cynthia Zhai

• https://www.YouTube.com/user/cynthiazhai

• https://VoiceMastery.app.heroicnow.com/

About Cynthia Zhai

Cynthia Zhai is a Voice Coach, Professional Speaker (CSP), and Best-Selling Author. She’s also a TEDx speaker. She has helped professionals from 46 countries across 6 continents to speak with a powerful voice. Cynthia has been a professional speaker and coach for the past 19 years and her engagement spans 5 continents in 18 countries.

Episode 146 - Al Argo - Leaders on Leadership

As a leader, you have to be equipped with different skills to communicate and deal with things correctly. In addition, you have to be focused on overcoming adversity, making tough decisions, and staying committed to growth. Join your host, Dr. Tracey Jones, as she interviews Al Argo about all of these things and his unique perspective in leadership. Al Argo is a motivational speaker and author. He also speaks on overcoming adversity, gratitude in life and business influence, positive impact leadership, and missions. What price must you pay to be an effective leader? Al provides a deep dive into some of the components you have to deal with as a leader, including loneliness, weariness, and abandonment. How will you overcome these? Tune in!

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Al Argo - Leaders on Leadership

I'm so excited because my guest is the one, the only, the tremendous, Al Argo. Let me tell you a little bit about Al. Al is a skydiving accident survivor, a motivational speaker, an eight-time author and speaks on overcoming adversity, gratitude in life and business, influence, positive impact, leadership and missions, and helping you create ARGO, which stands for A Really Great Organization. Al is an expert in helping professionals achieve more, relate better, grow faster, and overcome obstacles. In addition to all that, he has been a dear friend of many years of my mother and father and myself as well. Al, thank you so much for being on our show.

Thank you, Dr. Tracey. What an honor to be with you and all of our readers.

Tell a little bit about the intersection of you and my father. I like to set the context of how long we've known people. I had a gentleman on who we connected on LinkedIn. Before I even knew about coming back to Tremendous Leadership, you were a part of Tremendous Leadership.

Your dad was always proud of you and his whole family. I first met Charles "Tremendous" Jones back in the early 1990s. I sold books for two summers with a company out of Nashville, Tennessee. That's how he and I connected. We stayed in touch. Toward the late '90s, I ended up transitioning over into Asia, began to work with John Maxwell training leaders overseas, and still work with a nonprofit organization that I've been with ever since then.

Your dad was coming over and visiting us, and then your mom came over and visited us different times, not once, but several times. He and I would speak not only to Christian Ministry groups like Haggai Institute, but we'd also speak for Corporate Asia. I remember doing events with the Napoleon Hill Foundation. He was so proud of you and thankful for all of his readers and listeners, not only in America but in Australia. I still run into fans of Charles from Australia. Several years ago, I did an author publishing masterclass down in Perth and came across fans. Even though he's been in heaven quite some time, his legacy, the influence and impact of Charles "Tremendous" Jones lives on.

He loved Australia, and we still get orders every now and then. They're effervesced and efficacious as he was. He loved them. I interviewed Nikita Koloff.  Al was one of the gentlemen in our monthly Godly Guys and Gals group, our little mini-mastermind, where we get together. We're all speakers, authors, and Christians who share with one another because that's what we're meant to do. Al brought me into this a few years ago. I was so honored. I'm like, "Do you want me to be with you guys?" It's been such a tremendous help.

I'm so thankful, not only for you but for Nikita and our whole group. It's a small group but very powerful and influential group. We're like your dad. Until his last breath, he was always learning. I tell people, "My name is Al. It's an acronym for a lot of things, but one of those things is Always Learning." I don't know if it was your dad or someone else, but they taught me always to have a book you're reading and writing. Those two things were huge in books. When I was a young boy, I didn't have a TV. All I had was a library. When I was 14, 15, my dad said, "If you want a TV, you can buy it." I bought and watched it for a little bit, but I never lost my love for books.

He took our TVs out of the house. We were in high school and didn't watch that much. This was in the early '70s. He's like, "You don't need that," and we didn't need it. We wrote book reports. I'm thankful for that. Let's get right into the topic of leadership. My father loved leadership, but he was very pragmatic about it. He did not shy away from the tougher side of it and had a speech called The Price of Leadership where he said that there are four components that if you truly are going to be a leader, there's a price that you're going to have to pay.

It's worth it, but you're going to have to pay for it. The first one he talked about was loneliness. We've all heard that it's lonely at the top. Could you unpack what loneliness means to you as a seasoned leader? Maybe share a time when you were in that season. Maybe a tool for our readers if they are walking in a time of loneliness.

I heard your dad speak to a lot of different audiences from the time I was in college to the time I was in ministry and Corporate Asia. All of us, whether we're brand-new leaders or seasoned leaders, can go through a season of loneliness, whether that's a short or extended period of time. For me, when I was selling books, that was hard because you're out there by yourself. I didn't know how to sell.

I began to learn how to sell when I was 14, 15, and then the company kept doing sales training. Continuous education and ongoing education are important. That's why you and I train in Corporate America, Asia, and different places. Loneliness is different than being alone. Leaders, by nature, oftentimes are alone. It doesn't have to impact us negatively. It's what I'm saying. We've served in Asia for twenty years, the first ten years in Singapore, and the last ten years, we've moved over into the Philippines. We travel a lot. The whole concept of loneliness is about making decisions that are tough and giving up the good for the great.

This goes into these criticisms that are tough. The next thing he talked about was weariness. If it's tough, it wears on you mentally, physically, spiritually, all that good stuff. How do you combat weariness so you can continue to go through those tougher seasons and still stay robust and strong enough to move forward?

Overcoming Adversity: The whole concept of loneliness is really about just making decisions that are tough and giving up the good for the great.

I'm a big believer that you give each day all you've got. I start the morning with journaling. I wish I'd begun to do this when I was in my early 20s or late teens, but I've honestly begun to do it in the last few years. I've not missed a day doing this consistently since I've started. I talked about yesterday and today, but I could talk about 4 or 5 years down the road in my journal. I'm not doing it by hand. I'm doing it right here on my laptop, and that way, I'll always have it with me. It's also searchable.

I write my to-do list in my journal, which is important, but I also write my goals. I even write a small prayer and a gratitude list. These are the things that I'm doing every day. As far as weariness, in particular, I also make sure that I rest well. I've written a book about morning habits called Wake Up and Shine, but I've often thought about writing a book on rest and the importance of sleep. How we combat weariness is we honor the Sabbath. It's okay to be tired, but we don't want to be too tired.

Someone passed away, and he left notes on his desk. This was an older preacher, a gentleman from North Carolina. Found on his desk was, "At the first sign of fatigue, I'm going to rest." I thought that's pretty interesting because I've not followed that. I work hard. I worked through my fatigue oftentimes, but this older preacher in North Carolina had a different view. That's interesting because we work hard, but we also want to rest as well. We honor the Sabbath and rest well at night.

How I've combated weariness is, one of the first things that I do in the morning is I drink lots of water. I've learned that from the Japanese. They drink water. While weariness comes, we don't want it to linger. It is part of the price that we or others have to pay. I've got an acronym toward the end when you asked me as we get through the next one because we've talked about loneliness, weariness and there are two more.

That glass of water thing is huge. When I reclaimed my health, that's the first thing I do in the morning. Go get and drink an eight-ounce glass of water. That's amazing what you do, but I love that you talk about you're being very intentional with writing down in the gratitude. Sometimes weariness comes from a lack of focus. You've pulled so many ways in, and you're tired. You're like, "I didn't get anything done," and then you feel more tired. How can you be tired if you are unproductive?

That lack of focus drains you, and that's getting to our next topic. You need to do a book on rest and the Sabbath because that is critical. We're still flesh and blood and the temple. We need to take care of that. The next thing my dad talked about was abandonment. Abandonment typically has a negative connotation, the fear of abandonment. In his world, abandonment was abandoning what you like and want to think about in favor of what you want and what you need. It was a real focus. I'm like, "How'd you get so successful?" He's like, "I do more in a day to contribute to my failure than I do my success." He would get spun off on other things. How do you abandon stuff and stay truly focused?

When a lot of people think about abandonment, it might have a negative connotation, but it doesn't have to be because it's us abandoning what? It might be good, but it's not God's will. It might be good, but it's not great. TV in and of itself, it might be good, but it's not great. I'm not preaching against TV. Back in the '70s and '80s, a lot of people preach against TV. One of the reasons why we grew up without TV is because someone preached against it, and my dad threw it away. Your dad probably did the same. When we talk about abandonment, it's about us giving up the mediocre for the incredible.

God promised us life and life more abundant. AL is an acronym for a lot of things, but it's also an acronym for Abundant Life. That's God's promise for you and me if we not only know about him but if we know him. God wants us to do four things. He wants us to know him and have freedom in him. Just because you know Him, it doesn't mean you have freedom. He wants us to know Him and have freedom. He wants us also to understand our purpose, whether that's Corporate America, Corporate Asia, or even ministry. Your dad loved the ministry. He often told me, like, "Why couldn't the Lord call me into the ministry?" I don't know if he ever told you that.

He did all the time.

I've been able to walk that fine line of ministry and marketplace. I love it. I'm so thankful for being able to work with the bankers in Nepal, tourism departments in very interesting countries across Asia. I'm very grateful for your dad and other mentors. This whole concept of abandonment is we give up the mediocre for the best for that day. I do write every morning. I don't do one thing every night, but as we're going to talk more, I do this often, is I review the day. I ask myself what went well and what I could've done better. I'm being transparent.

My morning routine is very solid as far as exercising, water, and getting my morning started. Those seven habits are outlined in the book, Wake Up and Shine. We're talking about the price of leadership. We've talked about loneliness, weariness, and abandonment. There's one more, which these three leads to vision, which is very important. Do you have any other comments on weariness?

No, weariness in your abandonment. I love that you are always looking at abandoning every day, and it's a daily thing. We were on point, but it's like your car. You constantly have to be tweaking, preventative maintenance, and rest. It's like you dust your house, and a day later, there's dust. It's a constant tending to getting out the weeds, the non-value-added, and staying on point. You never, ever can sit there, and maybe for ten seconds you can, and then stuff starts happening again. That was beautiful talking about abandonment.

Overcoming Adversity: How we combat weariness is how we honor the Sabbath. So it's okay to be tired. But we really don't want to be too tired.

We're talking about abandonment, and then I circled back to loneliness and weariness. If we rearrange those three things, I like acronyms and alliteration. I do this all the time, even with my last name, when I teach sales. Our sales professionals, if we give a great offer, that's what we want to do. As far as consulting organizations, we want to give ARGO and help build ARGO, which is A Really Great Organization.

If you rearrange those first three things, loneliness, weariness, and abandonment, it's LAW, Loneliness, Abandonment, and Weariness, and that's the law. A lot of our readers love the Lord and have a real relationship with Christ like you and I do. Some may not, and that's okay because we love everybody. We welcome everybody to your leadership broadcast. I love what you're doing, the people that you've interviewed since you've begun this.

I can't wait for the future, but we're not living under the law. We're living under grace. For me, have I dealt with loneliness? Yeah, we've dealt with it. Has it been a big issue? Not so much because I'm never alone. We have to abandon the mediocre to achieve God's best, but that's okay. We give up so we can go up. We grow weary. Sometimes we get tired, but it's not a big issue because we pay the price, but he paid the ultimate price.

I want to bring that out because it's close to Christmas. When he visited us over in Singapore, your dad told me these stories about keeping up the Christmas tree all year long. You can maybe give us more insight because I never got to come up to the house. To this day, I've never been up to where you grew up. Even when your dad passed away, I was overseas. It was very challenging for me to get back. I wanted to. In my spirit, I was there, but he told me these stories about keeping the Christmas tree up all year long.

We're coming into the Christmas season. As I prepared for this interview, I realized Loneliness, Abandonment, and Weariness are an acronym for LAW, but we have a vision. The law leads into vision. God gives vision. We know that verse where there is no vision, the people perish. Vision is also the price that we pay for leadership.

How do you hone your vision? Dad was pragmatic, down-to-earth, not fancy talk at all because he was real. He would say, "Vision is seeing what needs to be done and then doing it." How do you incorporate this into your leadership?

I'm a big believer in goal setting, but I also take action toward those goals. The Bible says, "Faith without works is dead." I shared that verse with a corporate audience in Asia. Some of these young people had never even heard that. We have a lot of faith in different things. I have faith in the chair that I'm sitting in. I have faith in the car that we drove up to speak at an engagement in North Carolina. If I'm flying to Asia, I certainly have faith in that airplane and the pilot.

Even with that pilot in that plane, that plane naturally will tend to get off course, and vision is the act of pulling it back on the course to make sure it gets to the right destination. Even before we were born, God knew all of our days. He understands our purpose and the plan that he has for life. Many people never discover that purpose. No wonder a lot of people aren't happy and don't have real peace.

Whether your purpose is working at the post office or driving a truck, or selling insurance, I met with a guy who's been in the insurance for several years. I told him about your dad. I was like, "You got to read some of these books." Every one of us has a purpose and a vision. If we get it, we'll understand that the desires in our hearts were probably put there by God.

I love that you tied it back to freedom. I heard a quote and tried to find who did it, but they said, "For the center, this world is the closest to heaven they're going to get. For the saint, this world is the closest to how they're ever going to get." Even in our most lonely, tired, messed-up days, we have that freedom. I love that you brought that because that gets the wind back in your sails. We don't just do it on our own.

Those of us that have the faith paradigm know may be alone, but never all alone. When we are weak, he is strong, and abandonment is constantly, as Paul said, "Dying to self," and then we get into another biblical principle of vision where there is no vision that people perish. I thank you for that, Al, and those insights and how you're weaving that into all aspects of your life.

I believe that the best for you and me is yet to come. We have to keep learning and also apply what we're learning.

Overcoming Adversity: We just have to keep learning and also applying while we're learning.

Somebody told me this, "Embrace, but then you have to integrate. Faith without works is dead." We're still learning, but our minds, all the leadership stuff says, cognitively, if you keep your mind active, you can stave off senility, all that stuff. Retirement is not a biblical principle. We're meant to keep going and growing. That's why I love our tremendous fan base because these are seasoned people that already have 1, 2, 3, 4 great successful careers. They're always still like, "There's more." That's what true leaders do, always growing and sowing.

Somebody at lunch asked me where I plan to retire, and I'm like, "Retirement is not even in my mind." I'm barely half a century. I'm so grateful that I've known your dad and family for many years. I declare that for me and my future and the ministry, the marketplace, everything that our hands, the consulting or the books. I love Asia. We've invested two decades. The legacy, the generation that will come as the Lord tarries.

They asked me, "Where do you want to retire?" I'm like, "I want to live forever in Asia." The truth is I go back and forth. I'm at home in America, even though the weather's getting cold. This will be my first Thanksgiving in America since 2015. I'm very thankful to have a Thanksgiving birthday and Christmas in the US in 2021. It's interesting but cold.

Come up to Pennsylvania, where it's even colder, and we'll give you some beautiful winter.

Do you have your Christmas tree up yet?

No, after Thanksgiving. I like to add, "Keep a tree up all year round," because that reminded him every day about the birth of Jesus. When you look at that every day, it helps keep you focused. Every day, there's my reminder that this price was paid for me, and I can live as a free, liberated child and claim my inheritance. I love the tree.

I don't keep a tree up all year round, but maybe we should.

I changed mine out every month. It's a seasonal tree, but it still is the joy of the seasons, the remembrances. It all hearkens back to the birth of Christ. We have Easter for the resurrection, all those data points, and everything in between. We've covered the four points. Share with our readers, too, how you do walk in the ministry and the marketplace? I want you to share a little bit about your ministry and what you're doing with that?

Our purpose in Asia and even in America is to teach. I tell people that it's all about the team. I like acronyms. We're all about Teaching, Equipping, Activating, and Mobilizing. That's an acronym for TEAM. Specifically, we want to help the Asian church move forward and become all that God wants them to be in the ministry. In the marketplace, we want companies to make sure that they hire the right people. I'm teaming with a group of high-level industrial psychologists who've developed software to help HR departments hire the right people. We're not talking about small companies, but these are companies that are 500, 1,000, 1,500, 5,000 employees or more, whether it's Asia or America.

In the ministry, for many years, whether it's a relief in Indonesia after the tsunami, we'd help train a team of locals and were mobilized immediately to go in after the Christmas tsunami back in 2004. It killed 144,000 people in 15 minutes. It's a hard area to get into, but the US government under the USAID got in. We got in as a religious nonprofit. They're still effective ministries in that area there in Indonesia. We work with Bible schools across Southeast Asia. We do relief, whether it's the tsunami. We've done volcano and typhoon reliefs. It's very sad, some of the craziness.

When you talk about loneliness, abandonment, and weariness, when you see some of that without the grace of God, you can tend to go that way. Thank God for vision and provision. The ministry may be a relief, or education, whether that's elementary education or reading programs. One of the reasons why I do the books is to promote literacy and encourage children and parents to read to children. Our readers can find the kids' books on Amazon. We promote literacy, do relief, leadership training for the church and corporate. I get bored easily. Someone told me not long ago, "You might have ADHD." I'm like, "I've never been diagnosed with that." They went on to say, "If you do, you manage it well."

It's like loneliness and weariness. It can be a good thing.

I don't want my hand in too much. Whatever I do to be done with excellence, and I want it to be fruitful. We've talked about vision, but we also need people to pray for us and support us, but we need people you and I can delegate work to. John Maxwell always teaches that you inspect what you expect. That's so important. There are other aspects of leadership, including numbers. I may not be a natural numbers guy, but I understand that numbers tell a story. At the end of the day, if I know the numbers that matter, I can see how my day went. Whether that's a Sunday in church or a Monday through Friday in corporate, the numbers always tell a story.

Overcoming Adversity: We need people not only to pray for us and support us, but we need people to help, that you and I can delegate work to.

Al, what is the best way for people to get in touch with you?

Anyone who might want to donate to the ministry can receive a tax deduction if they're given in America. I have a URL, a short link that would go right to the ministry site. It's www.Bit.do/AsiaMissions. If they want to look at the books, they can search Al Argo on Amazon or Al Argo on Audible. If they want to get in touch with me as far as consulting or some of the HR work we've been doing, or to ask a personal question, they can connect with me on LinkedIn and message me.

There's only one Al Argo on LinkedIn. That's a skydiving accident survivor, author, and consultant. There is a couple more Al Argos out there on LinkedIn, but they don't have any pictures. I'm not sure who they are, or even if it's a fake profile, but my LinkedIn profile has a picture and it is very clear which one it would be.

Touch on some of your children's books because the readers need to know you've got some kids' books, too.

Thank you. When I was down in Australia, my event organizer named Chris, he’s a pastor, a corporate guy, and an all-around good guy. He's my good friend. I've known him for years. We've attended events together in Canada and America. He was coming up to Singapore and the Philippines to see us. He invited me down to do not only speak at a leadership event, but we also did an author training masterclass. On the night before I was leaving Australia, he took us out for ice cream. In that ice cream shop, he got the hiccups. In the Deep South where I'm from, if you get the hiccups, you're going to get scared.

I looked over at him and scared him. He never had that happen. He had a fit. The whole ice cream shop got silent. We all bust out laughing because his hiccups were gone. I made a comment. I said, "Don't worry. I've written the book on hiccups." I was joking, but the next morning at the airport, I wrote this cute, almost like a Dr. Seuss type rhyme. It all rhymes.

At the end of the book, I wrote about 5 to 7 true hiccup facts. This is a book for early readers. It rhymes like Dr. Seuss. All the artworks are hand-drawn. All the parents and the little kids love. That was the first book. I wrote a book about hiccups, and it's based in Australia. A couple of days later, I wrote one about doing number two, which all kids have questions about. I didn't realize a lot of parents would go to that book when their kids had questions about potty training, but that's pretty interesting.

I wrote one about hiccups and then sneezing. Those are the four books in the kid's series called The Adventures of Chris. Chris is a real person. All the books are educational, and our goal is to give away 1 million books in Asia. What we do is whenever someone buys a book on Amazon or they buy a book at one of our events, we immediately donate a book in Asia as well. It's a neat little giving model that we have.

Al, thank you so much for what you meant to my family, the blessing you continue to be to me and for sharing your wisdom with our leaders out there and our Tremendous Tribe.

What a tremendous opportunity to be with you. We have the opportunity to be together every month via our speaker and author mastermind. Thank you for being a part of that. Thank you for being a friend to our family and ministry. We appreciate your prayer and support and friendship. It means a lot to us, and we love you. I love your mom and your dad. They're great people.

You as well, Al. Thank you so much. To our tremendous readers out there, thank you so much for taking the time to read. If you haven't done so yet, please hit the subscribe button so you don't miss another episode. If you do us, the honor of a five-star review, we’d be so thankful. Drop us a note, we'd go ahead, and I forward anything you say to Al, and we answer all of our responses.

Please, make sure you go over to TremendousLeadership.com, sign up for our email letter, where you automatically receive two free weeks of eBooks in addition to making sure you don't miss another episode. To our tremendous leaders out there, you keep on paying the price of leadership. We're right there with you. We're so thankful for you.

Important Links:

• Al Argo

• Wake Up and Shine

• www.Bit.do/AsiaMissions

• Al Argo - Amazon

• Al Argo - Audible

• The Adventures of Chris

About Al Argo

Al is a Skydiving Accident Survivor, Motivational Speaker, 8x-Author, Speaks on Overcoming Adversity, Gratitude in Life & Business, Influence, Positive Impact Leadership & Missions. Helping you create ARGO (A Really Great Organization!)

Episode 140 - Dr. Don Hamilton - Leaders On Leadership

You can set yourself up for success. Be the leader you're meant to be. Join your host, Dr. Tracey Jones, as she interviews Dr. Don Mark Hamilton about leadership even in the most challenging times. Dr. Don Mark pastored the large and healthy Vibrant Christian Church in Mechanicsburg, PA, for thirty-eight years until his retirement in 2020. Don is now a blogger, author, and public speaker rooted in the charge to Live Inspired! He shares how to deal with loneliness, weariness, and abandonment and still bring out the best version of yourself. You have to choose to deal with the changes because they may affect different aspects of your life. Tune into this episode for growth and success secrets!

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Dr. Don Hamilton - Leaders On Leadership

I am honored and blessed to introduce to you, Dr. Don Mark Hamilton. Dr. Hamilton or Don is the blessed father of 4 beautiful daughters with soon-to-be 3 sons-in-law and 7 awesome grandchildren. Don was married to Gail Hamilton for 38 years until her passing in 2018 of pancreatic cancer. Don pastored the large Vibrant Christian Church in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania for 38 years until his retirement in 2020. Don is a blogger, author and public speaker rooted in the charge to Live Inspired. Don's articles and resources can be found on DonMarkHamilton.com. He is working on three books to be published in 2022. Don, it is tremendous to have you on the show.

Thanks very much, Tracey. I'm honored to be here early in.

You're welcome. For those readers that know this show, Kristin is Don's daughter. I have the joy of getting to work with Kristin. I get the second generation tremendousness. You knew my father, Don.

I knew your dad very well. He was one of my mentors. I met him at a conference somewhere initially. I had a good buddy who was an executive in one of the local companies and he said, “I have to take you over to Charlie's place to meet him.” I did and that started it. He gave me that old big trademark hug of his and that started a friendship. He taught me a lot about leadership and more importantly, about life.

Thank you so much for sharing that. The reason we are here is to talk about one of his most famous speeches, and that is the Price of Leadership. You knew my father and a lot of our readers did. He was very motivated but he was also incredibly pragmatic. He was very much like, “Leadership is going to be joyful but you're going to have to pay a price. It's going to be tough but it's worth it.” What we are going to unpack in the Price of Leadership is the four points he talked about.

The first one my father talked about was that if you're going to be a leader and not just a leader in name only, you're going to encounter times of loneliness. Could you unpack that for us? You have spent decades running a church and dealt with loneliness in your life. What would you say to our readers out there, perhaps if they are in a season of loneliness and what it means for you?

For me, there are a lot of times, especially if you're the sole leader of an organization. In any level of leadership, you realize that the buck does stop there. With that, it leaves you feeling alone sometimes and even a little abandoned in certain circumstances. For me, it was always a matter of having mentors like Charlie and people that I could unload that stuff on, had already been there, done that, walked that path and that I could go whine to. I'm good at whining. When you feel lonely, you usually feel whiny. You go sit in the corner and whine. I did that.

For me, I'm a person of faith and with my relationship with God, I knew he was always there. Sometimes he felt distant in those situations and yet as you read through the record that he gave us from the Scriptures all the way down through history, another thing that was so encouraging to me was to see that he's so honest about the leaders in the Bible. I cannot imagine. I would think to myself, “Moses must have felt terribly lonely working with these stiff-neck people.” He did it a lot better than I could ever do it.

In Joshua's final charge, “You're going to have to be strong and courageous.” He tells him that 3 or 4 times because he knew there were going to be some lonely moments. Also, I was blessed in that somebody, at one point, challenged me to learn about solitude. I've learned about solitude, journaling and journaling my prayers. After I had done that for so long, it was like going to a well. You're thirsty, you go to that well on a regular basis and you're comfortable with yourself, your God and where you are. If you're in the middle of one of those lonely times and it's because some bad things have happened, you're always, “This too shall pass.” It does.

Those are some of the ways that I have always worked through my times of loneliness. The other thing is I developed deep friendships through the years. I'm not sure what motivated me to do that but I have deep friendships with a group of fellow leaders and we grew up together. We are all across the country and the world. We get together and chat. When 1 of us is down, the other 3 or 4 of us would pull them up. We meet together with some regularity down through the years. That was helpful because I know some leaders tend to isolate themselves. To me, that is a prescription for disaster. There are too many things that you cannot handle by yourself.

I love that you hit on a nuance that leaders can feel lonely. You touched on that sometimes they feel even abandoned. We are going to talk about abandonment as the third point but in a slightly different thing. That is very transparent of you because we have to watch that bitterness. You will be abandoned as a leader. Jesus was. Even Jesus had his Judas.

I tell people, “I don't care how great you think you are. There is somebody out there in your camp who is not all in.” It's going to leave you feeling abandoned and it's okay. It's par for the course. I love that you talked about having a group of people. I started watching The Chosen. Thanks to your connection. Every day and every episode, Jesus says, “I'm off on my own.” He says, “Where are you going?” Jesus says, “I need to be alone.” It reminds me that we do need to go and be in solitude. There's beautiful loneliness and there's the other part of it that you're going to feel too.

It's very helpful to have a larger picture in mind and to never lose the larger picture of life in general. As a leader, you're going to get to me too undeserved. You're going to get undeserved glory. Something has gone well and you may have initiated it and put some of it together. You know very well you are not responsible for what happened but you get the glory because you're the person at the top. The second undeserved to me is you get undeserved criticism. No matter what way you choose, the old saying, “Damn if you do, damned if you don't,” is true. If you've got a bigger picture of the whole thing, the undeserved glory and criticism don't go to your head. It pulls you through that lonely feeling of being there.

When we are not yanked around by our feelings but just no knowledge of, “This too shall pass,” that there is a bigger picture. We are never walking through this alone. A valley has a bottom and then you start uphill again. I appreciate that because that's going to help our readers go, “This is the season and it's okay.” It keeps you from doing something, walking off a job, firing off an email, falling on your sword, that we all like to do when we're suffering. Thank you for that. I've been there.

Leadership Success: Leadership leaves you feeling alone sometimes, even a little abandoned in certain circumstances. But it was always a matter of having mentors to guide you along the way.

I always did love that saying, “They don't grow crops on mountain tops. They grow them in the valley.”

I have never heard that. I thought I heard everything so I'm getting a lot. Thank you for sharing the feeling of loneliness. You gave our readers some applicable tools and resources to go ahead and be prepared for that. Don't get caught unaware. Whenever I catch a leader saying, “I feel so alone.” It's like, “No kidding. You got to prepare for that.” The next thing my father talked about was weariness. I always think of the parable of the olive tree. You grow something and there is a lot of good and bad that lands in there. How do you stay at the top of your game when a lot of people are depending on you and your vision, touch, prayers and everything?

I would go back to that solitude or quiet. It's developing a good rhythm when times are very demanding and you're on big projects, especially projects that are lengthy. I remember we built a very large playground. Our church had a 53-acre campus. It was a community park and we built a large special needs playground. We were doing it in 2008 during the Recession trying to raise $800,000. Everybody said, “You couldn't do that.” The Lord came through and we built that.

I remember it took us a year to get the whole thing going and then we built it. It was a community built in seven days. At the end of it, a special needs playground has to have a poured rubber floor. That's very expensive and we didn't have the money for that. We had this playground sitting out there that nobody could use, which is the worst possible thing. I got this far and can't close the loop. We were tired by then. We had already been working on it for over a year and had a long way to go.

I had a group of 4 or 5 people. Some were leaders in my church and some were staff members. We would play off of each other. Laurie Cartmell was one person that led me through that. One day, I would be over there whining to her in her office, “I am so tired. I am sick of this crap and I'm done.” She's like, “We are not.” Three days later, she would be in my office doing the same thing. We kept at it.

Right before Christmas at the end of that year, we got a gift of $120,000 that was totally unexpected. It put us over the hump. As soon as spring got there, we could pour the floor and things could go forward. A two-year process on a large project was tiring. It wears you out. Also, on the subject of weariness, something I have learned from Nehemiah is there was a time when Nehemiah was rebuilding those walls. He was perceptive enough to know that you're going to face opposition and it's going to wear not only you out but also the people who are doing the labor.

You've got to plan for that in any project. It seems to me that if it lasts very long at all, you're going to have the initial excitement. Everybody is going to be on board and ready to rock and roll. People came out, 1,400 of them worked for that week and then they went back home and sat down. You're not done. You've got this long project, have opposition during that and then come all the way to the very end of it.

What does charge you up? What helps you to get through this weariness? I always had an illustration that I used. I saw it somewhere back through the years of the three buckets. As a leader, you have things that fill and empty your bucket and your bucket is going to be leaky no matter what. You’ve got to keep your bucket full enough because you're pouring into other people's lives constantly.

Sometimes, in the midst of constantly doing and working at things, you get to a point where you don't realize your bucket is getting emptier. At some point, it can become dangerously empty and you have not given attention. Sometimes people don't even know what does fill your bucket because you're going to need that or what that is in those times. That is what gets you through the weariness of it.

Another thing, especially in the business world but even in the church world is there is the biblical concept of the Sabbath. As leaders and I did this for years, you feel like you can go 24/7, 365 and you can't. Your bucket gets empty. You get worn out. You finally come up against a project that you don't have the personal resources to do. You get tired and weary.

It's a rhythm on a daily basis then weekly and then yearly where you have to have the self-discipline. Develop that to pull away and say, “I need one day this month where I'm not doing anything.” Whatever it is for you, like hiking or longer periods of time as you're out of place. I don't think the human body and certainly the human mind, God did not design us to go 24/7, 365. He made a serious point that, “You take a day of rest and I mean business about it.”

That is serious business. You look at what is going on in the world and see the effects of this and of running even if you're not a believer. We are not coded for this and meant to do this.

It's easy as a leader to get an inflated view of your worth. The last four years of my ministry were the hardest of the entire 38 years. By that time you think, “I'm going to slide those last few years.” It didn't turn out that way. Our church was growing tremendously. We went through a name change and structural changes. The people in my older board, there were 9 of us, 7 of us had serious cancer illnesses in the family.

One of our elders died suddenly in a car crash. My wife got pancreatic cancer and that was a 22-month ordeal. A guy who is my son-in-law was my campus pastor at the time. His wife at the time was 34 years old, a young woman. He went downstairs one day, came back up and she was gone. She had died. It went on and on. At the same time, I was trying to do a capital campaign. We were designing a new building and it was a lot.

Leadership Success: If you're in the middle of one of those lonely times, always say, “This too shall pass,” and it will.

By the time I got to the end of it, I realized, “You are worn out a lot more than what you ever thought you were and you need to figure it out.” Number one, at my particular juncture at the time, I was like, “You need a new season. It's time for you to turn a chapter.” That was hard to do but God said, “Over a period of months, I'm taking you somewhere else. I want you to prepare your organization as best you know how and I'll help you for the future.” We did a two-year succession plan and that turned out well. People around me realized but I didn't realize I was utterly worn out.

We never see it. We think we're keeping it together. When the trauma has passed, I have had people say to me, “I'm glad that was over because you became something different.” I'm like, “What?” It has to. I also appreciate you sharing with leaders that there is this thing that we think, “I'm going to get it all dialed in like a finely tuned fighter jet.” God can call you.

I love that your ending was the hardest part of the race because you might think once you got things cooking and the team is there, you can sit on the beach and drink non-alcoholic Mai Tais all day long. That is not possibly God's calling. I love that you brought that up at the end because sometimes when finishing the race, you may even think, “Am I going to even make it across it?” It doesn't mean you're doing anything wrong. It is what it is. It's how God orchestrates it all.

It's back to that original point of it's easy to get an inflated view of you're important to the organization. Somewhere along the line somebody said, “They will have forgotten your name in six weeks.” It's the nature of it. I have a very close friend of mine who is a leadership trainer in a Fortune 500 company. Concerning my successor, he says, “They always say they all want your advice but I don't want your advice. They could care less what you’ve got to say.” It turned out that way and it's not bad. It's the nature of things. The organization will go on without you and do quite well. When you get that in your mind, it's much easier to move on.

I'm glad you said that because a lot of other people that we have interviewed have said it was shocking because when they were done, they were done. It's time. People have to continue to move on. You have made your mark and hope you will stay in touch with a couple of people. That is the nature of what it is. People are too concerned. In other words, don't keep drawing it out. You always want to leave strong and not all the things you should have checked out a couple of years ago.

When you have been in an organization for a long time that is harder to realize than if you're in a short-term situation. You're so used to it. It's your life. When you walk in my situation as a “pastor of a church,” that becomes your identity whether you consciously do that or not. You subconsciously assume that, “This is always going to be my dead-end.” In fact, it's not. I'm not a pastor, at least in the same way. It's a very different way and I'm enjoying it.

We did loneliness and weariness. The next thing my dad talked about was abandonment and you had hit on that. His point of abandonment was that we need to stop thinking about what we like and want to think about in favor of what we ought and need to think about. It was very much focused. You've said the discipline word many times throughout this. How do you stay abandoned? You've got your flock and a million things, three books, blogs, this and that. How do you stay abandoned every moment to what you need to focus on?

I know I keep coming back to this but for me, at least, people that do that well slowly over time usually develop a rhythm that is productive. It helps you to say, “I'm not going to spend four hours in front of the TV tonight. I'm going to spend an hour and a half.” For the other ones, “I'm going to go work out, read, write, spend time with my family and do the things that should be up high on the priority list.” You can get this entitlement mentality even that, “I have worked ten hours. I deserve to sit in front of the TV with a very large bowl of popcorn.” What you end up doing is developing that as a pattern like Pavlov's dog and that pattern is counterproductive. It's the same thing for me in the morning. I like to get the morning started right.

One of my favorite books is Make Your Bed. It's that little book. I can't remember if the guy was an Admiral McRaven but he wrote the book. He makes a point that in the military, the first thing you do is make your bed. It equates to a win and a pattern that you're developing on a daily basis that brings out your best self and abilities. That's the first thing I do. I make my bed. I've got my little routine and all that. I've got a chair in my living room that I have sat in for years. I'm on the second one wearing it out. I'm going to read, write and journal.

Leadership a lot is about what you say no to and those two little ladders are so powerful. Everybody's got to learn, if you're a leader especially, what you are going to say no to. There are always bazillion things to occupy your time and even more than your time, your mental energy. Leadership is so much about mental and emotional energy.

In the rhythm you talked about, you don't write the whole opus. It's one beat at a time. I love the fact when you talked about making your bed equates to a win. What my dad would say with abandonment is, “Tracey, when you get down billable hours at the end of the day, how many things you did contribute to your success and failure?” When you look at it, you can go, “This is why it's not happening for me.”

Incrementally, little thing. I'm not saying you have to throw all the TVs out of the house like he did when we were growing up. If you have to do it, you have to do it. Discipline and that rhythm, even if it's for an hour a day as you did before and then incrementally, is how you get a lot more clarity. You can deflect them a lot easier because you're so dialed in.

There are a couple of books on the power of habits. One is Atomic Habits. A guy named Duhigg wrote one called The Power of Habit. The whole point is that very minimal changes make a big difference. What those changes are that you choose to make also are so important because some changes have a domino effect. This good thing that I'm developing is going to have a domino effect in my leadership and life, whereas I might make another choice that might even be a good choice but it's not one that's necessarily going to have a domino effect on other areas of my life.

Either way, the point is very small and incremental changes make such a huge difference. That is about abandoning some stuff that I want to do or that is impulsive. I'm an impulsive guy. I go to the store, see something and I’m like, “I need that. Do you have to lure the disc? I don't think you do need that, Hamilton.” You can live that way, impulsively and it doesn't add up to strong leadership.

Sometimes, it's that one little thing like a ball falling when you're playing pool that may make it over. There's loneliness, weariness, abandonment and lastly, vision. My father would say that vision is not some esoteric, mythical thing that the greats, the Zuckerbergs, the Oprah Winfreys or the brilliant people see. Vision is seeing what needs to be done. You're doing it and executing it because if you don't execute it, it's this thing floating around. How do you get vision clarity? You went through this big transition where you got the calling or the pivot point. Unpack for our readers what they should be looking for if there are vision blockers or how you're honing this next stage of your life.

What people always told me is, “Your strongest thing is you're a visionary and you, secondly, are able to inspire people towards that vision. You're very good at that. You're a strategic planner.” You're taking the history that you developed based on this abandonment and the other points of leadership and developing a process whereby you can visualize and see.

Vision is what I call a picture of a preferred future. You've developed the knack and the ability to learn how to pursue something when you do see it. To me, it's like when you went to high school and college and everybody always complains that there are all these classes that, “I don't need to learn that. Why would I want to learn about psychology? I'm going to be an accountant.” All of us complained about that stuff but the bigger principle of education is you got to teach yourself how to be educated because the ultimate goal is for you to educate yourself.

It's like in Christianity. To me, if you have been a Christian for fifteen years and you still have to be spoonfed by a pastor or a church something is not right. Adult people feed themselves and they do that because they have learned how to do that. The best discipline in life is learning. Solomon says, “Where do you get wisdom? Where do you learn to fear God?” You'll get it and see it coming into your life or get an understanding of that thing. I've been writing a little bit about this in Nehemiah. Leaders do tend to see things that sometimes other people don't see or they see the same things that another person sees but the distinguishing characteristic is exactly what you're saying. They want to do something about it.

I have a good friend that ran an Upward Basketball program for years. It was a great program. About 220 people were kids in our church and from the community play. He would always go to the parents. I know if you've had kids in sports, parents are notorious for being jerks. “You ought to be doing this, that and so on.” He would get them all together. At the beginning of the year, he would have his speech. He'd say, “I'm going to do things that are not the best here. I'm sure I will do things that could be done better and so forth. You're going to see some of those things.”

Leadership Success: As a leader, you have things that fill and empty your bucket, and your bucket is going to be leaky no matter what. You got to keep your bucket full enough because you're pouring into other people's lives constantly.

He says, “I'm glad for you to come to me with, ‘We ought to be doing this way.’” Then he would always tell him the second step, “You come to me with the thing that you see wrong, with a solution and with the willingness to be part of the solution. If you don't, don't come to me.” That often is the difference. You have to develop an aptitude towards, I'm a doer rather than a listener of whatever it is I'm pursuing.”

For me, writing is a very different discipline than leading a large organization, preaching and so forth. There are so many different aspects to that whereas writing is very focused. I tended to like to do everything. If you're a leader like me, I had trouble saying no because I liked everything about the church and loved everything about leadership. I love public speaking and liked cleaning the church. I would clean the church and you get to a point where, “Don, you don't need to be spending 2 or 3 hours cleaning the church at this particular stage.”

In becoming a writer, I have this vision of, “I want to start to write.” One thing my nephew, who has written a couple of very successful books says, “I'll tell you one thing, Uncle Don. Writers have to write.” A lot of writers are supposedly writers but they are just talking about it. I've read a number of books since I have been trying to pursue this and talked to you some. It all comes down to this, “You set your rear end down in that chair and start writing and do it every day. You will slowly but surely become a writer.” Any vision is like that. It ends up being, “I need to do something about this.”

I love that you brought on the obvious and the non-obvious because my focus is followership. Where leaders can avoid burnout is by bringing the followers that can see the obvious. You don't need to tell them, “This is not Mother May I? You do it.” In the military, you do it if you see something wrong. That is good for leaders. You need to focus on seeing the vision that is not obvious. You're going to get the call, not because you're smarter than everybody but for whatever reason God chose to give it to you.

It's like in The Chosen when Peter was like, “Why did you pick me? Andrew, why do you think he picked you?” He says, “I don't know. He just did.” It's a mystery for leaders to dial into people. That will help you with the other things too like the weariness and loneliness. You want followers that don't have to sit there and wait for permission to do what needs to be done. I tell them 80% of business is intuitively obvious to the most casual observer. You can say, “That is no vision.” It is vision, discipline, seeing what needs to be done and doing it.

It's that residual momentum that keeps the day-to-day tactical stuff going. The strategy is more of a creative aspect. I liked that you separated the two. You want people that, going back to Moses, aren't always coming to you saying, “Do you think this is going to work? I don't think this is going to work.” If you're not in with the vision, go to another tribe.

Going back to the point of abandonment, the other things I would say on a much deeper and on a bigger scale would have been you must abandon your pride if you want to be a good leader. Humility, to me is the linchpin of leadership. You have to abandon your insecurity because if you don't, you won't be able to get the vision. An insecure leader will not allow people to make decisions on their own. An insecure leader won't delegate. They are afraid that they are not going to get their due. It doesn't work that way. To me, you get the big picture and figure it out. Most of us are good at 1, 2 and 3 things. That's it. You're probably good at about one thing. You need to figure out what is your one thing and do it. There are very few projects that involve just one thing.

You better find people around you, the better you can find and then let them run with it. I go back to Nehemiah. Nehemiah was not going to build a wall around Jerusalem not even remotely by himself. That is ludicrous. He was going to have to enlist the entire community to get this thing done, especially the leadership in the community. In order to do that, he had to be a humble guy. John Doe comes out of his house every day. There is the sheep gate. The sheep gate is barred. You can't even walk through the crazy thing. It's all torn apart. That guy has got to stare at that gate every day.

A leader comes along and says, “You don't have to stare at that gate being broken down. I'll bet you can fix it.” He says, “I can't fix it. I have been working in the King's court my whole life. I don't know anything about fixing doors but you and your neighbors do so I will get you the resources.” To me, that is another thing that sometimes leaders don't recognize. You can even get good people around you but 1) If you won't let them do their job, and then 2) If you don't resource them properly, you will end up losing your best.

The people didn't have the wherewithal to build that. They didn't have the wood, the hinges and so forth but Nehemiah knew where he could get that. He brought it with him and said, “You got it. Here it is.” They will do the work. To me, it's not just a vision of a wall that was completed. It's, “What resources do these people need that they cannot provide for themselves?” A leader has access usually or knows how to go about getting resources that many times that’s not the role of the followers.

Once you provide those resources then they are going to be able to pursue that vision. The leader is tasked to keep. You got to paint that vision over and over and paint it in fifteen different ways and times. When you're the one hammering the nails, you forget, “Why am I doing this again?” He said, “You are doing this for your kids, Jerusalem and the city.”

I'm sure you've heard about this famous old illustration. I've been reading a book about the great cathedrals of Europe. The story of God that comes up where he sees these three different Masons working on this cathedral. The Masons were a generational thing because cathedrals usually took hundreds of years to build. He walks up to the first guy and says, “What are you doing?” He says, “I'm laying bricks.” He was pretty blunt about it.

He walked up to the next guy. He says, “What are you doing? He says, “I'm building a big, beautiful wall here.” He says, “That's good.” He walks up to the third guy he finds and says, “What are you doing?” He says, “I am building a structure to the almighty god of the universe.” That third guy somewhere had a different vision than what that first guy had. To me, the responsibility of the leader is to get all of them to be the third guy. “We are not just putting bricks on bricks and building a wall here. We are building something great.” That can be a program, a project or the overarching theme of whatever organization it is.

Leadership Success: A leader usually has access or knows how to go about getting resources. 

It's hard for people to stay fired up if they lose their vision and lose track of, “What is my part in the play? How does it contribute to the whole?” That is a harder thing to do. A leader needs to address that on a frequent basis because when you're sitting there on the computer and filling out forms, it's pretty easy to lose sight of, “What are these forms? It's for somebody's healthcare. This is important.” Somebody has got to remind everybody of that. It falls with the leadership.

I have heard that cathedral story before. That is so profound. It's how everybody does the same thing and shows up at the same job but some people go and think it's the worst thing in the world. Other people are like, “This is the most brilliant thing.” We have covered quite a lot and you have shared with our readers a ton of great resources, real-world stories and your wisdom, Don. Is there anything else that you would like to share with our readers about leadership? How about some of these books that you're working on? Would you like to share a little bit about that?

I have mentioned Nehemiah several times. That is where my world is. You and I have had the chance to talk about this. Many years ago, I found an interest and I don't know if it was a class or something in Nehemiah. It was one of the greatest leadership books that have ever been written. You have to perceive that and look at it from a leader's bird's-eye view.

I'm writing a shorter book on Nehemiah and then a longer one. It's based on this study I did years ago that I called The Six E’s of Success that you Examine, Evaluate, Envision, Encourage, Equip and Enjoy. This is going to play out a little bit differently than that. I'm writing a short one and then I'm writing a longer book, which is going to be a 40-day leadership devotional with 40 lessons from Nehemiah. I'm working on that. I'm working on another book called Just Go on Anyway.

I had this saying throughout my life that served me well. There are those times where you're weary and you've done it but you failed. It is that you just did. Sometimes, it was your own fault and sometimes it was the circumstances beyond your control. A lot of people failed in business and there wasn't anything they could do about it. Nobody's buying.

There are a number of times in your life. Your wife gets sick and passes. You got to look at yourself in the mirror every once in a while and say, “I'm going to go on anyway.” It's not a stoic thing. It's, “I am going to go on anyway.” I'm writing a book called Just Go on Anyway and it covers a number of like, “Just go on anyway when your business went under, when the divorce papers were signed and when you got outsourced.” There is a myriad of subjects that we all go through. I'm picking out 40 or 50 of those. I'm thinking of doing a series of books on, “Just go on anyway.” I have been working on that as well. I do my weekly blog, which is usually around 1,000 words or so and a 6 to 7-minute read. I'm enjoying it.

Where can people find you? Where can they read this tremendous blog of yours? How can they connect with you? I know a lot of our readers are going to want to reach out to you.

DonMarkHamilton.com is my website. There is some other information that I will continue to place on there and some other resources. As a matter of fact, there is that article. I titled it Why Your Life Sucks and What You Can Do About It? It is a study of the Book of Nehemiah. You can download that for free. You'll see the blog button there. You can click on the blog and subscribe to that. You'll get a weekly email with that and once in a while some other things. I'll keep everybody up through that on where I'm at with the books or other projects.

I'm doing some speaking. I've done some development for some nonprofit groups and their leadership teams. I'll do that and I'm available to do those things. I did one for My Cerebral Palsy, a group down in Baltimore as well. I'm doing and enjoying doing that. You can get a hold of me at DonMarkHamilton@Gmail.com. If you approach me on the website, you can put contact and it will be a different email address from my website. Either one of those is fine.

Don, thank you for pouring out your wisdom to us. For our readers out there, please make sure and reach out to Don. He is a tremendous resource and has seen a thing or two as you have heard. He is a very seasoned, connected and grounded leader. That's who we need to surround ourselves with so take advantage of this. Don, thank you for being a part of this and for the joy you are.

You're more than welcome. Thank you, Tracey. I'm honored to get to chat with you.

You are so welcome. For our readers out there, if you liked what you read, please be sure and subscribe. Give us a like. The joy and blessing of a five-star rating would be so appreciated. Wherever you listen to this podcast, we are everywhere across all the different platforms. Leave us a comment. We answer all the different ones that we get from people. We would love to know what you're reading and what thoughts you were inspired by on your leadership journey. To all our tremendous leaders out there, you keep on paying the price of leadership. We are so thankful for you. Be sure and go over to TremendousLeadership.com and sign up for your two free eBooks to get you on your tremendous journey. Keep it up, Tremendous Tribe. We love you. We're thankful for you.

Important Links:

• Dr. Don Mark Hamilton

• Live Inspired

• Make Your Bed

• Atomic Habits

• The Power of Habit

• My Cerebral Palsy

• DonMarkHamilton@Gmail.com

• https://www.Facebook.com/DonMHamilton

• https://www.Facebook.com/DonMarkHamilton

• https://www.LinkedIn.com/in/Don-Mark-Hamilton-23954a7/

• https://www.Instagram.com/Don.Mark.Hamilton/

About Dr. Don Hamilton

Dr. Don Mark Hamilton is the blessed father of four beautiful daughters, soon-to-be three sons-in-law, and seven awesome grandchildren. Don was married to Gail Hamilton for thirty-eight years until her passing in 2018 from Pancreatic Cancer. Don pastored the large and healthy Vibrant Christian Church in Mechanicsburg, Pa for thirty-eight years until his retirement in 2020. Don is now a blogger, author, and public speaker rooted in the charge to Live Inspired! Don's articles and resources can be found on DonMarkHamilton.com. He is presently working on three books to be published in the coming year.