Leadership_Lessons_From_The_Great_Books_Podcast_Episode_#1

This podcast episode is about leadership lessons from the book of Nehemiah in the Bible. The host, Haitham Sorels, and his co-host, Colby Sutter, discuss the importance of leadership and how to develop as leaders. They emphasize the need for leaders to have compassion, to maintain boundaries, and to get their hearts right before leading others. The episode also touches on the significance of walls in ancient times and the historical context of Nehemiah's role as a cupbearer to the king. The hosts express their excitement about exploring the book of Nehemiah and its teachings on leadership. My name is Haitham Sorels, and this is Leadership Lessons from the Great Books, podcast, with my host, my co-host actually, for our very first episode, Colby Sutter. Hello, Colby. Hey, how are you guys doing? We're doing quite well, and we're going to break down some leadership today. You look beautiful today. I don't think so, David, thank you. Yes, no. Yes, it's going to be a good episode. And I arose in the night, I and some few men with me. Neither told I any man what my God had put on my heart to do at Jerusalem, neither was there any beast with me save the beast that I rode upon. And I went out by night by the gate of the valley, even before the dragon well, and to the dung port, and viewed the walls of Jerusalem, which were broken down, and the gates thereof were consumed with fire. And I went to the gate of the fountain and to the king's pool, but there was no place for the beast that was underneath to pass. And I went up in the night by the brook, and viewed the wall, and turned back, and entered by the gate of the valley, and so returned. And the rulers knew not whether I went or what I did, neither had I as yet told it to the Jews, nor to the priests, nor to the nobles, nor to the rulers, nor to the rest that did the work. Then I said unto them, Ye see the distress we are in, how Jerusalem lieth waste, and the gates thereof are burned with fire. Come and let us build up the wall of Jerusalem, that we be no more a reproach. I have taught, led, and trained people in leadership and in how to develop as leaders for about the last 15 years. And if I think about it, I've really been leading people all my life. I've also been reading all my life. Those who know me know that I'm a man who, as a child, sat on the floor reading encyclopedias. The old blue leather Mercadur encyclopedias were the best ones, and I absorbed lessons from those books. Those who know me also know that I've coached and taught and trained people in everything from martial arts to making fire, and I've learned a ton of things along the way. Leadership, however, what makes a mediocre, a good, or even a bad leader, or even a great leader? Well, these are things I have only recently begun to focus on with laser-like intensity, and thus the genesis of this podcast. With the leadership lessons from the great books, I hope that you and I and our co-hosts will discover something new about leadership, at least twice a month, every month, from the great books of the Western canon. Now I know that there are books that can not only identify but also provide direction from all over the world, but we are starting with books written that underpin Western civilization, because that's where we live. That's what we're based in, and whether we like it or not, that's where our assumptions, our thoughts, and our expectations about who and what leaders should be resonate from, without us even considering it too deeply. Books such as Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, City of God by Augustine, Don Quixote by Miguel Cervantes, and even Moby Dick by Herman Melville, all of these books basically are the undergirdings of the Western canon, and many, many more. The root of all Western thought on aspects of leadership lies within the great books, and has been there even before books about leaders and leadership were exclusively written. As a matter of fact, if we want to think about this historically, books about leadership really only started to be written, gosh, within the last 80 years, particularly when we think about books like Think and Grow Rich, Self-Help Books by Dale Carnegie, and many, many others. So we are starting our podcast series off with the greatest of all the great books, quite frankly, the Bible. And whether you agree with its overall scope and focus or not, whether you agree with the Bible being a place of a transcendental deity, that is actually irrelevant. What's relevant is what we can take from the Bible, what we can take in our learning from the Bible, and what we can apply directly to our lives as leaders. Now, specifically today, we're going to delve into the book of Nehemiah, and we're going to talk about how this guy, who I talked about in the opening, who was riding a donkey around the dung walls of Jerusalem, how this guy, Nehemiah, the son of Hakaliah, and yes, we're going to talk about those biblical names, and we're going to pronounce them, and I'm going to try to round my mouth around them, because they're not easy, led his people, specifically the Jewish people, to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, which had been broken down by invaders. Nehemiah is one of my favorite books, Cezanne, and I can't wait to be a part of this podcast with you. I love the book of Nehemiah because it is this in-depth richness of leadership, but yet also compassion and love. So as you said, either if you agree with the Bible or disagree with the Bible, we can all find leadership skills and life skills in the book of Nehemiah and how he went and rebuilt the wall. I don't want to give away too much yet, so I'm going to turn it back over to you so we can start talking about the book before I get ahead of myself. Well and we're going to read big chunks of this book, right? This is one of the things that I want to be clear with folks, and this podcast format is modeled, and I would be bereft if I didn't say this, it's modeled off of Jocko Willock's podcast, the Jocko podcast, where he reads big chunks of books and then talks about them for two, three hours at a time, or has a guest on and talks about a book that was written and then deals with that and talks about that for a long period of time. This podcast is designed to have conversations about leadership. It's designed to have riffing. It's designed to have back and forth. And Colby and myself both have two different styles, but we both have a passion for leadership. We both may approach it differently. We both may think about it from different angles, but we have a passion for it. Yeah. I probably think of it better than you do, just because it's me. Well, you know what, we're going to see just how much better it is. We're going to let the listeners take the taste of strength test on that. There we go. All right. All right. I'll take the Pepsi challenge. Yeah, I'll go right on ahead and jump right on in that. I was bluffing. Well, one of the things that I want to start off with is getting some of our legs underneath us around Nehemiah. And so I want to pull from the Blue Letter Bible's Strong Concordance reference. And if you don't know what Strong Concordance is, it doesn't matter. But basically what it is is it's a combination of an encyclopedia and a thesaurus and a translation volume for the Bible. And it's usually divided into two sections, one in Hebrew for the Old Testament and discovering the meaning and the depth of Old Testament words, and then one section that's for Greek because the New Testament was written in Greek. And if you want to find out more about that, you can go check out blueletterbible.com yourself. I want to give them immense shout outs right now. I probably could not have written this episode without their help. And so they are a great resource. And the Bible is a book that annotates itself. And so when you read through the book of Nehemiah, and some of you may be Bible scholars who are out there, and you may be thinking, is he going to get biblical? I'll get a little biblical as we talk and as we riff. And I can't really help getting a little bit biblical because Colby is a reverend in his real life and he gets biblical. But as leaders, we don't have to get biblical. We just have to know what the great books say. And we have to acknowledge it and we have to take it seriously. And Strong's allows us to do that because now we actually understand what the meaning of words are behind the words that are used. So when the word excellence is used in the Old Testament, it means a different thing than maybe the way that we think about it in the 21st century with our English language, right? So the word love. Love is an interesting word in the English language. We have one word that covers a multitude of sins. I've said this before in training and in development work that I've done with organizations. But when you talk about the word love in a Hebrew context or even in a Greek context, there's multiple different definitions for love and there's multiple different ways that love is defined. So anyway, let's go back to the book for just a second or the Strong's Concordance. So Nehemiah's name means Jehovah Comforts. He was the son of Hakaliah, cupbearer to King Artaxerxes. And by the way, that's a great name. I'm going to say it as many times as I possibly can, Artaxerxes. That's back when you gave your kids really awesome names that you couldn't do anything with that name, Artaxerxes, other than be a king. That's it. That's the only job that you have. You're not going to be a janitor named Artaxerxes. Like, it's not going to happen. Who became governor of Judah after the return from exile. And he was one of the 12 heads of the people who returned from exile with Zerubbabel, again, another great name, son of Asbuk, again, another great name, and ruler of the half part of Beth Zor, who helped repair the wall of Jerusalem. Now, it turns out back in the day that walls mattered, just as now to people. Conversations about walls are nothing new, you know. And so back in the day, if you did not have walls to protect yourself, to fortress yourself off from invaders, from people who wanted to take your stuff, from people who wanted to, let's be blunt here, because as leaders we need to be blunt sometimes, we need to be clear and candid and courageous, who wanted to rape and pillage, you had to actually maintain the walls. And by the way, this is a first lesson for leaders. Sometimes you have to maintain boundaries. Yeah. Oh, I know what I love about... Good neighbors. Yeah, go ahead. No. What I love about the book Nehemiah 2 is what you're saying is during its exile, they've already rebuilt the temple and then they started to rebuild the people spiritually and then Nehemiah comes along to protect the people, if you will. He comes and he has a desire to build this wall to protect the people. So I can't wait to dive into this book even more. When you were saying that, I just got excited too because I wanted to chime in real fast that I live my life by this concept of... The Jewish people used to teach it's a Hebrew concept, it's the wrestle with God, which Israel really means. I think we all need to as leaders and just followers of the Bible or not even, even if you don't know what you believe, we all have to wrestle with what we think and what we believe so we can come to our own understanding and knowledge. And the wrestling with God was what Jacob did after he watched the angels come down and go up of Jacob's ladder and he wrestled, right? And then he wrestled all night with God. Well, some folks think it's Jesus, but whatever. He wrestled all night with God and then his thigh was taken out and he walked with a limp for the rest of the remainder of his life. I call it a gangster lean. A gangster lean. A gangster lean. You know, I've often thought, I'm going to say the first outrageous thing on this two hour podcast. We are now probably about 15 minutes in. I'm going to say the first outrageous thing. I think the drug dealers should probably be teaching in business schools. I agree. That's all we're going to say on that one. And by the way, they should be sentenced to teach at Stanford Business School. It's not a get out of jail free card. Don't get me wrong. No, no, no. They're actually going to put it to work. Like, I've designed syllabuses. I've taught students. It's a sentence sometimes. It's not going to feel like that. Yeah, but I've wrote in programs and taught too and it is torture. So it's a good torture system. Good torture system, right? You've got to go through it. And now we've abandoned our entire higher education audience. This is good. I'm going to go right off the bat. Back to Nehemiah. Let's start with Nehemiah 1, 2 through 4. So back to Nehemiah. The words of Nehemiah, the son of Hacaliah, and it came to pass in the month of Chislew in the 20th year as I was in Shushan, the palace, that Hanani, one of my brethren, came, he and certain men of Judah. And I asked them concerning the Jews that had escaped, which were left of the captivity and concerning Jerusalem. And they said unto me, the remnant that are left of the captivity there in the province are in great affliction and reproach. The wall of Jerusalem is also broken down and the gates thereof are burned with fire. And it came to pass when I heard these words that I sat down and wept and mourned certain days and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven. Couple of big points here for leaders. And Colby, you can jump in at any point, but a couple of big points here for leaders. Look at what Nehemiah actually did. He got a bad report. Everything's sucking, right? Hanani comes along, he's like, listen, old boy, things are terrible over here. I understand you're up in the king's court. I understand you're the cupbearer. By the way, back in the day, the cupbearer, those of you who don't know, the cupbearer was a really important role because the cupbearer was the person who basically prevented the king from dying. I'm going to taste your food. I'm going to drink your wine. I'm going to make sure you're not poisoned because everybody in the king's court was trying to poison Artaxerxes. And so he needed a cupbearer. So this wasn't a I'm the janitor pushing the broom kind of role. This wasn't that. This was I'm the executive vice president of Exxon Mobil. I make $100,000 a month. Here's what I care about if I'm Nehemiah. I care about always being right because if I'm wrong, I'm dead. That's the role that Nehemiah was in. Is that a correct maybe categorization of that? Yeah, it's a great generalization of the cupbearer, as you just said, was the people that would test out to see if the king's food was poisoned. If he drank out of the cup, it was poisoned. It was an extremely important role. Nehemiah was seen from the king and other people as a leader and a person in great authority because of that position. Right. And then you have... I just wanted to quick point out because I wanted to point out as a good leader before you steal it from me because you might. And I wanted to sound smart for a second. What I love about Nehemiah is when he hears this report, what does he do? He weeps in praise on it. This shows us the heart of a leader. He's compassionate towards other people. Nehemiah didn't supposedly even know these people because he's been in captivity his whole life. These were just his family's family members in his hometown, but he had such compassion for the people. He actually wept and prayed on this issue for days before he took action. So to me, that's the heart of a leader, putting other people before yourself. And Nehemiah wasn't, historically speaking, in the biblical context, he wasn't Moses. He wasn't Abraham. Those people at the time that the book of Nehemiah was written, which is paired with the book of Ezra, which we're not going to get into today at all, maybe in a future podcast we will. But those individuals, Nehemiah and his buddies like Hananiah and his father Zerubbabel and all these other kinds of folks, right? Not Zerubbabel, but Hakaliah. All those folks, they talked about Moses and Abraham the same way we talk about George Washington or Abraham Lincoln, right? It was as far away from them as Abraham Lincoln is to us. Like if they could have built, and they probably did, but if they could have built a statue to Moses, they would have. Except, you know, they're Jews, so they're not going to do that. Instead, they're going to build a little academy and get in trouble in other kinds of ways. It's all due to the adultery, yeah. I know what you mean. And all that. Yeah, yeah. You're going to have all those kinds of problems. But the point is, like for Nehemiah, those individuals, those experiences were historical. They weren't his contemporary experiences. And so being a cupbearer, he was living his life. He was just hanging out, living his life, doing what guys do, doing what leaders do. And as I said before, the parallel to today is, you know, being an executive at Exxon, making $100,000 a month and never being wrong. And by the way, he had the 445 BC version of a BMW. And it's never talked about in Nehemiah, but I'm sure he had wives, not just one, but multiple wives. I'm sure he had property. I'm sure he had possessions. I'm sure he had all of that because that's how you were set up back in the day if the king really liked you. Yep, yep. I just was thinking, too, this is what's fascinating about Nehemiah, besides his multiple wives and big houses and mansions and escalades, is it's equivalent almost to, so my people are from Ireland. My grandma was first generation from Ireland. So it would be almost equivalent to me hearing something that's happening in Ireland this day in my age and weeping over it. It wouldn't happen for me, and I wish it would. So I'm saying Nehemiah is such a good leader. He's hearing the story of a place he's never been to, about a people he doesn't even really know personally, and he just weeps and has compassion for these people. I think we can all even just learn from that, that Nehemiah, this person of great authority, falls to his knees when it comes to the hurting of his people. And the other thing that's sometimes neglected in this first part of Nehemiah, again, Nehemiah 1, 2 through 4, right? There's so much packed in this book, by the way. I mean, if you go in and read the book, it seems short. There's only, what, 15 chapters in Nehemiah? It seems short, and again, it's packed in between Ezra and Esther. So if you're going and you're finding that old Bible that you've used for a marker or for a family heirloom or something like that, and you're cracking it open or you're going on the internet because you don't know what I'm talking about right now and you're trying to follow along, please do that. I encourage you to do that as a leader. But when you look at what's inside of just these first sentences, there's so much packed in here for leaders. And one of the big ones that I take away is that Nehemiah cleaned himself out. We don't talk a lot about prayer, and we're not going to talk about that in this podcast necessarily. This episode, we might hit that another time. We're going to talk about Augustine and some other things. Maybe we'll talk about Thomas Aquinas. We're going to get into prayer. We're going to talk about how do you write yourself as a leader spiritually with being in the Kierkegaardian sense of being. Anyway, he fasted and prayed. He prepped himself. He cleaned himself out so that he could take things in. And I'm sure the fasting and praying wasn't just, I'm just going to miss a few meals and get on my knees a couple of times and say some prayers and go about my day. That's not what Daniel did, but much later on. That's not what the prophets did. That's not even what David did when David was, as a leader, was accused by Nathan of basically engaging in murder and adultery and creating a child out of wedlock and all these other kinds of things. David was a man after God's own heart. And so Nehemiah had to get his heart right. And that's really what I take from this. He had to get his heart right before he could lead the people. And so for leaders, this is the first bomb I would drop. Leaders have to get their hearts right before they can lead other people. They have to be intentional about doing that. And don't worry, we're going to get into how you handle followers because there's a lot of information about followers in here. And we're also going to talk about how you handle enemies because it isn't just about how you get yourself right because there's a whole bunch of other people who don't want you to get yourself right. Back to the book. And it came to pass when I heard these words that I sat down and wept and mourned certain days and fasted and prayed before the God of Heaven. And I said, and said, I beseech thee, O Lord God of Heaven, the great and terrible God that keepeth covenant and mercy for them that love him and observe his commandments. By the way, I'm reading from the King James Version because I like the these and thousand those because I like the theatrical Shakespearean language. You don't have to read from this. You can read the New Living Translation. You can read any translation you want. And the language will be a little bit different, but you can read any translation you want. All those are good. Let thine ear now be attentive and thine eyes open that thou mayest hear the prayer of thy servant which I pray before thee now. Day and night for the children of Israel, thy servant, and confess the sins of the children of Israel which we have sinned against thee. Both I and my Father's house have sinned. All right, let me pause there for just a second. He wasn't just cleaning himself out. He was asking for repentance and reconciliation for his people as well, which is something that's also interesting for leaders. You don't just stand in the gap for yourself. You stand in the gap for a whole bunch of other people. Even if you're just leading in your family, let's say you're the head of household, not just on your taxes, but you're the actual head of household, right? You stand in the gap for your family. You stand in the gap for your community. You stand in the gap at your workplace. It's a big responsibility to be a leader, and so many leaders tend to not think about it that way, particularly positional leaders. So if there are any managers and supervisors listening to this podcast right now hoping to glean some insights, that's a big one right there. You stand in the gap, not just for your family, not just for the position you're in, but for everybody that surrounds you. Back to Nehemiah. We have dealt very corruptly against thee. He's continuing his prayer. We have dealt very corruptly against thee and have not kept the commandments, nor the statutes, nor the judgments, which thou commandest thy servant Moses. Remember I beseech thee the word that thou commandest thy servant Moses, saying, if ye transgress I will scatter you abroad among the nations. But if you turn unto me and keep my commandments and do them, though there were of you cast out unto the uttermost part of heaven, yet will I gather them from thence and will bring them unto the place that I have chosen to set my name there. Now these are thy servants and thy people whom thou hast redeemed by thy great power and by thy strong hand. O Lord, I beseech thee, let now thy near be attentive to the prayer of thy servant and to the prayer of thy servants who desire to fear thy name and prosper, I pray thee, thy servant this day and grant him mercy in the sight of this man. And then he closes it by saying, for I was the king's cupbearer. A couple of different points here to make. And Colby, you could jump in at any point, but a couple of different points here to make that jump out from that long section. And again, that's Nehemiah chapter 1, 4 through 11 we just read. A couple of big points there. Actually, three big points specifically. Leaders need to align their hearts and their character with the work they seek to accomplish. If you align your heart and you align your character with the work you seek to accomplish, you will have success. You can manage without alignment and you can supervise work that other people are doing without alignment, but fundamentally I don't believe, and I think Colby would agree with me, I don't believe you can lead without alignment. Managing is different. It has aspects of leadership, but it's not purely leadership. And supervision, quite frankly, supervision is about the day-to-day. It's about putting out fires. It's about making sure the entire walls don't burn down on a day-to-day basis. It's maintenance. And don't get me wrong, there are acts of leadership inside of supervision. There are acts of leadership inside of management. But those acts in and of themselves are not pure leadership. If you want to be a pure leader, you have to align your heart and your character with the work you seek to accomplish. And that will start you to have a path towards that. Yeah. I think just to chime in on that 100% is a good leader needs to find out what their character is and what they believe and then align themselves with that. I think anyone that follows a leader knows their heart, their leader's heart, because we reveal our hearts through the way we talk and how we act. And the people that are following us see that. So if your character is not aligned, your followers will see that and you won't have dedicated people following you. You won't be leading dedicated people. And there's a moment where this old boy has to deal with his followers, right? We go to Chapter 5 and he talks about, you know, the Chapter 5 of the book. He talks about usury. And he talks about the taxes. And the people working on the wall basically taxed, not taxed, but they basically sacrificed, not a physical sacrifice, but they basically sacrificed their sons and daughters, their fields, their vineyards to go out and build this wall. And it was Nehemiah's own people that were taxing the people who were building the wall to protect everybody. And so there wasn't just a, it wasn't just about getting aligned with the work. And Nehemiah had the much bigger issue, which is again an issue of leadership, of aligning himself with the people and then aligning the people to the organization and to the work. Actually, not the organization and the work, aligning the people to the work and then aligning the people and the team and the work to the organization. And so one of the other principles for leaders, which I didn't really write down, but Colby sort of triggered it in my head, is this idea of scale. Scale sometimes defeats leaders. And I think you probably agree with me, Colby. It's easy to lead two people. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And that's fairly simple. I mean, you've had a coffee business. It's fairly simple to lead a couple people, right? Yep. Yep. It's actually a lot easier. I'd rather lead two people than 200. Yeah. And so was our bill for scale. I mean, you know, like I've decided like 50 is probably about my sweet spot. Yep. I don't want to be a CEO of a big public company. I don't want that. And I've looked at those jobs. I've seen those positions. I have an understanding of what goes into those kinds of roles and what you have to sacrifice in order to make those kinds of roles actually work. And it's a lot. If you're leading a multinational corporation with 100,000 employees, you've got problems that are just unbelievable and they're all based on scale. If you didn't get good leadership training, if you started, let's say you started a tech company in your Harvard dorm room, if you didn't get good leadership training, you might run into some problems later on. Because scale is the key. Alignment problems. Oh, massive alignment. Misalignment all over the place, which of course makes it easy for folks like myself to do consulting and coaching and teaching and training work because that's how we get paid. If you'd like to have us come into your organization, please visit us on hsconsultingandtraining.com and you can sign up for one of our webinars or one of our training opportunities. Or even you can do private coaching with me and I do private consulting as well with your organization. And a lot of what we do in those consulting gigs, a lot of what we do in those kinds of environments, and I can't talk about all of the examples as we go throughout the remainder of this podcast, but a lot of the problems are about misalignment. The leaders are aligned to one thing. The followers are aligned to something else. The organizational structure is aligned to this amorphous idea of mission, vision, values and goals. But then you talk to the people who actually work there and they don't even know what the heck those things are. So alignment is huge. Leaders must be aligned. The second point that I'd like to make is leaders acknowledge current reality with all of its problems, but they don't complain about it. They don't rant about it and rave about it. And they don't even, this is a big one I see, they don't even lament the state or the present fact of current reality. Leaders put their shoulder in and they start to work. Yeah, okay, it sucks. We just lost a billion dollars in the stock market. Yeah, it sucks. COVID-19 came along and ripped the heck out of our business model and we're two days away from going out of business. Yeah, it sucks. The state has shut down our economy. Any state, you can pick which any state you want. The state has shut down our economy and we run a restaurant and we don't know how we're going to survive. Those moments, and those are big crisis moments I've mentioned that are recent in the public imagination, but you can have small crisis moments like my entire team that worked on a project that needed to be delivered tomorrow just quit because they hated me. Or I get a report of somebody not finishing the work and by the way, it's due at midnight and it's 1130 and I'm getting ready to go to bed. Who's going to do that? Leaders lead. Leaders acknowledge the current reality. So leaders look at those realities, both small and large, and they go, yeah, that sucks. How do we fix it? You made me think real fast and this will be really quick. I'm a storyteller so I teach you to tell a story. Take your time. Tell a story. Take your time. We've got plenty of time. It's a very small story, but this is an example of a great leader. I've written and designed programs that public schools have picked up. So in case there's a school out here in Syracuse called Fowler Heights School and I wrote a drug education program and the school picked it up so I came in there to do case management and teach this program to the students. I say that to say the principal of this school was one of the best leaders I've ever met in my life because he would get in the dirt and do work with you. He came beside you, just like you're talking about, and would do it with you and he never just told people what to do. In this instance, I know all leadership is different, but he would do it with you. So whenever you talk to anyone, the common theme was this. His name was Matt Williams. If Matt Williams told me to go clean the basement because it was flooded with raw sewage and I knew that wasn't my job, I would go do that because I know he would be right beside me doing it with me. So a little graphic example of the raw sewage, but I keep going through this story and I believe it shows you what a good leader does, kind of what, Etan, you're talking about right now, is that leaders do the work and people follow those type of leaders. I'm not getting down there with raw sewage. I'll be honest. I'm like, that's probably my limit. I wouldn't either, but that's what his staff member said. I wasn't a staff member. I was a contract worker. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, but even there, you knew as a contract worker that the leader had the character, and this is really what we're talking about, had the character to literally get down in the muck with you, literally jump into that thing, right? And the best leaders, and by the way, this has nothing to do with education. This has to do with character. I don't care about your education. You could be a PhD and have poor character. You could be- He was a PhD, just a side note. LOL. Great, great. So you could be a PhD and have bad character. And then it was Dr. Matt Williams, my bad. I'll take that back. Great. Cool. Not a medical doctor, but a doctor. Okay, cool. All right. I'm not going to take away his thesis writing, which I probably left him walking through sewage for like seven years if we really had him honestly and off the mic. No. I'm sure he enjoyed all of it. But the point is, you have to engage with folks, and it's the acts of character in acknowledging whatever the reality is. And again, without ranting, raving, complaining, lamenting, just say, yes, this is the reality. The sewer line is broken. Somebody's got to go fix it. Who's up? I raise my hand, I am. I made this. That's the courage part of being a leader. And Nehemiah had that. He had that, and it was reflected in his prayer when he talks about how the people have been moved. And he harkens back to Moses, so he's tying it to historical things, right? The people have been moved in this way. I mean, it's 445 B.C. The Jews are scattered all over the place. Israel and Judah have had a series of bad kings. And by bad, I mean, if you want to see the bad leadership, go read Chronicles and 1 and 2 Kings. My God, like post Solomon, everything goes in the toilet. And by the way, Israel and Judah always repent. Well, not always, but they sometimes repent, and they come back. Or it goes on for two or three generations, and then the Lord just, you know, boom. Worst circumstances, if you're an atheist or an agnostic, just whacks the pacutie out of them, and then they come back and they try again, right? And so there's examples of, quite frankly, piss-poor leadership, people who are more interested in position than in actual leadership that had occurred before Nehemiah, and he still harkens back to Moses. And by the way, we see this later on in Nehemiah when they dedicate Jerusalem, and they dedicate the wall, and they, again, Ezra comes out, reads from the Book of Ezra, and talks about how Moses led us out of Egypt, or not Moses, yes, Moses led us out of Egypt, Abraham, harkening back to all these patriarchs, which again, were the ways in which we talk about George Washington or Abraham Lincoln. Or if you're in another country, you're revolutionary or leaders of old time, right? If you're in England, kings and princes. If you're in Japan, emperors, right? If you're in Brazil, it might be past presidents or prime ministers, right? I don't care. It's the people in the past, right, who were these great leaders, and he's tying it to that because he's trying to bring their character forward so that these people can see them, can see that character. Last point, leaders have humility. That's very simple. You can click that. Not fake humility either, not pretend humility, not, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that was really terrible, and then they're going and sucking up all the credit they can possibly suck up, or I did a really good job, that was really cool, or, whew, that was really hard. No, they're not doing that, right? They're not engaged in that way. Leaders have humility. They check their egos, which got that from, quite frankly, from Jocko Willick, and it's absolutely true. They check their egos, and this is what Nehemiah was seeking to do with his prayers. This is what he was seeking to do through fasting. This is what he was seeking to do through preparing to go into the breach here. They acknowledge that they may not have all the answers and all the solutions or even all the energy, that's a big one, to solve every problem with which they're faced. So, Colby, in your example, I don't know that you would have the energy to jump down in the sewer, you know, as a contract worker, right, because your position says, I'm just here from like eight to two, or I'm just designing this one piece for you, and then I'm going away. But a leader shows that, shows you that, yeah, I don't have the energy to solve that problem that you were hired to solve, but I at least understand it enough to be able to know that I have to give that energy to you. That way you can go forward with it. Does that make sense? Yeah, that makes perfect sense, and I agree with that. I think as leaders and just as people in general, we can't fix every single problem ourselves or have the energy to engage in every single problem, but it's the effect of just acknowledging that it's there and understanding that it's there and making, you know, acknowledging that. I think what I just wanted to say from the first chapter of Nehemiah was my biggest takeaway as a leader and just as a person, so this goes for any leader out there listening and any just person who's a person, get it? Person that's a person. Anything, this is what I get from it. A human being, not the aliens. Yes, yes. Little Wayne is not listening. No, no, no, no. For you who don't know, he calls himself an alien. Just had to clear that up. Is this, Nehemiah, what did he do? When the people came and were telling him about the problem, he said, well, I'm going to tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to tell you what I'm going to do. 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And I've watched Game of Thrones. And I've watched Game of Thrones. And I've watched Game of Thrones. And I've watched Game of Thrones. And I've watched Game of Thrones. And I've watched Game of Thrones. And I've watched Game of Thrones. And I've watched Game of Thrones. Does stubbornness help or hurt leaders? That's a great, great question. I'm going to let you answer that, Haysom. I defer to the right representative from Hustle. I'm going to let you answer that, Haysom. What I love about that, too, and I'll let you chime in on that, too, is stubbornness sometimes is great, obviously, when you're trying to accomplish something. But the other thing that's negative about stubbornness is you don't listen to other people's opinions. And I think that's a great course to ask. And so I'm a boxer. I boxed for ten years. And whenever I teach anything or talk to people, once again, because I like to use stories and illustrations as an example, this is how I teach and communicate. I teach a book called Charge the Storms, and one of the principles in it is a principle of boxing. When you plan something out, you set your goal, and this transpires into stubbornness. You set your goal. What you need to do is, just like a boxer, each round you go back to your corner and you re-evaluate what's working and what's not working. When you're in a boxing match, if you're not winning, your corner man, your coach, will tell you, you're doing this wrong, you're leaving your guard down, you're not doing the combinations. So each round you re-evaluate, but your goal is still the same. Your goal is to win the boxing match. So if I am stubborn and I'm a leader, I don't listen to my corner man. I don't listen to my even self when I'm re-evaluating because I'm going to keep my same strategy because I'm stuck in my ways. And usually it doesn't end up winning that way. So you need to be able to re-evaluate yourself, and I'm sure Haysan's going to contradict and talk about why stubbornness is good. Maybe not, but that's why I believe stubbornness is bad. I think stubbornness has its place, if you will. It has its place. I think that leaders, much like entrepreneurs, have to be bullheaded and stubborn. It's kind of like artists, right? So I went to art school for many years. My bachelor's degree is in the fine arts. Most people don't know that about me. They don't associate me with art in any kind of way, and that's okay. That's fine. I didn't go to school for them. I went to school for me, so that's all right. And I was in printmaking and I was in painting, and one of the fundamental things about art is ego. And we were just talking about how ego can be a bad thing, and this is the dichotomy of leadership, right? You have to appeal to egos, but you have to also check your own ego. This is the dichotomy of leadership. And you have to know when to do that, right? You have to know how to do that, and you have to know why to do that. Okay, cool. Same thing with stubbornness. I also did martial arts for many years. Colby did Colby Box, right? I did martial arts, various types of striking arts. I'm a striker. I'm tall and skinny, for those of you who can't see me. I'm tall and thin. I'm a relatively light guy. I'm fairly quick. I do not want to go to ground with you. I'm not going to do jiu-jitsu with you, pache, jaco. I'm not going to go to ground with you. I was just going to add, for the people who can't see me, I look just like Brad Pitt. Yes, he does look like Brad Pitt. It's shocking how close. Identical. Identical. Identical. I'm going to tell her when you're confused if she were here right now. The studio. When I did martial arts, I learned that if you want to tag a guy, it's not as if they're just going to stand there because you're not playing patty cake. You've got to get in and get after it. I played rugby for a number of years as well. My coach, he talks about coaches, my coach told me you have to want the ball more than you want your body. You have to want the ball more than you want life itself. You have to want it more. Well, that means that my will, and we don't actually talk about will too much as leaders, but my will has to be so overwhelmingly powerful to drive forward, even a positive thing. Let's talk about it in a positive way. To drive forward even a positive thing, a positive vision, a positive goal, that it can overcome any obstacle placed in front of it. Now, that comes off to, we talk about spectators, that comes off to spectators as bullheaded stubbornness, particularly if spectators aren't on your side. I'm not talking about they're your enemies. That's a different thing. But spectators who are watching and are just like, oh, I would never do that. That looks really hard. Like how many people have walked up to you, Colby, in the time that you've been not only leading but also working, entrepreneurship, oh, wow, that looks really hard. I would never do that. Actually, they don't ever say that. They say, oh, you're so lucky, you're so lucky you get to work from home. Yep, all of it, at least 50 times a day. Right. Or they think what we do is easy because they don't see the hours and hours and weeks and weeks that go behind writing and planning and strategizing and coming up with content and material. They just think we show up and it's game time. Exactly. All the time. All the time. Oh, you're so lucky, oh, you're so lucky, and, you know, I have a whole series of videos around this because it isn't luck, it's ten years of work. It's 10,000 hours of going in and getting your face bashed in multiple times, going back to the corner, as Colby was saying, getting up and jumping back in there. And, by the way, it's also self-doubt, wondering if you're in the right game, wondering if you're in the right fight, wondering how long the fight's going to go on, wondering how long you can last. And, by the way, you can't always talk about these things as a leader, as an entrepreneur, as an individual building a world-changing product. This is the kind of stuff that's inside of folks like Steve Jobs that we laud, and he just uses ego to overwhelm it, or even Bill Gates or Elon Musk, any of those names that we could name, and we can name them all. And it's been a while. We've been an hour, we're an hour and 45 minutes into this conversation, or an hour and a half into this conversation, and I haven't mentioned them. Like, that's been a while, right, because they just get mentioned all the time. We don't need to give them more airplay. And the thing inside of them, yes, is their brilliance, yes, is their ego, but it's also that will to get up and get hit in the face again. Yep. Most people who have a mindset of, I will follow, we're going to talk about followership on this podcast as well, but a mindset of following, it does not lend itself to stubbornness. That's a good way. I just wanted to chime in 100% on what you just said, even about the self-doubt. I just want to let people know, leaders out there and everyone else, if you don't question or think about giving up or quitting at least 50 times a week, something's wrong with you. I think all good leaders, all good entrepreneurs, all good anyone, we have to – and it's our biggest enemy is ourselves, our biggest bias. I keep calling them the bias of the rest of development. I'll never call them by his proper name. Our biggest enemy is ourselves a lot of times, our self-doubt and our self-fight in our head that we're in the wrong game, we're doing the wrong thing, or we're not good enough, we're not smart enough. The people that succeed, the true leaders and the true successful people doesn't depend on your wealth or your status. I believe it's the people who fight through that self-doubt and keep continuing on to the mission. I would be bereft if I didn't mention this, entrepreneurs or leaders, let's talk about leaders specifically, leaders who are from minority groups, leaders who are women. Irish. Irish, sure. I was kidding. No, no, you're right. No, no, no. Actually, you're right. In America for a while, the Irish need not apply. No, absolutely correct. You were talking about your grandma. Your grandma remembers that. Irish need not apply, right? Yep. The part of upstate New York where this studio is currently located was dominated by Italians. Italians didn't become quote, unquote, white, whatever that may mean. We'll talk about that much later. Don't send me emails about it. I mean, I did say quote, unquote. Don't send me emails about it. I don't want to hear from you about that. But those kinds of individuals, not yet anyway. We'll have a specific podcast for that and then you can all yell at me about that. But those individuals, they didn't become that thing for quite some time. You still got people walking around who don't believe that they're that thing. Okay? So when you talk about minorities, when you talk about women, when you talk about individuals who have a mindset of I am the other and then feel as though or may in reality be othered by other people, well, that's an extra layer on top of this. And so the thing that I have to sometimes coach minority leaders through or female leaders through is this idea of imposter syndrome. This idea that I'm not really worthy enough to be here. And the thing that you sometimes have to recognize is, and sometimes you do recognize this, everybody has a touch of imposter syndrome if they're playing the game right. Yep. People who don't have a touch of imposter syndrome tend to be overwhelmed by arrogancy or ego or overwhelming stubbornness and tend to be, quite frankly, pissed for leaders. I was reading a story about Lime, this scooter company. And basically Uber for scooters, basically, is what Lime was, if I'm remembering correctly. And their leadership, not even their leadership, the leader of Lime, the CEO, the way his behavior was described in the expose that I was reading on The Verge, you can go Google it if you want to see it, the way his behavior was described was absolutely atrocious. Arrogancy, ego, absolutely atrocious. Not a trace of humility. I think humility is on the other side of imposter syndrome. It's the positive end of imposter syndrome. The negative end is I'm just an imposter and I'm going to take myself out of the game. The positive end is, yes, I'm an imposter and I'm humble about it and I'm still going to keep going. He wasn't even anywhere near that, right, the way his behavior was described. And, again, things are blown up for the media, I get that. And, again, now you can send me emails about that. I get that. Things are blown up for the media and all that. But my point is the people who don't have that ability to engage in self-doubt, they don't have that ability to self-question, yeah, they may succeed materially, but they're going to lose in the long run. You can't gain the world and lose your soul. I think a great point to that, too, is, and I'll leave it at this last point for this particular part, is you already mentioned it, and I just want to capitalize on it because it all fits together, is the transparency. Being transparent is a lost art in our society today because we're afraid to show any sort of weakness or any questioning. So I think the more transparent you are as a boss or as an individual, the more dedicated your followers will be, your people you're leading will be, even the people you're doing life with, your relationships. Transparency, for me, breeds connection and honorship and just liability with each other. I love your point on transparency. I could talk for hours on being transparent just because I think it's a lost art in our society today. We want to puff up our chest and we've made it and we have no weaknesses and nothing, and nothing fouls us. And transparency fundamentally is mixed up also with authenticity. We're going to get into that when we talk about Spinoza and ethics. Let me invite you back on for that. We may have a three-person roundtable around Spinoza and ethics because there are ethical considerations around transparency and authenticity for leaders because open book management is really rife with, oof, it's really rife with problems. But also so is leading in a flat organization, right? What kind of project do I want to build and what kind of thing do I want to develop and what kind of team do I want to lead? Now, if the team is given to you, that's a different little thing there. You can do some quirking and some changing and some things like this. But if you have an opportunity to build a team, you really have to think about transparency. You really have to think about authenticity. You really have to think about how much do I want to have these people brought in. And I'm not spiking off the top of my head. When you work in higher education and doing the kind of work that I used to do, you know, you have a new crop of students every nine months. Which is every nine months you've got to rethink all of this stuff if you're actually engaged with leading people in the way that you need to be leading them. That would be a great topic just because if you think about even in ministry, so being a reverend and being a minister, you can't be completely transparent. So let's say, I'm going to use this as an example, but it's not a true one. But let's say I'm struggling with my faith or I don't believe at this particular point in my journey. Maybe, you know, we have this issue. If you're transparent to the people you're leading and say, no, I don't know if I can be a good guy right now. I need to work through this, you're going to lose followers. You're going to bleed followers like a nuclear weapon bleeds radioactive waste. You need to know when to be transparent and when not to. So that will be an interesting subject and interesting podcast. Well, and also the depth of transparency. Like how deep do you want to – and again, where are leaders being intentional about this and where are they just being accidental? Yep, yep. I keep going back to intentionality over and over again. No more accidents for leaders. That's one of the points of this, not only this podcast, but also this series. That's the point of reading these books. How do we avoid being accidental? Not even avoid it. How do we not start on that path in the beginning? How do we start from a position of sitting in a room, you've been given this thing called a team, you've been given this responsibility or this position in an organization, and now you've got to do something with it and what is that something going to be? Back to the book. I want to talk a little bit about – kind of turn the corner a little bit. And there's a lot in this book, a lot in this book. We're only on Chapter 3 right now. And so I want to turn the corner here and I want to talk a little bit about who the followers were of Nehemiah. Who were the people who built the wall? Nehemiah 3, Verse 5. And next unto them the Tekelites were paired, but their nobles put not their necks to the work of their lord. Now the reason why I'm pulling that out is because there's a list beforehand in Nehemiah 3, 1 through 4, of the people who were putting their necks to the work. And what jumped out at me about that was the people who thought they were better than the people who were doing the work, yeah, they were going to kind of tacitly support Nehemiah. They were going to kind of tacitly put their hands to work. But they weren't going to be all in. Their hearts weren't in it. And it's no accident that the language of nobles and necks is used in here. Their nobles put not their necks to the work of their lord. That's the work of Nehemiah, by the way, the work of the larger vision, the work of the lord. Nehemiah consistently brings it back to this idea that this is bigger than us, this is bigger than us, this is bigger than us. If he were at Apple and he received jobs, he would be saying we are here to change the world, we are here to change the world, we are here to change the world. If he were at Facebook and he were Mark Zuckerberg, we are here to change the world, we are here to change the world, we are here to change the world. Constantly bringing back this larger idea. In our secular 21st century time, we forget that transcendental relationship with being mattered a lot before the enlightenment, before the explosion that happened where we abandoned God, yes, I use the G word, we abandoned God and put him in a corner. And it took us a good 400 or 500 years to do that. But abandoned God, put him in the corner, and now we can begin, just like in the Tower of Babel, we can begin to do all of those things that we can put our hands to. We can begin to build the tower to the height of the universe. And yet, we still have problems that are very human because they come from the transcendent side of ourselves. And that transcendent side of ourselves shows up when people refuse to put their necks to the work, not for the leader, but for the larger purpose. We see that transcendent side show up. And we would be bereft if we did not recognize it as leaders. Too often, leaders don't talk about spirituality because it's a subject. It might get to religion. We can't talk about that at work. Okay, let's talk about meaning. Fine, don't talk about spirituality. Fine, let's talk about meaning. Why are people on your team showing up to do the work that they're doing? Colby already mentioned this with knowing your team's why. I want to double down on this. It's not just knowing your team's why. It's knowing where the why stops. And for these nobles, their why stopped at a certain point. Now, it's never very clear in Nehemiah why their why stopped, although later on you get the suspicion that the nobles were also the ones that were engaged in usury and slavery. So they were kind of they were double-minded individuals, and they weren't quite as focused on Nehemiah as they could have been because they were playing multiple games on multiple tables versus just playing one poker game on one table. But you get the sense at this point in Nehemiah when the people are really starting to come out, the work is starting to be done. People have a sword in one hand and a shovel in the other, but they're getting after it, and these nobles, nobles aren't quite on board. Leaders can see this in organizations and on teams when they start doing work, and then their parallel colleagues who they have to influence and have no authority over just aren't on board. I see this in organizations and in businesses that I go into that are fairly large, and I'm talking about 1,000 to 2,000 employees and up. When you get into that level, now you're going to get into some scale issues because now you have divisions and you have departments. And you'll sit in a room with 25 managers or 25 supervisors, all of whom should be positional leaders, and they would call themselves positional leaders, that's fine. And you'll watch them all not be on board with each other. And they won't say it out loud, but you'll watch maybe one go, hey, I really believe in the mission, vision, goals, but you'll have this other person going, well, you know, that didn't work for me last time, or I have all this history, or what's in it for me, the WIFM, W-I-I-F-M, what's in it for me thought process. And you'll see it happen nonverbally. It never happens verbally. And you'll tell folks, and I've told folks this before, you all have to be aligned in this room. Because if you're not aligned in this room, then when you go out to put the neck to the work of the organization, you're not going to do it. The guy over there will. But you're not going to do it to the same fervent level that that guy over there will with his team. And by the way, you might also then wander into the space of allowing that guy and his team to do all the work or that woman and her team to do all the work and take credit for that work and then use that work to politically leverage yourself up the hierarchy. Meanwhile, that person doesn't get the benefit and that team doesn't get the acknowledgement. This jumped out at me because this is something that is huge. Not every follower of yours is going to be on board. Not every follower is going to whistle while they work. I keep going back to that over and over again. They're not going to be happy. They're going to want to play their own game. And so as a leader you have to be aware of this. Nehemiah, I think, was aware of this. The list of people that Nehemiah worked with, and then I'll kind of close this out, the list of people that Nehemiah worked with, they were sons of apothecaries. That's a fancy word for a pharmacist. They were sons of goldsmiths. They were sons of merchants, right? They were priests. Some of them were nobles. Some of the nobles were on board, though not all of them. Farmers. And even, and this is pointed out in Nehemiah very specifically, even the daughters of rulers. So there's no we talk about the Bible sometimes and we don't like to look at it because we're like, oh, it's discriminatory, oh, it's against women, it's against minorities, it's against all these prohibitions against what you can do, what you can't do, it's against fun, we're going to throw it out, and by the way, it's about this God guy and we don't believe in him anyway. Nietzsche said we kill them until we're done. Okay, cool. But Nietzsche also said, by the way, on the back end of that quote, which everybody forgets, that there isn't enough blood, or there's enough water to wash the blood off your hands after you kill God. He was correct, by the way. The entire history of the 20th century, and increasingly the history of the 21st century is showing this, is demonstrating this loudly for all ears to hear and eyes to see. When you're talking about the sons and daughters of rulers, you can see even in the Old Testament there is an idea that in order to be a follower, your gender, your orientation, your race, none of this matters. What matters is can you put your hands to the work of the vision, can you put your hands to accomplishing the work of the vision. That's what's hugely important in Chapter 3 here. Thoughts, Colby? I think, agree 100%, and it comes down to, once again, self-reflection, self-realization. If you're on the wrong team, if you're a worker, you need to know you're on the wrong team and be able to have confidence to find something else and maybe leave an employment instead of going against the grain. But also as a manager or a boss, a person in authority who is in charge of hiring someone, it's very important that you get the right people on the bus, as the old saying goes. You might not even know what position to put someone in, but if you know they belong on your bus, you hire them onto your team and work a position in for them. I had a great leader once tell me that. He built his entire organization up by just putting the right people on the bus. If he knew you belonged on his bus, his vision, his future, he put you on the team. He hired you because he knew that character, whatever you had in you, was what he needed to succeed. I think one of your points you made, too, was do people work harder when they have something to lose? That's a good one. That's a tough one, something that I think takes great wrestling, if you will, like I said in the beginning, back and forth in your head, because I go two ways on this. We all work harder when we have something to lose, obviously. It depends what it is we have to lose. But I once talked to a great woman that I look up to. She's a mentor of mine, and she was telling me about some health issues she had. And when she was sort of telling me about it, she was like, I need to start getting in shape because I have something to lose. The problem with that is, this is what she told me, like I said, I'm a storyteller, so I tell stories. She said, as soon as I met with her later on, as soon as I started feeling better and things got better, I stopped working out. That's the problem with working for something to lose is a lot of times it's temporary or it's fast because that thing that we have to lose either changes or we lose that motivation. That's why I think it's important to find the why once again. As soon as you start working for a why, I believe we work harder if we work in the right direction. Yeah, character counts in all kinds of ways. And we either move towards a we were away from a loss or we move towards a gain. That's just the standard. There's a lot in Nehemiah, a lot to look at. I want to talk about enemies, though, because I think this is hugely important for people to understand. And so there are various rules we can learn about how Nehemiah handled his enemies. And I'm going to skip around a little bit as we talk about these enemies, as we talk about these rules. There's seven, maybe eight of them. I think there's probably eight, but I tried to whittle it down to seven. There's seven rules that I think individuals have to really focus on when they are thinking about leading and dealing with their enemies. So Nehemiah 2, 9 and 10, again from the King James Bible. Then I came to the governors beyond the river and gave them the king's letters. Now the king had sent captains of the army and horsemen with me. So this was Artaxerxes sending him out right at the beginning. And when Ambalad the Horonite and Tobiah the servant, the Ammonite, heard of it, it grieved them exceedingly that there was come a man to seek the welfare of the children of Israel. So these two old boys are going to be a problem for Nehemiah. And that's the first rule of enemies. If you are leading, expect resistance. Plan for it to happen. Be aware of the environments that cause resistance. And then face the challenge. So many leaders I see, I don't see they engage in happy talk, that's terrible, but they kind of pretend like resistance is not going to happen, like everybody is just going to be brought in. And that's not true. And Nehemiah shows this. You're going to have Ambalad the Horonite and you're going to have Tobiah the Ammonite showing up, except they won't be called Ambalad and Tobiah, they'll be called Bob and Jim, right, from accounting. And you're going to show up, or Tobias from Arrested Development, and you're going to show up and he's going to be colored blue and it's going to be a whole thing. It's going to be a whole thing. Or he's going to have this weird thing growing out of his head. If you've watched the show Arrested Development, you know what I'm talking about. If you haven't, go away and watch it and come back. Pause this podcast, go watch Arrested Development, all of it, and then come back. But you're going to have those kinds of folks come along. They're going to challenge you, and that's the first rule, expect resistance. Rule number two, Nehemiah 2, 19 and 20. When Ambalad the Horonite and Tobiah the Serpent came and Getchum the Arabian heard it, they laughed at us to scorn and despise us and said, what is this thing that you do? Will you rebel against the king? Then I answered them and I said unto them, the God of heaven, he will prosper us. Therefore, we his servants will arise and build. But you have no portion, nor right, nor memorial in Jerusalem. When you start something that you think you can't do, your enemies will reveal themselves through mocking you. Sometimes your friends will mock you, too. We've already talked about that. But you've got to make sure that you're aligned with a higher authority. You've got to make sure that you're aligned with a higher authority as a leader. That can be an ethic, as we've already talked about, it can be a transcendent deity, God, in particular Jesus, or even the organization itself. But get aligned or the mockery will undermine you. It'll just undermine you. And Colby and I have talked about this. It'll undermine you. It'll dropkick you right out of it because it'll breed that imposter syndrome, which we've already covered. Nehemiah 4, 1 through 3. Actually, no. Nehemiah 6, actually. Let's go to Nehemiah 6 because that's really where rule number 3 is, Nehemiah 6, because they're negotiating with him, right? And now he's built the wall. He's starting to build the wall. He's starting to put things in place. The people have got their shovel in one hand and they've got their sword in the other. He's gotten the nobles straightened out. He's fixed the usury problem, which you can read about in Chapter 5. And now the enemies show back up again, Nehemiah 6, 1 through 4. Now it came to pass when Samballot and Tobiah and Geshen, the Arabian, and the rest of our enemies heard that I had built the wall, that there was no breach left of their end, though at that time I had not set up the doors on the gate. I hadn't finished it yet, but I'd gotten in enough for them to break in. That Samballot and Geshen sent him to me saying, come, let us meet together in one of the villages on the plain of Oda. But they fought to do me mischief. And I said, no, I'm saying I can do it with great work so that I cannot come down. I'm busy. Leave me alone. Why should the work cease? I'll leave it and come down to you. Yet they sent me four times after this sort, and I answered them in the same manner. So they bugged them four times. And the reason why they bugged them four times, and my master's degree in the concept of personal and social reconciliation, I'm sure you can negotiate with management and negotiate with the institution. The reason that they bugged them four times was because they were seeking to negotiate with him. This was their opening bid. This was their, hey, this is how we're going to go. This is how we're going to go at it. Right? So we mocked you. We laughed at you. We sent people against you. We even tried to usurp your temple, and we even tried to get my boy in there, which we'll talk about in a minute, to ruin the temple and ruin the sacrifices, ruin your internal dynamics. We tried all that. And now we're going to negotiate with you. Enemies will seek to negotiate with you, but it's designed to probe your weaknesses as a leader. It's not a genuine negotiation. So this is for anybody. I don't care what background you come from. Negotiate with outrageous confidence. Don't bluff, but don't back down either. That's rule number three in dealing with enemies. Don't bluff, but don't back down either. Understand that when you are confronted by a bully, the solution is not always, and you can maybe even say never, but not always to bully back the bully. Then you get into a power dynamic, right? You get into a battle of fixed wills. Maybe you don't want to be in that battle. Maybe you don't have enough will to get to a battle of fixed positions in order to be successful. Maybe what you need to do is be more clever and be consistent. And this is the thing that Nehemiah was. He was consistent. I said the same thing to them four times. I didn't back away from it. Back to the book, Nehemiah 6, 5 through 9. Then sent Zambala his servant unto me in manner of the fifth time with an open letter in his hand. So now he's coming back to him a fifth time. These guys aren't giving up. Wherein it was written, it is reported among the heathen and Gashemus saith it, that thou, the Jews, think to rebel. He's going back to this rebellion idea. You were seeking to be disobedient, but they used that to scare you. For which cause thou buildest the wall, that thou mayest be their king according to these words. And thou hast also appointed prophets to preach of Jerusalem, to preach of the ad Jerusalem, saying, There is a king in Judah. How dare you say there is a king, by the way. There is a king in Judah, and now it shall be reported to the king according to these words. Come now, therefore, and let us take counsel together. Come. Kind of like in The Lion King, right? Come in. Let's break bread together. Come into my cave. I'll be all right. Then I sent unto him, saying, There are no such things done as thou sayest. You don't know what you're talking about. But thou faintest them out of their own heart. These are things coming out of your own will. These are things coming out of your own mind. They don't match reality. This is another way we deal with enemies, by the way. You challenge their view of reality. For they all made us afraid, saying, Their hands shall be weakened from the work, that it be not done. And then he doesn't go to Artaxerxes. He doesn't go to the people. Nehemiah goes back to the vision. He goes back to the transcendent deity. He goes back to the thing that he is on. Now, therefore, O God, strengthen my hands. Dance with your fear. Sam Ballant is the kind of guy who will stab, or who will threaten, to stab even his own followers at the negotiation table. If he's trying to suck you into the cave, don't go in. It's dangerous. Are you going to be afraid? Yes, absolutely. You would be crazy if you weren't. Matter of fact, I'd be worried about you if you weren't afraid. You should be afraid. But don't let that fear paralyze you. Dance as a leader with your fear. Dance with your fears. That's rule number four. I love it. We'll continue, but I just love to dance with your fears. We've done so many of us as leaders, and just as people, once again, we don't like to confront our fears. We don't like to dance with them. It's almost like you just said about being clever and outsmarting your bully. That's how you dance with your fears when you're being confronted by a set ballot. A mocker, right? Yes, we all have those in our organizations. We all have those people in our life. We all have people like that around. So that's one of the catalyzes that was a great point. I like to dance with your fears. You have to, right? Because if you don't, your fears will waltz you around the room. So it's better for you to waltz with them than them waltzing with you. And they'll point you in a different direction when they're done waltzing you around. There you go. That's right. Sometimes you might wind up in that sewer that's like down with the PHD. You might wind up down in there. You don't want to be down in there. No, but Dr. Williams, he's down there by himself. Yeah, well, there you go. That's right. We're going to have to get Dr. Williams on here. He's going to be like, what are you people talking about? We've got to show this episode to him. Back to Nehemiah, Nehemiah 6, 10 through 13. Afterward, I came unto the house of Shemaiah, the son of Deliah, the son of Mehentivel, I love the names, who was shut up. He said, let us meet together in the house of God within the temple, and let us shut the doors of the temple, for they will come to slay you. Yea, in the night they will come to slay you. So Nehemiah is being lured into the temple. And this is something very interesting and specific to Jewish theology, Jewish history, and Jewish custom. Non-Levite individuals are not supposed to go into the temple. There's a whole bunch of reasons why we can't get into. But basically, as a leader, there are places you probably shouldn't go. You should be aware of what those places are, right? That's the larger issue. You should be sucked in because that's an opportunity for you to stumble, an opportunity for you to fall. And Nehemiah says to him, should such a man as I flee, how dare you get me to run away? Not only run away, but run away into the cave, going back to this cave idea. And who is there that being as I am would go into the temple to save his life? I will not go in. I won't violate that standard. I won't violate that boundary. Remember at the beginning we were talking about walls? I won't jump over that wall. There's a boundary beyond which I will not go. And lo, I perceive that God had not sent him, but that he pronounced his prophecy against me, for Tobiah and Sembala had hired him. Look at that. Don't break your own rules to play the game by their rules as a leader or you'll lose the game. That's rule number five. Last two rules. I love your point. I'm going to continue. I'm writing them down. That's a great point, too. Don't break your rules to play the game by their rules because you'll lose the game. I think a lot of times we get frustrated in life or we get, you know, we start feeling defeated by an enemy, if you will. I'm using quotations that can't see me, but the enemy. We start playing their game by their rules, and that's when we lose. Right, exactly. We go on to ground that we don't understand. Yep. Or maybe we only half understand. And, by the way, we have no plan. We just go there. Or we act in, and it would have been real easy for Nehemiah, it would be real easy for any leader in this situation to react in a panic. We become reactive rather than proactive. Nehemiah there was proactive. He knew what his boundaries were. He knew what his, well, to use a certain American phraseology, he knew what his alamo was. He knew the point at which this is the point beyond which I will not go. By the way, alamos can sometimes be ethical for us in the modern era. Actually, not sometimes, they very often are. All ethical failings, we could have said this, all ethical failings come from moral failings first. That's not popular anymore, but it's true. And for leaders, they have to think about this. What's the areas, even at that tactical level, what's the rules you won't break to play the game? And, by the way, write that down. Be really intentional with it. I think it comes down to also is not making decisions out of emotion. A lot of times in the moment we'll make a decision out of emotion, and those usually don't end up well. Right, exactly. Well, and, by the way, emotions are valuable. You should feel anger. You should feel happiness. You should feel disgust. You should feel fear. Dance with those things. They're an early warning symbol, right? The last 150 years of the Industrial Revolution is not going to overcome the last millions or thousands or however many years you want to go into of evolution and growth and change at a material level in human beings. It's not going to do it. There's too much biology here. There's just too much, right? But we can overcome our biology, which we're working on that right now in the world. Back to the book. Nehemiah 13, 4 and 5 and then 7 through 10, again from the King James Version, last two rules. And before this, Elisib, the priest, having oversight of the chamber of the house of our God was allied unto Tobiah. So the person who was supposed to be watching out for the house of God, watching out for the temple, was allied with Nehemiah, with the leader's enemies. And he had prepared for him a great chamber where for a time they laid the meat offerings, and they go into what the meat offerings are. I won't read all those off. And I came to Jerusalem and understood of the evil that Elisha did for Tobiah in preparing him a chamber in the courts of the house of God. And it grieved me sore. Therefore, I cast forth all the household stuff of Tobiah out of the chamber. And then he commanded that they clean the chamber and invite the Levites, the Levites back in who had fled through the fields, the people who belonged in that space. After he came back from visiting our conservancy, he found that the temple was kind of a mess and he fixed it. When your back is turned as a leader, usurpations will happen if your back is turned. Cast away the mites that will fly and it will destroy your projects if you aren't paying attention. That's rule number six. Usurpations will happen if you are the leader and it will destroy your projects if you aren't paying attention. Finally, talking about followers. This is a long piece, Nehemiah's, Nehemiah chapter 5, 4 and 5, 14 and 15 if you're following along, and then 13, 28 from the King James Version Bible. I'm not going to read all of it word for word, but I'll summarize a lot of it by saying this. The people were coming to Nehemiah early and they were talking about how they had borrowed money for the King's tribute and that upon our land and vineyards, they basically put down credit and the credit had come due. And so now the King's tribute and the nobles, not the King's tribute, I'm sorry, the kings and the nobles were coming and they were demanding the workers' children as slaves. So it wasn't just, hey, I'm putting down credit so I can go up and work on this wall and do good work. I'm also going to give you my kids to be servants and slaves in your household. And the nobles and kings are like, yeah, sure, because back in the day having people was a sign of wealth, along with animals and land and a whole bunch of other things. Nehemiah rejects this. He says, moreover, from the time that I was appointed to be their governor in the land of Judah, from the 20th year even to the 230th year of our exercise, the King, that is 12 years, I and my brethren have not eaten the bread of the governor. We didn't eat from our own people. Our people, to quote from Keith Ferrazzi, our people ate first and I ate last. This is a principle that I used to walk out when I was leading people at higher education, leading 19 and 20-year-olds, teams of 19 and 20-year-olds. This wall was 12, all the way up to as large as 50. I don't care how big the team is, I'm at the back of the line when it's time to line up for the chow. Hasan eats last. And they never understood that, right? None of my followers ever got that. Many of them were like, Hasan, you should come with us, Hasan, you should go first. No, no, no, I'm at the back of the line. I eat last. Can I point something out with that real fast? I love it, just because, once again, it's another antidote story of what not to do. I once worked for an organization who had a boss who wasn't the best boss. And it was funny because it was about eating. And we had this, the boss put on a catering event for all the staff. There was about 200 of us. And the boss was in line first, and she's talking to everybody. And one of my coworkers budged in front of the boss while she was talking to get his meal. The boss asked me, this is a true story, asked me, what is that guy's name? So I told her, I didn't know anything of this. I'm like, oh, it's so-and-so. She fired him a week later. That's an example of how to be a bad boss, who eats first. I just, the story inside my head that I remembered of, sometimes we need to see what a bad example is so we know what the right example is. And that would be a perfect case of a bad example. Clean house thoroughly. This is rule number seven, clean house thoroughly. Bad company, like a bad boss, bad leadership, even how a leader leads their family matters. It can corrupt good leadership character. Bad company, even family, can corrupt good leadership character. If you are a leader, you need to be looking at what are my followers doing, how are the governors behaving, and in this case in Nehemiah the governor's of Judah, how are my subordinates behaving, and if they're behaving poorly, if they're eating first, if they're eating of the bread of the followers, if they are, as in Nehemiah, taking the labor of the followers and not honoring it, and they expect me to do the same, I have to meet that expectation in order to develop good character. And also in order to develop, and not only develop, but also maintain good character. That's a lot of. Okay. I don't know what's happening there. Okay. When we think about how we engage with leadership, when we think about how we engage with each other around leadership, when we think about what we learn from great books, those seven rules are a good place to stop. There's a lot more in the book of Nehemiah. It is a robust book. I would encourage you to read it. We've been talking for almost two and a half hours here, and we've covered a lot. So I encourage you to read it. I encourage you to think about a lot of things to consider. And once again, you don't have to believe in the transcendent nature of a deity to get something out of Nehemiah. Leaders should be open to getting lessons wherever they come from, but in particular, they should be open to getting lessons that come from the foundational books that have formed the civilization that they take for granted. And I think that's a really important thing to think about. And I think that's a really important thing to think about. 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And I think that's a really important thing to think about. And I think that's a really important thing to think about. And I think that's a really important thing to think about. And I think that's a really important thing to think about. And I think that's a really important thing to think about. And I think that's a really important thing to think about. And I think that's a really important thing to think about. And I think that's a really important thing to think about. And I think that's a really important thing to think about. And I think that's a really important thing to think about. And I think that's a really important thing to think about. And I think that's a really important thing to think about. And I think that's a really important thing to think about. And I think that's a really important thing to think about. And I think that's a really important thing to think about. And I think that's a really important thing to think about. And I think that's a really important thing to think about. And I think that's a really important thing to think about. And I think that's a really important thing to think about. And I think that's a really important thing to think about. And I think that's a really important thing to think about. And I think that's a really important thing to think about. I'm on LinkedIn, and I haven't been on Twitter, and something went out of style. I'm kidding. Twitter is really awesome. And check out Colby's TED Talk. It is amazing. Check out Colby's books. Being an author and being a published author is not an easy task. It is a task that requires not only a good dose of entrepreneurship, but it also requires a good bit of discipline in order to be a leader. Speaking of discipline, if you want to connect with me, Hasan Sorrells, you can always Google my name, J-E-S-A-N-S-O-R-R-E-L-L-S. You can check out this podcast at www.hasansorell.com underneath the Leadership Pro-On tab. If you would like to work with Human Services Consulting and Training, my company that I founded eight years ago that currently serves a number of clients as remote, video-first, e-learning leadership development, touchless, completely direct to your people, you can check out our live webinar products, you can check out our Leading Keys solution. We love our Leading Keys platform. It's a place for coaching. It's a place for prerecorded content. It's a place for asynchronous interaction and synchronous interaction. It's also a place where you can go and connect with other leaders. Go and check out our Leading Keys solution at leadingkeys.com. We also offer remote live training services customized for your organization. We can work with you through WebEx, Cisco WebEx, Zoom, GoToMeeting, Skype, whatever you've got in your organization. Myself and our remote trainers, we have many, many, many dedicated and qualified remote trainers to be shown to your organization and lead your teams to be better leaders on things as small as time management. All we have to think of as large as how do we adapt to change, how do we understand volatility and black swans, how do we find a team's zero, and how do we adapt. You can check out all of our remote live training services, again, at humanservices at hsconsultingandtraining.com, or you can just Google Human Services Consulting and Training. You'll pop right up. And you have a book floating around out there just like Colby. You can check it out, Colby, just like on Amazon.com. You can check it out. My Boss Doesn't Care, 100 Essays on Disrupting Your Workplace by Disrupting Your Boss. Go check that out. If you want to book me to speak at your live event, if you want to book me to speak at a keynote, if you want to have me come into your organization and do some personalized training for you, if you want to book me for coaching or for anything else, go and check out hsconsurels.com for speaking and booking. Also, I provide high-quality consulting services that are personalized to your organization. So if you're interested in that, please get a hold of me there. Finally, you can check out my other podcast, Haysan Sorrell's Audio Experience on Anchor.fm. And, of course, it's everywhere. It's on Spotify. It's on Google Podcasts. Just look for my name. And finally, you can check me out on Haysan Sorrell's Presents YouTube channel where I do small videos and longer ones about how to be a better leader, how to wade through being a 10-year overnight success, how to actually wrestle with fear, and, of course, thinking about the challenges of entrepreneurship and leadership at the dawn of the 21st century. Thank you very much for your time today. Thank you for listening. If leadership were easy, everybody would sign up to do it. However, everybody can be a leader. And at this time in our world today, all of our problems, or at least almost all of our problems fundamentally can be solved through effective, through the application of effective, intentional leadership. So now that you've taken time to listen to this podcast, I want you to go forth and do something with it.