Ep212: What is the letter that only you can write?

David is joined by Judy Brown and Rick Eigenbrod to build on Dr. Martin Luther King's letter from a Birmingham jail - and to ask what is the letter that only you can write? At the heart of the chat we ask what do you have to say to the world and challenge you to think about what you don't think about

Transcript

David Wheatley (00:10)
Welcome to this episode of the Humanergy Leadership Podcast. My name is David Wheatley, and I’ll be your host today. I’m joined by the good doctors, Judy Brown and Rick Eigenbrod. We have these regular conversations about all things leadership that tend to run a little longer than our usual episodes.

This time, we want to talk about a big question: What’s the letter that only you can write?
Just sit with that for a moment. Judy, tell us what this is all about.

Judy Brown (00:43)
What prompted this for me is that for years in leadership development work, I’ve offered people Martin Luther King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” written in 1963 when he was jailed for his leadership in the nonviolent civil rights movement.

It’s a long letter—about 16 pages—but it’s filled with extraordinary language. And it calls people from all backgrounds into a bigger conversation. It was a leadership letter meant to create a large tent, even in the midst of a fraught civil rights moment.

King didn’t know how long he’d be in jail—could’ve been forever. He had no paper, just margins of the New York Times, toilet paper, sandwich bags. His lawyer would smuggle pieces of the letter out under his jacket.

Here’s the part I love: a 20-year-old college student named Willie Pearl Mackie King—no relation—was working at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. She was new, didn’t even know who King was at first. She was invited to Birmingham and ended up piecing together all those scraps of paper, taping and gluing them on her hands and knees.

She said King’s handwriting was terrible, and the jail had poor lighting. But she managed to assemble what became a classic in leadership and civil rights.

To me, it’s one thing to write something deeply personal from your own values—and another to realize others may be the ones who help bring it to life. Sometimes we’re the ones writing. Sometimes we’re the ones piecing together tattered scraps of insight. Both roles are powerful.

There’s a third part too: After she put it together, the Quakers printed and distributed 75,000 copies. That’s how it reached the world.

There’s a synchronicity in this for me, too. Years ago in Kalamazoo, Michigan—where David is based—I was in a project with writer and poet Mark Nepo. He pulled me aside and said, “I think you should write the book that only you can write. Don’t think about the audience—just what you have to say to the world.”
 That led to The Art and Spirit of Leadership.

I think we all have something only we can say. And sometimes we’re called to offer it—even without knowing how it will land or whether it’ll make a difference.

That leads me to another story…

About 30 years ago, an American was being held prisoner in Jerusalem. Jesse Jackson was outraged. He left his Chicago office, hailed a cab, and told the driver, “Take me to Jerusalem.” The cabbie said, “I can get you as far as O’Hare.” Jackson got out at the airport and said, “I want to go to Jerusalem.” They sent him to Tel Aviv Airlines. He got on a flight, landed in Tel Aviv, then took a cab to Jerusalem and asked to be taken to the prison.

At the prison gate, he said, “Take me to the cell where the American is.” They opened the gate. He walked into the cell and said, “Come with me. We’re going home.”

That story has always stuck with me. It’s about being so committed to an action that you take the first step—even without a clear path. Just an unwavering sense of “This will not do.”

So I leave you with a question: What do you have to offer that only you can offer? And what’s stopping you from doing it right now?

David Wheatley (11:43)
There’s a theme that runs through all of that—whether it’s Jesse Jackson, Mark Nepo, or Martin Luther King. It’s about commitment to something bigger. Doing something from where you are now. And maybe this moment—April 2025—is the right time for that call to action.

So for any leader listening: What are you going to do to step up your commitment to something bigger?

Judy Brown (12:37)
That’s a wonderful way to frame it. My colleague often quotes my mother, who used to say, “This will not do.”
Getting to that clarity—that something simply will not do—and deciding to act on it… that’s powerful.

And we act even when we don’t know if it’ll make a difference. King didn’t know his letter would ever see daylight.

David Wheatley (13:37)
Right, he didn’t even know if it’d make it out of the jail.

Judy Brown (13:41)
Exactly. It’s about persistence and insistence.

David Wheatley (13:48)
It reminds me of one of our tools, the Four Choices of Leadership. One axis is commitment—and we used to frame it as low or high. But we updated it to “commitment to comfort” on one end and “commitment to impact” on the other.

Your examples highlight the call to commit to impact—to step up and do what only you can do.

Judy Brown (14:27)
And Rick often says comfort is overrated. Discomfort pushes us into growth—for the greater good and for ourselves. It moves us.

David Wheatley (15:01)
Discomfort creates energy. Rick, you’ve been quiet—what’s on your mind?

Rick Eigenbrod (15:11)
Riveted. I’m thinking about the themes we’ve explored in these episodes: murmuration, humanness, and now this. These aren’t leadership toolkit topics. They're about leadership itself.

We manage by what we do and direct. We lead by who we are.

And I’d say if I were hiring a CEO, I’d ask, “What do you have to say to the world?”
 Because that tells me who you are.

Judy Brown (17:14)
Wow.

Rick Eigenbrod (17:17)
Most interviews focus on mechanics—financial acumen, business strategy. We don’t ask about the art. And leadership is an art.

Get the tools, sure. But develop into a full human being. That’s what makes people want to follow you.

David Wheatley (18:31)
If you asked that question in an interview—“What do you have to say to the world?”—I wonder if people would even know. But that’s our challenge today: to get people thinking.

Rick Eigenbrod (18:55)
We’re asking people to think about what they haven’t thought about. That takes awareness, curiosity, a commitment to both learning and development. They’re not the same thing. And a leader should know the difference.

David Wheatley (20:17)
We’ve talked before about the value of space—leaving space to think. That links here. If we want people to think differently, we need to create room for that.

Coaching is often described as an “oasis of sanity in a desert of craziness.”
 And if I can give someone 90 minutes a month to just think, that’s valuable.

Rick Eigenbrod (21:24)
Space and grace. I sometimes say in my company, after eight years, you’re required to take a two-year sabbatical and study liberal arts.

University today feels like a trade school. But historically, liberal arts were about understanding the world and yourself. That matters.

Judy Brown (23:32)
Exactly. We’re not saying everyone has to go to college, but do something that opens your mind. That’s how you figure out what only you can say.

Rick Eigenbrod (23:51)
The more we’re exposed to different ideas, the more we discover what we have to say. Not regurgitating. Authentic expression.

Judy Brown (24:21)
And that’s why I love these conversations—because we’re working that out together, out loud. I actually grabbed my latest poetry book, These Days, because it speaks to this moment.

There’s a short poem called “Timeless”:

What we are learning together
 is that what we have is timeless.
 Could we have figured that out alone,
 each on our own?
 I don’t know. I’ll never know.

Rick Eigenbrod (25:26)
That’s fabulous, Judy.

Judy Brown (25:28)
It’s about being clear with ourselves—but also having space to meander through conversations that pull the thread of what we’re meant to offer.

Rick Eigenbrod (25:50)
When I wrote my book, I didn’t start with the intention to publish. I wrote it to understand what I think. Writing helped me realize what I hadn’t yet thought about.

We write the letter only we can write. We offer what only we can offer.

David Wheatley (27:11)
That’s how most of our tools get written too. They evolve through coaching. And then we create the space to sit down and realize—Oh, there’s something deeper here.

Rick Eigenbrod (27:46)
We write not for an audience, but to know what we think. And that takes self-awareness. King didn’t just quote scripture—he wrote himself into that letter.

David Wheatley (29:00)
Which brings us back to journaling. Creating space to slow down, write, and think. Anyone listening who isn’t doing that… you’re missing an opportunity.

Rick Eigenbrod (29:59)
We once talked about “high-value contribution”—what is it that only you can do? If I’m on a board hiring someone, I want to know that. Otherwise, we’re paying too much.

I looked up the word “letter”—it comes from Latin, meaning “that which is to follow.” But it also means a “written character.” So when we talk about the letter only you can write, we’re also talking about your character.

King wrote his character.

And in everything we do, we’re always writing a letter—of who we are.

Judy Brown (32:21)
That’s right.

David Wheatley (32:22)
What a great note to wrap on. Here’s the challenge: Write your letter. Capture your character. And if you do, we’d love to hear from you. Maybe it leads to a future podcast conversation.

Thanks again, Rick and Judy, for exploring this with me. And to our listeners—make space, embrace discomfort, think about what you're not thinking about, and commit to something bigger.
 Write your letter. Capture your character.

Rick Eigenbrod (33:20)
Slightly dead.

Judy Brown (33:21)
What a pleasure.