A Call To Leadership

EP304: Radical Purpose, Part 2 - Traits are Seeds

• Dr. Nate Salah

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What if the traits you carried as a child were actually the blueprint for your future purpose? In this episode, we explore how early ambition, curiosity, resilience, and hunger silently shaped visionary leaders and how those same traits are shaping you. You’ll walk away seeing your wiring, your story, and your leadership potential with completely new clarity. Press play to uncover the purpose your traits have been pointing to all along.


 Key Takeaways To Listen For

  • How early traits like curiosity, hunger, and determination reveal clues to your leadership calling
  • The quiet ambition and rapid learning habits that shaped Milton Hershey into a visionary leader
  • Why Walt Disney’s expressive creativity became the foundation of his lifelong mission to create joy
  • How Steve Jobs used intensity, curiosity, and simplicity to drive world-changing innovation
  • Why misunderstood childhood traits often evolve into powerful and effective leadership

Resources Mentioned In This Episode

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[00:00:00] Dr. Nate Salah
You are not behind, you are not off track. You are not disqualified. You're not lacking. Everything that you need for where you're going was already placed inside of you long before you realized what it was for. Welcome back my friends, to episode two of our six part series on Radical Purpose, the book that's launched my very first book in a series of three books that are my dissert. Asian work and they are now available for popular. Press one after another every six months or so, we'll release one and then we'll do a fourth book, which is a standalone. And so I can't wait to continue to share some of the insights from the book. And that way we can really just better understand, how we can live with radical purpose.

[00:00:51]
 So if you're listening today, I wanna say something right up front. You're not here by accident. I believe that you're the kind of person who. Perhaps doesn't drift. You're not wandering into leadership context as a curiosity. Now, I think if you're here, it's because something in you resonates with this journey. Something in you knows there's a deeper reason for your work. Something in you has been nudging, maybe whispering, maybe shouting that you were made for more. So if you haven't listened to episode one, definitely go back and listen to that first installment in this series because it helped us to look back at where we were planted, proverbially, the environment, the soil, the context, all of the things that shaped us long before we ever had control, or at least the illusion of control over our decisions.

[00:01:56]
 And if you did listen and you listen carefully, you may have already felt that stirring that, wait a minute, maybe nothing in my past was really wasted. Well, today we're gonna build on that because if episode one was soil, episode two is the seed. And today we look at the traits, the, internal wiring that showed up long before we had a name for it. Ambition, curiosity, stubbornness, independence, resilience, hunger. You didn't learn those things, friend. You were wired with them. And if we want to talk about visionary leadership, if we want to talk about radical purpose, you have to name the truth. You see, you can't really teach a hunger. You can only uncover it. We uncover it. So settle in, take a deep breath, and just walk with me as we step into this episode two. And I wanna start with something that you may not have considered in depth before. Your earliest traits. Hold clues to your colleague, not your adult strengths, not even skills for the job, not even learned behaviors, your traits.

[00:03:17]
 These are the tendencies that appear. Before we even understand the concept or the construct of leadership, I want you to think back for a moment. Were you a curious kid? Were you one that took things apart? Maybe you were the kid who asked too many questions. Or perhaps the one who hated being told, because I said, so, were you the problem solver, the peacekeeper? Were you creative? Were you a thinker? Were you a helper? Were you a dreamer? Were you a challenger? Wherever you landed, whatever resonates with you. These weren't randoms. They're not quirks. They're the fingerprints of, of early purpose, and here is a truth we often forget. Traits begin before leadership roles, before opportunity, before any kind of training. They show up in childhood, usually in this sort of friction between who we are naturally and the environment that we're placed in. And this is why chapter one matters so much because. The soil shapes the seed. You see the environment. It awakens the wiring that's naturally inside of us. And, and the, the research that I did on Milton Hershey, on Walt Disney and Steve Jobs in my dissertation work that is now being presented to you in book form, while each of these leaders, before they were leaders, they displayed these undeniable traits early in life and I've.

[00:04:52]
 Extracted those and those traits predicted the shape in some way of their leadership decades later. And there's a lot of theory around this, but this, this isn't theory, this is a pattern. It's clear, it's consistent, honestly, it's, it's really shockingly reliable. So I'm gonna go a little deeper here. I wanna begin with Milton Hershey and, and talk a little bit about this story of his arc. You see. His early traits, they're a bit subtle. They're quiet, and they're almost like easy to overlook, but they're super powerful. You see, Hershey grew up between two poles. this idealism of his wandering father and this disciplined hand of his Mennonite mother, and that tension created something in him, something you could call it firm, something productive and something steady. You see, when Milton Hershey dropped his straw hat into that printing press to get fired from a job that wasn't aligned, a job that his father had ambitions for him, that wasn't a childish accident. At age 12, it was a quiet declaration. Some kids gripe, some tolerate Hershey. Well, he acted. He didn't yell.

[00:06:15]
 He didn't resist violently. He didn't wait for someone to rescue him. He just made a decision. You see, that is ambition and in its earliest, most unpolished form, it's strategic self-direction, if you will. It's the refusal to stay stuck, you see? Then he enters this confectionary apprenticeship. He didn't dabble though. He went straight to work. He didn't just go through motions. In fact, Joseph Royer, the confectioner, the company owner, said that Hershey only ever had to be told once how to do something just once Hershey clearly displayed a sense of, I don't know, rapid learning. He was deeply concentrated. He had meticulousness and his attention, his curiosity was compulsive and, and the need to perfect the process was a skill along all those others that were not yet developed were more inner tendencies at the time. The kind that, that don't necessarily fade, but that are traits within you built into the DNA. You see, Milton failed, and he failed again. He failed more than most people realize in his early career. His Philadelphia shot failed. His Denver stint ended abruptly. His Chicago attempt, well, it collapsed his New York venture that folded, but he didn't interpret failure emotionally. He interpreted failure informationally. And there's a distinction there.

[00:07:58]
 Hey friend, it's your friend, Dr. Nate Salah, and I wanna personally. Invite you to something that's been on my heart for a long time. On October 3rd in St. Louis, we're gathering a room full of faith-driven leaders, entrepreneurs, professionals, lifelong learners, at our inaugural G3 Summit. It's not just another business event. It's a sacred space where we lay down the pressure, the performance, the pursuit of empty success. We step into a calling that's a line with God's best for us. I believe you were created to lead with purpose, to give from overflow, go love radically in your home, your business, and your community. That's what G3 is all about. Grow purposefully, give generously. Go love radically if you've been longing for deeper meaning in your leadership, if you're ready to consecrate your influence to something. Eternal. And this summit was designed just for you. You can visit us at myG3summit.com. Reserve your spot today, and I cannot wait to see you there.

[00:09:13]
 You see, this is a rare trait. It's the ability to see failure as data, not as identity, and that's important. These are all parts of this trait equation developing. You see, his father planted the idea, if you want to make money, you have to do things in a big way. He said, now, Henry Hershey, Milton, Hershey's dad, he never lived that principle fully anyway, but that principle lost itself inside of Milton's imagination and so. His trait was this seeing opportunity beyond the horizon of his circumstances. Friend, that's not just optimism, that's visionary wiring, you see, and it, it flows right into Walt Disney. Now, shifting to him a man whose traits were explosive. Expressive and of course completely unmistakable from childhood. You see Disney, he grew up under intensity, intensity of pressure, really. He had a father who saw childhood as a time for labor, a mother who saw childhood as a place for imagination.

[00:10:31]
 You can see the distinction here, and those opposites forged the traits that shaped an empire. See, Disney had this creative compulsion. He didn't just draw. He had to draw. He didn't just perform. He needed to perform. You see these early compulsions toward this creativity. It's one of the purest examples of early purpose expression and this emotional expressiveness with, if you will, intentionality. Is how Walt processed life, and he did it through creativity. So he drew to interpret experience, he performed to understand emotion, he imagined to create, meaning. You can see the the connecting dots here. These traits, emotional expressiveness, were tied directly to meaning making purpose. You see, most people stop expressing around age 10, age 11, or maybe even 12 when the world starts telling them to grow up. Did the world tell you to grow up? Did for me? Well, Walt refused. Trait. You see, he had this stubborn independence. You see, his father wanted to play the violin. Walt resisted that. His father wanted him to follow structure. Walt wanted to create. That's not rebellion, that's trait-driven identity protection.

[00:12:03]
 You see, joy for him, was a responsibility. From early an early age, Walt took responsibility for making people smile. Not necessarily just pleasing them, but lifting them. And that's a rare and very powerful trait. The desire to create joy in others as a mission, not his manipulation. And that showed up early and it stayed in him until his last breath. Now shifting to Steve Jobs. So a lot of people know about Steve Jobs. He is a man whose traits were so potent that they shaped not only his life, but the expectations of an entire industry. He grew up feeling both chosen and abandoned, connected, yet disconnected, which is. Kinda a paradox that really sharpened his inner wiring. He was intense. Steve didn't feel lightly, he felt deeply, excitement, frustration, curiosity, inspiration. You see his emotional intensity. It was never, neutral. It, it just, it drove him. And intensity is often, it's misunderstood. As volatility, but in leaders, it's the furnace of clarity. And through that, he had this compulsive curiosity. You're gonna see this trait in all three of these leaders and most visionary leaders jobs wanted to know why things worked, not just how he questioned authority, not because he was rebellious, but because he saw inefficiency and nonsense in his and his wiring. It just demanded improvement. Curiosity was a trait.

[00:13:44]
 Compulsion for clarity was his purpose, and through that he had this uncompromising demand for beauty. When his father taught him that even the inside of a cabinet has to be beautiful, Steve absorbed that, and he absorbed something that most people never developed, that the unseen matters. That one sentence became really a lifelong obsession for him. He wanted elegant circuits. He wanted perfect topography. He wanted seamless design. He wanted his interfaces to be intuitive. It's not like a skill. It was a trade. It was deep need for this aesthetic integrity. And as he developed this idealistic vision from a young age, jobs believed technology should serve the human spirit, not burden it. So his idealism guided every decision. Simplicity, elegance, meaning human connection. And this endless idealism, this relentless demand that's trait-driven leadership, right? And scholarship. Scholarship integrates this. You've may have heard of Albert Bandura. He's a social or cognitive, I wanna say psychologist, from long ago.

[00:15:04]
 I included him in some of my work. He made the argument that your traits radically influence how you read and respond to your environment. They shape your interpretation. So curious. People see opportunity sensitive people see emotion analytical people. Well, they see patterns. Visionaries see potential. You see traits, they shape perception. And another scholar, Heifetz, he looked at it from this perspective, he said, traits meet challenge. Leadership emerges when traits collide with difficulty. You don't know how resilient you are until life tests you. And I'm sure life has tested you as it has tested me. Others as well as a car and banks. They said that your traits show, they show you what matters, right? So Hershey, value, quality, and service just value, joy, and creativity. Jobs value, beauty and meaning. So these values are encoded in our wiring. And so you can only hear the questions that you might be asking. What if I didn't show leadership traits early in life? Well, you may have, but perhaps quietly. You see, leadership traits can be loud like Disney or subtle like Hershey. Or you might say, Nate, what if my traits were criticized? Often, early traits yes, are labeled. They're labeled. They're labeled negatively because they may be inconvenient to the environment or to a culture, a family school peers.

[00:16:39]
 Intensity becomes too much. Curiosity becomes nosy. Independence becomes rebellious. Creativity becomes distracted. Sensitivity becomes weak. These are misinterpretations, friend, not truth. So whether that happened to you or perhaps you're a parent and you're taking a look at the traits of your children, take heed. Sometimes we misinterpret and mislabel. The traits of our kids and ourselves. And then you ask, you know, what about traits? Can they develop later? Well, traits are often buried under expectation, under maybe trauma or fear. And sometimes they're rediscovered later. You know, say purpose redirects and often resurrects these traits. So I wanna, I wanna bring this home to you. I want you to ask yourself. What early tendencies did I show that never fully disappeared. Think about that. Which traits were misunderstood? Maybe even labeled incorrectly? Maybe not only that, for my own family, my own children, my siblings, which traits that I suppress as I got older.

[00:17:51]
 How many are, how have my traits been guiding me, even when I wasn't aware? You see, this is the moment, friend. That clarity emerges. I mean, I think about my own life. You know, growing up in Chicago, my life didn't look like some leadership incubator. Far from it. It was chaos, instability, a lot of brokenness. But within that chaos, were those traits. I had hyper observation at the time. I had deep empathy, which I then stuffed when pain came. I looked. Problem solving. I wanted to figure things out. I was deeply independent. I was called the black sheep because of it. One of those mislabel. I had a deep intensity. I had to get things done. I was resilient. I was not gonna give up. And I searched. I searched deep for meaning. I wanted it so badly, but at the same time, I wanted stability. I wanted to improve and make my world better. See those traits weren't gifts. They were in some ways survival tools, but for, but for many of us, survival traits then become leadership traits if they mature when they mature.

[00:19:12]
 So everything that I use today as a leader was planted in that soil of yesterday, just like you. Here's a big idea. You don't grow into your traits. You grow from them, your traits. They're not an accident. You are not an accident. They are assignments, they are indicators. They are invitations. And when we honor them, we honor our wiring. When we honor our wiring, we honor our purpose. And when we honor our purpose, we honor the life that we were created for. And I wanna leave you with this. You are not behind, you are not off track. You are not disqualified, you're not lacking. Everything that you need for where you're going was already placed inside of you long before you realized what it was for. And next week in episode three, we will turn skills. Into something we can recognize because the traits are the spark, and the skills, if you will, are the ignition. Traits are gonna show us what our potential is. The skills are, create the power. I can't wait to see you in episode 3. I'm Dr. Nate Salah, and this is A Call to Leadership.

[00:20:32]
 We did it. Again, thank you so much for being a part of our program. We thank you, and we couldn't do it without you. If you've been blessed by this show, we would just ask that you give us an unfiltered review. And share with the world how God is speaking to you through A Call to Leadership. You can do it on Apple or any of the podcast platforms, A Call to Leadership, and we thank you again. God bless you.

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Dr. Nate Salah

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