Navigating the ever-changing tides of the workplace can feel like a daunting task, but not if you have the right compass. Join me and our guest, William Vanderbloemen, an authority on leadership and team building in our latest Lead Culture Podcast episode.
We dissect the challenges of hiring and retaining talent in a world still reeling from the pandemic's impact and the Great Resignation. Discover the 12 data-driven habits that make leaders shine, straight from William's groundbreaking book, "Be the Unicorn", and arm yourself with the strategies to build teams that don't just function, but flourish.
The conversation takes a deeper, more nuanced turn as we address the financial intricacies unique to church and nonprofit organizations. Striking the delicate balance between offering competitive compensation and maintaining a mission-focused budget is a dance many leaders know all too well. Learn from our exploration of real-world scenarios where throwing money at the problem isn't the silver bullet, and how investing in fewer, but more adept individuals, might be the masterstroke for fostering a resilient and capable team.
We need your help to get the Lead Culture podcasts in front of more leaders! There are three simple things you can do that truly help us:
Navigating the ever-changing tides of the workplace can feel like a daunting task, but not if you have the right compass. Join me and our guest, William Vanderbloemen, an authority on leadership and team building in our latest Lead Culture Podcast episode.
We dissect the challenges of hiring and retaining talent in a world still reeling from the pandemic's impact and the Great Resignation. Discover the 12 data-driven habits that make leaders shine, straight from William's groundbreaking book, "Be the Unicorn", and arm yourself with the strategies to build teams that don't just function, but flourish.
The conversation takes a deeper, more nuanced turn as we address the financial intricacies unique to church and nonprofit organizations. Striking the delicate balance between offering competitive compensation and maintaining a mission-focused budget is a dance many leaders know all too well. Learn from our exploration of real-world scenarios where throwing money at the problem isn't the silver bullet, and how investing in fewer, but more adept individuals, might be the masterstroke for fostering a resilient and capable team.
We need your help to get the Lead Culture podcasts in front of more leaders! There are three simple things you can do that truly help us:
The Art of Leadership Network.
Speaker 2:Hey leaders, welcome to the Lead Culture Podcast, part of the Art of Leadership Network. I'm your host, Jenni Catron. Each week, I'll be your guide as we explore powerful insights and practical strategies to equip you with the tools you need to lead with clarity and confidence and build a thriving team. My mission is to be your trusted coach, empowering you to master the art of self-leadership so you'll learn to lead yourself well, so you can lead others better. Each week, we'll take a deep dive on a leadership or culture topic. You'll hear stories from amazing guests and leaders like you who are committed to leading well. So keep learning on this leadership journey together.
Speaker 2:Now, today I am joined by longtime friend, William Vanderblumen. William has been leading the Vanderblumen search group for 15 years, where they are regularly retained to identify the best talent for teams, manage succession planning and consult on all issues regarding teams. This year, Vanderblumen will complete their 3,000th executive search. I can't hardly say that number 3,000 executive searches. Prior to founding Vanderblumen search group, William studied executive search under a mentor with 25 plus years of executive search at the highest level, and prior to that, William served as a senior pastor at one of the largest Presbyterian churches in the United States. William has been a friend for a number of years.
Speaker 2:So today, William and I dive into the state of the current employment landscape, why hiring is more difficult than it used to be. Do you feel that the challenges with compensation in today's economy that's a huge one so many of you are facing? And we get a sneak peek from his new book, "e the Unicorn 12 data-driven habits that separate the best leaders from the rest. You guys are going to love this conversation. I love talking about some of these habits from his book. He shares two of them in the episode and I think you're going to be intrigued and surprised by the habits that show up from the best leaders. So here's my conversation with William VanderBloomen. Well, william, I think you might be the most frequent returning guest on Lead Culture.
Speaker 1:It's always great to be with you, Jenni. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2:Well, we always manage to have an extra episode. The years we've done culture conference, you and Jim and I always managed to get an extra episode there and then I've had you on a couple other times. But that's probably because we share a lot of common interest in all things leadership, culture, great teams, hiring great people, so a lot of synergy there.
Speaker 1:Probably exactly right.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. Well, you have a new book called "Be the Unicorn, and I want to spend a lot of time on that, just because you spend a lot of hours of your day and your team spends a ton of time and energy helping leaders find great staff members, and so I think it's going to be fun to see what you're seeing, what you're observing about just great, great employees, great team members. But before we just dive even into that, talk a little bit about just kind of the state of employment landscape, right Like we went through these years of the great resignation and you know just all these what felt like a very volatile and workplace experience over the last few years. What's the landscape now Like? What's on the horizon for both employees and employers?
Speaker 1:It's a great question, Jenni. I think that we're still seeing some settling out. I mean, obviously, the great resignation. We actually kind of forecast that back in December of 20. I didn't have an idea how big a forecast that was, but it was, and a lot of the resigning is over and the boomerang hiring is over. But what has continued, that I don't think will stop, is hiring is more difficult than it used to be Because, you know, luring people away from a place is harder than it was a year or two ago.
Speaker 1:All of the "oh, let's go try, let's move to here, let's try a new thing that happened in the great resignation happened and people realize, you know, the grass isn't always greener. So you've got a candidate pool that's very hesitant to move. You've also got employees who all of a sudden got used to working in sweatpants, which okay, fine, you know. But the world's going back to some form of normal. Maybe it's a hybridized normal, but what that means for hiring is a lot of people just won't even look at you unless you're 100% remote, and that doesn't always work for churches. So I just think it's hard to hire and maybe, while we've been busier than ever in the last three years.
Speaker 1:We I think we've just about doubled since the pandemic. And you know, it seems like things have to be faster. You have to be more responsive to candidates, you have to be more acclimatized to people dropping out of your search at a very quick time. And it's not about this sort of reticence and of fickleness that I see in the job market, but the wave of resignations, the wave of boomerang hiring, I think that's kind of done and we're still living with some ripples that make it difficult to get things done, never mind the fact that.
Speaker 1:Forget the pandemic, forget all those things. We had coming for a long time a real crunch of labor because you had a whole lot of boomers very few people that aren't Gen X but aren't boomers and then a lot of millennials, and so when the boomer retires, do you hand the job off to the millennials? Maybe, but maybe you want somebody with more experience and there just aren't that many of those. So there's a separate part from resignations and COVID and all that. There's just a birth rate issue that's catching up with us and it'll pass in 10 years. That didn't help you much right now, but it's not a forever thing, it's just still. The birth rates catch back up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's fantastic. You know I hear some of the same. You know, of course we're not directly in that space with you guys in helping organizations find candidates, but I'm often working with leaders that have a position open or you know they're, you know they're trying to, you know, add more team members or whatever, in just the complexity of hiring. In this climate, how are you coaching employers to be competitive in hiring with kind of that fickleness that you talked about with the expectations that employees have? Like how are you coaching those of us who are hiring to be more competitive in that space?
Speaker 1:Well, it depends on what you're coaching. For me, the short answer is hire a search firm.
Speaker 2:We'll put the link in the show notes, of course.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, it actually is the shortest answer because you get somebody who's actually got real working knowledge in the field. But I would say, just don't worry about it being about you If you keep getting turned down. It may not be about you. It may be that you've got fickle candidates. I would urge employers not to cut special deals so that you can get this employee, because then sooner or later there'll be another special deal and you'll make a for an exceptional person and then your church will grow because you have all these exceptional people and you're going to have a pay grid with 10 employees and 11 different pay matrix and people start wondering why does this one get that and why does that one get that? I would do everything you can in the middle of needing to have flexibility that's probably the big employer word for the year flexibility. Within that flexibility, there's got to be fair and equal distribution of time off and of pay and of benefits, and if you get someone who I've never seen a generation more willing to negotiate salaries than millennials.
Speaker 2:I wondered about that, yeah.
Speaker 1:It's just fascinating.
Speaker 1:They're really bold with that, aren't they? I am very bullish on the millennial generation so, having said that, they need to cool their jets on that. It really doesn't work. It's just off-putting and it will bite you sooner or later. But I think employers run across a really great millennial and it's like this person's awesome. They could change the company, they could change the church, they could change the. We'll just give them Wednesday's remote, because that's what it's going to take to get them, because they've got their stay at home dad and they've got two little kids or whatever the you know, whatever the circumstances are.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think you know. Pray for wisdom to know where to be flexible and where to keep things fair and just for the whole team.
Speaker 2:I was going to say there's such a culture impact there, right, like, as soon as you start making all those exceptions for new team members, the impact on the rest of the team might, you know, might seem not that significant right now, but over time, like you said, with all of those different arrangements and agreements and the you know just the yeah, that lack of what seems to be fair or equitable starts to really create havoc.
Speaker 1:And churches are somewhat set up for failure on this, because we want to say yes to people, of course, yeah, and we want to make it work, and I've got this great person in the church that could do that job. However, we would need to do X, y and Z for them to work. I had a great friend from Bible college that would come, but we'd have to. So it's. You can't just be inflexible because no, it'll come work for you. That's right. How do you? You know the prayer should be Lord, give me wisdom to know where to be flexible and where to say this has to say the same for everybody to be fair and just.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and I think that's what I'm saying, William, on compensation, because that is a big conversation I'm hearing because of because of inflation and you know just the the, it feels like salaries have escalated quite a bit. Yeah, what are you noticing there?
Speaker 1:Yeah, a couple of things right off the top of the mind. It is the hot topic. You know, years and years ago we started aggregating all of the data there is on church salaries. So we have it all. We've built algorithms, we've built AI driven things to help people understand what they should be paying their people. The overall trend. There are a few things. One, people are paying bigger salaries to fewer employees.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, okay.
Speaker 1:So you know, I'm seeing people swing big for a director of whatever the thing is, in the hopes and beliefs that we pay more money for that person they'll be able to recruit, train and retain more volunteers. So that one is is for sure. And then on the cost of living stuff, you know inflation was bad. It's not bad this year, right? And if you look at the, all you have to do is Google what's government going to do with social security. Because they don't want. I mean they, they generally keep pace, they're pretty good at that one, right. If they're not, they get some pretty instant feedback from a group of people that you don't want to get feedback from. So it's, that's the easy. This year inflation has not been bad.
Speaker 1:I think what has lingered and churches are still trying to figure out is housing. Sure, okay, so like the can afford the milk, the bread, the, this, the, that. You know that's not a no-transcript. Housing costs have gone way up and debt is no longer free. So you know interest rates are going to come down a little this next year or two. At least that's what they are saying, and maybe that alleviates some things. But housing is a pretty big deal in the recruiting industry right now. We've even seen some churches like your not your former church, but a church like Menlo Church that's in a very high dollar area. They're hiring someone to be there for a season of three to five years. Maybe they go back to kind of corporate housing right, you know, owning some apartments or things. So people are having to get creative as real estate prices have sort of priced out the salary packages. So do you inflate the salary just to get the housing rider? Do you find some new combination?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I think kind of what you acknowledged there. I think there were some unique markets that were dealing with this previous to the past few years, but now that housing thing is actually impacting most, most markets are feeling that pretty significantly.
Speaker 1:So that's yeah, that's super interesting and I'm hearing that and if nothing else, if you own a home right now and you're paying 3% on your loan and you've got to move, you're not getting a 3% loan. So even on a lateral move you're losing money. So it's kind of a sticky situation that hopefully will pass.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's super interesting.
Speaker 2:Again, some of the teams that I'm working with, you know just even in budgets, trying to account for, you know appropriate cost of living and you know merit raises and so forth.
Speaker 2:But then, just recognizing the impact on some of their teams and I was talking to a leader the other day they were trying to hire an open position and they had they made their best offer, like it was at the top of the range for that particular position and they had a really great candidate and that candidate was like I can't, you know, like their best offer that was at the top of their range, you know, equitable to the rest of their staff, was ultimately and was going to be a lateral move for that individual. And they were like I can't, I can't make a move for you know lateral pay, you know, and and they had, you know they've really done their best offer. And so it was just that recognition that, okay, probably all of our salary ranges are probably not quite where they need to be to help us be competitive for so it's raised all kinds of questions that I'm hearing from time to time too.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I, I. It may be that, just for a period of time, churches need to invest more of their overall budget into personnel.
Speaker 2:That's interesting yeah.
Speaker 1:But you know, even before all the mess of inflation and housing and all, we would see really successful churches that started like the church you served in Nashville.
Speaker 1:Oh, amazing place that was cause driven, kind of became the the it place to be in Nashville. And I'm guessing you didn't have to work real hard to hire a millennial that was attending the church to go do a job, right, you probably didn't pay him that much. And as church triples, the salaries don't keep pace. Because you want to open a new campus, you want to hire a new thing you want to do, and and I mean it's the classic founders syndrome in entrepreneurial settings where they get behind on being their people because they're trying to build out the business. So I, you know it's, it's probably probably time, good time at the beginning of year Just do a little reset and say are we in danger of losing our people because of pay? Are we needing to up the game a little bit? But the single most steady pattern I've seen in 15 years of doing what I'm doing is that people are paying higher salaries to fewer individuals.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, how is that impacting, are they? Are they then finding that that example you used earlier, are they finding a candidate who is then recruiting great volunteers and so forth? And so sometimes, or are they occasionally, like you know, getting themselves a little stuck?
Speaker 1:because then they're, they're understaffed and yeah, yeah, well, you better be better be ready to live with whatever you hire. Right, most expensive way to hire somebody is to hire the wrong person. Sure, it's a problem all across the board. I think people are getting smarter about testing for that big job and some promoting from within. Yeah, I've got a pastor. I won't out him because you'd know who he is. He said is quite a large church. And he said people are coming to him all the time saying we need three more people to do this. And he said you know, every single time you come in with three more people. Let's assume lower salaries $125,000, something like that. Okay, I can spend it on that, or I can give you the team $100,000 in pay increases and you can figure out how to do it on your own. And guess what usually happens.
Speaker 2:They're going to take that pay increase.
Speaker 1:So I, yeah, yeah. I think when you find that superstar, they're always able to figure out a way to increase their own value. It's just super easy to get enamored with somebody who's not a superstar, because it's somebody you knew, or they or they did a great job at the big church down the road, right, so it, yeah, yeah. I think, in general, though, the people that I see that are making these rather large offers to run children's ministries and such are making smart moves. That's great, and at that level of salary, there are usually some performance indicators that are tied to the job. So, if we're not getting this done, it's a more of a, it's less of a. You mean, you're going to fire little Janie's mom, who quit teaching school to run the? No, yeah, it's just a different thing when it's oh, it's Jenni. Jenni understands business, she understands the you know performance metrics.
Speaker 2:That's right, yeah, yeah, you're really shifting the caliber of the team and the expectation on those leaders and I, you know, even I would agree on this, but I'm a big believer in a leaner, stronger team. I would rather pay a handful of people really well, and we might be a lean and mighty machine, but you know you just you've just got great, great talent at the table. So, speaking of that, your book Be the Unicorn 12 Data-Driven Habits that Separate the Best Leaders from the Rest. So give me, give me the why. Why this book? What did what kind of sparked your curiosity in trying to identify these habits of great leaders?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I remember when we met you and me. Yeah, I think it was in an elementary school cafeteria. Yeah, elementary school, it might have been where you guys had services, before you had a building.
Speaker 2:I don't yeah, it would have been.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So I remember that. And why am I answering your question with this? I remember meeting you within five minutes saying that's a winner, wow, thanks, and I. That doesn't happen very often, but I think everybody can say, oh, yeah, yeah. I met somebody one time at a social function or a church or at a cocktail party or whatever the thing, and there was just something about them that made me go oh my gosh, this person is a winner, sure, sure, right. So for years, I've just wondered what voodoo magic do people know that they can do this to me and turn me into the gullible? You know that would, within five minutes period is sign up for your email list, listen to your podcast, do all the things hire you. You know, right. Why is that? So that's a question in my mind. Yeah, what is that magic that's going on? Yep, get to the pandemic and we're shut down and all of our clients are shut down. You and I talked on the phone a lot during the pandemic. Sure, we're talking to us.
Speaker 2:So William coached me through this.
Speaker 1:All the way around. Anyway, I realized at that point, for all of our searches, when we get down to a finalist, we usually only have six or eight that make sure of the short list of a search and those six or eight somewhere in there have all had a very long face to face interview. That has some symmetry. It's not a cookie cutter interview but there's a rhythm and a flow and we've kept notes on that. I realized during the pandemic we've done 30,000 of those now. Wow yeah, and we kept notes and nowhere to find them, which is really strange.
Speaker 2:I was just saying that's pretty impressive.
Speaker 1:Well, just strange. But we started to say, okay, those are our best of the best. Who, within that, were the best, and do they have anything in common? And that's when I found the answer to my question for what?
Speaker 1:happens when I meet someone that just grabs my attention with five minutes. What we started to see was very clear patterns in the research that we did about not how people look, I would have thought. They're all six feet tall, they have fabulous hair, shiny teeth. You know he was the quarterback, she was the head cheerleader. Whatever the generalization you want to make, it was none of that. It was not IQ driven, it was not socioeconomic, it certainly wasn't racial, ethnic, it was habits.
Speaker 1:It's what these people, these unicorns, had in common were habits that they all seemed to practice. That were habits that were very, very common to them and very uncommon for us normal people to practice, and we identified 12 of them. And then there's a fall off. You know, you could probably identify more or fewer or whatever, but we saw a clear line of 12 that kept showing up. And then a drop of me said well, you know, let's study this a little further. We surveyed all of them and got answers about you know what they think about these habits. We surveyed a quarter million normal people to see how they map out around these 12 habits and what we ended up with was a bit of a roadmap, to say. I thought we were building a research project that would let me find that person that would make the instant impression. Does it make me a better search consultant? Oh wait, all of these amazing. You know, what we ended up finding was actually a blueprint to teach you to become that person.
Speaker 1:Because the habits that are in the book, the 12 data driven habits. They're all attainable, teachable, coachable, repeatable, all of them. It's just that very, very few people take the time to do them and they're not hard. I mean, if you read the table of contents, you're going to read William's amazing list of 12 habits and you're going to go duh, William, I've heard all that growing up. I mean, I've said before, if I'm really honest, if the publisher had said no to be the unicorn, we probably would have gone with something like well, I guess mom was right, because the list sounds like yeah, it just sounds.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but the difference is, instead of being William's ruminations on what he thinks he knows now that he's a little older, or my opinions on what's irrefutable as a no, this is actually. We studied the best of the best.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's awesome and they have these 12 things in common. If you practice these 12 habits, you will learn them, which is what the book teaches you to do. Sure, you will stand out of crowd. And what would happen if your whole church staff trained around that? Where every time a visitor walked in and ran into someone on your staff, they'd say, within five minutes, I wanted to get to know them. They're special, amazing. I'm hopeful it's going to help a lot of people and help a lot of churches to become more and more attractive to people that might not otherwise check out a church.
Speaker 2:I love that so much. Okay, I want to know what surprised you the most. Was there one that surprised you that it surfaced in that top 12?
Speaker 1:There's one that would have surprised me before I started this business. Sure, and does not anymore, but I was really glad to see it come out clearly, and that is the very first chapter is called the fast. You say, well, I'm not fast, I'm not fast either, I'm a very slow sprinter, I'm a slow jogger. It's a bit of a clickbait title. The real title should be responsive.
Speaker 2:Yeah, which is what your team is brilliant at.
Speaker 1:Well, we try. We've got things to learn every day, but you know, how quickly do you get back to people in a real human way?
Speaker 1:Not an AI auto respond or whatever those five options are. When you get a call coming in while you're in meeting, you can say can I ding you right back? Can I? You know all the things at the bottom of the iPhone? Yeah, none of that. Like, how quickly do you really respond to people? And what it found is it would have surprised me before starting this business, but just out of necessity, when we started, and it was just me and a card table If I didn't get back to people. We didn't eat, you didn't eat, yeah, so I just. And people kept saying William, you have no idea, you actually got back to us quickly, that's. That doesn't happen. And as we studied the unicorns, we found they've all learned that same lesson or they're prone to getting back to people. And we also learned that nearly everyone else is not any good at it.
Speaker 2:That's fascinating.
Speaker 1:I mean even like like dating websites that email you since you're paying them money and they email you and say here are three potential matches. The response time on the people receiving that to actually reaching out super long. Sales and marketing super long response. What's normal pass way, the people who you know. We used to say speed wins. Yeah, people quickly and intentionally and you will stand out of the crowd. So I was happy to be surprised that that made the list.
Speaker 1:And I think frankly, it's the easiest change anyone can make to start down a road of these 12 habits.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and I remember at some point when I first bumped into your the values you guys have at VanderBloomen, and it's what is it Be responsive or it's?
Speaker 1:ridiculous Responsive ridiculous responsiveness.
Speaker 2:I was like, yeah, it's catchier than that. And and I was like, yep, absolutely, that has been my experience with you and the team. Is that hyper responsiveness, and I feel like that be similar to you. That became very clear to me when I started 4Sight, because there's a different urgency and intensity. But I'll say this especially for our church listeners when I was executive pastor at the church in Nashville, you know, in those early stages of growth, you know everybody who was coming in the door every day because it was do or die Right. Like you know, in early church growth, it's like we need people there. We, you know we need to connect with people. And so it was that, that hyper attention to who's here and you know how can we get them more connected.
Speaker 2:And so over time, as we grew, I said we called it the curse of the crowd.
Speaker 2:We got just kind of comfortable with.
Speaker 2:You know, people were just showing up, people were just showing up and I remember frequently probably ranting at the staff of like their responsiveness to like anytime somebody would inquire him back in the day.
Speaker 2:It was like a response card that we actually physically filled out and handed it in the service and eventually went to digital, but we had a metric around that that it was like within 24 hours everybody had to be responded to, you know, and this would be hundreds of cards on a given Sunday because of the size of the church and but I cannot tell you the number of times that people would acknowledge the team actually following up on the card that they filled out interest in this or that. And so, you know, even beyond an employment thing, it was that responsiveness to people. You know, my story to the staff always was it's kind of like, you know, they're saying, hey, I'm interested, I want to be a part, please, you know, please pick me, please call me, please, let me know how I can be more of a part of this thing. And so that responsiveness thing I think was so powerful even in the church context like that.
Speaker 1:But in the in the old old school, back when I was preaching and leading a church, I learned, you know, as an associate I learned the lesson. But I learned that I mean I made our volunteers crazy because I wanted those cards by 1205. That's amazing, yeah, and I called every first time visitor that left phone number because if they're filling out a card, hey, they're not a first time visitor.
Speaker 2:Right? No, they're not, they're way down. That's the first time they were willing to do it.
Speaker 1:And I remember adopting a whoever preached that week will call all of the first time visitors to send out a card. And I mean 95% of our new people were people that got that phone call. Wow, people that stayed and people stuck and I learned the modern corollary so well. That's fun to talk about. Back then you probably use two cans in the string, but today some of the latest fundraising research that I've read says number one way to turn a first time donor into a regular donor the preaching pastor texts the first time donor on the day of the gift.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 1:That would have sounded like invasive to me, yeah, five years ago, but now it's like no, you, that's, they have given, and now you respond. That's right, the speed wins. Sorry, I could go on just about that one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a huge one. Okay, give us one more before we run out of time. What's another one that you would?
Speaker 1:one that I'm not doing a good job of today. Self awareness or I would have moved this along faster and not burrowed down on on responsiveness and self awareness is the unicorns themselves. So we surveyed them force rank where are you best and worst among these 12? Self-awareness was far and away dead last, for where unicorns ranked themselves Really Basically, they all said, yeah, we got a long way to go with this one. Okay. Now the flip side of that is survey a quarter million normal people. How would you rate yourself? One to five, three being normal, four above average, five really above it. 91% of everyone that we surveyed said that they were above average and self-awareness.
Speaker 2:I see that play out in coaching.
Speaker 1:Like 91% of a group is not above average. Like the math doesn't work.
Speaker 2:The math doesn't work?
Speaker 1:yep, half are and half aren't. So it's, on the one hand, the biggest blind spot for most of us, and then the ones who are aware of themselves at all know that they need to work on it more. And, if you can. To me it's almost like if the 12 habits were an archway. Self-awareness is the keystone. You pull that out. If it's gone, everything else crumbles. If it's there, you can build anything on it. That's brilliant and it, man. I've got so much to learn here. But I think about like this is the journey with Jesus. It's like you take, for instance, Paul, okay, writes most of the New Testament.
Speaker 1:In seminary I studied Galatians quite a bit. If you go back and read all the scholars there's some people say this is the very first letter he wrote. A smaller group say so a little later. I tend to be with the group says yeah, this is his early work If you look at the Greek and how he's using words and such. So how does he start this first letter? Or one of the first that he writes, paul, an apostle called by God, not by men? Like that's the dude that has no self-esteem issues right there. So, okay, he's fine. But like that's where he's all right. Fast forward to one of, absolutely for sure, paul's last letters, and how does he describe himself? I'm the chief of all centers.
Speaker 2:Wow, I've never thought about it from that perspective.
Speaker 1:So the journey of sanctification, the journey to personal development with Jesus, is a long, slow opening of the eyes where you gain a little more self-awareness all the time you go. First of all, how did I get in this club? This is amazing, and how can I help others? So to me, self-awareness is the hardest one and the most fruitful one.
Speaker 2:That's good. That's good. Well, the listeners will know this. My mantra is always lead yourself well to lead others better, and so that self-awareness piece is such a I think it's such a game changer for every leader. In fact, I think there was an article at self-awareness. There was a study done that said self-awareness was the single greatest predictor of leadership success. I'll have to go back and find where that study was, but that makes so much sense, so good, William. Okay, so we're gonna leave everybody on the hook for what the other 10 are. They're gonna have to go get the book dive into it. Why should every leader give their time and attention to these habits? Tell us why we should spend our time doing this.
Speaker 1:Because they're learnable and if you learn them, you will stand out of the crowd. And let me ask you, leaders, are you having an easy time standing out of the crowd right now? No, it's harder than ever. The world's more crowded than ever. It's more crowded than ever in the workplace. It's more crowded than ever in the church space. There are five new church plants on your block from just the other day probably. How do you stand out of the crowd? This is not my opinion. This is data-driven. These people stand out of the crowd. They do these things in common. If you will get on board with the book, build a development plan, you'll build a team. It's remarkable. You'll stand out of the crowd and you'll see things flourish. That's awesome.
Speaker 2:Okay, where do we get the book William? How can we connect more with you?
Speaker 1:Yeah well, so the bad news about my last name is it's messed up. The good news is you can misspell it however you want, it'll still get to me. So go to Amazon and just try typing Vanderbloemen and it'll pop up. Or Google, if you want that one stop website with everything theunicornbook. com.
Speaker 2:Perfect. We'll link to all that in the show notes. William, thank you for joining me today. Thanks for this research. I mean this is powerful insights and again you've spent. Was it 30,000 interviews? Did you say? Learning, studying, interviewing people? And this is just phenomenal research that can help us take actionable steps to keep growing as leaders. So, thank you and thank you for joining me today.
Speaker 1:Thanks, Jenni, it's always good to be with you.
Speaker 2:All right, friends, I hope you enjoyed that episode. As always, great conversations and nuggets in there. If you are a hiring manager, if you are leading a team or an organization, some really helpful things to be thinking about in regard to attracting and retaining the best talent and how to kind of navigate the hiring landscape. And then for all of us, how do we be an extraordinary leader, how do we be a unicorn? And I think those couple of habits that William shared I think are some great starting points and I would encourage you to go get the book, dive into all 12, and I'll be eager to hear how that impacts your growth this year as a leader.
Speaker 2:All right, friends, let me know what you thought of this week's episode. You can connect with me on Instagram and Facebook, at GetForesight G-E-T the number four, s-i-g-h-t, or on LinkedIn at the Foresight Group. You can also find me at Janie Catring, j-e-n-n-i-c-a-t-r-o-n, and I would love it if you would share this episode with another leader. Let them know what got you thinking, what intrigued you, and just get somebody else to kind of listen and process it with you. And if you haven't done it yet, would you go leave that five star review? Let us know how we're doing. Give us some feedback, let us know what we can do better. I would so appreciate it.
Speaker 2:And then, if you're looking for even more leadership resources to help you and your team thrive this year, be sure that you are signed up for our free Insights newsletter at GetForesightcom. Just go to G-E-T, the number four, s-i-g-h-tcom, and you'll see the little pop-up window there to go ahead and get signed up for our weekly insights, where I am talking all things leadership and culture sharing some of what's coming up, what we're doing here at Foresight, how we can help, serve and equip you to keep leading well. All right, friends, thanks for listening today. Have an amazing week and we will see you next time ี.