The Cost of Being Indispensable

In this episode, Don reflects on the hidden cost of becoming indispensable, not only the toll it can take on us, but the ways it can unintentionally limit the growth, confidence, and capacity of those around us.

He is joined by longtime friend Larry Bartlett, an engineer, architect, business founder, educator, mentor, and community leader whose life has been shaped by both professional accomplishment and a deep commitment to serving others.

Together, they explore the tension between helping and over functioning, solving problems and developing people, being useful and needing to be needed, and what it means to lead in a way that allows others to discover what they are capable of.

At its heart, this episode asks a challenging question: Is the measure of leadership how necessary we become, or how much stronger others become because of us?

To learn more about Don's work, upcoming offerings, and leadership resources, visit carpentercompanyconsulting.com

 If something in today’s episode spoke to you, I hope you’ll subscribe and continue the journey with me — because leadership begins within. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Welcome to Meditations on Leadership. I'm Don Carpenter. Let me ask you, what if one of the greatest risks in leadership is actually becoming too necessary? What if our instincts to step in, to fix, to guide, or protect the outcome sometimes keep us, keeps other people from discovering what they are capable of? And what happens when our need to be useful, needed, or even dispensable quietly places us at the center of the story that leadership was never meant to be about us. Well, those questions bring us into this week's meditation and into a reflection on the hidden costs of being indispensable, not only what it asks of us, but what it can unintentionally take away from others. Exploring tensions like these is at the heart of this podcast. Each week begins with a meditation, followed by a personal reflection, and then a conversation with a guest whose lived experience helps bring the theme to life. All in the service of the interformation that leadership asks of us. And today I'm especially glad to welcome my friend Larry Bartlett. Larry is a licensed professional engineer and architect who spent much of his career owning and operating Bartlett Design, his consulting engineering firm. His work also took him to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where he helped develop recommendations around energy efficiency and sustainable lighting across the entire campus. And as a pretty memorable perk of the job, he even had the chance to climb inside the space shuttle. But what always have appreciated most about Larry is the way his professional life has been matched by a deep commitment to young people and to his community. Beginning as a youth leader in 1989, he went on to mentor students across Maine, tutor math and science, and coach the debate team at Morse High School in Bath, Maine for more than a decade. He has served on nonprofit boards, helped establish Waypoint, a six-year youth mentoring program in Bath, and previously served as board president of the Midcoast Youth Center. And I think there is something rare in the way Larry made room for all of that while also building a business and raising a family. He never saw community involvement as something separate from or secondary to his professional life. Even while building a business and raising a family and serving his community remained one of the central priorities of his life. In that sense, he has been not only a founder and a professional of a business, but a real force multiplier in the community around him. Larry and I have also had the privilege of serving together on a local nonprofit board, youth forum, Maine, for more than 20 years. So I've had a front row seat to his thoughtfulness, steadiness, and commitment to others. Larry, welcome to Meditations on Leadership. I'm really glad you're here.

SPEAKER_01 4:00

Well, I'm really glad to be here. Don, um, you are a special friend and have been an influence for me for, like you say, 20 years. So I'm really happy to be here.

SPEAKER_00 4:11

Awesome. Well, uh, before we jump in to our conversation, I want to share meditation 16 from my forthcoming book. It's titled The Cost of Being Indispensable. And the listening audience should know that Larry picked it up today for the conversation. Here's the quote it's by Rustin Dodd. When people stop thinking of themselves as the hero and their own personal narrative, and instead focus on how they can set up others, their own performance can benefit. When people stop thinking of themselves as the hero and their own personal narrative and instead focus on how they can set up others, their own personal performance can benefit. I have spent many years trying to understand why being needed could feel so much like being valuable. Because for so much of my leadership, I was not trying to be the hero. At least I did not think I was. I thought I was being responsible. I cared deeply about the mission. I had high standards. And somewhere along the way, I convinced myself that one of the best ways to teach those standards was simply to model them, to work hard, do it exceptionally well, and show people what excellent looks like. I assumed others would learn something by watching. But leadership development does not always work that way. People need more than an example. They need training, systems, feedback, coaching, practice, and perhaps most importantly, enough room to make decisions and discover where those decisions lead. I'm afraid to say I did not always give people that room. When people did not develop as quickly as I had hoped, my trust diminished. When my trust diminished, I stepped in more. And the more I stepped in, the fewer opportunities they had to develop the capacity I was wanting to see. I had created a cycle without even knowing it. The more I stepped in to protect the standard, the less room others had to learn how to meet it on their own. This was especially hard when I could see something heading off course, a staff member navigating a difficult conversation with a parent, a decision I believed might produce the wrong outcome, a process unfolding differently or less skillfully than I would have handled it. My tolerance for watching something to be done below my standard in service of someone else's growth was painfully low. So I intervened. And each time I did, I may have protected the immediate outcome, but I also took something away. The opportunity to struggle, to experience consequence, to adjust, to learn. I eventually saw the same tendency in another part of my life when I became a stepfather. My wife Cheryl sometimes had to remind me that her children did not always need me to point out the consequence I could already see coming. My desire to help could easily become overfunctioning in someone else's space. That forced me toward a much harder question. What did I need from being at the center of everyone else's process? That question has followed me for years. Did I need recognition, a perfection, a control? And beneath all three, perhaps the reassurance of being needed. There was a security in believing that things worked because I was there to make them work. But the cost of indispensability is not simply exhaustion. The greater cost may be that it denies others the dignity of discovering what they are capable of. Leadership is not merely about producing the best immediate result. Sometimes it means tolerating short-term imperfection in service of someone else's long-term growth. It means moving away from being the hero of the story to becoming someone who helps others discover their own strength within it. Maybe the goal was never to become indispensable. Maybe the goal is to create people, teams, and organizations and families that grow increasingly capable without needing us at the center of everything. Because perhaps the measure of leadership is not how necessary we become, it is how much more possible others become because we were willing to stop being indispensable. So I'm gonna offer a real-time reflection here. And as I think about the more than 35 years that I've had the privilege of mentoring hundreds of young people, often during some of the most formidable years of their lives. From 12 to 18, you can become deeply woven into someone else's story. You know what they struggle with, you celebrate their victories, you worry about them, you answer the call for a very long stretch. You matter in a very particular way, and then they graduate, they move away, they begin careers, relationships, families, and lives of their own. And sometimes you simply stop hearing from them. And I'll admit that that sudden shift can lead to some internal ache. Having said that, there are former students who have become some of my dearest friends and people I now consider family. But there are many others I spent years walking alongside who I haven't been in touch with for a very long time. People have asked me over the years how I've dealt with this process. I share with them that I've come to learn to try and do my best to trust their process. Of course, there is grief in realizing that someone who once occupied such a meaningful place in your life may no longer need you in theirs. But over time, I have learned to see something beautiful in that reality. The truth is that they were never expected to prioritize our relationship forever. The point of mentoring was not to secure a permanent place in their story, it was to help them at a particular inflection point in their journey to become strong enough to write the next chapter by themselves. And perhaps that is one of the quiet challenges of leadership, parenting, teaching, or mentoring. Can we celebrate someone's independence even when it changes the nature of our relationship with them? I've come to believe that one of the most mature forms of love is learning to celebrate when our role in someone else's life changes because they are growing more fully into their own, even when parts of me still miss the relationship I once had with them. Larry, as you listen to the meditation and this reflection, what resonated with you? What stirred him with you? What stayed with you?

SPEAKER_01 12:49

Well, let me start by saying, I think we're done. You pretty much got it. You nailed it. I'm good. What he said. Well, you started with a quote, and I love that quote. Uh, I had not heard it before, but there's there's real truth in it. And that where it talked about focusing on setting up others, ironically, perhaps, provides your own personal benefits in performance. It's it's amazing what you can draw from working with others and giving them giving not just control, but giving them support to be themselves. So I love that quote. And it doveth dovetailed into what you were talking about about leadership. It's not just modeling leadership for adults who are coming into mentorship, it's making room for them to make their own decisions. And, you know, that flies right in the face for me of this incredibly powerful need to be indispensable. You mentioned in the bio I'm an engineer. Um, let me just say this: I'm always right. I always have the right answer. I don't need anybody else to give me the right answer because I've already figured it out. And, you know, when it comes to youth mentorship and connections with youth and connections with adults, it's so hard but so important to lay that kind of an attitude down. You know, I'll just say that for me, the best form of youth support is based in community. When self takes over, it denies the important gifts that others have to offer, for sure. And the best model for youth is one of community, where I think support comes from a variety of caring adults. So you had some great things in your meditation for sure.

SPEAKER_00 15:01

Well, I appreciate that, Larry. And uh, been writing some things down that you've already been saying. And I'm so glad you brought up this piece about the engineer because it's the first thing I wanted to ask you about. So, as an engineer your entire life, how did you learn the difference between solving the problem yourself and perhaps helping other people who work for you become better problem solvers? Meaning that engineering rewards precision and expertise and getting things right, as you said. Leadership requires something different, though, allowing someone else to wrestle with a problem long enough to develop their own judgment. So I'm wondering how you navigated that tension.

SPEAKER_01 15:50

In the engineering world, very often offices are divided up into cubicles, work cubicles. And people have their assigned station, they have their assigned job, and you're given the task to solve this problem or to create um this answer. And right from the get-go, I felt like that was a mistake. I remember early on in my young years, I thought to myself, if I was ever going to have an office myself, we're all going to work together. Um, and the reason why I felt like and do feel like that's important is no single human being has all the answers. We must rely on the expertise and talent of others to get to the end line. And if you're gonna embrace that, you have to hire people that you have trust in that I can give you enough space and watch you learn how to solve the problems that are being presented. And I learned perhaps that, gee, you're better at this than I am. But as a team, I have always felt like that's the answer in engineering. And to bring that to youth leadership, yeah, I have I I made a joke, but uh I have fought this desire to be in indispensable, to be in control. That's another way to look at it. I have fought that because it's not the best way to approach youth. I have the answers, I am in control. Listen to me. You do not have the answers. Maybe if you're lucky, you'll get the answers when I'm done. That's a horrible way to uh approach youth support. And so what I learned as an engineer, I think, kind of tempered how I work with youth.

SPEAKER_00 17:59

Yeah, that's really I'm so glad you pointed that out about creating workspaces where one person didn't become the bottleneck for all the information and flow. I I want to just press on this a little bit because as you were talking, I was thinking about it's a world that I don't know much about, which is engineering. However, I'm curious about what your own appetite was for risk and failure as a way for moving things along. So for instance, I'm thinking right now, and this is an extreme example, but I think it's somewhat of a good one because I'm sure um he hires incredible amounts of engineers, which is you know, SpaceX and and Elon Musk, you know, he's had rockets explode on the base site and or explode right when they get in the air, and they ask him about it. And he said, Hey, we're learning a lot of things here. You know, failure is built into this process. But as a uh as a somebody who's a founder of a for-profit business uh of engineering, I wonder how that worked in your own calculus in terms of failure as a way to lead to growth.

SPEAKER_01 19:21

Well, I think, and you may have just touched on it, but I think you've probably heard many times that we perhaps learn more from failure than we do success. I don't I don't like that. I don't buy that. Um, I will be quick to admit that in the engineering world, there's little patience for not coming up with the right answer. I I get that. But my approach is this: there's no such thing as failure. We're on a path. We're going from point A, which is here's a problem to solve, and we're gonna get to point Z where it's solved. There are no failures. There are points where we may have to recognize that went down the wrong road, but let's learn from it and back up a little bit and go on. And when you treat your employees as that was a failed attempt, it can be life-crushing. And I think again, how that translates into youth leadership. I think there's enormous pressure on young people to cringe when they're told they've failed. And life is too complex to put it in terms of black and white. You succeeded, you get an A. Oh, you failed, you don't get a good mark. I rather look at it like, okay, so what did we learn? So you're not on that path, but that's okay. Let's figure out what the next path is. I just don't like that word failure.

SPEAKER_00 20:51

Well, I want to press on the business side of this before I get into the community side of this. Okay. So I'm just giving you a heads up as to some of where some of my questions are coming from. But I promise you, we're going to get into the some of the pieces of this that I know that really light you up inside. So when you ran Bartlett Design, was there ever a point when you realized that the business needed to become less dependent upon you? I imagine taking this on can make it incredibly difficult based on you as the founder of being kind of the um person with the most information. But I'm just wondering whether or not you decided along the way that you saw yourself as the bottleneck, so to speak, and you did something about it. Or did you just have that baked in from the very beginning and you were self aware enough to know?

SPEAKER_01 21:49

Well, you know, I try not to be the bottleneck. There's some things in my business that only I knew how to do. That that's fine. But a large percentage Other people knew how to do, maybe not quite the same way I do things, but rather than become a bottleneck, what I felt like was yes, it's a business, it's my business, I need to make money, but more importantly, we can't not meet our clients' needs. But the way to do this is I'm here to help. I'm gonna give you space to do what needs to be done. Yes, when it's done, I need to look at it and I need to evaluate it because my name goes on it. But I'm not gonna be looking over your shoulder every step of the way. I don't need to do that. The reason why I don't is I hired very carefully. And what was the metric for hiring? Do I trust this person? And trust isn't, do I believe they're gonna, you know, skim profits off? No, that's not the kind of trust I'm talking about. I'm trying the trust I'm talking about is do I trust that this person feels like I can do this, whatever this is. And if I can't do this, I can learn how to do this. And I want to do this, I'm passionate about this. And if I saw that in a prospective employee, that's what I needed right there. And so, yeah, there were a few things that only I could do, but that you know freed me up from doing all the other things that others could do. And if given the right support and the time, they always did.

SPEAKER_00 23:38

Was there, I loved this point about taking it back to the hiring process and you having trust in your team from that very, the very beginning? Was there something in the or a question or a particular not activity, but some kind of thing that you brought out that competency, that that particular skill, that particular uh mindset during the interview process that helped you know that you could trust them? Was there something that you did in the hiring process that made that happen?

SPEAKER_01 24:14

Absolutely. In my early, early days before I had my own firm, I I rose through management in other firms and ended up hiring and watching other people hire. And so often the hiring process began with tell me about your experience. Have you done this? Not me. I'm looking for a relationship first. So my question was always tell me about yourself. Who are you? What turns you on? What do you really like in life? I mean, which may sound irrelevant. It's not irrelevant. If you can't build a trustful relationship, it's gonna be a problem employee forever. And the the examples of answers to those questions, like, you know, what turns you on? What are you all about? were just wonderful. I could write a book with some of them.

SPEAKER_00 25:10

Well, I uh I have one last uh business question for you, and then I'm gonna get into some other aspects of your uh career in life. I believe I have it right that uh when you retired, Bartlett Design no longer existed in the world. And I'm curious whether or not there was a decision, uh, intentional decision that you came to on that, or was it that um was there ever a thought to then train somebody else to take on the business and hand it over to them?

SPEAKER_01 25:46

Well, the way that happened wasn't any way I ever thought it would happen. In 2015, my wife and I were in New Orleans on a mini vacation, and I got hit by an automobile as I was crossing the street. And it took months of rehab and surgeries, many, many surgeries. And at that point, it became clear to me that I wasn't going to be able to function physically for sure, but time-wise as well to continue. So I spoke with employees, and rather than try to sell my business or train somebody to take over the name and run with it, what I told them was look, you've been with me for a lot of years. Now fly. You're on your own. Go do something, make engineering better because you can do it. You're gonna be like a virus. I'm gonna plant you in other firms, and let's just see what you can do. So it was mostly because of the accident. I just wasn't able to continue physically or or mentally, for that matter, for a long time.

SPEAKER_00 26:58

Oh boy, I I do remember that chapter of your life and um how concerned we were all around that. And I know that there are parts of it that continue to impact you on a daily basis uh as a result of that accident. I wasn't really going to go here, but I'm curious as to what you learn most about yourself from that episode.

SPEAKER_01 27:23

I learned something that I tell my family over and over, they're sick of hearing it now. I learned time is more important than money. Now, anybody who says that obviously has enough money, so they can afford to say that. But time is enormously important. And by time, what I mean is spending my days in relationship with my family and with others and focusing on the blessings of life. Whereas before, a large part of what drove me was my work. And, you know, as you mentioned at the onset, I had other things going on at the same time. It wasn't just work, I did a lot of youth ministries and so forth. But suddenly uh there was a clarity that I hadn't had up to that point, which is okay, so you've got so many years left. Let's see how you use them.

SPEAKER_00 28:23

Yeah, that's a uh I'm so glad you shared a piece of that journey with us. Uh it's really profound, what you learn from it. I'm gonna transition this a little bit. And I think the one thing that strikes me most about your life and what I've come to learn and knowing you is that while you were building this business and raising the family, you continued making a significant amount of room in your day for young people and your community. And I'm just curious, how did you keep your professional life from convincing you that it needed all of you?

SPEAKER_01 29:06

Yeah, I have an ability, I don't know how rare it is, but my brain is like a series of boxes, and my wife can't do this, but at the end of a day, I can close a box and open another one. It for me, the question, which was never said out loud but was always rattling around in my head, as a as a business person and so forth. If that's all there is, you're gonna burn out. Well, you got to find things that are completely opposite to what you do nine to five in the morning, or actually a lot earlier than that. And what I discovered was I got very active in my community. I got active in youth, youth connections and youth uh ministries. And it was such a breath of fresh air when I did that, that there was never a sense of competition or oh, this is I can only do this because I got work to do there. I was able to separate.

SPEAKER_00 30:13

Knowing that you built a team at Bartlett Design that you trusted, which I imagine because you trusted them, it allowed you a little bit more freedom to compartmentalize that at the end of the day, knowing that they could take some of it so you could do a number of other things in the community. I'm just curious as to how what impacts that did or did not have on your own family? Because I I just know your work ethic in general, but then your commitment to the community. And I also know that you are, I think you said 52 years into an incredible uh marriage. So what what impact did leadership in all these different places, work, community have on your home?

SPEAKER_01 31:00

Yeah, there were, as I look back on it, there wasn't uh there wasn't enough space for all of it. Let's come on, let's be honest, okay? There just wasn't a lot of space. And this is the irony of life, I think, for a lot of people. My family are the ones I love so dearly, and they're the ones who probably suffered the most. And they suffered because I felt like I was connected to them. And if somebody has to suffer, you know, they're right here. Uh, it's a terrible thing, but there were times when I know I didn't spend enough time with my middle daughter because it was at a time in my career when I was doing both traveling business and a lot of youth ministries and so forth. But I have to tell you this, my wife is spectacular and never once did anything but support me in everything that I wanted to do. And so in that I was incredibly fortunate. But, you know, it wasn't perfect. I will admit it certainly wasn't perfect.

SPEAKER_00 32:18

Well, you know, I brought up in my personal reflection the overfunctioning that me, uh myself as a stepfather had um the lives of a nine-year-old, 16-year-old, and 18-year-old when we first got married. And whether it's with family work or in community, have there been moments in your life when you have felt helping in the spirit of helping across the line into overfunctioning. Maybe you could see what was coming, knew what someone should do or believe that you could prevent the mistake. And so you stepped in. I'm just curious, is like what lessons learned there, if any?

SPEAKER_01 33:01

I I suffer from what a lot of people suffer from, which is I want to do more. I want to do more. It that motivates me in whatever I'm doing. I want to do it right, and I want to do it more. And what that does is it creates a sense of I need to control this situation. I need to be in control because if I'm gonna do more, I've got to put this here and put that there and do that. And my wife and my youngest daughter were lifelines for, you know, you gotta back off. Hey, you know what? What happens if this doesn't get done? You know, uh, the world is probably gonna keep turning. And it's my sense of the engineering sense of perfection. I mean, what I felt like as an engineer is I wanted to do my work better than anybody else that I competed against. That's how we're gonna get work. I'm never gonna have to advertise, and I never did. Word of mouth is gonna say, wow, you got to go to this company. And so it's that attitude that can get you into trouble sometimes. And today, if you ask me what my biggest chore is, the thing I work on virtually every day, it's humility. It is humility recognizing that I can't do it all and I shouldn't be trying to control everything. And I need to live for the moment, I need to live for right now and quit trying to organize everything to accomplish three times what I'm doing right now.

SPEAKER_00 34:45

Well, I really appreciate you bringing that up and being super honest about the humility part and you know, from the meditation that I asked the question of what did I need from being at the center of everyone else's process? And I named two of the three things that you talked about, which I named recognition, perfection, and control. And so yeah, I'm not proud of that, but I also think the antidote to all of that is humility, and I thought I'm really glad that you brought that up. You know, uh as I think about um your work on boards, uh your work uh uh Midcoast Youth Center as the board chair. Uh you've been on this board with me for 20 years. But so much of your community leadership has happened in uh places where you were not necessarily the person in charge. And I'm curious about what have those experiences taught you about making an impact without needing to be at the center, because as board members, uh there is a sense of you know that we have some decision-making power, but really it's the leadership and the staff who's executing everything. And uh I'm just curious as to whether or not what it's been like to uh be an assist to those who are on the front lines uh in your own leadership.

SPEAKER_01 36:17

Well, again, I'm not gonna tell you that it's been easy to take on that role. It takes work. It really, it really does take work. But the good thing I can tell you is I can see it when it happens, okay, and I can recognize it. In other words, I make the mistake of saying, I know how this works best, I know what needs to be accomplished, I need to get everybody on board. And after beating my head against the wall several times, I walk away and think, gee, is it even remotely possible that somebody else has another, maybe even God forbid, a better idea? And so I'm not saying I do that as well as I should, but I do recognize it. And again, here's the incredible irony. You know, some of the best things I've accomplished haven't been at the center. They have not been at the center. You know, they've been in an advisory role helping others who are trying to do something. Now, at the same time, I would sit there and say, but I know how to do this. But, you know, but it's your, it's it's yours. Take it, run with it, but I can help a little bit. But I think that is the best of anybody. And you talk about youth leadership. What do you aspire to? What is the thing that we should aspire to? And this topic is what spoke to me when you gave me a choice of topics, which is our need to be indispensable, a need to be in control, a need to be on top. And the irony is so much better things happen when we lay that down and watch things unfold as you're in a support role.

SPEAKER_00 38:14

Well, I know that that you had the opportunity to follow a cohort of students and as a volunteer for uh six years where you began a relationship with them when they were in seventh grade, and I think we're talking about 10 to 15 students and uh and followed them until they graduated high school. I I'm just curious that was in a support role. You weren't in charge of that group, you didn't, and so you were really there around the edges at the you know, and anywhere that you could be or was asked to be. I'm curious, what did you learn from that experience?

SPEAKER_01 39:01

You know, that that was amazing because that program, Waypoint, which you're familiar with, because it had roots and trekkers and so forth. But I was on the front end of that here in Bath with a fellow who was in fact set up as the director, and he and I would meet quite a bit and we would talk about what this program could do, what it could be, maybe how to get from here to there. But I stepped back and said, you know, what I really would like to do is just be one of the adults on a cohort. That's what, and boy, was that I'd like to say that was really smart, but I just wanted to do that. And so I went for six years with this group of students. Not once did I have to design a program, not once was I the sole person responsible for this event or that event. All I had to do was be there, show up, and it opened the door to some of the deepest kinds of connections I've ever had with young people. And I gotta tell you this, you know, I've been doing this in a different format in different ways for quite a few years. And, you know, that was probably the best six years of my whole connection with youth, to be honest with you. Just being there and talking and connecting, first off, with middle schoolers, which I had a lot of experience with, and watching them grow and involve and being part of you know of their lives without any of the pressures. And of course, when I graduated, I I said to myself, you idiot, why haven't you been doing this for the last 25 years instead of all the stuff I have been doing? But it was wonderful.

SPEAKER_00 41:01

Oh man, I I'm sure the uh listeners felt uh your energy really come alive right there because it uh it put me a little bit on fire. I I know that you said that this accident you went through caused your life to shift a little bit, and it hasn't uh slowed down too much your community work, but certainly your professional part it did. But at this stage of your life, now that you're through some of that, how has your definition of being useful changed? Meaning, like, I'm going to this back to the piece about being indispensable. But I'm wanting to kind of just say, like, how do you see yourself now at Larry Bartley at this age of being useful?

SPEAKER_01 41:56

Yeah. At the core of the answer to your question, I'm getting old. I'm really getting old. And young people treat me differently than they used to, you know, when I was 30 years younger. So I've kind of retired, so to speak, from the need to be indispensable, the need to develop programs, and to focus on what really matters to me, which is relationships. And for that, I have the luxury of not worrying about the whole and worrying about the young person sitting right across the table from me, you know, during the next hour, you know. And it's and it turns out it's it's kind of like the blessing for my life towards the latter part of my life to be given this. And so now I'm doing things to work more one-on-one, one, two-on-one, and so forth. Um, in a week or so, I'm gonna run a camp, a day camp for two girls going into the sixth grade, you know. I know what going into the sixth grade means and so forth. So it's just gonna be two of us, or three of us with me. But that kind of thing, you know, I was forced to slow down physically with a number of other health issues and so forth, but it allows me to do that which I have guess I really have treasured all along.

SPEAKER_00 43:38

Boy, that's beautiful, Larry. Well, I've got one question left for you, but before I do, I just uh wanted to before we end it to flip the script for a moment and uh give you the mic and just see uh what question you uh want to ask me about this relationship about uh being needed. Being indispensable, learning to move out of the center of someone else's process.

SPEAKER_01 44:07

You have, you know, when following your career, you have done so much good, and you have learned a lot of lessons along the way and so forth. I guess the question I have for you is have you ever been able to do what I'm finally able to do, which is to stop thinking about the future and just take advantage of the right now with the right thing I have in front of me right now. Let me just do this. I enjoy this. Let me do this. As opposed to thinking about what's next and how do I make the next thing work and so forth.

SPEAKER_00 44:50

Yeah, that's a great question. Thank you for asking it. And the way I would answer that is that you are asking me that question at a particular inflection point in my own life that I can honestly say it's exactly what I'm attempting to do right now. I think part of it is something that you said earlier, which is that you don't have to focus on the whole. Like you don't have to carry the weight of the container, which is for me for the past 35 years, has been running an organization in the midst of doing all these other things. So I don't have the responsibility of holding that. I think that, as I said in my last episode, the toughest part of that is that that gave me a lot of identity and meaning and all these different things, and and I was good at it. And I I keep thinking, well, I I could go lead that, or maybe I could do an interim piece over here, or maybe I could start a, you know, I have so many ideas that go through my head on a daily basis. But when I ended December 31st, 2025, um, the Rural Futures Fund and dissolved that foundation, I'm had this incredible encounter with a couple coyotes down in Florida. I walk every morning and I walk in the dark down there at 5 a.m. And I ran into these two coyotes, and they were chasing one another, and they were having the great time. They didn't care that I was there. And you know, I do this every day for six years down there. I've never seen coyotes down there. I've heard them from a distance late at night one time, but whatever reasons they came through and they were chasing one another, and they went right in front of me. It took my breath away, and I went back and I wrote about it because I thought it was such a profound moment. I mean, it's four days after ending that, and you know, I don't want to get too foo-foo about it, but nonetheless, what I took away from it was that it was an opportunity for me to agree with myself or agree to not chase something in this next stage, and that I would just let the current episode unfold. Now, like you said earlier, somebody who says, you know, time is more important than money has enough resources in that moment not to have to go chase time or chase money, I'm sorry. And I had started this consulting business prior to, and uh had been building it a bit, so I I knew I didn't have to worry too much by hitting this pause button, and I don't even know if it's a pause button, it could be the way things unfold forever. I'm I I feel like I'm still being useful, it's a different uh definition of being useful, and um, I'm getting more and more comfortable with that. That allows me to be much more present, and um, it also allows me to do a lot more things for myself, to be honest with you, that I haven't ever done just in terms of time. So, yeah, so what do you think of that?

SPEAKER_01 48:21

I'm so impressed that you've gotten to that at a much earlier age than I did, that's for sure. I worry about you. I mean, we've known each other for quite a few years, and I do worry about you. I worry that the pressure for continuation can be overwhelming to the point where you wake up one day and you realize you missed the last six months or what have you. And so it sounds to me, I love the story with the coyotes. That's that's great. You didn't have a gun with you, so that didn't work out. But no, I love that story. You remind me a lot. One of my favorite people to read is Henry Nowen. I've read everything he's ever written, and his his thoughts just, you know, are just so incredibly powerful. And reading your recent book and so forth, I mean, it it's you've you've reached a point that I didn't reach until much later in life, which is slow down and look at what's in front of you and make the most out of that, and not let go of the future, but know the future will take care of itself as you continue.

SPEAKER_00 49:39

Well, Larry, that is uh truly some of the kindest words that I've heard in in a long time. So I appreciate that. And I don't know, Henry Nowen.

SPEAKER_01 49:51

Nowin, yeah, Henry Nowen.

SPEAKER_00 49:53

Okay, I'll have to look that up.

SPEAKER_01 49:54

Jack has a bunch of his books, he'll go into you.

SPEAKER_00 49:58

Okay. Well, thank you. Thanks for asking me that. Thanks for the dialogue around it. I have one question for you, and I I want you to, as I formulate this question, I want you to be thinking about it from the perspective of business, as opposed to, you know, from a community perspective or a nonprofit perspective, because a lot of the people I bring on are nonprofit leaders, and I've had a handful of um for-profit entrepreneurs like yourself. And so I'd love to get this perspective from that since I don't have as many on. But for someone listening in that space who recognizes that people have become overly dependent upon them, or perhaps that they have become overly attached to being needed in a particular system or particular uh role, and they want to change that. Where would you encourage them to begin?

SPEAKER_01 51:02

So the beginning, if it hasn't already started, the beginning, I say this all the time, is stepping back and forming a real relationship with your employees, a meaningful relationship. They're not just instruments of some or some cog in a wheel. Um, they're people, they're real people. And the reason why I say that is the ultimate answer is trust. Trust to let them have enough space to let you let go and be comfortable about it. But you're never gonna get to that point if you don't have a real relationship that says, I know what this person's all about, I respect it, I love it, and I can help wherever I can help, but I know I can depend on this person. And so I'm gonna take the big step and give them that responsibility and see how it goes.

SPEAKER_00 52:10

Well, I think that's a good place to end, my friend. Appreciate that. I thank you for being here. And I would love you to stay on for a couple minutes as I close this out, and uh way I'll get to say goodbye to you at the end. Yes. All right. Well, here's what I'm taking away from this very inspiring conversation. I think that if the contention of this podcast is that the journey of leadership begins within that the idea of our own internal work can make us better leaders. Larry uh really nailed this one because he was uh really honest by saying his own need for control and perfection. And I understand it because his name is on his company. It didn't say uh carpenter design, it said Bartlett design, and therefore whatever goes out could ding or help support his company in terms of dollars brought in, etc. etc. But he recognized that that led to being at the center, being in control, being perfect. But he also said something very important that I hope you all got to hear. And that is that he spends an awful amount of time. The thing that he works on the most in his entire life is humility, the ability to see how being at the center and having all the answers can get in the way, and therefore recognizing his own humility in the process. I just thought that was beautiful, and that humility has led to incredible things that he's done in the community and allowing other people to lead, including youth. So that's the biggest thing I'm taking away. But here's a couple other things, and that is that when it came to the addiction of work, meaning the business side and the desire to do it at such a high standard, he began to see and ask himself if that's all there is, it will only lead to exhaustion and burnout. And so for us to ask ourselves, is this the only thing that matters? If this is all there is, he said the answer to that if it is, meaning if we uh are so adept workaholics to whatever we're doing, that the way to balance that is to find things in the community that are just the opposite of that and try to do them, and it will lend to a much greater balance of work-life balance in life. So I really love that. And then, well, there were so many other things, but I'll just close with this one. And that is it's a two-fold piece. One is when I asked him how he could step out of the center, what allowed him to step out of the center, besides humility to really begin to empower others, he said at the essence of that was trust. And so that trust came from a hiring practice where he focused on the relationship, not the skill set at first, not the expertise. He focused on the relationship. And he knew if he could build a relationship with this person based on their resume, he was on to something. And then finally, the wisdom that he shared, the time is more important than money. That he wants to spend the rest of his days focus on the blessings of his life. That's a message we can all take to the bank even on Sundays, to incorporate more into our lives. So, Larry, I just want to thank you for that incredible conversation. For you, the listening audience, I just want to leave two prompt reflection questions here at the end. The first one is where in your leadership might your need to be needed be getting in the way of somebody else's growth? And two, uh, what would become possible for others if you no longer needed to be at the center of the process and indispensable? As we close, again, just a big shout out to Larry for joining me today. I'm so grateful for his friendship, his mentorship, and his example of what it means to show up in the lives of those who live in his community, both adults and youth alike. My thanks as always to Omar for producing this episode. With about four episodes remaining in this 52-part series, I'm beginning to think more seriously about what might come next. As I prepare to bring this series to a close and turn my full attention to the final edits of my book on the same title, I find myself wondering whether the podcast should end right here or continue in a new form. I'm open to keeping it going, but I would genuinely value hearing from those of you who've been avid listeners along the way. Are there themes, guests, or directions you would like to hear explored? I'm honestly very open to hearing anything you might have to say as a way to contemplate whether or not there's a new iteration of this in the future. If you would like to share anything with me, I'd be grateful to hear it. You can reach me at Don at Carpenter Company Consulting.com. And of course, if you found something meaningful in this conversation today and you were inspired, just like I was, please share it with somebody. Honestly, what a gift. What a gift to hear some of the incredible points that Larry had to make. Share it with just one person. It would mean the world to me. As always, thanks for listening. And please remember that the journey of leadership begins with this.