Episode 11: Leadership Is an Inside Job

What does real leadership actually look like?

In this episode of The Navigating Leaders Podcast, Gabriel Griess explores a powerful truth: Leadership doesn’t begin with influence, authority, or position; it begins inside of you.

Drawing inspiration from historical and spiritual leaders such as Gandhi, Christ, Nelson Mandela, and Mother Teresa, Gabriel examines what made their leadership so impactful. Their secret wasn’t power or visibility. It was alignment. Their thoughts, words, and actions were congruent, and that alignment built deep trust and influence that continue to shape the world today.

Gabriel challenges listeners to reflect on the difference between modern “headline leadership” and the kind of leadership that flows from integrity, authenticity, and purpose. He explains why trust is foundational to leadership and why it’s impossible to lead people well if our inner life is chaotic or disconnected from our actions.

In this episode, Gabriel explores:

• Why leadership begins with mastering the inner world
• How thoughts shape behavior and influence
• The incredible power and responsibility of our words
• Why actions ultimately reveal who we really are
• The importance of living with alignment and authenticity
• How awareness allows us to break free from past patterns
• Why every moment offers the opportunity to choose differently

Gabriel also reminds us that leadership isn’t about perfection; it’s about progress and awareness. When our thoughts, words, and actions come into alignment with our values and vision, we naturally become people others can trust and follow.

Because the most powerful leadership in the world doesn’t start on a stage.

It starts within.

Leadership is an inside job.

RESOURCES

• Website: navigatingleaders.com 
• The Results Tree (Available April 7): https://shop.harpandswordmedia.com/products/the-results-tree 
• Napoleon Hill: Think and Grow Rich: https://a.co/d/0hQmc4pg
• Viktor Frankl: Man’s Search for Meaning: https://a.co/d/03veF2cJ

SCRIPTURES & QUOTES

• Proverbs 25:28: “A person without self-control is like a city with broken walls.”
• Matthew 12:34: “For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.”
• Napoleon Hill: “If you fail to control your mind, you may be sure you will control nothing else.”

Gabriel also references several historical figures as examples of leaders whose thoughts, words, and actions were aligned:

• Mahatma Gandhi
• Jesus Christ
• Nelson Mandela
• Mother Teresa
• Viktor Frankl

CONNECT WITH GABRIEL

🎥 YouTube: @navigatingleaders
📸 Instagram: @navigatingleaders

👍 Facebook: @navigatingleaders

🎵 TikTok: @navigatingleaders

🗣️ LinkedIn: @navigatingleaders

====================

ABOUT GABRIEL

Gabriel Griess is a retired US Air Force officer, the CEO of Excel Medical Staffing and MedForceX, and the founder of Navigating Leaders. A graduate of the elite Air Force Weapons School, he has spent decades leading teams in high-pressure environments and equipping others to reach their full potential. As a combat veteran and an entrepreneur, Gabriel helps individuals cultivate self-awareness, resilience, and the ability to create lasting impact.

An internationally sought-after keynote speaker, he addresses audiences on personal transformation, strategic leadership, and veteran empowerment. The Results Tree is the framework he lives by, and when applied, it will unearth your destiny.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

What does leadership look like? Who do you choose to follow? My name is Gabriel Brees, I'm the founder and host of Navigating Leaders, and I'm honored to have you here today. In this episode, we're going to look at leadership both from an earthly perspective and a heart-centered or godly perspective, and tease out what it means to look at either of them and which one maybe has a greater impact. So in some instances, I think you've probably seen people living completely out of balance. Folks who, in some ways, maybe selling their souls for a victory in one domain in their life, where they're putting all their eggs in one basket, where maybe it's their business, maybe it's their athletic ventures, maybe it's uh their efforts in community service or whatever, but but they're leaving other elements of their life uh unnurtured, unfed, uncared for. And so what I'm looking to do is to create a cautionary tale about that way of living. And I propose that leadership is an inside job, right? It begins with who we are on the inside. And there are many amazing examples, right? We have Gandhi, we got Christ, we got Mendelo, we got Mother Teresa. And we're going to come back and look at them and use them as a template, as a touchstone as to maybe what really matters in life. And so Indira Gandhi was once asked why her husband, Mahatnam Gandhi, was so powerful, so followed, so impactful, especially when he preached and led a life of nonviolence and resistance against the British Empire. And what she distilled down was that his thoughts, words, and actions were in alignment. Well, think about that. Right? Step one, thoughts. His thoughts were in alignment with the words that came out of his mouth. And the actions that people experienced from him made sense. Right? We've been around folks where they say one thing and do another. Or you know they're thinking one thing because they may have shared something with you about what they were thinking and then said something entirely different. And you're like, hey, this doesn't make sense. And it's hugely off-putting, right? You're like, it makes you uneasy. It makes you wonder what are they saying or thinking about me? Um, there's a there's like this natural feeling of foreboding or or wariness, or like, hey, I don't, I don't know that I can trust this person. And when we're talking about leadership, trust is paramount, trust is foundational, trust is a must, um, which is different than management, right? You can manage people and maybe they do or don't trust you, but it's really difficult to lead somebody, to have them follow, to have them invest wholeheartedly into the vision and the mission and the purpose without trust. And so that trust begins with authenticity, with you being you, with you showing up as yourself in a way that the other person or the other people can experience and feel and understand you. And so what does it look like? I'm glad you asked. We're gonna dig into that. But we start with thoughts, right? Thoughts that's that narrative that's rolling around in your head, right? And and I often say to folks that the six inches between your ears is some of the most difficult territory uh on the planet to conquer and to control and to manage. And in fact, some amazing tools when it comes to your thoughts are first, your thoughts are not you. Understand that, right? Lots of things are going to come through our heads. Some is gonna be because of what we read that day, what we heard on the radio, uh, past experiences, past conversations, uh, the devil, right? Our shadow self, our dark side, all those things have the ability to conjure thoughts in our minds. And those thoughts don't make you wrong, they don't make you bad, they don't make you evil. Now, acting upon some thoughts, certainly, yeah, they can lead you down that path. But first and foremost, a thought that jumps in your mind, just acknowledge it, right? And if it is not you, if it is not aligned with who you are or where you're going or who you be, then just let it go. Surrender it, right? Sometimes we have things that are reoccurring, or uh almost characters, if you will, in our minds, right? And uh, and those are helpful sometimes to say, hey, thank you for sharing. Not today. Or the exit's over there, feel free to go. Uh, sometimes it's helpful to name them, right? You could even create characters, right? Hey, that's Joe. Joe, no offense to any Joe's listening, right? But hey, not today, Joe, right? And so beginning with understanding, experiencing, being present, and and and dismissing those thoughts that don't serve you so that you can quiet the mind and you can get into a place where you become familiar with you again. You become familiar with who I am, what I'm about, what I'm creating, where I'm going, what my purpose is. Like God made each of us for very specific intentional purposes here. Uh, and we have a mission, we have a role to play. And quieting the mind and getting to a place where we can connect with that is absolutely essential. So Proverbs uh 25-28 says a person without self-control is like a city with broken walls. Right. So if I can't control my mind, if I can't control my mind or still my mind, then I have no defense against anything else coming in, right? Like there'll be leaks, and you know, you imagine, you know, being an old military guy, right? You imagine that city wall with a breach and the defense that the the citizens and the people expect that wall to provide, and it's gone. Uh and so uh controlling our thoughts is is absolutely essential. And Napoleon Hill states if you fail to control your mind, uh, you may be sure you will control nothing else. Right. And so even in even in the business world, we understand that we we've got to still the mind, we've got to get it under control in order to be able to take that first step to authenticity, to being, to being who we are. And so, so the invitation is to manage our thoughts. And I add a word here, gracefully, right? For for folks who are beginning this journey of of trying to categorize and still and expel squatters who may be living between your ears, uh, or voices from family members, current past, or present. Um, you know, we've we've got to be graceful, right? This isn't this isn't necessarily something easy, uh, but it's hugely, hugely valuable. And so my invitation is to connect with what's happening in your mind and those thoughts that don't support you, don't support your vision, don't support your purpose, is find a graceful way to to exit them and be kind with yourself, right? Uh if this is new, you're gonna screw up, you're gonna fail, right? Because we all do and we're all broken, and that's okay, right? When we fail, what do we do? We dust ourselves up, we get after it again. You know, get back on the bike, get back on the horse. Um, there are thousands of uh analogies on how to do this, right? But commit to beginning and commit to beginning again until you get it. Uh step two, right? The thoughts, words, and actions. Our words uh are infinitely powerful, infinitely powerful, right? And so much has been written on words and the use of words and the impact of words. Um, you know, we could we could do hours of conversations around words. But but as a as a uh as an experiment or example, I invite you uh to complete these phrases so long as you're in a safe place, right? If you're driving, uh focus on the road. Uh if you're running on your treadmill, you probably can handle this or you're walking. But but finish these sentences either out loud uh if you're alone, people might think you're a little odd if you're listening to your earbuds and you're saying this, all right? So finish these in your own mind or as you see fit. If you don't have something nice to say, if you don't have something nice to say, right, finish it. How about this one? Do unto others. Do unto others as you'd have done unto you, right? Or how about a falsehood?

unknown 9:59

Right?

SPEAKER_00 10:00

A falsehood around words like this. Sticks and stones may break my bones. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me. And we know that is absolutely not true, right? Words are wickedly powerful or wickedly amazingly inspiring, helpful, uplifting, life-giving. And so I want you to think about words, how you use them, and if they truly are a reflection of what your intention is, or are you on automatic? And what I'll tell you is God thought about it. He thought a lot about it when he when he produced this, right? When he produced this entire region that created speech, the larynx, the vocal cords, the tongue. He took all of it and he put it inside of a cage, right? A cage called your mouth, with teeth that bite, with lips that seal shut to keep it shut, so that you intentionally use your words and not just say whatever comes to mind, or to use those words for hurtful meaning, right? We've heard things like we have two ears and one mouth for a reason to listen more, to be present, right? And so uh Matthew 12, 34 speaks into the fact that words reveal your heart, right? It is that window. What comes out of your heart, what you reveal with your mouth is a lot of truth. Is a lot of truth. And the next step, then, right? So thoughts, words, and actions. Well, we know about actions, right? They speak louder than words, right? So you can stand on a stage, you can sit in front of a team in a meeting, a board meeting, uh, a huddle. Uh, you know, if you're a coach, uh if you're leading your family, what have you, you can say all sorts of things, but ultimately your actions speak louder than your words. And that's what people follow, right? They they follow the leader they can trust, they believe is authentic. They've said, hey, here's what we're gonna do, and then they go execute that. They go do that exact same thing, they take that exact same action. And so a question I have for you is how are your actions different in different situations? How are your actions different depending upon who you're around? And I would just invite you to look at that, right, as you go through your days, you go through your week, as we you know approach holidays and uh and and a lot of like legacy, family, a legacy energy, your past comes around. Uh, how do you respond? How do you act? What do your actions say? And are your actions congruent with who you are? Or are your actions living out your past? Are you recreating your past in behaviors and actions and places you visit, things you say, and ways you be? And so um our actions really are our calling card to the world. And so we honor, we we uh we put up on posters and write books about people who live congruently, where their thoughts, their words, and their actions are aligned. I mean, that is a uh an invitation, right? And and and I aspire to it. I would never even begin to say that I I I accomplish that. Uh I think I think very few people really live, you know, so much of their life in that way. But what a what a great ideal to to strive for, right? To be like a Gandhi, a Christ, a Mother Teresa, a Mandela. Like uh, you know, Victor Frankel, I've mentioned him before, and in his ability to let his internal compass, his internal way of being, control himself, right? A man who's in multiple concentration camps in World War II, all the reasons in the world to be a victim to his outside world chooses that that's not who I'm gonna be. Right? All of these people that I've listened chose, despite their surroundings, despite what couldn't be done or never had been done or never will be done, in the face of all that, still set out to accomplish the impossible and do it with grace and humility and kindness and love in their heart, and they win. And so we started this conversation around leadership, and it's hugely important. And so, as I described those folks just a moment ago, I ask you, how did that make you feel? Inside, when you think about the lives those people lived, the sacrifices they made, the impact, the fact that now hundreds or thousands of years later, in some cases, we're talking about these folks, right? What's the image in your mind and how does it make you feel? And the next thing I'd ask you is how does it compare to earthly leadership or social media leadership or what we see in the media or the news? What is being promoted to you? What is being fed to you? What are you death scrolling or doom scrolling through on your device? And what is it feeding you and telling you about leadership? What is it telling you about the way to live your life? And my hunch is unless you've really curated what you allow in to your mind through your ears and your eyes and your surroundings, it's probably less like Christ and Gandhi and Mandela and Mother Teresa, and more like picket, pick your reality TV show, right? Not right or wrong, none of this is to create judgment. What it's designed to do is to create awareness, to create a ripple, a window, an opening, an opportunity, a crack in the way you've shown up every other day for today to be different. Because every moment is different. Every moment is a chance to rewrite, to begin anew, to start over, to refresh, to rewrite. Because the past is gone. Your past is gone. It does not affect you, it does not keep you hostage unless you choose to let it do so. And there are some terrible stories out there, and a lot of things that would many people would say, Oh my yeah, I you should be held hostage to that. You're a victim to that. And yes, you were, and it's terrible, and I'm sorry. And there's evil in this world, and it does not, it does not need to be directed at you, and it shouldn't have been, and that is wrong, and I'm sorry. And in this moment, you can choose different. In this moment, you can choose different. That is a gift from God. So use it. Have the courage. Exercise that muscle. It may have atrophied, right? And it depends on the domain, and that's okay, right? But we're stepping out, we're taking the step, we're living boldly, we're awakening that vision. We are choosing differently because that is our right to choose differently. This is a continuous journey. It is ongoing. We are gonna have wins, we are gonna have losses, but it begins with you. It begins with you, with yourself, because this is an inside job. A job where we bring our thoughts, our words, and our actions into an alignment, anchor that to a vision, we set clear intentions, we take committed actions, and by golly, we see the results, and those results are a mirror for what we're doing in our life, and we get to begin again and begin again and begin again and begin again. Nothing is set. You have ultimate freedom to be curious and playful and happy and joyful and loving and abundant because that's what God wanted for you. It's what he intended for you, it's what he intended for all of us. There is enough for all of us. There is abundance and bounty and love for all of us. It isn't a zero-sum game, it isn't winner take all. It isn't if you get some, I lose some. It's not how it works. Overnight, I've watched billions of dollars be created. One day it's this way, the next day it's that. And you're like, whoa, where did that come from? Infinite. The supply, the abundance is infinite. So it begins with you. It is absolutely an inside job. Watch your thoughts, begin to manage them, watch your words, have them reflect who you are, watch your actions, and see if you are living the way your thoughts and your words align. Because I promise you, a life like Gandhi or Christ or Mandela or Teresa is far more valuable to your heart and your soul and your purpose than anything you see on social media or on reality TV. So let's get after it. Let's implement this, let's control our thoughts, mind our words, and live authentically with actions that inspire first ourselves and humbly lead others. So, leadership. How do you show up? Who do you be when it matters? It's an inside job. Thank you for joining us today. I invite you to share this, to like this, to subscribe. There's somebody out there that this resonates with. If it's you, great. I'm so glad you're here. But if it made you think of somebody else, please share this. That's how we grow. It's how the message gets out there. It is an honor to have you here. Thank you for joining the Navigating Leaders podcast. I'm your host, Gabriel Grease. Until next time, God bless.