Minister, teacher, nonprofit executives, and small business. You can get more information about Ed and read some of its content and also find out about this new book and get a copy at edbrenneger.com. That's ed. Ed, welcome to the Christianity of Business Podcast.
SPEAKER_02Thank you, Jared. Glad to be with you today.
SPEAKER_01So as we're trying to bridge the gap between the sacred secular divide, we're always fascinated when we hear about pastors who have gone into business and worked in the church as sort of a microcosm to help us understand how to work this thing out, this issue of how do we uh incorporate our faith into our work. So, what has been your experience with working in both the marketplace and as a pastor? And when did you really understand that God wanted to be involved in your work and business?
SPEAKER_02Well, I began as a Presbyterian minister back in the early 80s. And I was doing community ministry in Atlanta, doing urban community ministry, and um I got um tapped to be a part of a business association board as their clergy rep representative, and I saw something in the way this organization functioned, which I had never seen before, which was 45 people all working together, uh, very, very committed, all as contributors. And it wasn't like there was one person who was the boss and a whole bunch of followers, it was really everybody working together. And I thought, well, this is what real real leadership is all about, and this is what I want to be about. This is what I want to do, and I want to see if I can um encourage this kind of leadership. And at that point in time it was in churches, but then it just kept expanding because I kept seeing that there were places in um businesses and in schools and in colleges and in local communities where they had they all had the same kind of problems regarding the way they functioned and the way the way leadership happened. So that my conclusion was that there is this difference between churches, Christian organizations, and and secular organizations, but at the structural level of organizations, they're all the same. They all had the same kinds of problems. They're all had problems of lack of clarity about their purpose, and they have problems with their relationships, and they have problems with how they function. And I have been working at that kind of uh the nexus of those three areas uh for in particular for the last 25 years.
SPEAKER_01I'm curious, with this group of business people, I think you said there were 45, 46 of them, what was your role as the clergy rep? Why did they want or feel like they needed a clergy rep?
SPEAKER_02Um, I think because there were 13 congregations in this neighborhood uh in downtown Atlanta called Midtown, um, 12 churches and one Jewish synagogue. And they they were uh treating us like we were another organization, like an arts association or a or a homeowners association or any other kind of organization who had uh a claim upon the health and welfare of that community, of that neighborhood. And so they invited us to be a part of that. That's how that happened.
SPEAKER_01And and so this was uh an organization focused on community renewal, community flourishing.
SPEAKER_02Yes. Umsociation that had a broader mandate than simply how do we promote businesses. They were gonna change their community because it had gone through some really disastrous times in the 60s, a lot of drug abuse, a lot of prostitution, a lot of things like that were um resident in this neighborhood. And what we were doing was we're gonna change that. We were gonna elevate the quality of life, and and um, and that's what that's what happened. It was an amazing um thing to see and be a part of.
SPEAKER_01Beautiful. We may circle back to this in in just a minute, pun, pun intended there, talking about your circle of impact. But you said in your book the conventional view, which is the conventional view of leadership you're talking about, which has generally been accepted by everyone for decades, sees leadership as a rare, elite, and even heroic function of a select group of people who tend to run organizations. I see something very different. What do you mean by that statement?
SPEAKER_02What I mean by that is that um that people have um bought into this idea that whoever's in charge is somehow um the right person to be in charge, and that they have all the knowledge, all the wisdom, and they are somehow um different from everyone else in the organization to the degree that they really stand above everyone. And what I found was that there were a lot of people in the middle and lower echelons of organizations whose effect upon the organization was of such a significant degree that they should be considered leaders, and that they their leadership actually was the backbone of a company or the church rather than whoever was in charge. And and so and I would, you know, I would introduce myself to uh business owners, for example, and I'd ask questions, and I'd find that their knowledge of a lot of what was going on in their business was kind of missing. And I didn't understand how, okay, this person who's supposed to know all this doesn't know things. And and what I realized was that there was this uh almost celebrity kind of status that that came with being the owner or the boss or the president, and it was not serving the company well, and it didn't serve the the senior leader well either, because it placed all kinds of responsibility on them to be perfect and to have all the answers, and it removed responsibility from the other people in the organization from being fully engaged with the life of the organization where their contributions would make a difference. So I I found this as a kind of a brokenness, a fragmentation that needed to be healed. And out of that, I mean, this this didn't happen overnight, this was a long period of years of kind of coming to see this, but what I came to uh identify is that all leadership begins with personal initiative to create impact that makes a difference that matters. And what I mean by that is that if you're the senior leader or you're the um the janitor, you still have to take personal initiative to do your job well. And you have to be feel you have to feel that this job is a responsibility that you have to do something better than maybe what it was when you entered into the job. And and that if you could change an organization where the structure of the organization was oriented towards equipping people and supporting people to solve problems and to innovate new ideas, new ways of doing things, and to communicate that you would see a transformation take place. And I saw this in a company I worked with about 10 years ago where they had gone through kind of an Enron-like scandal, and people were kind of very isolated into their little compartments. There was there were these silos and there were these hard barriers between levels of the company, and it had really only served the top-level executives. And and as a result, they took um uh advantage of that and and made some fairly unethical decisions which hurt the company, both in terms of that was financial, but even more so in terms of the status of the company in their local community. New leadership comes in and they want to start in a different place. They wanted to start with a values process. And so I came in to help them write a values statement that then became the backbone of a new management supervisory training program, which was to elevate the lowest Son all the way up to the top of the company to take personal initiative to solve problems primarily. But what it actually did was build trust between all the people in the company because now everybody knew where they stood, but they also knew that they were free to become contributors to the betterment of the company. And as a result, this company, in over a couple of years, went from having this kind of uh hard, hard relationship with their community as kind of an embarrassment to being recognized by Forge Magazine as one of the top 100 most trustworthy companies in the nation. And it happened not overnight, but over a period of a couple of years, because what the commitment was was we're going to elevate the leadership capacity of the company by equipping all our people to lead from the function that they have as people in the company. So it was not no longer a title that someone had, it was actually how they were to function in their job.
SPEAKER_01And I'm I'm going back to your statement from the book where you said that the problem that really kind of holds up this process of people being empowered, equipped to really take that personal initiative, to make that impact, is that they view leadership as a rare, elite, and even heroic function of a select group of people who tend to run organizations. I think that's kind of the way, if we were to just look at a microcosm of this to help people understand what you're talking about. Uh I grew up my dad as a pastor, and and you see this at mealtimes in particular. When it's time to give the blessing, who is everybody looking to uh to pray in public and to pronounce the blessing over the food? It is without exception almost going to be whoever went to seminary, you know, is uh ordained to officiate weddings and funerals. It's gonna be that after. And you know, that may or may not have been some of the reason why those businessmen felt like they needed to appoint a quote unquote clergy rep. Um, but don't you do you think this is an issue for in what is holding business people back from living out their faith in the marketplace? Is that they feel like they don't have that title as a pastor or a missionary. And and so therefore they just kind of need a rep to do a clergy rep to do those quote unquote ministry spiritual things, and they just are about the business of making money.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think that there's a lot of truth to that. Um, I think this this is an older way of looking at leadership. And if you go back over the last 200 years or even more, and you look at the books that were written about leadership, you'll see that there were always these biographies of of these heroic individuals as if they were the only ones who made a company or a church great. And we all know that that's not really the case, that there are all these people who make organizations function, and there was no recognition that they even existed in many of these biographies. And these were the kind of the first things I began to read when I became interested in leadership. And I and it really put me off because I realized because there are all these people that had influence upon my life, impacted my life, who were not the heads of organizations. And there were other people that were the heads of organizations, but they would have never said to me, You, I want to influence you because I am the head of the organization. They wanted to influence me and make me better because they had a relationship with me. And I think that's where the difference is. And when that that relationship is informed by values which really bring people together to say, we have a calling here, we have a mission that we share together, and ever and we need everybody to be contributing for that mission to be fulfilled, then we have a totally different uh mindset, and we and we see um say the pastor of the church becoming just one of the ministers that everyone, uh one person in the midst of all the ministry that goes on, and they have their role to play, but it's not the it's not the celebrity role or the heroic role, because maybe the person who is doing the hardest work or the most sacrificial work in the church or in that business is actually the heroic person, but they don't get recognized for it. So I think it's you know, there's kind of a celebrity culture that which has grown up around leadership, and and I'm really challenging that because I see it in in people who would never I mean I let me give you an example of what I mean. So I meet people all the time and I'm engaging them in conversation all the time, and I'm asking things like, Do you see yourself as a leader? And this this I began to do back in the 80s and 90s. And and what I would the pushback I would get from people, don't call me a leader. Don't call me a leader. I don't want to be called a leader, I don't want that. And I would ask them why, because I see something in you that is is leadership-like. And they said, No, I don't want the responsibility and I don't want the attention, I don't want the target on my back. And so they were seeing leadership primarily as this role within an organizational structure. And what I was recognizing in them was that they were, it was a part of their character as a person, that the the effectiveness, the influence, the impact they were having was about who they were, not the title that they had. And and so I said, Well, you are you are doing these things in your community, and you're making a difference that makes that matters in your community, and I would call that leadership. And they would say, Well, yeah, that is leadership, but don't call me a leader. So there was this brokenness, this uh divide between the title, the label, and the way people want to live. And and so what I'm trying to do is encourage people to say, recognize that you have leadership capacity by merely taking personal initiative to do something that really matters for your church or for your community, for your business, for your school. And when you do that, that's what leadership really is. And I think that's really where the future of leadership needs to needs to go.
SPEAKER_01Do you think some of the problem is that we have downplayed and even ridiculed the idea of management, managers? Because you if if as you say, and I believe it's true that leadership begins with personal responsibility, aren't we really just talking about good management of what God has given to us? I mean, isn't there a little bit of an obsession with the idea of leadership in our culture? I mean, why can't why can't we think of ourselves first of all as managers, being personally responsible for whatever is in my sphere of of influence, whatever is in my sphere of responsibility, I need to focus on being a good manager. Because, you know, back in the 90s, and and I think even now today, there is this pitting of leadership against management. Do you see that?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well, I I do see that there's a difference between a manager in an organizational structure and a leader. But I also see, and I I agree with you in what you're saying, is that the work that we all do, whether it's volunteer work or it's work in our in the businesses where we work, we are managing responsibility that has been given to us. And the question is, do we accept that responsibility as a, in a sense, kind of like a calling, that we have found ourselves in a position where um we we're doing something that matters to us, first of all. Um maybe you're a teacher in a school and and what you really love is the the the opportunity to influence the minds of young children. Okay. Well, you manage the work so that your relationship to those kids can have its greatest uh possible impact. So yes, there's a there's a and maybe management is is one word, but it maybe it's discipline, that we we are disciplined in the way we manage the work that we do. But I I want to encourage the idea that um people of all kinds can decide to take personal initiative to make a difference and not merely take on what has been given to them to do. I want them to take personal initiative that rises out of some sense of calling or some desire that they have that has been a nurt uh kind of a nurturing inside of them for maybe months or maybe years, which says, I want um to to make a change. And let me give you an example. Um I hired uh a year ago, I hired a virtual assistant uh named Natalie, and she was she was fantastic. And she came to me through uh an organization called Belay Solutions, and she was fantastic, and um she was going managing my email and managing my contact list and managing my um my my calendar manage and she was um managing my travel uh schedule. She had all these roles that she was playing in my little business that I have. And um I had her read the book, you know, the manuscript of the book, because I respected her and I wanted to know what she thought about it. And and at some point, at one point she says, I think I need to leave you. I said, Why? He says, Because what you have shown me in this book is that I have a calling, and my calling is to go disciple women through my church. And so and we had that conversation in the morning, and and it at one o'clock that afternoon, she sent me her termination email saying, I've I've quit and now I'm starting my ministry today. And you know, and I you know, I missed her because she was really fantastic in all that she did for me, but I was so thrilled that here this woman had had taken initiative to begin something that had been inspired in her by something that I had written. That's what I see happening in the world. I see there are a lot of people who are waiting for someone to give them permission to do something, and they're just been kind of languishing in their life. And and whether this is in a church or in a business, I think it's the same that that God has for something in all of us, and it that is calling us to give ourselves to something that matters. And uh it is connected to a purpose, it is connected to values, it is connected to relationships with people, and it all needs some kind of structure that we manage so that the opportunity to have that impact really can be fulfilled.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And uh and it's pretty, it's it's an amazing thing to see. I think that's how it's someone.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think that's why it's so critical to get your marching orders from God instead of just waiting on your boss to give them to you. Because when you when you have a guy and he gives you a calling, you are a steward, you are a manager of that calling and the gift, an ability that he's given to you in order to fulfill that calling. And so to bury that, you know, like a parallel of talent is bad stewardship. It's it's bad management. But there is so much leadership that happens as a result of being a steward and so much impact that you talk about of being a good steward of what it is that you have uh been given. And uh and you don't have to have the title in order to do that. So what I'm curious, would you say that would you say that leadership it has that we've as a culture become more leadership rich or more leadership poor? I I saw you made that the uh the phrase leadership rich starved. Over the last 30 or so years, would you say that we become more leadership rich or leadership poor?
SPEAKER_02Um I would I would characterize it this way, and I use the the phrase leadership starved. I think there's a lot of content about leadership. There's a lot of books about leadership leadership.
SPEAKER_01There's a massive amount of content.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. But to me, I I want to look at the structure of organizations and see what's happening there, see the structure of churches and see what's happening there. And and there, I still think people are waiting for someone to say, go do something. You you are a leader. And in some places they're really committed to that, and they are equipping people to, in my terminology, to take personal initiative to create impact. But in a lot of places, they're they're just talking about leadership. It's a it's it's another form of um marketing in a sense, and and so it's just a it's a lot of it's a lot of words with a lot with not a lot of effect. Uh I'm I'm looking at what changes when someone begins to talk about leadership, say the pastor for church begins to talk about leadership. Here's what I'm looking for. I want to look at what changes in the life of the church. I want to change, I want to see what changes in the perception of the people as to who they are. I want to see what happens in their relationships, not only to each other, but to their neighborhood and their community and the other organizations in the world that they live in. And I want to see what's happening in the structure of that church. Because if you're equipping people to lead, then the structure of the church is going to change. Because what you're going to have is a lot more people doing things that are probably not just fitting into the normal structure of what most churches have. So they're having to adjust and they're having to adapt. And so there's a change process that begins to happen. And I really do see this change process as almost a grassroots kind of emergence of leadership, coming out of the of of the um the boundaries and the periphery of churches and businesses to strengthen the center of the church, the center of the business. Because people are now taking initiative to do things to say to serve their clients better or to serve their members better in ways that maybe wasn't even on uh someone's uh checklist uh previously. So that's that's what I'm looking for. I'm looking for what is changing once people begin to get inspired by the leadership. And it's far more than just having a clear ideology about leadership.
SPEAKER_01It seems like a big part of what has really muddied the waters for the concept of leadership is when humanism comes into the equation. Now it's I'm a leader because of I want to be important. I'm a lead, I want to be a leader because I want to matter. I want to be a leader because I want people to do what I tell them to do. I want to be a leader because I don't want to follow anybody, you know? And that that's all very, it's all very humanistic. And I think there's still much of that that's kind of flooded the conversation about leadership. Not that people would come out and you know say it right off, but I think that's kind of what is underlying a lot of people's worldview. Do you think we'll ever come to a point where we will need to adopt a new term uh and kind of move away from emphasizing and telling everybody they need to be leaders or that they are leaders and maybe start to emphasize another component of what we're really uh going after? If if it is if it is management, if it is personal responsibility, like what shouldn't that be maybe the first or would there be another term that we may have to start using down the road if things continue the way they have been?
SPEAKER_02Um I I would be fine if there was another term with it. But here here's what I think is is the greater problem, and that is that there is this equation, um this this connection between what people see as a leader and what we see is the expression of ego in people. And um what I'm what I'm promoting is not egotism. It is this is not about the individual uh presenting themselves to the world as some kind of uh answer answer person. I am talking about people deciding that they're going to live their lives to bring beneficial change to the world. And with that, in many respects and in many cases, they um decide to become very sacrificial in what they do because they recognize that the goal that they have, the calling they have, the mission that they have, the purpose they have requires them to be a different person than what they have been. And I, you know, I have this uh I've had this conversation with um a friend here about egotism off and on over the years, and her point is that uh people with high ideals and high purpose are become egotistic. And my answer to her was no, it's the exact opposite, because egotists set really low goals so that they their egos can be fulfilled. And it's people who have really high ideals and high ambition to bring um benefit to the world, so to do things that are making a difference that matters, they have to put aside their ego because it's going to require that they uh partner with other people, with other organizations to achieve the big goals that they have. And let me give you my own uh personal uh take on this. So as I began to develop this idea, I realized that I needed to have um what uh the management writer Jim Collins calls a big, hairy, audacious goal. And and I and I was thinking what what could be a really big goal that it is impossible for me to do on my own? It's impossible if I simply practice leadership as a form of egotistical um self-expression. And I decided that my goal was to move 1% of the world's population to take personal initiative to make a difference that matters in their local communities. And we're talking about seven, oh I think it's uh seven seventy-five million people. Now, that's that's a goal that's far beyond anything I can do by myself alone. So I have to join with people in in such a way that they join me, and together we decide we're going to have an impact upon the world. And we're gonna move other people to join us by encouraging them to take personal initiative to have an impact in their communities. So I think this is what leadership really is intended to be, and these kind of false notions that have born been born out of the kind of the business literature of the past century, uh, which I think has put many businesses in in very difficult positions of of uh managing uh kind of um uh creating uh uh structures where people are not very well appreciated and they're used. And I've seen I've seen a lot of that. So I'm really saying that that we can have another line, you know, we can have another word, but until we do, let's talk about leadership as something which results in some kind of change that I'm creating rather than something which is primarily reflected of someone's ego.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I mean, so so let's say I'm going to work, which I'm at work now. Um do I need to have this mindset right now that I'm a leader, that I go into this task, I go into this meeting, I'm a leader, I'm a leader. I'm going into uh you know a conference, I'm a leader. Is that is that the way people need to be thinking?
SPEAKER_02Um actually, no. I know I know that surprises you may surprise you. No, actually, I'd rather than be looking for opportunities to make a difference, to help someone, to I and I think it starts with really small things. For example, if if someone has never taken personal initiative, they've always just been kind of followed whatever the group has always done, and and I'm asking them to take some kind of personal initiative for the very first time in their life, what does that look like? And I would say do something really simple, like if there's a an elderly woman who lives across the street who's kind of lonely, go over and visit her once a week for the next three months. Just go over and spend an hour with her, just listening to her, listening or short, take her some flowers or take her to lunch or something. Something small like that is a place to begin. Because it's not really small, it makes a difference in a person's life, and then begin to uh move out from there. Let me give you an ex another example. Um, you know, the there's a guy named Mike Rowe who has who had a TV series called Dirty Jobs, and then he created a Facebook series called Returning the Favor. And these stories that Mike has are of people who have been moved to do things in their community, and no one else has said, Well, you need to go do this. So there's no obligation, they're just doing this out of the goodness of their heart. And uh one of these shows that I saw was about a guy um in uh Twin Falls, Idaho, who um this is six or seven years ago, um, in there in his church, they um had found out that there was this family whose children didn't have beds. And so they they bought some lumber and they made bunk beds for this family. And they had some lumber left over. He says, Well, why don't we just make some more bunk beds and find some other families? And that was the beginning of a of a business, a ministry that this guy began, which now is in um at the point of a video that they produced for Facebook. There was nine other cities that had these organizations which were making bunk beds for children that didn't have beds. But it all came because he decided, well, let's take these this the rest of this wood and do something with it. So it tells it starts small and it grows. And I think that's the way we've we discovered that the effect of our lives is one of leadership. If we ever call ourselves leader or not, really doesn't matter. It's really what is the effect that we're having with our lives.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. It and it does that, that's really helpful. I'm glad you phrased it like that. It it helps me to think of it more as it's about take initiative versus go lead something. Because leading something seems very overwhelming to people, I think. It has so much baggage with it. But take initiative, it's like, wow, I can walk across the room, I can walk across the street, I can go and you know, sign up for that thing or whatever it is. I mean, just the small uh and then the impact, it might not look like you're gonna be up on a platform speaking to thousands of people, uh, but it you know, it could mean that you know, it it could involve any sort of it could involve animals, you know, it could involve students, it could involve um, you know, you're you're shifting uh an industry in a in a certain way. Just by taking a simple or inventing something. I mean, that's if I'm an inventor, I think I would meet the criteria of what you're talking about in the circle of impact, although you could argue that this is this is leadership. Um, but we have to get in, you know, kind of put our academic hats on to grapple with that. But I think people can wrap their minds around just go take initiative.
SPEAKER_02That's where it all begins. Um, I think we need to get away from labels uh and titles because they tend to marginalize us. And so, you know, in a say in an organization where that person is recognized as leader, well, it means I'm not a leader. But if we just said, well, that person is in their role as the CEO is doing these things to make a difference for everyone else so that they can do their job well, then I can say, well, this is what I'm doing in my job, in my role, so that I can help others to do their job well. When we see that our our efforts are to create some kind of change, then we can see the impact that our our lives have. And when we see the impact of our lives have, I I believe what we're seeing is is um for many people it is is the beginning picture of why we were created by God. When we see that we can make a difference, we see how uh I think God's sense of human humanity placed into our lives can have an effect which is not just social or not just something, but it really means something on at a greater level. I think it transcends the moment, I think it transcends our lives. You know, and I I think about people who have made a difference to me, um who whose character and the way they lived and the the way they related to me changed how I viewed the world and it changed the way I saw myself. And you know, in many cases, they never knew that they had that effect upon me, um, but they did. And, you know, I I was remiss and not telling them because I was, you know, particularly when I was younger, I just didn't know how to do that. So part a part of this, Darren, I think, is it's not just that we're taking personal initiative to to make a difference that matters, but we're also recognizing in other people the things that they're doing, and we're saying, thank you for doing that. It's a place that we can join ourselves together in a community where we are expressing gratitude for to one another for I saw you uh help that person with their groceries out of the car. And I just wanted to say that really made a difference to me. That really it it made me want to do that with you, you know, something like that. So it's not that we're just doing this kind of in isolation from everyone else. It is really that we see each other doing that and we should recognize that and say, thank you. Because now I am I am more motivated to want to go do similar things as you were doing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And I love that visual of the circle of impact because you know, I've I've heard the teaching. In fact, I've taught it myself that you know, you don't want to be a pyramid style of leadership where you know there's the the person at the top that's in in charge of everybody, and then everybody kind of work your way down, but now you need to flip the pyramid and you're at the bottom, and now everybody else is you know up at the top. But that's not really it either. Because you know, a pyramid can't stand up on the top. It's got to be flat, right? But a circle is is a much better visual, a much better analogy for leadership, I think. Uh uh because I mean plus the circle can actually go to the circle, can roll, the circle can move, the circle can is dynamic, you know, whereas the the pyramid or the upside-down pyramid are just um just very, very weak.
SPEAKER_02And the and the beauty of it, this is the beauty of the circle, is that you can enter at any point on the circle, and all you have to do is complete the circle to pull it all together and make it whole.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And um, and so that's I it's um so that my model, the circle of impact, which is built around these three dimensions of ideas, relationships, and structure, is a has become a really powerful problem-solving methodology. So, and it can happen on a personal level. So you just take something that is a concern, something of pressing in on you, and you simply ask, well, is this an idea problem? Meaning, am I is this just something about is this just something that I'm not clear about? Or is this a relationship problem where there's a breakdown in trust and respect and communication between me and someone else? Or is this a structural problem where really how things are are organized to function is broken and it's not working? Well, regardless of which it is, all three of those become the contributors to the solution. So it's not if you have a broken structure, you just work on the structure. No, you look at what is it, what are the ideas, what is that we need to bring into this, and what how can we marshal the relationships to fix this together? And all of a sudden you see that these three things work together in a way which is uh a beautiful way of bringing whole a program or a church or a business which has been broken. So what yeah, and one of the things that and I say this to business leaders in particular, but I think it's also true for pastors. You know, so often the organization of a business or church is organized around the senior person being the delegator of work task, uh, responsibility to people. And so everybody is responsible up to this person, and this person really lives almost without some kind of um responsibility to them, unless they choose that. And so what what I see is that this the role of the senior leader is shifting from being that of the delegator of work to now being the facilitator of everyone else's leadership, of their leadership impact. And so they create they recreate the structure of the organization or recreate the structure of the church so that everyone is being freed, being released and equipped and supported to go out and take personal initiative to make a difference. Um and so that becomes a different role for the senior leader than anything we've ever seen in um, particularly in the last in the modern age, in the the way modern businesses have function. And it puts them in in what um Robert Greenleaf called a servant leadership role. And I think that is going to increasingly become important because um in businesses, every business leader knows that talent is is an important asset that they need to acquire. And increasingly, not having a culture which is leadership starved, meaning you're not free to lead, you're not free to take personal initiative, is a detriment if you're trying to acquire high talent people. And and so you have to change that culture so that you're equipping people to lead, and that becomes where what we talked began with as a leader-rich culture. And we see that leader-rich culture in the personal initiative of all the people doing their small and large tasks of things which make a difference.
SPEAKER_01Yes. Excellent. So edbrenniger.com is the website. Is that the best place for people to go get the book?
SPEAKER_02Uh, yes. Or you can go to Amazon.com. It's there for pre-sale now. And uh yeah, you can you can find it there by you can Google my name or you can uh do a search of Circle of Impact at Amazon, you'll find it. Uh, or you can find it through my website. It's uh as easy as anything there. And um, and they can uh if they're interested in talking with me uh about this, uh they they can email me at ed at adbrenniger.com and I would love to have uh conversations with people and see where we can encourage greater uh leadership impact in the world.
SPEAKER_01All right. Well, edbrenneger.com, that's br-e-n-e-g A-R dot com. Ed, this has been a fascinating and helpful conversation. I know for me personally, and I'm sure it has been for our listeners, and may God continue to bless your family and your business and just book on everything else you've put your heart into.
SPEAKER_02Thank you, Sarah. It's been great. And I wish you well in all your endeavors and may you have impact in ways that you cannot imagine now, and maybe fast.