the art of leadership network. - So at the age of nine, I tried to end my life, not even knowing what was on the other side of death, but I didn't think you're-- - Sorry, nine? - Yeah, yeah, nine years old. - What happened? - Well, I used to watch like scary films. I was by myself quite a bit, and I used to watch scary films. And I remember seeing a movie where this woman took a knife and she tried to slit her wrist and she died. And so I tried to do that, but that was unsuccessful. (upbeat music) - Welcome to the "Carry Newhof Leadership Podcast." I am so glad you joined us. I hope our episode helps you thrive in life and leadership today. And I've got Nona Jones back on the podcast. We are gonna talk about the impact of childhood trauma, top lessons from Facebook and Meta and how to examine your crew. Leadership motivation, it's gonna be a great conversation. Hey, I wanna thank Braden. Braden, thank you for your podcast review. You said all the episodes are so good, this podcast has changed my life over the years. I'm so glad to hear that, man. It's so humbling to know that this is what we get to do, that it's making a difference in your life. Will you leave a rating and review? I'll tell you, it helps us get the word out and reach new people, so thank you for doing that. And hey, thank you to our partners as well. Today's episode is brought to you by Sub Splash. You can empower your community with a platform made for church engagement. Go to subslash.com/carry to get $500 off when you sign up and Glue's Free Church Pulse Assessment will give you a crystal clear picture of how your church and people are really doing. Take it for free at stateofthechurch.com/carry. So Nona Jones is back on the podcast. She is a rare combination. She is a preacher, a business executive, an author, and an entrepreneur. She has held multiple executive leadership roles, including serving as Chief Content and Partnerships Officer for Uversion, head of Global Faith Partnerships at Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, Chief External Affairs Officer at Pace Center for Girls, Inc. and a whole lot more. She serves on the boards of Christianity today, magazine and Glue, a tech company that is building a first-of-its-kind platform to connect the entire ecosystem in the church. She's the author of several books and it's so good to have her back on the podcast today. Hey, as a church leader, you know, you're facing probably a rather unique challenge, right? More than half of Americans now never attend church. And many churches see 10 to 20% of their people leave each year. On the other hand, three out of four people still say that they want to grow spiritually and maybe open to hearing the gospel and visiting a church when invited. So what you need to do is you need to understand how to deepen engagement. And that's the key to opening your church's front door and creating a community that makes people want to stick. That's where Subsplash can help. Empower your community with a platform made for church engagement. They offer mobile apps, messaging, website, streaming, groups, giving, and a whole lot more. You can join more than 17,000 churches that partner with Subsplash to help make an impact in their communities. Go to subsplash.com/carry. That's subsplash.com/c-a-r-e-y and you will get $500 off when you sign up. Wouldn't it be great if you could actually know what's working in your church? Like, is it healthy? Are people growing? Are we resonating with people in the pews? Well, actually now you can know and I've got Brad Hill from Glue here to talk about the latest initiative to do just that. - Yeah, Kerry, you know, here at Glue, we're about to release a new tool and I really think this could be the most important thing pastors do all year. It's the free church pulse assessment. And what it's built for is to give you a crystal clear picture of how your people are really doing and how healthy your church really is. It's based on this measure what matters framework. And we didn't just come up with this in a vacuum at Glue. This is based on deep work by the Barna Group, the Harvard Center for Human Flourishing and teams here at Glue, all the best thinkers and researchers on biblical flourishing of people and communities. And as you roll this out, you can now make decisions based on knowing, not just based on guessing where your people are. And whether your church normally does assessments or not, my encouragement, my challenge, Kerry, for every pastor is think about putting this into your January calendar. So it's a really good time of year to do this and honestly could help set the course for your whole ministry year. And we have a free kit that literally makes this as simple as pressing the easy button. And you'll be joining over 50,000 churches who are gonna be using this to serve their people all through 2025. - To get a crystal clear picture of how your people are doing and how healthy your church really is, take the church pulse assessment for free at stateofthechurch.com/kerry. That's stateofthechurch.com/c-a-r-e-y. And now to my conversation with Nona Jones. Nona, it's good to have you back on the podcast. - It's always good to be here, Kerry. Thank you for having me. - Yeah, well, I've known you for years, but I did not know what you recently shared about your childhood. And I know we have a lot of leaders listening who've had very traumatic childhood experiences. Seems to be a pattern in leadership that a difficult childhood often propels you in the leadership. Can you tell us what happened in your childhood? I mean, there's more than one or two things, but do you mind sharing a little bit about your story? - Yeah, well, it's funny because when people ask me to describe myself, the best descriptor that I can give is that I'm a statistically improbable product of God's grace because the life that I live right now in no way aligns with what should have happened to me. To make a long story short, I was born to a mom who did not want to have children. My dad wanted to be a father. They had been married for 13 years, but when she found out she was pregnant with me, she was angry about the situation. My dad was ecstatic, but about halfway through her pregnancy, he started to have stomach pain and went to the doctor to get it diagnosed. And they came back with a terminal cancer diagnosis. And so, of course, that was devastating for him, but he lived until I was about almost two years old when he passed away. My mom, she met a string of men who came in and out of her life in my life. And when she settled on a guy who became her live-in boyfriend, when I was about five years old, he assaulted me and told me that I better not tell my mom what happened, that she'd get rid of me. And so I kept it to myself for a couple of years and he was repeatedly abusing me during that time. So it got to the point that I just, I couldn't take it anymore. And when I was about eight, I worked up the courage to tell my mom what was happening. And she had him arrested and I thought the whole situation was over, but when he was released from jail, she brought him back home and he started to abuse me again. And to make that situation worse, my mom became verbally and physically abusive to me. So I was being abused in various forms. Only child, I didn't have any family around me. It was a very isolating experience. And so I remember in elementary school, I was labeled as a problem child because I was acting out in school. I mean, when you're eight years old and you're being abused in these ways, you don't know how to cope. So I was disruptive. I was not attentive in class. My progress reports all say, no one is smart, but disruptive, no one is smart, but she talks too much. And so I had a very just dysfunctional home situation. We didn't go to church. So there was really no kind of spiritual grounding for me at all. So at the age of nine, I tried to end my life, not even knowing what was on the other side of death, but I just appeared-- - Sorry, nine? - Yeah, nine years old. - What happened? - Well, I used to watch like scary films. I was by myself quite a bit and I used to watch scary films. And I remember seeing a movie where this woman took a knife and she tried to slit her wrists and she died. And so I tried to do that, but that was unsuccessful, thank God. But the reason why I did it was just, I just, it was so, I wasn't so much pain, like physically, emotionally, mentally, all of it. I just wanted it to end and it's crazy, Carrie, 'cause like I have two sons, they're 14 and 11. And I remember when both of them turned nine, I remember looking at them and being like, when I was your age, I wanted to end my life. And it's just, it's incomprehensible. Now, you know, looking at it as a mom, but yeah, I thought that death was the answer, but thank God he did not agree. And so fast forward to when I was 11, I tried again unsuccessfully, but shortly after that attempt, I had a classmate invite me to church and this was in the sixth grade. And the very first sermon I ever heard, the pastor said that God is a father to the fatherless. And I remember when he said that, I was thinking, God is a father, like if God is a father to the fatherless, I don't have my father, who is God? So it became this moment where I was like, hmm, I wonder who God is. And I got to be honest, I think that, that experience is really what changed the entire trajectory of my life, because the abuse was still happening at home, but I was part of a church community that loved me, that affirmed me. I was learning more about my identity and God and that I had purpose on my life. I remember my youth pastor saying, no, no, you're a leader, you're a leader, you're a smart, you're a great speaker. And that was the place where I was built up. And so I started to change my behavior in school, ended up getting really good grades, started like being in student government, doing all types of extracurricular organizations. And I'm telling you my entire life changed because of that experience. But yeah, my formative years were shaped by just multiple levels of trauma. - One of the things that, first of all, I'm just, I'm so sorry, I know it's a story of redemption. We're gonna get there, but I just wanna acknowledge how sad and terrible that situation is. You know, one of the things that really gripped me is you, it's the story you tell about you and your husband, Tim. And Tim didn't really understand why your mom and you had a strained relationship. Can you tell us about what happened when you tried to reconcile? Because I've seen this play out in a number of adult situations. If you grew up in a loving, relatively healthy home, you wanna see your parents. If you don't, sometimes you don't. Can you talk about that? - Yeah, I thank you for bringing this up for two reasons. The first is, children naturally want to be in relationship with their parents. Like, I don't know of any child who is like, man, I just can't wait to not have a relationship with my mom or dad. Like, teens go through that phase, but there really is something within us that finds comfort and safety within our parents. And so when you encounter someone who doesn't have a relationship with their mom or their dad, what can tend to happen is if you have a good relationship with your parents, you'll be like, you know, just make it right. Like, what's the problem? You only get one mom, you only get one dad. Like, you just, you can't understand why that would be. And so my husband, you know, he has always had a really good relationship with his parents. And so when we were even courting, he couldn't understand why my mom and I didn't really talk. And then after we got married, he was like, you know, you just need to make it right. And I tried to explain, like, listen, my mom allowed some really hurtful things to happen to me. My mom herself did some really hurtful things to me and has never apologized. And, you know, I just don't feel safe. And he was like, look, you only get one mom, right? The thing that everybody said, you only get one mom, you know, she probably just has a lot of guilt and she doesn't know how to apologize or whatever. And so I tried to kind of heed my husband's prompting for the hundredth time, because I'm telling you for- - He's like, give her a call, give your mom a call, right? - Yeah, okay, my experience with my mom has always been when I was even a child, my mom could go days and weeks without speaking to me. And then when I, you know, moved out with the college, that could turn into months. That could turn into years. If I did not call her, she didn't call me. And so I would even tell my husband, I was like, listen, it's not even that I don't want a relationship with her. It's that she doesn't seem to want a relationship with me. And so I was the one always in the position of pursuing her. So one day I did, I was like, all right, you know what? I'm going to try again to make this work. And so she lives about an hour and a half from where we live. So I set up this weekend where I wanted us to have like a mother-daughter weekend and kind of reconcile. And I picked her up and we were driving back to my home. And I just brought up, I said, you know, don't you think it's strange that we don't really have a relationship? Like we don't really talk. And she basically was like, no. And I said, well, you know, I would like us to have a relationship where we talk and we laugh and we take trips together, you know, like a mom-daughter relationship. And I said, but in order for that to happen, we have to discuss what happened to me as a child. And the mood in the car completely turned icy and I sensed it and I knew that that was getting into an area she didn't want to go into. And so she said, you know, that was the past. That's not something we need to talk about. And I said, well, we do need to talk about it. I said, because it was deeply hurtful to me. And I was like, and you've never even apologized or acknowledged what happened. And my mom basically said, well, it wouldn't have happened if you would have just kept your legs closed. And, you know, I share that because I think it really speaks to the state of her heart. You know, I was, you know, six, seven, eight, nine years old. And in her mind, it was my fault. And I think a lot of us, a lot of leaders are carrying guilt because it was guilt that was given to them by someone who actually owns it. Like they're giving you their guilt. So that was definitely painful. And I will say this, Carrie, one of the revelations that I got years after that experience and having to distance myself from my mom is that a healthy relationship is actually two sides of the same coin. On the one side is the thing that we always harp on. And that is forgiveness, right? Like, okay, somebody hurts you, you forgive them. You know, man, they know not what they're doing, forgive them. Okay, that is true. We forgive them because forgiveness is essentially the currency of peace for us. However, on the other side of the coin, in order for there to be a healthy relationship, there also has to be repentance. And we don't tend to talk about that, which is if a person causes an offense, they have to have the humility to acknowledge it and repent of it, which means changing direction, not allowing it to happen again. In the absence of repentance, that person is not safe. And I think far too many of us are feeling pressure to be in relationship with unrepentant people who keep hurting us over and over and over. But at some point, we have to recognize, I can forgive you, but that doesn't necessarily mean that I have to give you access to me. - One of the, this is a repeating theme on the podcast. I interviewed Henry Cloud this year, and, you know, he had a traumatic childhood. And it was just, it was more medical things that happened to him rather than abuse or that kind of thing, but a lot of depression. And, you know, I've read around this, but not enough to really quote it. But I think there's two things that happen when traumatic experiences happen to a child. And in my head, I think if it is, you implode or you explode. So one root that is often well-paved is you become an addict, right, Nona? You bury your pain through alcohol, drugs, you name it, any kind of lifestyle that basically self-destructs 'cause you feel so bad, you implode, that's implosion, or you explode. I'm gonna go to church, I'm gonna become, you know, I'm gonna be involved in student government, I'm gonna be a straight A student, I'm going to college, I'm gonna be the first one who goes to college. I've got numerous friends who have exploded rather than imploded. I'm wondering, number one, whether you've seen that, and number two, why you chose the explosion rather than the implosion. - Well, first, it's interesting that you use that language because I literally talk about implosion and explosion as expressions of rejection in my new book. And the reason why I talk about that is because I do think that the painful and the hurtful experiences that we have, even though there's this idea that, well, time heals all wounds, that's a lie. The things that we don't deal with, the things that we don't address, don't go away. They simply seep out of us in various forms. One of those forms, as you said, could be self-harm. That is implosion. It's like, I'm going to take my pain out on myself. On the explosion side, I think, I actually think there's two ways that we explode. On the one hand, we do explode into ambition. And that's definitely been my experience, that's been my path. I think that becomes what people think is a virtuous form of kind of expressing time. It's probably has more rewards in this life than implosion. Absolutely. Now, the second form of explosion is we can explode into anger. There are some people who are just, there's like a seething hostility. Like they're just angry. Anything will set them off. I've had some managers in my life who were carrying a lot of anger from things they experienced in childhood. They were micromanaging. You could not please them. They were fault-finding. They were blaming. And so when you get to the root of that, it's all the same, right? It's the same pain that's unaddressed. For me, I will say that I think the reason why I took the path of exploding into ambition is because that's what was rewarded for me. So I think it was in the fourth grade. I told you when I was in elementary school, I was acting out a lot. I was disruptive. Well, my fourth grade teacher one day pulled me out of class. And she said, "Nona, you don't have to act like that." She was like, "You're smart. People listen to, you're a leader." And she said, "These words, which I will never forget." She said, "I bet if you just try, you can make all A's in my class." That was the first time that I had anyone ever look beyond my behavior and speak to my potential. And so what I did in response to that is I was like, I'm gonna live up to her expectations of me. So she then kind of became the goal is I wanna please her. I want her to be happy with me. And so I did. I made all A's in her class and I kept the pattern going. I became from that year on, you will see all my progress reports change. Like I was the teacher's pet. That's when I started to get into student leadership in middle school. I got put in advanced classes. I was captain of the dance team. I was running track. I was a captain of the track and field team. Like all of a sudden, because I was being rewarded, I chose that path. Now I think people who explode into anger also are getting rewards as well. And that could be in the form of people's compliance. Like they notice that when I'm angry, when I'm brash, when I mean, people do what I want. And I think that becomes a form of power. And so when you are kind of nursing rejection wounds and abandonment wounds and all of those things, you feel power less. So the explosion becomes a way to take power back, whether it's ambition or anger. But again, I think ambition is the more virtuous form of it. Emplosion becomes kind of the vicious form of it. - So it was really that fourth grade teacher that gave you a different vision for your life. If that hadn't come along, do you think you could have chosen implosion or would have ended up down that road? - You know, Carrie, I will tell you, I experienced a bit of implosion because for the majority of my childhood going into young adulthood, I was very overweight. I used food to kind of anesthetize the pain of my situation. So I was very overweight. Well, there came a period where I had a situation happen that was very hurtful. Someone publicly shamed me for being overweight. And as a result of that, I secretly became bulimic. And so for me, that became a form of implosion because that was harming myself in an effort to try to deal with the pain of that person embarrassing me. So I do think that you can have multiple forms of that pain expression. - And now a quick word from one of our partners. Today's episode is brought to you by Preaching Cheat Sheet. A recent study showed that 46% of pastors say one of their biggest struggles is feeling like attendees don't absorb or use what they preach. Did you hear that? 46% of pastors feel that way. Look, I get it. Okay, we've all been there. But if you feel this way more often than not, I would love to help. I have a free 10 step preaching cheat sheet that outlines you guessed at 10 simple steps to help you get the most out of your sermon prep. Each step ensures that your sermon and delivery are clear. In other words, you're ready to go before you get into the pulpit. You don't sit there at lunch going, ah, you know, could have done this, could have done that. Get that done first. Over 30,000 pastors have downloaded copy to help with their sermon prep. It's something I still use to this day even after. Decades of preaching. I love filling out each of the steps as I write my sermon. And then I sit down to review the message the night before and I can go in with reasonable confidence that this message is going to land or at least that I have done my best. So I'd love to get a copy for you for free. If you want to be more confident on Sunday mornings, visit preaching cheat sheet.com. That's preaching cheat sheet.com to download your copy for free. And now back to the conversation. You know, underneath this, Gordon McDonald talks about the difference between being driven and being called. Right. You sit down with a lot of driven people, preachers, leaders, business executives, founders, entrepreneurs. You discover that there's something driving them. And it's not always healthy. It's often pain. What are you learning about the positive side of drivenness, the negative side of drivenness versus, you know, learning how to redeem those motivations? Yeah, well, I'll start with the negative side just because I think this is the part that sometimes because it's so subtle, we don't really see it. When we experience rejection, when we experience trauma, we can make inner vows that say, I will never allow someone to do this to me again or I will never put myself in this type of a situation again. And so that inner vow can actually almost become like a hydrochloric acid within us. And if you think about hydrochloric acid, but what does it do? It dissolves whatever it comes into contact with. And so that inner vow then, no matter how successful you are, no matter how much you achieve, it's like a hydrochloric acid to it. It just dissolves it and you still feel like, well, I gotta do more and I gotta get more. Why? Because that inner vow is now prompting you to make decisions to feed it as opposed to feeding purpose. Those are two very different things. So I love the way that you said that, the difference between being driven and being called, you'll know that you've made that inner vow and you'll know that you're being driven because there's a lack of fulfillment. So that are never enough, never enough, right? It's never, never enough. And you can achieve the thing that you said, if I can just get that, then I'll finally be good. And within a day or two or maybe a week, it's like, all right, what's next? So I think that's part of it. The positive side of it is I do think that there has to be a motivation, like there has to be something within you that's going to propel you into your calling. Like I know some people, I actually just had a conversation with a young lady today that she was just talking about how she feels like, or she wants to move into a new opportunity. And my question to her was, okay, well, what are you called to? Because her thing was, well, I just wanna help people. Okay, that's a huge category, right? You can help people. You can even build a big platform helping people. But if that's not what you're called to, if that's not what you're graced for, you're not going to be fulfilled. And it's never going to be enough. So I do think that we as leaders have to be really careful that if we have to force something, chances are we're not graced for it. And we have to question, is there an inner vow within me that's pushing me into this? Where I'm like, once I get this all matter, if that's what's driving us, we will never experience fulfillment. - How has your, you've been in senior leadership now for what a decade or more? How has your dance, your tango with the drivenness changed in your adult life? - That's such a good question, Carrie. And I've reflected on this a lot because I remember, you know, early in my career, when I got into my first, so I've been in senior executive roles since I was 23. And now I'm 42. And I just recently stepped out of one about six, seven months ago. And so now I'm in like full-time industry and entrepreneurship, but I remember early in my career thinking, man, if I could just get this title, there was a title that I wanted, right? There was a certain salary that I wanted. If I can just get that, then, you know, I'll have made it. Well, the problem with that is once you get that, it's almost like success becomes its own drug because once you achieve something, you realize what you haven't achieved. Like, there are levels, right? Like you get to, I remember on Instagram when I got to a thousand followers. And I was just like, I have made it, right? Like, I was like, well, then I saw somebody with 10,000 and I found out at 10,000, you can share links in your stories. - Yes, remember that? That was a big deal. - I was like-- - No, anybody can share links. It's like, come on, bring it back, bring it back. - It needs to be exclusive. - You know, I was like, now, once I get to 10,000, I will have arrived. Like, I did 10,000 and I saw somebody else with 30. And I was like, if I could just get the-- It just kept going. So in my career, you know, I was a director and then I was like, man, if I could just become a VP, got that. Oh man, if I could just get to the C suite, that happened. Wow, you know, if I could just be on the board of some prestigious organization, I did that. Well, if I can now just be on the board of a paid, can I get a paid board seat? Okay, I got that. And it just, it never was enough. And so I think about maybe 10, 12 years into my career, I started to have the realization that it's like, man, the more I achieve, the more I realize I haven't. And if I'm not careful, I will end my life feeling like a failure, not because I have failed, but because I am comparing where I am to where I'm not. So that has been the journey. And I'm at a place now where I'm able to just be grateful for where I'm at, Carrie. And I got to tell you, man, Paul had it right. It's like, godliness with contentment is great game. Like just being able to see somebody else achieve incredible things and just be happy for them and not feel like, oh man, because I don't have that. Somehow I haven't arrived. That to me is great game. I don't need to be where any particular title, but to just have contentment. And I think that's where my journey's taken me. - What has helped you get there? - I think it's been honestly just, I got tired of the perpetual state of discontentment. I think that's what it was, is I realized, there was an organization that I wanted to be a part of. It's like an invite only organization for senior executives. And I applied for it. And the first time I applied, I didn't get selected. And I remember just being like, oh, I suck. I just, you know, and I remember feeling like I just, I didn't matter because I didn't get invited or selected. Well, the next year, I applied again, 'cause someone on the selection committee said, I really think you need to apply this year. I applied, I got in, I did the program and carry, I got to tell you, at the end of it, I was like, such a waste of time. (laughing) Just like, I was like, I'm in such a waste of time. Like, yes, you know, I'm with all these professionals, they're all successful and they're high powered and all this stuff. I was like, I didn't feel any better after doing it. I honestly just felt like I wasted a year of my life. And so I think that became the turning point where I was like, you know what? Yeah, I think all this kind of vanity. (laughing) - Yeah, you know what, I'm reading, I am reading Ecclesiastes right now. And if you want real time notes, I'm like, godliness with contentment is great gain, 'cause this has been a demon that I have been systemically chasing for decades. This not enough, never enough, you know? Because again, even this podcast, great example, greatly exceeded my dreams. But then it's like, well, why isn't it 100 million? - Yeah. - Right? You're just like, come on, come on, settle down. - Can I-- - But there's this, yeah. Go ahead. - I was gonna tell you something super morbid that has actually grounded me, which is, and I'm gonna ask you this question and you may know, who is your grandfather's father? - Yeah, I'm struggling on multiple sides. There's a Cornelis in the mix somewhere, but that's all I know. - So, if you think about our life generationally, you know, two generations from now, most people won't know who we are, right? And so you get to the, let's say you get to a billion downloads and two generations from now, it's just not gonna matter. And so what's grounding me now is, am I living in purpose? Am I doing what I was created to do? Is there a joy in what I'm doing? Because the person who has a billion downloads, like, yeah, man, that's awesome for them, but two generations from now, people won't even know who they were. So-- - Exactly. - So if I can impact and I can shape this moment, that is success. Like the people, and I'm taking this as an opportunity to just speak this into you, is like the people who are listening to you, like you are shaping them and they are shaping generations. So it's almost like you're touching everyone on earth because of the people that you're touching. And it may seem like, but it's not a billion, but it is. - Yeah, no, we thought about that. You know, I'd rather talk to 10 leaders than 1,000 people. - Yeah. - It makes a difference. You know, the other thing, just to noodle on for leaders listening who struggle with this, which I think is an occupational hazard, Nona, but in this current reading of Ecclesiastes, which I will finish tomorrow, there's a refrain I've noticed before, but it repeats more often than I thought. And there's a line that Solomon has where he says, you know, everything's foolish, everything's foolish, he does this, he does that, it's foolish, it's foolish, it means nothing. But he says, so I'm concluding, it's good to enjoy your food, enjoy your drink, and enjoy your work. And I'm at the point in my life where I'm like, I like a really good meal, and I really love what I get to do. And I'm like, God, is this the bullseye? Like, I know there's more, and there's a New Testament, not just an Old Testament, so I get that, but I'm like, Solomon's onto something here. Like, if you can just enjoy the moment and savor it, and really do work that you find meaningful and rewarding, which I'm very fortunate to do, I find this extremely meaningful, extremely rewarding work, and I'm enjoying my bike rides. And I'm enjoying my dinner with friends, and I'm enjoying the celebration moments in life. Then Solomon's going, you're onto something, you're onto something, and I don't know, I'm just really mulling that over right now. - You know what, I read a quote recently that actually was quite profound, and I forget who's the person who said it, but it was someone who was like very, very, very wealthy, very successful, and they said, the worst thing I could wish for someone is that they achieve all of their dreams. And I was just like, why would that be the worst thing? But his point was, you may think that if I could just achieve everything on my to-do list, then I'll have fulfillment, and it's like actually achieving everything on your to-do list is the worst thing that you could possibly do, because then you get to a place, and it's something that actually I think Will Smith said as an actor, he said, I'm at a place in my life where I have more money than I could ever need. He was like, I'm known by more people than I could ever want to be known by. I've literally done everything I could want to do, and he's like, now the question I'm wrestling with is what more is there to live for? That, Carrie, is scary. - Boom, it is. - It's scary, it's like, so you've achieved everything you've ever thought you could possibly want to achieve in more than you thought, and now you don't even know what there is to live for. Man, you talk about emptiness, but we're aspiring to that. Man, if I could just get on that level and feel like you have no reason to live, no thanks. - You know, no, no, we'll get to some other stuff in a minute. A couple of books ago, I wrote, didn't see it coming in at seven sections, and the last section is called emptiness. It's my favorite, I reread it this summer. I don't think anybody makes it to the end. I've never heard a single reader comment on, wow, I love the empty, they hear it talking about burnout, cynicism, pride, irrelevance, I hear about all the other issues I tap. No one talks about emptiness, but I reread it, just to remind myself, you've climbed this mountain and you're like, no, so that's it. You know, you win the Super Bowl, you're happy for two days, and then you're like, well now what, training camp? In fact, there's a curse, right? Like if you win the Super Bowl or the World Series or whatever it happens to be, now you're expected to perform at a much higher level. And it's like, well, here we are in this treadmill. So, you know, you made a big career shift, big work, vocational shift. So you spent, how many years at meta total? - About six years, yeah. - Six years, yeah. Big, and we connected numerous times on this podcast and offline, et cetera. Looking back over your years at meta, what are some of the top, which Facebook when you started? What are some of the top lessons you learned at meta over those years? - Man, I think one of them that I tried to live by daily, even in my personal life, is having deep convictions that are loosely held. And so, we would go into meetings, whether it was about a new product or a new strategy or whatever we were talking about. And we would all have very deep convictions about our point of view, but most of the time, we would leave the meeting, arriving at a place that none of us started at, because our deep convictions were loosely held and we were willing to be wrong. I think before I joined meta, and part of it is because I came out of very hierarchical organizations, and certainly meta is that, but it was more horizontal than hierarchical. So I could be in a meeting with someone who was at a lower level than me, but they would have just as much weight in the conversation as me, because the goal was to arrive at the right decision, not be right. And so, I think having those deep convictions that were loosely held, I kind of operate my life now, so where I'm like, you know what? Yeah, I have an opinion about this. Yeah, I think I'm right on this, but I'm willing to be wrong so that the right decision can be made. And that is, for me, that's been groundbreaking. - Can you timestamp the years that you were at meta, just the calendar years? Just because it's such a public company, it's been through so many phases publicly. You were there from what, 2017 to 2023? - So were you still there in the move fast and break things stage, or were they emerging out of that? - So I think the move fast and break things was still there. So what essentially happened was the ethos changed around late 2017, early 2018, because of Cambridge Analytica, that actually happened. I remember when I joined Facebook, it was so amazing and wonderful for like three solid months. (both laughing) And then Cambridge Analytica happened and everything blew up. And so then the ethos became, you know, move fast and build things, which I think is much more responsible. But yeah, I was there during that, for at least three or four months, and then it changed. - So what is the difference between move fast and break things, which is very famous, to move fast and build things, which I'm not sure I'd heard people talk about. What was the shift? - Yeah, the concept of breaking things was that, you know, done is better than perfect. And so if done causes a problem, that's okay, we'll fix it later. Let's just move fast, let's implement the thing, let's learn as quickly as we can, so we can iterate and then we'll take our learnings and we'll do something better with it. The idea of build things is wait, slow down before you ship that code. Let's make sure that the context of what it's being dropped into is going to actually make the system better as opposed to making it worse. And so that, I think it instituted like a pause and a contemplation, which was not there before. I think when I first joined the company, it was very, very much so the Wild Wild West of Silicon Valley, like any engineer could just come up with something and just ship code and see what happens. - I remember listening to podcasts in that era when it was still moved fast and break things, where, you know, because everyone thinks, oh, we have the same software, we have the same app, it's Facebook at the time. No, you have multiple versions running multiple codes and an engineer would upload something on 10,000 users and you'd get all these error reports and then it's like, well, we're not going to do that, but someone else will launch something else. So literally, you know, it's changing as they went. So they became more focused and deliberate about releasing more responsibly thought through code in the world, et cetera. What are some other top lessons from your time at Facebook/meta? - So that's definitely one, I think, I think the concept and the importance of data. So, you know, because I also live in the world of ministry and my husband being a pastor, I understand that sometimes what'll happen is, and we're dealing with this actually right now at our church, so I'll give you a live example. What'll happen is somebody will complain about something and, you know-- - That happens at your church, you're kidding me. - I know you can't imagine. - Wow. - Somebody will complain about something. A person will complain about something. - Yeah. - And people will be like (gasping) and they'll change everything because one person complained about something. - Yeah. - And one of the things that I think serves me very well now that I definitely gleaned from the ethos at Facebook and out meta is you do not change anything until it is validated, right? So, classic example, and I know you'll know nothing about this carry or any other church that you're watching this. We got some complaints about announcements and where announcements are placed in the flow of worship, right? - Thought it was about preferences, never about principles. - It's so about you get it. And so, the thought was, well, we'll move announcements because we got a couple of people that said they don't like it where it is. And I thought I said, well, why don't we actually test? And like, let's see, like how many people share this opinion? Like, is this truly a problem? There's a difference between signal and noise. Like, noise is somebody has a complaint. Signal is a validated sample of people have a complaint, which is you can decide what the validation is. Is it 10%, 20%, is it 3%, whatever it is, but you decide what that is and then you validate that complaint. Is this truly an issue that we need to put energy and resources behind or not? So, you know, at Facebook, users complain all the time. As you can imagine, it's a bit of an interesting wonky experience sometimes. But just because even 1,000 people complain about something doesn't mean the whole system is going to change. Because in the vast scheme of 3 billion daily active users, that's noise, that's not signal. So that's one of the ways that it's helped to kind of shift the way that I think is a leader. - I love that idea. I call that principle do the math because it's like in a church of 100, there's 10 people. Well, that's 10%. You have 90% who are okay with it, 10% who are not, right? And I think that's so good. I would love for you, you know, because you do know the church world well and we have a lot of church leaders listening, a lot of business leaders like you who care about the church. If you could improve the way churches run based on your time in Silicon Valley, what are a couple of strategic recommendations/changes? You're waving your magic wand. All of a sudden church is healthier/better because of some of the leadership lessons you've learned. What are a couple of those that you think could directly apply to churches? - Well, I'll start at the leadership level because I think what tends to happen is people like to go to the operational tactical side. It's like, well, I would improve this program and I would put in this software. It's like, no, the first thing that I would strongly recommend is as a leader, you have got to personally be very clear about what your vision is for your organization. Because in the absence of clarity, people fill in the blanks. And so you wonder why you're like, well, I did cast vision. I did cast vision, but we're not making progress on it. Chances are it's because there's a lack of clarity, but how do you get to clarity? Clarity is not just standing on a platform and saying, we're gonna be a church of a thousand people in five years. Clarity also has to do with the way the organization is structured. So who is accountable for executing the vision? What are the roles? Who has what role within the organization? What are the expectations of those roles? I think as a leader, we have to get really, really clear about the role that everybody on the team plays. And we have to first be clear about what is it we're expecting the team to do? What does success look like? Not just for the organization. What does success look like for the roles supporting the vision? Many times we do, we implement a new vision, a new strategy, but we haven't taken the time to clarify the roles of each person on the team and how it ladders up to the strategy. And I do think that part of the reason why we lack momentum in organizations is because we lack clarity, even at that structural level. - Well, you're tapping into an allergy that a lot of senior church leaders have, which is definition, clarity, position, descriptions. But I mean, you were in the C-suite, you had a very senior position at meta. What level of clarity did Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg and the team bring to your role? And how was that helpful? - Well, every role, and let me say, there's two different versions of meta that I will say. The first version of meta around the time that I was hired, there was kind of just a hiring spree happening, all right? So the organization has definitely evolved to a place of more clarity. When I was first hired and I think churches have done this too, it was like, let's just bring good people on the team, they can figure out how to add value. I don't know what they're doing, I don't know how they're gonna do it, but let's just bring them on the team and we'll figure it out. Well, that unfortunately ended up not serving the organization because you have all these brilliant people who are just doing busy work because there's no clarity about how does my role serve the vision. Now, you know, enter into, I would say 2021, 2022 version of the company. Well, now Mark is casting a vision for, you know, metaverse. And now every single team has to figure out how do we serve the vision that he has now cast? And the challenge for many teams is that they didn't. So now you find yourself in a situation to where you're either going to have to figure out how to serve this very clear vision or this is not going to be the organization for you. And so for me, that's where the clarity came in. It came in circa 2021, 2022, when Mark got really clear about from a marketplace standpoint, we want to lead in the development of the metaverse, the technology, just the entire experience. But again, that took about four years for him to get there. But once he got there and that's kind of sadly, I think where you even saw like the layoffs and things happen because I think there was a recognition that the company became bloated with talent. And some people might say that's a good problem. It's not a good problem because now you have an issue where you can't invest resources in the vision because you have such a bloated staff that doesn't even know how to support the vision. So that's why those difficult decisions had to be made. - I think another thing that we, I am thinking about a lot, and this goes with AI, this goes with medic, goes with X and Instagram and everything, well, Instagram is owned by meta, is unintended consequences, right? Jonathan Hight has done some really important work on that in the last couple of years. And just like, we didn't know what this technology was going to do to our kids. We didn't know what it would do to anxiety, depression, isolation, loneliness, we had no idea. I'm thinking that in every leadership role, there are unintended consequences. And I'm wondering if you have any thoughts about unintended consequences and how it might apply to general leadership? - I'll get back to the issue of clarity, just because I've seen it in both marketplace and ministry, is that when there is a lack of clarity, there tends to be two things that happen within the body of people following a leader. One, there's uncomfortability, because people thrive in clarity. So when there's not clarity, they become uncomfortable. I've seen situations where people are like, I think I need to leave, I don't really know what I'm doing. I think people join organizations to add value. And in the absence of clarity, they don't know if they're adding value. And so that creates this big question mark in their mind. And they're kind of like, I don't think this is where I need to be. So it creates discomfort. It creates discomfort in the person who doesn't understand what their role is. But I think secondly, it causes people to, what we call like sideways energy. It causes people to expend sideways energy on things that are not aligned with what may be in your heart as a leader, right? So people may come up with ideas. Let's just say your vision is we want, I'm just making this up, as a church, we want to solve the breast cancer crisis in our community, just making this up. Okay. That's a very specific vision. But if you're not clear on what does success look like for that, you may have- - But nobody ever has breast cancer again, right? - Right, right, yeah. - It's probably not gonna happen. - Yeah. People will start to make up projects and programs and they'll start to do all types of things that may not align with what you actually intend. And so that's why for me, clarity is job number one for a leader. You have to be able to clearly articulate what is success for our organization, what is success for your role. And I think that's why I'm harping on that because if you're not clear, nothing else matters. - You know what? And I mean, I've taught on this stuff, but just yesterday, one of our team members challenged me on clarity. And I thought I was perfectly clear. And this morning, spent a half hour writing a document outlining greater clarity on the issue that we were talking about. And I thought I was clear. And then when he challenged me, I'm kind of like, oh yeah, I wasn't clear. - Right, right. - I thought I was. - At least you have the humility as a leader to admit that. I've actually consulted with pastors who were like, "Hey, I think I need to change my organization. I think I need to let some people go." And I was like, "Really?" I said, "Okay, well let's sit down and talk about why you believe that." And they would say things like, "Well, this person just isn't performing. I just don't feel like I'm getting what I need to get out of the person." And my question was, "Okay, well, how exactly did you articulate your expectations for their role?" And their answer was, "Well, they had a job description. I mean, there was an interview. Job description does not-- - Five years ago. - Right. - It's like, how often are you meeting with them to actually share your heart and clarify, are they on track or off track? And it was like, "Well, not often." And like, well, you're gonna fire someone who isn't performing because you haven't led them appropriately. It's one thing if a person has been led well and they just can't do the job. It's another thing when they don't know what you're expecting. - What do you say, and I'm not disagreeing with it all, Nona, but what do you say when people say, "Well, that's great, but that's Silicon Valley. You worked at a multi-billion trillion dollar company. I'm a pastor. I'm a shepherd. I don't do that stuff. What's your response?" - So my response would be an organization that destructurally is the same regardless of scale. You have a leader and you have followers. And so if you are a pastor, if you are a shepherd, that means that you have a flock that is looking to you for protection, they're looking to you for direction. There are things that are expected of you as the shepherd. It's no different than a corporate context. If you have employees, they are looking to you for protection, that could be financially, that could be protection for their future. They're looking to you for direction. What are we doing as a company? What are we doing as an organization? It's the exact same principle because organizations are structured the same way. Organizations are no different than the way that our body is structured, right? We have a brain. We have eyes. We have ears. We have limbs. That's how organizations are structured as well. So you as the leader, you are the primary neurological unit of that organization. That doesn't mean that you are the only one who thinks, the only one who brings ideas, but you are the one who sets the tone. You're the one who's directing energy and effort. And that's the same regardless of the organization type. - Yeah, totally agree. I mean, an organization should by definition be organized. And if you wanna say, well, that's not a good book all, right? I mean, the word for corporation is body. - Right, that's it. - Right? - That's it. - And so it's like, yeah, this has to be organized. So I wanna get a little more granular. So you also have an affiliation with YouVersion now and you're working full time sort of at known@jones.com. But both meta and YouVersion handle immense amounts of user data. And even if you have a small church, certainly if you have a church over a thousand, you're dealing with so much data. Giving data, people's personal information, all that's cloud-based now. Nobody has like servers and their own proprietary software. How do you think about the ethical responsibilities? And what advice would you give to leaders about the ethical responsibilities of handling that much sensitive data? - Oh man, well, I think we have to remember, and this is, I mean, this is scriptural, right? It's love your neighbor as yourself. At the end of the day, do you want your private information to be publicly available? Chances are, no. And so you have to regard people's information the same way you would regard your own. And I think if you just have that principle, then the decisions that you make will be in the best interest of the users, the best interest of your congregation, the best interest of your customers. But yeah, treat them the way that you would want to be treated. And I would assume that would be with the utmost privacy and security. And that is an investment that has to be made. I think sometimes at churches, we do get focused on the front end, like just give us the money, give us the time, give us the information, but you also have to be equally sensitive to the back end, which is you want to make sure that people can trust you with what they're giving to you, whether that's their financial information or their personal information. - Yeah, I think that's a good word. You can't have your password being your password or one, two, three, four, right? Being your password, or way beyond that, or way beyond that. - Or a password 95, like that's the best password. - Yeah, we got to do a little better than that. You know, Meta became an AI company. Really, if you look at it, it was first web three and then AI doing a lot in that work. And you know, you wrote a book called from social media to social ministry. I know you've got your eye on this. So it's been a little while since we talked about this. When you think about the future of digital ministry, what are some key trends or technologies that you're seeing right now or even hoping you would see in the church? - Yeah, I'm glad you brought AI up because that is absolutely where technology is not only headed, but where technology is. I'm actually preparing a talk for a college. And one of the questions they asked was, "Hey, what do you kind of see as the future of AI?" And I was thinking about, you know, the Terminator. If you remember, so the Terminator came out in 1984 and the Terminator came back to 1984 from the year 2029. And so-- - Yes. (laughing) - We can almost smell that year. - Right, it's like five years away from the Terminator. But I do think that what we have to prepare ourselves for is that number one, AI has been a part of our lives for a long, long time. It just, it has. I mean, even at Meta, everything from machine learning and you think about ad recommendations and all of that, like that's been powered by AI for years. And so what we're kind of thinking about now is this autonomous AI where it actually kind of thinks on its own and, oh gosh, what does that mean for the future of our world? I think that we just have to, as a body, we have to keep our eyes on it. And what I'm encouraging people to do is there are so many free resources available, whether it's through your platform, YouTube, there's missionallai.com, there's so many free resources. Stay on top of these things, because no matter what I tell you right now, within the next 10 minutes, it's gonna be different. So I'm just encouraging people to use these free resources and platforms, because there's so much generative AI and technology that's developing, that it's mind-blowing, but we do have to have at least a base level knowledge. And I do encourage pastors as well, be aware. Don't be so quick to outsource your technological understanding to the young people on your staff. At least have a working knowledge of what's emerging and what's evolving so that when people are talking to you about it, you're not just like a deer in the headlights. That's when it becomes a problem. Is when you can't even have the conversation, that's when people can actually lead you astray. - I think it's starting to change too. In the Art of Leadership Academy that we run, I had a little conversation going about AI and like some of the users, pastors, these are pastors in their 30s and 40s, are leaving their prompts in the chat, the private chat that we've got going on in the academy. And they're pretty impressive. Like stuff that I don't think church leaders would have been doing a year ago, they're doing now and they're not like AI employees or anything, you know? - I love it, but that's kudos to you. I mean, that's kudos to you, my friend Kenny Zhang and just how-- - Oh, Kenny, yeah. - Who is amazing, like just kind of sounding the trumpet and being like, look, it's an opportunity and we have to be aware of the opportunity. I will also say, I know some people have said, you know, AI is gonna be the end of the world because they think about, again, the Terminator, they think about the Matrix and I'm just like, listen guys, Acts chapter two. This is something that I like to share in these contexts. If you think about Acts chapter two, so Day of Pentecost, there's these 120 Galilean Jews, they're gathered in the upper room and the Bible says that, you know, tongues of fire came, the Holy Spirit descended on them and they began to declare the wonders of God in unknown tongues, right? So there's these other Jews walking around outside the room and they're like, who are these Galileans declaring the wonders of God in our language, right? Well, if you think about what that is, that's essentially the Holy Spirit being the very first Google translate. That's what happened, okay? And so God is demonstrating what can happen when technology is used for His purpose. And so instead of us being like, it's the end of the world, the question we have to ask ourselves is, how can God use me? How can I use this technology to fulfill my purpose? Because it's not going away. Even if we say it's gonna, you know, everything's gonna die, it's gonna end, it's not going away. So now we have to figure out how do we use this for the purpose of what we were created to do? - Well, we covered a lot in our conversation. Is there a question that we haven't covered or a topic we haven't covered that you would like to explore before we wrap up? - You know, just, I would let leaders know. So I'm releasing a new book called The Gift of Rejection and it's coming out really soon. And it's something that I think is so important for leaders to read. Because I do know that there are a lot of leaders who are walking around feeling empty and you don't have a name for why, but part of the emptiness has to do with rejection wounds. Whether that is because, you know, members of your church who you faithfully served, they abandoned you. Or it could be because, you know, people that you built a company, an organization with, they hurt you, they humiliated you, they spread lies about you. It can even be as personal as, you know, maybe your spouse or your significant other, you know, they left you for somebody else. And those are serious wounds that affect the way that we show up as leaders. So we have to deal with that instead of saying, oh, I'm over it, that happened so long ago, I'm over it. No, as I said earlier, the pain that we don't deal with doesn't go away, it just seeps out of us. And so you wonder why you're so irritable, you wonder why you, back to our conversation about exploding into achievement, why nothing is ever enough. Well, part of it is because there's a rejection wound within you that hasn't been addressed. And so, yeah, I would just encourage leaders to check out the book, "The Gift of Rejection" and I hope that it's a blessing for them. - Yeah, you know what? I was just gonna say, if you hadn't referenced back the emptiness and the drive part of our conversation, I think that comes from rejection. I'm wrestling with a quote from Simone Wiel who said, "All sins are attempts to fill voids." I read that and I'm like, oh, oh, that is so true. Well, Nona's new book is called, "The Gift of Rejection." It's available everywhere. Nona, best place to hang out with you online these days, you're always, you're always starting something new. Every time we talk, it's like, boom, something new from Nona. - You know, well, you can find me on any social platform. My handle is @NonaNotNora. Well, it's not any, I'm on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. I'm not on X. I have a TikTok, but I don't ever upload anything there. - Yeah, same same. That's me on TikTok, TikTok. - Yeah, so, but yeah, you can find me on any of those social platforms, and it's always great to hang out with you, Carrie. Thank you. - All right, thanks, Nona. Hope you enjoyed that conversation, man. And I know a lot of you are recovering from, you know, trauma, traumatic childhoods, difficult stories, and you're in leadership. And we wanna, we wanna minister to the whole person. And I hope this episode did that, plus we had some fun strategy conversations as well. If you want more, you can get the show notes at kerrynewhough.com/episodes683. And we have everything there for you, including transcripts, show notes, links to everything we talked about. Make sure you also check out our partners. Go to subsplash.com/kerry. You'll get $500 off when you sign up. Subsplash empowers your community for church engagement through technology. And then glue has a free church pulse assessment that will help you determine where your people are at and the state of your church. Take the assessment for free at stateofthechurch.com/kerry. Next episode, oh my goodness. I just had a great conversation with Seth Godin. I'll tell you, we go all over the place. It's so much fun. I love Seth. He's such a great human being. We talk about strategy. We talk about getting rejected 800 times. And well, we talk about a whole lot more as well. Also coming up on the podcast, Henry Cloud, Carl Vaders, Pete Scazero, Will Gadera, Bob Goff, and a whole lot more. And before you go, hey, I would love for you to check out my preaching cheat sheet. I mean, we wanna do things that really make a difference in your life. And if you're a communicator on a regular basis or even semi-regular, do what tens of thousands of leaders have done, download my preaching cheat sheet, absolutely free. You can go to preaching cheat sheet.com and what it is, it's pretty simple. Just runs you through 10 questions in an interactive form that will tell you whether your message is ready to preach or whether it needs more work. So you can be confident before you step onto the platform about whether your message is positioned to connect or not. Go to preaching cheat sheet.com. Link will also be available in the show notes. I wanna thank you so much for listening today. And I hope our time together today has helped you identify and break a growth barrier you're facing. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) You
