The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast
CNLP027 – How to Know When It's TIme to Move On - An Honest Interview About Leadership, Personal Growth and Leaving Before It's Too Late with Brad Lomenick
(upbeat music) - Welcome to the Carrie Newhoff Leadership Podcast, a podcast all about leadership, change, and personal growth. The goal? To help you lead like never before, in your church or in your business. And now your host, Carrie Newhoff. - Well, hey, everybody. And welcome to episode 27 of the podcast. My name's Carrie Newhoff and I'm so glad you're along. Thank you to all of you who have just like started listening. I know that the podcast keeps growing and that's because so many of you keep sharing. Thank you so much. And our goal in this time together is to help you lead like never before. Today, in episode 27, you're gonna hear from Brad Lominek. Brad's become a friend over the last couple of years. And a lot of you will know him. I mean, if you're connected in church world, if you're on church staff or like a hyper-involved volunteer, you've probably heard of Catalyst Conference. And the guy for the last decade behind Catalyst Conference, the guy like setting it all up is Brad. And I think he knows more people in the church than anybody alive today. Like Brad just, he's got like Rolex's, nobody has him anymore. But if you did, like his phone has got the most incredible list of like leaders, I know, people who are very famous and people you've never heard of, but Brad is just super connected. And we're gonna talk today about his last year because at the age of 40, he retired. Can you believe that? I mean, not like retired, retired, go buy a yacht kind of retired. But he just actually stepped back from leadership. And he's got some really interesting reasons behind that. And so this is a fascinating conversation about how you know when you're done. Like, how do you know you're done in a particular phase of your life? How do you know whether you've stayed too long as a leader? So I think that's gonna be a fascinating conversation. And we're gonna jump to that in a couple of minutes. I wanna thank the Orange Conference who is bringing you this podcast. If you have not registered yet, it is not too late. We got it like a month left until Orange Conference 2015 in Atlanta happens the last week of April, starting on April 29th. I'm running and teaching on the senior leader track. And you're gonna hear a lot of podcast alumni on that track, including last week's guest, Jenny Catrin. I think Brad's gonna be floating around as well at Orange Behind the Scenes. You're also gonna hear from Josh Gagnon, from Jeff Henderson. You'll be hearing from Judd Wilhite, Reggie Joyner, John Acuff, and so many more. If you have never been to an Orange Conference and you're a leader, you need to get there. It's gonna be incredible. You can still register. Just go to the orangeconference.com/seniorleader if you wanna jump on the senior leader track and otherwise just the orangeconference.com. We would love to have you there. And I wanna thank everybody who has been so kind to this podcast. I wanna thank everybody who's left ratings and reviews. I know I say that almost every episode, but it really makes a difference. This podcast has had an incredible run near the top of the charts of iTunes and that's in part because of downloads, but in part because you keep leaving ratings and reviews. And I just wanna say thank you. I wanna say thank you to a couple of people in particular who have left some in the last few months. So thanks Justin Stetzer, Kevin Holland. You left a great review. Wayne Cordova, who's podcast I was on recently, left a review. Andrew Peters. Hey, Zachary Verbracken. I think that's how you pronounce it. It's sort of Dutch as well, like Newhof. Thank you so much. I love what you said, you know, you would pay to sit down and have lunch with some of the leaders that were interviewing on this podcast and now you don't have to. That was really cool. Heard from Neil Newhof, who turns out to be a distant relative we connected on Facebook. Didn't know that. He's someone from Grand Rapids, Michigan. iOS, MOM of three. I mean, you know, whether you leave your name or not, I just read everyone. They really make a difference. And when you leave a rating or review, it really gives the podcast some momentum on iTunes. And for those of you who are sharing it, that's great. And for everybody who's jumped on over to the blog, the blog is having an incredible year. That's just my website, carrynewhough.com. Every single episode of this podcast, by the way, has show notes and you can find them at carrynewhough.com/episode27, for example, for this episode with Brad Lominek. But you'll see a blog on subjects we don't cover on this podcast as well and just your intelligent, helpful, constructive comments are so awesome. So thank you so much for that. Hey, we're gonna jump right into the interview this week with Brad Lominek. It is a thrill to have Brad Lominek on the podcast today. Welcome, Brad. - Carrie, I'm so pumped to be here, man. So excited to be a part of this. - I'm pumped to have you. We've done some hanging out. We even went on a mission trip together about a year or so ago and had some great time together. And Brad, as I think a lot of you know, has been associated with Catalyst for over a decade now, but a year ago, really stepped back and is in a place where you've had a brand new year we're gonna talk about sort of the things you learned at Catalyst, but also the things you're learning right now in a brand new era for you personally. - Yeah, well, I just wanna say this too. Like we did go on a trip last year to Guatemala in December about a year ago. And we talked about this podcast. Congratulations on launching it. But I love it when you have a conversation with someone and then you see it a year later and they've actually implemented. They've executed on the ideas. And so, man, kudos to you. And I listened to the podcast when I'm running or walking. I mean, I should say walking. - I like that. That makes me feel better. - I love what you're doing. And man, so many great guests before me and so many great guests after me. I'll just be the hot dog in the middle of the steakhouse. - Well, you know what's really cool, Brad, is the impetus for this podcast, as I've said before on this show, is so important for me because I, for whatever reason, get to have great conversations with people like you. And I can still remember some of those moments when we had conversations. We talked about succession. We talked about what you were doing in your life. We talked about why leaders hang on too long about sort of the hopes and dreams that I had both for the church and also for this podcast. I mean, those are really important conversations and conversations about the future of the church and the dream behind the podcast was, well, maybe we could have some of those conversations publicly and here we are full circle. So it's kind of cool. It's fun for me too. - Yeah. So Brad, tell us a little bit for those listeners who are familiar with you a bit and also for those who might be meeting you for the first time about your 10 year journey at Catalyst and what all of that was involved and then the change you've made over the last 14 or 15 months. - Yeah. Well, I got involved in Catalyst in the early days. I was helping John Maxwell back in the late 1990s, early 2000s with leadership conferences that John was putting on. And there was several of us who were in our late 20s, early 30s that were part of his team. And so we approached him and said, John, would you let us do something for sort of this generation that we're part of, for us and our friends? And so Andy Stanley got involved and Reggie Joiner and Lanny Donahoe and obviously John Maxwell and Catalyst was launched in 2000. I was involved and then about 2004 I got way more involved with Catalyst and sort of took over the reigns. So for 10 years I was playing the role of Executive Director, President, CEO, whatever you wanna call me. - Yeah. - But really stewarding Catalyst and 10 years ago when I jumped into that role, I was right around 30 and I said, if I'm 40 and I'm still in this role, somebody slapped me in the face, you know, somebody kicked me because I need to get out of the way at that point. And, you know, 10 years into it, once you've had success and thriving and it's growing and you feel like, you know, you're in your sweet spot, then it's really hard for somebody to get your attention and sort of slap you across the face and go, hey, Brad, remember when you said when you're 40, like somebody remind you and, you know, so for me that was a big moment of last year, you know, kind of crossing over that threshold and going, wait a second, I need to make an adjustment here, I need to make some changes. And the thing that happened carried for me in regards to this, you know, it took us a radical last year at this time, about a year ago. And there was this sense that there was three things happening, three things were converging in my life. - Sure. - The reminder of 10 years in a catalyst, hey, this is never about you. - Right. - You didn't start it, it wasn't your baby and it's not yours personally. You know, you're a steward and you're assigned to it for a season, but it's God's. Like the ownership of this belongs to God, the movement of this was not because of your great leadership or the lack of it, it's God's sense of blessing on it. So that was the first piece. The second piece was that the succession part is really important for leaders, that part of your role as a leader is to hand off. You know, you gotta be passing the baton at every level, not just when you're in charge, not when you're the grandpumba, not when you're the man or woman that's making all the decisions and everybody sort of shows up at your discretion. Like you have to be handing off things at every season and every level in an organization. And then the third thing was that my leadership was getting stale. And I mean that in the purest form that I was just not a good leader. I was talking about leadership. I was writing a book about leadership. I was in the middle of one of the great movements of leadership with catalysts that our generation has seen. And yet I was struggling. And it wasn't like these major moral issues or wasn't like all these problems that were happening that the team was talking about behind the scenes, but I could just tell that my leadership was stale. And so all those things collided last year and it really made sense for me to take some time off. And then after that time off, there was a sense coming back from that time off that it was time to hand it off. It was time to step out of that seat on the bus and move to a different seat on the bus. - Yeah, which is really interesting. I mean, you're just 40. I mean, this is not like, you know, I'm 70 and I've been at this my whole life. I mean, you had a decade at it. You're 40 and catalyst was at its peak. It had never done better. - Well, one of the things I've always appreciated about your Brad is you're very honest, very transparent. You said a couple of things there that I just, I just think are great, you know. First thing you said, I've done it for 10 years and it's not about me. Sometimes those of us in ministry, we get confused and we think it is about me. And we might not, you know, be at the place where we're like, oh yeah, it's 'cause I'm so gifted or I'm so awesome. But I mean, there's a tendency to confuse what you bring to the ministry and the ministry, which is separate from me. And as Andy Stanley has said, as you've said, there will be a time where the church has another pastor and there will be a time where, you know, you're not synonymous with the organization. I think that's huge. And the second thing that I want to jump back to is what you said about my leadership got stale. You don't hear a lot of leaders talking about that and going, you know, maybe in hindsight to say, oh yeah, you know, I look back and 15 years ago, I was pretty stale. But no, in the moment you called it, you called it an audible. And I got to watch it with terms like that 'cause you know a lot more about football than I do. But I think that's what that means. - You're learning. - I'm learning. But you called an audible and said, you know what? I'm stale. And how did you learn that? Like how did, did you just know inside or did you have other people feeding back? And then what gave you the courage to kind of call that out and go, you know what guys? I'm stale. - Well, a big part of for me was the people around me were not flourishing. - Okay. - And I think that's always a really good sign or it's an appropriate healthy sign to be looking for that the people the closest to me were the ones suffering the most. And you know, that's hard to recognize sometimes because a lot of times they'll fake it. And here again, Kerry is the contrast and the tension of this is that catalyst was on the rocket ride. - Yeah. - We were growing as an organization. We're growing as a ministry. We're having the most impact we can have. I think this is true for a lot of organizations is just because you're growing doesn't mean you're healthy. And just because your organization is growing, your organization may be healthy, but you as the leader may be decaying inside. And, you know, a lot of people talk about leadership landmines and they talk about toxic leadership. I don't think I was a toxic leader. I don't think I had stepped on any leadership landmines. But what I was doing was I was just picking up these landmines and I felt like I was carrying them across this desert. And at some point they were gonna blow up. They haven't blown up yet. They weren't, you know, they weren't going off but I was carrying them. And it was just that sense that, you know what? I'm supposed to be a person who is living this out really well and I'm supposed to be a leader who's actually doing what I'm talking about. And I had to back up and say, what is it about my own leadership that's causing me and the people closest to me to not be able to flourish? And there was some very close people in my life. Actually a guy that I'm writing about in this next book, a guy named Steve Cochram who set me down last August and said, he said, you're done. And I was sort of like, what do you mean? I mean, I'm healthy, I'm growing, like we're on the rocker ride. He said, no, you're like the boxer who is in round 15 and you're just throwing punches, not even sure where they're landing. And he said, the problem is you won't bow out. You won't give up. You'll stay in the ring until you're totally knocked out. - Right. - And he said, you've got to take some time and we've got to evaluate sort of where you are and we've got to let this process uncover some of the things that might be unhealthy in your life. So as a leader, the main practical piece of this for people listening is don't just assume that if you're in a good place with where your ministry's going, where your church is going, where your family's going, that you're in a good place personally. - Right. And I think you're right. You can have momentum, right? And clearly, I don't think catalysts would have been what it has become if you were unhealthy the whole time or stale the whole time. I mean, you had some great years and you brought a lot to the table. But there's momentum that can fuel something for a while. And in the meantime, you're kind of decaying and that's what you felt. How did you know? You said something really interesting. You said the people around you weren't flourishing. It wasn't that they were suffering and it's not like there was some, you know, if the journalist came calling, they're not going to find anything. There's no headline here. It's just like, I looked around. I looked inside me and, you know, kudos to you. You had people who were willing to speak the truth into your life, which a lot of leaders don't. But that's huge to have a great inner circle like that when Steve said those things to you. But how did you know that the people around you weren't flourishing? Did they tell you or did you see that in retrospect or how did you know that? It was a little bit of intuition. You know, nobody was really saying it. Nobody was walking into the office going, Brad, I'm not flourishing and it's your fault. You know, I mean, I wish that would have actually occurred. And we would all be an easier sort of transition a moment if people would just say that to you as a leader. But a lot of it was intuition. A lot of it was people in my world going, hey, you know what? I just want to bring up something. I don't feel like you're the same person that you were a year ago or that I'm seeing some things in you that are just that I'm concerned about. I had a pastor in my life who is my pastor, Louis Giglio. - Right. - And, you know, I'm fortunate to have lots of pastors. But Louis is one of those pastors who said, hey, I know you're gone a lot right now. Like you're traveling and you're the world's, you know, most connected Christian or whatever. Like that's cool. - Probably true. - I'm not seeing you a lot here. Like I'm concerned that your community is, is, you know, a mile wide and an inch deep. And as a pastor in my life, man, I was like, oh, okay. Somebody's speaking truth into me. So my response to all that had to be Carrie that I was willing to listen to. Because again, the higher you go up, the more influence you have, the more you feel like you're watching things move forward with momentum, you think, well, there's nothing wrong with me. - Right. - I gotta, I gotta just pull my socks up and put my boots on and deal with this. I've got them, I gotta work through this because we're going somewhere. And what happens so often is the organization keeps going and you as the leader, you start falling behind and you start, you know, you start having sideways energy and you start allowing things that are toxic to come in your life. And you start to decay and then, you know, all of a sudden what used to be someone as a leader who was, who was deeply passionate and deeply encouraging, all of a sudden I'm the one that's causing discouragement and I'm, I'm not somebody I want to be around. And, you know, that happens slowly. It doesn't happen overnight. You don't, you don't always see the signs of it. I think one of the practical things is if you're, if you're a leader, which everyone who's listening is a leader, you have to be willing to stop all the time in your journey and look around and go, okay, help me. Give me feedback people. Everybody who's around me, help me understand the blind spots I have. Where am I failing? What am I doing well? What am I not doing well? You have to be just incredibly hungry for feedback. - Yeah. - You have to get permission to people around you to get it to you. - So was that something you cultivated as a practice, as a leader, how did that work for you? Before there was sort of this malaise, if you want to call it that. - Well, I wasn't doing a lot of that, which was part of the problem. - Gotcha. - I wasn't actually living that out effectively. So I would say I was so focused on where we were headed that I wasn't allowing myself to stop and go, okay, where am I on the journey right now? What does my leadership look like personally? Because again, we had this momentum, we had the sense of, hey, we're making things happen. And we were, you know, and-- - And it was good stuff. That's the other thing too. It's not like you were doing bad stuff. I mean, people's lives are being changed. Leaders are being equipped. Churches were growing and are growing because of what catalyst is doing. So you just happen to have enough people in your personal circle then who had the courage to say, Brad, tap, tap, tap, we need to talk, right? - Yeah, and again, again, this is so important. It wasn't because there was this major crisis. - Right. - And most of the time this kind of stuff happens because there's a moral failure because your team absolutely just hates you. - Yeah, there's no black or white. It's, we hate this person. They're the most toxic leader we've ever been around. We need, they need to leave. Like they need to be fired. And that's the point when we usually respond to these kinds of situations. - Right. - Versus being really proactive on the front end and going, hey, let's stop. Let's stop and let's look around. Let's get some feedback. Let's make sure that we're continuing to get better and we're growing and we're healthy. And you know, a lot of the stuff I've talked about, I've talked about the last year is things like rest and margin and allowing that in your life, you know, permission people around you to give you feedback, understanding that you're, that you're who you are is not what you do. Boy, that is like one of the greatest temptations of leaders is we assemble all of our, of our sense of identity around what we do. It's the question everybody asks when you're meeting somebody new. Well, - What do you do? - Yeah, well, I'm the catalyst guy. Oh, that's awesome. You're so cool. You know everybody. So what's so and so really like Brad, right? You know, right. Let me just go back there. When you heard that, 'cause this is so important. When you heard that feedback, like when Louis tapped down the shoulder and hey, you're not here, when Steve sat you down and said you're done, what happened inside you? Did you like, oh, thank you Lord for speaking or was it like, was there a defensiveness? 'Cause I know there was a season of my leadership, you know, particularly when I was in my 30s where I heard that hostile territory. Like, whoa, hey, that can't be God speaking or yeah, I'm not very open to that. And I've had to learn as a leader how to be open to the critical stuff 'cause it still kind of hurts to be really honest with you. I don't know whether the sting ever goes away. You just need to be open to the sting. - Yeah, no, there was sting there. - Yeah. - I was a bit pessimistic in some ways towards the feedback. - Right. - Partly thinking, well, you don't really know what's going on. You're looking at only a part of the story here. Look at all the great stuffs happening. And again, if I'm not leading myself well, and I'm not focused on me as a leader getting better and growing and healthy and deeply entrenched in who I am as a follower of Jesus, you know, that's where my leadership has to start. So even talking about flourishing and people flourishing around me, the problem there was not that it was that people weren't flourishing. The problem was is I wasn't flourishing. And I can't help others on my team flourish if I'm not. So starting with me was really important. But yeah, there was a sense of, wait a second, I just wrote a leadership book. - Yeah, literally. It wasn't even out a year when you went on sabbatical and step back. You were six months into it and like, here's all the awesome things. And it is a great book. You should buy the book. I mean, it's a great book. So were you burning out? Do you think those were the early stages or mid stages of burnout or was it something different or what was it? - It wasn't burnout. - Okay. - It wasn't, it was more of again, just a slow and steady potential decline of my influence. And there's a difference between those two. I think that leads to burnout. - Sure. Left unchecked. If you'd been doing this now, you might have been on the edge of burnout or whatever. It was an early radar system that kind of detected this. - Yes. - Okay. - Burnout could have happened. It probably would have happened. You know, and I think all of us would say, especially if we're type A's, we're ambitious. There's a point in all of our journeys and all of our seasons of leading where we would go. Man, I was close to burnout. And many people cross over and go, I was burnout. I don't think I was. - Yeah. - If you sleep for six months or like do something crazy with your life when you step back, which is actually a sign of health, actually, that you could hear, even though it hurts. And you know, maybe you spent a week kicking back and going, that's not true. Or look at all the awesome things I'm doing. Or God, you're doing great stuff in my life. But you had the sense to step back. You took a four month sabbatical. And then you took on a new role with catalyst, right? Tyler Reagan took over in your role. And now you are an advisor visionary. That sort of thing. - I basically get to sort of pick and choose where I can add the most value. And I'm helping other organizations now. And I'm speaking a lot more and writing a lot more. And again, for me, the lesson in so much of this was that my leadership was stale. I needed to deal with my own leadership. Self-awareness was huge. And self-awareness is huge as a leader. If you're not sure about where you are, and if you're helping other people flourish, start with yourself. The other piece of this though is that, you know what? Like at the end of the day, my job as the leader of catalyst at every stage of me leading for 10 years was to be handing it off. And the stage of catalyst, the platform of catalyst, this is not true for every organization. So if you're a pastor, if you're a CEO, if you're an executive director, don't hear me saying that you need to get out of the way. - Right. - Right now. What I am saying is that-- - Mass resignations after Brad's episode. Everybody's leaving, like we're all just, we're all going to an island together. What I am saying is this, like part of your role is to be putting pieces in place to hand it off. - Right. - So many times we wait until we've already outworn our welcome before we start having those kind of conversations and everybody around us on the team is going, please, seriously, would you get out of here? All you are is a barrier now. You're not an asset anymore. - Or it's too late and all the good people have gone. You had the team to hand it off to two years ago, five years ago, and they were waiting, and you never threw them a torch or a baton, and they're all gone now, somewhere else where they can actually lead and you're left with no exit plan. - Yeah, and it's, this is, I mean, Carrie, you know this. Like, we both know this. The young leaders on our teams today, especially today, 20-somethings, you know, early 30s, mid 30s, they are more motivated than ever than any other generation before then to say, hey, coach, put me in. - Yeah. - Like, I'll probably screw up, but I think I'm ready way before I might even be ready. And part of our role is not to be stupid with that, but it is to say, all right, you ready? You're 23, come on, jump in. - And look at what John Maxwell did for you. I mean, my goodness, you were 28, 30, and he's like, yeah, take this whole thing and just run with it. That's an incredible amount of confidence, and sometimes when you become the 40-year-old leader or the 50-year-old leader, you're like, oh, they're not smart enough. And the problem I think when you become an older leader too, and I'm pushing 50 real soon, is you look out and you spot all the cracks easily. But if I looked at myself when I was 25, I could probably spot all kinds of cracks I've spent years figuring out how to fix, but people still threw me the baton. People still said, we'll put you in, and I think we've got to do that, and you've got to make sure that you don't, 'cause you're so smart now and you're so wise now, that you don't stunt the next generation of leadership. - Well, and part of, again, the assignment is, once you hand it off, this happens so often, and it's gonna happen more and more with so many boomers and older leaders handing off to younger leaders, is you hand it off, and then you go, okay, I'm not gonna have a plan around this, but part of my motivation is gonna be to try to sabotage it at every level. And part of my motivation is gonna be, let's get to the point several months from now, a year from now, or three years from now, where everybody says, man, I wish Brad was back. - Yeah. - That is a toxic, dangerous place to be as a leader, and you have to fight that at every level, and every stage, once you've handed off. And part of your role is to say, I don't know. Not my problem. - I have full confidence in the new leader. - You got it. - Ask him. - You got it. - Ask her. - You got it. - And I've seen that, I've seen that work out, where, you know, quietly from the sidelines, it's like a little missile, a little bomb, and even if it's not active sabotage, it is commiseration with the sad state of affairs. - Oh, yeah. - Right, you know, it's really tough. So let me ask you, what made you decide it was time to go to change worlds, rather than just reinvent yourself and say, here's the next three years? 'Cause you could've done that. You're not burnt out. You don't have to leave. There's no scandal. Why did you go and how did you know it was time to step back? - Well, part of that is faith. You know, a sense of God's timing and assignment. And I felt like the part of even the staleness was that I didn't necessarily have the fuel and the fire to really take catalyst to the next level. Somebody else might. - Right. - I felt like handing that off was a good thing in terms of energy going up. And, you know, every time you bring in somebody new or a new team and you always have that sort of the next level of passion, the next level of energy. And that's a good thing. - Yeah. - And I could've continued to run this thing for 10 or 15 more years, but I felt like for the future of catalyst, it needed a fresh wind and a fresh leader in some fresh fire. - See, and that's a good distinction too. It wasn't just the future of Brad. It was for the future of catalyst because you could easily make an argument. I mean, this is true of leaders of organizations, leaders of churches, where you can say, "Well, I took this thing from like a hundred people to a thousand people." And, you know, what would it be without me? And you could've made that argument with catalyst. It was a one or two day conference that you did at North Point, probably back when you took it over. And then all of a sudden it's filling stadiums and arenas and it's all over the country and it's East Coast and West Coast and Chicago and like all these places. And you could easily say, "Well, where would you be without me? And I'm synonymous with it." But you saw the organization as having a life outside of your leadership, which is I think is a distinction that a lot of leaders need to bear in mind. - Yeah, and here's the reality, Kerry, is you know who I am? And some of the people listening to this know who I am. Like they know that I was connected to catalyst. But most of the people that came to catalyst and still are coming to catalyst and are connected to catalyst, they don't care. And I had to realize that they don't care. You're not a big deal to them. And they're coming to hear Andy Stanley, they're coming to hear so-and-so. They're bringing their team, expecting a great experience for their team. They don't really care who's in charge of catalyst. They don't want it to be some bum. But at the end of the day, it wasn't about me. And I could have easily gotten wrapped up in, well, I'm really the reason for the success and I'm the reason for the growth. I mean, I've heard Craig Rochelle say this. Like if you believe you're the reason for the growth and the success, what happens when it fails? Is it also your fault? Yeah. You know, that it's honest to mys. And, you know, so don't ever think too much of yourself when something's healthy and growing and having a lot of impact and success. You know, you're part of it, but I'm not the reason for it. And I had to, I have to really be careful that I didn't connect myself to, well, this season of 10 years of a really good run was all about me. I hopefully stewarded my assignment well. And if I look back, I can say with a sense of faithfulness that I did, but you know what? Somebody else could have been in that role for the last 10 years, they'd done it as good or better than I did. You know, because I believe so much of the success of Catalyst has got favor and blessing on it. For me to step away from it, to answer your question, it was easy because I just, I had to disconnect myself. A year ago, I killed Catalyst Brad. That was one of the assignments on the sabbatical was Steve Cockerman. I sat down and one day over coffee in outside of London, he said, here's what we're doing today. We're killing Catalyst Brad. This cool guy that everybody knows and you know, wants to hang out with, he's dead. That was hard. I mean, that was like the hardest. - You probably really like Catalyst Brad. - I love Catalyst Brad. He's fun. Like, I like the Catalyst Brad that showed up at events and you know, was everybody's friend. And he had to die. And now I can show up at Catalyst and I'm just the guy hanging out. - Right. - And I have no problem like setting in the back and being in the shadows because Catalyst Brad died. And so many of us try to, we try to transition something and put succession in place. But we never have that moment where we go, my identity is not what I do. My identity is not Catalyst Brad. My identity is I'm Brad and I'm a follower of Jesus and that's good enough. - Well, and I think one of the reasons you can actually say that was some integrity now because I want to go back to that. I want to go back to the lessons you're learning but I think you told a story on your blog about being at whether it was a Catalyst event or something and you were just in the front in the Mosh Pit like having fun and Matt Redmond looked down at you and kind of was like, gosh, it's Brad. You used to run this place. You used to own the joint. And I know a lot of people, they step back from a church that's like, I can never go back to that church or I can't go back to that company or I can't buy that product anymore. And I don't know whether that's entirely healthy. Like, I think it's really cool when you can go back and just be like, aren't you the guy who used to run this? Doesn't really matter. I'm just glad I'm here. - Yeah. - Was that a hard journey to go back? Like when you went back the first time, was that hard? - No, because again, there was a process in place that I walked through and not because I'm smart, part of it was just good timing and other people in my life who said the best way for us to really move you forward in this season is for you to step away for a few months and let's have some very clear conversations and that sense of identity being disconnected. Now I can walk in with a sense of 100% authenticity and be comfortable walking in. And if you love something and you're passionate about it, I'm always gonna be part of Catalyst. I will always be the greatest fan of Catalyst because I love it regardless of what seat I'm setting in on the bus, you know? And I mean, I maybe get kicked out of a bus. That's okay. I still love what it is, what it does, what it's about, who it's impacting. And so many times we end up in these moments where we leave something and it's awkward and it's tense and it's frustrating and it's depressing. And like you said, we don't feel comfortable walking back into the front doors of that church or that organization or that nonprofit that we started and helped build and then we got run out of because we were kicked out by the board and that's a really sad state. - Yeah, it is. - I don't wanna be able to walk back into any environment that I was part of and teams that I was part of and go, man, I love this place. I love this place. - That's so healthy. So tell me, what have you been learning? There's a blog post we'll link to in the show notes that I really appreciated. It was like lessons from the last year. I forget the title. You had a much better title than that, but you talked about, I am not what I do. You talked about needing to rest more. And those are things, I take it in some ways. If you look back and said, even if you exit it after a decade, you would have exited healthier had you done some of these things and these are gonna be part of your leadership in the next 10 years. So you go through a couple of those key learnings that you've had, 'cause I think they're universally applicable to any leader. - Yeah, well, I mean, I think one of the things I said in that post was I got my smile back, which was so important for me. The Brad that I had become was not the Brad that I was really proud of or that I looked back even a season ago and said that was who I was. And I was always the fun guy. I was work hard, play hard. And I had gotten to the point where I was just work hard. - Right. - It was not, there was no play. And if it was play, let's get that done. You know, we got things to do. We got a hill to climb. And I lost sort of that play hard mentality inside of me that is who I am. - Right. - Getting my smile back was huge. We talked about what I do is not who I am. You know, I think the idea of calling was so important for me, Carrie, like the lesson of Brad. This is not, so many of us when we think of calling, we think of our current season of assignment that's our calling. And I have to step back and look at, okay, what's the 30,000 foot perspective and calling from me? What's my purpose? My purpose is really to influence the influencers. So it is to impact leaders. But the catalyst job and the catalyst assignment and the catalyst role was just a chapter in the book. It's not the full book. There's many other chapters that are gonna come along. You know, so I had to realize that I'm not losing my calling, I'm not backing away from my calling. I'm just closing the chapter of my calling. And I have to close it really well and I want it to be healthy and I want to move on to the next chapter. So many of us, we mistake the chapter for the full book and we look at it and go. - Well said. - I've now lost my identity and my purpose because this job, this assignment is done. No, no, no, no, wrong. The chapter's done. - Yeah. - But the book is still being written. Calling is on you as a person, right? The calling is on you as a person. The calling's on your life and it is for life. And that calling will leave when you leave this world. But it might have different expressions. It might have different. I like the way you say, you know, calling versus assignment, chapter versus book. That's so, so healthy. And for some of us, it might be, you know, a 35 year chapter in one church. I mean, you look at where Andy's going or Rick Warren's going. I don't think Rick's gonna end up going to another church at any time soon. - But that is not his identity. - And that's okay. Again, I'm not in no way am I saying that my story is true for everybody because Catalyst has very specific pieces to it that say, hey, I need to hand this off way before, even I might need to because it's not about me. It's about this larger movement. It's about, you know, young leaders. The fact that Catalyst needs to be run by young, if you want to attract young leaders, you better make sure you've got young leaders running the organization. Otherwise, you're not authentic. - That's true. So let me ask you about this. Why do you, and we talked about this even last year on our mission trip together, but why do you think leaders hang on so long? William Vanderblumen's gonna be on the podcast or was just done. I forget when these episodes are airing exactly, but, you know, he talks about that. He thinks people hang on too long. Why do you think people? - I think a lot of times you get to stage in life and you say this statement. I'm not sure what else I can do. I'm not sure if I jump out at this point that I really will be able to do anything. You know, I've built a skill. I've built a, you know, a career. I've built this sense of this is who I am. And these are sort of the tools in my tool belt. If I try to do something now, man, I may fail. - Yeah, and you didn't have that lined up. I mean, even now, almost a year later, you're not like 100% sure what the next chapter is. - Right, yeah. And that's, you know, I used to always tell people, "Hey, don't jump before you know where you're jumping to." - Yeah. - And I still believe that for the most part, but I think there's moments in life when, again, we need to hand them a ton off. - Right. - We need to hand it off and then figure out what we're doing after we've handed it off because the power of passing it on is so important as a leader. If you're not replacing yourself at every single point in your journey, then you're truly not setting other people up for success. - In Catalyst Leader, you tell the story of going to Bob Doff's Cottage for the first time. And it's sort of a metaphor for what we're talking about here. Can you tell that story again when at the end of the four days you made you do something that I'm not sure I would do, but you did. - Yeah, well, and this was sort of the opening, this is the opening story to the courage chapter in the book. And, you know, Bob has this tradition. He sends you out. - Yeah, let's explain who Bob Doff is 'cause not everybody might not know, but he's crazy, isn't he? - Yeah, he's kind of the mystery man of the Christian community. - And he's amazing. - He likes to pull off these capers and he's a lawyer by trade, but he does all kinds of crazy stuff. He wrote the book, "Love Does." And he's got a place up in British Columbia on the ocean right next to the young life property called Malibu. And this place is, it's like Narnia. I mean, you go there and you're truly, you feel like you've stepped into another world. And the last day I'm there, he says, "Jeff Schnerbarger and I were there "like working on our books." And he said, "All right, you guys wanna take you out, "put you on a rock or put you at a place "where you're gonna be by yourself for four hours. "Pray, dream, swim, think, whatever you wanna do." And then he comes and picks us up and he parks the boat and he gets out and then he walks up to us and he says, "All right, come with me." Well, the first thing is that he's in his underwear, which is a little weird. He's kind of stripped down and it's cold, you know what I mean? It's late May in British Columbia. And we're thinking, "Uh-oh, what's gonna happen?" And he said, "By the way, you guys, "all right, strip down to your underwear, okay." Well, you're in charge, Bob, like this is your place. So we have to, we walk up this trail and we get up and we're 40 to 50 feet above the ocean, which looks like it's 150 feet. - Yeah, it does, it does. - And he says, "All right, we jump." And if you don't jump, you don't go back in the boat. You have no choice. So there we are, all right, you're gonna either jump or you're gonna stay here and you don't know what you're jumping into and we jumped and the water was, it was like 40 degrees. - Yeah. - The fall didn't hurt at all. The fall was amazing. The jump was incredible, but once we got in the water, it was like, "Yeah!" Oh my gosh. But you know, when we look back now, Jeff and I and Bob, we laugh, we had that memory moment of, we jumped in. And it wasn't like this major courage place in life, you know, where I was facing down a lion, but there was that sense that we did this together and it's a moment, and it's a memory. And, you know, now we can walk away and always kind of have that. And Bob makes everybody who comes to his place pretty much, you have to have one of these courage moments while you're his guest, which is, I think, pretty amazing. - Well, I think in many ways, that's what this interview has been about. It's been about courage, the courage to hear the hard truth, the courage to make a change, maybe even before you have to make a change, if that's actually faithful to what you determined to be God's calling on your life and the courage to blaze a trail for the next generation, I think that's really cool. So in the time we have left, this is just flown. Brad, very few people are as connected as you are. I don't think there's anybody who, you know, whose name I could mention, who you haven't met, are known, you sat down, I texted you. Last month, I just saw your interview with Tim Keller, which was so incredible, and it's like, "Oh, I'd love to talk to Tim Keller." Yeah, you had a great time. So you've had a lot of leaders that you've connected with, but before we go today, what would you say are some of the practices among those leaders that you just think are, man, if every leader did this, the kingdom and leadership would just be further ahead. Are there a few surprise ones? Not like, you know, these guys work hard. Yeah, no, let me give you something that I think that most people would not answer with. Okay, great. It is true that, you know, sort of all the leadership essentials, even the aid essentials that I wrote about in the comments later, they all, they live those out. You know, if I was to identify the great leaders that I'm around, they would identify those. But here's some of the things I think they do that you kind of go, "Okay, interesting." They look me in the eye. They're not looking around. I mean, I remember one of the times, first time I went to the White House, which I'm not that big of a deal, but the catalyst is. And so I, you know, I got invited to the White House several times because of the catalyst platform. And everyone who was there, it seemed like they were looking through me instead of looking at me. Okay. And they were kind of looking, you know, it was that sense of who else is here that's really important. Right. Are you the most important guy? Oh, I thought you were, sorry. Let me get onto this other guy. Yeah, but I mean, the great leaders that I'm around, it doesn't matter what's happening. They will focus in on me. And I've watched them do that with people who don't have a lot of importance or significance. They can't do anything for them. And that's a huge lesson I've learned from watching them is no matter who you're talking to, be present with them. Yeah. Be connected to who they are. These great leaders are real. They're not full of themselves. They actually will fight against barriers of protection being built around them. Right. They understand they have to have it sometimes and it's part of the process. You know, the higher you go up, the more power you have. Sometimes you have to create some layers. But if given the option, they will tear down the layers of protection in order to continue to have constant connection with their team and with people around them. And that's huge. The people who are fake that I've seen and I've seen a few of those, they love the barriers of protection. In fact, they lean into it. You know, they see it as this sign of, hey, I'm a really big deal. And so you can't have my private email. Yeah, yeah, you need to talk to my 27 assistants before you can ever approach the throne of me and I'm like, come on, dude. Seriously, you're not that, you're not that big of a deal. Another thing is they always follow up on what they said they would do. And then this one is, it seems pretty obvious, but a lot of people, they talk a lot and they create a lot of hype. Right. But there's just a lot of stirring of that hype. And the great leaders, man, if they say they're gonna do something, they do it, they follow up, they tell their team, great job. They say, I'm sorry. They say, thank you a lot. They're willing to laugh at themselves. Hello, like this one is humongous. They have this sense of, I'm so self-aware of who I am, that I'm okay being who I am. And that's a sign of maturity as a leader, is when you're at the place where you know yourself so well that you can laugh at yourself, you can have others laugh at you, you're not, you don't take yourself that seriously. Those would be a few that stand out that are kind of outside the normal responses. Those are really good. And I mean, you know, a ton more people than I do, but that would be very real to what I see too, that these are pretty humble, grounded down-to-earth people who don't take themselves too seriously. They take God seriously, and they take their stewardship of their leadership seriously. But they're probably far more comfortable sharing their weaknesses with you than their strengths, and are really good people who just wanna help, which is cool. Authenticity would definitely be a piece of that, you know, in that sense of their, they know who they are, but they're also willing to lead with their vulnerability, they're willing to lead with their brokenness. You know, I've heard Patrick Lynch-Yone say this, like when he speaks, he always will kind of do this. And he says, "Great leaders show their pit stains." Like they're not afraid to, you know, to like say, "Look at these pits, man, I am sweating the death, arms up." Yeah, so many of us, we fight that. We, you know, we're trying to hide and protect everything that might be something of a weakness or vulnerability about ourselves. And today, like you will connect more with your team by leading with the things you don't do well, then you will with the strengths you have and the, you know, the home run type of leader you are. - Well, and that's why I'm so encouraged, even listening to the first 15, 20 minutes of this interview, and I mean, we don't script all this stuff out, I send you questions in advance, but the first 20 minutes was like, I think we spent that all in the first question or two and just kept going deeper and deeper, but like, you were just so honest, like, you know what? My heart was flat, I wasn't really great around, you know, the people who were closest to me, they weren't flourishing, and I had people speak truth into my life. That kind of vulnerability is really hard to show, and it's really hard to say those things out loud in public that thousands of people are gonna hear. And yet I'm sure for a lot of people, that was the most helpful part of the interview, it was like, oh, wow, that's how Brad is. Wow, I'm scared of the same things, but it gives you courage to go. Brad went first, so maybe I can do this, or maybe I've gotta go, maybe I gotta take the initiative and I've gotta invite somebody out for coffee and say, okay, tell me the truth, how am I doing? - I wrote about this, too, in the blog post you're talking about, the idea of pruning is such a biblical sign of health. And it's a beautiful picture of what discipleship looks like, but man, we are not, we don't set up systems and structure and framework for pruning within our lives, personally. Now, we're all, as leaders, we're all about pruning others. Like, we will spend a lot of energy on working on other people's and how they're getting healthy. But we don't spend a lot of time pruning and allowing God to prune us. And the beauty of pruning, which I've been through the last year, and I've been through before, but this has been a real intentional season of pruning, is that you're healthier on the other side of it. And you come out of it with a sense of, this is part of who I am and it's part of my story. And now I have been, all this stuff got clipped off so I can run free and be really focused on this next season. And without that pruning, I would have carried in a lot of baggage to this next season of whatever I'm doing. - Whatever you're gonna do, wherever this is gonna go. No, and you're right, and it's funny, prune things grow faster. If you look at it in the long term, it's a short term setback and it's painful, and it's awful, and it's ugly. Prune plants are ugly. You ever been to a vineyard that's just been pruned? You're like, really? - Right. - Yeah, man. Everybody got a haircut and it looks terrible. But then you grow some of the finest grapes, you grow some of the finest gardens by good pruning. And I think that's a good metaphor. So what's next for you? You're working on a book, tell us about that. - Yeah, the next book is titled H3 Leadership. The payoff for that is three words, hustle, hungry, and humble. And we're gonna dig into what those three words really mean. Also, the premise of the book is that leadership over time, if you wanna be successful over time as a leader, you have to create leadership habits in your life. And we think of habits like for quitting smoking, or we think of habits for trying to lose weight, though we don't necessarily think of leadership habits. And what does it look like for us to have healthy habits in our life that over time, if we're consistent with, will allow us to get to the finish line and look back and go, okay, well done. So this is kind of the playbook, I would say to the catalyst leader, in the sense catalyst leader was the staff handbook, it was the essentials, it's the overall manifesto. And this book will be much more of a practical game plan. Here's how we're gonna go beat Cincinnati today, you know? - Do you have a release date on that? Yeah. - It's September, September of 2015. - Awesome, okay, great. Well, what we'll do is we'll link to the catalyst leader and then around the time two, I mean, that'll be a book that I'm gonna be, I'd love to read and it's gonna be really exciting to see that. Brad, the time has flown. I just, I can't thank you enough. And if people wanna connect with you, you're blogging? - Yes. - So your blog is called on the journey and it's bradlomonic.com. - Yeah, just my name, Brad, B-R-I-D and then lomonic-L-O-M-E-N-I-C-K.com. And then all the other outlets, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, all just buy my name. - We'll link to that in the show notes and you can go there. Brad, can't thank you enough and can't wait to talk again soon. - Love to man, thanks for letting me be a part of this. Always interesting to talk to Bradlomonic, isn't it? I mean, he's just a fascinating guy and he just knows so many people. He's got so many insights for a guy who's just, you know, on the other side of 40. And I hope that was helpful. I mean, maybe you're at a place where you're like, you know what, I think it's time to go on or maybe listening to Brad makes you think, now I gotta dig in and I've got another season left in me. Either way, I hope it's been helpful. It's just a question a lot of leaders ask and a lot of us don't really know what to do with. So hope that's been helpful. We've got some follow-ups, also some quotes from Brad in the show notes and you can just go to carrynewhough.com/episode24 where you can get all of those and all the links to Brad's sites are there as well, including his book, the new one and the upcoming one. So I really hope that you can head on over to the show notes, check out what Brad has to say. Thanks so much for listening and hey, if you like stopped and left a rating or review or shared this with a friend, I just wanna say thank you so much for that. You can do that on iTunes, on Stitcher or on TuneInRadio. And again, jump on over to the blog at carrynewhough.com and if you haven't registered for the Orange Conference, do so, times going quick, the orangeconference.com. Hey, we're back next week, we've got episode 28 and you're gonna hear from a guy who I think knows more about the church in North America than anybody alive today. His name is Warren Bird, you probably read one of his books, he's written like 25 of them, he's my guest next week and we're gonna talk all about how to build incredible teams. So look forward to that, that's episode 28. Thanks so much for listening. Do hope this has helped you lead like never before. 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