The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast
CNLP 007 – An Interview With Ted Cunningham
(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. (upbeat music) - Well, hey everybody, and welcome to episode seven of the podcast. My name is Carrie Newhoff. It's so good to have you along. And I got to tell you, I'm having a lot of fun hearing from all of you. So many of you are like feeding back on iTunes, leaving awesome ratings and reviews. And a lot of you are leaving comments on my blog and some of you have written notes. And I'm just so grateful. The goal in all of this, and that's why we do these things every week, is to help you and maybe even your team lead like never before. So I'm really glad you're along today. We got a really exciting episode. I'll get to that in just a moment. But I also want to say, thank you to everybody who has shown up on the Orange Tour. This fall, we're gonna see over 10,000 leaders in a dozen different cities. And I'm not able to make every city, but I've been at a bunch of them. And the Orange Tour is almost over. I would love to meet you. If you live anywhere near Texas, we've got a couple of tour stops coming up on November 4th in Austin and November 7th in Dallas. And I'll be doing some keynotes, breakouts and also leading or hosting a leaders lunch. I'd love to have you come to that. And it's not too late to get in. Just go to orangetour.org to register or just slip on over to the show notes at karaenuhoff.com/episode7. And those will have links so you can get over there. Also, this is kind of cool. This is the first podcast with a contest. That's right, first episode, I should say. I'm sure other podcasts have had contests, but I'm gonna do a contest for the next few weeks and you can win every week. And then there is a grand prize at the end of the contest that you're not gonna want to miss. And so I'm gonna tell you all about that toward the end of the podcast today and you can start entering today. And the easiest way to get over there is just go over to the show notes at karaenuhoff.com/episode7. There'll be some details there. And I'm gonna tell you all about it after we talk about today's subject. So hang on for that. Now, the subject of this podcast, really three things, leadership change and personal growth. And a lot of that really, I think comes from the heart. And if you think about your leadership as a leader, I mean, if it's going well at home, if it's going well in your marriage, if it's going well personally and in your walk with God, if you're a Christian, or if it's going well in terms of your marriage or your key relationship, then things tend to go better at work. And when they don't, things don't go well. And that's why already just seven episodes in, we've heard from a variety of subjects that really talk about personal growth and the changes that we need to make as people. So for example, in episode two, Perry Noble talked all about his burnout and depression and even suicidal thoughts as a leader. Powerful episode, one of the most downloaded ones we've had so far. And then a couple of episodes ago in episode four, Cara Powell talked about why young adults are walking away from the church. But what was so fascinating is she spoke to the parent and all of us and the young adults who are walking away and the environments that we could create for them. And then in episode five, I talked to Craig Jutilla and Craig talked about how leadership really led, the way he led led to the breakdown in his marriage and how he and his wife managed to work through that. And so you're gonna hear that from time to time. And again today, we're gonna talk about something that might strike into some of our hearts as parents. I'm a dad, I have two sons who are now young adults. They're 18 and 22. And so this was a really timely subject for me. It's also a timely subject for me as a church leader because I lead a church that really is trying to reach a lot of young adults. And it's also timely for me as a boss because as a boss, I lead as a leader of a church. I lead a lot of young adults. So that's why I'm so excited about today and the subject in episode seven today is delayed adolescence. That's right. You've probably seen it. You've probably felt it. You're struggling with it in different ways as a parent or maybe even as a young adult yourself. But there seems to be a delay in the launch into adulthood. Sometimes people call it failure to launch like why are so many 20-some things depending on their parents for help and like almost daily advice. And when do we really become adults? And I could think of no better guests to take us through this than Ted Cunningham. Ted is the author of multiple books including fun loving you and also young and in love and trophy child. A lot of his ideas that we're gonna talk about today are in young and love and in trophy child, his two recent books. He's also co-authored a bunch of books with Dr. Gary Smalley. So you might be familiar with him in that. And he's also the pastor in his spare time of Woodland Hills Family Church in Branson, Missouri. He's leading a great church there. So you're gonna love Ted. He's got a very counter-cultural perspective on this and you may agree with a lot of what he says or a little of what he says, but I think it's fascinating. And I think it's really helpful. So when I listened, you know, went through this interview as a dad and also a church leader and a boss, I love working with young adults, but I also see some of the challenges and I see some of the things that he hopes young adults will do at work in the people that I care about in that generation. So anyway, fascinating interview. We're gonna talk about why is it that it takes so long for people to grow up these days and what you can do about it as a parent, a boss or a young adult. So after the interview again, coming back with details on a contest and in the meantime, I don't think there's any reason to wait. Let's jump in, here's Ted. Well, it's a thrill to have Ted Cunningham here today. Ted, welcome to the podcast. - Hey, Kerry, thanks for having me. - Hey, Ted, give us a little bit of background. Tell us what you do and how you got into studying this whole business of millennials and leaders and delayed adolescents, which I think we're gonna have an awful lot of fun talking about today. - Yeah, you know, 12 years ago, we started Woodland Hills Family Church in Branson, Missouri. And my passion, my calling, I believe is marriage and family. And as I was encouraging couples in our church a few years back with a series on, you know, just the simple, enjoying life and marriage message. Just looking around at the young adults in our congregation that we're kind of saying, nah, you know, I don't see it, I don't need it. And it was really the first time it hit me of the young adults in our church that just had no desire to pursue marriage. So I thought it was a marriage issue, so I dug into it a little bit more and then I realized it's not really a marriage issue they're struggling with. It's the delayed adulthood milestones and how that's connected with, you know, the workplace, how that's connected with the home, how that's connected with the church. I've just sensed, and even the way we program in the church, young people today with the desire to grow up, being told by the adults in their life, you got plenty of time. Don't worry about that. - How many times have I heard that? - Yeah, and so, I mean a lot of young people today that want to take on the responsibility of work and relationships, but all of the influences in their life are saying, ah, don't rush, you're only 24. You know, take your time. You got your whole life ahead of you. And so, I just started in teaching and preaching as I would teach on marriage, as I would teach on work, as I would teach on money. I would always keep the young adult in mind to say, okay, why are they so relaxed with this message right now? And I would just always in every message have a challenge for them to paint a beautiful picture of the future for them to say, you don't have to wait another five years to start what we're talking about today. We're talking about today church about saving money. You don't have to wait until you're 30 and everything's paid off before you start thinking about a 401k or start thinking about saving. Everything in their mind is just wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. And I just developed a passion for removing the unnecessary delays of those adulthood milestones. - Well, that's fascinating. I think this is gonna be challenging to parents then and older leaders who might be saying, ah, you got all kinds of time, as well as to younger leaders as well who might be thinking, you know, life doesn't start till 30 or 35 or whatever. So let's talk about that because this kind of plays into the whole tension and I mean, it's been written about in every business magazine. Church leaders are talking about it. David Kinemann has done studies on millennials. Tim Elmore, who writes a blog, growing leaders has talked a lot about the millennial generation or generation IY as he calls them. But really it's about millennial leaders and those are leaders or people in their late teens right through their 20s to their early 30s. And so this idea about prolonged adolescence, 'cause when we were talking a couple of weeks ago about something else, you raised that and I said, I gotta have you on the podcast to talk about this. So this prolonged adolescence is sort of this idea that leaders are not growing up quickly enough today. Where did that come from? And how long has that been around? Because according to you, it's a pretty recent phenomenon. Isn't it this idea of delayed maturity? - Yeah, and they say if you, depends on who you research with this, the shift started back in the 1980s as we moved to a more nurturing home as we moved to a more kid-centered home. You and I were raised in homes where it wasn't the speak when spoken to, but it was, you gotta take on responsibility in an early age. By early age, I mean, when you're six, seven, eight, nine, you got things to do around this. - Oh yeah, I remember dusting and vacuuming and making my bed and being told, hey, this is just part of being in the family, absolutely. - Yeah, and so I think, here's the struggle I see today. The kid-centered home, we raised children in the kid-centered home and we put so much emphasis on academics and athletics to raise the responsibility bar and our young people that we honestly believe, okay, when you come home at night and when you're here on the weekend, we want this to be the place where you just crash, where you just unwind, you play your video games, hang out, get refreshed to go back out to school and back out to the sports field again. And the problem with that is when our kids leave home and they hit college and they get their first job, they're shocked that their first employer, that the dean at their college, that the resident assistant, the professor, won't treat them in a similar fashion as their mom and dad did, and they're shocked, they're like, my mom and dad thought I was awesome. And now, here I am looking at you. Well, he doesn't have the same, or she doesn't have the same connection with me and she's looking for some results in me. And so, when I'm not judging and basing my value or worth to an organization or even to a school based on what I do and produce and rather than consume, I'm just shocked, and so this is the sad part for me. We raise our children in kids-centered homes, we send them out and we tell them, this is the church, this is the home, we tell them, go learn to be independent for another five to 10 years. And Carrie, I really believe independence has become the new socially acceptable term for selfishness. - Oh, that's an interesting connection. We're teaching our kids, you gotta learn how to be independent before you're ever gonna be successful at work or in relationships. So, go out and learn how to do that. And I'm saying, I believe that responsibility needs to start much earlier in the home. - Well, we'll get back to responsibility in a second, 'cause I think you're onto a goldmine there, Ted, and every boss, every employer, every buddy who's got coworkers who's maybe running to this. And then those of us with adult kids are taking notes as well. But tell me a little bit about independence, being a code word for selfishness. I've never heard that before, and it's really, really intriguing. - Yeah, I define prolonged adolescence as a therapist friend of mine, Ryan Penil defines it as too much privilege, not enough responsibility. - Bingo. - And so, again, there's nothing wrong with privilege. And many have been handed privilege, but, you know, all throughout history, privilege was a result of responsibility. So, you worked a year before you got two weeks off. - Yes. - And you never, in an interview with your boss, would ask, "Do I get my birthdays off?" All right, you don't get your birthday. - I still don't ask that. - Yeah. - And hope it falls on a Sunday. No, no, that's a work day, right, nevermind. - Yeah, but if you think about it, it's there, they're even going into the first job, the interview for the first job with a privilege mindset. - Yeah. - What time do I get off? What do you expect out of me? And they're not coming at it from it. I want you to set the bar for me so I can exceed it. I just wanna know what the bar is so I can meet it, and I wanna be able to make sure that work doesn't get in the way of my life. - It's such a good point. - Yeah, because as I'm learning to be independent, and again, I put this in even the context of couples counseling, you know, the struggle I see with that 30-year-old couple struggling in their marriage who didn't get married until they were 28 or 29, it's because they effectively learned how to live by themselves and for themselves before they got married. - Ooh. - And so they get married, and the goal of marriage is oneness, right? We wanna be plus one in marriage. So, but I always in the first 10 to 15 minutes of a counseling session picture them, they're either wearing the same jerseys or they're in opposite jerseys. They're either going down the field in the same direction or they're on opposite ends of the field going at each other. And independence feeds that I'm my own team. I'm my own person, and so I wanna make sure I don't lose my identity in this relationship because my mom and dad revolved the house around me. I wanted, you know, I was given massive amounts of opportunity. When a young person gets out in their 20s today and they're met with the reality and responsibility of work and marriage, I think it's shocking for them. - Totally. - I don't think they've been prepared up to that point. And that is what I mean by independence. They've learned it's all about me, it's all about me, it's all about me, self-reliance. And now I'm in a work environment and it's not all about me. - Well, you know, I've been married for a while. My wife and I got married in the middle of school, which a lot of people told us was a mistake because you need to wait. I was 25, she was 27. Like wait until you get established, wait until you have a house, wait until this. And we just decided to get married. But even by that point in our mid 20s, I remember, and nobody's articulated it before, but I remember navigating that tension. And I would say when we started our marriage as much as our goal or our thought or even our theology might have been oneness, we were definitely wearing separate jerseys. And over the course of a couple of decades of marriage now, I'd say we've got a team mentality going, but that was a lot of therapy along the way, you know, for sure, for sure, you learn to get that way. And it wasn't always that way. I know you and I have talked before and it might be good to catch us up on that. So adolescence is a fairly new concept, right? When did it start in the, so you say in the 80s, we got child centered parenting. But was adolescence is what teenager came out of the 40s or the 50s, like there wasn't even a word for that stage of life prior to that? - The word adolescence was coined in 1904. - Okay. - And when, so if you bring this up with professional counselors and those and academics, they will take you apart, right? So I don't argue too much against adolescence, even though it's about 100 years old. And so I was just at a professional counseling conference two weeks ago. And I said it, I go, when I bring up adolescence and you can just see the division in the room. Like, hey, we know this is a stage in life, but where you get every single one of them on the same page is when you mentioned prolonged adolescence. - Gotcha. - That's when they all go, yep, we see that. Kerry, we've so stretched out prolonged adolescence that one UCLA professor says we need another term and he wants to call it youthhood and it would be between adolescence and adulthood. So if you think about this, traditionally and historically, really only two seasons of life and biblically, you have childhood and adulthood. You went from being a boy to a man and from a girl to a woman. And in 1904, we created adolescence and we put this gap in between childhood and adulthood and prolonged adolescence, okay, on that gap and in that gap has stretched it out. So I always like to think about the five milestones of adulthood on that track called prolonged adolescence and it simply goes like this. Number one, leave home. Number two, finish school or any training or an apprenticeship that you might need. Three, get a job. Four, start a family or get married. Five, start a family. So those are the five milestones of adulthood. They've been the same in every generation. So at a conference earlier this week, I met Fred and Joanne, married 62 years. And I said, Fred, Joanne, the only difference between your generation and my generation is you completed those five milestones in a very short period of time, if not in the same week. Yeah, 23, 24, 25, right? Yeah. And they laughed because they know. What we've done with prolonged adolescence is we've taken those five milestones, the same five milestones, leave home, finish school, get a job, get married, start a family. And we've placed those on the prolonged adolescent track and we've stretched them out now, 10, 15. And honestly, in some cases, 20, 25 years. That it's like the first big crisis and because I deal with marriage more than anything, that first talk of divorce in the home, in the late 20s or early 30s or mid 30s, it's like I'm being confronted with such massive amounts of responsibility and paying bills and work and everything involved in life. I'm not equipped to handle this. And what you're really dealing with today in a lot of 30 somethings in marriage counseling is the prolonged adolescence. They still have not fully grasped how to handle this responsibility, even though it's been handed to them completely. Mom and dad are now out of the equation. And normally and historically, when are people ready for that? I mean, you hear people getting married as young as 18 and a lot of people wouldn't recommend that, but like what, between 18 and 25, you start to take those steps or what does that look like? I say early 20s. I say, and again, I can't see myself fighting too much the traditional college pressure that our young people feel today. But same thing with you. I mean, I met Amy, I was 21, she was 20. We decided to get married when I was 22 and she was 21. She had not yet finished her first, or she had not yet finished college. So she had one year left. She was finishing her junior year. I was graduating. And I went to Fremont Nebraska, walked into the kitchen of my six foot two soon to be father-in-law, full-blooded Norwegian, pretty much a Viking. And I said, "Mr. Freetag, can I marry your daughter?" And he and his thick Norwegian accent, he said, "You betcha." And then I said, "Only under one condition." And he said, "What's that?" I said, "That you allow me to pay "for her senior year of college." Wow. To which he said, "You betcha." So, that's great. And whenever I tell that story, the young guys in our church will say to me, "How, man, how did you do that?" And I'll look at him and I'll say this in a loving and joking way, but I'll go, "Well, at the time, "I didn't have a Venti Caramel macchiato in my right hand "and an iPhone 5 in my left." Yeah. I remember we're gonna sound like old people pretty soon. Yeah, we are. My kids are 18 and 22. But I remember when Tony, my wife, and I decided to have our first child, we had been married and we knew there was a window. We were still students. We were in law school. She took a term off, worked in the marketplace. We saved to students. We saved $10,000 and put it aside in a separate bank account so that we would be ready for children. Now, I don't wanna claim I was completely mature when I became a dad, but I was 26 when I became a dad. And I'll tell ya, you can do it if you want to. And I'm trying to instill that in my kids, right? Where's your part of the education? And you can get your kids financially independent, but you've gotta lose that sense of entitlement. So let's shift this a little bit. That's a really helpful introduction, but this impacts us in leadership all the time. I think we're gonna listen to this conversation with both our parenting hats and our leadership hats on, but how does this translate into the workplace, this whole idea of prolonged adolescence, and how does it translate into, you know, even the world of volunteers, when you're trying to create a leadership culture in your church, organization, or business, a lot of employers complain, you know, they can't spell, they can't do this, and they can't do that, and they won't take on responsibility, and they want their birthdays off, and they want four weeks vacation in their first year. Now, I work with a lot of millennials, and I don't think that's universal, but it certainly seems to be a problem. How does this attitude translate into the workplace for a lot of people? - Well, I think the first thing you have to recognize is you're going to be the first one to help many transition into adulthood. - Okay. - And to me, that's a first step to understand, and early in ministry, I didn't get that, 'cause I grew up in a home with parents that, I mean, just handed me massive loads of responsibility at the age of six. I mean, my dad was the type driving home, if he saw a neighbor with, you know, the grass, a foot high, he'd stop the car and tell me, go up, knock on the door, and offer to cut it for 10 bucks. I mean, my dad was just that type of guy and said, you don't need to be sitting around, you need to be working, and so, I, as a 35-year-old pastor, would look at the millennials and be like, come on, I get frustrated, and then I realize this is an opportunity. I'm not going to be that whining and complaining, as you said a minute ago, we're going to sound like old men here in a second, but I don't want to be that guy. I want to be the guy that walks alongside him and say, okay, listen, God's placed us together at this point in your journey, and I'm going to be the first one. College didn't do it, your parents didn't do it, and I, as your first employer, first full-time employer, I'm going to be the one that introduces you to adulthood and what that means. And I think like you have that conversation with someone, they're open to it, and now you're not just an employer, but you're a mentor. - That's a really, really good point, and if you think about it that way, instead of rolling your eyes into complaining, because I've gotten together with leaders who are a decade or two, and it can easily turn into a complain fast, and I find that the millennials I work with at our church, and we've got lots, and we've got a few on staff, quite a few on staff, they're quite responsible, and they want to learn, and they want to grow, and some came from homes where they got responsibility early. Some didn't, I mean, some kind of raised themselves, and they're often eager, you've just got to show them the way. So, okay, that's a really good point. How else does it translate into the workplace or into a leadership environment, Ted? - Yeah, I like to discover what they're reading, and then, and listening to, and instead of making them listen to my country music, I want to find out the hip-hop artists they're listening to, but I give you an example of that, when the book "Radical" came out. - Yeah, "The Millennial." - The Millennials in our church devoured it, and I started to hear this tone among them. Now, this is really a positive thing, and I thought, boy, this is just something, this is gold that we need to camp on, I thought, I told Amy, because they really embraced this, but then what I started to hear was this disdain for stuff. Like, instead of good theology, where the love of money is evil, money was starting to become evil, and having stuff started to become evil, and the tone I was hearing was kind of like, well, it's just stuff, we don't want it, and we're gonna give everything we have away to serve God, and I came in and listened to that, I wanted to listen, I think this is important, you gotta listen, you gotta listen, you gotta listen, but at one point, I finally said, hey, listen, guys, I just wanna tell you, before you give everything away, I just wanna remind you, you ain't got nothing to give away. You haven't earned anything yet, you've been out of college for five months, and your student loans, I mean, you can't develop this, and I said, don't look at the boomers as this evil generation that worked, and they have some stuff and act like, they're not giving enough of it away, so I would take what they're reading and bring that in to say, what if God's calling you to be an entrepreneur and to make money to bless ministry with? I said, you gotta be more open to that, so I think that's another step as part of being a mentor, being a leader, being the first one to introduce prolonged adolescence to adulthood, is to find out what they're listening to, and then hear the messages, and because a lot of young people in our church, also, my friend Gary Thomas wrote the book, Sacred Marriage, did God give you your spouse to make you? - I love that book. - Holy are happy, and a lot of millennials didn't even read that, but use that as a book to delay marriage, and to say, I'm just gonna wait, I'll go on a mission strip, I don't need marriage to make me holy at this point, and so I just think a lot of times, messages can get lost between generations, there's a gap, and so to be real astute to what they're listening to, and don't be the grumbler, be the one that sits down at lunch, or even at the beginning of a staff meeting, I could give you guys a devotion today, but what are you guys reading? What are you reading? Let's talk about it, what are you learning, and then just bring a voice of responsibility to that. - Well, and part of that, I remember an all day staff retreat we had a couple of years ago, we had a lot of millennial leaders around the table, and we were talking about our direction at our church, Kinexis Church, and one of the ideas that came up around the table was, well, let's just sort of unleash social justice on our community, and it was very idealistic, it didn't really have anything tethering the balloon to the planet kind of thing, and I remember a few of us who'd been in leadership for a little while, said, hey, that's a great ideal, and we wanna be a just church, but like, how do you ship that? Like, what do you do? You can't just walk around with a t-shirt or a banner that says, I'm all in favor of this, you know, peace, love, and happiness. What do you do with that? And so what we had to do was we had to put some strategy behind a goal, and then all of a sudden it had legs, and so we did a few things in our community, and now as an North Point strategic partner, I mean, we do the Be Rich Initiative every year, as well as a few other things that we do, and we partner with churches there, with organizations in Guatemala, and we have other partners in Africa that we work with, and they're making a difference, as well as in our local community, a couple of community organizations, but I think you're right. Often it's not the ideals that need to be shot down, they just need to be channeled, so they actually become something that makes a difference. - Absolutely, and I think one way a boss or a team leader can coach someone out of prolonged adolescence is to take those messages, you know, 'cause I do, that is something that we should stand up and applaud that the millennials do have a heart to serve the world, they have a heart to give, but I'm always, we have this very simple equation around here, it's earn, give, save, and spend. And so don't look down on earning, earning is not bad, we wanna be earners, we need to be producers, and so that's, to me, one of the ways to coach out of that, and again, too much privilege, not enough responsibility, you know, the phones and the technology we have and the three and four dollar drinks, that's all part of privilege, nothing wrong with any of that, but if that's the pursuit, you're a consumer. So how do you transition a young person from being a consumer, even in the work environment, to being a producer? - Right, and the fact that-- - To be able-- - Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off, there's a little delay, but you know, even the fact, Ted, that it's an alternative consumption, in other words, I buy all recycled clothes, I only buy fair trade, I only eat organic, I only do this, it's still consumption, it's just disguised as something other than mainstream consumption. - Absolutely. - Yeah. - But to really challenge, to be producers, to be a part of something bigger, to produce, and I always just love the, when Ecclesiastes says, the sleep of a laborer is sweet. That really, we rest well when we worked hard. - So what I hear under what you're saying is kind of the desire for work ethics. So let's say somebody has a volunteer and they're like, really, you want us to serve every week and you want us to get up at five o'clock in the morning, or you have an employee, and maybe not at the job interview, because perhaps they wouldn't have gotten the job, but you realize, okay, they want four weeks off, or they want their birthday off, or they expect to be done at three o'clock every day. And listen, I'm coming at this not as a slave driver, we all want work-life balance, but there's that sense of maybe entitlement that comes, and not just from workers in their 20s or 30s, but I mean, hey, we get that in our 40s and beyond too. So how do you coach someone into a different mindset? What would you say to somebody who's dealing with a situation right now, and while you've been talking specific names have come to mind, how would you coach that person to address that attitude? - Yeah, I think the other side of this addressing prolonged adolescence as a leader is knowing the difference between character and competency. I think it's something parents and leaders really struggle with, and give me just a second to develop this, 'cause I think this is important for leaders to understand, and I think we get it the best as parents, but I used to bring home failing grades and math all the time in high school, it was not great at math, and my dad's an engineer. So you can imagine bringing home failing grades and math to your engineer father, and I didn't catch on to this 'til 25 years later, and just a couple of years ago I asked my dad, I go, "Dad, why did you never get frustrated with me?" When I would bring home bad grades and math, and he said, "It's because you studied more for math "than all of your other subjects combined." And I said, "What does that mean?" Again, and I think a lot of our parents understood the difference between character and competency, he said, "I wasn't dealing with laziness, "which is a character issue. "I was dealing with competency. "You didn't have, God didn't give you a math brain." So I just did not, I didn't stress over that. He said, "Now, if you never studied "for it and brought home failing grades, "we would have had some very serious talks." Today, parents, and so this transitions into that young person that just started, you know, your company or in your church or as a volunteer, they haven't been able to know the difference 'cause mom and dad, in the entitlement generation and in prolonged adolescence and in the trophy parenting, world now, they want their kids to be awesome at everything. So when their children show a deficiency in competency in an area, we get tutors, we spend more time in it, we're gonna get you awesome in this sport, in this instrument, in this subject, we're gonna get you awesome at everything. And I think what I do when I meet that person who has a hard time getting to work and because it's all been muddled together, they have to understand how hard you work is a part of your character. The type of work you do is part of competency and that's negotiable. That's changing all the time. You can learn new skills and abilities and do other stuff, but your character is what we're more concerned with. We're more concerned with developing that character in use, so when you show up, how hard you work while you're here, giving us your best time, leaving when you're supposed to and not taking longer breaks or longer lunches and that's all part of your character. That's the most important thing for us in our work environment. And then the type of stuff you do, and I think you're like, well how do you, why is linking those two so important? It's because that volunteer who doesn't wanna show up after giving you their word that they will, hasn't had those two lines drawn from them. They're like, well, he'll get over it. I told him I would, but I can't. Well, but we're dealing now with a character issue that really needs to be addressed. That's a really, really good insight, and I think that's great advice. And I mean, I think studies have even shown, I can't quote them chapter and verse, but I've read studies that have said, parents that kind of affirm outcomes, like great, you got a great grade. There have been times where our kids came home with A's and we said, well that's great, but did you really work for it? You know, can you turn the 83 to an 86? Like, I'd rather have you work for something rather than just focus on the outcome. And then there were other areas where, I know once or twice they struggled for 72 and something, and we were like, that's even worth more than your mark that was an 85 or 90 because you worked so hard for it, like way to go. So in the workplace, what does that look like? I'm trying to, or in your organization, the volunteer basically says, yeah, I'm not coming in, sorry, I slept in, I was tired, I was up the night before, or the employee says, well, I just gotta go. Are there certain things you can do to kind of truncate prolonged adolescence? - Yeah, I think, especially if you have someone that's super high on competency, they'll start to rely on their competency more than their character. And they'll let their character slide because I'm so valuable for you and what I do. I encourage our salesmen all the time in this area. You're a salesman in our church. I'm like, man, you're good at what you do. You can sell stuff. People like you at the end of the conversation and they buy what you're selling, but boy, please don't ever let that run ahead of your character. Always be concerned, above reproach. When asked a question and you're choosing between being principled and expedient, go with principled. Lean on the principle, not on whatever gets the sale. You know, in the books for you that month. And I think that's what happens too with young people. It's like, hey, I can work from wherever I want. I can do whatever I want because my boss can't program a computer like I can. So I can, I'll get to it when I get to it. I'll get, no, again, that's relying on your competency. - And remote work really does. I mean, that's a growing thing. We have employees who work remotely. I work remotely a couple of days a week, but that's really where your character takes over because nobody really knows what you do, right? Nobody really knows. Did you actually show up? Did you phone it in? Did you goof off? What did you do? And so what is it? Is it just having those character conversations and having them often that really sort of forced someone to take responsibility? You've just got to get more used to having those conversations? - Yeah, because if you think about it, your competency will let you down in the future. I promise you, you won't hit the deadline. You won't please everybody. You won't exceed expectation. You won't meet expectations, but it's your character that you want growing. And as we talk about this too much privilege and not enough responsibility, okay, that when my character is growing, when my character is, character is what responsibility flows from. Okay, so commitment flows from your character. I can throw another C in here, but our culture is obsessed in relationships with chemistry and compatibility. And so we think it's the most important thing, but I tell couples this as well. Compatibility is something you make. It's not something you stumble into. It's not something you fall into. You negotiate it each day. And so how do you have the stick-to-itiveness to negotiate that and to work through difficult conversations and to deal with conflict that comes from your character? - Right. - You make decisions. - That's a really good point. And one of the things you talk about when you're a book trophy child, you talk about the rescue parent and rescue parenting. These are the parents who really just, you'll say it better than I can, but basically rescue the kids from the consequences of their responsibility, of their irresponsibility. So I think one of the examples you gave is a 16 year old crashed the car and dad went out the next day and bought him a brand new car. Well, life doesn't work that way, right? Like dad just absorbed all the consequences of your irresponsibility. And do you ever see that at work in leadership where sometimes you're pretty grateful to have someone on your team and they don't show up or they don't meet the project deadline or they're just not burning. And again, I'm not into a 100 hour work week or an 80 hour work week, but they just don't seem to be putting in the effort. They seem to be cruising. Do you think sometimes as boss as we rescue people? Do you think sometimes as adults, we carry that into the workplace or into a leadership environment where it's like we start making excuses for people while they were tired or well, that's just the way it is or you can't get much better than that. Do you see that at work sometimes in leadership? - A hundred percent. I think one of the best things a boss or a team leader can say is one of the best things that a parent can say when asked by their teenager. Mom and dad, what do you think if I, the best question, I don't know, what do you think? And to turn it back around on them so you can be part of their processing. My mom and dad did, I told him, I told my mom and dad, well, I was right in Trophy Child. I spent a lot of time calling my mom and dad saying, "Hey, thank you." I didn't even realize you were doing that, but, you know, and my mom, and I think that's a big just a side note here. One of the most honoring things you can do for your parents is to call them as an adult and say, you know, you did something 20 years ago. I just wanted to say thank you. It was so subtle, it was so small, but I understand that. And my dad and mom all the time, I would go, "Hey, I'm thinking about buying this. What do you guys think? I don't know. What do you think? How much you have in the bank? How much is it gonna cost? Are you gonna get a return on it?" I mean, they would just walk through all that. And I think if that insecure new employee sits down, wanting to make sure, 'cause here's the other problem, and this is definitely the Trophy Child Syndrome, because they receive so many gold stars and so many, you know, excellence on everything, if they do something poorly or make a mistake in the office and they're called on it, I mean, it's like their world comes crashing down on them. - Absolutely. - Because they were told how awesome they are, and if you're the first one that tells them, you didn't do that right, let me show you how to do that right. Then they may become gun shy, and then they come in the office and they're like, "Kari, what do you think if I were to? I don't know, what do you think? Tell me what you're thinking. Process that with me so they can know, they can begin to, "Hey, before I make this decision, I've thought about two or three outcomes of this decision." - Right, and you know, the other thing I think that does, you're helping me see this too, is when you throw the question back on them, and you do it in a very nice way, like, "I don't know, what do you think? I got this problem I can't solve. What do you think? I don't know, what do you think?" I think what you do at that point is you transfer responsibility, right? All of a sudden, you don't absorb that responsibility, so the helicopter parent or the helicopter leader, or the rescue leader, or the rescue parent, would be like, "Well, I think you should do this, and you should set it up this way, and here, I'll go do that, or I'll go to the bank for you, or I'll take care of that." Because then you're just making them more irresponsible, and you're so right, when you ask the question, what do you think? It transfers responsibility, and not only do they think it through, they own the outcome, because all of a sudden they have skin in the game, and then when it doesn't work, they thought about it. They didn't, they can't go, "Oh, well, that was Ted's idea, and it was a dumb one anyway." - Right. - You know what we call that at our church? We call that, "Take the hit." Take the hit. You come into the senior pastor, or the CEO, or whoever, and he may be, he's the quarterback. And if you're a snap in the ball to him, and this is the word picture I love, and I got this from a senior staffer at our church, probably six or seven years ago, he told one young staffer, he said, "You know what you did Sunday when that lady came to you, and said she doesn't like the volume? Instead of taking the hit, you snap the ball to Ted, and then you got out of the way, and you didn't even take the block, right? You did not take the hit. You said, "This is the volume Ted wants it at." And but see, those are those moments of gold to say, "You gotta take the hit." You just, your value here is in responsibility, your leader. So take that and to say, hey, explain to that lady, help her, encourage her. Oh, I think that is so good. Was it, did you do that, you did a blog post on just turning down the volume on people who shouldn't be out there? - I did, yeah, what was it called? - Yeah, that's the exact same thing. - Yeah, I think it's called while just turning down as microphone is a bad leadership strategy, we'll link to it in the show notes. But yeah, and it was one of those things where people don't want to have the conversation, and no one wants to take the responsibility, and there's a really bad singer on stage. So you whisper to the sound guy and everybody, but the guy knows, and it's like, just turn down his mic, just turn down his mic, right? 'Cause we can't tell him he's terrible. Well, somebody's gotta get up there and go, you can't sing. Maybe you can serve somewhere else, but you can't sing. I agree. Okay, this has been a lot of fun, and we're running low on time. I got two more questions for you. Okay, one of them is, somebody's sitting there right now, and they could be 18, 25, 35, 45, I don't know. And they're going, that's me. I've been named, I realize I've got a problem today, and it's probably overwhelming them. Where would they start? What's one or two things they could do to just even begin reversing the tide to say, I gotta grow up, I gotta take some responsibility. But how did they do that? What does that mean? And if we're talking that 18 to 25 year range, examine your ties. Who are you still tied to, and then have the hard conversations? I speak every year at a gap year program, so it's kids who are leaving high school going to college. And it's before their freshman year, it's a whole year program, and we have this conversation you and I have been having the last 40 minutes, and I do this for three days. At the end of three days, I've talked about prolonged adolescence, entitlement, growing up and all of that. I can't begin to tell you Carrie, the number of students that raise their hand and say, we wanna do this. These are 18 and 19 year olds. We wanna do this, but our parents won't let us. Ted, I want a job, they won't let me get one. Ted, I wanna buy my own car, they keep paying me. They just want it to be about college, and about learning, and about, you know, and so a lot of times the privilege of the parent, because they have the resources to give their, it's not about what you can or cannot give your child, it's about the responsibility of your child. So at 18 and 19 at 20, there may be some conversation, it could be as simple as calling home to say, "Hey, I appreciate that I'm on the Friends and Family Plan, "but I'm at a point and I have a part-time job "while I'm gonna pay for my own phone bill." - Yeah. - Start taking little bits of responsibility showing your parents, 'cause I hear this in pre-marriage counseling all the time. I just wish my parents would trust me. Okay, when's the last time you called home for money? Well, you know, they have my rent. Yeah! (laughing) - What's your point? - And I would say this, if you're 18 to 25 years old and your ties are still to home, I think, and I'm not saying, you know, if mom and dad are covering your insurance, I'm not saying tomorrow just end it all, but you do need a plan. And to have that conversation with your mom and dad of a plan and to say, "Hey, listen, "I'm applying for my first job. "HR directors are telling me this. "Mom and dad calling in to negotiate "first compensation packages." - Oh, really? - Yeah. - No. - No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You tell mom and dad, "I got this one." Now, you can go over to their house, you know, that night and say, "Hey, here's one of them." - Get some advice, that's great. Mom and dad calling the HR director is a no, no. And you take the responsibility with that. Say, "Mom, don't need you calling on my behalf." - Right, exactly. I mean, I've seen situations where parents in an employment situation where it gets conflicted, the parents will come in and demand a meeting. And it's like, we didn't hire you. We hired your daughter, we hired your son, all right? Okay, that's really good. So cut the ties and take responsibility, but that also means absorbing that responsibility. That might mean you don't get the $5 macchiato. That might mean that that money actually goes to your phone bill, which is part of adulthood, part of responsibility. Now, if you're the rescue parent or the rescue employer or the rescue leader who just goes in and keeps making excuses for your team, keeps up, well, that's fine. What's one change you could do? I love the what if thing is, you know, well, what would you do? What would you do? Is there anything else you can, as we wrap up, give advice to the people who might say, okay, I'm the rescue parent, I'm the rescue leader. What would you say? - Yeah, and I, you know, so much of what we talked about today is about today and is about your performance at work or in church today. But I think one of the most honoring things you can do for a young person to prepare them for responsibility is to begin picturing a special future for them. And spend some time with them painting a picture of 10 years from now, 15 years from now, 20 years from now. How, again, chemistry might change 'cause you may be in a different job, competency might change, you might learn new skills and go do something else. But it's your character that will sustain you from here to there. And responsibility is part of your character. So I wanna help you build that. So because, you know, 10 years from now, you're married, you have small children, your responsibility isn't gonna probably start decreasing until you hit those retirement years. You are on a path of, you know, all eight cylinders going with responsibility between here and 60 or here in 65. You know, so begin to picture that special future. And this, I think the sad part for me curious, I look at a lot of millennials today. There is a lot of hopelessness. Getting out of college, I can't get a job. My student debt is huge. They need some voices alongside them that are saying, you can do this, you can do this. It's gonna take some time. You're not gonna be able to do it in three years, what your mom and dad did in 30. That's not gonna happen. But let me tell you how you can begin on that path. Paint a big picture, just not a, what I need from you today at work. - You know, that's really good advice. And I would say with the millennials that I work with up close every day, they are so open to mentorship. Like, I'm surprised. - Yes. - When I was 25, I was not that open to mentors. I kind of figured it all out and I knew it all. And, you know, now I've lived long enough to know I know almost nothing. But they are so open to that kind of coaching. Well, Ted, this has been incredibly helpful, incredibly enlightening. I imagine people are gonna wanna know more about you and they're also gonna wanna know more about this. So what's the easiest way for them to find you online or to get in touch with you? - At woodhills.org, woodhills.org, or they can go to TedKunningham.com and it takes you to our church website, Wood Hills. - Excellent. Hey, Ted, Ken, thank you enough. - Thank you, Gary. - Well, you gotta admit, that is fascinating. I'm so grateful that Ted would take the time to build into you and your team and your head's probably spinning right now, going, okay, that's a really different way of looking at things. And I think there's some super helpful tips. So what we've done is we have broken down a lot of those tips and some quotes and so on and things that you can do in the show notes. Just go to karaenuhoff.com/episode7. And also, you might wanna check out some of Ted's books. A couple that come to mind are Young and in Love and Trophy Child. He deals with a lot of the issues that we talked about in those books. And you can learn more about Ted at his church's website. Just go to woodhills.org. And again, everything's in the show notes, karaenuhoff.com/episode7. Now, if you found this podcast helpful, please, if you would, take a moment and just leave a rating in the iTunes Store or on TuneIn radio or on Stitcher, we'd love to hear from you. And your review gives us honest feedback and also gives us an opportunity to get that message in front of other people. 'Cause it just really impacts the ranking of the podcast. And just thank you. It's also fuel for me. You guys, you're awesome. Okay, that's so cool. And now, the contest. Are you ready? Okay, this is gonna be fun. Over the next few weeks, next few episodes, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna be a chance to win a prize every week. And then, when you enter by leaving a comment in the show notes of the blog, it's also your ballot to win the grand prize. So this week's prize is an autograph copy of Parenting Beyond Your Capacity. The grand prize, which we're gonna draw for a little bit later on, a few episodes down the road, is a free ticket to the Orange Conference 2015 in Atlanta in April of next year. It is a premier conference on leadership for those who want to influence the next generation. Andy Stanley's gonna be there. Perry Noble, Reggie Joyner, John Acuff, Donald Miller, Virginia Ward, a whole lot more. I'm gonna be there. I'm gonna lead the senior leaders track. And we're gonna make this interesting. Okay, it is the only ticket. The only ticket at Orange Conference 2015 that gets you a bonus. Not only is it free, but it's gonna get you a copy with me and John Acuff backstage. So if you, I know a lot of you love John Acuff. He's an amazing leader, a great friend. We're just gonna hang out with you backstage and we will take your questions and we're just gonna sit down just the three of us and have a conversation. So if you're interested in that, here's what you do. Go to the show notes. KerryNewHoff.com/episode7 and leave a comment and answer this question. What is the one best thing you've done as a parent or church leader to encourage young adults to take on more responsibility? Okay, when you leave a comment, that's your ballot. I'll draw this week for somebody who wins the book and then we're gonna keep all those ballots, all those comments and a few weeks from now, we're gonna do the grand prize draw. So that's your entry. Okay, you can enter every week by leaving a comment, but why don't you start right now? Just go on to the show notes. KerryNewHoff.com/episode7 and you could win a copy of Parenting Beyond Your Capacity signed by Reggie and myself or you can also win or I should say and you can also win the grand prize, which is the Orange Tour 2015 free admission to the conference and coffee with John A. Cuff and I backstage. So head on over to the show notes now, leave a comment and the cool thing about this contest is every week we're gonna learn best practices. Isn't that cool? It'll actually make you a better leader and me a better leader. So that's fun. So thanks for doing that. Hey, next episode, a week from now we're coming back. You're gonna hear from Rich Birch, Rich is an awesome leader. He writes a blog called Unseminary.com. Rich is honestly one of the most progressive thinkers I know and he's gonna talk all about how church and culture are changing. He's just outside New York City, helping with a great church there and what we can do as leaders to respond to the changes we're seeing. So until next time, have a great week and I hope this helps you lead like never before and go over to the show notes now and leave your ballot. Okay, you ready? Leave a comment, that's your ballot and don't forget, we'll see you next week. You've been listening to the Carry New Hough Leadership Podcast. Join us next time for more insights on leadership, change and personal growth to help you lead like never before. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)