¶ Impacting Lives and Creating Coaching Trees
Hey everybody , frank here with another episode of Modern Church Leader , joined by the Brad Lomonik . Brad , it's great to have you on the show today .
Good to be here , man . I get the the in front of my name , that's cool the Ohio State and the Brad Lomonik .
We got both of them . I think I'm the . It would be great if you went to Ohio State . Did you go to Ohio ?
State . I didn't , but I think I am the only oh , I'm the only Brad Lomonik in the world , so I can be the I mean have you done the like , Ancestrycom or any of ?
those things ever . No , I should . Okay , I haven't either . We were having a chat in the car with my kids the other day . They were asking us , you know , because a buddy had done it and I don't know . We just haven't done it Maybe one day .
I do know that Lomonik Mavis is Scottish , so I do have that reference from the arc . You know the long five generation , six or seven generations , however long we've been around , which I'm proud of that . I'm very proud of my Scottish heritage . I love it . At one point there was rumors that we were French and I didn't want to be French .
I mean , I love all . I love French fries , offended all the French people watching the show . They're all offended right now All three of them . So I like the French people , I like that they gave us French fries , but I feel like Braveheart is more the movie that I want to be compared to .
That's kind of like yeah compared to .
I don't know Paris in Love or whatever other movies there are that are French , so oh my gosh .
Yeah , I get it . You want the fight story more than the love story .
So there you go .
There you go . Well , tell us for this you know our audience of three that you referenced like . Tell us how you got into what you're doing . If you ran Catalyst for a long time , I'm sure there'd be a lot of people that know Catalyst . You've written a great book . We're going to talk a little bit about that . It's brand new , just hits the shelves , exactly .
So we're going to have fun Exactly About that . But how did you get into ? You know , serving the church ? Let's generically that book , sure .
Well , I mean John Maxwell . Really for me , frank was like the Catalyst , truly . I mean we all have those who's in our 20s who give us a chance . You know that we're knuckleheads and we're young and dumb and then we get connected to someone and they really change our trajectory . So for me it was John Maxwell .
I mean I got connected to his organization and many would , many would probably .
You know , when I referenced that the old , when John would send out like cassette tapes of his leadership content , that was the you know , enjoy , that was the name of the organization and there was a bunch of us who were young and got around him and I was one of those , and so that's , that was 20 plus years ago , and so all the things with Catalyst and
other big conferences and events and being connected to churches and pastors and leaders in general , it was because of my , of just truly like one person , changed trajectory for me .
Right , yeah , so I sat in . This is with a buddy who passed through the church for a long time , got into like coaching for pastors and senior leaders , and it was last year he did . He does this kind of smaller gathering , maybe 50 churches , something like that . You know there'll be 50 , 75 people , but it's with John Maxwell .
So it's in Florida , it's at a hotel out there . He gets them together and Maxwell speaks for a day . Right , it's kind of a day , you know , I don't know if it's a , it's not , it's not like eight hours of teaching , but it's a lot of Maxwell , right , and I got to sit in it and just hang out and the first time I've ever heard Maxwell like in person .
I've read his books and heard him online and whatnot . Dude , I couldn't stop writing notes . Like he's just amazing , Like , and he was . He was like riffing on something he was gonna write , Like hadn't written the book yet but was kind of just sharing his notes of something that he was one day going to publish , right , and it was incredible .
So I can fully understand how he could have a massive impact on an individual and change the whole course of life .
Yeah , he truly does , and that I mean that's the lesson for me now , and the lesson for me the last 20 years is well , I want to have the same impact on on people , on my team or people that I'm around , or even the people you , indirectly , are impacting or influencing .
And I mean , I got to travel with John a little bit , but we weren't like best buddies , um , and that's the thing , like so many of us , we have the ability to to impact people that are close or even far away from us .
And so this idea that you know you're , you're a value adder to people , um , that you actually like give people courage , you know you , you you come alongside and and you they walk away from an interaction with you and they're better because you've invested something in them .
And all that is that's just the , that's just the osmosis and being around somebody where they create a culture , that that that is now like the norm . And so it wasn't just leadership , but it was more like life and um , life .
You know , if you looked at the coaching tree , for example , of John Maxwell and so many young leaders who at some point worked around John and then now they've gone on to do other stuff . I mean , it's a pretty significant coaching tree of pastors , of marketplace leaders , of of authors , of movement leaders , you know .
So , again , that's the lesson that I think everybody not everybody's going to be , john Maxwell , but we all have the ability to to have our own coaching tree of people who who've worked around us , even if it's like for a year or two , and they go , man , when I was at Tidely and I worked on Frank's team , I was only there for two years , but those are the
two best years perhaps of my entire career . That's .
Oh man , wouldn't that be awesome .
Exactly , and this is true like . I'm only a tire to have something like that set and it's , it's it's going to be true more and more because the average the average like young leader going forward is going to have a lot of different job assignments . Uh , I hope they all stay for 30 years at Tidely , but the reality is is now they're all like free agents .
So I've got to bounce it around more . I've got to change my mindset and think I might . I'm not only have a year or two with them , and if , how can I release them when they leave here after 18 months or two years or five years , and that this was one of the best season for them ?
Mm . Hmm , yeah , no , I hear that . I mean , I think like there was the day of people right Like loyalty and longevity of a company was like a real quality right Like people praised that kind of thing . But and this is , I don't think this is necessarily like a selfish thing or but I feel like the marketplace shifted right .
It's like you kind of have to move around , not in every situation , but you know a large , like in a very general high level sense , like you kind of have to move around to progress in a career .
Yeah , Well , you can move around . That's the other thing .
Like you actually , and it is easier to move around . Yeah , there's way more opportunity .
And it's , it's , it's not required , but it you know this , the whole premise that you're now creating a career based on 25 projects compared to 50 years in one company , right , that's a whole new mindset that for us and for our , you know , for those before us like that would have been seen as oh , you're totally disloyal , you can't keep a job , nobody wants
to hire you , and I think now it's like oh , that's just normal , right Now we can like in my day , that still would have been a thing Right .
Like I'm , I just turned 45 . So you know earlier , you know early on in my career , like that kind of like long jet , like you look at a resume , how long were you at job a and job B ? Like you still , that was a way of things getting processed right .
You would , you would screen out the people that like bounced a bunch Right , whereas like now , like today , people entering the workforce , that's going to look to my kids . It's going to look totally different , like they might all be projects , stuff , Like who knows right .
Um project , the object generation man free agent economy , I mean the gig generation like this , and it doesn't make it right or wrong , it just is because there's more options than ever , which which actually creates a lot of a lot of freezing of 20 somethings today , because they have so many options .
Now they're , they're getting the paralysis analysis and so they go because they're watching Instagram .
They're all on Instagram or Snapchat , tik Tok or whatever one they're on and they're watching a zillion options and being like .
Now I don't know I can do that or I can do that or I can do that , which is true . But I mean , let's all be clear .
This is why being really being really dotted in on purpose and the way God's wired you , the things you're really good at , the things that you're passionate about , like all that is even more important today than ever , because otherwise we're just jumping from thing to thing based on like five minutes ago , and that's going to create a schizophrenic generation , which
it is like . Purpose anxiety is real . There's a real thing out there right now , with 20 and some things in early 30 somethings , like they feel purpose anxiety because they're . It's comparison , it's imposter syndrome , it's the ability to do anything I want to do in life .
And if we don't help young leaders dial in and know like the riverbanks are supposed to be , like trafficking in , then we're just going to have a bunch of jumpers and you know , this is this is what's happened in the church the last three years .
You've watched a lot of people , I think , arguably , who looked around and thought , okay , actually working for a church was probably something my parents wanted me to do . I'm not even sure I'm like this is in my wiring to have a full time role , right , I mean we're all , we're all supposed to be part of a ? yes , we're all part of the church .
So you know just the reshuffling of talent . It's a massive , massive , massive issue in culture , in the church , in the marketplace , nonprofit space .
Yeah , I mean I was .
You know we're three years in to kind of I guess the just the crazy COVID politics , cultural things , social things , like there's all the stuff that has happened in these last three years and , like you know , anecdotally , I've heard plenty of pastors , senior leaders go man , the young talent , the young leaders are leaving because they don't know , they didn't sign
up for this , like they're not , not , not that hard , like I don't want it to come , I don't want to be framed that way , but like I'm not , I wasn't prepared for this , I didn't know , like I'm not trained for this , I'm not ready for this , I don't have the experience of the life behind me to deal with this . Like , so I'm out .
And then I guess , if you layer on all these opportunities and like the sort of like I don't know what I want to do , because I could do that , could be a YouTuber , I could go into real estate , I could do , I could be an influencer , like there's all these things right , and they're just watching social media and being kind of ripped around , I mean , yeah ,
it's the new reality .
Think about that . So the question always with that kind like what you just , what you just framed , is well , how do I , how do I find them and how do I keep them ? If I find them , I kind of actually keep them around .
And there there actually are churches that are really good examples , and I think what you see with the churches where you walk in and there's there's a lot of like young 20 something , high capacity talent or early 30 something , and they're not in charge yet . But but when you walk in , what's the what are the ingredients of that kind of culture ?
¶ Leadership Development and Succession Planning
I think a couple of things . One , they feel like there's movement internally , not just externally , meaning they don't , they don't sit around and go . Well , I guess I'm just going to have to wait until somebody dies or somebody retires , which is which ?
Yeah , so they can see it , like they can see it clearly , like they can see a path and the path has actually been talked about , so that they're on a path .
They can not just see it , they're actually on one , and that path might be again five years and they go somewhere else . But there's enough room for them to maneuver internally . And there's also a sense that the general consensus in those kind of environments is that they're being given opportunities to lead on stuff that they shouldn't be leading on at their age .
So you look around and go wait , you're in charge of that and you're 22 . That's the kind of culture we have to think about . Is and are they gonna make mistakes ? Absolutely , but we have to give them opportunities way earlier than ever we were given . And this is hard for a lot of us because we have a hazing mentality .
Even in the church world we're like I'm gonna make you wait as long as I waited , and man , that is just dangerous .
Right , I also and this is not scientifically proven , this is just my own experience and anecdotal . But you get leaders that maybe were young when they did their thing and they rose up and they've got to use them to do something great .
But then all of a sudden you turn around and they're the old guys , but they're not letting go , they're still in their day and that's not I get it . Like I mean , I'm middle of all of that in life at 45 . Like I get it , because I'm 45 , thinking I'm 25 . Right .
Oh , you're still cool , man , you're still cool .
I can still play ball the way I used to , and I know , but no , it's not true , but it's hard , but then . So then these great leaders age , but they didn't let . I don't know , maybe it's probably not on purpose , but letting the young leaders kind of raise up doesn't happen , because they're kind of held down under the senior folks .
Yes , and here's the irony , because we can think of so many places I won't name names , but we can think of places where there was nothing there before and all of a sudden , a very high capacity young leader started a church Young , yeah , and then it got big .
And what happened when it got big is now , without even trying to make this the reality , they created an environment that was built around the genius with the thousand helpers mindset , which is Jim Collins . That's Jim Collins language , from good to great . And it happens in companies , it happens in nonprofits , it happens in churches .
So then you have a situation where , again , you create a culture that you didn't even realize you created and you actually force young , up and coming , high capacity people to self regulate , based on their sense of ambition to go somewhere else , right , without even realizing it . And this is , you know , that's just the normal default .
So our thinking has to be counter cultural to everything we built , and I just watched John Maxwell do this for me . I mean , I'm not that smart , frank , like you know , cause I would do the same thing , but when you've been in an environment where it was modeled to you , yeah , you see it .
You see it , it like helps you have clarity around it . So important it's thought , happening and probably talked about , probably like overtly brought out , so then you're aware of it .
I mean when I stepped out of leading catalyst at 40 , for a number of reasons , but one of the main ones was because I was now becoming that leader that when we started it we were sort of making fun of in a very honest and honoring and respectful way . But you know , I was but listen , man , I was at my pinnacle but I wanted to .
I wanted to Barry Sanders the situation way more than like , I guess , brett Favre . You know , brett Favre , it Barry .
Sanders , just I mean , just as a tangent . Barry Sanders was absolutely amazing , but I feel like he just fell off the face of the earth . He left early and I was probably young yeah , I was probably young and not paying all that that much attention , but that guy was amazing and then he was just gone . Where'd Barry Sanders ?
He left before anybody had to force him to leave . Oh my gosh . Like I think he was still in his prime , he totally was compared to Brett Favre , and I love Brett Favre , brett Favre , they were like hey , brett , you're 47 . I mean Tom Brady , again the goat , but it's . You know , those are , those are fun , those are like . Those don't parallel as examples .
¶ Fostering Young Leadership in Organizations
But I think the mindset of a great leader who has a lot of young leaders hanging around them is that they've already moved out of the way even though they're still in charge . They've , they're moving out of the way constantly to let other leaders like step in , and that's a it's a hard to do .
Once you build something that that now you feel like you got a steward .
Right , right , yeah , yeah , it's hard . I mean this is a little bit your world , right . Like leadership , helping the younger folks Like you dabble in all these areas , like who do you see doing it well ? Or maybe what you know for the people doing it well , what are they doing that really fosters that environment and helps young leaders thrive ?
Yeah , well , I said it earlier , they're giving them opportunities way early before . Anybody probably probably would have given them an opportunity when they were that age . They're allowing them to sit at the table , and that that's I mean .
Like that , I mean that literally and figuratively , because the old days again for you and I , we might have gotten invited into the room where the decision was being made but we didn't get to speak up . We had to set like four rows back and it just the fact we were in the room we felt honored .
You know like , I got to be in the meeting and the average 20 something today in General I'm stereotyping , but the average younger leader , they expect to be at the table . Now again , they've got to .
They got to show up and put their big boy or big girl pants on and Play , play at that level and not get offended or get hurt when we say , hey , that idea stinks , you don't stink , right , they've got to be able to to to add value , but we do have to . We have to invite them to that table .
And you know , I find it even in my own role , right , sometimes you just got to let the young folks it's weird , young folks it sounds so dumb .
Yeah , the young kids the young people .
Yeah , just you know like they throw stuff out and you're like I don't even know why you're talking right now , because whatever , whatever , whatever's coming out is like either like Not good , or yes , of course , or what , whatever right .
But that's how you grow exactly , like like people need those chances , they need those opportunities because they're not you right , they got 20 more years to get there and it took you 20 years to figure that .
Those things out that now are just you kind of know and understand via like experience and intuition , right , yes , so , and you know you got to give them those opportunities and just let it fly and for all the young leaders .
This works both ways . I mean young leaders again . If , if your expectation is oh , brad or Frank , please invite me to that meeting where we're making the decision , great , okay , you're invited . Now again , I need you to show up prepared . I need you to show up , you're out .
You're now at being asked to out kick your coverage as it relates to your level of authority and responsibility in the organization . So you better be like acting and dressing and praying and speaking and Thinking like you're . You're in my seat . Don't show up and all shucks it and and just and not have a good idea or or bring something that's not valuable .
Now , I'm not talking about like we're gonna , like failure is is needed , like you said . But but again , when you , when you say , when we say to that young leader , hey , hey , ted , what do you think ?
And they throw out something that's awful , it's the rules of engagement are that we will throw you under the bus based on your idea and you can't take offense to that or you'll at least know .
Yeah , you'll at least know that idea like that's .
But that has to be , that has to be understood , because that would be true for anybody sitting at the table , right . And this is where , like the really great , like , for example , tech companies you know , think of any great tech company Apple , amazon , google , just throw them all in there . But they have this . They have this premise of psychological safety .
Regardless of whether you're 20 or 70 , you're gonna show up in an environment and add value and there's gonna be psychological safety , knowing that the fact that you're on the team , you already are a high capacity player , right . So that's what we have to create in the church is we have to create like this this idea of best idea wins a standard of excellence .
We're not gonna be nice , we're gonna be , we're gonna be kind , kindness is clarity , right . But you know , we get stuck in the nice factor and and nice just creates more gossip on the on the backside of a conversation . Right so all that has to be part of the culture again that we're creating , that .
That that is , that is allowing for young leaders today to , to , to stick around . And here's the other thing . Just I'll finish on this one , on this question , all of us who , who are their leaders or bosses or managers of a 25 year old let's just take that as an example they probably have like four or five job offers right now .
They probably are on LinkedIn or they're on you know some Christian Placement website . My job is now to coach them With all those opportunities , not to judge them and say I can't believe you're even looking around the fact that I now found out you're fired . Different world man , yeah , totally . Who's doing it ?
Well , give me , give me some examples that you've seen , that if somebody's watching , listening and they want to kind of go man , like , how do I get better at this ? Or I'm a young leader and I want to see what this looks like like , you have any like Leaders ? I mean , maxwell Is great , you know , are there any other ?
Whether it's church leader , business leader , any guys you know , or whatever they're like , they do this really well .
Well , I mean , you know this , one of the real standards for me is Chick-fil-A yeah , you know , in terms of the way they attract talent , but both , both at the local operator level , like the Chick-fil-A in your , you know , in your neighborhood or your city , but also at the corporate level .
Every time I want Chick-fil-A . It's a Sunday , oh man .
It's tough . Oh , there's a great . You've seen the song that what's his name ?
did , like the I think I have , oh yeah , like any name thing , that's all , oh yeah .
I mean , they're , they're really good at At building a culture that is attractive to a young leader . And you go to their , you go to their headquarters in Atlanta and it's like all 20 somethings , it's crazy , like there's hundreds of them .
Just I'm not sure what they all do , to be honest , but you know it's , it's , it's a there's a strong culture of , of leadership development , so but they , they'd look at it and they say we , we may not , we may not have them for 20 years , but we might have them for five years and we're going to develop these leaders and it's a leadership development factory
, whether they stay or not . I mean , you know , churches churches , I think the usual suspects would probably , would would probably be the ones that everybody would turn to in terms of examples , meaning that the probably the largest churches in America are the ones that are doing this .
Well , you know , I think I think one of the things that is also changing the game is that everybody's starting to think about apprenticeship . So , just as an example , church of the Highlands in Birmingham , alabama , you know , big church , 30 , 40,000 . But one of the things they're they're really they they've done intentionally is they they created Highlands College .
Yeah , highlands College has now got a thousand students in it . They , when you , when , when you have a conversation with their team about , about recruitment of new talent , they look at you and go we're , we're good , they have , they have , they have such a bench now because of this college that they've created , that they have inflow .
They have constant inflow of great talent .
So , when you talk about talent recruitment , talent retention , they're , they're , they're good , I mean they , they have a whole model of apprenticeship , of residency , of internship , so they , they're just they're , they're solving their own problem , which is we're trying to go out and find the next generation of talent and they're just saying we're already developing them
right here with and this is , this is a massive opportunity for the church and I'm talking about churches of five hundred or a thousand or ten thousand or fifty thousand is your ability to like , actually raise up talent , starting in middle school .
That now becomes a feeder for , for your ability to find staff and right , that's , that's the future , because that's a big deal . I mean and think of , think of everybody right now . I mean anybody who's got an 18 year old or 17 year old that's thinking about college . It's not the same thoughts that we had . There's a lot of them going .
Why would I go to college ? I'm going to have tons of student debt , and so this idea of , oh , I could go , like you know , be a resident at a local church , probably get paid , get some kind of accreditation for it , that's a , that's a new opportunity .
Yes , it's big , and just the YouTube generation . I mean you learn so much online , exactly as compared to even even when I went to college and certainly you know before me . I mean , there's so much that's free . If you are resourceful and curious and motivated , you can learn a lot all by yourself .
You can curate your . You can curate your own degree , basically .
Yeah , yeah , yeah . Well , man , I know you got a jam . This has been awesome . You wrote a great book . It's it just hit the shelves , so I want to make sure people know seven years ago . It didn't just hit the shelves but it is a great book , so I want to make sure people know about it . Eight three leadership where , where should people go ?
Is it just Amazon search for eight three leadership .
Yes , anywhere , anywhere , that and , by the way , it's everywhere .
The one thing I would say for everybody to do , if you were going to ask me , like , how do they connect with me , is that my podcast like it's free , ok , eight , three , eight , three leadership podcast , and the reason I think it's on valuable is that I do links and recommendations and resources on every episode .
So I'm like I'm trying to figure out what are the other podcasts people need to listen to ? What are books they need to read ? What are what are articles they need to be paying attention to .
So I'm trying to be a curator of of the best , like sort of the best of these different categories that people don't have to do the hard work then they can just like listen to me .
I love it . Eight three leadership podcasts Go to Apple Spotify . Wherever you listen to your , you publish it everywhere . Can they find it anywhere ? Is there one where you know it's everywhere ?
Yep . So wherever you listen , wherever you listen to this one , I can guarantee it's . It's available there too , and it's free . Listen this is the whole new world of , like you said , curate your own , curate your own learning experience .
Here's my last question . So everyone needs to go eight , three leadership podcasts . Go check that out . Another podcast that's not yours and that's not this one , because I know you would pick this one , naturally . So I'm going to put this one out . What ?
What is a podcast that you absolutely love listening to , like , what are you listening to right now that you're just obsessed with ?
I'll give you . I'll give you four . Oh , because I'm all . Listen , I'm a nerd , I'm a podcast . Yeah , I'm a podcast nerd . So how leaders lead , with David Novak , who's the former CEO of Yum , which is Yum's like Taco Bell KFC . How leaders lead , I love , love , love . A podcast that is called the Ed Mylet show .
So Ed Mylet's like a thought leader , voice speaker . That was really good . I'm a big fan of of all the stuff that that Dave Ramsey's organization does . So contrary leadership would probably be my favorite of all of like the Ramsey world , so it's called the Entree Leadership Podcast . And then the last one is when I could .
I could put a bunch of of of podcasts in this last fourth spot , but I will say a diary of a CEO .
It's . I hadn't heard of that one . Yeah , what's ?
that . Who's that by ? It's a guy out of London named Stephen Bartlett , and OK , and you know it's not . It's not a Christian podcast , so just be aware but he interviews like thought leaders , soccer superstars , coaches , and he's yeah , it's fascinating .
So , yeah , I love that , so you just get to hear a lot of different perspectives from different things . Yes , brad , this has been awesome man . Go check out the H3 Leadership Podcasts . Enjoy the show . Brad , thanks for coming on and thanks for listening everyone . We'll catch you next week on another episode of Modern Church Leader , see you .