
1st Lead U - Leadership Development
This podcast, now in Season 3, is dedicated to self-development, self-awareness, and learning to lead oneself so listeners can lead others well. If someone cannot lead themselves well, it will be difficult for them to be an effective leader of others. This podcast will help listeners understand what it means to 1st Lead U and build confidence in themselves and their leadership ability. Personal Growth Coach John Ballinger has spent 35 years developing the knowledge and material he shares with individuals, business owners, and leaders from a variety of areas.
1st Lead U - Leadership Development
Respect: The Missing Element in Modern Leadership - CHART - Ep 325
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The respect deficit in American leadership has reached crisis proportions, with a staggering 83% of workers feeling disengaged and disrespected. This episode dives deep into why respect has eroded so dramatically in our society and what we can do to restore it.
When we examined what generates respect in leadership relationships, we discovered something troubling: many people demonstrate more affection and consideration for their pets than for their fellow humans. This isn't merely anecdotal—it's supported by research showing how the unconditional nature of animal companionship activates oxytocin (the "love hormone") in our brains in ways that complex human relationships often fail to do.
What do people actually need from leaders to feel respected? Our research reveals consistent answers: transparency, fair decision-making, emotional stability, open communication, competence, integrity, and genuine care for team members. Yet these qualities are increasingly rare in workplace environments, creating a downward spiral of distrust and disengagement.
We explore four essential character traits for respected leadership derived from ancient wisdom in Exodus 18: competence, passionate faith that elicits good, trustworthiness, and incorruptibility. These principles align remarkably well with what modern workers say they need, suggesting the fundamentals of respectful leadership have remained constant across millennia.
The solution begins with self-reflection. Leaders must examine whether they truly embody the respect they expect to receive. Do they listen actively? Make fair decisions? Demonstrate competence? Most importantly, do they genuinely care about those they lead? Rebuilding respect requires acknowledging we don't have to agree on everything to value each other's humanity.
Share this episode with anyone who leads or is led—this message is too important to keep to yourself. The future of leadership depends on our ability to restore respect as its foundation.
What people say they need in a leader. From a respect standpoint, they need a leader who is transparent, makes fair decisions, is not emotionally temperamental and communicates openly. They have competence, integrity and care about their team and care about their team.
Announcer:Welcome to First Lead you, a podcast dedicated to building leaders, expanding their capacity, improving their self-awareness through emotional intelligence and developing deeper understanding of selfless leadership.
John Balinger:Hello America and welcome to First Lead you where we believe selfless leadership is essential. America is suffering a leadership crisis. Self-awareness and emotional intelligence is the key to developing selfless leaders.
Announcer:Now here is personal growth coach John Ballinger.
John Balinger:Hello leaders and welcome to First Lead U. My name is John Ballinger and I'm here with my trusted co-host, mr douglas ford good afternoon, john.
Douglas Ford:How are you? This week? This is, uh, this is a short week. It is short week yesterday monday, it felt like it definitely felt like monday, all day long, all day long, even though we're recording this on a tuesday yeah, so we're cramming monday tuesday into tuesday tuesday yeah, that's what it feels like.
John Balinger:Yeah, so we have a very interesting podcast today. We're continuing with our R's R R.
Douglas Ford:Yeah.
John Balinger:And for those military type out there that know the phonetic alphabet Romeo, that's the.
Douglas Ford:R. Did you know that I would have gone with Roger?
John Balinger:That means okay, I know, yeah, they can't do that because you can't mess that up. Yeah, romeo, so we are on our. So we started off with relationship. We're at respect. We'll do resiliency and results in the next couple of weeks, but this is a very interesting one. Um, a lot of research done into this and I kept going down this kind of the spiral of respect, respect, respect, and we're going to have some interesting information and I want the audience to know that listen to this and I want I have not asked for a favor on any of our podcasts, but I'm asking for a favor today. I want every person that listens to this to share this podcast with anyone and everyone that they know, and I'm going to tell you why as we roll out this podcast. But this, this podcast, is very important for the leader and anybody involved in the acronym LEAD and Mr Ford, I'm going to let you explain to our audience again LEAD.
Douglas Ford:Yeah, well, if you've listened to the show much at all, you have heard us reference this as the capacity to lead, lead, lead, l-e-a-d and each of those letters stand for, kind of where a person would be on the leadership continuum all the way from being a born leader to someone who is not happy about being led and so to walk through that real quickly. So L are people who are born to lead, who have the kind of the qualities and the natural tendencies to be a leader. They may still need a little bit of guidance and shaping but by and large they can walk into a crowd, they can kind of rally a group of people around them and they can lead fairly effectively, just kind of out of their own natural intuition, so to speak. The E's are people who are educated to lead, people who are educated to lead. So you've got the capacity to learn, you've got a kind of personality that can be a leader and rally people around and get people moving in the right direction and be able to accomplish the tasks that are assigned to you with a group of people and do that fairly well. But you need that education, you need that guidance, you need that mentoring from somebody who is in the L position or a one position. Sometimes we refer to that. That means someone who is actually leading is helping you learn to be a better leader so that at some point you then move into that L position and you will then return the favor and mentor others.
Douglas Ford:The A are what we call agreeable followers. These are people who are happy to be there. They want to help. They don't really have a lot of aspirations to lead at the moment, but they want to make sure that the job is done well and that it is done completely, and they want to try to make as many people happy as they can by doing their job and making sure everybody else is doing their job.
Douglas Ford:The final group is what we call the disenfranchised, the disengaged, disgruntled follower. These are people who have not experienced good leadership. They're not happy about being there. They just want to do the job that they'll really the least job that they can do, so that they can keep their job. And you know this. We start talking about quiet, quitting things of that nature that we've talked about before. This is typically where you find the people that are in the D category, and so really anyone that's listening to this podcast is somewhere on that continuum and so, from what you said earlier, so you want them to, you want the listeners to share this with really anybody they know, because everybody's on the LEAD.
John Balinger:Exactly Anybody and everybody. Personal favor to me share this with anybody and everybody. Okay, now, as I'm kind of researching this, I come across this quote by JRR Tolkien Very popular, very popular Lord of the Rings. This particular quote came from the movie the Two Towers, and Frodo is talking to Samwise and he says this. I mean, when it hit me, I'm like you know what? There's a lot of truth to this statement, but we are not realizing it because of the, because of the lack of respect that we have for one another. Here's the quote there is some good in this world and it's worth fighting for.
Douglas Ford:Oh, wow, yeah, that's, that's good.
John Balinger:That's a good quote, good quote. Now, who's it up to to do the fighting for Us? Us, yeah, not one, not L, not E, not A, not D, us, everybody. This episode, this podcast, needs to resonate with everyone in America and everyone in the world right now, because we are. We are self-inflicting wounds and we're imploding on ourselves because of lack of respect for one another.
Douglas Ford:Well, and you could maybe equate that to something else, but I'm sure we'll talk about later in the chart series. But uh, if you think about one of your favorite books, which is the Speed of Trust, I mean respect and trust walk hand in hand and the lack of trust that we have for each other demonstrates the lack of respect that we have for each other. Playing, I can get it out we are paying. We are paying a trust tax or perhaps even a respect tax because of the way we've treated each other and leaders have treated, treated people over the last 30 plus years.
John Balinger:Did you know that in the teas that trust is one of the teas I did I said yeah, yeah. So I want you to think about that. There is some good in this world and it's worth fighting for and it's really worth fighting for for the future generations. When you're looking at your kids and your grandkids and you're acting out with disrespect and not treating with respect and leaders, you're not earning respect and people are not earning the leader's respect because of doing what the leaders ask, because the leaders doing the things that need to be done, as we're going to talk in this podcast. When those things don't happen, we find ourselves in the situation we're in right now, and this isn't just an America thing, this is a world issue.
Douglas Ford:Yeah, I was actually thinking about this the other day, about respect, and you know, of course we live in the south. There's a lot of what I'll call um cultural respect that kind of is provided or given at times. Uh, a lot of times, you know, we're very much in the habit of saying yes, ma'am, no ma'am, yes, sir, no sir, while as a kid that was part of being respectful. But it also comes with the attitude. Are you saying that with the, you know, with an attitude of respect? But that also goes along with the idea of respecting the office. Even.
Douglas Ford:You know, you hear people say that, well, respect the office, I don't respect the person, but I respect, respect the office, and it's like, well, are you really being respectful? I mean, yeah, maybe, but what we're talking about is individual, personal respect from one human being to another. We're not talking about cultural respect. We're not talking about respecting an office versus a person. We're talking about respect that you would give anybody that you would meet on the street, regardless of their position, their station, socioeconomic level, just straight respect from one human to another.
John Balinger:I'm going to read the definition of respect. Now we're asking people to share this and to listen and understand respect. Well, here's the definition. And to listen and understand respect? Well, here's the definition A feeling of deep admiration for someone or something elicited by their abilities, qualities or achievement. So when you sit back and just think about that, do we operate as a population with respect, deep admiration for people based on abilities? But no, we don't. We're looking to tear somebody down all the time. We will see somebody do nine things right and they'll do that one thing wrong, or maybe the one thing we don't agree with, and we'll just start ripping them to shred Instead of saying you know what? What man, you did nine things, great, that one thing. I don't know that, I agreed with it, but help me understand why you did it. Like that we want. We can't have a civil conversation.
Douglas Ford:we just start blasting that person, but normally we're blasting them to somebody else, like we'll go to somebody else and start blasting and a lot of reasons you can't have that conversation is because unless you have developed some respect and some trust with a person like if you try to engage in that conversation at all they're immediately defensive Because we're all so used to not being respected, we're so used to the idea of everybody's in attack mode, like you said. It's like you know build them up just to tear them down.
John Balinger:I made this statement at this point in my notes. We have lost a lot of respect for each other as humans. Yes, comma, we love our pets more than we do our fellow man.
John Balinger:I believe, that's very true. So I'm stopping at that point and just reading, because I'm reading, you know, got my own books that I've read about respect and the psychology of respect and which we're going to talk about, like where that even comes from in the brain, and it takes me down this road of articles that are being written in business journals about our love for animals is greater than our love for each other, and so I wrote this. After reading these articles, I wrote this people often love animals more than other people because of the unconditional affection, simple and predictable companionship and the perceived innocence that animals offers offer without complexities, judgments and demands of human relationships. This is reinforced by mutual oxytocin release in humans and pets, activating the same brain pathways as a parent-child bonding and the human tendency to protect the defenseless.
Douglas Ford:Yeah, I mean, I can see where. That would be very easily be true for most people, because we've all heard the stories. You come home in the afternoon from work or wherever, or maybe you just went outside and put the garbage in the garbage bin. You come back and the dog is like man, where you been, I missed you, you're the greatest, I'm so happy to see you and they're running around wagging their tail, you know, and everybody else is just like hey, so I mean it. Yeah, I could see where that's very easily uh, translated into I love the dog, because I think the dog really loves me.
John Balinger:You know, emotional support animals have increased a tremendous amount since COVID.
Douglas Ford:I would, I would believe that.
John Balinger:Yeah, I didn't. This. This podcast could be so long because of how much research I did, because I stopped and thought about that like emotional support animals, which led me down researching from the CDC about the amount of people that are on an antidepressant or some kind of anxiety drug and right now these are people that prescriptions are being prescribed drug and right now the c these are people that prescriptions are being prescribed but I don't know how many people are taking it that aren't getting a particular like getting it from somebody or whatever.
Douglas Ford:76 million americans wow, that's out of what?
John Balinger:330 million well, and then take the babies and you know small, small kids out of this. So take, take 10 and under out of the equation. You've probably got half the population, or close to half the population, of adults on some kind of anxiety or antidepressant.
John Balinger:Yeah that's an incredible amount of people. So I said a word in my statement about the oxytocin. I want to read what that is so everybody understands that, because that's like a big word. Oxytocin it's a hormone and neurotransmitter produced in the hypothalamus that plays a vital role and that's just part of your brain vital roles in social bonding, maternal behaviors and physical functions like childbirth. Often called the love hormone, it elicits a feeling of trust and well-being. My question after this point in the podcast do we as people, especially leaders, elicit a feeling of trust that you as a person feel like your well-being is a focal point in that leader's life? Now I'm going to say, based on all of our research, research, all the things that we've done, going into companies that most people do not think their well, their, their leaders, elicit a feeling of well-being and trust yeah, I would agree with that.
Douglas Ford:I mean, I think most people do not think that their leaders have their well being at heart. You know they're caring for them on a regular basis okay.
John Balinger:So if, if you, if you take that information and you say that most people probably do not, and we know that in our research, that the 95 percent of people that were born to be pushers, doers, accomplishers and things like that, moved to the d category, which is the the disgruntled, disenfranchised that was at 95, but became 83% in the D category, which meant that the A category became 12%.
John Balinger:So those numbers by themselves reflect the fact that most people that are being led right now feel like they're not being led properly.
John Balinger:So they become that deep and I and I'd say they don't want to be the deets I would say there's always going to be 10 percent of deep I don't care what you do but not 83 percent of the, the actual doing population. But the leaders have not given them the respect over I'm talking about over time, the respect that they should have been afforded and therefore the people have turned around and said we just don't respect our leadership anymore and the leadership, my opinion, has gotten more selfish and how they operate, which puts a greater chasm in between the L and the D. So I want everybody that's listening to this I'm going to plead send this podcast out for everybody to look at themselves in the mirror and ask themselves do I do everything I can every day to respect people and to gain their respect, earn their respect and then, at the same time, expect respect back from them? So we're going to talk about what people expect in leaders from a respect standpoint, what they expect to gain the respect of a leader. We'll be back.
Douglas Ford:Hello First League Youth listeners, douglas Ford here, thank you. Help you on your own personal leadership journey. In order to reach more people and to improve our positioning on all the podcasting and social media platforms, it's important that you subscribe to our podcast on your favorite podcasting platform, like Apple, spotify or any other platform where you listen to First Lead you. We would really appreciate you clicking on the subscribe button to help us reach more people and expand the message of First Lead you, and please take time to visit the First Lead you website. That's the number one S-T, the word lead and the letter U dot com. First Lead you dot com. Number one S-T, the word lead and the letter U dot com. I hope you have a great day as you continue to learn to first lead you. Hello and welcome back to First Lead you.
Douglas Ford:Today we are talking about the second R in our chart acrostic, which is respect, and we had a pretty good discussion about the position of people in society today related to respect and what our thought process is related to individuals, to animals, to just trying to understand how and why it's important to have respect for each other. And now we're going to get into some good information about what AI has to say about why we don't respect each other, what some other articles that John's researched says about the lack of respect that we have for each other. It says about the lack of respect that we have for each other and then I think, if you stick with us to the end, there's a nice little bow that we're going to put on this and why we should all respect each other. So, john, why don't you share with us what you found? Really it?
John Balinger:was kind of a real-time search that you conducted there with AI. Yeah, so before we get into the ai, I'm gonna I'm gonna write what the article said that people said that they didn't, why they didn't respect leaders, and so this is this is articles that I read and compiled, and then I'm gonna read ai and we're gonna see how close the articles that I've read and what I compiled people said and what AI said. Are you ready for this, mr Ford? Yes, please, all right. So people say they don't respect leaders due to them being dishonest, unfair. Here's a big one that they lack competence in their field of leadership. But one of the most, one of the biggest failures that they see is that leaders do not listen in order to develop and support their people and they focus more on problems and promote a negative vision inside the company. That's that's like, that's bad.
John Balinger:Yep, well, it's also true it is true true, I mean, I think that's what we see on a pretty regular basis so here's what ai says, and this I'm reading this word for word a decline in societal respect stems from several interconnected factors, including the erosion of traditional value, a rise in selfishness and competitive mentalities, the negative influence of social media and its focus on validation, inconsistent leadership and communication, and a general lack of empathy and compassion and interaction. This erosion is also linked to behaviors like dishonesty, a failure to keep promises and a general inability to listen or value others' perspective. Now, mine wasn't too far off AIs, so I read it, compiled it, said it. I'm like okay, so, and because what AI does is just go out, pull, write information and like, okay, that's pretty close.
Douglas Ford:Sound very similar.
John Balinger:Yeah, so we should. We should take note of that. If people are saying it in exit interviews, uh, in articles that are being written, when uh, people go into companies to write articles, uh, and they elicit information or do some of these surveys that get sent out. If people are saying it and then that information is going out into the worldwide web and then AI is consolidate and bringing it in and saying the same thing, you'd probably think you know there could be something to this. Okay, what people say they need in a leader? From a respect standpoint, they need a leader who is transparent, makes fair decisions, is not emotionally temperamental and communicates openly. They have competence, integrity and care about their teams. That almost sounds like the complete opposite.
Douglas Ford:It does, but it also sounds very reasonable. I mean, that's what you would expect with somebody that's in a leadership position.
John Balinger:Yeah. So we're in this intersection in society right now. We're almost 250 years old and we're at an intersection in our society where trust and respect has eroded so much that we've just become selfish, self-centered and totally protective on our of ourselves and we'll throw stones at anybody that we, that we don't agree with or doesn't agree with, who, what we say. That's where we're at. So the reason I ask and I pleaded for this to go out is because something has got to change and it starts with the people. The people have to stand back and recognize it. It's us, it's not just you know. Yes, the leaders have. In the most part, they have failed in their ability to lead people, especially in adverse situations. We really saw poor leadership rear its head in COVID. It was there, but it really really got bad during COVID. And then people went home and they recognized like I don't like working where I work at, I don't like the leader that I'm working for. The leaders in turn looked at the people and was like you know what? I don't like you, I don't like what you do, how you treat me, and so we literally got into this tug of war. Have you ever tried to put two magnets together two strong magnets, try to put them together and they just fight each other. I felt like that's where we're at in society. We've got these magnets and they're just fighting each other to go together and they're not going to go together Right there. There's not going to be where you can just put together like a magnet and a piece of metal in there. All right, we're coon by y'all, we're going to be happy.
John Balinger:So what I want the people to that are listening to this podcast and the people that are sharing that are listening to this podcast. If this is the first time you've listened to First Lead you, I want you to step back and look at yourself and we're going to give you some homework. After we do this last, this last segment, we'll give you some homework, but part of that homework is going to be doing a self-assessment of how do I treat an act. Do I treat my animal better than I treat my neighbor or my co-worker or a family member? Um, we don't talk about this a lot on first lead you. Uh, I think maybe one time in all, and I think we're 75 ish episodes into this.
John Balinger:But you and I are people of faith, yes, and we in this podcast. We try our best to be respectful of the people. We're, we're, we're. We're talking about a very difficult subject right now poor leadership in America on this podcast, and how to, how to change that poor leadership into good leadership. All right, so this isn't the easiest podcast. It's not like we're sitting around and talking about how to make more money or vacation tips or anything like that. We're talking about one of the in my opinion, one of the most critical items that needs to be discussed and transformed in society, and that's leadership. But we also have a faithful component to us that we feel like that. You know, we've not gone too far. I'm like. I'm like Mr Baggins Is it proto Baggins? That says you know there's good, you know and it's worth doing something to say, right, right you know, and it's worth doing something to say, right, right, uh.
John Balinger:And so in this, you know, years ago, I started looking for character traits that I thought that most leader, every leader, should like, if, if I could nail it down to these four things, just start there.
John Balinger:And uh, it was just impressed on me just to read a book in the Bible, or a chapter in a book in the Bible, and so I went to this particular chapter in the Bible, which is Exodus, chapter 18, and started reading it. Now, people that have heard me speak and people that know the passion I have about Exodus 18, and I'm writing a book about it and myself and Shagun Haibusa, who's a pastor over in Africa, we've really we've, we've really worked hard for the last probably almost two years to get this book in the form where when people read it they're like, okay, I get that, but it it lays out four character traits that leaders should have. Then it also illustrates a numerical process which, with a leader, should suffice it okay. So I'm going to talk about the four character traits that xs18 says that a leader should have. First, and depending on the translation, must be capable or able.
John Balinger:That's the first character trait so competent competent, so, and really the definition having the ability, fitness qualities, quality necessary to do or achieve a specified thing, able to achieve efficiently whatever one has to do. Competent, so that's capable or able. I kind of blended the first and second, but very similar, okay. The next one is have a love for the lord, or your faith, be passionate about it. That's, that's what your your is. Be passionate about it. But if it is your faith, it better be something that elicits good, because faith shouldn't elicit bad. That's the second.
Douglas Ford:And we should probably at some point do a whole podcast on those four qualities, because there's a lot we can say about each one of them. As you're going through them, there's things I'm thinking about. Uh, that why that is a necessary characteristic, but but I won't stop us here.
John Balinger:Let's keep moving forward yeah, the third character trait is trustworthy. Now I want you to listen to as I talk about these and go back to what people said they're looking for, and you'll start seeing these character traits start blending in to what they said they're looking for in a leader so trustworthy, able to be relied on as honest or truthful. And then the fourth character trait and this one is something that I feel was not a coincidence, that was left last and depending on the translation, but cannot be bribed or must not covet. Now, bribe the definition persuade someone quotations to act in one's favor, typically illegal or dishonest, by gift money or other inducement. Mr Ford, I can tell you right now, if I went to Washington DC, there'd be a lot of people up there that that character trait would not fit inside.
Douglas Ford:And a lot of other places.
John Balinger:And a lot of other places.
John Balinger:There seems to be a concentration, but they're in a particular location, but they're and look how long ago these, these words were, were said from jethro, who was moses's father-in-law, said go find men with these four character traits and then and this is another thing, thing that I think is very important then have them be capable, in all that, of leading thousands, hundreds, fifties and tens. So he didn't just say go find these people that had these character traits. Then he said ensure that they have the capacity to be able to lead a specific number of people well, without damaging themselves, the leaders and the people. Why did Jethro, why did the father-in-law of Moses, who's been tasked to lead the people from captivity to the promised land, feel compelled to stop Moses from how he was even leading? Because this started with Jethro telling Moses listen, how you're doing this, how you're leading these people, is not good. You're going to wear yourself and the people out.
John Balinger:Douglas.
John Balinger:That verse right there resonates in my head so much because of how poorly I see people being led and how frustrating it is for them and how it turns them into the D category in LEAD, because they're not being led.
John Balinger:And for those that have read the Bible, you know that the people that were being led out of captivity started moaning and groaning pretty quickly after they were free quotation marks free because they didn't feel like they were being led well and being given what they felt like they should have. And there is a balance to giving too much. There is, but that's the leader's responsibility to find out where's the balance at. So I know that's not something that you normally hear on this podcast, but it is a guideline that I've been using. We've been using firstly, do you, even if we don't say it, we're looking for those character traits and leaders to see do they do they? Are they capable? And that's the assessments tell you pretty quick is that person even capable of being in a leadership position? And if you listen to this podcast, 50 plus percent of people in leadership positions are not capable or able to be in that position.
Douglas Ford:And, to be honest, some people don't want to be in that position. No, they've been given a choice you either do this position or you do something else that's not involved with our company, and so, uh, you know, so they're kind of forced into that, so they have a good reason not to want to be there, right?
John Balinger:right. So we? I think it would be a good idea to unpack these four character traits on some podcasts, because they are critical and they really they really take chart and cram it all into those four character traits because you can just dive down on each one of them Absolutely Uh. So please again, share this podcast with anyone and everyone that you know so that they can listen to it and do a self-assessment. So here's my homework, mr Ford.
John Balinger:Look at yourself, the person listening to this I don't care if you're in the L, e, a or D and say is there something I could do better in order to learn to respect myself, so that I can learn how to respect people even if I don't agree with everything about them and they don't agree everything about me? Can we open up a line of communication in our society that says we don't have to agree on everything, but we can learn to respect one another and our differences? That we have? That's the homework I want. I want people to literally take a self-assessment and I want everyone to. In order to lead your team well, you must first lead you.
Announcer:Thanks everyone, We'll see you next time.