1st Lead U - Leadership Development

Relationships Revisited - Selfless Leaders Wanted: No Reset Button for Real Relationships - CHART Ep 327

• John Ballinger

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A leadership crisis is unfolding across America, and at its heart lies our collective inability to form and maintain meaningful relationships. In this raw, unscripted conversation, John Ballinger and Douglas Ford revisit the foundational element of leadership: relationship-building in an increasingly disconnected world.

After recent reflection, John introduces a troubling concept that perfectly captures our current predicament: "portable relationships." We've become a society that treats connections as disposable—unfriending with a click, dropping relationships when they become challenging, and substituting digital interactions for genuine human connection. The evidence surrounds us: college graduates without relationship experience, teenagers unable to communicate face-to-face, and workplaces fracturing along ideological lines.

What's driving this disconnection? The podcast explores how "hyper-reality"—artificial representations becoming more compelling than actual reality—has fundamentally altered how we perceive and engage with others. This phenomenon, predicted decades ago, has accelerated through social media, gaming, and technology, making it increasingly difficult to distinguish what's authentic from what's manufactured.

For leaders, this creates an urgent mandate. As society grows more divided, the responsibility to foster genuine connection falls squarely on leadership. The hosts offer practical guidance: 

1. Be present and engaged rather than distracted

2. Listen to diverse perspectives before responding

3. Develop emotional intelligence to navigate complex human dynamics. 

As John bluntly states, "Leadership created divisiveness in America, and leadership has to fix it."

This episode serves as both warning and roadmap. In a world where the very nature of reality and relationship is questioned, we need leaders willing to do the difficult, intentional work of building authentic connections. The future of our organizations and society may depend on it.

What steps are you taking to build meaningful relationships across differences? Join the conversation and discover how to lead with emotional intelligence in an age of disconnection.

John Ballinger:

The leader's responsibility inside their organization is to foster strong relationships with their team, 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 Ballinger:

Hello America and welcome to First Lead U 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.

John Ballinger:

Now here is personal growth coach John Ballinger.

John Ballinger:

Hello leaders, my name is John Ballinger. I'm with First Lead U. I'm here today with my trusted co-host, mr Douglas Ford. Good afternoon, john. How are you today, douglas? This is a tough podcast. It's going to be some raw conversation, but I'd like to readdress an R, oh, okay.

Douglas Ford:

So we were kind of originally scheduled to go with results today as our last R, but you want to back up and pick up something we've already talked about.

John Ballinger:

I do. I want to go back to the first R in our acrostic chart, which is relationship. Um, just got back from some R and R Then rest and relaxation.

Douglas Ford:

That's what they're going to ask them. Yeah, just keep my rap speed and did a lot of reflection. A lot of so maybe the R and R you can could be R, R and R, R R and.

John Ballinger:

R. Yeah, exactly, but a lot happened while I was gone. A lot had started happening Then I left and then a lot happened while I was gone and it really made me pause and think about. Firstly, because you and I both are faithful people. We've talked about our faith on this podcast. I literally started praying like Lord, why did you burden us with all the other things we have going on in business Helping people? Why did you burden us to start this podcast, which will begin season four very soon, with things that I started sensing 10 years ago?

John Ballinger:

And then, when you and I met and really started working closely together, you really highly encouraged me to get this out of my head and out in the public, and so I was reflecting on all of that, given the fact of the events going on in America in the past few weeks up until Charlie Kirk's assassination, how America has reacted to that, and in many ways, you saw divisiveness at its worst. I mean you saw hatred, you saw anger. I mean there there was a portion of this that you saw where people talk about. You know, it brought people together and there's a revival and we're not going to forget Charlie and all these things I don't want to seem skeptical about what's happened. I don't want Charlie Kirk's assassination to just be forgotten 90 days from now. I don't want to do it, but if the leaders in America do not seize America and start teaching us how to have relationships with each other even though we made this agree, we're going to continue down this road and it's going to.

Douglas Ford:

Yeah, absolutely, I mean. I mean you're talking about, you know, several things have been happening. I mean we can go back and just some of the preliminary research we did related to this and just trying to recall just events that's happened this summer, which you can go back much further and pull up different examples, but there's four key examples that we were able to identify that are just like why, why do these things happen? And a lot of it is about divisiveness. Some of it's just out of, and we talked about this in a meeting the other day. I mean there is certainly an element of evil in the world. Some of it just has to do with evil being evil, but regardless, you're absolutely correct. I mean the state of relationships in America between all interconnected parties male, female, co-workers, political parties, I mean, however you want to slice the relationship by, it is definitely breaking down very quickly, right?

John Ballinger:

Very quickly. So I was actually on the R&R and I was in prayer, I was in reflection, I was in prayer, I was in reflection, I was in journaling. There was a lot going on, plus calls, texts, people, you know, what do you think, what do you, you know? And I just had this impression that we are now living in a society of portable relationships. That was the word portable and I thought, man, that's a terrible way to describe what a relationship is in America.

Douglas Ford:

So when you say portable relationship, what are you?

John Ballinger:

Yeah, so what? What got me to thinking about it is it's so easy right now to just unfriend some. I mean on social media, if somebody doesn't agree with what somebody else says, we will just click a button and we will go from friends quotation friends to now I'm unfriending. Now I'm unfriending I mean just the spatial awareness that you psychologically make a decision to hit a screen on some type of device or click something that says I no longer want to be friends with that person who I was previously friends with because of whatever Right, previously friends with because of whatever right. And so we almost get numb to what a relationship is and what we should be doing to foster relationships and to create relationships.

John Ballinger:

And we've got statistics of college students that are graduating that have had no formal relationship at that point as high school. I mean imagine going from middle school, high school all the way through college and saying I've never had a relationship of any type with a another, uh, party, from a, from a male, female relationship. That's foreign to people like you and I like we don't understand that Right. Foreign to people like you and I like we don't understand that right. But society's at a point and and I can only start thinking about. There's trust issues. There's I don't know how to for issues and this isn't. This is not a scripted uh podcast, by the way. This is this is raw off our hearts and minds. If I was women in America right now, I would be very cautious about having a relationship with another guy with the state of men in America right now about some informal surveys that were conducted in another organization that were connected to where young people, teenagers.

Douglas Ford:

one of their major concerns, one of the things that they wanted to know more than anything else is how do we talk to each other? Because they, both sets of teenagers males and females both indicated that being able to talk to people of the opposite sex was an issue.

John Ballinger:

They. They even told us we're happy with sitting across the same table texting to have a conversation, but we don't know how to put that phone down and say the same words across the table. I mean that's something we were doing. We're like gosh, like pop it out and read it and just do something to communicate with that person. Like we don't even know how to do that. So I really felt like that it would be good to come back and readdress the first R in our acrostic chart, which is relationship, because what I'm seeing and what is really being laid out is we functionally, psychologically, emotionally, do not know how to have relationships with people, especially those that we have some sort of different view of. We don't know how to do that. Now here's and we always read the definition of the I'm going to go back definition of relationship the way in which two or more concepts, objects or people are connected, or the state of being connected, which means if we don't know how to connect, we're disconnected. Don't know how to connect, we're disconnected.

John Ballinger:

When I say portable something, as in my mind, I see so many gas stations and fast food restaurants being drop off for kids where parents are divorced and I see those kids get out of the vehicle with their bags and go into the next parent's vehicle and get in. That's portable. They're living a portable family life between parents and step-parents. You can friend and unfriend somebody very easily. That's a portable friendship relationship. The statistics we have here prove out. We're not even going to get married. We want to be able to portably come home, say I'm done, I found somebody else. This got hard. Let me just pack my bag and leave. Think about how portable we've come. It's no wonder we can't have what what the cross stick chart says. This is what we put out beside it Strong connection that create lasting impact. That's what it says next to relationship on our chart. If you can't, if you can't, have strong connections that create lasting impact, because everything's portable what's it going to do to society? It's going to do exactly what's going on right now. There is no strong connection at all, and I'm talking about society.

John Ballinger:

Now let's get to the leader. The leader's responsibility inside their organization is to foster strong relationships with their team. So let's say it's the CEO, the owner, and he has six people that are directly reporting to him or her. Their responsibility is to foster relationships with that group of people that then do a waterfall effect throughout the organization. If the CEOs, the owners, the executives do not know how to create relationships, then it's not going to go to the next tier and on down the line and the calls that I would get with just the social, what do we do about social media policy?

John Ballinger:

Because somebody in our organization said such and such, and now do we do it. And I was like well, what's the handbook? Say, what do you mean? What's the handbook? Say, well, what's your social media policy? Say in your handbook that they sign oh, we don't have that, which goes back to risk. I mean, so there's all these things going on inside the organization and the speed with which the deterioration of relationships is taking place in America is outpacing our ability to understand what to do. It's like we've lost both engines and we're heading straight to the ground and nobody's got parachute.

Douglas Ford:

Yeah, and you talk about that in terms of relationship and you think back to some other time in American history and even probably still today, in a lot of different type of trades, there's this role called an apprentice, right, and which is where somebody wants to learn a trade or learn something, and so they come alongside, beside somebody and basically another word for that would be their mentor that walks them through these different scenarios and helps them understand, like here's how you handle things as you, as you mature through your, your journey to this, you know, to understanding this task or this skill or whatever it is, journey to this, you know, to understanding this task or this skill or whatever it is. But you know, and that's so, that's kind of an artificial relationship where you've got someone who's supposedly a senior person with that skill set teaching someone who is less skilled that but wants to learn. But there's nothing like that that exists in quote, unquote real life, where you know I mean, certainly you can have a mentor, but it seems like that that opportunity and those walls are getting um, less you know the ability to do that it's less and less frequent. There's more and more walls being built to keep that from happening and um, just the idea of even asking people to be your mentor. Like you know, we've done episodes on this before.

Douglas Ford:

I think back to TW Franciscan who, from season one, when he spoke at our first, first Lead you conference, he talked about the qualities that he outlined and kind of the mission that he went on to find a mentor that he thought could help him achieve what he wanted to achieve. And he did that by watching people and kind of understanding them and their personality. But are we even thinking about those things just from a pure business standpoint, of creating those types of relationships to grow strength in an organization? And I would say most of the time we're not.

John Ballinger:

Yeah, I don't even think you know. Just talking about the apprenticeship program. Here in Chattanooga, tennessee, not too far from here, there's the IBEW International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. There's an apprenticeship program over there. Why would it be important for someone that doesn't know anything about electricity to go through that program and be a journeyman and be an apprentice and then have a journeyman? Why would that be important?

Douglas Ford:

because it could kill somebody. It could kill somebody it's not done right.

John Ballinger:

Electricity is a is a powerful right. Yeah, plumbers do it, machinists do it. It happens in the aviation world. If we do it on trades like that, why wouldn't we do it in the leadership across what we call the four pillars? We should have mentorship programs for dads, for pastors, for business leaders and for government officials. Just because you became elected, because the people said we're electing you, does that automatically flip some switch in you that makes you competent to be the leader that you need to lead to the people? It does, unfortunately it the people. It does. Unfortunately, it does not. It does not, and we are seeing that play out time and time again in all aspects of local, state and federal government.

Douglas Ford:

And the mental requirement that individuals have for people they vote for is becoming more and more narrow. Do you agree with me on this subject? And if you agree with me on this subject, then I'm going to vote. And as long as you don't disagree with me on other subjects, I'm going to vote for it. And so, as opposed to like, I believe you're actually the best person for the job. I might agree with you on everything, but overall, I think you have the best interest of us as your constituents at heart, versus. Here's my two or three push button issues. If you agree with me on those, I'm going to vote for you. I don't care what the other guy says.

John Ballinger:

Other candidate guy or girl, whoever, yeah, when, when in America, when a setting Congress person makes a statement that you may have committed a crime, but that doesn't mean you're a criminal, is that's a? That's a challenge for me. Now, if that person has said you may have been charged but not convicted, so you're not a criminal, is one thing. That's not what she said. You may, you may, have committed crimes, but that doesn't mean you're not a criminal, is one thing. That's not what she said. You may, you may have committed crimes, but that doesn't mean you're a criminal. Yeah, it does. If you go out and and you're just committing, you're breaking the law, you're a criminal and you should be treated as a criminal.

John Ballinger:

But so, in all this doug, my mind is just racing a hundred miles an hour. I want to come back after the break and I want to. I'm going to reference an article that I found on Monday, but a week earlier I started doing research on and shared, before the article actually came out with, with America, and I'm going to tell them why we're in the state we're in and why we can't create relationships. We'll be back.

Douglas Ford:

Hello. Firstly, you listeners, Douglas Ford here. I want to take just a few seconds during this break to say thank you for spending a few moments with us as we discuss the challenges and opportunities of being a leader. We hope that in every episode, you find some bit of information that will 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 st the word lead and the letter u dot com. First lead you dot com. Number one st 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.

Douglas Ford:

Hello and welcome back to First Lead you. I'm Douglas Ford, and today we are talking about we're actually revisiting relationship. Relationship was the first R in our chart acrostic, but due to just the overwhelming things that have happened really kind of several major headlines since early summer that really talk about relationship, the state of relationship in America, how we as a society are dealing with broken relationships across all spectrums we decided that today would be a good day to just revisit that. And it also comes on the heels of John getting back from a vacation where he said he was experiencing RRNR, which was rest, relaxation and reflection, and so before the break we'd talked a good bit about some of the causes and the state of relationships, but you left us with the idea that during your reflection time you had recalled something that has to do with reality and relationships, and so you'd been studying that, and then earlier this week an article came out that pretty much mirrored what you'd been thinking. So won't you share that with us?

John Ballinger:

Yeah, what does that mean If I was thinking about it a week ago and an article was published? The universe has a way. That's strange. I saw that. I'm like that's weird.

Douglas Ford:

And to be more correct to what we would say is like saw that, I'm like that's weird. And to be more correct to what we would say is like maybe maybe that was divine inspiration that you received.

John Ballinger:

Well, I know that I was praying for the lord to show me, like, what's going on, and I know that the the term portable relationship was very clear to me, and I had images of kids being dropped off at fast food restaurants and gas stations. I had, I mean, I was seeing buttons being pushed, unfriend, I mean. I had all that going on in my head and I'm like so what's? What's the cause of this? And I started looking back at some of my old work from years ago in psychology and there was a study, uh, performed by it was a sociologist, uh, john ballard, and he it's, it's called hyper reality. Let's just call the name what it is. It's hyper reality. And I'm gonna read the definition of the definition is is it's a simulated or artificial representation of reality that becomes more influential and compelling than actual reality itself, making it difficult or impossible this says difficult or impossible to distinguish between what's real or fake.

Douglas Ford:

Perhaps we call that virtual reality. I mean, that's certainly the goal for virtual reality is to try to it is, but here's the difference.

John Ballinger:

There's a big difference between virtual, because virtually you're putting on some kind of apparatus right now that takes you somewhere. Hyper-reality is you're actually in it, real life, every day through. And here's think about how this guy was. He passed away in 2007. Okay, his work is pre 1900, 1980s is when he really started. Here's the four things he said. We got to be very cautious about Social media, gaming, advertising and theme park. Those places, those things that we can go, are going to be places that when we go to, we don't know whether we're seeing truth or reality in their minds. It's and, and whoever this game is, this is real because people are going to that game. It's real.

John Ballinger:

It's not real the truth is it's a game right, okay, that's the us.

Douglas Ford:

I was having a hard time with following you there to start with, so so truth is this is actually what this is, or is this reality right and so the truth may be no, this is not real this is not really and the reality is that, but we're not telling that, yeah, we're not.

John Ballinger:

I was talking to a business owner today and he brought up the subject of, uh, the coyote and the roadrunner. Now for those that are our age looney tanes.

John Ballinger:

Look it up on youtube but the coyote was forever trying to get the roadrunner and he was using a company store called acne acme and he would purchase things to try and blow the coyote or the the roadrunner up, or blow this rock up and have it fought. It was comical. However, what this business owner said was they've had to go in and edit all of that because it is now known as the most graphic, violent cartoon of its time. So much so that in the Looney Tunes, when Elmer Fudd, who was hunting Bugs Bunny, had a shotgun, they've gone in and edited the shotgun to be removed. I'm thinking through this. He showed me this article. He's just blown away by it. This business, he said. But at the same time, look at the video games that we're putting in kids' hands.

Douglas Ford:

Right.

John Ballinger:

We're removing which?

Douglas Ford:

are much more realistic. Much more much more, much more immersive this was.

John Ballinger:

This was so cartoon. You know they're so cartoonish, right, and they've removed that because it was violent and they're. And he said that. But look at this video where the guys actually inside of it, in virtual reality, walking through that with the gun, blowing people's head off, blood coming out everywhere and he said tell me what's going on with kids. I'm like right right there. Right, that's, that's a problem. But when you get so numb and I've used I use that word a lot in society we're numb to those things right, Kids are numb.

Douglas Ford:

They think it's simple to just hit a reset button and whatever just happened is not going to be bad anymore, because I can hit reset and start all over right, well, and we talked a little bit about this before we hit the record button, I think that numbness and and the continued evolution of the realness of things is to try to induce some reaction. Right, we become numb, we up the ante, we make it more real, we make bigger effects, better effects, make it appear more realistic because we want that effect which causes us to become more numb, which means we've got to continue to turn it up.

John Ballinger:

What's that? What's that? Filters that you can do on pictures and it can make you change, and all this stuff, you know. So that's a big thing on social media is all this? This picture is without filters because so many people are using filters. Is that really what that person looks like? I don't know, you know, but let me let me go down a little bit more. So I gave you the definition of hyperrealm. Now this is. This is some more of his. This occurs because culture and media create models and images that are so saturated with simulation that they no longer point to an underlying fundamental reality instead of creating. This is this? Is gold quotation? Real without origin? Hmm, man, that is that's us. That's a society right now. Real without origin? Artificial intelligence.

Douglas Ford:

And he was talking about this in 1980s.

John Ballinger:

He was a little ahead of his time. There are people that were born on this earth To be sent. Does that make that make sense? Yeah, this is a warning. Yes, technology that make sense? Yeah, like this is a warning. Yes, technology's going to advance. Yes, these things are going to happen. But the sentinels responsibility is to warn, like be careful, because as much as things can advance, those advancements can be used against the, and they can and will be used.

John Ballinger:

What I had to determine on this RR and R is that I really feel like that. What God has shown me, what I have been immersed in, is is I've been placed here as a Sentinel to alert and then, once the alert goes out, say now, here's what you need to do to really understand what's real and how to differentiate as a leader, because you're going to be faced every day in your business with trying to figure out is that real or is that hyper-reality? And business leaders that do not spend the time. I go back to our chart. You have got to take that chart and literally immerse yourself in it and learn as much as you can, even if it's your entire leadership journey, mr Ford, I don't care.

John Ballinger:

Start at the C, and if it's your entire leadership journey and you get ready to retire and you're doing some kind of mentor protege program with the next people that are coming into leadership, you have a responsibility to learn as absolute much as you can. To be the effective leader you need to be in a society that's not living in reality, and the only way you can do that as a leader is dive headfirst into this. Find you a mentor, find you someone that can come alongside you, because trying to do it by yourself is going to be near impossible. With as fast as things are moving, as fast as society's moving, as fast as hyper reality is moving, as fast as the division of America is moving, as fast as leadership is failing Americans is moving, if you want to stand up and be a Sentinel, you better start learning and digging in.

Douglas Ford:

All right. So let me ask you real quick. You just talked about like uh, chart across it. These are things that people can do, but is there something that, if I'm hearing this and I'm like, yes, I need to start, start this journey, I need to elevate this well, is super good for a leadership journey. That's probably a little bit longer journey, but like, yeah, I want to take action this week. What can I do?

John Ballinger:

Yeah. So the first thing that I would say and this may seem just very generic be present and engaged. We're so distracted that it's easy for things that are moving so fast to go by us and we don't even see them. The more present and engaged you can be as a leader, the better it's going to be for you to really dive into this process the chart side, the development side, the journaling side. You have to be present and aware. It's critical. Okay, that's number one. Number two you have to be willing to listen to both sides of a situation in order to understand how you need to respond as a leader.

John Ballinger:

Don't just discount when somebody comes up to you because you think it's the way it should be in today's divisive world. If you've already turned someone off inside your organization that feels like that they want to be heard, and you turn them off because of whatever reason. It could be that you've heard something. It could be this, that other color of their hair, I don't care what it. Do not discount the leaders that have created and this is, this is my opinion, mr ford leadership in america has created a lot of the divisiveness that's going on in america because they failed to listen to both sides effectively determine a path forward and then communicated that path forward effectively. There's a huge problem with that. So stop and listen. So if you're aware, so you're attentive and you stop and listen, do that and then become emotionally available. Those three things be aware, stop and listen and then be emotionally available to make good decisions for the entirety of the organization.

Douglas Ford:

So tell me a little bit more about being emotionally available, because I'm sure we all kind of bring our own definition of that. What specifically are you talking about?

John Ballinger:

It's easy, if things aren't going our way as a leader or we have somebody that gives us some resistance, to become emotionally unstable or angry or frustrated and that's going to permeate outside your organization. It's going to start with your office and it's going to go outside, into your direct reports and they're going to be frustrated. And it's going to go outside direct reports and they're going to be frustrated and it's going to go outside. So if you're uh, if you're emotionally void, it's going to impact your entire organization. So you have to spend time and we talk about in our opening.

John Ballinger:

Emotional intelligence is a key. We say that in our opening to leadership. That's needed in America. You have to practice. I had a leader the other day took the emotional assessment and he scored the lowest scores I've ever seen and I felt so horrible because this is a good person who desires to be a good leader for his people and he's looking at his own test results saying, oh my gosh, no wonder I'm in the shape I'm in. My team's not growing at the level they need to grow at and I'm like now they need to grow at and I'm like now we got to fix that.

John Ballinger:

Now, since that recognition of that on black and white paper with his answer, he is stepping up. I've seen in two weeks, three weeks, whenever he shared it with me till Monday, I've seen a drastic attitude change. Like I'm going to fix it. I will not be born and die on this earth the train wreck of emotions. The leaders have got to embrace emotional intelligence because you're dealing with a divided society with divided team members that we're not talking about. They're just a little divided. We're talking about total ends of the spectrum and you've got to be able to take those people in and communicate effectively to them through listening and information and make an emotional uh, this have an emotional discussion about. Here's the path forward Knowing when you do, there's still going to be resistance because some of the people that came in and voiced their opinion you didn't listen to, and today everybody wants to be listened to. So the leader has it's I'm, I'm, this is, this is not me begging and maybe it is me back.

John Ballinger:

If we're going to stop the things like we did research and we didn't, we didn't. The young lady over in Charlotte that was just stabbed the? Uh, I think it was a college professor down in Auburn, just drug through the woods and killed Charlie Kirk, assassinated Minnesota legislators, just shot. If we're going to stop this and learn how to create relationships and learn how to respect each other, it has to start with leadership. Leadership created it and leadership's got to fix it. And if the leader's not willing to step up and do the hard work, then sit down and let somebody step in and do the hard work. And that's my position at this point. That may sound harsh, but that's my position. If you're not willing to do the hard work as a leader, sit down. Yeah, I think.

Douglas Ford:

And we've talked about this before. That's my position. If you're not willing to do the hard work as a leader, sit down. Yeah, I think and we've talked about this before all the things that we've wrapped up into the word leadership, that really don't belong in the word leadership, and we have used leadership to replace the word management, we've used the word leadership to replace several other things that don't really define what a leader is, and so now we're confused as a society, we're confused as people who look to quote unquote leaders as to what a leader actually should be, and we've said this before authority doesn't make you a leader. So there's a lot. There's a lot in this episode done pack for sure and to think back, and it may even be worth hitting the repeat button and getting this one again very well, maybe, but leaders listen.

John Ballinger:

This is important. In order to lead your team well, it's imperative that you must first lead. Thanks everyone, we'll be you next time. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm.

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John Ballinger

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Douglas Ford

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