When I was closing in our my 40th birthday, I noticed something. I started to see it around 37 or 38, but I didn’t have words for it.

I started to notice that I had less energy than I did in my 20’s. Not just physically but also mentally, spiritually, and relationally. I also started to notice that some of the goals I had in my 20’s, things I cared about: being well known, having a large following online, or leading an enormous church, started to feel hollow. It isn’t that they were wrong goals; I just started to wonder if they were worth my time and energy.

I remember talking to another pastor who was about to move his church into a new, huge facility. It was the second building campaign he had led, and honestly, for pastors, he had reached the top. I asked him if he was excited, and he said, “I guess.” He said, “Honestly, this is great and all, but I wonder what I missed on the way to this.”

When you aren’t at the top of the mountain, it is hard to understand how people who get to the top can feel ambivalent or empty about it.

In my teens and 20’s and maybe this is or was right for you. You are proving yourself. You are figuring out what you are good at, what you will spend your life on, you are building your competency. Climbing ladders, stepping over people to get to the top, you are forging your way. 

For some of us, the change that happens in life is that those goals feel not worth it anymore, or we wonder, “what was I thinking.”

For others of us, we don’t hit those goals, and it is discouraging. 

For others, we hit all of our goals and wonder, is that all? We are convinced that hitting those milestones would feel a certain way, but they didn’t. 

I was talking to a counselor about this, and he told me, “Josh, that makes sense.” Of course, I leaned in and said, “tell me more.”

He said the first part of your life is about competency. The middle part of your life is about community, who you will do that competency with. You are figuring out what matters for the rest of your life. This is what David Brooks calls The two mountains. 

Then he told me, It’s the reason we feel kind of blah about life at different times. You run after things that you thought mattered, and at the time, they might have seemed like a huge deal, but now they don’t. He told me that is what you are searching for, and that is living a significant life. 

This is why, when you see a guy in his 50’s with an open shirt, a balding ponytail in a yellow Miata, we wonder what is wrong with him. He is still chasing after the first mountain.

The problem is that as we get older, we don’t have the energy to climb the first mountain. This is what leads many leaders to burn out and give up. If we can make the switch to understanding who we want to use our strengths and talents with, we last longer in the leadership game.

The problem, as many authors point out and many leaders discover, our world is built for the ladder climb for the company building. We are unsure how to navigate what comes after that. But sustainability is found in bringing these two mountains, these two circles of competency and community together.

Every year, my team and I attend the leadership summit and it is always refreshing, challenging and recharging for me. Easily the best leadership material in a conference that is out there. I try to share some of the highlights I took from each session.

Here are some thoughts from the session with Craig Groeschel on The Power of Emotions in Leadership:

• Impressing you is not the same as connecting with you.
• Emotions are relevant and important but they are the catalyst to growth.
• The fastest way to change someone’s mind is to connect with their heart.
• Knowledge alone rarely leads to action.
• Knowledge leads to conclusion while emotion leads to action.
• We must ask what do we want people to know, feel and do.
• Share stories purposefully. 
• Stories stick but facts fade.
• Stories connect to the heart of emotions with the strength of logic.
• Choose words deliberately. 
• The words you choose determine the emotions that people feel.
• Vision and values should inspire you and move you. If they don’t, they are too dull and safe.
• Show vulnerability thoughtfully. 
• We may impress people with our strengths but we connect through our weakness.
• People would rather follow someone who is real instead of someone who is always right.

Every year, my team and I attend the leadership summit and it is always refreshing, challenging and recharging for me. Easily the best leadership material in a conference that is out there. I try to share some of the highlights I took from each session.

Here are some thoughts from the session with Jo Saxton on leveling up your leadership:

• Who were you before anyone told you who you were supposed to be?
• Too many of us struggle with impostor syndrome.
• We believe we are a fake and don’t deserve to be in the room.
• Many of our stories create limits for us as a leader.
• What we think is who we’re becoming.
• The way you think about yourself is shaping your leadership.
• The story we tell ourselves matter.
• If your body could talk to you, what would it want to say?
• If we don’t listen to our bodies, eventually it will speak loud enough that we won’t be able to ignore it.
• You have one body and your leadership lives in it.
• Who are your people?
• Half of all CEO’s reported feeling lonely.
• 60% of leaders say loneliness is affecting their performance.
• There is loneliness when everyone wants an answer but you don’t have it.
• Who are you leveling up as a leader? Who are you investing in to help them become great leaders?

Every year, my team and I attend the leadership summit and it is always refreshing, challenging and recharging for me. Easily the best leadership material in a conference that is out there. I try to share some of the highlights I took from each session.

Here are some thoughts from the session with Dr. Krish Kandiah on Vision and Seeing Things Differently:

• Leadership is about seeing things differently than other people.
• A visionary leader helps other people to see things differently.
• Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others. -Jonathan Swift
• Leaders are called to see potential where others see trouble.
• Leaders see hope where others see chaos.
• You and I are more than the worst thing we’ve ever done or the worst thing that was ever done to us.
• The opposite of prejudice is hospitality.
• What legacy would be passed on to your children if you brought kids into your home that were in need?
• Investment in people leads to loyalty.
• The kitchen table is the most valuable part of your house because of the stories that are shared around them.

Every year, my team and I attend the leadership summit and it is always refreshing, challenging and recharging for me. Easily the best leadership material in a conference that is out there. I try to share some of the highlights I took from each session.

Here are some thoughts from the session with Todd Henry on Leading Creative Teams:

• We should aim to be prolific, brilliant and healthy.
• Creative people need a challenge.
• Creative people need stability.
• A leader needs to speak courage into the people who follow them.
• If you have low stability and low challenge, your team is lost.
• A leader needs to know how much stability and challenge each person on their team needs.
• Never assume that your people are with you.
• Trust is the currency of creative teams.
• It is the little things we do that cause us to lose trust in the big moments.
• Leaders need to declare undeclarables. 
• We breach trust by pretending to be a superhero.
• We fail as leaders when we push people away.
• Insecurity is at the center of so many poor leadership decisions and actions.
• The place of your insecurity is the place you have the potential to do the most damage to the people around you.
• Your job as a leader isn’t to do the work or control the work, but to get the work done.
• We have to transition from leading by control to leading by influence.
• Leaders, you have to take care of #1.
• If you are not inspired, you cannot inspire.
• If you don’t take time to fill your well, you won’t have any overflow for your team.
• You owe it to your team to know what prolific, brilliant and healthy look like.

Every year, my team and I attend the leadership summit and it is always refreshing, challenging and recharging for me. Easily the best leadership material in a conference that is out there. I try to share some of the highlights I took from each session.

Here are some thoughts from the session with Jia Jiang on rejection:

• Rejection is a numbers game.
• Someone will say yes to us at some point.
• Rejection is an opinion.
• We think rejection is all about us, but it isn’t.
• Rejection is just someone’s opinion.
• Rejection is growth.

Every year, my team and I attend the leadership summit and it is always refreshing, challenging and recharging for me. Easily the best leadership material in a conference that is out there. I try to share some of the highlights I took from each session.

Here are some thoughts from the session with Chris Voss on Negotiation in relationships:

• Any time the words “I want” or “I need” enter your head or a conversation, you are in a negotiation.
• The commodity in all negotiations is time.
• The first move in a negotiation is to listen, to hear them out. 
• You will be shocked how far you will get if you connect with people.
• Every time someone says “that’s right” they feel more connected to you.
• People want empathy, to be understood. What the FBI calls tactical empathy. 
• Empathy is not compassion, it is a step towards compassion. It is understanding where someone is coming from, even the parts you might not like.
• Call the elephant in the room out, don’t deny it.
• You can manipulate people, but you will pay for it down the road.
• The second move is mirroring. 
• Repeating the last couple of words of what the other person just said.
• It is inviting people to expand.
• Mirroring is the conversation swiss army knife.
• If someone says “no” then they feel safe and protected.
• A calibrated “no” is worth at least five “yeses.”
• The third move is if you remove barriers to agreements first, you get to agreement faster. 
• The fourth move is effective pauses. 
• Be comfortable with silence. 2 out of 3 are uncomfortable with silences.
• We can break people up into groups: fight, flight, make friends.
• The fifth move is to be likable. 
• You are six times more likely to make a deal with someone you like.
• The sixth move is don’t say “I understand.”
• The seventh move is to figure out why not what. 
• The word “why” makes people defensive.
• Ask “what makes you want that” not “why do you want that.”
• The eighth move is to ask open-ended questions. 
• Ask “how.”
• How triggers slow thinking, in-depth thinking. It helps us to shape someone’s thinking.
• Negotiation is about what’s happening in the future. 
• In negotiation, leave the selfish stuff out.
• Fear is part of every negotiation because we’re hardwired to be afraid. 
• The quickest hack against fear is to be genuinely curious.

Every year, my team and I attend the leadership summit and it is always refreshing, challenging and recharging for me. Easily the best leadership material in a conference that is out there. I try to share some of the highlights I took from each session.

Here are some thoughts from the session with Patrick Lencioni on Motivation and how it Shapes our Leadership:

• I think a lot fewer people should become a leader. 
• Don’t be a leader unless you’re doing it for the right reason.
• There are two kinds of leadership: responsible and reward.
• Responsible leadership is comparable to servant leadership.
• Many of the things you do as leaders don’t have a reward.
• You have to understand your leadership motive if you’re going to be a good leader. 

A leader who is reward centered won’t do is:

• They don’t like to have an uncomfortable, difficult conversation.
• They avoid them and push them off to others. And people suffer.
• To be a leader, you have to have awkward conversations.
• They don’t like to manage their direct reports. 
• A good leader knows what their people are working on, coaches them and keeps them aligned.
• If people aren’t managed, they lose motivation.
• They don’t like to run great meetings. 
• A leader can’t abdicate meetings or delegate them to someone else.
• Bad leaders don’t like to do things that are tedious or boring.
• Bad meetings lead to bad decisions.
• They don’t like to talk about how they interact with each other because it’s difficult. 
• They don’t like to repeat themselves and overcommunicate. 
• Great leaders never get tired of reminding people what they do as a church or company.
• Leaders don’t entertain, they keep people focused.
• Our people suffer because of poor leadership.

Every year, my team and I attend the leadership summit and it is always refreshing, challenging and recharging for me. Easily the best leadership material in a conference that is out there. I try to share some of the highlights I took from each session.

Here are some thoughts from the session with DeVon Franklin (who is a walking motivational poster):

• Too often we try to become like someone else instead of being ourselves.
• Too often we think we need to compromise to open a door to your destiny.
• Stop letting people limit you.
• Own your difference by using your voice.
• Questions you should ask: What makes me different? What makes me unique? What gives me a different worldview? And why do I think differently?
• Don’t exchange what makes you different for what makes you common.
• Why do you give “they” so much power in your life?
• Leaders are addicted to the sequel instead of asking how to find something new.
• Too often we try to be a repeat of what someone else did.
• Don’t repeat what you saw someone else do.
• We make sequels to avoid risk.
• My difference will ultimately become my destiny.
• Discomfort is a sign that you are on the right path.
• Our discipline is our destiny.
• Your difference is powerful.
• Hang with people who encourage your difference and push you.
• Don’t mistake popularity with purpose.

Every year, my team and I attend the leadership summit and it is always refreshing, challenging and recharging for me. Easily the best leadership material in a conference that is out there. I try to share some of the highlights I took from each session.

Here are some thoughts from the session with Danielle Strickland:

• If you want to change things, you have to change the right things.
• To find what needs to be changed, you must dig underneath the surface, to the roots.
• Disruption is not a threat, but an invitation.
• There is no changing the future without disturbing the present. -Catherine Booth
• Leaders leave behind everything that is normal and everything that is comfortable to find the new normal.
• Leaders know that changing things doesn’t matter as much as changing the right things.
• One encounter can change everything.