Becoming a Wise Leader with Uli Chi and Shirley Hoogstra

Hello everyone, and I’m so grateful to be with you today. Thank you for joining us on today’s online conversation with Uli Chi on Becoming a Wise Leader: The Power of Humility. I want to especially welcome our over 119 first-time guests and 92 international guests from 26 different countries, ranging from Australia, Austria, Senegal, Slovenia to Indonesia and Ireland. Isn’t it neat to be part of a global cohort of leaders? So thanks for joining across the miles and time zones. And as Cherie said, tell us in the chat box how you heard about us. Also, if you are one of the many first time guests and are new to the work of Trinity Forum, we want to provide a hospitable space to engage the big questions of life in the context of faith, and offer programs like this online conversation to do so and to become – to know the author of the answers. So we hope that you will get a taste of that from our discussion today. Our guest today is an entrepreneur and author who has spent his life practicing leadership in the intersection of for-profit and nonprofit businesses, the theological academy, and the local church. Uli serves as the board chair of the Virginia Mason Franciscan Health System. He is a senior fellow at the Max De Pree Center for Leadership and a fellow at the Center for Faithful Business at Seattle Pacific University. Uli serves on the faculty for Regent College’s Master’s Program in Leadership and Theology and Society, and the Fuller Seminary’s Doctoral Program of Global leadership. Uli, welcome.

Thank you, Shirley, so good to be with you all.

Uli, I loved your book. I have it here. It’s dog eared underlined because that’s what I do.

Wonderful.

And your book is for those of us wanting more information about where wisdom comes from and how wisdom intersects in the world around us. And you did a wonderful job in the first half of your book explaining that. I thought I would just mention a couple of things to bring us all into the book. You made a point to say that wisdom is from God. That wisdom is rooted in community. That wisdom is found in diverse community, not in any individual alone. That wisdom is discovered from relationships. And you mention particularly long-term committed relationships. I loved when you said that wisdom isn’t like you just put on a jacket, but it’s this way: it’s–you said—it’s like a journey and you discover wisdom along the way. That made me feel so good, Uli, because I thought I haven’t missed it, right? I’m still on a journey.

We’re still on the journey, yes.

We’re all still on the journey. So how did you prepare yourself to write a book about wisdom and leadership? Did God give you particular spaces? Were you aware of sort of cataloging these wisdom moments?

That’s a great question, Shirley. It’s my first book. I don’t know if you knew that or not, but others have written books. I’m in my 70s, so I was often asked by folks, you know, how long did it take you to write this book? And I said, it took me 70 years to write this sort of a work of a lifetime. And it really is, I think, in many ways, sort of a journey of and a reflection on the journey of a lifetime. And I think, you know, as you said, you know, wisdom is a journey, not a destination. I think oftentimes we think we become wise and arrive at a certain point. But it’s really, as I’ve discovered, certainly I think most folks know that, you know, it’s a journey, not something that you simply come to a set of, you know, come to a place and now you’re wise and are officially anointed as being wise or something. And I, you know, I think for me, early on, I tell the story of my grandfather, who is a Chinese scholar. And, when I was thinking about writing this book, there was a picture that I remembered from my childhood where he was carrying me around. I was probably 4 or 5 years old, and he was showing me his garden and the picture is of him pointing to a plant in his garden, and my sort of reaching out and touching it. And it’s a lovely and very moving picture that I remember, but it sort of captured a bunch of things about wisdom for me. And all of it is sort of rooted in its being relational fundamentally, right. And I think even at an early age, I knew that, you know, there was something magical or wise about having someone who was deeply hospitable, who welcomed you into their space, and that’s the wisdom. It was someone who he clearly loved me. And the picture, you know, I think embodied that for me. And he created, he empowered me. It was not, he didn’t sit me down for a lecture. Not that I would have sat still for a lecture at the age of five, right? But he was wise enough not to even try that. But I think it was just sort of empower me to explore his garden. And I think wisdom fundamentally is an exploration in many ways. And I think the other last thing about it that reminds me of the quality of wisdom is that wisdom ultimately should result in delight. It’s not just accumulation of information or facts, but it leads to joy. You know that a wise way of life isn’t sort of a dark journey, but ultimately one that leads to light and life. And so it was in the picture, it’s in the front of the book, those who have a copy of it, is and you can see the light of my in my face as I was exploring the garden with my grandfather. So that was sort of that picture sort of, for me, captured many of the aspects of wisdom that I wanted to explore and to capture in the book.

And I love that it’s such a long term relationship, right? You talk about that. It started from when you were just a child. And it sounds like your grandfather was full of generosity, that ability to think about others. And you reference in this book about wisdom, the key aspect of humility, the giving away, the caring for others. And that, you know, you say that humility is an action more than a feeling about how humble we are. And your grandfather showed you, right, that humility of wanting to impart things that he loved. And you quote this historian, John Dickson, and it said, the noble choice is to forgo your status, deploy your resource, or use your influence for the good of others before yourself is a definition of humility. And my bet is that that is what your grandfather modeled to you.

Yes. No, exactly. And I think sometimes we have a misunderstanding of humility, that is sort of humility is about being either a milquetoast or a doormat. You know, somehow that it’s not an act of power. And I think one of the things that, in fact, one of the one of the motivations for writing the book was for much of my life I wrestled like I suspect many people do. But how do you hold humility and power together, right? I mean, it seemed like oil and water in many ways. You can either be powerful or you can be humble. But how do you actually do the two together? And I think and one of the John Dickson’s quote is that you mentioned is quite wonderful because it reminds me that humility, I mean, there’s such a thing as a humble attitude or a modest attitude, but actually, more importantly, humility in a certain sense is an act of power on behalf of others that we serve others and even at the detriment to ourselves. I think that’s what Jesus finally fundamentally modeled by laying his life down for others. And he said in the Gospel of John, he said, you know, I have the power to lay down my life and I have the power to pick it up again. So it was not imposed. It was a choice, right? And I think Christian humility is something that is really, at its core, is about a choice, right? That we choose for the sake of the other.

And, I think sometimes, you know, even I was teaching, involved in teaching a course at Fuller Seminary on leadership, and I had a number of Black women executives who were in the course with me, and I was talking about servant leadership. And I realized to my, I should have known better, but I didn’t, that the term even servant leader landed for them differently than it did for me. It sounded like, well, that’s what you’re supposed to be. You know, I’m Black, I’m a woman, I’m supposed to serve. But actually not, it’s an act of power, right? It’s actually meant to be an expression of grace and a gift to others by acting for their benefit, for their good, rather than just for my own. And so I think humility in that sense is a powerful thing. And in fact, as John Dickson, by the way, his book Humilitas, which is well worth reading, makes the argument that Jesus fundamentally changed history, actually, by his understanding of humility, that it wasn’t humiliation, it was an act of grace and mercy, and that before Jesus, people thought of humility as, why would, humility was a bad thing. It wasn’t just a foolish thing. It was a bad thing because you were sort of lowering yourself for the sake of those who were morally less worthy than you were. And so he’s telling us to do that, I think. Change the world, right?

Well, you use the example of crucifixion. No one in the age of Jesus thought that the crucifixion or being crucified was an act of humility. But what you’ve just described is Jesus upending really how we use power? And by laying down his life in this dramatic, painful way is such a lesson to all of us. And you go on to say that that actually not only by observing Jesus and learning practices of humility but that even learning the practice of vulnerability builds this concept of humility. And you’ve been an entrepreneur. You’ve been a successful tech executive. A successful teacher. You have a lot of success in your life, but you tell a story in the book about an experience with the Herman Miller Company and your staff way back in 2002, where you were practicing a different kind of way of being the leader, the powerful, by being vulnerable.

Yeah. It’s a great story, in retrospect. So pleasant at the time. Right? I mean, these things often aren’t right. And, 2001, roughly, we were, it was, right at the right after 9/11, we were faced with. And Herman Miller was our principal client at the time, and we had a great relationship with them. But understandably, they were, you know, 9/11 caused a lot of economic havoc and not least for them. I remember their CEO at the time said it was like going through the depression. It was really very, very bad. And so we were strategic partners with them. And so they asked us to sort of do our part in terms of sharing the economic pain. So I remember I had this conversation with the senior team and I was flying back to Seattle recognizing I was faced with the question of how much, you know, there was a lot of uncertainty. We didn’t know exactly the scope of the cuts, you know, how it was going to be implemented. And so I was debating the question of really how much to tell my team. And, you know, I didn’t want folks. I felt vulnerable because I didn’t want them to feel like this guy doesn’t know what he’s doing. What is it? You know, why does he know more than he’s telling us or what does he know? Why isn’t he able to do things or give us a more hopeful picture? But I said at the end of the day, I thought, you know, this was a big deal for everyone.

And I knew the team well enough. I think we developed a culture of trust enough where I felt like it was okay to tell them here’s what I know. Here’s what I don’t know. The reality is, you know, we’re going to have to make significant cuts. We don’t know exactly how big they’re going to be. And I ask two things of them. I said one, you know, don’t make it worse and focus on what you can do something about. You know, I’m sharing this with you not to raise your anxiety level, but simply because I know it’ll matter to you in your life and your families. And secondly, if you are planning to make a change in your work and perhaps you’re planning to relocate or something, please tell me so that we can factor that in our thinking. And I was really — Even though I think I knew my team pretty well, I was actually really pleasantly surprised by their response. I think everybody, you know, was grateful for the information, even though in a certain sense couldn’t help but raise their anxiety. But they also, one person came and told me, hey, I was planning to move. And so, you can, you know, offer my, you know, space or place to someone else. And some people said I’m willing to work part time so other people can stay.

That was remarkable. And so here’s the other thing that was, really I found, perhaps at a personal level, the most remarkable. So we had this conversation at this feedback. And then at the end of it, one of my staff came in who was one of the junior people, and she was, you know, fairly new and she said, hey, can we talk? And I said, sure. And I thought she would come to ask about her position because she was young. She was probably last in first out kind of thing. So she would be concerned about that. And she asked me a question that caught me totally off guard. She said, are you doing okay? And I said, what? You know what? Why is she asking me that? I’m you know, the owner of the company. I’m making these decisions that are going to affect your life. She said “I know this is really hard for you to share this with us. I just want to make sure you were okay.” It was just an act of remarkable generosity on her part, right? And she was, in a certain sense at the bottom of the ladder, if you will. And she cared about me, and I was just so struck with that. It was an act of generosity and humility in a certain sense, that taught me about the willingness to serve others, right? And even though she could rightfully be concerned about her own role. So.

Well, think about it. Everybody was anxious already, right? It wasn’t that it wasn’t known that things were not going to be the same after 9/11. There was some economic downturn. And your wisdom in deciding to give the facts, to show some vulnerability, not to be the all powerful CEO really honored them, it respected their lives, it allowed them to have some agency over the next decisions that they might make. And I bet that those folks will always remember that sort of bonding that happened when they were in it together and felt that you were going to take care of them because you were willing to have that level of candor with them?

No, I hope that’s true. I think that’s true. I certainly know it’s true for me. I mean, It’s stuck with me in a way that it’s hard to forget.

What I love about the way that you talk about power in the book. You talk about wisdom, humility and power. We have some examples of people who do not exercise power wisely, but that doesn’t actually eliminate the good of this thing we call power. I always say nothing is none of our experiences are wasted in God’s economy. And God chose you, for a variety of reasons, to have power to execute it on his behalf, in a way, as an image bearer on his behalf. And you have developed a very healthy vision for power. Say a little bit about that.

Sure. Sure.

Yeah. I think it’s easy to treat like sort of the Lord of The Rings view of power, right? That power inherently enslaves and then Tolkien grew up at a time when, you know, that was sort of what the world looked like. And understandably so. We live in a fallen world where power certainly can be used that way. But I think it’s helpful, like you say, to remember that God created us as image bearers, which means, as Genesis one reminds us, we have dominion, whatever that term exactly means, right? That we have power, I think is clearly implied and that we, and the reality is as leaders, power is part of the deal, right? It’s part of the package of being a leader, you can’t lead without exercising power in some way, and to be naive or to be pretend we don’t have power doesn’t serve anyone well. So the real question, as you say, is what’s the right, what are some healthy models of power. And I’ve suggested three in the book that I find really helpful. One, first of all is what I call generative power, which is sort of creating space and place for people to exercise their agency, to exercise their gifts. I think, you know, and I’m indebted to Andy Crouch in his book, Playing God.

You know, he talks about, you know, the Genesis one account where, you know, God says, let there be, you know, let there be. Let there be that God is creating space for other powers in there, you know, in his world. And I think that’s, I think, the most fundamental and most healthy expression of power, if I can use the word Godly view of power is to create space for others to exercise their gifts. It’s not about me accumulating power so that I’m more powerful, but it’s actually to enable and to empower others. That modern word empower is a good word, right? We should be empowering others to do their work. So that’s the first category of power that I think is very helpful. The second I call participative power, which means God doesn’t just sort of, you know, delegate power to folks to exercise, but God in some sense enters into their world with them. You know, Genesis two talks about God literally gets his hands dirty, right? In terms of creating humanity from dust and breathes life into the sort of like a potter shaping, you know, a creation. And it’s not just, it’s not somehow creating something from a distance. And I think for me that’s helpful because I think sometimes you can view delegation as being sort of an impersonal thing where we hand over responsibility and authority to someone and sort of we stay out of it in a not a good way, but that we we don’t own our piece of that. That we don’t enter into that with them. And so I think participative power fundamentally I think is about recognizing that we’re not engaged in impersonal work as leaders, but that we are called to love both the work and the worker and those who follow us, and to be engaged in a relationship of love that is participative. And then finally, the third category of power that I think is helpful is what I call directive power, which is sort of, which I think you could think of in the more traditional way of how people think about power. Power gives me the chance to tell people what to do or to, you know, give them direction, whatever. And, well, while that can be abused, there’s actually a really healthy sense in which that kind of directive power is helpful to others and to the community. We were just talking about my business experience in 2001. There was about seven years later in 2007 and eight, there was another major mortgage crisis, you may remember. And there were huge economic consequences, and we went through another big upheaval as a business.

And I remember calling my team together and my senior team and said, hey, we’re facing technological changes, business issues, financial issues. You know, I want to – let’s talk about how we’re going to do this. And so we spent several hours together. There were more ideas in the room than there were people in the room. You know, and there’s a lot of passion and energy about different things to do. And I remember thinking toward the end of the conversation and I thought, you know, I’m not sure I’m going to be able to get everybody on the same page. You know, this is there’s a lot of passion and rightfully and there’s this is not life or death. But these were, you know, financially and from an economic point of view, very serious decisions. And so after we had this conversation, I finally said to everyone, thank you for all your input, now here’s what we’re going to go do. And so I essentially took all the things and gave them clarity and focus by choosing amongst a bunch of choices and essentially excluding a whole bunch of options as the leader, right? And I wasn’t sure how people were going to react, but everybody sort of went, oh, okay, great. Let’s go. And so I guess I sort of knew it ahead of time, but I was reminded from that experience that one of the gifts, not only responsibility, one of the gifts of leadership to the community is to provide focus of clarity, right? Because we all know if we just keep doing everything sort of as a group process, there is a participative part of leadership where we invite input, but there comes a time when whoever holds the responsibility, who has been called to take responsibility, has got to provide clarity and focus, and that’s where directive leadership can be really helpful. So generative, participative and directive I think all of those not just one. All three of them have a place in wisdom and leading well.

Well I when I read those three I was thinking of my own journey, both as being a follower and being a leader. And I thought, wouldn’t it be the biggest compliment of your life as a leader if people that worked under your span of care said, I flourished under her leadership or his leadership? I was my best self when I worked for Uli or worked for Shirley, or worked for Cherie, or worked for whoever you’re supervising. I flourished, I was my best self. And then the participatory idea, this idea that you might be a mentor to someone. And I’ve had many wonderful mentors, young Willie Dal, Howard Jacobs and the thing that I noticed about them and I now have categorized them as even more wise, is that they were pouring into my life so that I would be better, right? And there’s a book by Heifetz and Linsky out of Harvard, Leadership on the Line, and they say, you know the book, and in their phrase, it says “you lead because you love people and you want their lives to be better,” and you can’t do that at a distance. So that’s why this participatory kind of leadership is so important. It takes risk to do that. You have to spend time. And then when you were talking about directive power, I thought, well, that was Covid. Every day you got up and you would look to your leader and you said, well, what are we going to do? Right? We have all this uncertainty, all this. You can’t predict what’s going to happen next. What do we do? And it gave people real – a sense of peace and calm to know that somebody was going to make a hard decision. So I think this would be nice for our listeners. This could be a dinner table conversation. You know, take a situation where you’ve been and talk about whether the leaders you had practiced generative, participative or directive power and share some of those stories, both the highs and the lows. It would be a great conversation for around the dinner table.

Yeah, and I think it’s a reminder too that what you were just saying, that, you know, fundamentally wisdom is about relationships, right? That’s why mentoring is so important. Right? And that’s why I think all of these attributes of power, all these categories of power, models of power, I think, remind us ultimately it’s about the relationship and that we can’t be wise if we are not relating well, you know, in some ways, somebody, I think Walker Percy said, you can get all A’s and still flunk life. Right? That was his quote, I guess, And that I think we can be really smart. And we see a lot of folks in the world who are really smart people but are not wise. Right? And I think a lot of it boils down to the quality of the relationships and how we treat other people and how we interact with them. So that’s great.

I want to pick up something about that, because in order to have good relationships, you cannot be speeding through life. Right? And so many leaders find themselves in a cadence that feels more intense and more like workaholism than maybe rest and the ability to be present. So would you say something more about this idea how while workaholism is criticized, it’s often glorified. And how have you practiced, or how have you seen the practices of Sabbath and solitude enabling a leader to be wise in their relationship tending?

Oh, that’s a great question, Shirley, and I wish I were an expert in it. You know, I’ve been working at it for a long time, but I think I don’t know that anyone ever becomes an expert. But I think one of the things I think I’ve come to appreciate is that there are disciplines that wisdom disciplines that have been given to us, that remind us of our finiteness that, as leaders, I think sometimes we worry. And this comes with getting power and being made in the image of God. You know, you can start to think like you are God, right? And so and I’ve as a leader and as a creator of a new business, you know, there were days that felt like if I didn’t do something, nothing would happen. So I understand that hard work matters, right? And hard work is important, but I think God created this rhythm of rest and work where we are reminded on a regular basis that we need to acknowledge that God is God and we’re not. And I used the example in the book. Even before Sabbath, I used the example of sleep as being a discipline of what I call a discipline of finitude, a reminder that we’re finite creatures. And in fact, you know, when I was younger, I used to work till 2 or 3 in the morning because then my kids were asleep, my wife was asleep. This was before the internet, nobody called me. So I had lots of time to sort of focus on my work, right? But I just sort of as I got more responsive, I worked harder and harder and longer and longer hours. And it becomes dehumanizing at some level, right? And it creates the illusion that if I just work harder, I’ll get something done and that I’ll be a better leader. And I think one of the paradoxes of being a wise leader is to know when to stop. Right? And I think sleep every night just biologically, we have to sleep, right? I mean, nobody can not sleep for a super long amount of time. But rather than view it as a constraint or as an annoyance, I think it’s really helpful to see every night we’re given the privilege of saying, God, you are God. I stop and I turn over my life and responsibilities to you, and God carries on while we go to sleep. And I think that reminds us that we are servants, too. We are not God. We are called to be servants of the Most High God. And as part of that, we get to not have to do it all, right? We get the chance to have God be participants in our work with us.

That is such a beautiful image of knowing your limitations. And even in the workaholism space where you’re packing too much in. It may not actually even look irregular because your company likes you, you’re highly productive, your board likes you, but you don’t know actually what you’re missing. Conversation you’re missing. What kind of decision making you would make if you were less rushed, if you were more rested. So you don’t fall apart when you’re not practicing solitude or Sabbath, but you’re maybe not being the kind of person that helps yourself to flourish and therefore someone else to flourish.

Yeah. Can I add something to that?

Absolutely.

Yeah. So I think in addition to the effect it has on you and your own flourishing, I think it’s easy to forget the effect. Your sort of compulsion to work affects the culture of the organization. You know, I’ve had the privilege of working with a number of senior folks as a board chair in different contexts and to a person, every one of them. They’re great leaders and they care deeply for the organization. And ironically, that gets them into trouble because they sort of work really hard, which, I mean, you have to work hard as a leader, but it’s sort of like it’s easy to keep going and keep going without stopping. And I was, I’ve had conversations with multiple folks essentially saying, remember the example that you’re setting that if you may, in fact, in their cases, in each one of their cases, they’re very generous with their people. They say, you know, you shouldn’t work, you know, make sure you take time off, take a vacation, whatever. But they actually didn’t necessarily do that themselves. And I said, you know, realize that if you keep modeling this behavior that you have to work all the time, guess what your people are going to do? Even though you’re telling them they can have time off, they won’t take it either because they’re watching your behavior. So I think as leaders in particular, I think modeling the discipline’s affinity for ourselves, whether it’s in sleep or Sabbath. I mentioned to solitude, you know, taking time for, you know, not always being active in an extroverted sort of way, which I am an extrovert. So I think figuring out ways to contain, how do I say this, I think it’s ironic that the disciplines of finitude contain our power to help us to exercise power better.

Yes.

It’s sort of paradoxical in that sense.

Well, and this goes back when we when we say that wisdom comes from God. One of the main characteristics I believe about that is believing that God is trustworthy. Right? And so if you believe that God is trustworthy, cares for you, cares for your company, cares for your work, cares for your family, you then don’t have to over worry or overwork because only you can produce the result. God apparently is not capable of producing the result you need. And one of my prayers has always been, and this is a lifelong thing, I don’t seem to be getting any better at it, you know, which is to trust more, to to risk more, and to worry less. Right?

Yeah. And I think, you know, it’s so interesting that, you know, wisdom is often associated with action and discernment and willingness to, you know, to be courageous in our action, which is certainly, that’s an aspect of it. But there’s another sort of the model might be someone like Solomon, right? Somebody who’s wise and powerful and willing to act on behalf of the powerless. But there’s another aspect of wisdom which is more childlike, right? It’s not associated with maturity as it is with being childlike, of being vulnerable and being willing to trust God and Jesus himself, you know, put a little child in the midst of his disciples and said, you know, you’re you’re worrying about who’s going to be the greatest. It’s the one who’s one who is childlike and willing to exhibit trust and vulnerability. And so I think that’s another paradoxical aspect of wisdom, which is easy to lose.

I would like to talk with you more and I’ll just call you up, but we have even better questions, great questions from our listeners. So let me ask this question for you. From Madonna Hammel. Given that you work in tech in the AI age, how do you navigate the confusion between information and wisdom?

Oh, that’s a wonderful question.

And a great question.

Donna. Who asked that question? Is that right?

Madonna.

Madonna. I’m sorry. Yeah. Madonna. Great. Great question. I mean, it’s so easy to confuse the two. And it’s not that information and knowledge don’t matter. Is there an aspect of wisdom? It’s just that I think, as we talked about earlier, I think there’s a certain sense in which information and knowledge are a part of wisdom, but they’re not the whole of wisdom. Sometimes we confuse just knowing a lot makes us wise, and I think we live in a world that prizes knowledge and information. And so I think it’s important to say that there is wisdom is that’s why I like the language of wisdom is funny about a characteristic of a person and about a set of relationships, rather than about a set of propositions. Now Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life, not just I have the way, the truth, and the life, right? So wisdom is embodied fundamentally in persons and persons in relationship. And so I think in an age that prizes information and even artificial information, it’s important to remember that wisdom is about relationships. And to that point on, the AI question and this wasn’t quite the question that was asked, but one of the concerns, I think many of us who are technologists are who are people of faith have is the question of human agency in AI. And what I mean by that is I think AI can create, potentially, the situation where we are abdicating our responsibility to an artificial intelligence. Now artificial intelligence, as a technologist, there’s no question there are benefits. I mean, there are medical breakthroughs that I’m aware of that have come about through AI technology, which would have taken much longer or would have never happened. So that’s the good thing, but it’s not the whole story. And so we need to be careful that, I guess it’s true of any technology. Technology is a wonderful servant, but a terrible master. And I think fundamentally to being human is that we have been given by God the responsibility for his creation and this world, and we can’t abdicate it. And I think I creates at least the possibility of human abdication, which I think is very dangerous and something that we need to think about how we, in fact exercise our responsibility in stewardship.

Well, and don’t you think that wisdom is needed even more so today, right?

Absolutely. Oh, yeah. I say this elsewhere in the book, but, you know, we like simple answers to complicated questions. There are sometimes there aren’t any. And I think we need more. And I think that’s why I love the Trinity forum because I think Trinity Forum reminds us it’s important to think carefully our way through very, very complicated issues. You know, they’re technology issues. They’re political issues. They’re environmental issues. I mean, these are there’s it’s easy to reduce things to a slogan or to a bullet point or something, a set of bullet points. But many of these issues are very complex, and I think it requires all of our humanity and our love for God and for the world and for the people of the world to help be part of the solution.

So from Nathan Swanson. How can leaders practice humility well, in the age of social media, which has performative incentives and de-formative effects, what posture do leaders need to adopt?

Boy, that’s a great question. I don’t have a great, you know, magic bullet of how to do that well. I think one is that, I think one is to figure out the practice of finitude with regard to social media. You know, I think some of us get caught up in being always, it’s sort of like 24/7 social media. And I think social media, again, can serve lots of useful functions. But I think, like all technology, it needs to be reflected upon as to how it’s affecting us as we use it. Every technology not only is useful, but it in a certain sense forms us by the way we use it, right? So we need to think about what is the effect of using this technology. That’s the first thing. The second thing is I think almost always we need ways to create boundaries around the media or the technology. We need to figure out what are the limits as to how we choose to engage. And the third thing I would say is, I think particularly in the social media context and particularly in a polarized world in which we all find ourselves within the church or in the broader culture, is to remember that people are more than just their labels or their ideologies. And I think one of the things I say in the book is that I think one of the challenges, and that’s why humility is so important, is our posture is always should be one of curiosity towards the other rather than sort of, you know, reading a social media post saying, oh, I know what that means. I know what kind of person you are, and responding sort of full on say, I wonder what made that person say that?

Right. The curious. Okay, so one of the qualities of of wisdom is being curious about somebody else, right? And don’t you think the performative nature of social media really hits at this I want to be admired, I want to be liked, I want to be viewed as, right, successful or stylish or, in the know? I think it is something to make sure that when you are either spending a lot of time on it and your point is, spend less time on it or thinking about how will this post make me look. Those are probably two a couple of questions. Am I spending too much time? Am I more worried about how this makes me look than maybe communicating something valuable?

Yeah. Or am I getting to know the person as a person rather than as a debater on an electronic forum?

Right.

Can I say one more thing? I’m sorry.

Yes.

No, I was just gonna say one more thing related to that, I think. You know, the two fundamental postures of humility that I find helpful is one is what we talked about already, which is recognizing that we’re finite creatures. Right? Another way to say that is we don’t know everything, right? There are things we don’t and sometimes we feel like we know everything we need to know about something, but chances are we probably don’t. So we’re finite in that sense. The other is that we’re fallen creatures, right? So not only don’t we know everything, what we know might be wrong. Right? And so I think it’s really in an age that is so polarized. And I think in a way that that creates dissension and distrust, I think it’s important to just acknowledge, particularly those of us who are coming from a Christian point of view, who, you know, believe that Jesus is, in fact, God incarnate. You know, it’s easy to sort of instead of being humbled, to have a certain hubris about our faith. Right? And so we know we’re right. Right? And I think it’s important to be able to acknowledge that. I think Steve Hayner said this one time, he said, you know, I believe in objective truth, but I hold lightly my ability to perceive it. And I think that’s a wonderful posture to take in social media to say, you know, whatever this person is saying isn’t the whole thing. It’s not who we are as a person. And maybe I should figure out a way to get to know them. If that’s part of my calling. Right?

Well, here’s a follow up from Nathan’s question by an anonymous attendee. It says, it seems to me that our current culture does not value wisdom as much as wealth, intelligence, real or perceived, and achievement. and the question producer here says I encountered this daily in academia. How can we, as the church, better elevate wisdom as something of value in more than an abstract sense? Well, how do we incentivize people exercising wisdom?

That’s an interesting question. I don’t know. I mean, I think there’s a sense in which wisdom is its own reward, that is that if we behave wisely, ultimately in the long term leads to life and flourishing. And I think even those who aren’t necessarily of faith can recognize when someone’s being wise and, you know, and can be affirming of that. But I think it’s also true that wisdom is costly, right? In the sense that it isn’t always rewarded. You know, you just have to read Psalm 73, right? Where the person’s talking about, you know, it’s all the bad guys who are flourishing. And I’m trying to be faithful and all I get is grief. You know, I identify with that. You know, it doesn’t always work out that way, right? And so I think we, maybe what the church, what we as a community of believers can do is to encourage each other. That is you know, we’re in this for the long run. I mean somebody said you know God is in this. God is into the long game. You know, and I think we really need to take a much longer picture along the longer perspective of what sort of the reward looks like. Right? The sure thing is that if Jesus’ resurrection taught us anything, it’s that the meek and not the mighty are going to inherit the earth. And it may take, it may not happen in our lifetime, and it may get worse for some of us who choose to be humble. I explore in the book that humility, there have been studies, like by Jim Collins, where he talks about level five leaders, where humility can make a difference in terms of economic performance, even in companies. And he wasn’t coming at it from a religious point of view. But there’s sometimes it doesn’t work out either. Right? I mean, you have to be willing to pay the price in that sense. You know I quote, I’m a big Star Wars fan, so I quoted Yoda and said, you know, he said to Luke Skywalker when he was training him to be a Jedi Knight, he said, do or do not there is no trying. Sort of as a way of saying, you know, it’s all about performance, right? And I quote it as a counterpoint. T.S. Eliot’s wonderful line. He says, there’s only the trying. The rest is not our business. Which is, I think, a way of saying, you know, it may not work out the way we expect. I mean, we’ve had lots of history has taught us that not, you know, things have not always worked out, but God in his mercy and in his truth, will ultimately make what is good. You know. Well, it will ultimately prevail, right in the resurrection.

Will ultimately prevail. Here’s a follow up from one of our listeners. It says Proverbs states that knowledge and understanding is needed before obtaining wisdom. So what’s your view as to what produces wisdom in us? And I’m thinking about that place in your book where you talk about the glass blower.

Yeah, I think, thank you for that. That’s a helpful connecting point in the book. You know one of the questions you ask that I asked and the questioner is asking is, how does wisdom really get formed? Right? And so knowledge and information can be helpful. But the truth is that we find ourselves formed by our experiences and oftentimes by experiences of suffering. When I was, one of our holiday events in our business, we went to a glassblowing event where we were invited to blow, you know, to put glass in a, in a furnace and blow into it and create works of art of different quality. But it was so interesting to see how what was brittle and un-shapeable became malleable under pressure and heat and that it’s the pressure of life and circumstances that often create the context in which our formation of wisdom takes place. And the story that I explore in the book is the story of Joseph, which is, I suspect, familiar to many. And, you know, he had a vision of becoming a leader, of becoming someone of importance, and he wound up being sold as a slave in Egypt and being put in prison. And the whole story, the whole narrative of that, I think, gives us a feel for that, how wisdom gets shaped in us. And at the very end he says to his brothers, you know, you meant this for evil, but God meant it for good, for the deliverance of many. And so, you know, it’s not to not to downplay the effects of evil actors or evil experiences in our lives, but it’s that that’s not the whole story. God is at work for good, even in the midst of evil to create something that allows us actually to become wise and to contribute to the flourishing of the world.

So our last question, and Jeff Crosby, and this is a question I love too. So I’m really grateful, Jeff, that you asked it. Uli, you seem to suggest that reading art, poetry, and literature is a key touchstone for wisdom? Can you say more about the importance of reading in the life of a wise leader? And can you say something about every leader who wants to be wise should read poetry?

Oh well, I wish we had more time, Jeff, and thank you for asking that question. That’s a great question. You know, I think that, maybe the simple way to say it is that I was trained as a mathematician, which means that I tend to, you know, function on the what metaphorically, you might call the left side of the brain. Right? I know the neurobiology is more complicated than that, but, you know, I’m an analytical type. And I think I tend to focus and I think a lot of modern leadership literature focuses on helping the left side of our brains function well, and that’s good. I mean, there’s lots to be learned. That’s helpful. But I think there’s, the problem with that is that there’s a whole other half of your brain, which is about the imagination. So I think one of the things, and I’m not a poet by nature, and I didn’t read poetry most of my life, but later in life I got started reading T.S. Eliot in particular, and Malcolm Guite, who’s been on Trinity Forum before and is a good friend, has been so helpful in helping me see what he calls the poetic imagination has the great counterbalance to the rational mind, and that if we’re going to be good, great leaders, not to mention just being good human beings, I think we need both sides of our brains, right? And particularly in an age that prizes, you know, knowledge and information in the rational sense. We need to cultivate the creativity that poets bring. And I think another aspect of that is that one of the things I’ve learned from poetry is to learn how to empathize more. Is that what poetry requires you to do is to get inside the head and heart of the poet. Right? You sort of have to figure out what is this person saying? So often poetry isn’t obvious, right? It’s not prosaic, right on the surface. And so we have to get inside people’s heads and, and I think poetry trains a different part of our minds. And so reading generally I think is obviously helpful. But reading poetry in particular, I found, helps develop an aspect of my leadership wisdom that I would not have had had I not been doing it.

Many of our listeners will know the poet Lucy Shaw. Yes. America’s great distinguished poets. We would recommend her work to all of our listeners. And she was a board member. And you came to the conclusion, after serving with Lucy Shaw, that every board should have a poet on their board.

Oh, absolutely. Lucy has become a good friend. And she, I served with her on the Regent College Board in Vancouver. And, you know, Lucy sort of saw the world, most of us who served my observations, and we had wonderful board members on the Regent board. But most of us, I think, came at the world sort of through the analytical side of their brain. And Lucy came at it more balanced. Not that she couldn’t see the world that way, but she came at it from sort of the more imaginative side, and in particular one thing she could do was sort of see the whole rather than the parts, and see the larger picture instead of the particulars or the narrow focus. And she’s wonderful. And I – you know, I’ve served on other boards, I haven’t been successful in finding another poet to join any of my boards. But I look for that kind of capacity to think with what Malcolm would call a poetic imagination. So I would commend that to anyone who is on a board and is looking for new board members.

Well, I also think when we look at biographies, you know, we don’t have to live. All of our experiences aren’t the sole sort of source of wisdom of art, poetry, and then this idea of reading, one of my favorite authors is Doris Kearns Goodwin. And she writes so well, so vividly about the decision making that happened with presidents or other people who had immense responsibility. And in her work, you think about, well, I wouldn’t do that, right? You can read somebody else’s story and you can say, oh, that was not a good idea, or that’s a very good idea, right? And so this question of Jeff about where do we gather wisdom? One of our questioners said in the, in the Psalms and the Proverbs and Scripture as a whole, and then in, in art and literature and and poetry. So, in just a minute, Uli, I’m going to give you the last word. But I just want to say to all of our listeners. Thank you for being such a great audience for us to imagine as we were here on this webinar and your good questions. And for those of you who didn’t ask a question, we’re going to, immediately after we conclude, send you an online feedback form. And we would be grateful for your thoughts on how we continue to make these conversations more valuable to you. And as a small token of our appreciation for your participation in that survey, we’ll give you a digital choice of one of our readings. So for instance, this one is Who Stands Fast, a selection from Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Or A Man Who Changed His Times by William Wilberforce. A letter from the Birmingham Jail, obviously by Doctor Martin Luther King. And then The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass. All of these beautiful monographs are available when you are willing to participate in our survey. Also, we’ll be sending you a link tomorrow of this video. And we would love for you to share that with your friends, family, people that you think would like to have a moment of thinking about leadership and wisdom. For those of you who get involved and become a member of the Trinity Forum Society. We would love for you to give a gift, supporting events like this with your membership. And if you join today at www.TTF, clever, TTF.org, anyone who becomes a member renews or gives a gift of $150, is going to receive a signed copy of Uli’s book, The Wise Leader. And we have more wonderful conversations coming up, and on July 18th many of you have read The Untangling Our Knotted Up Lives by author Beth Moore. Many of you love Beth Moore’s work, and she, on July 18th, is going to be the guest. And also Doctor Karen Swallow Prior, a wonderful author and thought leader, is going to be on our program on August 1st. I want to thank again our sponsors for today, Scott and Patty Hardman, and our co-host Erdmanns and the Max De Pree Center for Leadership at Fuller Seminary, and also our incredible Trinity Forum team, Tom Walsh, Campbell Vogel, Marie-Anne Morris MacCrae Hanke, Francis Owen, who put the mission of the Trinity Forum into action by this program. All right, so, Uli, last word.

We didn’t have a chance to talk about this, but I think one of the fundamental insights, wisdom for me is that wisdom is fundamentally a communal art that no one is wise on their own. I used to think, you know, wisdom was about finding the great guru or something. But wisdom is finally, a communal trait, and that’s one of the great gifts of the community of that we are part of. And so and that’s why relationships matter so much. So I would encourage each of us to continue to work at developing the communities that nurture our wisdom and that nurture a communal wisdom with one another.

Uli, it’s been wonderful to spend this hour with you. Thank you for being our guest.

Thank you.

And thank all of you for joining us. Everyone, have a great weekend.