EP212: Leaders Always Protect

From seeking safety in our leaders to protecting our families in the digital age, this episode dives deep into the human desire for security. Explore how to safeguard your loved ones through communication, financial wisdom, and fostering a positive work environment. Tune in to create a secure foundation that empowers you to thrive in life.

Key Takeaways To Listen For

• The human desire for safety and its impact on leadership
• Strategic ways to protect your family's physical and mental health
• Why protecting ourselves and our families in the digital age matters
• Reasons to protect your family's future through financial wisdom
• How employee security drives business success

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Transcript

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[00:00:00] Dr. Nate Salah
Hello, my friend, and welcome to this episode of A Call to Leadership. I'm Dr. Nate Salah, your host, and I am so thankful and blessed that you are here with me on this episode as we continue our series on leadership from the aspect of how we care for our followers with the ideology that love can be at the center of how. We move people forward, how we influence, how we achieve our desired shared purpose. And so we're taking characteristics, principles, virtues from the ancient scriptures in the first book to the Corinthians chapter 13 verses 4 through 8. We call these the love verses, often hear them at weddings. And reconsidering, laying at your feet this idea that leadership can be all of these attributes.

[00:00:55]
Leadership can be patient, leadership can be kind, leadership should not envy, should not boast, should not walk in pride and arrogance, leadership should not dishonor others, it should not be easily angered, it should not be self-seeking, all of these attributes are aspects of leadership that we can learn and glean from leadership. which are attributes that will help us to be more effective leaders. And so as we continue through this series, we've landed on the next installment, which is leadership or love always protects. This is one of the fundamental aspects of leadership, the aspect of protecting that is a nonnegotiable in leadership. Followers desire The leader to protect in many different areas, and we're going to cover them, whether it's in society, whether it's in business, whether it's in family, whether it's for ourselves, one of the basic human needs is a need for safety. You see, even Maslow talked about this, right? Our physiological needs.

[00:02:01]
He talked about the need first and foremost for air. for sustenance and then from there for shelter for safety and security and then from there from belonging and esteem and self actualization but at the very foundation of humanity we must survive and in order to survive we must be protected think about that think about the very base need for human beings to continue on and survive. It's protection. And so what do leaders do? Leaders offer an environment that protects in many ways. Sometimes it's physical protection, sometimes it's emotional, mental, sometimes it's protecting The mission, the vision, protecting the values, there's all different ways that we seek to protect. And think of it societally, way back hundreds of years ago, there was a social contract, which was the terminology we use, John Locke and Rousseau and others came up with this idea that we can make an exchange, obedience or conformity to the norms of the nation of the government in exchange for really giving up certain rights.

[00:03:08]
And it was an exchange. So, obedience for protection, for safety from tyranny and oppression. And that's what we call the social contract. This is an unwritten, if you will, rule, but it's also unwritten because we're not thinking about it, if you will. But every time we obey a law, we obey that law, perhaps to our own lack of desire. Maybe you're obeying the law of wearing a seatbelt. But, you know, perhaps you really don't want to wear a seatbelt, but you wear it because it is the law. So you are sacrificing and giving up your right to disobey that law in exchange for the safety and the security, the protection of the nation. And when that safety and security is compromised, oftentimes people will then question whether or not they should continue to obey the law. In fact, Martin Luther King talked about this when he talked about unjust laws. He said, unjust law is no law at all. Because there were laws in the United States during his lifetime, which did not guarantee, did not help keep people safe, especially marginalized, African Americans, and so on, which instituted the Civil Rights Movement.

[00:04:18]
So you see this tension between the lack of security, the lack of protection and safety, and the lack of influence to obey. And the converse of that is true, too, in our lives as leaders. Perhaps it's not civil rights that we're talking about. Perhaps it is, by the way. Perhaps it's a different area of life. And this runs through the gambit of society. It runs through business. It runs through family. It runs through the individuals. It runs through all of those pieces of our journey together. You think about what's happening right now in the Middle East. It's so sad. And this attack by Hamas and this retaliation by Israel, Netanyahu, and you see some of these same dynamics happening here in this environment. A heinous act. of Hamas to attack all of those innocent people. However, on the other side is the disproportionate response in the bombing of an entire city, tens of thousands of innocent people dying. And when we look at it from this perspective of when the people of Gaza elected Hamas to be their leadership, they desired to have protection.

[00:05:26]
They desired to have safety. Hamas could not guarantee that. And so, Hamas then sends military to, and of course many call them terrorists, and I would agree, there's terrorism, to attack these innocent people. And their desire, of course, is to get the response. Of course, they know they can't defeat Hamas. This nation. But what is the goal then? I like the way Elon Musk explained this. He said this, quote, Hamas really wanted to commit the worst atrocities that they could in order to provoke the most aggressive response possible from Israel, and then leveraging that aggressive response to rally Muslims worldwide for the cause of Gaza and Palestine, which they have succeeded in doing. The question is, does that help the people of Gaza become safer and more protected? I think the answer is going to bear itself out. I'm going to wager and say that the answer is no. On the other side, with Netanyahu's staunch approach to say, we will not stop until every single Hamas fighter has been killed. Is that a response that will ensure the protection of his people? Well, time will tell. I don't know that it's Hamas alone that you're fighting. I think you're fighting an ideology. And so, Musk's response was quite remarkable to approach the situation, not only of course from a protectionary, I think Israel absolutely has a right to defend itself, absolutely has a right to fight back, 100%, no doubt in my mind.

[00:07:00]
But his response was to utilize acts of kindness, of course, in ways that are humanitarian. And we will see how all this bears out. However, you can see how this thought of protection can be demonstrated, yet be ineffective, and eventually the people Will say look you can't protect us and we won't follow people will stop following when they can no longer Be protected find someone else. It's a base humanity. It's a base sense of dignity It's base and I use this example because it's happening right now at least at the time of this recording How does that play out in families and how does it play out in businesses? It has a very similar meter to it. When we are focused on protecting our families, we are doing the right thing as leaders. And so we have to take an inventory, take an inventory of areas in our family, which we are and are not protecting. I'm going to give you a few examples. The very first way is most obvious physical safety, physical security, securing our home. When I had, uh, my son was young, he was really worried about burglars as most kids do.

[00:08:15]
In fact, we had our nieces living with us and we had an ADT sign, which is a security system, which was in the basement. She said, Uncle Nate, we have to put the sign out so people know that we have a security system. We have alarms, we have cameras. Why is this important? It's important because they want to feel safe. We want to feel that if there's an intruder, that their lives won't be in harm. And even to that point, we wanted to make sure we had emergency preparedness, a plan for some kind of a disaster. If there wasn't a meeting point or emergency kit, teaching family members basic First aid, CPR, what to do in the event of an emergency. And making sure, if we have little children, you remember when you had little kids, if you're listening and you have little kids now, what do we do? We childproof the home. Some people are like, oh, I'm just going to let my kids get beat up and bruised up. Well, we wanted to make sure that we reduce and eliminated the possibility of hazards, really.

[00:09:15]
So, toxic substances and loose railings and all of those types of things. But That's important and we have to start as a baseline of that, but we can't lose sight of some of the other things that are equally important to that is like our lives, our health. Are we encouraging a healthy lifestyle for our families? What are, how are we protecting their health? And are we encouraging healthy eating? You say, Nate, stop right there, buddy. Don't take away my food. I get it. There's certainly foods that are tasty, but listen, if we're constantly eating out, eating fried foods, eating foods that are high in. Refined sugar and sodium and just unhealthy foods. That is going to take a toll on our family. It's going to take a toll on our kids. I remember another family member. I won't name who it was, but the dinner routine as a little child. We're candy and bread and it's like whoa, that's probably not gonna be very good for you growing up And you know this friend that ends up creating trouble later. So, not that we're saying you have to feed your kids rice cakes and Seaweed, but teaching them to make wise choices because this is the only body we get now Yes, you can get surgeries and you can get on diabetes medication and all this but why let's try to take care of the kids And the family and how we eat healthy.

[00:10:43]
I haven't always eaten healthy. I grew up on TV dinners when I was young What are TV dinners? They were like these basically frozen meals that you put in an oven or sometimes a microwave. There was banquet TV dinners and they were like a couple little pieces of chicken. And then there were some mashed potatoes and some corn. And you heat it up and you watch TV and you ate your TV dinner. Now granted, it probably wasn't horrible, but it wasn't the best either. However, I did eat food that was homemade. My mom made Mediterranean food and it was really good. But I had to learn later. To take care of myself, because I come from a family that has both diabetes and high blood pressure. And so I got it on both sides. And I had to work and work and work and protect this vessel, because it's the only one I get. And most of my uncles have died in their early 60s, including my father, died at 62. And I'm 50 now. So if I were to keep that same methodology of not protecting this body, then I got another 12 years to live probably based on my hereditary DNA.

[00:11:50]
Now, I could die of anything else. Anything could happen. However, if it's up to me, then I'm going to make a change. And I want to be able to make that change not only for myself, but I want to model it for my family. It's so important to model and to live by example. When I was growing up, there was a phrase that people said all the time, especially parents said, do as I say, and not as I do. Do you remember that phrase? That's horrible. No, do as I do, as I do right, as I act to protect this family's health. Now, there's not just physical health, there's mental health too. And, I talk about this often on the show, we as leaders of our families have to promote open communication about how we feel, asking our family members how they feel, challenges. You know, I was just talking with my wife yesterday and I had said something to my son that upset him. And I said, man, I don't know. I blew it. I said something that I shouldn't have said. And she said, can I offer you a suggestion? I said, please. She said, why don't you just apologize? I'm like, duh, of course I should just apologize.

[00:12:50]
That seems so simple. And she gave me a little advice on what I might say. And I went to my son's room and I knocked on the door and I said, Hey, I just wanted to apologize. And I explained why. And I let that simmer and be. That open communication about sharing that I understood how we felt and that I was apologetic, sincerely, genuinely, it helped us to get past it. And that's how we're talking about protecting, protecting the integrity of those relationships through our mental health by communicating together. Now, I'm going to get into an area that I didn't have when I was a kid about health. And protecting our family. When we were kids, we didn't have computers. In fact, I remember where our very first computer was a Commodore Vic 20 and it predated the Commodore 64 and the 64 was where you could put a floppy disk, which was 64 bits into a drive. Which had data on it, and it read those 64 bits of data. Tiny, tiny, tiny amount of data by today's standards. By then, it was like, wow!

[00:13:49]
Well, the Commodore VIC 20, you had to type in your own code. My mom typed in the code to do whatever it was, and she showed me how to type code, and so on. It was very basic, very rudimentary. Today, it's a whole nother world. Which means that we must be even more vigilant with protecting our family from cyber intruders, from predators, and they're always lurking. From protect their eyes. Protect their hearts, protect their innocence from so much of what's available today. Which was not even remotely possible 20, 30, 40 years ago. So we must do that. Cyber security is so incredibly important. And just had a talk about this in our leadership development group to ensure cyber security. If you have not, I encourage you to take time and learn about cyber security. And to teach, not only that, teach children about the risks. Of sharing personal information online, you know, there's all kinds of just terrible things that are going on with what kids are saying to each other. And then, of course, there's sexting and all kinds of ways that kids are being hurt and we want to educate them.

[00:14:51]
We want to share with them. I know it's embarrassing that these are tough conversations, but we've got to help them to understand and see the consequences of some of the actions that may seem innocuous and innocent right now. We want to, we need to protect them. And so sometimes it means we have to be a Sentinel. We have to monitor. Internet usage. We have to consider parental controls, especially for the younger children. I had parental controls on my kids stuff for many, many years, and now he's almost an adult and we've taught him to look out for those kinds of things and to be wise. And that doesn't mean he won't fall. He won't make mistakes, but we're doing the best we can. You do the best you can to protect. those eyes. In fact, when we're talking about our eyes, our eyes are the windows to the soul. And you think, well, how about you protect your marriage, protect your integrity, your marriage. It's so sad that we have so much brokenness in families, so many broken homes, so much of the protected bond that's been broken.

[00:15:44]
When I grew up, I grew up, my parents divorced while I was young. My wife's parents divorced while she was young. And we made a promise, a covenant, a commitment to stay. To each other through our marriage to stay focused to keep God first in our marriage and let everything else be governed and dictated by that to set our own self interest aside so that we could be in unity so that we could leave and cleave become one flesh and it's not been easy sometimes it's difficult in fact my wife says she hasn't said this a long time you're lighting your own candle which means when we got married we had a unity candle we had two candles and lit one and that's a reminder that sometimes I had to check myself and perhaps I was saying or doing something that was compromising the integrity of that relationship. Not in a horrendous way, but just perhaps there was something that maybe I was doing that was selfish. And so I've been helped through that journey and I'm thankful for that. Honor your spouse. I love to, I want to honor my wife with my everything. I want to protect the integrity of this union, this bond. One of the ways I honor her is to honor her with my eyes. What does that mean? That means that I should look upon no other woman. Does that mean that you close your eyes when you see another woman? No, no, that's not what I mean. You know what I mean? It's how I look. I always say it's the second look that gets you, right?

[00:17:05]
Of course you can see a woman passing and, or a man passing that perhaps is attractive, but it's the second look. You must have the discipline to honor and focus on your number one, your Spouse, you ride or die. Isn't that what we say? Honor them with your eyes. Honor them with your lips. I heard this many years ago, a pastor say that he doesn't whisper sweet nothings to anyone but his wife. What are sweet nothings? Sweetheart, love, dear, honey. I thought, wow, I respect that. And I began to utilize that. So I reserve those sweet nothings for the love of my life for my wife. Now, have I said that to a niece, sweetheart, I've called her sweetheart, of course, however, another woman, never not going to happen. And that's important to protect. The integrity of that relationship. Have I always been faithful in that way and knocked it out of the park? I've not always been that way. I strive that and you can too. And then of course the elephant in the room, protecting our family's finances. This is something that breaks families up.

[00:18:09]
This is something that is a huge cause of stress and strain in families. We don't protect the financial security. Sometimes we can't, sometimes it's difficult. I've been there. If you listen to the show. And I've been on the ropes, almost bankrupt, not a dime left. I started out with nothing. I mean, I come from a poor family. We didn't have a millionaire trust fund. It was just scraps trying to figure out how to live another day. I had a poverty mindset. I was in a scarcity belief system. And slowly and slowly and slowly, I began to gain financial security. I started with budgeting, you know, creating a financial budget. Let's protect the year to manage our expenses and to save for the future. In so doing, we can teach our children the value of money, how to manage it responsibly, teaching them how to properly invest, how to Multiply and increase what they're entrusted with. By the way, we, again, we must model this ourselves and through the protecting our finances with financial security, sometimes it means we don't eat out, but once a week, sometimes it means when we do eat out, we get the coupons.

[00:19:21]
I used to get coupons all the time. We used to go to steak and shake and we always cut the coupons for the 4. Meal and find out what the best price is. We used to do Groupon all the time and try to find the best possible price for our expenditures when we needed to massively protect our finances, because we had very little, and as time went on, we had more and at that point. I thought maybe, you know what, I'm not going to do the Groupon because. I now have more of an abundance and I want to contribute more to that establishment so that they have more. But when I'm in a tough situation financially, well, then I need to make sure that I can support my family first. And so we must live diligently in that way so that we can protect our family's finances. That means I'm not going to go to the casino and squander my family's money. That means I'm going to find The most advantageous we choose price line all the time and find the lowest price on travel. And even to this day, I mean, we're comfortable as a family. I'm still making sure that I am being a wise steward of what I'm entrusted with financially.

[00:20:31]
That means I look for great deals on a car or on a vacation or on clothing, always buying clothes. I don't buy clothes that are. Regular price. I go to the outlets, find clothes that are half off, if not less. It started out as 40, 50. I love that 10 shirt that started out as 60 or 70. It's the same shirt. It looks the same, but it's a whole lot lower in cost. Let us create financial security and protect that financial blessing. And teach our children to do the same with it. The same thing with our insurances, our health insurance, our life insurance, our property insurance. All of this. Use it from a security perspective to protect our families. And let's not forget about emotional well being of our families. Let us protect our families. The emotions. Now, how do we do that, Nate? Well, one of the most important ways to protect the emotional well being of our families is simply spending time together as a family Strengthening our bond together. What do we call it? We call it quality time. Let's spend time celebrating our achievements creating positive memories Dinner table.

[00:21:37]
Let's break bread together, share our triumphs, share our trials. I love the dinner table to just talk and catch up and laugh, ask questions. I've used to ask all kinds of questions and to this day I still ask. Off the wall questions at dinner just to have a conversation around it. Hey, if there was one place you could go right now and eat anywhere on the planet, get teleported to, where would that be? Just asking questions, right? Getting time together to create memories, strengthen our bonds, learn because it protects the integrity of our emotional wellbeing by doing that. And when it comes to our support system, let's protect the integrity of our family by building a support system around us. A network of friends, relatives, community, individuals, and groups for support. Before COVID, we had this beautiful Bible study with lots and lots of people in it, and they were a wonderful network of support who supported our family, and we supported theirs. Now, of course, after COVID, things got fragmented, but we still keep in touch, and we still utilize it. Do you have a network of support to help you protect the integrity of these bonds, these emotional relationships in your life?

[00:22:48]
How about your family relationship when it comes to education? Are we protecting the minds of our family members? Are we supporting education? Are we staying involved in their education by communicating with if they're young, their teachers, attending school events? Are we helping them? To have an open mindedness when it comes to ideas so that they can learn and grow. Those are all aspects of protecting the growth of the mind. Encouraging them to learn. Be a lifelong learner. We must do that to continue to progress as a family, and maybe your kids are older, maybe they've moved out, and they're starting their own families, and you can protect the legacy of your family by reinvesting in them, by reminding them of that, how you are there to help them along their journey, and to support them, to encourage them, to be an open door when they're struggling with life's challenges that you've struggled when you were in that phase of life.

[00:23:56]
Extend the open arm, extend the open hand, and be a part of their lives. You know, my parents, when they got divorced young, I didn't have the protection of my father, and I had to fend for myself. Uh, because I really got to see him. Then I had a stepdad who came in and I really wanted that protection. And it was just a few years that went by, short years, and my mom and my stepdad were having trouble. And we lost that protection. And then I became a teenager and I had to And for myself, and it was so difficult on my own like that. And I wanted so dearly to simply feel the covering and the protection. If that's the situation that you have been in, we can then learn from it and be that protection to the next generation. Let us model that. Let us hold dearly to that because it is so helpful and impactful. But our businesses, well, our businesses. Must be protected as well. You've heard me talk so many times about protecting our, the integrity of our business with our mission, our vision, our values, our values, our principles, our ideals are the boundary lines that give our business a permitted and prohibited understanding what we can and what we cannot do, what is allowed, what is not allowed.

[00:25:15]
If you have not identified your principles, your core values, anywhere from three to seven statements that identify what the nonnegotiables are, the central tenants of your business, you're not able to protect it because no one knows what they are for us. It was so critical and to continue to share those every time that something happens in our organization, we want to marry it or illustrate it in parallel to a core. Value, for example, just recently, one of my managers was circulating a new policy. And so that policy related to our third core value. So when I was sharing with what to do next in terms of distributing it to the team, I said, this is our third core value. This is why this is important. And this is why it's illustrated for that, because that protects the integrity of the understanding. In our organization, it creates consistency and consistency is protection. By the way, it also protects everyone inside of the organization from those who desire to become part of the organization who do not share those values. When we're hiring, those core values are non-negotiable. If you do not agree with any one of those values, then this environment is not for you.

[00:26:29]
And so it protects those within it so that they are clear and understand that me as a leader, I will not dishonor them. I will not break my commitment to them to uphold those values so that they can work in an environment that's safe. Of course, there's all kinds of ways that we want to protect. We want to secure the premises. We want to have safety protocols. As I had said with the family, we want to have cybersecurity. Data protection is essential, not only for our employees, but also for all our stakeholders. You know, another way that we protect our business is to properly train and equip our people. That is so incredibly important to do that. How do we do that? Well, you know what? Sometimes we just have to spend more money investing in ways to improve people's skills and efficiencies. Asking, hey, where's the direction that you want to go within this organization? Have one on one meetings with our people and truly begin to understand what drives and motivates them, how they feel most secure moving forward within this entity. Oftentimes, when people are getting ready to leave, it's because of an insecurity, because they are no longer protected. What is it? Maybe they feel as though that they're not cared for. Maybe that their compensation is not adequate. Perhaps it is some kind of friction with a subordinate, a manager, a coworker.

[00:27:59]
You see, all of these are areas that are necessary for people to feel safe in an environment. To where they can do their best possible work. If they do not feel safe, they will have to expend energy to either become safe, to feel safe enough to do their best work, or to leave. So we don't want our people to have to expend additional energy to simply protect themselves. We want to do that. And we must implement these protective measures. We want to build a robust foundation for our business that not only guards against immediate threats, But also strengthens our long-term viability. Remember, one of our goals as leaders in a business is to create a resilient enterprise. Something that's capable of adapting to change, overcoming challenges. And so we need to foster a workplace culture that is positive, that encourages employee connection and commitment. And in so doing We will find that it will improve our companies, it will improve our productivity, it will improve our brand, our online presence, it will improve our engagement with our customers, it will improve all of our abilities to meet the mission, to satisfy our organizational goals.

[00:29:20]
Together, how do we do this? Well, it just starts with first step is identify where it is that perhaps we have weak links in the protection in these various areas and then begin to work on a plan to Start to add a layer of protection and a commitment that my number one Responsibility as a leader is to make sure that you are protected that the work you do is protected that your needs are That are within the realm of our mission, our vision, our values are met, are understood. Sometimes people just need to know that they are seen, that they are heard, that they're important as a first step to protecting them in your business, in your family, in our society as a whole. Well my friend, we did it again. I'm so glad you joined me on this episode of A Call to Leadership. If you've been with me on the show, listening in, you'll know this, but if you're new, you may not know that I created a free course for you that you don't need to provide an email address. You don't need to go anywhere, but to stay right here in the podcast, I created the very first six episodes of the podcast because I wanted you to have the kind of value that you need to take advantage of to thrive as a leader. So if you haven't done that yet, listen to episodes one through six. And I'll see you on the next episode. I'm Dr. Nate Salah, and this is A Call to Leadership.