Which Value System Is Running You?

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The most corrosive path in your leadership development doesn't announce itself with a caution sign or a warning alarm.
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It feels like good business.
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It feels like the obvious next step.
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Then the reasonable one after that, then the one any sensible person in your position would make.
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Every individual step holds up.
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Every step is defensible.
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And somewhere, across the sequence of all those conventional, defensible steps, you end up a leader you wouldn't have chosen to become, without ever once making a decision that, in the moment, looked like it was taking you off your intended path.
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Today, in one of the most powerful and deeply insightful of all of Ignatius' meditations, we're going to talk about how that happens.
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Not as a character flaw, but as a pattern, a strategy almost, that Ignatius of Loyola articulated with unsettling precision five hundred years ago, and that I've watched play out in so many leadership careers, including at times my own.
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I'm Mike McDonnell.
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This is CEO Exercises.
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Let's begin.
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So let me situate today's episode because we're building these CEO exercises episode by episode.
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For the first seven episodes, we work the territory of what Ignatius called the first week of the spiritual exercises around self-awareness and inner freedom, the examen, the daily review of your interior movements, the foundation, your cognitive operating system, and the disordered attachments that quietly tilt your judgment.
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The field notes, the annual walk-back through your whole professional history, looking for the patterns where your best self and your worst self both keep showing up.
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Then in episode eight, we crossed into the second week, where the spiritual exercises turn outward and start to build an intimate relationship with God.
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In our secular leadership version, we translate this as beginning to build certain unique leadership capabilities.
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In episode eight, we adapted Ignatius' contemplation on the kingdom of Christ.
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We put three leaders side by side and asked who we'd actually follow and why.
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One of those three was Jesus of Nazareth, considered purely as a leader, with the theological question set deliberately aside, so we could focus on the leadership lessons alone.
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In episode nine, we went to the next meditation, the incarnation, and pulled a lesson about empathy from it.
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That empathy isn't primarily an emotion, but it's the fruit of a particular kind of attention.
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It's what grows in you when you look at people the way Ignatius makes you look at them in the meditation.
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Today we stay in the second week and go to what is, in my humble opinion, one of the most psychologically sophisticated meditations in the entire spiritual exercises.
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It's one of my favorites, and it's had a great influence on me.
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Ignatius called it the meditation on two standards.
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It's about two competing value systems, two fundamentally different ways of living and leading, and about learning to recognize which one is actually running you in any given moment.
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Before we begin, let me remind you of the basic methodology of this first series of CEO exercises.
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I practice Ignatian spirituality as a person of faith.
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That's where I live, that's the source of all my motivation and inspiration.
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But in this first series, I extract leadership exercises in a mostly secular form from Ignatius' spiritual exercises.
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The focus is on leadership for everyone, regardless of where you stand on the God question.
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You just have to be willing to use your imagination and to look honestly at what you find.
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That's the whole price of admission.
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And unlike most leadership development programs, there's no badge and no buffet.
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In season two, I'll present a whole series on applying the spiritual exercises to your leadership, as Ignatius wrote them from a deep faith perspective.
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So season one is about extracting the secular leadership lessons.
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Season two will be about applying the exercises as Ignatius wrote them.
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So
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Let's step into the meditation on the two standards.
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Picture the staging because Ignatius, as always, is very cinematic about it.
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I'll take you through it from Ignatius' sixteenth century understanding because it's so vivid.
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To the twenty first century person listening today, good and evil are often understood less as external forces or personifications, and more in terms of our inner life and the choices we make as human beings.
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But the meditation works whatever your view.
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Ignatius asks you to examine the entire world, and over that world two great leaders, each raising a standard.
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Now a standard is an old military word, a banner, a flag, the rallying point an army gathered around and followed into battle.
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To stand under a standard was to declare whose side you were on, whose mission you joined, whose way of doing things you've adopted as your own.
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On one side, Ignatius places the figure of the enemy.
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He uses the old language, Lucifer, seated on a throne of fire and smoke, a figure of horror.
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From that throne, the enemy sends agents across the whole world, and every city and household, missing no one.
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They have a strategy, a deliberate, patient, intelligent strategy for how to ensnare a human life.
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On the other side, in a lowly place, a plain, an open field, stands the other leader.
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Christ, in Ignatius' framing, not on a throne and not elevated.
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Attractive, Ignatius says, and gracious, but unmistakably humble.
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And this leader also sends people out across the whole world, also with a strategy, a completely opposite one.
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So we have two banners, we have two missions, two strategies for what a human life is for and how it is lived, two strategies for what leadership is about and how it's carried out.
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And every person on earth, Ignatius says, is gathered under one or the other, often without ever having consciously chosen which.
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So that's the picture.
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Now here's what makes it more than just a vivid image.
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The part that has gripped me for forty years, because it's one of the most succinct pieces of wisdom I've ever encountered.
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Ignatius lays out step by step exactly how each strategy works.
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The enemy's strategy has three steps, and they happen in roughly that order.
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The first step is coveting riches, the desire, the excessive desire for more and more wealth, resources, accumulation.
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And notice Ignatius does not say riches are evil.
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It's the inordinate attachment, the excessive desire for riches that is the problem.
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Riches are the entry point precisely because they look so good, so reasonable, so necessary.
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You need resources to do anything, to build, to grow, to compete, to provide.
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As an example, lots of people, including me sometimes, might think we could do more good in the world if we just had more wealth, once our lifestyle and family needs were taken care of.
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Almost as if we could be better people somehow if we had more.
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So the first step doesn't feel really like a temptation at all.
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It can feel honorable, prudent, like ambition in the healthiest sense.
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It can feel like leadership, like what leaders are supposed to strive for.
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The second step is vain honors.
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As the wealth grows, it brings status, recognition, deference, even awe.
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The corner office, the board seats, the speaking invitations, the magazine profile, the place at the head of the table.
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And again, none of this is evil or wrong in itself.
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These things come naturally to people who succeed.
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They feel earned, and they're often earned.
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It's the need for the recognition and the dopamine hit of the look at me reflex that are the problem.
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And then the third step, the one the whole strategy was always driving toward, excessive pride or hubris.
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The slow, almost invisible transformation of a person into someone whose sense of self has become more and more absolute, someone who no longer thinks they need anyone or anything outside themselves, someone for whom the success and the status have stopped being instruments and have quietly become the center, the fixed point in the language of episode five, around which everything else now rotates.
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So we have riches, then honors, then excessive pride.
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And Ignatius' chilling claim is that from these three, every other destructive vice follows.
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Once excessive pride has the wheel, the rest of the wreckage, self-centeredness, lower confidence, greed, the devaluing of others, the ethical drift, the inability to see or hear reality and hard truths, follows almost automatically.
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So notice the genius of the sequence.
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The enemy doesn't open with pride.
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No one would sign up for that.
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You can't recruit a thoughtful, decent, hardworking person by saying, Come, become arrogant and self-enclosed and blind to your own failures, and over time, maybe even alienate everyone who loves you.
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That's a terrible pitch.
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It wouldn't survive a focus group.
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So the strategy starts somewhere that looks completely innocent, even admirable, and walks you there one reasonable step at a time.
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This is exactly what I meant at the top.
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The toxic, destructive path looks like good business at any particular step.
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That's not a flaw in the strategy, that's the strategy.
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Now let's turn to the other standard, the life-giving standard.
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Three steps, also in order, each the precise inverse of the enemies.
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The first step is what Ignatius calls spiritual poverty.
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We'll spend some time on this because it's the most misunderstood part.
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Almost as misunderstood as that concept of indifference back in episode five.
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The second step is a willingness, and even in some cases, a desire, to be lowered, to be criticized, reproached, to forego the honors, to be misunderstood, to take the path that potentially costs you status rather than buying it.
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And the third step, the destination, is humility.
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So we have spiritual poverty, then a willingness to be lowered, then humility.
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And from these three, every other life-giving virtue follows.
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Just as pride is the root from which destruction grows, humility is the root from which clarity, inner freedom, empathy, courage, generosity, and authentic service grow.
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Two strategies, two banners.
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And here's the line I keep returning to.
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Whichever standard you're operating under, you're not just living it, you're extending it.
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You're recruiting for it.
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You're an influencer for it, to the people you lead, through the culture you build, the people you elevate, the behaviors you reward.
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All of it raises one banner or the other over everyone who works for you.
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So why does this matter?
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I can feel some of you doing the results-oriented thing leaders do, where you nod politely and quietly file this under interesting, but soft.
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So let me be direct about why the life giving standard isn't just the nicer way to lead.
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It's the higher performing way to lead.
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Let me give you the business case in three quick steps.
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First, better perception.
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A leader running under riches honors pride as a contaminated information supply.
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The scale is pre-tilted, as we said in episode five.
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They see what protects their standing, not what's true.
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The leader operating from spiritual poverty and humility can see the situation more clearly, because their identity isn't riding on the outcome.
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And in complex, dynamic, fast-changing contexts, clear perception is a big part of the game.
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Distorted perception is how you lose 18 months, like our friend John in episode 5.
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My second point is you get better information flow.
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People often don't tell the whole truth to a proud leader.
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They tend to tell that leader what keeps them safe.
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So the proud leader, paradoxically, can often end up the least informed person in the building, surrounded by a beautifully curated version of reality.
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The humble leader gets the bad news early, while it's still cheap to fix.
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That's a direct, measurable competitive advantage.
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Third, is better followership.
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And this is the big one. People will comply with the leader running the enemy standard.
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They will not go through the walls for one.
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The discretionary effort, the late night no one asked for, the idea someone could have kept to themselves, the customer saved by someone who genuinely cared, that flows toward leaders standing under the life-giving banner.
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As I've said before, the very qualities the tradition says bring you closer to God are the same qualities that get the hardest things done.
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Humility is the source of clarity, the information, and the loyalty that produce extraordinary results.
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So when I talk about the life-giving standard, understand I'm not asking you to trade performance for virtue.
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I'm telling you that the virtue is where the durable performance comes from.
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Now I want to dwell on a key point of the whole meditation.
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Ignatius' deepest insight is that the destructive value system does not work by being obviously destructive.
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It works plausibly, credibly, reasonably, and slowly.
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It always operates behind a respectable front.
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If the wrong path looked wrong, no competent person would take it.
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The reason intelligent, accomplished, well-intentioned leaders get captured is that at every decision point it presents itself as the smart, conventional, grown-up choice.
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So think about how this plays out.
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You take a role because you want to build something.
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Good motive.
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To build it, you focus on accumulation.
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Revenue, share, capital, headcount.
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Reasonable.
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The accumulation produces success.
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Success produces status, and now you're somebody.
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Also earned.
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And then, so gradually you genuinely cannot point to the day it happened, the status stops being a byproduct of the work and starts becoming the thing you protect.
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The decisions begin, subtly, to optimize for the preservation of your standing.
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You manage the message.
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You filter the feedback.
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You need to be right.
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You surround yourself with people who don't threaten the picture.
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Nobody chose that.
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There was never a meeting where you decided I will now let excessive pride run my leadership.
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Nobody puts that on the calendar.
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It assembled itself out of a hundred reasonable choices.
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That's the plausible front Ignatius is warning about.
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The most dangerous attachments, as I said in episode five, are never the crude ones.
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They're the ones that look like virtues.
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The attachment to being right that presents as rigor, the attachment to reputation that presents as high standards.
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Now let me deal with the phrase I know is making some of you uncomfortable.
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This phrase spiritual poverty.
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Because if you heard the word poverty and conclude this meditation wants you to give away your money, take a vow, and move into a hut, you've misread it as badly as people misread indifference to mean not caring.
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And I want to be clear, I'm not telling you to sell the vacation home or the third car.
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Here's the actual definition of spiritual poverty, and it's precise.
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Spiritual poverty is the capacity to have possessions without being possessed by them.
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It's holding your wealth, your status, your reputation, your title as gifts and as instruments, useful, even good, rather than as the thing that makes you who you are.
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Spiritual poverty doesn't require actual poverty.
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It does require genuine openness to it.
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It means you could lose things and still know who you are.
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The money, the position, the prestige, you hold them with an open hand, not a clenched one.
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You'll recognize this because it's the principle and foundation in different clothing.
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Spiritual poverty is what disordered attachment looks like when it's been healed.
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It's the consumer products president from Episode V who cut her own flagship product line because it was the right business decision and because her identity wasn't fused with it.
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She said, My self-worth is not attached to that product line.
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I know what I'm about.
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That is spiritual poverty in executive action.
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She had the product line, the product line didn't have her.
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And notice what makes it possible.
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A leader who isn't possessed by the riches and honors is free, in the most practical, high performance sense, free to make the call that costs them status, free to give credit to others, free to fund the right but unpopular thing, free to be wrong in public, free to descend, in the language of the last episode, into the actual conditions of their people.
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The clenched hand can't do any of that, the open hand can.
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Now here's where this really gets demanding, and I won't soften it because that would betray the point.
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The middle step of the life giving strategy between spiritual poverty and humility is the willingness to be lowered.
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Ignatius, in his original language, goes further.
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He says we might actually desire to be thought little of, to share in the lowliness of Christ rather than the honors of the world.
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Now for a modern business audience, that sounds not just strange, but almost pathological.
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Why would a leader want to be diminished?
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It's not exactly a LinkedIn brag.
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Open to new opportunities, ideally ones that lower my status.
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Let me translate it because there's something real underneath the medieval phrasing.
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What this points to is the willingness, even at times the active choice to do the thing that costs you status when that thing is right, to take the unglamorous assignment, to stay in the role that won't impress anyone at the reunion, but it's where you can do the most good.
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To let someone else take the credit and the stage, to act counter to tradition, convention, comfort, and the way things are always done, specifically in ways that cost you something.
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They might cost you time or attention or recognition or ego.
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This runs directly against our instincts and against the wisdom of the world.
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Every instinct a successful person has developed says accumulate the honors, protect the standing, never choose the lower place when the higher one is available.
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The two standards says the opposite.
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The willingness to choose the lower place, to not need the honor, is exactly what keeps pride from taking the wheel.
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The honors aren't the problem, needing them is.
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And the antidote to needing them is being genuinely willing to do without.
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The leaders I've admired all had a kind of immunity to their own status.
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They could walk onto the factory floor and be the least important person in the room and love it.
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They could be corrected by a junior analyst and thank them for it.
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That immunity is not weakness.
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It's one of the rarest, most powerful assets a leader can possess.
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And to be clear, it isn't a lack of ambition.
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There's a phrase I love.
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A passion for results bordering on the extreme, held together with humility and inner freedom.
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The two standards isn't asking you to want less.
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Now I want to add something I feel really strongly about, because that's where this meditation becomes a practical instrument for changing an organization. These counter-conventional acts don't have to be grand.
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In fact, the small ones are often the most powerful, and here's why.
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An organization is constantly quietly reading its leader.
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People are far more attentive to what you do than to what you say.
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And they're most attentive of all when you do something that costs you and surprises them.
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A leader who does the conventional, self protective, status preserving thing teaches nobody anything.
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Because that's exactly what everyone expected.
00:22:02.480 --> 00:22:30.960
But a leader who does the counterintuitive thing, who takes the blame that could have been deflected, who gives the credit away publicly, who has Christmas dinner with the crew working at the plant, who sits at the back of the room, who refuses a bonus when their people didn't get one, who cancels the perk that applied only to executives, who took fewer stock options so the team could have more, who admits in a town hall that they got it wrong, and here's what they're going to do about it.
00:22:30.960 --> 00:22:32.559
These things land.
00:22:32.559 --> 00:22:36.640
They get noticed at a completely different level of awareness.
00:22:36.640 --> 00:22:39.440
I can't overstate this.
00:22:39.440 --> 00:22:51.119
A single small act of genuine humility, done where people can see it, sends a cultural signal louder than any value statement you'll ever frame and hang in the lobby.
00:22:51.119 --> 00:22:55.759
Nobody's heart was ever changed by a laminated card in the elevator.
00:22:55.759 --> 00:23:02.640
But people remember for years the day the CEO took the hard question and said, You're right, and I was wrong.
00:23:02.640 --> 00:23:08.079
Those small, costly, counterconventional acts are how culture actually moves.
00:23:08.079 --> 00:23:11.920
They raise the level of tension in the whole building.
00:23:11.920 --> 00:23:18.240
They tell people what's really rewarded here, what's really safe here, what's really valued here.
00:23:18.240 --> 00:23:24.400
And because they cost you something visible, people believe them in a way they never believe the poster.
00:23:24.400 --> 00:23:32.400
So if you're trying to transform a culture, and most of us are, always, don't start with the campaign.
00:23:32.400 --> 00:23:38.240
Start with small, surprising, costly acts under the right banner.
00:23:38.240 --> 00:23:42.880
One, then another, and then another.
00:23:43.200 --> 00:23:50.400
People are watching far more closely than you think, and they spread the news of your actions faster and wider than you think.
00:23:53.119 --> 00:23:58.240
I now want to talk about where this meditation is most useful and least preachy.
00:23:58.880 --> 00:24:01.920
This is not a one-time choice between two banners.
00:24:01.920 --> 00:24:02.880
I wish it were.
00:24:02.880 --> 00:24:08.559
It'd be so much easier if you could just decide once, I stand under the good standard.
00:24:08.559 --> 00:24:11.680
And then you can collect your certificate and be done.
00:24:11.680 --> 00:24:14.000
But that's not how this works.
00:24:14.000 --> 00:24:21.039
Both value systems are alive inside of you all the time, creating conflict and constraint.
00:24:21.039 --> 00:24:29.839
Every leader I've known, including me, especially me, carries an ongoing internal conflict between these two ways of leading.
00:24:29.839 --> 00:24:31.759
All day every day.
00:24:31.759 --> 00:24:38.319
The pull toward accumulation and status and self-protection doesn't get defeated in some climactic moment.
00:24:38.319 --> 00:24:45.440
It shows up again and again every single day in small decisions, wearing the reasonable face it always wears.
00:24:45.440 --> 00:24:51.440
So the question the two standards poses isn't which side are you on once and for all?
00:24:51.440 --> 00:24:54.400
It's more granular and more demanding.
00:24:54.400 --> 00:24:59.920
In this decision right now, which value system is running me?
00:24:59.920 --> 00:25:14.720
And how much am I willing to let the greater good value system penetrate my thinking, my words, my decisions, and my actions, while still in the end preserving my business goals and acting with solid business acumen?
00:25:14.720 --> 00:25:17.440
Because I cannot stress this enough.
00:25:17.440 --> 00:25:19.359
This is an and, not an or.
00:25:19.359 --> 00:25:30.720
Humility and a passion for results, inner freedom and rigorous execution, spiritual poverty and serious financial discipline.
00:25:30.720 --> 00:25:37.200
The two standards isn't asking you to choose the greater good instead of running a great business.
00:25:37.440 --> 00:25:41.440
It's asking you to run a great business from under the right banner.
00:25:44.319 --> 00:25:48.319
Let me give you one more frame because it gives you a diagnostic you can use.
00:25:48.880 --> 00:25:58.640
Ignatius draws the line not just as good versus bad, but as life-giving versus destructive, specifically destructive to your own nature and your freedom.
00:25:58.640 --> 00:26:04.319
The enemy's standard behind its plausible front ultimately diminishes you.
00:26:04.319 --> 00:26:06.000
It narrows you.
00:26:06.000 --> 00:26:11.759
It makes you less free, more anxious, more dependent on external validation.
00:26:11.759 --> 00:26:29.920
The leader fully captured by riches, honors, and pride is paradoxically the least free person in the building, trapped in a relentless, exhausting project of accumulation and image management that can never be completed and that never fulfills.
00:26:29.920 --> 00:26:39.759
The other standard, the life giving standard, expands you, makes you more free, makes you more whole, more yourself.
00:26:39.759 --> 00:26:41.519
That's the impact.
00:26:41.519 --> 00:26:50.640
When you act from spiritual poverty and humility, you tend to feel, over time, not always in the moment, more alive, clearer, more at peace.
00:26:50.640 --> 00:26:58.640
When you act from the destructive system, you tend to feel, underneath the rush of the wind, more constricted, more hollow.
00:26:58.640 --> 00:27:00.720
That hollowness is information.
00:27:00.720 --> 00:27:06.079
It's the same gap between happiness and fulfillment I described at my burrito dinner in episode one.
00:27:06.079 --> 00:27:12.079
And it's exactly the kind of consolation and desolation the examine trains you to read.
00:27:14.079 --> 00:27:18.799
Now I'm going to get a little personal because abstract talk about pride is pretty cheap.
00:27:18.799 --> 00:27:24.240
There were some times as a leader when I had, by every external measure, arrived.
00:27:24.240 --> 00:27:26.160
The results were strong.
00:27:26.160 --> 00:27:28.160
The recognition was flowing.
00:27:28.160 --> 00:27:32.480
I was getting asked to speak, to join boards, to give the interviews.
00:27:32.480 --> 00:27:38.480
And I'll tell you honestly, for periods of time, I didn't notice the banner I had drifted under.
00:27:38.480 --> 00:27:41.279
From the inside it just felt like success.
00:27:41.279 --> 00:27:45.359
It felt like the natural reward for hard work and a job well done.
00:27:45.359 --> 00:27:48.160
It felt, frankly, like leadership.
00:27:48.160 --> 00:27:52.480
What I couldn't see was that a quiet substitution was taking place.
00:27:52.480 --> 00:27:57.599
The work had started serving my standing, rather than my standing serving the work.
00:27:57.599 --> 00:28:06.960
The insight, and I only recognized it later, doing the examen, was how I'd started responding to people who challenged me.
00:28:06.960 --> 00:28:12.960
A little less curious, a little quicker to explain why the challenger didn't understand.
00:28:12.960 --> 00:28:16.880
A little more invested in being the smartest person in the room.
00:28:16.880 --> 00:28:21.440
None of it was dramatic, none of it would have shown up on a three hundred sixty.
00:28:21.440 --> 00:28:32.319
But the scale had pre-tilted, and I was making assessments of people plus my need to be impressive, rather than clean assessments of the people themselves.
00:28:32.319 --> 00:28:38.720
What pulled me back wasn't a crisis, it was the slow, unglamorous work of looking.
00:28:38.720 --> 00:28:47.440
And what I found, when I looked honestly, was that the moments I was actually proud of, the ones that went all the way down, were never the honors.
00:28:47.440 --> 00:28:50.799
They were the times I'd taken the lower place.
00:28:50.799 --> 00:28:54.000
The time I gave away credit I could easily have kept.
00:28:54.000 --> 00:29:00.319
The time I funded a long term investment that made my numbers look worse that year and would never get my name on anything.
00:29:00.319 --> 00:29:02.319
Those were the consolations.
00:29:02.319 --> 00:29:04.960
Those were the moments under the right banner.
00:29:04.960 --> 00:29:09.359
And at times I'd been spending enormous energy chasing the other ones.
00:29:09.359 --> 00:29:12.079
That's the two standards, lived.
00:29:12.079 --> 00:29:22.720
Not a dramatic conversion, a slow recognition of which banner I'd drifted under, and a daily, never finished choice to walk back toward the other one.
00:29:25.599 --> 00:29:28.799
So now Now let's do the exercise, the practice.
00:29:29.119 --> 00:29:33.680
This is an adaptation of the meditation on the two standards for leaders.
00:29:33.680 --> 00:29:36.640
Find a quiet place where you won't be interrupted.
00:29:36.640 --> 00:29:38.720
Twenty five or thirty minutes.
00:29:38.720 --> 00:29:43.839
Sit comfortably, take a few slow breaths, and let the noise of the day settle.
00:29:43.839 --> 00:29:45.839
Clarify your objective.
00:29:45.839 --> 00:29:52.000
You want knowledge of how these two value systems actually operate in your life and in your leadership.
00:29:52.000 --> 00:29:56.880
So clearly that you can recognize in real time which banner you're standing under.
00:29:58.079 --> 00:30:01.680
First, raise the two standards in your imagination.
00:30:01.680 --> 00:30:10.160
On the one side, the value system built on accumulation, status, and self, riches, then honors, then pride.
00:30:10.160 --> 00:30:12.640
Don't picture a cartoon villain.
00:30:12.640 --> 00:30:20.799
Picture it as it actually presents itself, reasonable, attractive, the smart money move, the way successful people naturally operate.
00:30:20.799 --> 00:30:23.200
Feel its genuine pull.
00:30:23.200 --> 00:30:24.880
It's strong in you.
00:30:24.880 --> 00:30:26.640
Be honest about that.
00:30:26.640 --> 00:30:35.359
On the other side, the life-giving value system is built on spiritual poverty, the willingness to be lowered, and humility.
00:30:35.359 --> 00:30:38.720
The leader who holds everything with an open hand.
00:30:38.720 --> 00:30:40.960
Feel that pull too.
00:30:40.960 --> 00:30:44.799
And notice honestly, that it pulls less hard.
00:30:45.279 --> 00:30:49.039
Because so much of your past leadership development resists it.
00:30:51.359 --> 00:30:52.400
Second step.
00:30:52.400 --> 00:30:54.079
Examine the riches.
00:30:54.720 --> 00:31:00.240
Where specifically has accumulation stopped being an instrument and started becoming the point?
00:31:00.240 --> 00:31:04.480
Which numbers, which assets have a grip on your identity?
00:31:06.079 --> 00:31:09.119
Where are you holding with a clenched hand?
00:31:09.119 --> 00:31:11.440
What you should be holding with an open one.
00:31:11.440 --> 00:31:14.480
Don't judge it, just see it.
00:31:16.880 --> 00:31:19.519
Third step, examine the honors.
00:31:19.519 --> 00:31:21.680
This is the sharper one.
00:31:22.480 --> 00:31:24.880
Which honors am I most afraid to lose?
00:31:24.880 --> 00:31:25.920
The title?
00:31:25.920 --> 00:31:27.119
The reputation?
00:31:27.119 --> 00:31:29.279
The place at the head of the table?
00:31:29.279 --> 00:31:35.920
Which one, if taken away tomorrow, would feel like losing a piece of myself, rather than losing a possession?
00:31:35.920 --> 00:31:41.039
That fear is the most accurate indicator of where pride has the deepest root.
00:31:41.359 --> 00:31:44.640
Stay for a while, with the one that stings the most.
00:31:48.640 --> 00:31:51.519
Fourth step, examine the pride.
00:31:52.160 --> 00:31:54.160
Where has it already taken the wheel?
00:31:54.160 --> 00:31:55.279
Even a little.
00:31:55.279 --> 00:31:58.160
Where have you become harder to challenge?
00:31:58.160 --> 00:32:00.319
Quicker to manage the message.
00:32:00.319 --> 00:32:03.680
More invested in being right than in being correct.
00:32:04.160 --> 00:32:05.359
Name one place.
00:32:08.400 --> 00:32:18.079
The fifth step, and the heart of it, make the inverse move. For each thing you named, ask, what would the willingness to be lowered look like here?
00:32:18.079 --> 00:32:26.319
Where could I act counter to convention, counter to comfort, in a way that costs me something real and serves the greater good?
00:32:26.319 --> 00:32:29.759
Where could I take the lower place this week?
00:32:29.759 --> 00:32:32.079
Give away credit I could keep.
00:32:32.079 --> 00:32:34.400
Fund the unglamorous thing.
00:32:34.400 --> 00:32:38.720
Act against the prevailing opinion of my board or my leadership team.
00:32:38.720 --> 00:32:41.920
Be misunderstood for the sake of the right call.
00:32:41.920 --> 00:32:44.880
Name one concrete descent.
00:32:44.880 --> 00:32:50.240
One real act of spiritual poverty scale to something you could do this week.
00:32:50.240 --> 00:32:55.920
And remember, don't advertise it, but allow it to be visible to others.
00:32:56.480 --> 00:32:59.359
That's how the small act becomes a cultural signal.
00:33:03.759 --> 00:33:05.759
Finally, offer your response.
00:33:06.480 --> 00:33:08.559
Under which banner do I want to lead?
00:33:08.559 --> 00:33:12.240
And what's the first specific thing I'll do to stand under it?
00:33:13.759 --> 00:33:14.480
Pause there.
00:33:14.480 --> 00:33:16.000
Let it land.
00:33:16.000 --> 00:33:20.960
Repeat this meditation often.
00:33:20.960 --> 00:33:23.119
Let it influence you.
00:33:23.440 --> 00:33:25.680
Let it change you slowly over time.
00:33:25.680 --> 00:33:29.359
There's a richness here that deepens over the years.
00:33:29.359 --> 00:33:33.279
I'm still finding new floors beneath it after four decades.
00:33:34.400 --> 00:33:38.480
As always, this exercise plugs in everything we've built.
00:33:38.480 --> 00:33:41.440
Take it into the examen.
00:33:41.440 --> 00:33:46.799
Now that you can see the two banners, your daily review gets a new layer of resolution.
00:33:46.799 --> 00:33:54.720
Watch for the moments you drifted under the enemy standard, where you chased an honor, protected your standing, let pride filter your perception.
00:33:54.720 --> 00:33:58.880
Those are desolations, and now you can name them precisely.
00:33:58.880 --> 00:34:05.279
And watch for the consolations, the moments you took the lower place, held something with an open hand.
00:34:05.279 --> 00:34:08.639
Savoring those trains you to want more of them.
00:34:08.639 --> 00:34:12.800
This exercise also goes to the foundation.
00:34:12.800 --> 00:34:20.639
The two standards is in the end about the path you can choose, over and over, toward where you want your identity anchored.
00:34:20.639 --> 00:34:25.599
Spiritual poverty is another enabler of the inner freedom we built in episode five.
00:34:25.599 --> 00:34:30.559
The predecision check-in from episode six, what do I need from this outcome?
00:34:30.559 --> 00:34:32.400
Where is my ego entangled?
00:34:32.400 --> 00:34:35.280
Is in a real sense a two standards check.
00:34:35.280 --> 00:34:38.960
It's asking which banner is about to drive the decision.
00:34:38.960 --> 00:34:42.800
And this exercise also goes to the field notes.
00:34:42.800 --> 00:34:48.559
When you do your annual walk back through your career, you now have a powerful lens for the pattern work.
00:34:48.559 --> 00:34:53.360
Where did riches, honors, and pride accumulate without your noticing?
00:34:53.360 --> 00:34:58.079
And remember episode seven, strength and shadow travel together.
00:34:58.079 --> 00:35:06.320
The same drive that built your success is the same drive that, if left unexamined, marches you straight up the enemy's three steps.
00:35:06.420 --> 00:35:09.760
 So let me bring this home.
00:35:09.760 --> 00:35:17.920
The two standards is finally an invitation to see and act differently in the world, radically differently from the wisdom of the world.
00:35:17.920 --> 00:35:22.480
There are two value systems alive inside of you and inside your organization.
00:35:22.480 --> 00:35:24.480
Both are always at work.
00:35:24.480 --> 00:35:27.199
And the destructive one will never look destructive.
00:35:27.199 --> 00:35:31.039
It'll look like good business every reasonable step of the way.
00:35:31.039 --> 00:35:36.320
The whole task is learning to recognize the banner before you've marched too far under it.
00:35:36.320 --> 00:35:39.199
And here's the part I'd ask you to hold on to.
00:35:39.199 --> 00:35:44.159
This is not the soft, gentle alternative to high performance leadership.
00:35:44.159 --> 00:35:46.719
It is high performance leadership.
00:35:46.719 --> 00:35:56.880
The leader who holds their riches and honors with an open hand is most often the freest, clearest, best informed, and most followed leader in any organization.
00:35:56.880 --> 00:36:00.159
Humility isn't the price you pay for goodness.
00:36:00.159 --> 00:36:10.159
It's the source of the clarity that lets you see and the freedom that lets you act, especially when the stakes are highest and your reputation is on the line.
00:36:10.159 --> 00:36:15.039
The world you belong to is also the world you are helping to create.
00:36:15.039 --> 00:36:22.000
Every day, in a thousand small choices, you raise one banner or the other over everyone who works for you.
00:36:22.000 --> 00:36:24.639
So choose it consciously.
00:36:24.639 --> 00:36:26.880
Stand under it deliberately.
00:36:26.880 --> 00:36:31.119
And then go do one small, surprising, costly thing this week.
00:36:31.119 --> 00:36:33.920
One real act of taking the lower place.
00:36:33.920 --> 00:36:36.000
And watch what it does.
00:36:36.000 --> 00:36:45.440
Not just to you, but to the people who are quietly deciding every day which kind of leader you really are and why they should follow you.
00:36:45.440 --> 00:36:49.840
Until next time, thank you for listening.
00:36:49.840 --> 00:36:51.360
I'm Mike McDonnell.
00:36:51.360 --> 00:36:53.599
This is CEO Exercises.