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Mature leaders have integrity. They express that integrity by honoring the trust of those they lead. Mature leaders are vulnerable. It's evident because of their lack of hidden issues. Welcome to Living Influence. So welcome to Living Influence. I'm Scott Boyd. I'm here with my friend and mentor Bill Thrall. And we're talking about maturity and integrity.

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And I have a little statement on this. I want to read a little bit further. Mature leaders have integrity, but not the kind we usually mean, not just consistency between their words and their actions, though that matters. The deeper integrity is relational. They honor the trust of the people under their influence, every person who follows you.

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works for you, learns from you, or is shaped by you, has placed something in your hands.

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And integrity is what you do with that deposit. It's back to relationship again, isn't it? Every time we're going to talk about this, thank you for reminding us, all of us. Yeah, this issue of integrity, it's what you just said there. I love it. I want to keep echoing this because it is about relationships. I worked as a CPA in lots of business environments.

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As a person who's worked with Christian leadership, I've been in lots of Christian organizations. And integrity is often a value in those organizations, whether they're Christian or not. The value of integrity. And then it's an interesting thing that happens. They then produce a bunch of rules and regulations to protect integrity.

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It's like, okay, now we have integrity, but boy, do we ever make sure that it's bound tight by the rules that make sure you are integrous, which breaks the whole point. So what if integrity wasn't about a virtue that I have, but what if integrity was a relational principle that sounds like you and I just wrote and read?

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What if integrity is my capacity to honor the trust you have in me? We say in a lot of contexts that trust is a key word in all of our relationships. What if integrity was my ability to honor the reason you trust me?

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And when I say that in the context of mature Christians, and some of them are leaders, they kind of look at me and go, well, what are you trying to say? What's the essence? It sounds really good. There's a nice word, but what's the essence of it? It's this. In my opinion, Scott, one of the most significant gifts you can give me is to trust me.

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One of the most significant gifts I can give to you, Scott, which I choose to do, is to trust you. Integrity has to do with my honoring the trust you have in me. So, yeah. So I have people who work for me, and I somehow earn their trust, and they begin to trust me.

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And so integrity is that I then trust them with me. Good for you. That's actually true. And it's like, wait, wait, you just turned it upside down. But it's actually true. So the second half of the statement you read were mature leaders are vulnerable.

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are giving people your trust. Now, whenever Scott, anybody, just we're talking together, you and I, when either of us chooses to be vulnerable, we are choosing to trust the other person with what is true about us. I think it's in Ephesians where it says, anything from the darkness that is brought into the light becomes light.

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So, you know, statement kind of like that. It's close enough. And being vulnerable is bringing things from the darkness into the light. This is the book I'm intending to write and my title would be Lead Like a Sinner. And then I think the tagline, because like, look, we're trying to scream to people, you're not sinners, you're saints. But the tagline of Lead Like a Sinner is, how leading from my humanity

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creates engagement, passion, creativity, focus, results. I had lunch today with a gentleman that leads six companies that do over a half a billion dollars in business, and he had taken over as interim CEO of one of these companies and

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And he says, I didn't know what it was. I knew I was taken over from the last guy, and there was a reason I was having to take over from him. It took me six weeks to find it.

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And so this thing was kind of buried, and it's technical, and I don't even know if I can describe it or if I want to, but it took him six weeks to find it. And this is the point in leading in a business. When I trust people with my humanity and I'm vulnerable with them, with when I've made mistakes, with, you know, the crappy things I've done,

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when I'm just vulnerable with my stuff, I make it okay to be human. And when I make it okay to be human, this is really countercultural to current corporate environments. When I really make it okay to be human, the mistakes that are being made in the business become visible because people share them. They don't hide them.

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And imagine it took him six weeks. What if it just took three days?

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And what if that happened over and over and over again versus, well, this mistake was buried by this guy for nine months. I didn't find it until I had to fire him, and then I discovered it. You know, what if you could create an environment where people self-disclosed and people like, because it's okay, because we're all human and we all will sometimes make mistakes. And so let's be a team and help each other and

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So this leader that honors the trust of those people that trust him by trusting them with himself, he makes it, he creates an environment, a different environment. Absolutely. And you're reflecting, Scott, on both sides of that coin called integrity. You really are. You're reflecting on both. And let's reflect back.

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What if the purpose of my integrity was to honor your trust? What if the purpose of my integrity was to be vulnerable to you? What if the purpose of my integrity was to allow you to have a voice in my life and experience?

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So it goes back to this. They're simple statements. We say them a lot. But I want to just repeat it. The question I ask a lot of people is this question. Who do you trust with you? Who do you trust with you?

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And they'll often pause and they'll reflect and maybe they'll say their mate or their children or a friend. They have answers. But the connection they don't make.

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is that that ability to trust others requires a vulnerability in your life, which is in fact an expression of your integrity, that when you get me, you get the real me. And I am learning personally now.

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I am learning. Scott, I lived way up into my late 20s, and for some people it's much further than that, but I lived way up into my late 20s hiding who I was with the fear that you might actually get to know me. I was afraid of being known for what I knew I was hiding.

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Now, that's a long time ago because I've lived a long life, but that's a long time ago. But in the process of those years, I've learned something really critical. In order for me to honor your trust of me, I have to be real to you. I have to be real to you.

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And so the man who's talking has realized, I can't do this with everybody, Scott, but those closest to me, I am very careful to make sure they know me well, that there are no hidden issues in my life causing me to move from them.

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Now, it takes—we'll talk about maturity here. This is a maturity process. So we've learned something. You know, a lot of men especially have been part of accountability groups that never worked. Because what they were doing is they were disclosing their stuff—

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but there was no resolution to the stuff they disclosed. Here's something that's important to say in this. When we say that my vulnerability is an expression of my integrity because I'm giving you access to me, there needs to be another line, Scott. I'm giving you access to me to protect me in my limitations.

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That's a really important aspect of this vulnerability. So if I want to say that in different words, so I'm giving them access to protect me in my vulnerabilities or in my weaknesses. So I'm giving them permission to speak advice into my life? Absolutely.

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And I'm giving them something else, and we're going to actually spend next time we're together, we're going to spend a couple sessions on this concept of protection. But it's this.

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I'm actually giving them permission to stand with me in those things that I know are my limitations because I'm trusting their strengths. Hear those words, because I'm trusting their strengths. Here's a model that we developed in True Face years ago, and John spoke a beautiful message called The Two Roads. And in that talk, he gave this model, accountability rules.

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causes somebody when they're seated, you stand over them and you want to hold them accountable to their behavior and you really press in on them because if they're part of your family or church or business, you really want to make sure they don't screw up so bad. That's accountability. And then you ask that person, stand up, please.

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and you ask them to stand up and you walk over to them and you put your arm around them and you say, look it, our stuff is in front of us. What if we protected each other in the process of dealing with our stuff? Here's the kicker. For many Christians, they have relationships with people and their stuff is between them.

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Instead of standing with their arm around somebody and with vulnerability, looking at your stuff together. Scott, I have had that privilege with you and with other individuals in my life where we literally have that ability to accept each other's limitations, protect each other. And then another talk next week or next time we're together. But we've learned something else.

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My integrity also allows me to submit to your strengths.

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I really believe, Scott, that God has designed others for my best. So what's screaming in me, it's been screaming for a little while, is this principle of integrity and honoring the trust of those that you're responsible for give to you also fits with parenting.

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Our kids trust us, and so do we give our kids access to who we really are? Do they know that we're someone who has a life story, too? That we're someone that has had struggles, too? We're someone that faced the same questions that they did and sometimes failed in our actions.

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And do they know those things? Do we make it okay? Well, it's good because, Scott, you're hitting right on the head. The issue is many, many parents are afraid to be vulnerable with their children.

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because they're afraid that their children will in fact copy their things they're vulnerable about without recognizing that their children have the ability to love them in spite of their vulnerability. That's the key, Scott. Don't hide from your children. Anybody who's listening, don't do it. Don't hide from your children.

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Let them know who you are. I've said this story before on one of our podcasts, but I was invited to meet with a Christian leader of an organization and make a long story short. In the process of our talking, he mentioned a tremendous struggle he was having with his daughter.

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And we got all done with the presentation, and I said to him, tell me more about your daughter. He said, what? And I said, tell me more about your daughter. And he looked at me like, what are you talking about? I said, well, you mentioned this struggle you're having with your daughter. And he described it.

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I said to her, you know, I'm from a distance. I'm going to make a point. I don't think your daughter knows you. I think she's afraid to know you. I want to ask you to tell her three stories about who you are. And he did it. And the response she had was beautiful because it made the point.

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When he finished the first story, his daughter looked at him and she said, Dad, that's not true. That's not who you are. I don't believe you. You just said that to make me feel better. He said, I started to cry because truthfully, Bill, you were right. My daughter didn't know me. So you're right. We can make this very personal, this idea of integrity, Scott. We can bring it right into the reality we have in our own homes.

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Am I able to honor the trust my children have of me? Am I able to be vulnerable so my children will understand that I need them to trust me? It's an amazing lesson, and we don't want to miss the application. What an amazing day. Thank you, Laura. I think that's about all we want to say today, but thank you for listening. Look forward to our being together next time.

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Thanks for listening to Living Influence. We appreciate you. Just a call to action. We would love it if you would share our podcast with one or two people this week. Thanks again.