Creating Us - A podcast for Texas Tech University System & beyond
A learning and development podcast focused on bringing the Texas Tech University System Values Based Culture to life.
Creating Us - A podcast for Texas Tech University System & beyond
The Leader Fast Lane - Episode 21 - with Jesse Rudy, Founder/CEO of Redeem International
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
In this episode, I talk with an old colleague, Jesse Rudy, who is the Founder & CEO of Redeem International, a Christian non-profit dedicated to protecting some of the world's most vulnerable widows and orphans from violent abuse and exploitation.
Jesse is a leader I greatly admire. Listen as he shares about the risks of conflating your profession with your identity, how to deal with anxiety and stress in a healthy, sustainable way, and how to prepare yourself to have difficult conversations.
Hello, and welcome to the Leader Fast Lead, the podcast where accomplished leaders from higher education, public service, and beyond share real stories, practical principles, and hard-earned lessons listeners can apply in their work. No buzzwords, no shortcuts, just real leaders sharing real lessons you can apply right away. I'm Lane Mears, Assistant Vice Chancellor for Leader and Culture Development at the Texas Tech University System. Today I am joined by Jesse Rudy, founder and CEO of Redeem International, a Christian nonprofit dedicated to protecting some of the world's most vulnerable widows and orphans from violent abuse and exploitation. Under Jesse's leadership, Redeem has launched impactful programs aimed at safeguarding these women and children in Uganda, where one in three widows faces the threat of losing their home and land to predatory land theft. With a background as an attorney, Jesse has extensive experience in justice work. Before founding Redeem International in 2020, he served for 12 years with International Justice Mission, where he led teams in Sri Lanka, Uganda, and the Philippines, and was a key member of its global leadership team. His expertise informs Redeem's Mission, which deploys teams of local justice professionals to intervene on behalf of victims, partnering with local authorities to restore families to their homes and prosecute their abusers, ultimately creating a powerful deterrent effect that protects entire communities. Jesse holds a B.S. in pre-law from John Brown University and a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. He resides just outside of Washington, D.C. with his wife Amy and their children. It's great to have you on the podcast, Jesse.
SPEAKER_00Thanks, Lane. It's great to be here. I really appreciate you inviting me on.
SPEAKER_01It's great. For listeners, Jesse and I worked together many years ago, and I've been looking forward to this conversation to hear a little bit more about his journey and some of the things he's learned along the way. To start us off, would you tell us a little bit about your background, your leadership journey?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, sure. So like you mentioned, uh I went to uh undergrad at John Brown University and then law school at UVA. Um and my goal was to be an attorney. Um and so I started my legal practice in Washington, D.C. Uh I was a K-street attorney doing mostly civil litigation. And after a few years of that, um I threw my hat in the ring for a uh kind of up-and-coming organization that you know well called International Justice Mission. Uh was sent to Sri Lanka for about a year. Uh that didn't go very well. Uh we sent me in the middle of a civil war. Uh suicide bomber blew himself up outside of our apartment. Uh, we got raided by the military police in the middle of the night, and eventually IJM said, Hey, we got to get you off the island. Um, and so ended up going back to practice for a couple of years. Um, and actually loved practice even more uh after coming back, um, but kind of got the bug. And uh after a couple of years back at practice, had an opportunity to rejoin IJM uh and moved to Uganda to work on a project to protect widows and orphans from having their land stolen from them. Um, and that changed the whole trajectory of my career. Uh, spent the next 11 years with IJM uh and then ultimately started Redeem. Uh my timing in starting Redeem was poor. Uh, I launched Redeem on uh February 1st of 2020.
SPEAKER_02Wow.
SPEAKER_00Uh and uh yeah, had a really, really beautiful month uh before everything went sideways. Uh but was really, really fortunate, really blessed to be able to continue to do that work uh and kind of get through the pandemic uh so that we can be protecting uh widows and orphans in their homes.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, well, I look forward to hearing more about Redeem as we as we discuss this. Um I've got a series of questions based on a few different themes that I'll go through. First theme is your leadership journey and meaning, gaining meaning from work. So having started your career as an attorney, as like you said, what led you to leaving that financial and professional security for working in the nonprofit world to secure justice for others?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah, I mean, when I was in college, uh, well, let's just say this. I grew up kind of first generation in my family to go to college uh to graduate with a degree. Um, and I honestly I didn't really understand what wealth was uh growing up. And so when I went to uh when I was in undergrad, um I thought my contribution to the world was I was gonna make buckets and buckets of money. Um and I was gonna make buckets of money, and my contribution was gonna be that I was gonna be able to give that away. Uh that was how I was gonna do good in the world. Uh and so as a high school senior, I was like, who makes the most money? It's either doctors or lawyers. So I was like, well, I like I don't want to be a doctor, so I'll be a lawyer because that's that's how I can accomplish that. Um and honestly, that was the plan through undergrad and through law school, was I wanted to become a lawyer, uh, become the best lawyer that I could be so that I could make lots and lots of money so that I could give it away. I didn't actually care about having it. I just it was a bit of a scorecard for me. And I I wanted to be able to give it away to do too good in the world. Um and then I became a lawyer and I moved to DC and I kind of was achieving all of the things that I thought I'd set out to do. Um, and what I found out very quickly was that uh one, I didn't actually understand wealth and understand like uh compounding interest and and that you don't actually come to wealth until later in your career. Um and uh I also found that I wasn't nearly as good at giving it away as I thought I would be. Um, I really wanted to be, but there was always something that you could save for or make the right financial decision, and you could, if you just held on to the money a little bit longer, I could do more good down the road. And what I found by the third or fourth year of my practice was that I wasn't having nearly the impact that I thought I was gonna have. Uh, and my character wasn't nearly what I hoped it would be. Um and along that same time, I was I was becoming familiar with this organization called International Justice Mission that was protecting the poor from violence. And I was supporting them financially. You know, I was trying to do my part to make money and give it away, but I just found I wasn't having the kind of impact that I wanted to have. And as I got to know what they were doing more and more, um a position came open, and my wife and I sat and talked about it for some time. And what we decided was that it might actually be easier for us uh to give away our time and our talents rather than giving away our treasure. Um, for some reason, giving away treasure was really hard to do, but giving away that trajectory of my career felt felt easy. And so that shifted my paradigm of how it was that I was gonna contribute to the world, how I was gonna do good in the world. I wasn't gonna make buckets of money and then just give it away. I was gonna make a whole lot less money, and I was gonna give away that time, that effort, and and hopefully talent, uh, to be able to uh to have a positive impact.
SPEAKER_01I appreciate that. Thank you for sharing that. I didn't know all of that background. Um I that's a calling, I think, what what you've expressed about that conversation with you and Amy about maybe we can be better about giving away our time and our talent than our treasure. I don't think that God gives everybody that perspective. And so that's a calling. But then there are, you know, there are people that are adept at building that wealth and can participate in what you're doing by supporting you along the way through finances, through prayer, what have you. And so there's this divine teamwork that goes into that. But I appreciate your sharing that story. 100%.
SPEAKER_00Like ever I do think there are all sorts of ways to contribute. Um, and some people's is is to contribute financially, some people is to contribute part of their career. There's all sorts of ways that one can contribute. And the truth is, one isn't necessarily uh better or worse than the other. People are always like, oh, how did you sacrifice all your time? How did you how did you sacrifice that wonderful thing you could have had to do this? And I'm like, that's not how that works. Like being able to do what I do every day is a luxury item. That's how that's how I look at it. It uh I could have had other luxury items. I could have had, you know, a lake house and a boat. Um and that would have been a luxury item that I would have enjoyed immensely. Uh, but I didn't I chose not to have that item. I chose to get to do exactly what I want to do and what I believe that I was built to do. Yeah, um, and I get to go cut ribbons on the houses of women that we put back in their home after they were attacked with a machete. Like that I that's more fun than a boat ride to me. Um, and so it's it's a literally a luxury item. And so I I don't look at it when people say, like, how did you sacrifice it? I'm like, I didn't. Yeah, I chose a different luxury item for my career. Um, and I get to enjoy that luxury item every single day. That's awesome.
SPEAKER_01I I found when I was with IJM that the type of work obviously is very meaningful. You're helping people who would not have anyone else for the most part to work with them to help them. And so there's great meaning in that. Um but I also wrestled with that meaning, that deep significance in that work the temptation was to it for it to get mixed up in my identity. Like this is who I am. And I wonder just to delve into that with you, are there risks to finding too much meaning in work? And it is a temptation to equate that the work that you do with your identity.
SPEAKER_00Oh, absolutely. Um, I think I I'm a big I love to read kind of social psychology and and think these through these things and kind of try to figure out how how the brain works. And one of the things that that I'm a firm believer in is that people have to believe that they're good people. There's that kind of self-serving bias. We have to we have to believe that we are we are good, we are honest, we are contributing to society. And we have to find evidence uh that that's true, and we have to avoid evidence that that it's not true.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And I think if you tie your identity too closely to your work, then your success or failure at work actually cuts to the very core of whether that that narrative is true or not. Um, and so then successes or failures at work have outsized impact on you. They they can send you into an absolute euphoria or they can send you into an absolute spiral. Uh, because what if you fail at work, if you fail at your mission, if you fail at your calling, what you're receiving is evidence that that whole narrative you've built that you're a good person just actually isn't true. Um, and it can actually be completely, completely devastating to you, where it shouldn't be. If you if you're building your identity on something outside of that, something greater than that, something some ways more diverse than that, then when you provide you get evidence of failure in your work, you can absorb that without it absolutely wrecking your entire narrative about who you are.
SPEAKER_02Sure.
SPEAKER_00Um, and that allows you to absorb it, respond to it, and move on from it um in a way that actually is healthy rather than a way that can be completely completely devastating.
SPEAKER_01Do you have any tips on on how to maintain that proper perspective on work and identity?
SPEAKER_00Uh not really. I'm terrible at it. I have struggled with that um since the the very beginning of my career. And I I will say that I mentioned earlier that that when I came back from my time in Sri Lanka and went back to practice, that that was a time that I loved practice more. Um and it's true because of what you just asked about. Uh before, in my first four years of practice, I thought every single filing was my identity. Like if I didn't win that motion to dismiss, I was a bad lawyer and I was a bad person and I was not measuring up. And so every single thing that I did was like was like the Super Bowl. Every I I would be in a pan, I would wake up in a panic in the middle of of the night about whether I put a comma in a in a sentence in a in a brief. And I went to Sri Lanka and I was working with people um they were facing all sorts of massive forms of abuse. And what I've what I saw there was like real, in some ways, real problems, real pain, real injustice, real success, real failure, real life or death consequences. And so then when I went back to practice, I realized that it that brief wasn't life or death. It didn't, it honestly it didn't actually matter. Like it was, it could have been millions of dollars, but it didn't actually matter. And so I still wanted to win because I like to win. But my identity wasn't wrapped up in it because I knew it in some ways it was just a game. And it was like playing a game of basketball. Like I really want to win in a game of basketball, but if I lose, I don't, I don't, it doesn't strike my identity. I'm able to just kind of move on from it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And you can take it. I think that's key what you're talking about. It's it's gaining perspective and just a broader perspective. I think, you know, after IGM, I went to work for USAID for 11 years, and and and I like the work with IGM. It's a it's it doesn't have the faith component, but it's similar in the sense that it's very easy for those that doing that type of work to take on the identity is that I'm I'm doing this international work, sacrificing a lot to do this, and that's my identity. And when my aid fell apart last year, it was it it was a it was a shock to the system for a lot of people questioning who am I. Um and so, but I think what you've talked about about the the when you came back after Sri Lanka had a different paradigm for your everyday work that allowed you to have a little more healthy perspective on your work. I think that may be a key for helping people to in some ways to dissociate their full identity from their occupation.
SPEAKER_00And it helped me learn that I actually play better loose. I play better when I don't take myself quite so seriously. Um and I enjoy it a lot more, and I'm and it turns out I'm better at it. I I wasn't I wasn't better at it because I was gripping it so tightly in those first four years. I was actually better at it when I wasn't taking it quite it or myself quite as seriously, because I was loose enough to be able to weigh pros and cons, let things go, focus on the things that are most important rather than spinning on every single detail.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, and so then when I moved into work that I guess is more meaningful, whatever that means, um I took that lesson with me to say, like, yes, just because this is more meaningful doesn't mean that I need to grip it nearly as tightly as I did before. I I still need to actually hold it as loosely as I possibly can because that's gonna make me actually that's gonna help me actually achieve better results.
SPEAKER_01Sure. Good. Well, I'm gonna shift topics to uh leading in challenging context, as obviously you you've got some experience with that. So Redeem works in places where people face violence, land theft, corruption, and significant injustice. How does leadership change when the stakes are exceptionally high?
SPEAKER_00I think it focuses you. And it to me, it helps me focus on the outcome rather than the detail. When we intervene in a case, it might be a woman, you know, is living in a home with her her children and she gets attacked by a neighbor with a machete and has her home burnt down. Like the stakes for her are absolutely life and death. And and when we intervene in that case, what we care about is whether she gets back in the home. Um and we don't necessarily care about how we get there. Like other than the that it gets us to there. Um, and so in some ways, when the stakes are really high, it it focuses your mind on what is it that we're trying to achieve, not you know, did I win this minute or this hour or did I do the right thing in in the moment? Like there's lots of ways to get there. Let's figure out what the best way is to get there because it actually matters whether we achieve the goal or not. Yeah, good.
SPEAKER_01Well while we're talking about redeem, why don't you tell us just a couple minute overview of the work that y'all are doing, if you don't mind.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So in rural Africa, in Uganda specifically, um, land is a family's life. Uh land is a family's primary source of food, income, shelter, security, it's their only savings, and it's also their standing in the community. Um but what we have found is that if you are a woman in Uganda and you lose your husband, uh your odds are about one in three uh that a neighbor, a relative, or just some casual observer are going to come to drive you out of your home so that they can steal the land that it sits on. Um and they're gonna do every horrible thing uh that a man can do to a woman to take it from you if you don't just give it up. Um we have cases of wells being poisoned, crops being destroyed, livestock being slaughtered, homes burned to the ground, children raped, women bludgeoned to death with machetes and bricks. All also that their attacker can steal the land that they depend on. And the women that survive but don't keep their land face starvation, disease, exposure, and exploitation. Um, and so what we do is we deploy teams of local justice professionals, local attorneys, investigators, social workers, community relations, security, uh, to intervene directly in those cases in partnership with local law enforcement authorities. We're restoring those families to the homes that were stolen from them. We're prosecuting the offenders for the crimes that they're committing, we're rehabilitating those survivors to safety and strength, and then we're broadcasting the results as loudly as we possibly can. Uh because what we have found is that law enforcement leads to deterrence, deterrence leads to safety, and safety leads to prosperity. If you want women and children to prosper in their homes, they have to be safe on their land, it has to be secure. If you want them to be safe, you have to actually deter the people that would endanger them, that would attack them. And it turns out that by far and away, the best way to deter them is to actually just enforce the law, to inject law enforcement into that system. Uh, because people steal land for money. Uh, they do it because it's highly profitable and there's almost zero risk of accountability. And so what we do when we intervene in those individual cases is we decrease the profitability and we increase the risk for those that steal. Um and it turns out they're they're not heroes, they're cowards. Um and when you inject that risk into the scenario, the cost-benefit analysis changes for them and behavior changes radically. And and then you prevent tens of thousands of women and children from actually losing their home. Um, and honestly, the best thing, the only thing that's better than restoring a widow to her home and cutting that ribbon is knowing that she actually just never lost it in the first place.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, man, that's powerful. I love it. That I love that you and your team are are intervening on behalf of these these widows and orphans, and just encourage listeners if you're wanting to find out more, check out their website, Redeem International. Um, I I'm sure the the the women that in that you all are supporting, there's there's risks. Well, obviously, there's risks to their situation, but but engaging with you then. Maybe risk. What have you learned about courage from some of your clients?
SPEAKER_00I mean, that they have it. And I'd like to think I do, but I don't have it in any way the way that they do. When a client engages with us, they are taking a real risk, like an existential risk. Because when a woman gets driven out of her home, she is threatened. She is by people that are stronger and more powerful than she is. Otherwise, she wouldn't, you know, be the victim in that situation. And so when she engages with us, what she's doing is she's essentially committing to step into that conflict. And she is trusting us to be there for her and with her and to provide her with the resources and the protection she needs to survive it. But on the front end, she doesn't know if that's true. And these women step in over and over and over again. And they step in. And they take on people that have threatened to kill them, that have threatened to destroy their lives, that have taken everything that they have from them. And they don't blink. And it is amazing. And they're like, I don't want anything from you. Uh I want my land back.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00And then watch what I'll do with it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Our our kind of our tagline is she is strong, uh, together we make her safe. Um, and it couldn't be more true. Like the women that we represent are the strongest people I've ever met. Um, they're not safe, but yeah, uh, but they are not weak. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Wow. Well, Jesse, I I appreciate you're sharing about that and and uh um the the heart that you're you bring to it. Um I'm thankful that y'all are there doing what you're doing.
SPEAKER_00Thanks, Lane.
SPEAKER_01Shifting a little bit into a topic of stress, anxiety, and resilience. And I know some of our conversations from the past that like like everybody, you wrestled with stress and anxiety and how to handle it um in a healthy manner. Um what have you learned about managing your own stress while carrying responsibility for others?
SPEAKER_00I think it's kind of two things. Um the first one in my mind is that you don't have to be and you shouldn't be afraid of stress. Um it's not actually a bad thing. Um you can press into it in some ways more than you think. And two, and I kind of the flip side of that is uh I think responding to stress, responding to stressors is about uh kind of the right dosage of stress uh and appropriate rhythms uh in your life uh to be able to respond to it and to recover from it and to respond to it and recover from it.
SPEAKER_01What situations have tended to create the most stress for you as a leader?
SPEAKER_00Um I mean, there's all sorts of things that that are stressors. Uh but honestly, the things that that get me the most wound up, um well, there's one selfish one and one less selfish one. Uh the selfish one that gets me stressed, that gets me wound up is when there's someone or something standing in my way of getting to the objective. Um uh one thing you experience a lot in doing this kind of work is what I call the 90% rule. Uh, people that are really good at corruption, they recognize that you can get, you can extract the most out of people if you allow them to get 90% of the way to the goal uh before you step in and put a toll in the way. Um every every good corrupt public official I've had to deal with, and I've had to deal with a few, uh, will let you get just within reaching distance of your goal. And then they'll step in with the arbitrary roadblock, uh, the request for a bribe, the uh if you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. Um, and there is nothing that gets me more angry and wound up than getting just able to touch the thing that you're trying to achieve and then have somebody arbitrarily step in the way. Um so that gets me wound up in the worst of ways, and and that actually comes from a deep, unhealthy part of my my own soul. Uh, but the thing that gets me wound up, I think, in a in a more loving way, and and I've I actually get the most anxious about um and and wound up about is when I have to, as a leader, if I have to uh let somebody go or change somebody's job out of performance issues. Um I I don't actually get anxious about letting people go or or disciplining people for behavior issues or or things like that. But when you have to confront somebody with a shortcoming in their performance, uh knowing how people attach their identity to their work and knowing how people want to protect that narrative of themselves and how much pain it actually causes to hear that you're not as good at that thing that you spend 40 or 50 or 60 hours a week doing every week. Um that walking up to that ledge to to have that conversation or or or take that step uh is probably the thing that uh that gives me the most anxiety as a as a leader.
SPEAKER_01Sure. We hear from a lot of faculty and staff across the system, um their reluctance or hesitancy or difficulty in having those crucial, those tense conversations. Um and so it's something that we try to bring some resources to. We do workshops on it. But I'm I'm curious for you, when you've got um an employee who their performance is substandard, even though they really care about the work, how do you how do you prepare yourself for that conversation?
SPEAKER_00I think the thing that I think you have to prepare yourself to do is to give that you have to plan and strategize the conversation to allow to give that person some ability to escape, to relieve the pressure. Um, and as part of that, and I think the thing that you most have to prepare yourself for is you have to be able to absorb their reaction without defending yourself. You have to be able to absorb how they will react to and how they need to react to it. Uh, this goes back to that whole idea of like people think in narratives, and and because of the self-serving bias, like we all have to believe that we're good people. We all have to believe we're we're good at what we do. You ask a hundred people whether you're above average driver, 85% will say yes. Uh, you ask a hundred people whether you're good at your job, 95% people will say yes. Uh, because we have to believe that. If we don't, we we we can't actually function. Um, and so when you get evidence to the contrary, when you get evidence that says that narrative I've built, that understanding of myself that I've built isn't true, it it causes massive amounts of stress, massive amounts of pain. Like I'd rather get hit with a bat than have somebody tell me that I'm terrible at the thing that I spend all my time doing.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And so what I see in people, and I've had to have these conversations a lot over the last 25 years of my career, is as soon as you get that, give them that contrary evidence, they have to relieve the pressure. They have to find some form of narrative that allows them to escape it. Otherwise, they it's just too too hard and too painful. And if you're the person delivering the the uh the message, you're the closest available narrative.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And what that means is they're going to have to blame something else. And in some ways, you have to let them.
SPEAKER_02Sure.
SPEAKER_00You have to let them form a new narrative that allows them to escape a little bit. You don't want to, you know, have them not learn the lessons of what it is, but you have to let them escape a little bit. You can't expect them to absorb it and just be like, you're right, I do suck at my job. Uh they they're gonna look for something. And because you're the one delivering it, and because you're the person who made the decision and you're the closest thing, yeah, that narrative is gonna be you.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And if you come in that and need to defend yourself to say, no, no, hey, that was a good decision. I made it on all the best evidence. You need to understand that I was right in this decision. You're not actually helping them to reform that narrative to get to a place of safety where they can actually process it. Um, and so what you have to be able to do, and what you have to prepare yourself to do in that conversation is to actually absorb the pain. They're gonna say, you made a terrible decision, you did misunderstood this. This was your shortcoming that that caused this to happen. And what I want to do in that situation is because that's negative information to me, right? And so my initial biological reaction is no, that's not true. Let me defend that position, let me push that negative information away, let me tell you why I'm right, let me win the argument. Yeah, that doesn't help, that doesn't serve them, that doesn't love them. Instead, sometimes you just have to absorb it. Yeah, yeah, it's okay. You can believe that I'm the villain in this, you can believe that I'm not talented, not smart, not good at managing, a terrible leader. I will absorb that.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_00And I'll just allow you to believe it as hard as that is for me.
SPEAKER_02Sure.
SPEAKER_00So that you can get to a place of safety and you can process it and you can move on to do the next thing. And that doesn't mean lie to people and say, no, actually, you're you're right, you are good. But you have to be willing to absorb it because if you defend yourself and it becomes a battle of I win, you lose, you both will lose. Sure.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and I think it's it's just a uh a venting, you know, when when people it when that when that threat gets close to that nerve of identity in your work, and and there's going to be a venting. And so what how the the terminology you would use is the the emotionally intelligent leader, like you're talking about, will have prepared themselves to not defend themselves, to be willing to take some flack, all with the goal of helping the person who's lashing out, underperforming, ultimately to improve. And so creating the way for them to be able to receive that feedback in the midst of maybe a messy conversation, but um that's that's the mantle of a leader.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, because what you hope you're doing as a leader is that you're loving your team well and you're loving them well, whether they're on your team or whether they're not on your team.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, and you're loving them well, whether you're disciplining them or whether you're moving them out of the position or moving them out of the organization. You want to love them well.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, and it's easy to become transactional and to say, well, they're on their way out anyway. I don't as soon as as soon as we've made that decision, I don't have to love them well anymore. That's that's not okay. Like I still have a responsibility to love them well, even if they move out the door.
SPEAKER_01Yep. Great. So one thing that that I realized after my time with IJM was that I was in pretty extreme burnout by the end of my my time in in Rwanda. Want to ask if you've ever experienced a season of burnout and and how were you able to get through that?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, there have been some pretty serious seasons for for me of ups and downs in that way, and and kind of walking right up to the edge of burnout. So I was I was working in Uganda and uh the organization I was working for uh sent me on kind of a debriefing, sent me and my family on a on a debriefing retreat um to kind of work with some some counselors and some therapists, uh, not necessarily because anything was wrong, it was kind of the the normal time period for doing that. And I remember that I went to the uh went through a session and they did a identify your stressors uh test. And I'm making these numbers up, but it this is directionally accurate. It was something like, you know, if you've had a death in the family, mark that four, if you've had a pet that died, mark that two, whatever the the stressors in life were. And and it was something like if you score 35 to 50, you are on the edge of burnout. Uh, and my score came back at about 274. And and the counselor that was running the session looked at me in just utter horror. And he's like, Hey, we need to talk about something. And I was like, Well, what do we need to talk about? He's like, Well, first of all, like, look at your score. Uh, second, look at the fact that you're ticking and you're like shaking and and and you can't sit still and you look like you're about 30 pounds underweight, um, and you are not sleeping, and like you're in a bad way.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And and essentially what he said to me is like, hey, look, if you don't stop, uh his original advice to me uh was I think you need to come out of the field, and I think you need to sit by the lake for the next six months and not do anything. Uh, because if you take another step towards the cliff, you're gonna go off it. And I don't know if you're gonna come back. And he wasn't wrong. What I had I'd gotten to such a deep dark place that I was actually using anger and adrenaline as my drug of choice. Uh, I actually would couldn't wake up in the morning because I was so desperately tired. Um, and so the way that I would wake up in the morning is I would roll over and I would open my email on my phone and I would look for the email from the person who I thought would make me the most angry. Um and I would I would read that email at 6:30 in the morning, and it would make me angry, and I would feel the adrenaline hit the back of my skull and run into my body, and then I would get up.
SPEAKER_02My gosh.
SPEAKER_00And I knew I was in a bad way, but I didn't know how to how to get out of it. And and and that debriefing session was a fantastic wake-up call for me. Um but what I knew is I couldn't just quit my job and move out of the field and go sit by a lake. Like, A, financially, I couldn't do that, B, like personally, I couldn't do it, and C, there's a mission to be accomplished. Um, but what it did force me to do is it forced me to tap, uh, you know, like they do in football games. Like I had to tap my helmet and be like, hey, coach, I'm I'm not in a good way. And fortunately, I had an amazing supervisor at the time that I tapped my head and I said, Hey, I need help. Um and and he was basically like, whatever you need, we'll we'll we'll take care of it. You know, up to and including going and sitting by a lake for six months. Um and I got to work with uh a really great therapist that helped me see that the advice that I had gotten from the first therapist actually wasn't really great.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Because what he was advising me to do is to run away from it and to pretend it was the stressor's fault that I wasn't able to handle it. Um, and that that if I just eliminated stressors in my life, that I would be okay. And I did a lot of reading there, and I was working with a another therapist that worked kind of in the cognitive behavioral therapy uh space. And what I learned was that I that it wasn't actually the stressors, it was it was my reaction to them and the way that I let that spin me up and keep me keep me going. Um and so what I ended up having to do was really, really build intentional rhythms into my life to step away from the stress, not so that I could run away from it, but so that I could go back to it.
SPEAKER_02Sure.
SPEAKER_00Um and so I started to approach it more like a um more like an athlete who's in training. Like you don't want to not stress the muscle. Uh in fact, what you want to do is you want to stress it really, really hard. You want to press into the lift, you want to press into the run, you want to press into the thing, and then you want to intentionally rest and take time away and not stress it and allow it to recover and then press into it again. Um and then take time away. And so what I ended up having to do was build rhythms into my life of really hard work and really high levels of stress coupled with times that I really, really shut it down and and was able to to find to find rest.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. That's that's powerful. Um thank you for for sharing that. Um, it's just making me think back to some of the times the the thing that got me through for a long time in Rwanda was there was a weekly basketball game at the embassy, just the physicality of it, working out that stress. Like I that was like my six months at the beach or at the lake, you know. Um and now that I'm older and can't play anymore, I need to I need to find some new ways of of finding that that rest, that release. But um, thank you for that. That's really I think really powerful and really useful to to me and to others who are listening. Um, shifting to one of our final topics, um, building healthy organizations. Um I recall when I was in Rwanda, you were in Uganda, I've heard about Rudy's doing this Team Olympics thing with his IGM Uganda team. Can you tell us a little bit about what what that is and what what was intended to accomplish and how did it affect the team?
SPEAKER_00Um yeah, we called it the the WMBR, uh the We Measure by Results Challenge. Um and uh essentially what it was was a uh it was the first Friday of every month. Uh we would knock off about noon and we would play uh a game. Um and the rules, the rules for picking the game were essentially that it had to be somewhat ridiculous, and we had to keep score. Uh we had to measure by results. Um and this came out of it came out of uh kind of two places for me. Um the first was we were trying to build a we measure by results culture in in our office, uh, and honestly through the organization. And what's funny about that is a lot of people kind of came at that with fear. It was like, oh, you're gonna be measured by your results. Um, and that that somehow is like management's looking down on you, and you will be measured and come up wanting by results, or you're only care about you're treating your employees like widgets, you're uh like there was just a lot of fear that came with that. And I was like, actually, no, what I'm saying is we always have to keep score. Um and winning actually matters. Um, because for our clients, whether we win or lose actually matters.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00Um, our clients don't care if we tried really hard or if we cared a lot. Uh what they care about is did they actually get back into their home? Um, and so it it does, in fact, matter. And so we actually do want to keep score. Um, and that's not a thing that we want to have that is fearful, but something that is actually joyful uh is is the idea of keeping score. So that was part of what was going on there. And then the other one was kind of lessons I learned from my grandpa. Uh my grandpa used to run this uh Machine shop, uh, welding shop and farm implement uh manufacturing shop. Um, and he would hire these really, really rough guys, those welders and grinders and painters and things like that. And what I remember about the way that he ran his business was that he always injected competition into it. Um he would, you know, during the break room, he was, you know, 60 years old and he had these 25-year-old guys, and he would challenge all of them to a push-up competition uh, you know, during the lunch break, uh, you know, for a case of coke. Things like that, that just kind of added something to the to the workplace for them. And and what I learned from watching the way that he managed it was like competition bonds people together. Uh, it seems like it would drive people apart, but it doesn't. It it brings people together. Um, two is work ought to be fun. Yeah, uh, if you're not having fun, uh you're not going to be productive. Um and three, people shouldn't take themselves, and they definitely shouldn't take you as a leader too seriously. They have to be able to joke with you, they have to be able to see you fail, see you being a little bit ridiculous in order for you to build that relationship. And then the last part is again, it's good to measure, uh, measure by results. And so we would do over the course of the year, we would have 12 competitions and we had a scoring mechanism for all of them, and we would do dumb things like ice cream eating competitions or uh egg and spoon race. We always had full contact egg and spoon race. Uh so uh people just banging into each other and knocking each other down, and it was this fantastic equalizer because the the woman who cleaned the office would just knock down the attorney, our lead attorney, yeah, because she was his equal in that competition, and it didn't matter who had what position, and they both looked stupid because they had a spoon and an egg in their mouth. Um, and and it it brought the team uh together and was able to like reinforce some of the things that we wanted to see uh see in the team.
SPEAKER_01Wow, that's I love it. Is it something you've incorporated at Redeem?
SPEAKER_00We do do a little bit of it. I'm not in in the offices so much, and we're remote, uh, which I really, really miss that that part of it. Um so at Redeem, we have four core values. Uh we love each other well, uh, and then second is we measure by results. And then third is we don't make easy things hard, and fourth, we're joyful in our work. And so uh loving each other well, being joyful in our work, those things I think it's good to have ice cream celebrations, it's good to have games, it's good to have competition. Um, and it's good to remember that we measure by results. And so I encourage these sorts of uh it's time well spent, I think, by our team leaders uh when they incorporate these things into their own rhythms. Uh, but I don't get the chance to do it very often myself.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Well, well, thanks. All right. Last topic is wisdom for emerging leaders. Um, if you could spend one hour mentoring a young leader, entering a difficult profession, what would you emphasize?
SPEAKER_00I would say don't try to self-actualize or don't look for fulfillment um in your job. Uh I find a lot of I was this way, and I find a lot of young professionals as they're coming in, they're like, oh, I want to make sure, you know, that this job brings me fulfillment, that this uh helps me achieve who it is that I want to be. And they actually focus on that as kind of an objective of the job. And what I would say instead is don't focus on your own self-actualization or your self-fulfillment, focus on looking for meaningful work. Uh, because I think personal fulfillment is a lot like happiness. Uh, you can't achieve happiness by pursuing happiness.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00Uh if you wake up in the morning and say, I want to be as happy as I possibly can be today, that's my goal is to be happy. You will go to bed miserable. But if you wake up in the morning and you say, Hey, I want to pursue this game of basketball, or building a deck behind my house, or I want to pursue lunch with my friend, or going on this hike, uh, you'll get to the end of the day if you pursued it, if you really pursued that thing, you'll get to the end of the day and look back and be like, wow, I'm happy.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, and I think when people are kind of navel gazing and thinking, like, well, how can this job make me more fulfilled? How can it make me better at what I am? You're focused on the wrong thing. And you you never will actually achieve it. It will always fall short of doing that. But if you actually pursue the work, if you pursue finding the meaning, doing meaningful work, yeah, you'll turn around and find that it actually was fulfilling and it actually brought out more of who you are.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, and so if that's your goal, you can't find it by pursuing it. You've got to put it to the side and pursue something else and hope you find it on the way.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. That's good. That that makes me think of um a book I read over the holidays that's really been uh significant for me over the past six, eight months, is called Deep Work by Cal Newport. And one of the big ideas is that deep work, which is intellectually challenging, all-consuming um you know, work that is advancing something that's important to you, is uh fulfilling and creative, and that's the way that we're gonna find satisfaction in our work. And so not aiming for I want to, you know, have joy in my work, but doing something productive that is requires the skills, abilities, and the talents that you have. Um the byproduct of that is satisfaction, is is joy in work. Uh so it's great. Well, Jesse, unfortunately, our time is up. It's been it's been so great to talk with you. Any any closing words uh for our listeners about leadership?
SPEAKER_00No, I would just say I really appreciate you having me on. Um, as far as leadership goes, I think it's a little bit like fulfillment. Like, I think sometimes people can focus so much on leadership.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00Uh like, how can I be a better leader? Um, sometimes I think it's good to put that aside and say, like, how can I love those people that I'm serving well? Um, and then it turns out you'll be a better leader.
SPEAKER_02Sure.
SPEAKER_00Um, if you're not always, you know, self-evaluating yourself whether I'm doing this thing, like, no, actually, am I loving these people well? Um, and the leadership tends to follow. Excellent.
SPEAKER_01Excellent final words. Well, listeners, redeeminternational.org is the organization. Encourage you to check it out, learn more about it. Um Jesse, thanks again for joining me. It's been great to hear your leadership journey and get practical takeaways. We can all incorporate leading our teams. Listeners, thank you for joining me on the Leader Fast Lane. If today's conversation sparked a moment of reflection or lane change in how you think about leadership, take a minute to share this episode with someone you lead or learn from. Join me next time. One of my guests will be Lawrence Skuvenek, president of Texas Tech University. You can find more episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Until next time, keep leading with purpose, integrity, and clarity, especially when it's hard.
.jpg)