{"id":40953,"date":"2025-03-03T18:00:41","date_gmt":"2025-03-04T02:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=40953"},"modified":"2025-03-05T09:26:13","modified_gmt":"2025-03-05T17:26:13","slug":"dad-am-i-childish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/dad-am-i-childish\/","title":{"rendered":"Dad, Am I Childish?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In this post I am going to look at Marcus Warner and Jim Wilder\u2019s book Rare Leadership <\/em>book and the importance of knowing and acting out your identity.[1]<\/strong><\/a><\/em>.\u00a0 Much of this post centers around a conversation with my youngest son, Josiah.<\/p>\n

Josiah came home from a meeting at church one evening while I was in the middle of reading Marcus Warner and Jim Wilder\u2019s book Rare Leadership. <\/em>\u00a0He walked into the kitchen and asked me, do you think I am childish?\u00a0 I immediately thought about emotional maturity.\u00a0 I asked him, in what aspect are we talking about being childish? I mentioned to him that it is important to be emotionally mature, to be able to handle his emotions without lashing out at people or becoming overly defensive (like when mom and dad get on him for not doing something). After that, I said, I felt it was important to still act like a child at times.\u00a0 I was thinking of Simon Walker\u2019s The Undefended Leader<\/em>, in which he discusses \u201cLeading as a Child.\u201d[2]<\/a>\u00a0 Walker discusses four ways that a child shows what undefended leadership looks like: Maintaining a light and playful touch, retaining the capacity to wonder, strengthening the bonds of trust, and learning to take responsibility.[3]<\/a> He ends his chapter saying \u201cMature childlikeness is a quality of playfulness, awareness and wonder, trust and taking responsibility that overturns society\u2019s conventional priorities.\u00a0 It replaces fear with confidence and offers others courageous generosity.\u201d[4]<\/a><\/p>\n

That conversation stuck with me as a continued to read Rare Leadership<\/em><\/p>\n

Walker and Wilder use Rare to not only mean something that is uncommon, but also as an acronym representing the four core habits of leadership:<\/p>\n

R \u2013 Remain Relational<\/strong>\u2014Common leaders tend to be problem focused. . . Consequently they value results and solutions more than relationships.<\/p>\n

A \u2013 Act like yourself<\/strong>\u2014As a leader, when I don\u2019t know how to act like myself, people don\u2019t know what to expect from me<\/p>\n

R \u2013 Return to joy<\/strong>\u2014Perhaps the single biggest factor in producing sustainable motivation is the leader\u2019s ability to return to joy from a variety of negative emotions.\u00a0 Leaders who can experience upsetting emotions such as shame, anger, fear, and despair\u2014yet possess the skills to recover quickly and help their people recover as well\u2014are rarely overwhelmed by the situations they face<\/p>\n

E- Endure Hardship Well<\/strong>\u2014In some ways this is the goal of the whole process.\u00a0 Leaders who learn to suffer well are truly rare[5]<\/a><\/p>\n

In the book Warner and Wilder suggest that our RARE Leadership skills are controlled by our Fast Track System.\u00a0 While the authors do not mention Daniel Kahneman, our fast track system is essentially System1 or fast thinking that \u201coperates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control.\u201d[6]<\/a><\/p>\n

Warner and Wilder say this about our fast track system, our \u201cFast Track system controls how we regulate our emotions, how we remember who we are, who our people are, and how it is to act like us (that is acting like the self God gave us). In other words, it is our identity center.[7]<\/a><\/p>\n

Based on this I asked my son a couple questions about his identity.<\/p>\n

Me:<\/strong> Josiah, what is your identity?<\/p>\n

Josiah<\/strong>: I\u2019m a Christian, A child of God, I am also energetic, light-hearted, outgoing, and try to be fun.<\/p>\n

Me<\/strong>: Josiah, what does it mean to act out your identity?<\/p>\n

Josiah<\/strong>: To be who you are, wherever you are, regardless of circumstances (in moderation).\u00a0 That means wherever I am at I try to be that fun outgoing Christian, Child of God, no matter who is around; easier said than done at times he added.<\/p>\n

One of the prototypes I am developing this semester centers around defining and outlining what an accountability relationship looks like for students who want to stop using pornography.\u00a0 Warner and Wilder discuss why accountability groups actually fail and that we should be creating identity groups to help people transform their lives.\u00a0 They write \u201cThe best coaches, pastors, teachers, managers, and leaders are the ones who instill a clear sense of identity into their group and help people understand \u2018this is who we are and this is how it is like us to act\u2019\u201d[8]<\/a><\/p>\n

I would encourage you to ask yourself the same question, based on your identity, what does it look like for you to act your identity?<\/p>\n

Knowing that it is important to return to joy when we experience negative emotions, I asked Josiah another question.<\/p>\n

Me<\/strong>: Josiah, how do you respond when you\u2019re upset or criticized?<\/p>\n

Josiah<\/strong>: I ultimately try my best to look past it, knowing that most of the time the person who says it has good intentions.\u00a0 I try to look past the hurt of the comments, quickly forgive, because I know they are not intentionally doing it to harm me. \u00a0It is harder if it is someone who is intentionally trying to harm me, it is harder to forgive and forget If it is family or friends, I consider the relationship as being more important than the wound.<\/p>\n

I believe Josiah is expressing what Warner and Wilder suggest when discussing returning to joy; \u00a0\u201cMature leaders (and parents) are able to quiet themselves and elevate the relationship above the problems.[9]<\/a>\u00a0 The relationships that Josiah has with friend and family are more important than anything said or done to him, and he finds absolute joy in those relationships. This reminds me of a helpful hint I was given years ago at a marriage retreat. The audience was told that when you and your spouse are having a disagreement, remember that he\/she is not your enemy. I have had to remind myself of that many times over the years because I tend to take things too personally. Once I calm down, I remember that my wife is only trying to get me to see something in a different way and is not attacking me.<\/p>\n

Is Josiah Childish?\u00a0 If being a fun, outgoing, energetic child of God (his identity) is being childish, then yes.\u00a0 But I believe he is becoming an emotionally mature, undefended young adult who knows the importance of maintaining joy in all his relationships.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Marcus Warner and Jim Wilder, Rare Leadership: 4 Uncommon Habits for increasing Trust, Joy, and Engagement in the People You Lead, (Chicago, IL: Moody, 2016).<\/em><\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Simon Walker<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Walker, 128-135.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Walker, 135.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a>[5] Warner and Wilder, 25-26<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Kahneman, Daniel, Thinking, Fast and Slow.<\/em> (Canada, Anchor Canada, 2013), 20.<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> Warner and Wilder, 27.<\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> Waner and Wilder, 46.<\/p>\n

[9]<\/a> Warner and Wilder, 162-163.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this post I am going to look at Marcus Warner and Jim Wilder\u2019s book Rare Leadership book and the importance of knowing and acting out your identity.[1].\u00a0 Much of this post centers around a conversation with my youngest son, Josiah. Josiah came home from a meeting at church one evening while I was in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":200,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3432],"class_list":["post-40953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-warner-wilder-dlgp03","cohort-dlgp03"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/200"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40953"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40953\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40955,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40953\/revisions\/40955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}