The Biblical Leadership Show
Inspiration. Wisdom. Leadership from a Higher Perspective.
Welcome to The Biblical Leadership Show, your go-to resource for discovering timeless truths from Scripture that empower leaders to inspire, influence, and impact their world. Hosted by Tim Lansford and Dr. Dean Posey, this podcast takes a deep dive into the Bible’s profound lessons on leadership, bringing fresh perspectives to timeless principles that resonate in today’s fast-paced, ever-changing world.
Each episode is packed with:
- Powerful Biblical Insights: We explore the leadership styles of biblical figures like Moses, Esther, David, and Jesus, extracting practical strategies for overcoming challenges, building trust, and creating lasting impact.
- Real-World Applications: Learn how to integrate biblical leadership principles into your workplace, team, or organization while navigating the complexities of modern leadership.
- Inspiration for Growth: Whether you’re a seasoned leader or just stepping into a leadership role, our content is designed to motivate and equip you to lead with integrity, compassion, and vision.
- Stories and Wisdom: Hear personal stories and guest interviews that highlight how biblical leadership transforms lives and businesses.
Leadership isn’t just about titles or power—it’s about serving others, making wise decisions, and leaving a legacy of faith and purpose. Through relatable discussions, actionable takeaways, and encouragement rooted in Scripture, The Biblical Leadership Show provides the tools and insights you need to lead boldly and faithfully in every sphere of life.
Whether you’re leading in the boardroom, the church, your community, or your home, this podcast is for you. Together, we’ll navigate the intersection of faith and leadership, bridging ancient wisdom with modern relevance.
New episodes drop every Tuesday. Subscribe now and lead with purpose, faith, and courage!
The Biblical Leadership Show
Christmas Eve Reflections: Family Traditions, Festive Humor, and Leadership Lessons from Joel and Obadiah
What if the holidays could be a time for deep connection and unexpected joy, even if you're feeling alone? Gather around our festive Christmas Eve edition of the Biblical Leadership Show, where we share heartwarming personal plans and cherished family traditions that bring the true spirit of Christmas to life. We delve into the bittersweet side of the holidays, recognizing those who might be feeling lonely or have lost loved ones, and offer a gentle nudge towards community and solace found in a Christmas Eve church service. We also highlight the heartwarming story of Dorothy, who selflessly worked so others could spend the holidays with family, reminding us of the profound gift in every single day.
Unwrap the gift of kindness with us as we explore how simple acts can spread Christmas cheer far and wide. From volunteering at a food shelf to sprinkling in light-hearted Christmas-themed dad jokes, we aim to uplift and inspire. This episode also introduces our fresh approach to discussing biblical leadership principles, with thematic explorations of books like Joel and Obadiah. Our goal is to ensure that the message of leadership and community resonates throughout this special season, so tune in for a blend of humor, insight, and holiday spirit.
Join us for a lively conversation about family traditions, leadership potential, and constructive feedback, peppered with some classic dad jokes guaranteed to bring a smile. We reminisce about favorite holiday moments, like playing poker with family and embarking on creative stocking hunts. As we look to the new year, we discuss strategies for maintaining productivity and team unity, emphasizing that new beginnings can happen anytime. Our New Year's Eve show promises more laughs and stories, so send us your best dad jokes and let's celebrate the season together with humor and joy. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from all of us at the Biblical Leadership Show!
uh-huh now yeah, uh-huh, yeah, come on, come on, welcome, welcome welcome to another exciting episode of the biblical leadership show.
Speaker 1:Now let's do it right. Welcome, welcome welcome christmas eve, dr p. How are you doing? Good tim, how you doing?
Speaker 2:brother, oh brother, I'm doing great, doing great, doing great christmas eve christmas eve. Yes, I know it's exciting, so right now we're probably uh, hanging out with the family, probably gonna do a christmas eve dinner, so we're we're recording this a couple days early so we are just you know in all fairness yeah, so, uh, so we're hanging out with some some things, because we always have the family over for Christmas Eve and then we do Christmas Day Christmas at our house.
Speaker 1:So I know a lot of people do the Christmas.
Speaker 2:Eve thing, but we're Christmas morning and so we're pretty excited, so I'll be hanging out with the family by right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so our daughter and her boyfriend are coming in from Maryland today, christmas Eve, so we're excited about that. And then our son and his family is coming out from California in a couple of days, and so we'll all be together for, you know, maybe two or three days, and then our daughter and her boyfriend have to go back to Maryland, and then our son and his family will stay on for a couple more days, and so we have about a week of family in. You know, christmas Day not everybody will be there, so don't actually know when we'll have Christmas meal. You know we'll have something, and so it'll be good. It'll be really, really good. That's awesome. It's always good to have something Right, and so it'll be good. It'll be really, really good, that's awesome.
Speaker 1:It's always good to have time with family.
Speaker 2:You know family it makes it. You know, and you see a lot of people that you haven't seen for a while. You know because you get together a couple times a year and, yeah, it's nice to have that time to spend with them, and you know and it's just such a special time of the year.
Speaker 1:It really is, and you know, but for some people this is not a good time you know they're lonely or they just lost a spouse or a significant other and it's a sad time and you know most people have been through that at least once in their life and it's not a good thing. So my encouragement is if you are by yourself on this Christmas Eve, look up online, go to a church service that has a Christmas Eve service.
Speaker 2:That's awesome.
Speaker 1:It could be six o'clock, it could be a midnight mass. Whatever it is, go and be around some other people and just celebrate the birth of Christ with other people. You might not know them, it might be hard for you, but just think about walking in and thinking how can I bless someone else this Christmas Eve and show up early.
Speaker 2:I always tell people show up early because that's when the talking, the getting to know the people around you and that's show up early. I always tell people show up early because that's when the the talking, the getting to know the people around you.
Speaker 2:You know, and that's that's such a benefit. You know a lot of people don't understand that showing up early you get to know a few people around you and it that's that's always a good thing, you know, especially on Christmas. And and do the. My wife lost her mom this year. I lost my dad right after Christmas last year, so it's always that time that you don't have your loved ones with you, so it's going to be an awkward time.
Speaker 2:It's different, Different yeah, I guess that's the key word, but it's one of those things that you cherish every day.
Speaker 1:You do cherish every day, because every breath that we breathe is a gift from God. Every day we live is a gift, and so this is a time of year to really celebrate that gift, with the birth of Christ that we celebrate tomorrow. And so just figure out, how can you celebrate that? You know, I had a—my very first church. I had a secretary by the name of Dorothy.
Speaker 2:Dorothy. Dorothy, was she from Kansas? Yes, she was.
Speaker 1:She was an operating room nurse and she came to the church on Thursday afternoon to print off the bulletin. That was her. She did it as a volunteer, okay, a volunteer Okay. But one thing amazing about Dorothy is she was single and so she worked every holiday. I mean, she worked Thanksgiving, she worked Christmas, just so that the people who had families could be with their families on the day.
Speaker 1:So what a gift that was for people, and so maybe this Christmas, the question would be what gift can I give to be a blessing to someone else? I might be by myself, but what can I do to be a blessing to someone else this Christmas Eve or this Christmas? What can I do? And if you're listening to us and you think you know I haven't really thought about that, and if you're listening to us and you think you know I haven't really thought about that, well, maybe you can look for some food shelf, somebody that's serving meals tomorrow, or what can you do to help someone and be a blessing to someone on this Christmas holiday, and you will get more out of that than you realize, and it might be tough to do that. You will get more out of that than you realize and it might be tough to do that. But I encourage people to step out and do something like that just to make someone else's Christmas just a little bit happier.
Speaker 2:Yeah 100%. Yeah, so we're doing our Christmas Eve show and I guess this is sort of a point where we talk about what we're talking about today, but then we have some exclamation about why we're doing sort of what we're doing, right.
Speaker 1:Right, does that sort of sound very generic and everything. That's a good setup for you, right? That's right.
Speaker 2:yeah, talk about what we're going to talk about, but don't talk about what we're talking about. No, because a lot of people don't understand. I'm just going to turn it it. Yeah, just let me just say it, Because we talked about this in show prep.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we as if you've been following the show. If you have not, if this is your first time to listen to us, we say welcome.
Speaker 2:Welcome To the biblical leadership. Yes.
Speaker 1:And so for the last couple months we've been going through books of the Bible and talking about leadership principles in every book. Well, we're going to continue to do that all the way through next August, but starting today we are not—we're working on the Old Testament. Last week we finished up the Song of Solomon, but from now to the end of the Old Testament we're not going to go in the order that is printed in the Bible. Okay, so we are trying to match a like two books together that we can talk about. They might have some of the same themes or something like that. So today we're going to talk about Joel and Obadiah and we'll get to all the books, but it's not going to be in the order, just because we feel it's better for our program planning to do it this way. And so just stick with us. We'll eventually get to all the books in the Old Testament and then we'll start in the New Testament sometime in the spring summer and we'll go through all those books, and so we'll still finish the end of August next year.
Speaker 1:And so today we're going to talk about Joel and Obadiah. They're small books. I mean, obadiah is the shortest book in the Old Testament. It just has one chapter and Joel. Very important book we read about that. It's quoted in the book of Acts, chapter 2, on the day of Pentecost. So it's got some very important, significant history and implications, I believe, for our lives. But instead of jumping right into the biblical story we need to have some type of dad joke. It is Christmas Eve, right?
Speaker 2:Are you waking me up? You're waking me up. So yeah, so he's. Yeah, I'm ready for some dad jokes. Yeah, you know, we gotta have the Christmas.
Speaker 1:I mean, christmas is like one time a year, so we can't do Christmas jokes. Next week.
Speaker 2:I know that's just not appropriate.
Speaker 1:Yes and we didn't do them last week. That was our anniversary week, right.
Speaker 2:That was yeah, right, and so we're just—. Didn't want to make Mama mad, you know, by doing jokes about anniversary, no, no no, no, never, never, never. But we are going to have some fun today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so here's the first one what do you call Santa when he stops moving? I think this is awesome.
Speaker 2:When he stops moving.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what do you call Santa when he stops moving?
Speaker 2:I don't know.
Speaker 1:Santa Paws, where's the?
Speaker 2:button. Yeah, that's a bad one. They're only going to get worse. I'm just saying you know, my favorite one when we did show prep was what do you call an elf who sings A rapper? My kids are going to love that one. They're going to love that one, I guarantee. Especially, wrapping presents, right? Yes?
Speaker 1:wrapping presents. Oh, it was so funny the other day. You know this whole thing about the elf on the shelf.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Okay, diane and I were driving I don't remember where it was, but we're driving and this car on the right is pulling us and is passing us on the right-hand side, and it was a car that had an actual trunk. So many now FUVs don't actually have a trunk. This car had a trunk and out of the trunk were two elf legs.
Speaker 2:Nice.
Speaker 1:It's not an elf on the shelf, it's an elf in the trunk.
Speaker 2:An elf in the trunk right. Oh, my goodness, that's the way it is.
Speaker 1:Oh my goodness, when are you? Okay.
Speaker 2:All right, give us one more and we'll talk why does Santa always land on the roof? I don't know.
Speaker 1:He's a lot easier going in the front door Because he likes to be on top of the world. That's another bad one. I can't reach the buttons.
Speaker 2:I need to have an extra stender to reach the buttons.
Speaker 1:Let's see no don't do that one Not that button.
Speaker 2:Oh, don't do that one. Yeah, not that button.
Speaker 1:Oh, I like this one. What do you get when you cross a snowman and a dog? I think this one's fun.
Speaker 2:I don't know, what do you get when you cross a snowman? You get frostbite. That's bad. What button is that one? I don't know. All right, that's great.
Speaker 1:Are we done with dad jokes? Well, for now. For now, let's give them what they're here for. Let's talk about the Bible for at least a minute.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean it is a great time we should have actually read Christmas stories and stuff, but maybe we'll think about that one. But let's start with what, joel? Is that what we're going to?
Speaker 1:start with. Well, we could do that, but let's just say what would be your favorite Christmas tradition, either from your history, from your growing up, or now.
Speaker 2:Boy, that's a great question. You know it was always about family and I know this is going to sound so crazy, but God bless my grandma because she's the one that did it. Our favorite and growing up, is we always would play Pocino it's like a poker like thing or we would play straight-up poker. My grandma wanted to play poker On Christmas. On Christmas and we always would play poker. We'd get the cards out, deal them. We'd always bring our nickels, dimes and quarters and we would play poker.
Speaker 1:With grandma.
Speaker 2:With grandma, my dad, my grandma, my sister, all the family, aunts and uncles.
Speaker 1:Like around the kitchen table.
Speaker 2:Yes, we would have it and that was our thing for christmas, that was the thing that it was just so fun. And, uh, she's the one taught me how to play poker right, I just she loved it. I let a whole family, we just we had so much fun.
Speaker 1:how did this like take all day, or is this after lunch, a couple hours after dinner, later on the night and stuff and my dad was a poker player, so he was teaching me a lot and it was just.
Speaker 2:It was our family tradition for years and years and years that's what we would do is play poker. So I don't know, maybe I need to fire up some of the poker when we're doing this tonight.
Speaker 1:Teach your son and daughter right, yeah, exactly right. So is that where you learned your poker face? Yeah, that's where I learned my poker face from grandma.
Speaker 2:Grandma had a good poker face right. So you didn't mess with grandma. So, and she had no quorum, she wouldn't give you your money back. She goes no, I won this fair and square.
Speaker 1:I won those three. She taught Lesson.
Speaker 2:No, your $100 is coming with me. You can win it back next Christmas. And yeah, but how about you? What are some favorite traditions? I'm assuming it wasn't poker.
Speaker 1:It wasn't poker, I think I shared this last year. But one of my favorite traditions of our family and we've done this for years and years is to do our stocking hunt.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1:We have this thing where it's like a scavenger hunt with your stocking, and so we write a letter from Santa to the person and then each, like the letter, has clue number one, and it's something either in the house or in the yard or something. And the older you are, the harder the clue is, and so there's always. We have probably 20 nativity sets in our house, so there's always a clue the reason for the season, I mean, that's always one of the clues.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Okay, but there could be. It could be like something in the pantry it could be. One of my favorite ones was I don't remember the clue, but I remember what I did with it. I wrote it and then I froze it in an ice cube. Okay, so I think it was our son had to get the ice cube, find the ice cube in the ice tray in the freezer, unthaw the ice cube and then read the clue okay, that's hilarious.
Speaker 1:Yes, and so, okay, this has really happened. So years ago, you know, and because our kids get into this and now we have grandkids and so they get into it too, okay, so years ago there was a song and it was very popular in the 70s called Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road.
Speaker 2:okay, that was the name of the song okay, Nice.
Speaker 1:So I used to sing that just kind of as a joke. Well, our son got a copy of that song and put it in the CD player, okay. So the clue was just the arrow, just the diamond shape for the press the button. That was the clue. And I'm thinking what in the world is that, you know? And I finally figured it out. Oh, that's the play button on the CD player. So I played it and the song was queued up for the dead skunk in the middle of the road.
Speaker 2:That's hilarious.
Speaker 1:So my clue was duct taped to the middle of the road, out in the street in front of the house. There we go.
Speaker 2:I just had to check it out, right, that's hilarious. I've never heard this song. Oh, it's's a great song I'm not playing the whole thing. I'm gonna have to listen to that middle of that one. My kids will probably love that one.
Speaker 1:So, anyway, that was so our. And the other day there was an Amazon delivery and I went out there. This was over the weekend and it was pouring down rain and it reminded me one year. One of the clues was something in the mailbox. I don't remember what the clue was, but the clue. The next clue was in the mailbox, and it was pouring down rain on Christmas Day and our son, good sport that he is, went out there with an umbrella, got soaking wet, got the clue out of the mailbox. So normally, with the adults in the family, there are six clues and the last clue leads you to your stocking. Okay, and so that's kind of what we do, and it literally with all the kids and the adults.
Speaker 1:It literally takes us a whole day or two days to do the stocking hunt. So that's a big part of our tradition.
Speaker 2:Nice. What's the reward with the stocking? You've got like a pair of socks in there.
Speaker 1:There's always an orange or an apple and some gum. Now there might be a little, you know, like a stocking stuffer too. It could be something else, like a little game or something, but the whole joy is the journey.
Speaker 1:Right Is the journey, and you know, because Diana and I write most of the clues for the kids and the grandkids. The problem is our kids write the clues for us. So what's interesting is you know the answer to the clue because you've hit them. You've hit all the clues and sometime they're on the Christmas tree, on one of the ornaments or something like that, you know, and people could be looking right at the clue. They could be looking right at it and they don't see it. And you're thinking why don't they see that? Well then it's your turn and you're looking right at the clue and you don't see it either so it's just fun.
Speaker 2:I remember you telling us this and now that we have a couple of days, I was right up on a show last year. I didn't have time to do this. I might have to implement this and see if I can do that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just start out with a couple of clues. Your kids are smart, they'll figure it out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, they would love that. I love scavenger hunt. Well, you know, we didn't have the skunk got run over you know the.
Speaker 1:Thing.
Speaker 2:But we always did, you know.
Speaker 1:Bye, reindeer, that was one of our favorites. Was that after the poker game?
Speaker 2:Yeah, sometimes we always break out a big dance party at our Christmases. It was crazy.
Speaker 1:So what's your favorite Christmas food Like for dinner? What's your?
Speaker 2:favorite. You know, I don't know, I know that you know.
Speaker 1:You have turkey ham duck. What do you normally have?
Speaker 2:We usually have hams, a lot turkeys and stuff. You know, it depends on what we do on Thanksgiving. Sort of influences what we do on. You know, the Christmas this year again we're going to do sort of a combination, I think, because we went out of town for Thanksgiving. So I'll probably do some of the traditional stuff turkey and hams but I think my wife's planning on doing some of the Italian stuff too.
Speaker 1:So we're going to do sort of a combination. And what time is dinner? Yeah, exactly right.
Speaker 2:Come on over, Dr B. Come on, come on, come on.
Speaker 1:I'm just two more people. No, you're welcome.
Speaker 2:You know you're welcome anytime in my house, that's true, but yeah, it's one of those things that I'm looking forward to. It's always a good time.
Speaker 1:That's always a good time, yeah, for sure, One of my favorite foods. We'll normally have ham, and then my wife makes this amazing dish called pineapple au gratin. It's just it's impressive, like pineapple and cheese, and it's just really, really good. It goes with ham, and then we have cold sweet potatoes. Now, that sounds disgusting for some people.
Speaker 2:It's really good. It's really good.
Speaker 1:But enough of that for Christmas. We've got to get to at least the Bible a little bit.
Speaker 2:We've got to talk a little bit about it. Let's talk about this book.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about Joel, Joel, right yeah.
Speaker 2:Joel, it's the shortest book in the Old Testament. No, that's Obadiah. Oh, is it Obadiah? Yeah?
Speaker 1:Joel is a couple of chapters long. It is quoted in Acts, chapter 2. Joel 2.28 is quoted on the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit was poured out onto the disciples. It talks about that and one of the things that we can learn from that. It talks about young men and women see visions. Older men and women have dreams, and so here's the thing about leadership from that verse. Okay, Joel 2.28. Don't discount someone because of their age. Some of your great leaders might be some of the youngest people on your staff.
Speaker 2:You know, if you look back in business, a lot of our very famous people didn't even start their leadership journey until their 50s plus, right? And it's interesting on some of the people you look at, right. So don't discount that by no means.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so one of the things that I've learned in my work as a pastor is someone's chronological age does not necessarily represent their spiritual maturity, right, right. Same is true with their leadership skill. Someone's chronological age doesn't necessarily tell you their leadership ability or their leadership desire. Tell you their leadership ability or their leadership desire. Some of your younger staff members employees, co-workers, whatever might have some great leadership potential, and so I think, as a leader, our job is to nurture that, discover that they might not be great at casting vision, but you know what they're great at leading that team, to do the research for that. And so I'm going to put them in charge of that team and see how they do. And so part of the leader's job is to think, okay, where are my leaders going to come from?
Speaker 1:And sometimes we make the mistake of overlooking some of our young staff members or young employees, and I think that's a mistake. And part of the job, I think, is to nurture those young people on our staff. They might not be young in age, they just might be young to the organization. They might only been there one or two years, but they just got out of the military after serving 20 years and they were in charge of their unit or whatever. They have great leadership potential, but they haven't been with us very long. You know, it's like hmm, that might be a really good person to get you know to do this, and so I think we can learn that from Joel here, chapter 2, verse 28. It's a great leadership principle.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean that's what you're trying to do. Is you're trying to inspire others to you know? Yeah, I mean that's what you're trying to do. Is you're trying to inspire others to you know, dream big, to you know, to look to a brighter future, you know, and that's, I think that's what that verse means to me as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so another thing about Joel. So if we read the book of Joel, it's not very long, you can probably read it in, you know, about 10, 15 minutes. It's important, like I said last time, to understand some of the history behind it. What's the purpose of the book? He was a prophet, but one of the things he did is he focused on the vision and he called his people to action. And so right now we're ending the year.
Speaker 1:The question is what are you going to do as a leader, starting in January, to call your people to action, to focus on your vision, to focus on your mission? What are you going to do with your words? What are you going to do with your motivation? What are you going to do with your incentives? What are you going to do to call your people to action? And is it going to be the same action that they've been doing for the last 10 years and they're just tired of it? Or is there a new spin you're going to put in? You know on that. So that's just a good time to process that, if you haven't already.
Speaker 1:I don't think it's too late, you know, because people are in the mindset of it's the holiday season. Maybe I can take a break and maybe you're off. Maybe you're off this week, next week, but you come back in January and you're thinking, okay, we've got to really focus on, we're going to make our first quarter really really good. What are you going to do to motivate your people and to call them to action?
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And Joel was good at that. He was calling the nation to action, and so that's a great lesson that we can learn from the book of Joel.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's one of those things I had noted on mine Joel, 2-1, blow the trumpet in Zion, sound the alarm on my holy hill. It talks about you know, knowing when urgency is necessary, right, Knowing when to light a fire under your team to get it done. You know, a lot of times at this point in this time of the season it's actually tough because everybody starts relaxing. Or even the month of December in general is tough for corporations. A lot, because everybody's like, oh, we'll just wait until the next year, right, We'll kick it off good at the beginning of the year. Well, I mean, you can kick off a new beginning. You don't have to set New Year's resolutions. New Year's resolutions can be set in June can be set in December.
Speaker 2:I mean, you don't have to wait to decide to get in shape on January 1st, start December 1st, you know, and and it's always this tough time there to figure out how to motivate people to continue through the holiday season. You want them to have fun, you want them to relax, you want to enjoy the team. This is a lot of team building at this point you know of the year, but at the same time, you still have business, we still have bills to pay, we still have things that have to be accomplished. I'm still trying to get projects done, you know, by the end of the year, just because we'd like to get them wrapped up beginning of the year, first year. So we're set for our busy times, you know, coming up. So correct.
Speaker 1:And so, in addition to that, to you know, call the people to action and urgency and those kind of things. One of the things that Joe was attempting to do in his writing in his book was to unify the community, unify the nation, and so the question is, how are you going to unify your people around your mission, your vision? We've talked about this a lot is the communication words, emails, personal conversations with people. So many times now communication is done only through email or only through text. It's that maybe, as a leader, one of the things you can do to begin to unify your team is to spend time individually with each person you know, and it might not be very long. It might be 15 minutes once a month, might be 15 minutes once a week, you know. Whatever it may be for you.
Speaker 1:But unifying the people around that and seeing where people are are they buying into that? Do they understand what it is we got to do this quarter are. Are they buying into that? Do they understand what it is we got to do this quarter? You know sales are down or our supply chain is slow or whatever is starting. How can we unify our people around our mission and purpose vision for this next year. How can we?
Speaker 1:do that, and I think part of that is just building relationships from the very beginning. It might be a New Year's resolution that you're going to spend a certain amount of time with the top 10 people of your organization every month, or do two a week. Spend 30 minutes with two people every week, and that will make huge dividends for the long run.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, I mean you have to take time. You know you have to. Everybody knows their team. You know whether you have two people working for you or 200, you know, at some point you have to develop a plan. You got to execute your plan over the course of the year and prioritize. If you have a plan, eventually you're going to have a strong team. But you can't just let it run itself. You have to be an active leader to be able to really make it happen. One more and then we'll get into Obadiah. I know you weren't going to get into this, but I think it's such a powerful thing when they talk about the words. I will repay you for the years. The locusts of Eden and we talked about a little bit before the show I just think that's a strong thing. It's a strong statement, you know.
Speaker 1:It's a strong statement that we read there in the book and I've used it when I've prayed for people. I don't know if you can do that in your organization or whatever you're leading, but it's a powerful prayer of hope and encouraging people to focus on what's coming instead of just what happened.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:We all go through difficult times and the question is where's our focus in the midst of that? Yeah, question is, where's our focus in the midst of that? And it's a time to walk with somebody during a difficult time and just keep praying for them or encouraging them. Maybe, if someone's going through a difficult time on your team, you need to spend a little bit more time with them. You know, they might just kind of be a loner right now. Maybe they need some extra attention. And maybe you're not going to pray for them out loud, but you can pray for them silently. And there in Joel 2.25, about I will repay you for the years of locusts have eaten what a great prayer for God's blessing in their life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I even thought about it from a corporate standpoint. You know, maybe you had a bad year. You know a lot of people morale's down, sales were bad. You know we're coming off an election year. Election years are most generally a lot of times flat. Going into that because they're for sure people don't like change. They don't know where the economy is going, where who's going to be the next leader and, and you know this, this one sort of struck me as a very powerful thing, not only for personal but for maybe corporate, to see where you maybe go, and I thought that was pretty strong. So Obadiah, obadiah.
Speaker 1:Shortest Now, shortest, shortest book in the Old Testament. Now I got my notes in the right spot. Yeah, shortest book in the Old Testament. And I'll just hit on one thing. Obadiah wrote this. We don't know exactly when it was written, but we do know that when it was written, it was the people of Israel, the Jewish people, were suffering greatly at the hands of their enemies.
Speaker 2:I got the date. It was written.
Speaker 1:Do you need that? Yeah, just throw it out.
Speaker 2:All right, go ahead.
Speaker 1:I don't want to brag and so it was a difficult time for the country, yeah, and Obadiah was encouraging people to be faithful even in the midst of a difficult time. So maybe you know year 2024 was not great for you, right, and you know you're going into because you had a slump in sales or you lost some key people or you had to downsize or something. I think the leader's job not to be Pollyannish about it, but you want to manage and lead faithfully under extreme conditions, and that's what Obadiah was trying to do is trying to cast a vision and give people a positive outlook. In the very uncomfortable, difficult circumstances. He was saying, no, there's still hope, there's still. You know, we've got a future. We just have to focus on the right thing. And for him that was God, and for you it's like okay, what are you going to focus on this year if this last year was not as great as you wanted it to be?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the one that stood out to me was Obadiah 1-12. It says you should not gloat over your brother in the day of his misfortune, and one of those things it talks about. You know, words of mockery or somebody's hardship shows a lack of compassion or integrity, and I think that's a big time thing. Lesson on leadership you know whether it's your competitor. You know whether it's somebody that works for you. You know wherever it is. You know don't don't talk bad about something. You know. And because you know we've we've all been through things. Every person has been in business, has had ups and downs. I don't care if you're talking about Apple and all the. We all have ups and downs and we've all had that. And be compassionate and have that integrity, just to be positive, as you just said.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Speak in that positive tone.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we're going to finish up. Yeah, so we're going to finish up. This is number three of things that we started two weeks ago about this magazine article that I read from Forbes magazine in June of this year, and so this is a list of what leaders want from the people they lead. Two weeks ago, we talked about accountability for your mistakes. Last week, we talked about being proactive in your follow-up. Today, we want to talk about the ability to receive constructive feedback.
Speaker 2:And some people say constructive criticism. But the PC term now is constructive feedback and it's important you have to give it, so many people want different results out of their employees, but they aren't willing to give honest feedback to make them better.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so the question is if you have an evaluation and you have something that might not be as positive, are you receiving that with bitterness? Are you receiving that as? Do you have time to talk about it? Okay, what do you see me doing better? How can I improve this area of your life? It might not be right then, but maybe in the next week or two weeks, you can set up a time with the person that evaluated you. Now here's the thing about giving evaluations when you give an evaluation, the people that you are evaluating should know exactly how they're being evaluated. There should not be any surprises as to oh, I didn't know I was being evaluated by that. On that, okay, they should know well in advance. And when I did evaluations, I would have people fill out an evaluation of themselves and I would fill out one, and then we'd talk about them together. That's how I did it. So, however you do evaluations, it's important to give constructive feedback, because you want your people to be the best they can be.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 100%.
Speaker 1:Yeah 100%.
Speaker 2:Well, I think that's good for a Christmas show.
Speaker 1:It is. We've got to have a couple more dad jokes. We do. And I've got one, that I think yeah, I've got one, dad jokes we do and I've got, I've got one that I think, yeah, I've got one. Well, I've got a couple, but I have one that I really like okay, which one is that?
Speaker 2:why was the snowman looking through the carrots? Oh no yes, I don't even want to know, oh yeah what why?
Speaker 1:he was picking his nose, he was your kids are going to love that one too right, no oh. Okay.
Speaker 2:What else you got? You got any good ones.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what do you call a cat on Christmas?
Speaker 2:A cat? Oh, we had the dog one earlier it was frostbite.
Speaker 1:What do you call a cat on Christmas?
Speaker 2:I don't know what do we call a cat Santa? Claus, yeah, no, no, no. I'm sorry, I was going to give you the rim shot on that one. I like this one even better.
Speaker 1:What do you call an obnoxious reindeer?
Speaker 2:I know this one and I like it too, I like it. Go ahead, rude off, rude off. R-u-d-e. Yeah, rudolph, rudolph, r-u-d-e. Yeah, rudolph, and you know, I'll let you. You know, why did the genderman go to therapy?
Speaker 1:Tell me.
Speaker 2:He was feeling crummy.
Speaker 1:Oh, maybe we'll just end with that, yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean we do have, why the reindeer hang on their Christmas trees? The reindeer hang on their christmas trees what ornaments, ornaments, oh no, no, yeah, that's got my buttons off.
Speaker 1:Yeah, really, hey, okay well yes hey, merry christmas.
Speaker 2:Christmas. We do wish you a Merry Christmas, you know, and uh, uh, you know, have a great one, you know and tell them about next week. Oh, next week, next week Christmas Eve.
Speaker 1:No, New Year's Eve. I mean, yeah, hold on.
Speaker 2:New Year's Eve show. Uh, we're going to have some fun, aren't we?
Speaker 1:We're going to have a lot of fun. We're going to uh, maybe the most we're going to have some fun, aren't we? We're going to have a lot of fun. Maybe the most fun we're going to have all week.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:At least in the studio.
Speaker 2:Yeah, depending on what you do for New Year's.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's exactly right.
Speaker 2:We're going to do a little fun show. We're going to have a lot of dad jokes. We're going to have a lot of stories. Are we going to have a lot of stories? Are we going to talk a lot of the Bible? I don't know that we will. I don't know if we're going to do Bible stuff we don't but we're going to have some fun. We're going to have a lot of good dad jokes. We need your dad jokes. We will be back in studio and we're going to be recording, so send us your dad jokes.
Speaker 2:Yes please, Because we need it for our New Year's Eve show. I mean we're going to have some fun there.
Speaker 1:Send us more than one. Yes, send us more than one, and if you think they're bad, that's the ones we want. That's the ones we want.
Speaker 2:I mean we want the groaners. You know those are the good ones for us. But yeah, we're going to have a fun show. You know if you want to listen to a fun and have that and uh yeah that's what it is. Come hang out with us New Year's Eve.
Speaker 1:Yes, all right.
Speaker 2:So, uh, anyway, all that is being said, merry Christmas. Dr Posey you know, to you and your family, and we wish everybody out there listening. We thank you for being listeners and uh we uh want to wish you the best. Uh reach out to us if you have anything that you'd like to discuss, but other than that you can take us out with. Make it a great day, and Merry Christmas.
