(00:02) Stephanie Warner: Welcome to Season 4, episode 56. Hello, Father.
(00:07) Marcus Warner: Hello, Daughter. You’re in a different place today. Yes.
(00:09) Stephanie Warner: I am. We were having a wee bit of interweb internet trouble at the office, so here I am. But also we are back from an epic event at Hope Together. And if you were there, drop us a comment about your favorite part. We can’t quite give our commentary yet because we are time travelers and have had to pre-record this, so I trust it was epic. I know how much we are looking forward to it. Very, very excited.
So, welcome, welcome into the Rare Leadership Series. The goal of this series is to equip you to live and lead with more emotional intelligence and resilience on your walk with God. And you can check out the free discussion guide for this book in the description links. Father, I have been really enjoying going through this topic with you. And thank you. Thank you for writing this book. We are entering into chapter six. This is actually kind of the breaking point. That sounds bad. This is…
(01:20) Marcus Warner: Yeah. This is where, yeah, this is where the book falls apart.
(01:27) Stephanie Warner: This, there’s literally a divider in the book, a part one, part two sort of situation. And so with chapter six, we’re turning into sort of the second half of the book. So before we get into the chapter itself, do you want to just remind us like what was kind of part one, and what is part two, what was your thought behind this?
(01:47) Marcus Warner: Sure. It’s basically theory and practice. It’s like the part one is the theory behind everything, and kind of trying to create a new paradigm, and laying out what that paradigm is, and how it works. And then part two is really diving into the practice of, all right, so if I buy into the idea of your paradigm about maturity and belonging and identity and the need for focus on culture and all that. How do I do that? How do I develop these habits and how do I put this into practice? So we’re in the practical part now.
(02:22) Stephanie Warner: Yeah, practice. So with that, chapter six is called: “Where You Start: Imitation, Identity and Intimacy.” So I’ll say the subtitle is going to be “Building This Framework That You Use for the Rest of the Book” and thinking through exercises and putting these practical things into context. So for this chapter, we’re going to go into okay, what do we mean by imitation, identity, and intimacy? Anything you want to say about that before we dig into point one of imitation?
(02:50) Marcus Warner: You know, I think that the key thing here is that, we’re talking about two different systems in the brain, right? Fast track and slow track. How you train the fast track is different than how you train the slow track. So you train the slow track with information and repetition and, you know, knowledge and content and accountability and tasks and those kind of the things we’re used to thinking of as, this is how you do training.
When you’re training the fast track though, you’re trying to train the part of your brain that’s kind of intuitive. And that shows up faster than you could think about it. So habits become extremely important on the fast track part of the brain. And so the things we’re focusing on here have to do with, like, well, what goes into training the fast track? I kind of know what goes into training the slow track. Like, if I want to learn piano, I got to do skills, I got to have some accountability and some discipline and things. You know, what is it that goes into training the fast track?
And that’s where these three I’s come in. And, you know, we start with imitation. And I actually like to flip it and go imitation, intimacy and then identity group is the thing that binds those two together. But I don’t think I wrote it that way in the book. So I’ve had more time to think about it since then.
(03:58) Stephanie Warner: Yeah, we’re a decade in. So exciting. Amazing. Alright, so yes, this is where we’re getting into the hope, you know, when we were originally talking about the fast track and the slow track, you know, there was kind of this question of, well, if my slow track can’t see what my fast track is doing, then how on earth am I supposed to help it get better? And so this is where we’re getting into more and more of those answers of like, hey, these are things that are going to help shape the fast track. So let’s get into imitation.
(04:34) Marcus Warner: Yeah, so imitation, the easiest way I know to dive into this is like there’s something in your brain called mirror neurons, right? And mirror neurons don’t learn through words, they learn by watching, and they learn by imitating. So the idea of imitating as a skill comes from this idea that there are mirror neurons that are constantly watching what’s going on and they’re learning from it.
And so, like as a pre-verbal toddler, for example, I’m watching the world around me and I’m learning tons just from what I’m seeing, even though I can’t put that into words. There’s a part of my brain that’s absorbing it and categorizing it, going, that’s how you handle it. And so what happens for a lot of us, if we get bad models, our mirror neurons are learning, so when somebody gets angry, this is how you respond. When somebody is crying, this is how you respond.
And we wouldn’t know to put it into a principle or put it into words, but something internally has processed that. Oh, this is how you do it. So if I’ve developed, say, bad habits about how you respond to anger, or bad habits about what to do when you’re afraid, because that’s what I saw modeled, then I’ve got to unlearn those habits. So the best way to end a bad habit is to build a new one.
And so it’s hard to just say, I’m going to stop doing that. I’m going to stop doing that. You have to actually build a new habit. And so in the process of doing that, what you’re looking for are models of people who handle anger differently than the way that you saw it handled growing up. Are you looking for people who have a completely different approach to it?
I remember, you know, for example, growing up, when I would visit friends’ homes and just seeing that there were different ways to do dinner than we did it in our house. I was like, what is this? Because we always did dinner the same way in our family. You know, we gathered at the table. We usually had a devotional thing afterwards, everybody had a job after, and so on. And it was, you know, it was the way I expected. And I remember the first time I went to somebody’s house and they all sat around and watched TV while they ate. And I’m like, I did not know that was possible. You know, it was, I didn’t know that was a thing people did.
(06:49) Marcus Warner: And I also remember going to another family where they just talked over each other constantly because everybody was like, nobody could get in a word if you didn’t talk over to the person next to you, and they were just, and I’m like, wow, I’ve never seen a conversation like this.
So my mirror neurons are going, I didn’t know that was even a possibility to to handle something like that. So I’m evaluating, I’m seeing things, and sometimes I go, that’s good, and sometimes I’m going, that’s bad, and sometimes I’m going, oh well, that is an option, and I didn’t know that was an option.
So I’m just watching and learning and seeing that, and so what we’re after is people who handle life or elements of life better than we do. So I’m looking like, for example, if I struggle with anger, like when somebody gets angry in the room, maybe I disappear and I turn into a wallflower, and I see somebody who actually remains relational and acts like themselves, even when there’s anger in the room.
And I’ve never seen that modeled anywhere. I’m going, wow, I didn’t even know that was possible. There’s a part of my brain that has to see it. And so that’s what we’re talking about here in terms of imitation, is paying attention to people who have some of these skills that maybe we missed out on, or maybe that we even learned bad habits about, and being intentional about noticing and imitating some of what we’re seeing in them.
(08:05) Stephanie Warner: Yeah, that’s really good. Can you give an example or maybe things to look for in terms of leadership context?
(08:15) Marcus Warner: Sure. So for example, you’re in some leadership settings, what you’re doing is you’re watching how poorly people handle emotions. It’s like you can be in a room and you see how certain people make it toxic and some people enter, you know, inject shame, or they kind of shut people down, or they talk over people in a way that, you know, and then you see other people who handle it with maturity, and you see the relational skill and you see somebody handle it in a way where everybody leaves feeling like they were seen and heard.
And you’re like, oh okay, I see the difference now. And I want to embrace and imitate that. And I don’t want to imitate this other thing over here. So for me, you know, I was in a setting not too long ago, where I was noticing that somebody just didn’t like something someone said, and sort of took over the whole conversation. And I had seen that happen enough times, I had a mental image in my mind of, well, how can you interject and redirect this thing in a way where it gets back where it needs to be without making anybody feel like they are the bad guy?
And that’s a skill you kind of got to develop along the way. So having seen a lot of different things, you can kind of help to redirect some things softly. And I remember being on the elder board at my church, and one of the fellow elders said one time, he says, I love being in meetings with you, because I feel like I learned something about how to handle people’s upset emotions every time I’m with you. Cause he’s like, you just handle things differently than I’m used to seeing them handled. And like that was one of the best compliments I ever got, because I was like, that’s really encouraging, you know, that somebody I respect was actually noticing. But that’s what happens is, your mind goes, I see how that person’s handling it. Maybe I should try handling it that way too.
(10:21) Stephanie Warner: Yeah. Or if there’s, you know, sometimes you get the, wow, I didn’t know you could have dinner like that, you know. And sometimes there’s a noticing of what is different about you. Like there’s something different and then you start paying attention, like, okay, how are they handling this? How are, oh, I see, you know, and so sometimes you have to be a little bit more sleuthy with it, but it’s worthwhile.
(10:41) Marcus Warner: That’s true. Yeah. But sometimes, you know, you look at it and you go, well, they can do it and I can’t. So I’m just going to turn everybody over to them. But what we’re talking about here is, no, this is an opportunity to grow and you’re not going to be perfect at it, but let’s start.
And the other way that we imitate is when we can’t see people do it, we’re listening to their stories. And we’re listening to them tell a story of, I remember when I faced something like this and kind of this is how we walked through it, and you get a mental picture in your mind.
You can even do this with TV shows and movies to some extent, you know, seeing, right? You see somebody and you’re going, wow, I didn’t know you could handle a situation that way. That looks, you know, like maybe that would be a good way to do it. We talk all the time, you know, you’ll point out, you’d love to point out when we’re watching something like, look, that was person was being a rare leader.
(11:28) Stephanie Warner: I know it’s like, you should clip that if you ever need something for real leadership or I’ve got books. I’m like, you need to read this, the character’s a great leader. But yes. Amazing. Yeah.
(11:36) Marcus Warner: Exactly. But all that goes into imitation, whether you’re reading about it, whether you’re listening to stories, whether you’re watching it, whether you’re in person, your mind is coming up with new ways of doing things by watching and hearing what other people do. That’s imitation. That’s the first one.
(11:52) Stephanie Warner: Awesome. Yes. That’s good. And then I was going to say second one is intimacy, but you wanted to flip it. So you want to go to identity group? It is next? Okay.
(12:01) Marcus Warner: No, intimacy is next. And maybe I didn’t need to flip it. So yeah, intimacy in this case is all about intimacy with God. And we’re talking about praying about everything. And I remember Dr. Wilder giving a talk one time. I think he said this, you know, many times, but I remember the first time he said it. He had read through the New Testament and he was in those teenage years, college years, where he was like trying to find his own faith and leave off what was his parents’ faith and embracing what was his.
And he said he came to the conclusion that there were three main lessons in the New Testament. And one was don’t be afraid of anything. Never be afraid. Two is love deeply. And three is talk to God about everything. And pretty much boiled the whole thing down there. It’s like do nothing out of fear, do everything out of a deep love, an authentic love, and talk to God about everything.
And that’s kind of what we’re getting at here is that I need to practice those things, catch myself living out of fear so that I can begin to replace those fear motivations with different things. I need to love deeply, which is a little bit risky, you know, but I’m like I’m willing to put myself out there for the good of somebody else.
But what we’re talking about here particularly is this talking to God about everything. And that gets into what has been called practicing the presence of God. But it’s also making sure that we engage in prayer and in conversational prayer, and I think that part of practicing the presence of God is just noticing things going on in the world. I love how Henry Blackaby put it in his book, Experiencing God. It’s like, notice where God is at work and join him there.
Well, the first part of that is God may not tell you where he’s at work. Part of it is just noticing. I see God is active here and God is drawing my attention to that. So sometimes that’s about, you know, open doors and closed doors, but sometimes it’s other things, but it’s part of building intimacy with God is, just noticing what he’s up to in the room you’re in. Noticing what he’s up to with the people you’re with, what he’s up to in different situations.
(14:32) Marcus Warner: And then it’s talking to him about it, being conversational with God. It doesn’t always have to be a formal journal, you know, experience. Journaling is just a good way to practice that skill and develop it. But that’s what we’re talking about with intimacy. If I want to grow my maturity, I’m going to have to grow my intimacy with God, because all these things that are currently overwhelming me, I’ve got to learn how to talk to God about them, so that I’m not overcome by the fears, and I’m still able to live out of a deep place of love.
(15:01) Stephanie Warner: Yeah. Well, and some practical things to do that, you know, you walk through a couple of things in the chapter, but I just have to intro kind of how you intro it or you included in the book a quote from Tozer. I won’t read the whole thing, but it was very apt, you know, he prays, “Lord, teach me to listen. The times are noisy and my ears are weary with the thousand raucous sounds which continuously assault them.”
Like we expect God to just, you know, say, you know, hey, so and so, listen to me and then we can say, here I am. But we have to actually, you know, break through the distractions and break through, you know, and cultivate the skills of listening and noticing and setting aside times.
So, you know, three of the things, oh no, I wrote down five. I had to scroll. Five things that I wrote out from the chapter, you talk about quiet, you know, so kind of getting rid of the distractions. You talk about scripture reading. You talk about appreciation. And then yeah, the writing, like the two notebook approach, which we’ve talked about before. I’ll try to remember to link back to some of those episodes we did earlier this year for people about listening prayer. and then sharing with others. So anything you want to say about those practical steps.
(16:24) Marcus Warner: Yeah, you know what gets me the most about Tozier’s quote is he wrote that in, what the thirties or the forties, or something like it was, and like if the the world was loud and raucous and it was hard to find quiet then, you can imagine now in the internet age where TV’s in every room and music playing and all the rest of it, quiet is not easy. And it does take some skill. And what I learned along the way was that it has to be practiced.
And so sometimes we think, quiet, we think, I need to become a monk, but that’s not what we’re talking about here. Quiet means can you quiet yourself for five minutes, and take a deep breath and try to quiet your mind? And then when it does settle on things, it’s settling on things that you appreciate. And then go into your scripture. And I find that if I can just quiet my mind for five minutes and I can practice appreciation, you know, for two or three minutes in that time, then I turn to the scripture and I turn to my prayer life.
It’s a very different experience than when I’m just rushing and rushing. Now there’s a time for that. Sometimes, you know, my prayers, God, just as I am, I’m coming because I need your help now. and there’s a place for that. But when we are really looking to connect and quiet and hear his voice, then I just want to kind of paint that picture for people. Like it’s not like you’ve got to go off into solitude for 48 hours or something like that. We’re talking about, can you quiet your mind for five minutes? Can you practice appreciation for three to five minutes? And then it helps you with focus and it helps you with hearing.
(18:22) Stephanie Warner: Yeah. And for the daily things. I think there is something to be said for retreats, spiritual retreats or doing things where you’re cleansing the palate and really digging deep and doing, you know, getting that extended quiet times. But every time you need to be quiet doesn’t need to be a whole big chunk, you know. We talk about this in depth too, but anyway.
(18:42) Marcus Warner: Yeah. No, you’re right. There’s definitely a place for those kinds of retreats, you know, where like Jesus going off to the mountains by himself to pray. There’s a time and a place for just getting away from everything for a few days. But I’m saying on a regular basis, you don’t have to, that’s not what they were actually talking about.
(19:04) Stephanie Warner: Okay. And man, there’s so much more we could dig into for this. But this is in the context of leadership. So would you tie this in more on how this can help you be a better leader?
(19:16) Marcus Warner: Well, yeah, let me give you an example from when I was a pastor. I remember I was just kind of overwhelmed with something. I’m sitting in my office and I was just learning about, you know, listening prayer and quieting and stuff like that.
But the way this started is, I was walking down the hall to my office and I had this image in my head, and it was of a big boulder with a circle of, you know, worn dirt path around it in a perfect circle around this big boulder. And it didn’t really mean much to me. I was just sort of walking back to my office and I was distracted with other things. But when I got there, and I quieted a little bit, that picture didn’t go away. And I went, oh, well maybe this is from God.
And so I quieted and I focused in on it a little bit, and as I did, it felt like Jesus was sitting on top of the boulder and there was this little boy running on that path in a circle. And the little boy would look up at Jesus and kind of, as just to say, are you happy with me? Am I doing good? You know, like little kids do when they’re out on the playground, like, look, did I do good on the swing?
And kind of intuitively I just knew that, sort of the way I was pastoring at the moment, that I was running around in circles as a pastor, trying to get everything done. And Jesus was saying, you know, there’s another way to do this, right? And that is where we connect and we do this together. And you don’t just do it for me. And it was him specifically saying, intimacy is lacking in your leadership. And you need to push into that a little bit more.
And so I just stopped everything and took a half an hour. And it’s like, all right, I just need to connect with you right now, and not worry about what that leads to, and if that gives me clarity on anything, and just actually connect with you for the sake of connecting with you. Cause one of the things I found in leadership was that I was often trying to connect with God to get something out of that connection.
(21:32) Marcus Warner: I was trying to connect so that I would get greater peace about something or so that I could get guidance on something or so I could, you know, think more clearly about something. And realizing that I was rarely connecting because I liked Jesus and wanted to spend time with him. I was connecting because I was hoping he could help me with something.
And so that’s what I mean by intimacy, that if I’m really going to become a mature leader who is living with less fear and living with deeper love, there’s no way to get around this idea that I’ve got to really take time to build that kind of intimacy with God.
(22:11) Stephanie Warner: Yeah. I love that story. Didn’t you have the sense like he wanted you to stop running around and come up onto the boulder with him? Yeah. Yeah. I love that. That’s a good example.
(22:27) Marcus Warner: Yeah, I haven’t thought about that in a while, but yeah, no, that was very vivid at the time.
(22:31) Stephanie Warner: Yeah. Well for the sake of our time here, I’ll move us on to identity groups. Tell us more about identity groups.
(22:40) Marcus Warner: So the counterbalance to an identity group would be an accountability group. So an accountability group is kind of like, okay, did you perform properly? Did you make any mistakes? Did you measure up or did you fail? You know, there’s a little bit of, it’s focused on performance. And so like, accountability matters. I remember when I was trying to learn to play the trumpet when I was in junior high. You know, that’s the right question to ask. Did you practice? Did you do your, you know, scales? Did you do the stuff? And that’s what accountability is for.
What identity group does is not about performance. It’s more about your heart. And so what you’re doing in an identity group is you’re with people who know you well enough to know when you are not acting like yourself. And the purpose of an identity group is to encourage you to be your best self, and to live out of the heart that Jesus gave you.
And so I remember when talking to Jim Wilder about this, he said you need to kind of ask yourself the question, who are the people I need in my life to give me the best chance of acting like myself this year. And I like, well, that’s not a question I have ever asked. You know, I’ve asked questions about who do I need in my life to perform better this year. But that’s a little bit different than if I’m going to live out of my true heart and who’s going to encourage me to be myself and to live out of the heart Jesus gave me.
And who knows when I’m slipping out of that, and I’m putting on a mask, and I’m pretending to be something I’m not. Those are the kind of people I need in my life. And so an identity group is also a place that not only collects people like that, but gives them permission to have those kinds of conversations with you. And it’s, you know, it’s important.
I will say too, that I’ve also had this go where, sometimes, the voices we listen to about our identity are the wrong voices. And so it’s important to have people who are also working on their intimacy with God, who are also working on their maturity development. And you don’t have to take everything they say as the final word, but you listen to them, you take it to God, and it gives you a kind of a mirror to help you as you’re going through your group.
So that’s the goal is I want an identity group, that is where we are helping each other be our best selves. We’re not necessarily trying to improve each other’s performance. We’re just trying to help each other stay ourselves and not turn into somebody else.
(25:30) Stephanie Warner: Mm-hmm. Uh, obviously again, more we could say on this, but I think we’ll keep coming back to it throughout. And like I said, in these three I’s are going to appear throughout the book itself, from here on out. So stay vigilant.
(25:49) Marcus Warner: No, it’s an important thing. You know, I’m blessed to been in a group kind of like this for about twenty years that meets by Zoom once a month, meets in person every year. And you know, I had a big issue weighing on me, and I know I can always bring it to them, and that and I get to listen to them. They talk about, I went through something like that, and I remember it made me feel this way. And I had to go through that.
And sometimes I see myself like, yeah, nope, that’s how it’s making me feel, or no, that mine’s a little bit different, but yeah. And you go through there, and sometimes, and every now and then you’ll get somebody who is just giving you really bad advice. Like they think they know what’s going on, but you don’t realize that they’re in the flesh at that moment. And that’s while they’re normally a good person to bounce things off of, in this moment, they’re a little triggered and their advice isn’t so good.
So, I don’t want to make this like utopia where if you get the right people together, then everything they say is like God speaking to you. But you do have to have a group that has a level of trust built up, and that takes a little bit of time and it takes vulnerability and empathy meeting each other.
(27:05) Stephanie Warner: Yes, well and as you say, like it can be, it doesn’t have to be an in person group. That would be ideal, but you can form bonds with people. We are blessed. Technology has many, you know, boons and curses with it, many pros and cons, but one of the pros is that we are able to stay connected with people across borders.
(27:26) Marcus Warner: Yeah. I know you’re the only person I know who would say boons and curses. That is, I love it. That’s my literary daughter at work. I love it. When talking about technology, boons and curses, that’s great.
(27:47) Stephanie Warner: You know. You’re welcome.
(27:51) Marcus Warner: No, I needed that. That was good.
(27:54) Stephanie Warner: This is good. And I’m glad that we’re going to be able to continue our conversations here. Thank you everybody who was on the trail with us. Thank you for being here for our shenanigans. And when we’re on the trail and off the trail, we’re glad to be here with you. Thank you. Thank you for those of you who volunteer with us, who pray for us, who fund us, who share your emails and your comments and your messages and such. You are blessings and you are epic. So thank you for being part of the fellowship of the trail. All right, Father. Final thoughts for this episode.
(28:34) Marcus Warner: I have something odd I probably want to say. It’s like, you know, last month I was on Taylor Welch podcast, you know, got well over 200,000 views. And I think we’ve had like a thousand people subscribe to our things since then. I just want to say, hey, if you’re here because of Taylor, welcome. I’m delighted that you joined us. and hope that you get something out of that. That was a great experience for us.
I know you were in the room with me, so you got to experience that as well. He’s got a delightful team as well, you know, as well as it being a good experience. His team was just a real joy to spend time with.
When it comes to all of this, when I got into leadership, it was all about strategy. You know, it was all about how you get things done and get results. And so looking at leadership from this angle has really changed a lot of things and it can make you kind of get down on yourself because you see all of your gaps. But the goal is to realize, no, there’s just something I need to learn. And we all have a growth edge.
So, my final thought and encouragement is just ask God, where is my current growth edge that you want me to be working on? Not how do I fix everything by next week? You know, how do I turn into a completely different person by next year? But what is the growth edge you want me working on right now? And that’s a good way to practice intimacy as well. It’s like what do you and I need to be working on right now? And so I encourage you, that’s a good place to start.
(30:07) Stephanie Warner: Yes indeed. Thank you. See you back next week.
