The Tim Ahlman Podcast
The Tim Ahlman Podcast is your go-to resource for inspiring conversations that equip leaders to thrive in every vocation, inside and outside the church. With three primary focuses, this podcast dives deep into:
Leadership: Learn from experts across diverse fields as we explore how their insights can shape and sustain a healthy culture in the local church and beyond. Over 60% of listeners expressed a desire for practical discussions on cultivating thriving environments—and that's exactly what these conversations will deliver.
Learn: Engage in deep theological discussions with scholars who illuminate how Christ is revealed on every page of Scripture. Together, we’ll bridge theology to the realities of a post-Christian America, ensuring practical application for today’s world. This segment aligns closely with the themes of the American Reformation Podcast and resonates with the 60% of you who crave more exploration in this area.
Live: Discover healthy habits that empower leaders in all vocations to become holistically healthy. As followers of Jesus, we’re called to lead not only with faith but also with physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being.
Join Tim Ahlman as we navigate leadership, learning, and living with purpose, so you can lead with strength, wisdom, and a Christ-centered vision.
The Tim Ahlman Podcast
Thriving in Chaos - Critical Leadership with Dan Heyn and Rachael Larson
Imagine weathering the storm of Covid-19, and emerging with a newfound appreciation for life and an amplified sense of humility and empathy. Our guest, Dan Heyn, a formidable leader from Siemens Company, takes us on a deeply personal journey of his encounter with the virus. A journey that not only strengthened his faith but also fostered a sense of camaraderie and community among his loved ones. Listen to his powerful testimony, a stark reminder of the preciousness of life and the importance of cherishing each day as a divine gift.
Now, let's talk about thriving amidst chaos. Rachael Larson, another inspiring leader shares insight into her leadership style during the pandemic. Learn how she kept her team connected despite the physical distance, building a sense of community and collaboration with regular communication. Plus, Rachael opens up about the challenges of balancing family mealtimes in an ever-bustling world. Hear how she navigated the demands of remote work, keeping a balanced approach to managing task and people-oriented individuals and the lessons she learned along the way.
And as we wrap up, we dive into the critical aspect of leadership - empowering others. From fostering a contributor mindset to the importance of letting leaders lead - both in the church and the marketplace. We discuss the adaptability of the church amid changing needs and methods while maintaining its core values. And we reflect on the struggles of respecting unique cultural practices while preserving the clarity of Jesus Christ's gospel. A riveting conversation that blurs the lines between faith, leadership, and community - join us for this enlightening podcast episode.
Hello and welcome to the brand new American Reformation Podcast. We long to see the wider American Christian Church fall more in love with Jesus by learning from the practices of the early church and other eras of discipleship multiplication. We want to hear from you, make sure you comment and leave a review, wherever you're watching or listening, to tell us what God is doing in your life or how you feel about today's conversation. Lord, have your way in us. Let's dive in.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the American Reformation Podcast, Tim Almond. Here I live in Phoenix, Arizona, and I don't know if you're listening to this in November or in. Some of you are getting grumpy. I'm getting super stoked, why? Because 100 degree temperatures are coming down and I think it's going to be 80 degrees today and I love being a kid walking and running outside and I pray that you're ready to lean in today. Hopefully you got your water. Hopefully you're locked in water before coffee. You've moved your body and maybe you're even taking this in as you're moving your body that God has given to you as you lean into a leadership conversation today with two people who actually interviewed me first.
Speaker 2:This was a unique invitation that I received a number of months ago to learn with Dan Hine and Rachel Larson, who are partners in Siemens, which is an amazingly large company. You're going to hear them share a little bit of their story, but they reached out to me just wanting to learn from different leaders in various sectors and what are a lot of those kind of commonalities that we have from the church space out into the marketplace. So Rachel Larson has a 14 year career with Siemens, starting a building automation sales and then moving into branch management. I love this part of your story, Rachel. You focus on smart building, leveraging technology to automate buildings to be more autonomous and efficient. We're talking heating and cooling controls. She's a graduate of Iowa State University and mechanical engineering. You guys are just way, way smarter than I am. You later obtain your MBA and she's been in leadership management people development for a long, long time. Has a husband and a couple of young sons Fantastic. Thank you so much for being with us, Rachel.
Speaker 2:Dan has dedicated his 35 year career to developing software that helps companies design complex products like airplanes, cars, space vehicles, space vehicles that's cool man Mobile devices, medical devices, windmills and many, many more. He began his career as a software engineer and then moved into various leadership roles. He's been a part of Siemens now, which strives to provide the number one provider and integrated engineering and manufacturing software products extraordinary, this company is huge. He's also the wife of 36 years to Lisa and four married kids. They are members from across the country with us here on our shared mission at Christ Greenfield. Thank you so much, Dan and Rachel, for hanging out. First question we're going to lean into a lot of leadership principles how to develop a healthy team. Today, the first standard question, Dan, that I'd like to start with how are you praying for Reformation in the American Christian Church today, man? Thanks so much for hanging with me, Dan and Rachel.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thanks, dan. I have to start firstly with humility and repentance in my prayer for the church. I'm a lifelong Christian and I just have to say that I've not been bold enough throughout the years and even now, sharing the joy of Jesus with everyone. There's so many people that just haven't heard it these days. My prayer is that I, and every other Christian in America, just can't shut up about Jesus. I have this person that I think about when I say this. It's my uncle Tom. He was like a rebel when he was younger, then, finally about in his 30s, he became sober After that. Anytime you see him, he just couldn't shut up about Jesus. He had this joy and sparkle in his eye and it was contagious. I feel like just kind of spreading talking about this joy, talking about this hope. It changes hearts. When you change hearts, they change other hearts. That's my prayer for the Christian Church in America.
Speaker 2:I love that, dan, so much. We just are talking a little bit of our faith journey, Anything to add to that. How are you praying for Reformation From your home out in the community, as connected to your local church?
Speaker 4:Yeah, well, I think Dan said it beautifully but I think also just building that sense of community. One of my favorite outreach things that we do at my church is a community garden and we place a lot of our effort into just feeding the community and building that connection over a meal. That's my prayer. I thought that community continues to build.
Speaker 2:That was Jesus' prayer. You may not know. They would know that we're followers of his by the way that we love one another. One of the primary markers, actually, of the early church why it grew so rapidly is hospitality, care around meals. We got to go make old school, new school, often times in our homes, to have deep Jesus conversations. How does that go for you in the Larson household, rachel, right now in terms of trying to, because our lives are so busy, hectic, I don't even like that word busy, right, they're full, they're full, hopefully, jesus' full, but Jesus at the center, just like sitting down with your husband and your two sons to have a meal. How's that going for you guys these days? For us it can be hit and miss man.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it is definitely hit and miss, but we're making a big effort to plan the week in advance so that we're not getting stuck going to McDonald's every day. We can sit down, whether it's something that's been prepared in advance or maybe it is something faster, but we do try to sit down as a family.
Speaker 2:That's really really good, dan. You've been connected to Christ Greenfield, the United Leadership Collective. I know you've listened to these podcasts for a while. Now you walk through and incredibly, it was hard. I was praying for you. So many people were praying for you. Just an awful illness connected to COVID. Would you tell that story, brother Sure?
Speaker 1:Yeah, let me step back through the story and then I'll maybe tell you a little bit what I learned about it.
Speaker 3:Take yourself back to July 31st 2021. That's about 15 months into the pandemic, and at that point each state and everybody was in various forms of lockdown or not lockdown or so on Me personally, I was sick of it. I was over COVID, I was invincible. I figured if I ever got it I would. Just it would be good, because it actually kind of grew an immunity to it.
Speaker 3:So I spent the summer up in Michigan. I'm in North Carolina, up in Michigan, family visits, family wedding, volleyball tournament and so on and then I just assumed I was invincible. And then God showed me I wasn't. So I was driving back to Michigan. I got sicker and sicker on the way back and the next few days, within a few days, I was in the hospital. I spent the next three miserable, boring weeks in the hospital barely breathing. It was like the most longest days I've ever spent my life. My left lung started collapsing and after the third collapse I was told I needed to go on a ventilator and people probably had heard about ventilators back then during COVID. That was sort of your last line of defense.
Speaker 1:But they told me I probably wouldn't survive it.
Speaker 3:It was a really low probability of survival at that time. So my kids I had four kids that had traveled into town I prayed with and for them, we set our goodbyes, and then I went under and I didn't wake up from the process, and so they put the tubes in and everything, but I was unconscious. So one issue after another happened while I was unconscious. I got subsist, pneumonia, various other things, each one almost killing me Day and night. My wife and kids stayed on top of the situation. Often, lisa, my wife, had to battle with doctors and nurses who wanted to give up, saying that Jesus is not going to survive this. If he does come out of it, he's not going to be right in the head and it would be the humane thing to do, they were telling her. So, lisa, the kids, hundreds of prayer warriors, including Christ, greenfield and many other churches, were praying that whole time, and so Lisa had in her mind that she's going to give it at least 30 days.
Speaker 3:And that 30 days came and went, and thankfully not too much. After that 30 days I started waking up and then she had me airlifted from North Carolina to Michigan. There was a recovery facility up there At the time. I was dry bones. I'm like a skeleton. I'm on a feeding tube, kidney dialysis, breathing device, large bed sores, no-transcript. I didn't have the strength to hold a pen or roll over. I was that weak, I had no muscles left. And when I got there the doctors said you know, this guy has the very little chance of making it. And if he is does make it, he's going to be on kidney dialysis his whole life. He'll probably be in a wheelchair his whole life. And then all of a sudden God started bringing me back to life. You know, just slowly but surely, a little bit at a time, things started working again. About six weeks later, after a lot of difficult rehab.
Speaker 1:I was, I was at home.
Speaker 3:We had an apartment up in Michigan and about two months after that I was able to come back to North Carolina and get back to work and fast forward two years now, which Facebook keeps reminding me that's two years. He keeps telling me what was going on two years ago. I'm grateful to say that I've aged a bit, but everything's working and I even got to play volleyball this summer. So you know, praise God, you know it's. You know a lot of people say it's a miracle.
Speaker 2:So you know, and I that doesn't agree and I definitely, so this is a crazy experience and I can tell you a few things I learned from it. But I'll let you ask if you questions. I'd love to hear that. Yeah, top, yeah, I know top. Two or three things you learned through. You know Sure yeah.
Speaker 3:I it's one of those things is like when I first came out of it, people would say, well, you know, has it changed your perspective on life and all that kind of stuff? And I found that, you know, it wasn't like an instant thing. It's like you have to keep kind of thinking through what did you learn about this thing? And it's almost like a conscious decision what am I going to learn from this situation? Just like any bad situation in your life, you have to consciously decide you're going to learn from it. You're going to. You know what can I take away from the situation? And so for me, it's been a learning process, even over the last couple of years, of what did I learn, you know, from the situation? And I'll tell you a few things. I did First of all and this is something I didn't have to think about long this happened like right away, that God's people are faithful friends.
Speaker 1:I mean.
Speaker 3:I was so humbled when I woke up to find out who would all been praying for me all this time. I mean, I was oblivious, I was, you know, everybody else was going through misery, especially my family, and there's just the people praying for me, people offering financial support, emotional support and so on. I just wept when I. You know, I just learned about it all. It was just crazy and I later learned that many of their stories, god used them, the situation, to build their faith and to build the faith of others. I go to like family events or other kind of church events and stuff and people will bring their little kids up to me and say, oh, this is miracle, the miracle man you know we were praying for and they're all excited.
Speaker 3:you know that they got to meet this person they prayed for and that came out of it. I'm just thankful I came out of it for them. But you know, a lot of people grew their faith through that. So that was one learning Another. Another one was I mean, I'm not damn the man who's invincible anymore. I learned humility. I learned a stronger empathy for people who are sick. I never had been sick like that before ever. I was always, you know, healthy never in the hospital.
Speaker 3:So on and I just didn't. It didn't when people, I think when people were sick, I just felt like they were being weak. Right now I get it. You know it's not that they're weak, it's that something bad has happened to them. You know, anybody can have something bad, and now I can feel it when somebody's sick and I'm able to, you know better, help them, yeah, help help. And then I'll say rehab is hard, so God heals you, but you have to do the work Anytime. I would be lazy about it, progress wouldn't be made as much. But you got to put in the work, yeah, and you got to have a like a goal and a positive attitude and a patient attitude towards it. Yeah, I was accepting that, okay, maybe.
Speaker 3:I will be in a wheelchair, maybe I'll be on, you know, make the most of my situation. But I wasn't. I was accepting it, but I wasn't content with that. I wanted to push for something more right, and you have to have something like that in your life to get you to the next level. And then, finally, my last point would be like I'm more grateful now. I think like every day is a gift, a way, a wake up each day and I make a conscious effort to just thank God for another day. You know, this is another day and it helped me to use my abilities and, you know, to bring joy to other people's life. You know, during that day there's a great quote I heard recently from a Willie Nelson song, the great Willie Nelson right.
Speaker 1:It says live every day like it was your last one, and one day you're going to be right. And now I realize that you know that could be any day and it could have been it could have been two years ago for me, and so each day is a bonus.
Speaker 3:you know now.
Speaker 1:So try to make the best of it. So those are a few things.
Speaker 3:I learned, I'm still learning and you know I'll continuously try to keep learning from it.
Speaker 2:You're the man bro. Praise Jesus for how he worked in your life. You are a walking miracle and I think you give us the eyes to see that we're all kind of walking miracles Every day. I love that last point. Every day is a beautiful gift from God and we're going to steward it well. There's grace that is underlying this entire thing.
Speaker 2:I don't think often enough we realize how good God is in just giving us this day, this life, this ability to interact and be in community and to experience love and care from our family to our friends, to our wider circle of support.
Speaker 2:Man, it's just amazing. That's one of the reasons I do this podcast is I just love hearing stories of God at work in the world and get ourselves because the world leads us to do what, because of sin, turn in on ourselves. It's all about me. It's all about me Either whoa is me or how great am I right, and that's not the way of Jesus. It's a proper sense of self, this deep humility, recognizing that everything is a gift, and out of that proper sense of self, then courage to lean into the respective ways that I have been gifted by God and the people that I get to, the team that I get to be on this day, or for my home into the workplace. So thank you for modeling that story for us and shout out to Lisa and your extended family how amazing was it to have your wife right alongside you that entire time. I know her. You really married up, bro, for sure.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, she took care of you in a powerful way?
Speaker 3:Yeah, she totally did. She had the hardest job. I was laying there sleeping. She was fighting the whole time and it was a grueling hard, hard job.
Speaker 2:So yeah, oh man, so so good. So let's pivot. That's an amazing story. Let's talk, let's talk leadership. You got more life to live, dan, more people to bless, more people to inspire, so let's get after it. Kick it over to you, rachel. Tell us about your leadership study. Why did you choose a study? Leadership from various sectors of society.
Speaker 4:Well, you know, leadership just inherently has always interested me, and especially as I've grown within Siemens. I've seen some very, very good leaders, some that had areas for improvement. But Dan and I got the opportunity to actually be part of a Siemens Advanced Leadership Program over the last year and you know my leadership experience has been kind of leadership by fire. I started in a management role a month before COVID hit, so it was a very, very challenging time for the most experienced of leaders. For me it was doubly so and I think what I learned was the people aspect is far more important than any financials, I would even say maybe more so than based strategy, because without the people connection there is no leadership and there's nothing moving the business forward. So leaning into that and trying to learn more not only about leadership but also how we lead into these world is extremely interesting to me.
Speaker 1:And I also want to know, you know, as part of this what we call learning expedition.
Speaker 4:Not only did we interview you, but we actually interviewed a former NBA, current college basketball coach, as well as a corporal from the British Navy. So it was very interesting to hear those themes that were the same, and then also the differences.
Speaker 2:Oh well, I can't wait to get into that. But yeah, dan, anything else about your learning experience. Thank you, rachel.
Speaker 3:No, I mean it was definitely fun the different approaches that you learned from people and the class we went to afterwards as well, and just seeing how the similarities kind of glared out at you right away, even though the styles are different.
Speaker 2:Well, you mentioned it's all about people, rachel. I just want to you bring up COVID today. Maybe COVID this is leading through COVID man. Maybe that's somewhat of the theme, because it was very, very challenging and I'm in a people business, right. I mean, if there's no people, the church doesn't exist. The church isn't about pastors or even like a leadership team. The church is about people of God gathered around Word and sacrament and then sent out on missions. So it was very discombobulating. And what were some of your main tactics, rachel, that you implemented early on to build community in the COVID world in your new role, because that had to be really trying.
Speaker 4:It was, and thankfully we're blessed with technology so early on. I had weekly calls and I thought it was very important to get people on camera where we could, and even if we didn't have a lot of content in those meetings, we still jumped on and we connected. It worked better for some than others and I think that's another piece that I've learned is that you have to get to everybody's level and meet them where they are. If the team's call being on camera was not the right format for some people, I would also send an email. Sometimes it was text messages, but making sure that we're communicating thoroughly was very important and then also bringing that empathy in. You know, dan's story is definitely to an extreme level and I'm so grateful that he came out of that and I was able to meet him, but everybody had trials during this and being a leader who also cares about the people and the trials that they're going through was very important.
Speaker 2:How did you manage the high D so driven and also really task oriented people Because I think we have that bent like. Some folks on our team are way more people, way more kind of the feels and the kind of culture carriers. And then you got others there. They're like I don't just want to sit here and look at your face on a call if we're not actually doing the work right Doing the work. So how did you balance kind of heavy task and heavy people oriented folks in your team, rachel, I wish I had a silver bullet.
Speaker 4:You know it was interesting. So one of the things with our business, and my division of Siemens in particular, is not everybody could go to remote work. Many of my employees are considered critical employees and we're still going every day on site to customer sites and that could have been manufacturing. In a lot of cases it was healthcare. You know government building things like that. A lot of them really just did a good job putting on their PPE and just showing up every day and I think I learned that you know you can trust your team and you can let them have that leeway to go get stuff done. But they still needed some check ins and a little bit more of that empathy than I think they were ready to accept in some cases. So it was a journey.
Speaker 2:Yeah, anything to add to that Dan?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean For us. Yeah, there was. Let me see, our local site was most impacted. Since my team and all of our teams were spread out across the world, we were already kind of used to working remotely and since we're a software development, thing. We could pretty much just continue with our same process, and most, most a lot of the people on the team like to just put heads down and work on their code anyway, so they actually I think, felt it as a blessing that they didn't have to go into the office and get we're closed and you know so.
Speaker 3:So that was that was good, but, but but at the site level. So we had also our Charlotte site and that was a different because we were used to coming in there seeing everybody. So I started this every other week Our first was every week and I went to every other week meeting where we just kind of all got together, had video calls and just just talked it out. And yeah, the people who didn't obviously they just wanted to get work done and didn't want to talk, they were either just tuning in and not listen or not talking or they were just not calm, but that was about how we, how we handled it, and it seemed to keep keep everything kind of moving along.
Speaker 3:The tough part's been getting people, a lot of people, to come back to the office After that. They got used to two years of sitting at home and working and not everybody wants to come back. And then and we're as leaders leaders were trying to evaluate well, what's really necessary to do. People really need to come back, and you need to come back just a little bit. And, in terms of the role, rachel has some people that have to be back all the time, and so do I, but there's a lot of people that don't, you know, and so we're trying to figure out the right balance now.
Speaker 2:Man, he's just person by. Is it more person by department, a person, or department by department in terms of in person? Now, because the nature of work has totally been discombobulated right now. So what percentage? Let me ask this quite what percentage of folks at Siemens are in person on a consistent basis and the rest are doing remote work? I'm just curious, because how many, how many employees to do Siemens have? I mean, it's a huge international company, yeah what do we have, rachel?
Speaker 3:is it 300 pouring the, 1000 pouring the?
Speaker 2:back. Huge idea on the percentage of in person. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, first of all, siemens. I put out a thing way back, I think at the beginning of COVID or something, that when we came back everybody was going to be allowed to hybrid work or, if they could get away with it, for their team. So the expectation is that that meant people would at least be able to be at home a couple days a week. But in our department, which is a software development group, I'd say, on average in the office, maybe 5% are in the office and most teams will have at least some element of coming to the office to get together with the team. But that could vary between two days a week to like one day a month, you know, and so on. So it's far less than it used to be for our group. I don't know how it is for yours, rachel.
Speaker 4:Yeah, by by it's a higher percentage in the office. You know, we certainly didn't get through these past couple years without some major bumps and lumps, and one of those things was we had a lot of turnover, so a vast majority of my team is newer in the last couple years. As a result, I think more of them do opt to come into the office just to learn from their peers. But one of the things we did was we implemented implemented some mandatory collaboration days so everybody has flexibility to work from home two to three days a week. But we've we've assigned one day that anybody who is an office person would need to be in so that we can foster that community. We can have the face to face meetings, water cooler talk and, I guess, kind of circling back to building sense of community over food we have. We actually have a pizza competition right now where we're ranking all of the local pizza joints. So on Mondays everybody's in my Des Moines office, on Wednesdays everybody's in my Omaha office, and it's been very helpful.
Speaker 2:Ah, that's, that's amazing. I just now feel I was telling our pastor yesterday because our congregations about 85 to 90% of what we were pre pre COVID I looked over to him and I was like this just feels about like it did before before COVID hit, like it's been that long in terms of the church and we were very, we were very open. It was such a dance. You know how, how you open and how sensitive you are to those that are that are struggling and and and then our team as a church were.
Speaker 2:The nature of work has changed. Some of our younger leaders, there's a little bit more of this. They want community, but they also want flexibility. So where we meet, you know maybe the coffee shop, etc. But those are kind of in office hours. And then the vast majority of our more seasoned leaders, here they're, they're in the office every single day. There's lots of laughter If you hear laughter on any of the podcasts outside they're yucking it up, they're getting after it, but but they also deeply enjoy just being, just being with one another. So so good. I'd love to dig into your learnings. My my doctorate was actually in organizational leadership development and the traits and characteristics of pastors who work together. So whenever you say collaboration and team, you have me, you know. So what were some of your main discoveries in leadership in your study across all these different sectors in society?
Speaker 4:Dan, if you want, I can kind of take this one off, you go ahead.
Speaker 4:So the one that we heard as a very consistent thing throughout all of our interviews was really defining core values and making sure that the leadership is driving back to those core values to get people on board. I thought it was really interesting because, as I mentioned earlier, we had a very diverse group of interviewees for this and every single person brought it back to those core values. You know something that people could rally around. The second that was one of our big takeaways and this was a quote from an interview in our in person session was you are the weather, so how you present yourself as a leader helps drive the weather, helps drive that environment of. What you're communicating and how you communicate is, at times, just as important or more important than the message that you're having, and part of that is listening and responding as well.
Speaker 2:Could you let? I'd love to hear more on on core values. And then you said rudder right, Are you DDR?
Speaker 1:kind of weather I heard technology Anyway the weather.
Speaker 2:So go back to go back to core core values just for a second. Were there any core values that were, like, majorly different? Just give us a splattering of some of those core values, if you can remember them off the top of your head, because obviously no, ours, but I'd love to hear, like in the military, what some of those core values could be. Yeah, do you remember?
Speaker 3:Rachel or Dan. Well, I remember in the basketball it was just the workout, thick, the teamwork. You know the.
Speaker 3:I'm forgetting the one, but he had one that was about being there, like being all in when you're there, you know, things of that nature All had to do with kind of hard work and discipline and being there for your teammates, yeah, and it seemed kind of similar from what we heard about the military. You know it was like being sacrificial to your, your team, you know, you know, going after your cause, that kind of thing. So I didn't see that that was all that different from what yours would be, tim, you know what you said about core values of your leadership team and and Christ Greenfield, so so they seem similar actually in that way, other than obviously yours are driven by God and driven by the will to win, or either win a war or win a competition right.
Speaker 2:Which I think is all first article, natural law oriented that we get the most out of life when we realize life is not about ourselves, life is about a higher cause, life is about God's cause or it's about the cause of the team. And then we are. We are hardwired for community from the very beginning. This is not good, that man should be alone. So how do we, how do we find ourselves and orient our unique giftings in this wider web of love and care and support, all with that shared vision, that shared mission? It could be for us multiplying disciples. And I'd love to hear a lot of times businesses you may get the bad rap of it's all about market share, market share, money, money, money. But I think a lot of the best businesses have even a higher cause why that that drives right? Anything more to add about that kind of bigger why, rachel?
Speaker 4:Yeah, well, we have a couple core principles that Siemens, and my favorite one is impact, because every single day, what brings me to work and what makes me excited about what I do is the impact that we have with our technologies. It could be direct impact on just making sure a building is running, but you know, I love the impact we have on healing in the healthcare environment, the impact we have on making sure that pharmaceuticals are manufactured in a safe way, or K through 12 schools, school children are comfortable. But also the impact we have within our team, and so that is one of the main things I talk about in my leadership team meetings is drilling back down not just a profit and the impact that has, but what's the real visceral impact that we have.
Speaker 3:Well, yeah, I think if you, if you look at Siemens, so it's an interesting fun fact Siemens and LCMS Lutzen Church, missouri, soon to have something in common they were both started about 175 years ago and born out of Germany in a different way, right, and so Waterman Siemens was our founder back 175 years ago and he had a mission statement, which we still use today, which is to provide technologies that improve quality of life and create lasting value in society. So it is bigger for him and for us than the money we got to make money to stay in business, and you got to not lose money to stay in business. But if you see, like even today, so back then you know it was a different thing that he was working on.
Speaker 3:But you see, today we focus a lot on like sustainability and making life better for the world and that kind of a thing, and so it is good that you have that sort of bigger thing, that you're after something bigger than yourselves.
Speaker 2:And then that bigger, why you also found out that top talent often doesn't fit into culture, and I totally agree with this. It's about maintaining the Jesus Center, the other centered culture that we have fostered here, and you can have a top performer or someone who's remarkably gifted. Just not fit Anything more to add to that, rachel.
Speaker 4:It's been the hardest lesson I would say that I've had to learn, because you know it's almost sometimes a disservice to somebody to promote them if it's not the right fit. We unfortunately have lived that in my branch and it was very hard to make that determination and then act upon it, and so I think you know my interview style has changed.
Speaker 4:My people development style has changed as a result of that, because we've got to share those core values, you've got to know that it's the right fit and I think you know you see that in the church too often is you want to make sure that you've got that right connection before a relationship involves.
Speaker 2:How did you assess that early on? Because hiring we've got 130 people on our team and there's always, you know, two or three maybe hires that are taking place in any given respective season. What were some of those mechanisms that you use, connected to your core values, to try the best you possibly could to assure a good fit right?
Speaker 4:Well, I think number one is growth mindset Just making sure that if somebody's joining the team, that they understand that traits are not fixed, that you know a person can grow and can evolve. As long as we have that base understanding, I think we can coach and work through pretty much anything else.
Speaker 2:I agree that you're talking character right now. It's about others and it's about I'm never satisfied, I never arrive. You know that takes a unique type of person Anything more to say toward that growth mindset, dan.
Speaker 3:No, I mean. Oh, then it takes curiosity. So you're looking for somebody that's curious and has a growth mindset and just sort of like a team, Some people you can sense that they're just out there for for themselves and not for the team, and so there's that. You also Dan learn the pop.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, amen, amen. You also learn, and we're we're such strong advocates of this coaching and empowerment. Get team members to define their personal goals, and this drives accountability and alignment that is so, so huge in the spiritual realm as well as in the marketplace. So anything more there, rachel, around coaching and empowerment.
Speaker 4:Just that you know, it's not an inherent skill to be able to do that. That was one of the things that Dan and I worked on as part of this program was to be better coaches and and learn to help others kind of define what that path needs to look like themselves.
Speaker 2:Could you? Could you tell me because I'm a certified coach with the secular organization, so tell me like your core principles for coaching a team member? Really really well, rachel or Dan, okay.
Speaker 4:Yeah Well, not to jump in with solutions. It's really easy, especially when you feel like you might be a subject matter expert in something or or have an answer or direction in mind. Already. You've got to sit back, you've got to actively listen and you have to ask open-ended questions to help people figure out their own path, and then support them in that.
Speaker 2:You said so. Good, rachel, that's so, because we want to come in and we're fixers, a lot of us who are leaders. We're like I know how it should be, but you don't exactly know what's going on in their head and heart, what's going on in their respective context. So how do you lead? With just great humility, open-ended questions I like to think of like a funnel what do you want to talk about today? What's top of mind today? What's giving you the most joy today? Lead with a lot of those types of questions and then narrow down.
Speaker 2:For them, self-discovery is the best discovery. Right For them to say, and I'm committing to this thing, this thing, probably no more than three things right Over the next week or month, and I'd love for you to just talk to me about that. That's it. But how often in various sectors? I just don't think that takes place with leaders on team. We dictate, we mandate rather than lovingly invite our folks in. And man, when a team member sees you treating them with that kind of dignity and respect, they will run fast and far man. They care about it because they're invested. They're not being told what to do. They get that sense of autonomy and control, the right amount of control to shape the future for themselves and for the team. It's very powerful. Anything else to add there, dan?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean it's definitely if it comes out of their mind and mouth.
Speaker 1:they're going to own it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and that's what ultimately, whatever the decision is, they need to own it if they want to make it successful. I know you love acrostics. The one we looked at in the class was called Grow G-R-O-W. I'll give you the details on that some other time, unless you want me to give them to you now.
Speaker 2:But it was an acronym to help. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Acrostic so good.
Speaker 2:So good. So here's what I'd love to close with, and I want to start with you, rachel, before we get to Dan, you've not been as probably intimately connected with the inner workings of different churches. I know you've been a church member. You come and you grow and you want your kids to know who Jesus is. But just top of mind for you in the marketplace, teach me up, coach me up, and I don't care if you tell me things right now. I'd love for you, from your perspective, to say what the local church has to learn from marketplace leaders and organizations, and then, dan, you'll close us down, rachel.
Speaker 4:Well, I think that it's really about that connection and going back to some of our learnings, or those core values, making sure that they're known, they're talked about. You know evangelizing to an extent, you know it's the same in business as it is within the church. It's bringing people in to want to be part of something bigger, to be part of the mission that you've developed, and I think that spans both.
Speaker 2:So for me, my mind is going we use this language here from consumer to contributor, and the major push in the marketplace is different here because the church, many nonprofits, but the church in particular, most people come in with a consumer mindset. Right, pastor, you're going to do this for me preach this sermon, make me feel good or challenge or whatever, and send me out and this kind of thing, and then I'll come back again to consume next Sunday. But the biggest switch happens for us in the congregation when people move from they're on our team, right, so our staff. We get to lead teams of teams, of teams in many respects If we're healthy and functional from small groups out in the community and creating those spaces for Jesus conversations that happen, that they go from consumer to contributor or partner with us, and that is a huge, huge.
Speaker 2:It can be a struggle for many, many pastors who have been trained to be doers rather than developers of other people. And then trying to fit your life and the way you do things with people who, like both of you, who are in the marketplace, you're busting it 40, 50, 60 hours a week and then how does Jesus meet you there in the marketplace? Yeah, that's the lens. The filter that needs to change, I think, for many of our every day or every Sunday pew sitters is Jesus is there with you. How does he give you wisdom and how does the church then add value for speaking the fruit of the Spirit love, joy, peace, patience, kindness.
Speaker 2:As you lead in your marketplace, do you get to be the hands and feet of Jesus, whether you say his name or not and how you treat your partners, your teammates, as well as your consumers with dignity and love and respect. So that's the big switch for us, and that does make it a little bit more challenging for the everyday pastor, because your differentiation between a team member, a contributor, is very different. You know your consumers and contributors. Our goal is to switch them from consumer to contributor. Does that make sense, rachel? The difference, yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it does, and I think it's something that I'm currently living with my church too is when that outreach is made and I'm being asked to contribute, I do feel a lot more involved and it's more fun and it's you know, it's a greater sense of purpose.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so good, so good. So, dan, what else do we have to learn in local church?
Speaker 3:I would build on that to say turn those contributors into leaders, because if you're looking at how do we build up Siemens, how do you build up a company and so on, is you got to have people that are taking leadership, whether it's people leadership or it's leader of a project or whatever. So build up those leaders, make sure they know the core values, empower them to do what they. Yeah, give them the tools and sort of the guidelines to do what they need to do. So I would take that step further. And then I would say one other thing.
Speaker 3:If you look at what's kept Siemens around for 175 years and what keeps good companies around is they're continuously adapting to what's changing. What's the change in the needs, the requests, what's changing in the methods and so on? And they're always experimenting with applying those new methods to the new needs, but yet keeping the same core value. As I mentioned, we still have the same core values we did 175 years ago. 175 years ago we offered telegraphs and lights for streets, right, and today we're doing windmills and spaceships and that kind of thing, but we're still for the same purpose. So I think you've got to be able to adapt to that. Things are always changing.
Speaker 2:Oh man powerful. The church has figured out how to adapt beautifully, not.
Speaker 2:We struggle with this we struggle with this Because the why, the mission of God always remains the same and the what, declaring who God is Father, son and Holy Spirit and who Jesus is in particular, and how he came to love the world through His life, death and resurrection. So gospel proclamation that what doesn't change, but the how it must change, it's not a negotiable and right now, if there are church bodies, churches in particular, who are not adjusting the how, well, keeping and this is the main struggle for us, rachel it's doctrine and then practice. So how does the church live out its life, its respective callings, its various vocations in the world and man? We really, really struggle because there's this interplay, or this interaction between doing and developing, between the what or theology, which is the what, and then the how, which is practice.
Speaker 2:And the crazy thing about the message of Jesus is that it is crossed, every single culture and all these different practices, with the main thing, the message of the life, death, resurrection of Jesus, crossing all of those cultures and yet the practices are remarkably, remarkably different. And in a cross cultural America right now, where it's becoming ever increasingly maybe more Eastern, more Southern, less, maybe Western, the church has to look at the how and respect the unique cultural practices, while maintaining the clarity around the gospel of Jesus Christ. Anything more to add there, dan, because we're walking through it? You and I are part of the Lutheran Church of Missouri Synod. We're walking through this in real time right now and praying that the how around, maybe leadership development, could be analyzed more specifically. Anything more, dan?
Speaker 3:No, I mean you hit it. That's definitely the application there is to the LCMS and to the church as a whole. We got to adapt. It's very difficult for especially a more conservative church body like LCMS to adapt because they're trying to protect whatever we've got going on. But Siemens too. Siemens is a very conservative company but manages to adapt in an experimental way. So you got to maybe experiment with things, try them out and learn from them. The lean start-up principles those are always, and how you're aware of those, those are always a good way to do it.
Speaker 2:Amen, amen. Last question, rachel, maybe I said that already. Here it is If there's one prayer that you have for just any healthy leader, what would you pray for them?
Speaker 4:To be able to slow down and not let the pressures take away from the tool that I have to be a good leader. I think personally that's what I struggle with the most is the everyday pressures, and the cadence takes you away from the things that you know are the right things to do.
Speaker 1:So I just hope every leader can pause.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, the power of the pause, for sure, specifically so that we can connect with our people right, deeply connect with our team members. Anything more to add? What's your prayer, dan?
Speaker 3:I just pray that they have courage. You know, a lot of times to do the right thing takes courage. It's not always the easy thing to do, and so I pray for courage for myself and for the other.
Speaker 2:Yeah, amen. And I think courage comes out of the pause. Courage comes in that deeper connection. I'm not alone. I can take risks, I'm not gonna everything's not gonna fall apart. I'm supported, I'm loved and I'm connected to this bigger wire, this big mission. This has been so much fun.
Speaker 2:Today, rachel, dan, it's an honor to end. It's such a joy to use technology and to learn with you both today. If you'd like to connect with Rachel, you can do so at Rachel. That's with an A R-A-C-H-A-E-L, larson, l-a-r-s-o-n. At Siemens, s-i-e-m-e-n-s what amazing company Siemenscom. And then it's Dan Hine, d-a-n, h-e-y-n at Siemenscom. This is the American Reformation Podcast. Loving having conversations with amazing leaders like Rachel and Dan, who are doing amazing work within the local congregation and I shouldn't say better yet and, in addition, out in the marketplace. I think there's a lot for the marketplace to learn from the church and the church to learn from the marketplace, and I pray that's what you've experienced today. This is American Reformation. Sharon is caring. Please like, subscribe, comment wherever it is you take in podcasts and we promise to continue to have encouraging, leadership-centered conversations centered in the person and work of Jesus, weekend and week out. We'll see you next week. Thanks so much, rachel, thanks Dan.
Speaker 4:Thank you.