The Secret of Leadership

Every one of us is a leader. Every one of us has influence over others. Jason Romano says the key to our leadership, our effectiveness with others, begins when we have the right perspective on life. Every single day we wake up, we have a choice to make on who we're going to serve. And I look at it as this I am third model. Hopefully if you're a follower of Christ, you're going to look to serve the Lord first. But then it's others second, and it's ourselves third. And I think the best leaders, stay at home moms, all the way up to vice presidents of large corporations, have to make a decision every day. What are they going to wear in terms of that uniform?

Are they going to serve themselves first, or are they going to serve God and then others first? This is Family Life Today. Our hosts are Damon and Wilson. I'm Bob Lapine.

You can find us online at familylifetoday.com. There are principles of effective leadership that apply to every one of us, no matter what setting we're leading in. We're going to explore those principles with Jason Romano today. Stay with us. And welcome to Family Life Today.

Thanks for joining us. And I know exactly what's going on here. Uh oh. Yeah, I mean, What's going on here, Bob? You said we should have my friend Jason on Family Life Today to talk about leadership. And I go, this is because the game's coming up, right? You're thinking you guys can get together, you could talk football, you could talk about what's going on.

This has nothing to do with his book or leadership at all, does it? No, it has nothing to do with anything but the game that the Detroit Lions are going to win this year. Oh, wait, I forgot they're not going again. Yeah, I don't think they had a schedule for this one.

Not going to quite happen. Tell everybody about your friend, Jason. Well, Jason Romano's with us.

And I don't know when we first met. Do you know, Jason? The first time I actually introduced myself was when I had you on my show, on my podcast, and we talked to you about vertical marriage. But I've watched you at our conferences with PAO come and speak, and I've kind of from a glance knew who you were. Yeah, so this is Jason that was with ESPN for 17 years?

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, and you'll tell us a little bit some of the jobs you did. But now, pretty exciting what you're doing, and we'll hear about that as well. But you left ESPN to sort of go to a higher calling.

Yeah, exactly. And, you know, we've been involved together with pro athletes outreach, which many people don't know about. But it's a beautiful ministry that does conferences for pro athletes, baseball, football, I think there's a NASCAR one, hockey, you name it. And they bring in speakers like Ann and I have been there for 20 years or so doing stuff on marriage to help NFL couples. A lot of a lot of people come to Christ at that conference.

So the last one we did for baseball, Mr. MC over there, Jason Romano was hosting the whole thing, did a great job, interviewed Darrell Strawberry and different things were happening and then have written a couple books. And the first one, I hope we talked about this a little bit, even though today's not about, you know, your forgiveness journey with your dad. That one was called Live to Forgive. And I have a similar journey.

So when I read that, I was like, man, I've been there. But this one is the uniform of leadership. So talk about that. Why did you even decide to write a book on leadership?

Yeah. So first of all, thank you for having me. It's an honor to be with you guys. First of all, I never wanted to be an author. I never wanted to write. You know, that wasn't the goal when I was in high school or college. It was to get into broadcasting. It was never to write books. But once you come through 17 years of working at ESPN, the most consistent question I get is what was it like and who are some of the famous people that you got to hang out with for some of the stories?

And I have a lot of them. And so if I was ever to write a book, it would not have been the first book that I wrote on forgiveness. It would have been this book. It wasn't initially going to be a leadership book. It was just going to be kind of stories from my time at ESPN.

And maybe some people will be entertained or enjoy reading or hearing about those stories. But the more we got deeper into it, especially after writing my first book, I realized I wanted to write a book that was focused on not just entertaining people, but being able to apply some of these principles or things that I've been through into their own lives. And so that's where the idea of leadership came from, especially because I've been reading a lot lately about leadership. I would say in the last five years, devouring leadership material, stories and books from people like John Maxwell and John Gordon and others, Simon Sinek, people who write about leadership, but they come from a perspective of serving. And I thought, well, what if I shared the stories that I experienced at ESPN with some of the famous people and some of the people that you would not have heard of, but come from a biblical perspective, A, but also from a leadership perspective? What were the leadership lessons that I learned from spending time or going through these experiences at ESPN? And that's where the uniform of leadership was born. Well, and we should start right off by saying you're not just talking about CEOs in corporate America or people who are captains of industry. When you talk about leadership, everybody is a leader at some level, aren't they?

Absolutely. And especially when you think it's funny, I was preaching at my church when the book released back in the summer and we were selling some of the books up at the church and we were not fully reopened, but we were open enough in Connecticut at our church. And this sweet old lady, probably in her late 70s, comes up and she looks at me and she goes, it's really nice that you wrote a book, but I'm not a leader, so I don't need your book.

You know, they're very bold and very open, a lot of these older ladies, and I love that. She's like, I don't need your book because I'm not a leader. And I said, well, let me ask you a question. I said, are you a mom? Are you a grandmother?

She's like, yeah, I'm a mom. And I said, well, that qualifies you as a leader. In fact, if you're breathing, you're in essence a leader because leadership isn't about, like you say, CEOs or power or titles or status. It's about influence and it's about serving. So you're saying the stay at home mom who has a two year old, a four year old and a six year old, you're saying you are a leader. You're an influencer. Yes. Like that's important for us to remember, because sometimes at that point of life, we feel like I'm having no influence.

I have no life, but we really do. We're leaders in our family. Oh, absolutely. Especially if leadership is influence, which I believe it is, if leadership is serving, which Jesus said, he's the ultimate leader.

I came not to be served, but to serve. So if Jesus is modeling that, then yes. I think if you're a stay at home mom or even just a parent or whatever situation you're in, you're a leader. I mean, that's your number one first priority of being a leader is your family and people at home. I think we get leadership kind of mixed up because we think it's just business related. When we talk about leadership in the workplace, in ministry and who we're influencing, what's our title, if you're the VP or the senior manager or whatever, then you're a leader. But leadership is more than title.

It's really influence. And it is interesting because when, you know, obviously we're older, we're not as old as that grandma, but we're not far away from her. Yes, we are. Yeah, we're a long way away from that. You got years to go, Dave.

Decades away from that. But you know, I think remember the days when Ann's talking about, because when she said that question, I'm like, she's remembering four year old, two year old, poopy diapers, the whole thing. She would often state that to me, usually at night, exhausted when we hit the sack and try and get two hours of sleep maybe.

And she would say, I'm doing nothing with my life. You know, I'm just a mom. I'm at home all day. I'm just chasing kids around. I'm disciplining. I'm exhausted. I'm not doing it. And I'd be saying what you're saying, Jason.

Oh, no, you're a... But it's hard to feel that way at that point. But here's where I'm going with this.

You call your book The Uniform of Leadership. You know, I'm like, what do you mean by that? But as I read it, I'm like, oh, there's this jersey. And obviously you connect it to sports. Talk about that, because that's the thing that a mom or dad or anybody needs to realize.

For grandparents. I am putting on a jersey. Every day. Because that's a metaphor you use. But explain that, because I think that works. When you understand that, it changes your perspective. Well, it's certainly connected to sports, of course, because that's what I've lived through. Because everything is, right? Of course, right, Dave? Come on now.

Sports is everything. No, when I wake up every day, I make a decision on who I'm going to serve first. That's kind of how I looked at this. So many times in my daily walk, my flesh kicks in, my ego kicks in, and the idea of serving goes completely to serving me. But every single day we wake up, we have a choice to make on who we're going to serve. And I look at it as this I am third model, which I talked about in the book. Hopefully, if you're a follower of Christ and you're listening to this, you're going to look to serve the Lord first. But then it's other second and it's ourselves third.

So it's this I am third, God first, other second, ourselves third. The uniform of leadership, putting on that uniform every day. You think about a uniform and what it looks like, right? And especially I use the example of the New York Mets. That's my baseball team that I grew up watching.

It's been a long time since they've won anything as well, Dave. But the uniform that the Mets wear has the Mets name on the front and it has the name of the player on the back. So if I'm waking up every day and I'm choosing to serve others first, I'm wearing my uniform properly. But for so many of us, and I don't care what you believe, but especially even as Christians, we wake up. And the very first thing we think about is ourselves and taking care of ourselves and what can what is this day going to be like for Jason? And I'm wearing in that sense the uniform of leadership backwards. The name on the back is who I'm playing for, not the name on the front. And that's where every single day when we wake up, we have a choice to make. And I think the best leaders, stay at home moms all the way up to vice presidents of large corporations, have to make a decision every day. What are they going to wear in terms of that uniform?

Are they going to serve themselves first or are they going to serve God and then others first? Yeah, as you know, the jersey in a sports situation is revered in a sense, especially by the athlete. I mean, obviously, when I was the chaplain for 33 seasons in the NFL, so an NFL jersey, same thing as a major league or soccer, you name it. When you get to that level and they put your name like on a Lions jersey, it is like it changes who you are.

It's an identifier. Yeah. And so you step up to like, I'm putting on this jersey right now. I have to represent that. One of the things I did years ago and it's your leadership is serving thing is one day after a Lions game, another loss, I'm standing there.

I mean, probably 20 years in as being the chaplain. And what I typically would do after a game is just sort of be there, you know, and walk around, talk to guys from their locker. And often they've lost. And so we're talking about that.

Maybe a guy got injured, whatever. I'm trying to be a pastoral and a light for Christ in the locker room. Well, here's what happened. I'm standing there one day looking around thinking, what's the best thing I could do right now to lead in this moment?

You know, I'm looking at his locker room like, I'm going to do the same thing again. I'm going to walk over and talk to that guy and that guy. Some of them want to talk to you.

Some of them want to just get their stuff and get out of there. And here's what hits me. I should help. I should serve.

What's that look like? And I'm watching the equipment guys. There's about seven or eight of them. Two or three are paid.

The rest are volunteers. They are packing up all the guys' stuff. Cleats, shoulder pads, helmets, jerseys, pants. Everything goes in a bag. We're on the road. Zip it up.

Then the bags go into this cart. Go out through the whole thing. I'm watching this and I'm like, hey, I'll go help those guys.

And they actually put on hospital gloves because blood and stuff on their jerseys. So long story short, I go over to one of the equipment guys and go, hey, man, where do you get those gloves? I want to help you. You know what the guy says? Oh, yeah, like you're going to help. I go, no, can I not help? He goes, dude, you're the chaplain. Now get out of here. Go do your spiritual thing. That's what he said.

He was sort of mad at me. So I kept looking around like, oh, the gloves are in the training room. So I went and got them and I just started looking at what they did.

By the way, just a little tip here. One of the hardest things to do is take a NFL jersey off shoulder pads. They're taped on.

Yes, it is. And you have to peel them off. So that took some work. Anyway, long story short, I started doing that every game.

Never was asked, just started doing it. And all I know is like the third game I memorized. I was kneeling down in front of Josh McCown's locker and I'm pulling this thing off and he leans over and he goes, I see what you're doing. And I go, what do you mean?

What am I doing? He goes, you're being Jesus, man. He goes, the whole room is watching you.

Like, what? He goes, dude, everybody's seen this. They can't understand why the chaplain is doing something he's not supposed to be doing. And I realized I was leading by serving.

And I tell you what, had a greater ministry. And I did it the rest of my career. Tell them about your relationship with the equipment guys.

Yeah. The next thing I know, the equipment guys are like, hey, dude, come back here. I'm in the back of the bus with them. I get a jacket on the sideline.

I never got any clothes on the sideline. They're like, yeah, let him. He's just a chaplain. But I became one of their best friends.

You know, when things were going on in their life, they're calling me up, they're texting me, hey, give me your number. And I'm in. And I thought all that was serving, which is leadership. That's what you keep talking about over and over in your book. It's Jesus saying, deny yourself. Right.

I mean, that's what it is. And that's the perfect example. I remember at ESPN one time we had Colt McCoy. You guys remember Coles? He played with Texas. I think he's with the New York Giants this season. And Colt came to ESPN. And at that time, he was like a highly touted Heisman Trophy type candidate coming to ESPN to do a bunch of interviews.

He had his Texas. He went to University of Texas Longhorns, had his Longhorn staff with him. And usually it was about six, seven deep when we would welcome a guest to ESPN and kind of take them around. And we ended up in the cafeteria for about an hour before one of our next interviews. And so ESPN cafeteria, real big, just picture like a college campus.

And that's ESPN in essence. And so we go to the cafeteria and for some reason, one of the requests was to get a couple of gallons of milk. It was in the morning.

People wanted to see. I don't even remember, like, how do we have gallons of milk at ESPN? But what I do remember was I was the one responsible for getting those gallons and making sure that whoever was requesting them was taken care of. And here's Colt McCoy when everybody else is sitting and watching me struggle with two gallons of milk and like these other things that I'm carrying. Colt gets up, comes over. He grabs a couple of gallons off.

He's like, I got you, man. Let me take this for you. And this is very small.

Like this is you'd say, hopefully any human that would see that would help. But nobody else got up. Now, Colt was the last person that I thought would get up because he's Colt McCoy at that point. You're our guest here. Be the superstar.

Be the Heisman Trophy candidate. But he got up. And it's little things like that, like what you did, like what Colt does that I think, A, represents who Christ is. B, is the ultimate representation of what leadership is about. Yeah.

Thinking about what you've said in your book about serving as leadership, leadership is serving. Yeah. I thought, here's what happened to me. I stood in the locker room. I saw a need. I met it. I come home. I don't do the same thing. That's what I was going to ask. Oh, there she goes. I was going to ask, is it harder to serve at home than it is at work?

I think so. I think because you become comfortable at home. You come set in your ways. I have the struggle. I'm no problem when I'm here with you guys or I'm at work or I'm out and I come home and it's like, what are we having for dinner, honey? My mind goes right to where we're comfortable.

Who's going to serve me? Correct. And you have to remember the love languages here. That's a whole other story for another time. But what's my wife's love language? Well, hers is acts of service. So I got to get up and I got to serve her and help her. And that's not my love language.

I'm going to give you all a secret. Serving is pretty much everybody's love language. Think about this. I mean, when we get up, we go to work.

Yes. And then work is over and we go home to rest. And so women get up and go to work. Right. And then they come home to go to work. So I'm thinking about a friend of mine who years ago told me this.

I thought this was so smart. He said, when I leave the office in the afternoon, he said, there is a spot that's about a mile from where I live. And he said, I will pull off for about five minutes before I get home.

Yes. And he says, and I will tell myself you are about to go to your second job and you better strap it on and be just as good there. You're not going home to rest and be served. You're going into the next area where you're hired to work. And it's really your most important job.

That's a great point. Just a tip, because I used to do this and it was wrong. I would say things to Dave like, I wish I could get home and sit on the couch. I wish I could come home. And that does not work.

It doesn't, does it? Does not motivate a husband? I'm going to give you my wife's number. Because I was sarcastic. I was hoping Dave would get the point. But I wish I would have just gone in, sat on the couch or done whatever and said, honey, I really need your help right now, because I assume that he knew it.

I assume that he would get up. And here's another tip. Tell them exactly what you would like them to do. And the wife who says, and I've tried that, and my husband goes, can you just give me 15 minutes to just chill? Or he goes, OK, what do you need me to do? And she goes, I don't.

The next day she just says, forget it. I'll just do it myself. I've heard that exact words. So I just said I do it. No, you didn't say you do it. You said, OK, so Mr. Leadership, how can that wife, is there anything you'd recommend to her to do? Oh, gosh. You called him Mr. Leadership.

I'm going to get in so much trouble. Listen, I've been married 21 years and I'm I'm not perfect by any means. But I will say a lot of what you explain, I live through every day. Now, it's weird with me and my wife because we both work from home currently. A lot of people. We're not. Yeah. I mean, obviously with the pandemic and everything, a lot of people are working from home. But her leaving work and coming upstairs is is other people's drive home for a half hour. Ours is turn the computer off. I'm upstairs. I go downstairs. She's downstairs.

She comes upstairs and here we clash at five thirty every day. We're like, OK, how was your work day? Well, it was fine.

How was yours? And it's a different world for us. But I do think it's important to communicate and that's on both ends. And remember to that communication is part of the leadership model.

You really got to talk and you've got to kind of explain. Sometimes guys need this more than the women. Exactly what you want, you know, and remember that it's different situations. You know, my wife works in a job that where she's not sort of happy all the time in her role, whereas I'm like, I get to do sports and I get to interview all these people and guess what I did.

So I'm very rarely in a quote unquote bad mood coming from work. And that was the same way at ESPN. So it's different. But I think communication has to be vital. I mean, as leaders, we have to be able to communicate through serving. But we also need to be able to communicate and be able to listen.

Yeah. And I know for and she's joking, but she would come in and sit on the couch and be mad at me. And then when she started coming in on the couch and encouraging me, I don't know, it was a different response. Again, she wasn't saying, hey, it's awesome.

You're sitting there watching the game and not helping me. But no, you started to say speak life into things that I was doing well. And to even thank you like, hey, thanks for doing the dishes tonight. That was a huge help that motivated you so much, like, oh, maybe I should do that again instead of me saying, well, about time you did the dishes.

I do them every night. I think that really is important in how we speak. Mary Ann and I were at a Bible study one time and the question that everybody kind of the opener question was, what's something your spouse has done recently that you found romantic? And I'm waiting as we're going around the circle thinking, why is everybody laughing right now? I'm thinking, what is she going to say?

Yeah. What's she going to come up with? And I'm starting to think, what have I done romantic in the last? I'm thinking she's going to go back to college when we were dating. You reached over and grabbed her hand. So I'm waiting to see what she's going to say.

She gets to her and she said, well, I'll tell you, this was this was like last week. I was in the kitchen. I was doing the dishes. And without me saying anything, Bob got up and came in and grabbed a dish towel and started drying dishes.

And I didn't even ask him to. And she said that was so romantic. Yes.

I'm going, that was romantic. Are you kidding me? You know what it was? You put on the home jersey. You wore the uniform properly.

Yes. I can tell you what. Then every time I grabbed a dish towel from then on, she goes, I know what you're doing. And I know what you're thinking. It's going to work to find another way. I will say to what you said and was was beautiful, because if you come in and you encourage Dave, thank you for doing the dishes.

Dave's going to going to be like, OK, I'm going to bat for four. I mean, you're going to you love each other anyways, but you're going to go to battle for that woman on anything because you feel loved. Right. And in the business world, that's the same way we talk about bosses. The greatest leaders I've seen are people who show caring and love. And they invest in the person, not just in the employee.

Right. Relational equity that you're building. And I think if somebody shows me I've had great leaders who are my bosses, but I've also had some bosses who weren't necessarily great leaders, but the ones who loved me, who cared for me, who went and invested into me.

I was going to go to battle for that person. I'll do anything they want because I know that they care about me. And I think that transfers over to the home. You know, if you each each other, show each other that you care for each other. And, you know, even just picking up the dish towel and doing the dishes and drying them off without being asked like that.

I think my wife would flip if I started vacuuming in the house. Yes. So I got to go home and do that tonight. But that's that's a way of showing that you care. And then she's going to go to battle for me.

I'm going to go to battle for her. And that just makes the relationships. I mean, one of the themes in your book over and over is the people part that leadership isn't just task and accomplishing great goals. It's really. And again, it's not a separate.

It's throughout the whole book. It's all about seeing people caring for people, people feeling loved by you. And I just thought it's easy to do that for me in the locker room or at church. It's harder to do that when I walk in the door. But who's the most valuable people in my life, in our lives, our wives, our kids, our husbands, our kids, you know, your spouse, your children. It's of course, a lot of defense. The people you work with.

I'm not saying that they matter. But it's so easy to walk in the door and have, you know, I'm where my boss is a 10. My wife's a seven.

What? It should be my wife's a 10. My children are tens. My boss is a minus five. Now, you know, I'm saying it's just like it's so easy. And again, if there's a leadership uniform, a leadership lesson to end with, it would be, man, when you walk in the door.

Everybody that you're you're leading and serving is a 10 and bring the energy that you brought to your office. It's a more important job. I said it earlier. I was sort of kidding, but it didn't. It's I'm not kidding. It is your most important job.

It's your first line of defense. Absolutely. And I think the two words that we started with influence and service as the definition of leadership. Everybody's an influencer and everybody has opportunities to serve. You're a leader as a mom, as a dad, a husband, wife, even teenagers who are listening. You're a leader.

So use that influence. Serve others. Get a copy of Jason's book, The Uniform of Leadership, Lessons on True Success from my ESPN Life. We've got copies of Jason's book and our Family Life Today Resource Center. You can order it from us online at familylifetoday.com or you can call 1-800-FL-TODAY to get a copy.

Again, the title of the book is The Uniform of Leadership by Jason Romano. It's available online at familylifetoday.com or call if you'd like to order a copy. Our number is 1-800-358-6329. That's 800 F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. I want to come back to those two words we've talked about, service and influence. Here at Family Life, we're committed to doing everything we can do to help you serve and influence others more effectively in your marriage, in your family, in your community. We want to help you effectively develop a godly marriage and family.

We believe godly marriages and families can change the world one home at a time. And those of you who are regular listeners, you've heard us say this often, but it is your financial support of this ministry that makes all we do here at Family Life possible. The handful of listeners in every city who support this ministry, either with one-time donations or as monthly legacy partners, you guys are partnering with us to reach more people more often through this radio program, our podcast, through what you hear online, all of the different ways that Family Life Today is now available.

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Joe tackles one of the tough issues of our day, the issue of pornography, and gets to the root causes of pornography to help men and women get free from the bondage that so many people are experiencing in this area. The book More Than a Battle is our gift to you when you make a donation today to support the ministry of Family Life Today. You can do that online at FamilyLifeToday.com, or you can call to donate at 1-800-FL today. We are grateful for your partnership with us, and thanks in advance for your support. And we hope you can join us again tomorrow as we continue to talk about what effective leadership looks like in the home, in the workplace, in the community, how we can all do a better job of serving and influencing others. Jason Romano joins us again tomorrow. We hope you can join us as well. I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, along with our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our hosts, Dave and Ann Wilson, I'm Bob Lapine. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life of Little Rock, Arkansas, a crew ministry. Help for today. Hope for tomorrow.