S5:E147🎙️🇺🇸 America 250 | America’s Aspirational Creed Renewed (Multi Tracks Audio)
In this episode of the Leadership and Success Podcast, Coach BZ (Bob Fabien Zinga) and host Daniel discuss America’s 250th anniversary through a three‑part framework—Celebrate, Reflect, Renew. Zinga highlights the historical mistreatment of Black Americans, from chattel slavery and its brutal metrics to ongoing medical bias, and argues that the nation’s founding documents contain a seed of progress in the preamble’s promise of a "more perfect union." He urges listeners to celebrate Independence Day while also reflecting on the nation’s violent past, including the lynching of Norris Dendy and the delayed recognition of Black leaders like Dr. Lisa Cook. The conversation moves to affirmative action, where Zinga frames it as a leadership challenge to ensure fair access to opportunity without lowering standards, citing examples from the military’s integration and modern hiring practices. He also shares personal anecdotes about his family’s experience with systemic racism, calls for reparations (the historic promise of 40 acres and a mule), and discusses upcoming book projects (Honor Mode Professional Growth Series and a Cyber track volume). Throughout, Zinga emphasizes paying it forward, mentoring, and building inclusive leadership communities.
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¡Hola! Hi, I'm John Maxwell.
When the top companies in the world are looking for trainers, speakers, and coaches, there's one name that stands above the rest, and that's Maxwell Leadership. Our certified team members have gotten proven results for companies all over the globe, and our reputation, I'm proud to say, is second to none. Some of our members have risen to the top of their profession, including the one you're going to meet today. I proudly introduce you to my friend Bob Fabien Zinga.
Welcome to the Leadership and Success Podcast with your host, Coach BZ, where we help you lead with purpose and succeed with impact. If you're ready to grow into the kind of leader others want to follow, this podcast is for you. If you're determined to elevate your success and leave a lasting legacy, this podcast is for you. As my mentor, Dr. John C. Maxwell, reminds us, everything rises and falls on leadership. Our goal is simple, to inspire you, challenge you, and equip you with insights that can transform the trajectory of your leadership journey. Welcome aboard to Welcome to another episode of the Leadership and Success Podcast with Coach BZ.
All right everyone, welcome to a very special edition of the Leadership and Success Podcast. Today marks the 250th year of the Declaration of Independence. America is officially 250 years old today. Wow. Well, I always start with what we call here the moment of gratitude. And part of the reason why we do this is because service members and veterans, it's about 21, 22 service members and veterans commit suicide in this country every single day. And we believe it's impossible to be suicidal and be grateful at the very same time. So on this very special day, for those who've been watching the show for a while, you know what to do. If you would maybe Close your eyes, put yourself in your happy space, and in this moment, what are you grateful for? Well, on July 4th, I am really grateful for freedom. Freedom, freedom, freedom. I believe God made men and women to be free, right? Patrick Henry said it right: "Give me liberty or give me death." I'd rather die than be somebody else's said, absolutely. I was born to be free. And Martin Luther King says, "Free at last, free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last." That's what we were born for, and that's what we celebrate— freedom for everyone, black, white, male, female, it doesn't matter. Freedom, freedom, freedom. And that's what we celebrate today. Now, America is not a perfect country, God knows, but I believe that America is the best country in the world. That's my opinion. I was born in Africa. I have grown up in Europe and I came to the US. I must tell you, right, I am African by birth, French by culture, and American by choice. And the reason why I chose America, because there's just no country like it. Doesn't mean that it's perfect, because it isn't, but it is the best country we have right now. And I think we need to fight to make America be what she's meant to be, right? Live up to those words in the Declaration of Independence. I think they really, really changed the entire world when in 1776 they says, "All men are created equal." That's never been said before, never. All men. Doesn't matter if you're Black, if you're white, if you're a man, a woman, gay, straight, it doesn't matter. All men are created equal. That is so powerful. And I think since that time, America has been trying to make it true for all of our citizens, not just rich white, you know, Christian heterosexual men, but all men, all humankind, all people created equal in this country. I think that's really what makes the difference between our country and everywhere else, right? When you go to China, they mostly have the same ethnicity. You go to Japan, you go to Europe, most of those countries, they are based on the language or and ethnicity. But in America, we are the melting pot. You could be originally from China or Africa like I am, from South America, from anywhere. You come here, you become an American because you believe in our foundational creed. Not that we've always done what we were supposed to, but at least we aspire to it. Anyway, this is gonna be a very, very special podcast. I'm gonna be talking about my latest article where I talk about our independence, right? America 250, America aspirational creed renew. So we need to believe in our creed and we need to make America more and more like what she's supposed to be. All right, we are going to get to it in a minute. So while you are listening, let me know where are you guys joining us from? City and what country if outside of the US. And again, happy Fourth of July to everyone. Okay, I am going to play— the podcast will be about 30 minutes or so. It is based on the latest article I wrote about America's 250th birthday. Now it's going to be challenging us a little bit too, right? I believe being a patriot doesn't mean that you forget about all of the ills of your country or you pretend that America or your country is perfect. No, we have to love America with honesty, right? For example, a very important fact. Yes, we are celebrating July 4th, 1776, but guess what? On that day, almost half a million African American men, women, and children were enslaved. So while we were fighting to free America, the 13 colonies, to be independent from the United Kingdom, half a million people in this country were enslaved. How in the world do you explain that? And then I will tell you why, even as a Black man, why I do celebrate the 4th of July. And I understand for some of the direct descendants of the slaves in America why they may not want to celebrate the 4th of July at all, but I think that is a mistake because I believe we own this country. We built this country. America wouldn't be America without African Americans. We built the wealth in this country. It is our country. And I don't think you want to really get that and let the white supremacist nationalists take over. This is all of our country. America belongs to all of us. And the 4th of July does too. Okay, I will tell you more, but I am open to hear what you have to say. Hello to Krista Gonsoli, Lieutenant Commander of US Navy. Thank you for being here. And she says, I am incredibly grateful to be surrounded by a community of witnesses, supporters, and mentors. Each bring a unique perspective that challenges, encourages, and strengthens me. Thank God for diversity of thought. Thank God for that. Really, diversity is our strength in this country. E pluribus unum, right? That's our national motto. Out of many, one. And that is so, so true. But thanks for watching. I'm now going to play the podcast. Lasts about 30 minutes or so. As you listen to it, I want you to think about 3 things that come to mind. What are your 3 to 5 takeaways? And you can also read the article with Sam Nam on LinkedIn. It's right under the article, it's the latest one I published earlier this morning. So hopefully there's going to be some food for thought and this is going to be a blessing to you. So see you in about 30 minutes.
So you write the words on a piece of paper and that equals the reality on the ground. I mean, that's the expectation, right?
Right. Yeah. In a perfect world.
Yeah.
You draw the blueprint, the builders pour the concrete, and boom, the building looks exactly like the drawing. It's clean, it's simple.
But today, uh, which is July 4th, 2026, by the way.
Yes. Happy 250th birthday to the United States.
Exactly. The big 250. But today we're looking at what happens when that blueprint and the actual reality are just, well, worlds apart.
Right. Because the second you step into the real world of, you know, human institutions, that clean one-to-one translation just shatters completely.
Oh, absolutely.
And so today we are digging into this really fascinating stack of articles written by Bob Fabien Zinga. He goes by BZ.
Right.
He's a US Navy information warfare commander.
Yeah. And a cybersecurity executive. And we're using his work to explore how leaders handle that the exact gap, you know, the massive distance between a stated promise on paper and the actual practice on the ground.
And we're doing this by looking at America's founding documents. And honestly, it's incredibly complicated history, but not just as like artifacts sitting under glass in a museum.
Yeah, not just the history lesson.
Exactly. We're looking at it as a living leadership playbook. Zinga basically frames this whole exploration around 3 actions, which are Celebrate, Reflect, and Renew. And I do want to just note right up front for you listening, we are going to be touching on some really complex, deeply painful, and honestly heavily debated aspects of history today.
Yeah, we have to. It's part of the story.
It is.
But our goal here is to just impartially explore the historical facts that Zinga presents. Right. We want to extract the mechanical leadership lessons.
Exactly.
We're looking at the how and the why of organizational behavior. We're not here to endorse any specific political narrative.
Okay, let's unpack this. Mm-hmm. Because Zinga starts with this concept that, well, it sounds really simple, but it is incredibly difficult to actually execute when you're in a leadership role. And that's the idea of the North Star.
Yeah. The guiding light.
Right. He argues that great institutions just do not begin in perfection. Like in 1776, the founders wrote down, all men are created equal.
Which, you know, was just an earth-shattering, totally revolutionary idea at that time.
It really was.
And Zinga actually brings in this great perspective from Brigadier General Stephen L. A. Michael of the US Army. Captures this perfectly.
Oh, I love this quote. What did he say?
He said, of the US, uh, greatest on the planet, no other nation like it. It all starts with that Constitution of ours, written not because of where we were, but where we aspire to be.
Where we aspire to be. I mean, that distinction right there, that is doing so much heavy lifting.
Oh yeah. It changes the whole framing.
It's like a tech startup, right? Like writing its mission statement on day one.
That's a great analogy.
Because the actual product they're shipping right then, it, it might be full of bugs. The code is a mess, the servers keep crashing, but that bold, ambitious mission statement, that's what guides the engineering team. It tells them what they're actually trying to build.
Yeah, exactly. The Declaration of Independence was basically America's aspirational mission statement, right? And what's really fascinating here is the mechanics of how that applies to modern leadership.
Right.
Like, you absolutely must articulate a clear North Star. You have to paint a picture of the future that is just so compelling that it forces all your decisions to align with it.
It pulls you forward.
Right. And it inspires perseverance when the day-to-day execution gets, you know, incredibly hard.
But wait, let me just play devil's advocate here for a second.
Sure, go for it.
If a modern CEO wrote this brilliant, soaring mission statement about equality and human dignity, but was like actively exploiting their workers on the ground, we would just call them a hypocrite.
Uh-uh, 100%. They'd be roasted.
Right.
We demand they step down immediately. So why does Zinga give the founders a pass here? Doesn't separating the messenger from the message just, I don't know, breed cynicism in the ranks?
That is the pivotal question. It really is. And to understand why Zinga takes this stance, you have to understand exactly who is making the argument.
Right, his background is super important here.
It's crucial. B.Z. Zinga is an African immigrant. He's from the Republic of the Congo. And he is a direct descendant of Queen Nzinga.
Oh, wow.
The 17th-century monarch?
Yes, the one who famously fought against Portuguese slavers in Angola.
That is incredible.
And he became a US citizen in 2006. Swore an oath, became a Navy commander, and was actually physically injured in defense of the nation.
So his own lineage traces back to the very regions where, you know, the first enslaved Africans were taken from in 1619.
Exactly. So his decision to celebrate the Fourth of July, it isn't born out of some historical ignorance. It is a deliberate, highly strategic choice.
Right. He's fully aware of the history.
He celebrates because he believes the American promise allowed him to dream impossible dreams. He deliberately separates the flawed founders from the enduring principles they wrote down, because in his view, the principle of equality outlived the hypocrisy of the men who penned it.
That makes a lot of sense.
He's basically arguing that if a principle is objectively true, you don't just discard it because the architect was compromised.
You don't abandon the mission, right? You renew it.
Exactly.
And he brings out a quote that I think really anchors this whole idea. It's from General Daniel Chappie James Jr.
Ah, the legendary Air Force general.
Yes.
And General James said, uh, I'm not disgusted. I'm a citizen of the United States of America, and I'm no second-class citizen either. And no man here is unless he thinks like one and reasons like one and performs like one.
Such a powerful statement.
It really is. He goes on, this is my country and I believe in her and I will serve her and I'll contribute to her welfare whenever and however I can. If she has any ills, I'll stand by her until in God's given time, Through her wisdom and her consideration for the welfare of the entire nation, she will put them right.
I mean, that right there is just a masterclass in constructive accountability. Absolutely. General James is saying, I claim ownership of this institution, flaws and all. My service is the mechanism by which I force it to heal its ills. It's treating a vision as a roadmap you actively have to pave rather than, you know, just a destination you magically arrive at.
Yeah, but you can't just stare at the North Star forever, right?
Definitely not.
If you have this beautiful aspirational vision, eventually you have to stop and look at the ground beneath your feet. You have to actually measure the distance between what you wrote on paper and what your culture actually looks like in reality.
And this is where Zinga asks a very pointed question, right?
Why did America need a second Independence Day on June 19th, 1865?
Because you simply cannot build an enduring system on an unresolved moral contradiction.
Yeah.
And the contradiction of 1776 was just Massive.
It's hard to even wrap your head around.
Zinga lays out the stark data here. Out of the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence, 41 of them enslaved people.
Wait, 41 out of 56?
Yes.
That is 73% of the signers.
That number is just staggering. I mean, you have Patrick Henry famously shouting, "Give me liberty or give me death!" while at the exact same time actively enslaving over 60 human beings.
Yeah.
And zooming out to the broader population on that day, July 4th, 1776, there were roughly 500,000 Black men, women, and children in bondage.
Half a million people.
That was 1 out of every 5 people living in the colonies.
Okay, so this is where I get completely stuck. How do they justify that gap? If they're sitting in a room drafting a document about inalienable human rights, how does that cognitive dissonance not just tear the room apart?
It's a great question.
And more importantly for you listening, as a leader today, How do you handle inheriting a system that is that profoundly compromised?
Well, it comes down to the mechanics of compromise, which are almost always driven by economics and fear.
Economics and fear.
Yeah.
Yeah. Zinga analyzes this historical justification. The Southern colonies' wealth depended entirely on the unpaid labor of enslaved people. And politically, the founders were terrified. They really believed that confronting the issue of slavery directly would fracture their fragile coalition before they could even win a war against the British Empire.
So they just, they froze.
Thomas Jefferson described it as having a wolf by the ear. You didn't like it, but you didn't dare let it go.
So they prioritized the immediate survival of their union over the integrity of their own core values. They saw the problem, they knew it was a huge problem, and they just kicked the can to the next generation.
And that right there leads to Zinga's core warning for leaders today: unresolved contradictions become strategic failures.
That is such a strong phrase. Unresolved contradictions become strategic failures.
When you tolerate a massive contradiction in your organization's foundation, it doesn't just fade away with time. It festers, it scales up, and eventually it fractures the entire structure.
That translates so directly to modern leadership. I mean, we see this all the time, right? An organization says, oh, our people matter the most. Mental health is a priority, but the actual rhythm of the business burns them out completely.
Exactly. Or a tech company publicly declares that cybersecurity is their number one priority.
Yeah.
But their internal incentive structures reward managers who push code out fast, even if it's unsafe.
Yeah. When you incentivize speed over safety, but claim safety is your top priority, you've created a structural contradiction.
And the people executing the work, you know, the developers, the factory floor workers, the sales team, they see that contradiction immediately. They know what the real values are. Based on what is rewarded, not what is written in some PDF employee handbook.
So true. And Zinga goes even deeper into this by bringing in an analysis of Edward Baptist's book, uh, The Half Has Never Been Told. And this is a really tough but necessary pivot because Baptist looks at the brutal mechanics of how American capitalism and slavery were intertwined.
It's totally essential for understanding the unintended consequences of systems. Baptist's book highlights this deeply uncomfortable paradox that For decades in early America, freedom and unfreedom grew together.
Wow.
Yeah. Democracy and economic opportunity expanded for many white Americans through the exact same mechanisms that expanded and entrenched slavery for millions of African Americans.
What are those specific mechanisms, though? Because I think we often think of slavery just as this generalized moral failing. But Baptist points out it was actually a highly optimized, data-driven economic system, right?
Exactly. And this is the part that is so chilling. The system relied on what was essentially a hyper-aggressive tracking of productivity metrics. Plantation owners developed what they called a pushing system.
How did that work?
They would assign individual quotas to enslaved people picking cotton, and they meticulously weighed the output every single day. If you met the quota, your quota for the next day was increased.
Oh my God.
And if you failed to meet this constantly rising, artificially inflated target, The result was immediate physical punishment.
So they were obsessively tracking data to squeeze maximum efficiency out of human beings using terror as the optimization tool.
Yes. And Zinga extracts this leadership takeaway from this that applies directly to our modern data-obsessed culture. He says data without humanity is dangerous.
Data without humanity is dangerous.
When you relentlessly track productivity metrics without any regard for human dignity, empathy, or ethics, The system just becomes completely destructive.
You can totally see the modern echoes of this mechanism, obviously divorced from the physical violence, but structurally similar. Think about, like, algorithm-driven warehouse quotas today.
Oh, that's a perfect example.
A worker's performance target is dynamically adjusted based on their fastest possible day. The algorithm doesn't care if they are tired or if they need a bathroom break. It just demands the optimized output. And if they fall short, they are automatically penalized or fired.
Which is exactly why leaders have to balance their performance dashboards with an unwavering commitment to human well-being. If you are optimizing purely for efficiency and ignoring the hidden human costs embedded in your success, you are setting up a strategic failure. You are building on a contradiction.
And as we know from history, you can't build an economy on an unresolved moral contradiction forever without the foundation finally cracking.
It always cracks.
Which brings us to the breaking point. The kicked can hits a wall. In 1861, that crack turns into the Civil War. The nation literally tears itself apart at the cost of over 600,000 American lives.
Such an immense tragedy.
And that forces an ultimate leadership test. When the system completely shatters, how do you redefine the mission?
That brings us to President Abraham Lincoln and the massive strategic pivot he executes at Gettysburg in November of 1863.
The Gettysburg Address. I mean, it's legendary, but the stats around it that Zinga highlights are almost absurd. Like, the speech was only 272 words.
Yeah, so short.
It took Lincoln less than 3 minutes to deliver. He redefined a nation in the time it takes to brew a cup of coffee.
It really proves that clarity and brevity are a leader's most powerful tools during a crisis. But the true genius is in the mechanics of what he actually said. Zinga cites author Garry Wills, who wrote a brilliant book analyzing this speech.
Oh yeah, what does Wills say?
Wills points out that what makes the Gettysburg Address so revolutionary is actually what Lincoln chose not to reference.
Right, he doesn't start by talking about the Constitution.
Exactly. He does not anchor his argument in the Constitution of 1787. Why? Because the 1787 Constitution was the document of compromise.
Right, right.
It contained the Three-Fifths Compromise, it contained the Fugitive Slave Clause, it legally tolerated and protected the institution of slavery. If Lincoln had stood up and said, "We are fighting this war to preserve the Constitution," he would technically be fighting to preserve the very clauses that protected slavery.
Hold on, so by saying "fourscore and seven years ago," he is deliberately bypassing the entire legal framework of the country. That is a massive legal and political gamble.
It is a brilliant calculated gamble. I mean, do the math. 1863 minus 87 years lands you exactly in 1776.
Wow.
Lincoln bypasses the legal contract of 1787 and reaches all the way back to the moral aspiration of 1776. He literally overrides the legal framework with a moral one. He's saying, our true foundation isn't the compromise, it's the proposition that all men are created equal.
He fundamentally shifted the entire nation's center of gravity right then and there. He redefined the purpose of the immense suffering they were going through. It wasn't just about preserving a union of states anymore, it was about achieving a new birth of Freedom.
And if we connect this to the bigger picture of leadership, think about how most inexperienced managers react when everything is on fire.
They panic.
Yeah, under immense stress when a project is failing or a company is facing an existential threat, weak leaders default to giving more tasks. They micromanage. They focus heavily on process because controlling the process feels like safety.
But Lincoln did the exact opposite. He gave the nation a renewed why. And Zinga compares this to his own experience in the Navy and in the cybersecurity sector. Navy sailors don't endure grueling, month-long deployments separated from their families just because they love the strict process of swabbing a deck.
No, of course not.
Cybersecurity teams don't work brutal late-night hours fighting relentless adversaries just for the fun of staring at lines of code.
They endure the hardship because they understand the why. They believe their mission actually matters. They know they're protecting people. Great leaders reconnect their people to that purpose, especially during a crisis. They reframe the tragedy or the stress into a moment of organizational renewal.
Okay, so Lincoln provides the vision. He executes the pivot. He gives the team the why. He even gives the formal order, the Emancipation Proclamation. But as Zinga explicitly states, orders are not outcomes.
Such a vital distinction.
Providing the vision doesn't magically change the reality on the ground. And this is the crux of the leadership lesson around Juneteenth.
This is one of the starkest examples of the gap between promise and practice in American history. Let's look at the timeline here. President Lincoln signs the Emancipation Proclamation, and it goes into effect on January 1st, 1863.
Right.
It declares that all persons held as slaves within the rebellious states are, and henceforward shall be, free.
A massive historic policy change. The blueprint have been updated, but for hundreds of thousands of enslaved people, it was literally just ink on paper in Washington, D.C. It didn't change the reality of their daily lives one bit.
Because a policy is entirely limited by the physical capacity to enforce it. The proclamation depended on the Union military advancing into Confederate territory and physically dismantling the system. So you have this declaration on January 1st, 1863, but it wasn't until June 19th, 1865—
2 and a half years later.
Exactly, 2 and a half years later that 2,000 Union troops finally arrived in Galveston, Texas.
Let that sit for a second for everyone listening. Two and a half years.
The troops arrive under the command of Major General Gordon Granger, and they issue General Order No. 3, announcing that the more than 250,000 enslaved Black people in the state of Texas were finally free. That day is what we now celebrate as Juneteenth.
It's like pushing a major software update from corporate headquarters.
Uh, yeah. That's the perfect way to look at it.
The executive dashboard in the C-suite shows that the update is 100% deployed. They are high-fiving, celebrating. But if the local servers at the branch level are physically unplugged, the update never actually happens. The employees at the branch are still running the old broken system.
Right.
The Emancipation Proclamation was the pushed update. Juneteenth was the day they finally rode into town and plugged the server in.
And this is Zinga's primary leadership lesson here. The stark difference between a declaration and a delivered outcome. Do not confuse policy with performance. Do not confuse your intent with your impact. A signed policy is not mission accomplished.
Leadership begins where the announcement ends.
I love that. So if you are listening to this right now and you've just rolled out a new standard, maybe it's a new safety protocol, a sweeping reorg, or a new diversity and inclusion initiative. What do you actually have to do to close the gap?
Well, you have to inspect for understanding. You have to actively hunt for the friction points that are stopping your policy from becoming reality. You have to get out of the boardroom, walk the ground truth, and keep showing up until the truth on paper becomes the truth in practice. Because if you don't enforce the standard, the standard simply does not exist.
And Zinga makes a deeply sobering point about the cost of that gap. When there is a delay in execution, it is the people on the ground who carry the weight of that delay. The 2.5-year gap between the Emancipation Proclamation and Juneteenth wasn't just an administrative lag.
Not at all.
It was 2.5 years of stolen lives, stolen labor, stolen families, and stolen freedom. Delay has a human cost. And that brings us to the reality of what happened after Juneteenth, because even General Order No. 3 didn't magically fix everything overnight.
Yeah.
If you read the actual text of the order, it is fraught with contradiction.
How so?
Well, it declares an absolute equality of personal rights, but in the very next breath, it directs the newly freed people to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages, and explicitly states they will not be supported in idleness.
It's announcing a new reality while aggressively trying to manage and restrain it using the exact framework of the old reality.
Precisely. It reflects a society going through a massive, terrifying transition. And as Zinga points out, the journey was far from over. This leads us to the concept of stewardship and the endurance of leadership.
Because after Juneteenth in 1865, you enter the era of Reconstruction, which sees brief progress but is rapidly followed by the violent backlash of Jim Crow laws, systemic segregation, and the disenfranchisement of Black voters. It took nearly another century.
Yeah, a full century.
It wasn't until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that the federal government finally provided real enforceable legal weight to the promises made in 1776 and 1865.
Which highlights the unimaginably long arc of execution. Zinga brings in the voices of two historical giants to illustrate how leaders manage this kind of generational delay. First, Frederick Douglass, who famously gave the speech "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" in 1852, fiercely condemning the hypocrisy of the nation.
Which was totally justified.
Right. Yet Douglass eventually evolved his stance. He came to call the Constitution a "glorious liberty document." Wait, how does he make that leap?
From condemning the hypocrisy to actually praising the document?
Because he realized the document could be weaponized for freedom. He understood that the text itself didn't actually mention the word slave. He believed that if you held the nation strictly to the text it had written, the system of slavery was inherently unconstitutional. He didn't want to burn the blueprint. He wanted to force the builders to follow it.
And a century later, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. used the exact same mechanical framework. During the March on Washington, Dr. King didn't say the system needs to be destroyed. He used a financial metaphor. He said that the founders had written a promissory note to every American, But for Black Americans, that check had come back marked insufficient funds.
He was demanding that America be true to what it wrote on paper. He was demanding that the bank honor the check and the stewardship of that— the stewardship of the Juneteenth legacy itself is an incredible story of psychological and organizational endurance.
Let's trace that timeline because it completely redefines what stewardship actually means. In 1866, just one year after freedom arrived in Galveston, Black Texans started celebrating Jubilee Day. In 1872, African American leaders in Houston who had been enslaved just 7 years prior pooled together $1,000, which was an enormous sum at the time, to buy 10 acres of land specifically to celebrate this day.
Wow.
And they named it Emancipation Park.
They preserved the legacy when the rest of the nation either ignored it or actively tried to erase it. They were stewards of the memory.
Then you jump forward a century. In 1980, a Texas state legislator named Al Edwards, who is known as the Father of Juneteenth, successfully fought to make it an official state holiday in Texas.
Mm-hmm.
But the mission still wasn't complete.
No. Then the torch passes to Dr. Opal Lee, affectionately known as the Grandmother of Juneteenth.
Her story is the ultimate definition of endurance. She spent decades advocating for Juneteenth to be recognized nationally. She gathered over 1.6 million petition signatures, And she launched a walking campaign. She would walk 2.5 miles in cities across the country to symbolize the 2.5 years that enslaved people in Texas had to wait for their freedom.
And she was doing this at the age of 89.
89 years old.
Incredible. And finally, in 2021, she stood next to the president in the White House as Juneteenth became a federal holiday.
This raises an important question for anyone in a leadership position: who owns a movement? Who owns a mission? Zinga uses this 155-year timeline to argue that true leadership is stewardship. Neither Al Edwards nor Dr. Opalee started the Juneteenth movement. They didn't seek personal ownership or absolute credit for it. They inherited a sacred trust. They strengthened it. They advanced the line and they passed the torch.
You don't own the command. You don't own the company. You don't own your team. You are a temporary custodian. Your job is to take the baton, run your leg of the race as hard as you can, and leave the institution better than you found it.
And you have to understand the pace of change. Meaningful systemic change takes longer than ambition prefers. Dr. Opalee didn't sprint to a quick victory. She endured. Walking 2.5 miles at age 89 requires a psychological resilience that honestly most modern leaders completely lack.
Yeah, without a doubt.
Leadership is a marathon. If you expect immediate results and you abandon the mission when progress is slow or met with resistance, you just lack the endurance required for transformational change.—
So we've talked about the aspirational vision, the friction of a contradictory reality, the desperate need for execution, and the endurance of stewardship. This brings us to the final part of Zinga's framework, which is Renew.—
Right. How do you, the listener, take 406 years of history from the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in Virginia in 1619 to today and actually apply it to your own leadership journey tomorrow morning?
Well, Zinga's answer relies on the concept of constructive accountability. It's the idea that true patriots and great leaders do not abandon imperfect institutions. They take ownership of them, they engage with the friction, and they improve them from the inside.
He points to the incredible service of African Americans in the military as the ultimate mechanical example of this, right? You look at the Golden 13, who became the Navy's first Black officers. You look at the Tuskegee Airmen, the Montford Point Marines, the Buffalo Soldiers.
True pioneers.
These are generations of men and women who wore the wore the uniform, bled, and fought to defend a country that, at the very time they were serving, denied them full rights and treated them as second-class citizens.
They defended freedoms they did not fully enjoy themselves. And the question is, why? How did that force change? Zinga argues that their service created undeniable ownership. They didn't just inherit America; they helped build it and defend it.
But how did their actions actually change the system? It wasn't just by being present, right?
Exactly.
Take the Montford Point Marines, for example. It wasn't just that they served, it's how they served. During World War II, the military needed massive manpower, but segregation was a logistical nightmare.
I can imagine.
You had to have duplicate facilities, separate training, totally inefficient deployment of troops. By achieving undeniable operational excellence, these segregated units created a friction point. They proved that performance and excellence can destroy the underlying logic of prejudice.
They forced the institution to rely on them.
Yes. Which mechanism by mechanism made segregation operationally impossible and logically absurd. They broke the system by outperforming its expectations.
So for the emerging leaders listening, maybe you're a junior officer, a mid-level manager, or an engineer feeling completely stuck at the bottom of a massive corporate hierarchy. What is the practical advice here? How do you practice constructive accountability?
Zinga's advice is incredibly pragmatic here. Do not wait for command to start leading. Don't wait until you have the corner office, the highest rank, or the formal title to start taking ownership of your organization's culture. You can lead right now from whatever seat you are in.
Okay, but how? I mean, if I don't have the authority to actually change the policy, what do I actually do?
You lead by how you communicate. You lead when you translate complexity into clarity for your immediate team, shielding them from corporate noise. You lead when you reduce fear during a crisis or a period of uncertainty. You lead when you stop trying to prove you are the smartest person in the room and instead focus entirely on becoming the person who makes everyone else in the room better.
Because as Zinga notes, when you finally do get that command or that executive title, your character isn't going to suddenly appear out of thin air. The authority won't give you integrity. It will merely reveal what was already there.
Precisely. And to give leaders a daily anchor for this, Zinga distills his framework into 3 commitments for personal and organizational renewal, drawing from the biblical book of Micah. They are simple to say, but incredibly demanding to execute.
What are they?
Do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly.
Let's translate those directly into a modern leadership context. To do justly means ensuring fairness, equity, and ethical behavior in your systems and decisions.
Yeah.
It means actively closing the gap between your stated values and your actual practices. It means not optimizing data at the expense of humanity.
And to love mercy.
To love mercy means leading with empathy. It means recognizing the fundamental humanity in your team. When someone makes a mistake, do you destroy them or do you develop them? It means realizing that your people are not just cogs in a machine designed to hit a metric.
Which leaves walk humbly.
This requires the profound self-awareness to know that you are a steward. Not an owner. It means having the humility to listen to the people on the deck plates, the humility to admit when your organization or you personally have fallen short of the North Star, and the willingness to change course when the data and your people tell you the current path is wrong.
Wow. That is an incredibly heavy, enduring framework. We've covered a massive amount of ground today, tracking the mechanics of leadership through centuries of history. Based on Bizzy Zinga's deep insights.
We really have. We started by looking at the power of establishing an aspirational North Star like the Declaration of Independence to pull an organization forward, even when the current reality is profoundly flawed.
We confronted the absolute necessity of reflecting on those flaws, understanding that if you leave moral and operational contradictions unresolved, like prioritizing economic metrics over human dignity, you're building a foundation for strategic failure.
We analyzed Lincoln's pivot at Gettysburg learning how to bypass compromised legal frameworks to reconnect a team to their ultimate moral purpose during a crisis.
We learned the hard, tragic lesson of Juneteenth: that a policy issued is not a policy executed, that the gap between a promise in headquarters and the practice on the ground is paid for by the people waiting for the change.
And we saw through the endurance of leaders like Dr. Opal Lee and the service of Black military pioneers that leadership is a marathon of stewardship. It requires constructive accountability and the willingness to perfect an imperfect system from the inside out.
America's story, much like the story of any legacy company or large organization you might be leading, is fundamentally a story of unfinished work. It is not a story of perfection. It is a story of continuous, sometimes painful self-correction.
And that unfinished work is exactly what you inherit as a leader today.
So we want to leave you with a final provocative thought to mull over as you close this out and get back to your day. Think about the physical mechanism of General Order Number 3, that specific on-the-ground directive that finally brought freedom to Galveston 2.5 years late because someone finally rode into town to enforce what was already on paper.
Building on Zinga's challenge, ask yourself this: if true leadership is stewardship, and if we absolutely know that orders are not outcomes, What is the specific General Order Number 3 in your own life or your own organization right now?
What is the core value, the bold promise, or the critical policy that your company has declared on paper, that you've sent out in a massive email blast, but that you are still waiting to personally ride into town and enforce on the ground? What gap between promise and practice are you going to physically close today?
The blueprint is drawn. The policy is signed. It's time to check the concrete.
Thanks for joining us on this deep dive. Celebrate, reflect, and renew. We'll catch you on the next one.
All right, thank you so much for watching. This is it for today. This was the podcast. So happy Independence Day. America today is 250 years old. America, again, is not a perfect country, and definitely for people who are not white and who are not male. But it's the best country we've got in the world. That's definitely the way I feel. One thing my godfather used to say is, uh, 12 million illegal immigrants cannot be wrong. I mean, people come from all around the world and they put their life at risk to come here. So there is something about America. And what I'm saying is America belongs to you, and we are going to work to make her better. I really, really love what General Chappie James said, right? He is the very first 4-star general, 4-star flag officer in the US military, the very first one. And this is African American, the first Black 4-star general. He said, I am not disgusted. I am a citizen of the United States of America. I am no second-class citizen either, and no man here is unless he thinks like one and reason like one. And performs like one. And then he says, "This is my country. This is my country. And I believe in her and I will serve her and I will contribute to her welfare whenever and however I can. If she has any heels, I'll stand by her until God's given time, through her wisdom and her consideration for the welfare of the entire nation, she will put them right." That's another thing I really love about African Americans. We never fight just for us, we fight for everybody. We are all inclusive. I believe women will never have had the right to vote if it wasn't for African Americans. I believe gays would never have the right to get married in this country if it wasn't for African Americans. All of the marginalized groups in this country got all of their civic rights because of the fight of African Americans. We don't just fight for Black people, we fight for all Americans. And I think that's a good thing. And we need to continue that tradition. All right, before I go, if you have any question, type them in the comments. And also, I would like to know 3 to 5 lessons you've learned from the podcast today. I know Daniel has a question for me. And then Daniel, I also sent you a link if you wanted to log in to Restream. Krista, I sent you the link also in case you want to. If you don't, that is perfectly fine. But Daniel says, Can leadership doctrine that ignores mental health and psychological safety be considered a violation of today's duty of care, especially when cybersecurity risk is now inseparable from human behavior? Well, I think that's a very good question, Daniel. This is how I think about it. The short answer I believe is yes, but I think there is an important nuance though. I think leadership doctrine That completely ignores mental health and psychological safety can in many contexts today be considered a failure of leadership and potentially even a violation of an organization due care, particularly when leaders know or should know that psychological harm, burnout, harassment, or toxic conditions are causing foreseeable harm. However, however, it is not automatically a legal violation in every circumstance. The answer depends really on the organization, the jurisdiction, and also specific fact. Again, I am not a lawyer, let me say it. I've worked a lot with lawyers. As a chief information security officer, I've worked with a chief legal officer, but I am not one. I didn't go to law school. And also as a naval officer, I've read the law of the Constitution before I became a US citizen, and all of the law of war and Navy regulation and all of that. But again, I am not a JAG officer or a lawyer. So from a leadership perspective, this is what I think. The modern understanding of duty of care has evolved. I think it's no longer just focused on physical safety. Today's leaders are increasingly expected to protect psychological, emotional, social wellbeing of their people, right? Research consistently, uh, shows that psychological safety improves team performance and innovation. Reduce burnout and turnover, increases trust and engagement, encourages ethical decision-making and speaking up about risk. Dr. Edmondson from Harvard University, one of my mentors, I've been following her work for a while. She's an expert in psychological safety. I highly, highly recommend her books on the subject. But conversely though, leadership cultures that normalize chronic overwork, public humiliation, fear of speaking up, stigma around mental health and retaliation against those seeking help can really create foreseeable harm to individuals and the organization. So when we talked about the military and the national security context, I'm very familiar with that having been in the Navy for 21 years now. The military profession rightly emphasizes resilience, right, mission accomplishment and standards. But modern military leadership doctrine increasingly recognizes that readiness and psychological health are interconnected, right? A unit will suffer from toxic leadership, unaddressed stress, injury, burnout, fear of admitting struggle, and so on and so on, will ultimately be less effective fighting force, right? So that's why we said mission first, people always, but you really truly have to take care of your people so you can accomplish the mission of your organization. So mission readiness and psychological safety are not competing priorities, they are mutually reinforcing, right? So when you think about legal and ethical duty of care, again, I am not a lawyer, but from what I understand, in many sectors, employers now have workplace safety obligations that include psychological hazard, right? Anti-harassment and anti-discrimination responsibility. For example, when I was a commanding officer for my command there in Suffolk, I had this zero tolerance, not not only for drugs, but also for sexual harassment, right? And sexual assault, zero, zero tolerance, will not be tolerated at all. What fiduciary and governance expectation regarding employee wellbeing, very important as well. So boards and senior executives, they increasingly view employee mental health as an enterprise risk issue, not merely a human resources issue. Finally, when we talk about leadership doctrine, when I look into the future, I would say a doctrine that ignores mental health may have been tolerated in previous generation, but today it increasingly falls short of what we expect from responsible leadership. For example, in the military, I think more people may have PTSD, something I was diagnosed with, right? And part of the reason I know when I joined the Navy 21 years ago, it was very difficult, especially for men to say, hey, I have a mental issue, I may need help. Because usually when you said that and you went to see a shrink, a psychiatrist, more than likely you're going to lose your security clearance. And if you do, you're going to lose your job and your career. So people back then, they were very much incentivized to keep their mouth shut and suffer in silence. That really doesn't make sense and it doesn't help. And the Navy understands that. And now it has changed. And now we do encourage our people when they need help to go ahead and get the help that they need, and they were not going to lose their security clearance. Just because they are seeking or receiving mental health. It is important because once you get diagnosed now, you can have a path toward healing and well-being, which is what we want for all of our soldiers, all of our sailors, all of our Marines, and all of our airmen. So I hope I am answering your question. But basically, as a leader, I think you should ask, are we building organization where people can perform at their highest level without fear, without unnecessary psychological harm or stigma for seeking help. Right? So in one sentence, I think a leadership doctrine that disregards mental health, psychological safety is increasingly inconsistent with today's understanding of duty of care. And depending on the circumstances, may even constitute both not just ethical, but also in some cases, a legal failure. So I hope that helps you, Daniel. I hope I have answered your question. But one thing I want everybody to think about listening to the podcast now, if people cannot safely speak up, admit mistake, or ask for help, can we honestly say we are leading or are we merely managing fear? And I must say again, in my experience, 21 years I've been in the Navy, when I first started, it was very much command and control. Things were driven by fear. I am in charge, you've got to fear me because I am the boss. But now more and more, especially when I was a commanding officer myself, it's more about influence, it's about leadership, it is about listening to everybody within your command. Like I give this example where I was having a very important issue regarding the mission of our organization, I couldn't figure it out. I asked all of my senior leaders, They couldn't figure it out. I asked all of my department heads, all of my junior officers, they couldn't come up with an answer. Then I opened it up to the entire command and a junior officer, an E-5 PD officer second class, gave us the answer within 15 minutes. We've been trying for almost 2 months to figure out how to solve this. And then we implemented what this PD officer told us and within 30 days, problem was resolved. So I think more and more now, even in the military, yes, we have ranks and we have order, chain of command and all of that, but people really want to be led by other people, not by fear, but by care. I care about you. I have great value and I want to add value to you. We are all in this together. I think that's really the leadership mindset that's going to win at the end of the day. Okay, it looks like you have another question. So Daniel is asking, What must leadership unlearn to make mental health and cyber resilience priority number one? Oh, actually, Daniel is here. I'm gonna let him ask me question number two. Hey, Daniel, welcome to the show. How are you doing today? Can you hear me? I cannot hear you. Okay, is that better?
Yeah, yeah.
Okay, I have already answered your first question. Are you good with the answer?
Yes, sir, definitely. And I'm honored to tune in. As a leadership coach, I really appreciate how you have highlighted that African Americans have fought for everyone's freedom, not just their own. So the inclusivity there shows sacrifice is a powerful leadership model for America's 250th year.
Absolutely. So would you read, uh, your, your second question? I, I, I have it on the, on, on the screen, and we're gonna talk about that. Thanks again for being active and making this more interactive. It was very, very boring. It is just me talking. Thank you.
Yes, sir. And, and it's never boring. You, you give— let me just, just give you an accolade— you give insight, you give depth, you give things to the world that, that is much needed, that is said, and that is translated in such a way that it's easy to understand. So we appreciate it, and it's much needed. So yes, on to the second question. What must leadership unlearn to make mental health and even the cyber resilience priority number one so that there's not a crack in the either our behavioral infrastructure or either called a glitch in the human firewall?
I really love this question. I think it's applicable not just in the military but in the industry as well. I think to make health and cyber resilience priority number one, like you say, and it should be, leaders must unlearn the myths that resilience is built by pushing people harder, right? I think it is better, uh, not to push them to the point of breaking. For example, African Americans in this country, we've learned to be resilient, right? Because over and over again, we've been let down by our country, by our fellow citizen. And if we couldn't be resilient, therefore the only option would be to die. We don't want to die, therefore we are going to survive. We are survivors. But why do you have to have people be resilient? Why do you have to push them to the point of breaking? That doesn't make any sense to me. So in reality, I think resilience is built by creating conditions where people can actually recover, right? Speak up, adapt and sustain high performance over time. So a couple of things I think leaders must unlearn. Number 1, we have to unlearn that mission first means people second. In the Navy, and I think we got it from the Army, we say mission first, but people, people always. Our people are always our highest priority. So mission accomplishment and people care are not competing priorities, right? People are the mission. Like when I became a commanding officer, I asked all of my mentors, hey, What do I need to know? What would you have liked to know when you first became a CEO? One of my mentors told me, "Just focus on the people, take care of the people, and the people will in turn take care of the mission." I think that is so true.
Why?
Because the people are the mission. Because burnt-out, exhausted, psychologically unsafe teams make more mistakes, they miss signals, and become vulnerable to both health crises and cyber incidents. So, I think mission first requires people always, which is what we say in the Navy. I think number 2, you also must unlearn that resilience means toughness, right? True resilience is not pretending to be invincible, right? It is the ability to absorb stress, yes, but you have to recover, recover as quickly as you can, learn and then adapt. So really the lesson here is recovery is a strategic capability. You have to give people time to recover. Now again, I must say there are times, especially in the military, where the up-tempo is, the stakes are very high, like times of war, bullets are flying, whatever. Okay, I completely understand that, but you cannot do that forever, not for weeks and weeks on, for months and for years. There needs to be time to recover. Now I know when I go on activity and doing some exercises, we pretty much work 12-hour shift, 12, 16-hour shift at times. And we do it throughout the entire week, including Saturday and Sunday. But eventually though, we need to have downtime. And if you're a good leader, you're gonna allow some of your best people to have extra time off, but just to make sure they have time to relax so they can recharge and then they can come back to you and take care of business, right? Recovery is a strategic capability. And third and last, I think we need to unlearn that if there isn't a crisis, everything is fine. Okay, well, we have to announce that because most failure, whether it's a data breach, a safety incident, or a mental health crisis, I believe they develop through small cracks that go unnoticed or unreported, right? So small cracks become strategic failures when people are afraid to speak up, which goes back to psychological safety. So I think, To bring this home, I would say you need to definitely prioritize health, trust, psychological safety, continuous learning. I think that's really what makes resilience, right? When any one of these components is weak or cracks or begin to form, then we are going to have a problem because eventually it's gonna be burned out, ethical failure, even physical sickness, no, insider threat, security incident, loss of trust, mission degradation, on and on and on. To close out on the question you ask, I'm sorry, I am a professor, I tend to speak too much, but I am going to bring this to a close. But the organizations that thrive, I believe, in the future will not be the ones that simply work the hardest. They will be the organizations that learn the fastest, recover the quickest, and care for their people the best. Bottom line.
I love it so much, sir. Agreed. And I just want to piggyback and add context to the, to the conversation. Uh, first and foremost, people can be pushed, and being pushed is a good thing. You know, iron sharpens iron. But you can push people away, and that's where the, the concern is. The current concern is for, for the lack of care for the person there. Um, the second point, um, that I want to touch on is, um, about Black people, how we are often pushed into survivor mode because the systems have required us to stay resilient under pressure for generations. So how do we fight what's been set up for us generationally wide? Where, for example, we talk about seats at the table. How can you talk about us and not bring us into the conversation? And third, I want to touch on a point that most people are afraid to to talk about. Being backstabbed, being held back, and even labeled a failure can create real betrayal. It creates trauma and not just hurt feelings, but it forces people into survival mode. But that does not define their worth or their future. So I want your listeners and our young people to understand that sometimes things will happen to you outside of your control. You can be, be painted and even given a smear campaign. But sometimes people are pushed into those survival modes because they, they again been betrayed, they've been held back, they've been unfairly treated. And a lot of people are, are abused and don't realize what abuse is until you are in that crisis mode space. So that's why your mess— your message matters. When you say that, you know, you're a professor— no, your professor adds to the depth of your, your credential, your cybersecurity security. It paints you as a, as a whole rounded diverse person, and we need that. We need you as a representation of leadership for those people who are mistreated and can't stand up for themselves.
Thank you so much. And, uh, one, one thing I'm going to highlight, you made me think of, know, how Black people in general in this country haven't been treated well from the very beginning, even when it comes to medicine, right? Uh, many doctors even today, they have this impression that Black women are stronger than their white counterpart, they think they can tolerate more pain for some reason. So sometimes you really have to stand for yourself. Like my wife, she has learned to say, oh no, no, no, I need pain medicine. No, I need to advocate for myself. Like, you know, you look like the Tuskegee experience with syphilis, what they did to African American, on and on. Like even in the podcast, I mentioned some of the things was horrible enslaver used to do. They would have metrics, Because like I said, we built America, free labor forever, right? Now there's been still slavery in the world before, but not the way it was done in America. Chattel slavery is like, no, you are not a human being. You are a piece of furniture. You are something I own, like I own a car or a chair. Not just you, but you, your children, and your children forevermore. And whatever you work is for me. Evil, evil. There is just no two ways about it. No excuses for that. But like I said in the the podcast, they would have those metrics, how much you can produce, how much cotton you can pick in a day. And then once you meet that quota, good. If you don't, they torture you. And then once you meet it, okay, that's great. Now tomorrow we're going to do more, we're going to do more. It kind of reminds you, if you read the Bible in Genesis, that's what Pharaoh did to the children of Israel. He would tell them, okay, now you need to make more bricks, and actually you won't even need the material to make— basically treating them like trash. And that is exactly what our ancestors have have gone through. That's part of, uh, history. Again, no, people feel like, well, I love America, I don't want to criticize her. No, no, no, because I love America, I have to be honest the way I feel so we can make it better, right? A more perfect union. And I even mentioned in the podcast when Abraham Lincoln talked about the Gettysburg Address, he didn't go to the Constitution, he went all the way back to the, uh, uh, Declaration of Independence, because that's where we said all men are created equal. Because when the Constitution was initially signed in 1787, men were slaves and they only counted 3/5 of a person in order to give their enslaver more rights and political power in the newly formed government. So it was legal to have slaves in the Constitution. That was the supreme law of the land. It was perfectly legal. It's unethical, it's immoral, but it was legal. Just because something is legal doesn't mean that it's something that we should do. But having said that, one thing I think that gave us hope in that Constitution is because it starts with a preamble. It says, "We the people," not we white men who are in charge. It says, "We the people." That includes me. I am a people. I am a person. That includes women too, because even white women didn't have rights until Black people fought for those rights. And then it says, "For a more perfect union." So they knew as they started the country, it was not perfect.. It wasn't what they wanted to be. There was a huge gap between what they aspired to be, you know, 1776, the independence, and then 1787 when they actually wrote the Constitution. It was compromised, right? They knew they shouldn't have slaves, but they allowed it. So there was a big gap, but however, there was a seed there that said, hey, we are not where we want to be. We know that there is a gap, so there's going to be a more perfect union coming on. That's exactly why the Civil War had to happen. That's exactly why we had to have a second independent day, which is June 10th, because not all of America was free. And there was a big difference, right? The audio didn't match the video. And I think that's really what we are doing. So again, my message today for everybody who cares to listen to this podcast, it's really 3 things. I say, yes, you need to celebrate the 4th of July, even if you Black, even if your ancestors were slaves, even if on July 4th, 1776, your ancestors didn't have freedom. I think you still need to celebrate that because America belongs to you. You are America. This is your country and nobody can take that away from you. Like my wife and I, my two kids, they're born here, they belong here. There is no country in Africa you can send them to. They don't belong to Africa. They are American. They have paid the price with their sweat, with their blood. They've built this country. This is the country. So we need to celebrate. So that's number one. At least that's my thought. Not everybody's going to agree, but that's how I feel. And then number two, I say you also need to reflect, right? Everybody needs to reflect, including the direct ancestors of those evil enslavers. And like I said, 72% of people who wrote the Constitution were. So again, there are two ideas and you can have both at the same time. Yes, without them there would be no America, so we are grateful for that. And they were genius in the way they thought about creating the country, but at the same time they were evil people for owning slaves. So it's two things that are true and they can coexist at the same time. I think we need to be mature enough to do so because some people, they think they patriot when they completely ignore all of the evils that they did. When you do that, then there is absolutely no improvement. Then we wouldn't have the 13th Amendment, which made the slave US citizen, the 14th Amendment, right? No, 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery, the 14th Amendment, who made them citizens, and then the 15th Amendment, which gave them the right to vote. And then that still wasn't enough. And then we had to have the Civil Rights Act and then the Voting Rights Act of 1965 as well. So we keep improving and we keep closing the gap between what we aspire to be and what the reality is on the ground. I hope that that makes sense. So one—
Yes, that makes sense. And may I briefly interject just to ask you, could you speak on any aspect of affirmative action? And the reason I ask you to do that is that we have to have a constant reminder of the truth, constant checkpoints of the truth.
Yeah, uh, I do believe in diversity, in equity, and in inclusion, and I think every American absolutely should, right? I think affirmative action kind of remains one of the most, uh, debated public policies in America today. I think some view it as necessary tool to address the enduring effect of historical discrimination and expand opportunity for all Americans. But others believe it conflicts with the principle of merit-based selection and equal treatment under the law. Again, you have to think, 1619, the first slaves came to this country, and those slaves were my direct kin ancestors. Obviously, I'm not a direct descendant of slaves because I was born in Pointe-Noire, Republic of the Congo, not in the US. But the people who came here, the very Slaves of America, they were the cousin, the brother, the sister of my direct ancestors. So that is why I really own that narrative. Again, we built this country, but America has never officially acknowledged, the government of America, the wrongdoing they did, the gravest crime in humanity, the slave trade in America and the way America decided to do slavery here, completely different from the way it was done prior in our history. Never acknowledge that. Because number one, once you acknowledge that, then you have to repair it. And even Abraham Lincoln had promised us what, 40 acres of land and a mule? Nobody got it. They make promises, but they don't deliver. So what I'm saying is America does owe a debt to African Americans. We built this country, one they never officially acknowledge the harm. And number 2, they never paid what they said they were going to pay. Don't even think about reparation. Just give me 40 acres of land and 1 mule. Go back to 1863 and see how much it is worth today. 40 acres of land, let's say in Silicon Valley, how much would that land be worth today? Think about that. Right? So I think it is really, So for me, from a leadership perspective, affirmative action really raises deeper questions that every leader, I believe, should consider. One is who gets access to opportunity and how do we identify talents that traditional system may overlook? For example, in Silicon Valley, I know some companies, they only hire engineer from one place, let's say from Stanford University or from UC Berkeley. And almost all of those people are white. They never consider somebody from the HBCU or somebody outside of California. And I think that is not right, right? Are our processes truly fair? Do they unintentionally favor some while excluding other people? What responsibility do leaders have to remove unnecessary barriers to success? So I think if you look for what our history, America has often discovered extraordinary talent only after expanding opportunity. In the Navy, they didn't believe initially that Black people could be officers and could lead. Without the Golden Thirteen, there is no Commander Zinga. That wouldn't have happened. And this happened in 1944, right? March 1944, we had the very first African American— I thought I had the book here— yeah, African American naval officer. How can you know unless you give somebody a chance, right? And I think if you are one of the first, I think it is your job to make sure you don't close the door after you. You have to leave that door open for other people to follow after you. That's what I think your responsibility is, right? So having said that, I think the integration of the US military, for example, or the admission of women into previously closed profession, the opening of leadership pathways to underrepresented communities, Will it strengthen our institution rather than weaken them? Right? I think the goal of leadership is not to lower the standard. The goal is to ensure that standards are fair and that opportunity is broadly available and that excellence can emerge from every corner of society. And I believe our institution should represent our diversity. Iprior nom unum, out of many, one. Right? And the thing also, I'm sure as an African American, you probably have grown up having this mindset. They used to say, as a black person, you have to work twice as hard to get only half as much. And that's not fair. Why do I have to be excellent to get an opportunity that an average white man can have, right? That is not fair, right? So a man who is not excellent, who's just average, I can have a great job, but I have to be excellent in order to have the same opportunity. Again, there is no fairness there. So I think affirmative action really reminds us of an important leadership principle: equality of opportunity and equality of outcome are not the same thing. So we should strive to create systems that provide fair access— I know you love systems— to opportunity while maintaining high standards of performance and accountability. I think that is definitely what we need. So are we building organizations that consistently identify, develop, and elevate the best talent wherever it is found? Or are there barriers, seen or unseen, that prevent us from benefiting from the full potential of our people? I think that's really what it comes down to. So my last takeaway about this is the purpose of leadership is not to guarantee equal outcome. That's not what we do. Our purpose is to ensure that talent, opportunity, character, and potential have a fair opportunity to be seen, developed, and rewarded across our entire society. Nobody left out. Yeah. So you may not want to mention that here. Do you want to mention something about a book that might be published soon or no?
Yes sir, you know me, I'm always excited to share, share the good news. That's like anybody who's down and out and always needs encouragement, you know. You don't have to be a religious person to, to either pick up the Bible— so equal, I can't say it's equivalent, but the Honor Mode Professional Growth Series and even its counterpart, the, the Cyber Series, uh, which is, uh, one of the corrections I have to send out for the proposal that me and Coach Professor Bob will be working on. It's a framework for the human infrastructure, but we look at the point of cybersecurity and as protecting the human firewall. And I got some encouragement from this show and even in return asked Bob to write one of the forewords for it as well. So we submitted that information. Over. So in addition to the Honor Mode Professional Growth Series, there's another track, um, and there's, uh, and this will be book number 6, um, under the, under the, the Cyber track. So that, that's something to look forward to. Yes.
Now you are already a, uh, a publisher. I've had you on the podcast a couple of times already, so whenever this book is published, I definitely want you back. We need to talk about that. But I believe This is the first book that you have that's going to be published by a publishing company. Is that correct? Not self-published?
Yes, that is correct. So fingers crossed, you know, if they choose the proposal. And this is just a learning experience for me. You know, I would encourage anybody who's doing these things to, to have an open mind and be flexible to learning all of the options, all the expansions of writing, because, you know, someone just ran up to me and was like, Who do you think you are? Why would you write a book? And the wealth of experience that one person has alone, why not? I didn't wait one day and say I'm a writer. If you look back over your lifetime, everybody's a writer. If you ever have journaled, if you ever written a paper in school, if you ever had to go back—
It doesn't matter.
Yes, sir. Yes, sir. If you ever had to go back and make corrections, it's just you have a bank of information, just like the people that we coach and train. You know, a lot of our military veterans, when they go to transition to corporate America, I train them on transferable skills.
Yes.
You know, they— these are brilliant people walking around. They just have to know how to relate their information to corporate terms, because corporate is a different beast. It's more so different than, than the military. You know, for example, take, take someone who, who's build and train to build missiles. I have to teach you and coach you on the soft skills. When you speak to a grandmother who's got a kitten up in, up in the trees and it's got to talk and get them down, do, let's say, due to a natural disaster, hurricane that's going on, you know, how do you calm her down while also training her of getting the cat back to safety and keeping water damage out of the home, you know?
Well, I must say, I'm very, very, very proud of you. Couldn't be prouder. I know you me as one of your mentors, but really, I know there are great things in store for you, and anything I can do to help you out, I will definitely do that. And I think we need to see more and more people helping each other, supporting one another, because the thing is, as you climb up, right, the ladder of success, success is lonely if you are the only one at the top. But if you can bring somebody with you, I think you are really doing something that is critical, I believe, in our society.
Study.
We need to always, always think about paying it forward. And again, I couldn't be prouder of everything you've accomplished and what you're going to be able to do. So thank you so much for joining us on this podcast. Really appreciate that, Daniel. And you are one of the most active members of our tribe here. I really do appreciate that. I know sometimes I don't always let you know when I go online, but if I just tag you, like, 9 times out of 10, you're there, you show up, you are active, asking questions. And I really, really appreciate that because the truth is that's a good thing.
Listen, they say spice is the variety of life, you know, to be able to flexible and just, just to jump on it. It's so exciting to me.
So thanks again for joining us today. I got very, very proud of everything you are accomplishing, my friend. Have a great Fourth of July. Thank you.
You too. Thank you.
All right, for everybody, this is it. That's, that's all I have planned for today. Now, as I end the show, I'm gonna play a couple of, uh, video. We are celebrating Black History Month, right, on the show here. Number one, let's talk about today. This was actually kind of tragic. This happened July 4th, Independence Day, 1933, right? A white mob lynches Norris Dandy on Independence Day. They went to jail, got him out of jail, and then they lynched him. I'm gonna play a video about that. Again, this was in 1933. My father was born in 1943, only 10 years later. So that's not ancient history, and this happened here in America. You would think that somebody would be safe when they are in a prison, but no, that happened over and over again. They would just go into jail and pick up Black people, men, women, and children, and just kill them, and then there would be absolutely no justice. Again, this happened Independence Day, 1943. I will play a short video about that. Now, another thing I would like to bring to your attention today is our profile in courage, Dr. Lisa D. Cook. She's the first African American woman to serve on the Federal Reserve Board. She is a genius. I mean, just, just an outstanding servant leader. I think she has so much to teach us, and I'm gonna play a short video of the time that she was appointed and confirmed by the Senate. That's all I have for today. And I remind everybody, our friend in the spotlight this week is Lieutenant Commander Christa Gonsoli, U.S. Navy, and she was part of this podcast today. And tomorrow I don't have a guest, but I'm going to go back to Proverbs chapter 26. We did 25 last time, and this is not a religious podcast, but we're going to be talking about ancient wisdom and leadership lessons, a book written more than 2,000 years ago How can we still apply those leadership principles and how they are still relevant today? All right. That's all I have for you. Thanks so much for watching and have a wonderful, wonderful, happy Fourth of July. Again, do celebrate, but also reflect. Think about our country. Think about why we had to have a second Independence Day with Juneteenth and also renew your commitment to make America a more perfect union for all of our citizens. That includes African American, includes women, includes Gays include transsexuals, it includes everyone. This is our country, this is our America. And I think I'm gonna end with a short poem about I am America too, because we all are America. Here we go.
This is another forgotten Black history story, and it's a tragic one too. I'm gonna tell you that right now, but this story is less about the tragedy of what happened to one Black man and more about how one Black family's success led to an entire community coming together to commit a horrific act. Pay attention to this story and learn how Black progress has often been met with violent backlash. This is the story of Norris Dendy. Norris Dendy was a 33-year-old Black man who lived in Clinton, South Carolina, who lost his life to racial mob violence. But before I tell you about what happened to Norris, I have to tell you about his family, because as much as this story is about what happened to Norris, It's about the story about his family, and you really can't understand why this happened until you understand who the Dendys were and how their success angered an entire white community in Clinton, South Carolina. Norris was born to Young and Martha Dendy in May of 1900. Both were the children of formerly enslaved black people. Young was a carpenter and Martha washed clothes. Together they had 9 children. They worked hard and saved and were able to grow their businesses. Young was able to move from carpentry and into contracting. He built many of the buildings and homes for white people in Clinton. Martha was also able to expand her business and had employees working for her for her laundry business. They were able to send all of their children to college. One was a dentist. Another worked in New York City as a post office clerk. One operated the family store, and another was a principal of a local school. The Dendy family lived a good life for black people during that time. They lived in a nice home and had financial freedom. They were the most prominent Black family in Clinton, South Carolina. The Dendys' success was resented by poorer whites in Clinton, who were relegated to working at the mills and barely made enough to make ends meet back then. Norris had gone to State College of South Carolina, now called South Carolina State University. He later went to Virginia Union University. He then returned to Clinton. He married Amanda Fant in 1924 and had 5 children. It was during this time that all the trouble started. In 1924, young Martha Dendy decided to build a larger home for their growing family. They wanted a place that could accommodate their children and their families for gatherings. So they purchased a large lot in a good neighborhood on the outskirts of town. It was one block from where the white people lived at. Young Dendy built the home himself. As he was building it, the home became the talk of the town. The house was grand and large and considered better than the white homes in the area. One day, young Dendy received a letter that had a skull and crossbones on it. The letter said that if the Dendys built their home right there and not with the rest of the Black people, harm would come to the family. It said that they were too rich to be a Black family and that Norris Dendy would die soon. Norris had become a target of the white people in Clinton. He was well-educated, well-dressed, and confident. He was everything that they hated in a Black man back then, and really still to this day. He had been arrested on false charges twice, both times without any evidence he was convicted, and both times those convictions were overturned on appeal. The fact that the Denny's could hire the best lawyer to represent Norris added more fuel to the fire. And in July of 1933, the mob made good on their promise. On July 4th, 1933, Norris was driving his truck to a picnic at Lake Murray in South Carolina. Allegedly, Norris got into a fight with a 22-year-old white man named Marvin Lawless about which man's truck was faster. Lawless cursed Norris, and Norris allegedly hit Lawless in his lip in response. Whether this is true, we'll never know. Norris tried to to flee and to get away, but he was stopped by a police officer in Goldville who arrested him. Norris was then taken to the Clinton Jail. Once at the jail, men began to gather outside. By 9 PM, a mob of white men filled the police station. One man, Hubert Pitts, arrived with a rope, and that was a signal that it was time to end this and to end Norris. Norris's wife, Amanda, she came to visit him shortly after he was arrested. Later that night, she returned with their 5 children and his mother Martha to see him. As they approached, they heard Norris screaming. When they got inside of the jail, they saw a room filled with white men. When they tried to intervene, one man hit Norris's mother. Another man, Pack Pitts, fired his weapon at them and told them to leave the jail. Norris's mother Martha pleaded with the men and the police that she would pay the fine and whatever it was if they would just release Norris. A police officer told her that Norris could not pay his way out of this. The mob then took Norris from his cell and dragged him out of the jail. They then put him in a car and drove off. Norris's wife, his mother, and children One more bit of news to tell you about from the United States Senate tonight.
The Senate confirmed tonight economist Lisa Cook to serve on the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors. She will be the first Black woman to sit on the board since its creation over a century ago. She is an accomplished economist and a former member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. But in order to confirm her tonight, Vice President Kamala Harris had to come down to the Senate to break a tie, because, surprise, surprise, all 50 Republican senators voted against Dr. Cook. Which means that even though the Democrats had the votes to confirm her, all 50 Republican senators made sure they were there for this nighttime vote because they all wanted to be on the record voting against this accomplished economist to be the first Black woman ever to hold this position.
Priorities. I too sing America. I am the darker brother. They send me to eat in the kitchen when company comes, but I laugh and eat well and grow strong. Tomorrow I'll be at the table when company comes. Nobody will dare say to me, "Eat in the kitchen then." Besides, they'll see how beautiful I am and be ashamed. I too am America.
Thank you for tuning in to the Leadership and Success Podcast with your host, Coach BZ. If today's episode added value to your leadership journey, be sure to subscribe, share, and join us again for more wisdom nuggets on how to lead better and achieve greater success. Remember, leadership is the most critical skill of our time. The world will always need leaders to inspire others, drive innovation, and execute meaningful strategy. So why not count yourself among the bold leaders shaping the 21st century? Until next time, stay inspired, stay committed, and keep leading with excellence.
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