Dr. Michaela O’Donnell (Executive Director of the Max De Pree Center for Leadership)

The episode you're about to listen to was released back when the Mere Christians podcast was called the Call to Mastery. Now, if you love Mere Christians, you're still going to love these older episodes because the majority of each conversation focuses on how the gospel influences the work of our guests. With that disclaimer out of the way, please enjoy the episode. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Call to Mastery. I'm Jordan Raynor. This is a podcast for Christians who want to do their most exceptional work for the glory of God and the good of others. Each week, I host a conversation with a Christ follower who's pursuing world class mastery of their craft. We talk about their path to mastery, their their daily habits, and how the gospel of Jesus Christ influences their work. Guys, today's episode is a treat. We're talking with my new friend, Dr. Michaela O'. Donnell. She's a brilliant leader, currently leading the Max Dupree center for Leadership out at Fuller Seminary in California. She's also the author of a terrific new book called Make Work Matter your guide to meaningful work in a changing world. So Mikayla and I sat down recently. We talked about a lot of things. We talked about Ted Lasso. We talked about what we can learn about calling for Moana. We talked about the helpful difference between betting the farm and taking the quote, next doable risk. We talked about this beautiful image of how Russian nesting dolls can help us think differently about calling. And we also touched on three things to consider if you're thinking about joining the Great Resignation. So before you quit your job, make sure you listen to this terrific episode with Dr. Michaela O'. Donnell. Hey, Mikayla. Welcome to the podcast.

Jordan. Thanks for having me.

I was perusing your Instagram like a creepo stalker. That's a weird thing to do, right? Or at least to tell somebody. I don't know, whatever.

Yeah, you could have done it without.

Admitting it, but I saw you were in Maine like the same week I was in Maine this summer. Yeah, we were up there with the kids. You were celebrating your 10th anniversary, is that right?

Yeah, we could have, you know, indulged in seafood together. Yeah, it was my husband and I's 10th anniversary, so we were without our children on that trip.

Yeah. Yes. That's a great way to do it. We had a ton of fun with our kids. There's no better spot in the world than Maine in the summer, am I right?

Yeah, it was my very first time to the state. And our basic pattern of every day was hike and hike and hike until, you know, we drop and then eat and eat and eat to refill the calories, but mostly indulge in the delicious seafood. I would agree with you. I have never been somewhere quite like Maine in the summer. And we plan to go back regularly.

Now, you got to take the kids to Rose Island, Rhode island, which they'll get a kick out of saying Rhodes Island, Rhode Island, 100 times. Like, that's half the fun. But there's this great lighthouse you can go, and it has this secret door. It's awesome that like basically only 4 year olds can fit through. And you go through this door and it opens up out into the, you know, the balcony of the lights. It's epic. It's like one of the coolest things my kids have ever done. They really dug it. So check that out.

I will. Rhodes Island, Rhode Island. Okay. I said it once. I didn't know if I was going to even be able to say it once, but I've got it in my memory now.

Hey, so for those who don't know, tell us about your work, the Dupree center for Leadership. What in the world do you and the center do, Mikayla?

Yeah, thanks for asking. So I am the executive director at the Max Dupree center for Leadership at Fuller Seminary. We are obviously named after Max Dupree. And for those of you who are hearing that name for the very first time, Max was longtime CEO of Herman Miller Office furniture Company. Really well known for high quality products that treat bodies well and are visually really nice to look at, located in Michigan. And he was also a longtime chairman of the board at Fuller Seminary. And I never met Max. Max passed before I got a chance to meet him. And so when people describe him, the basic picture that I've gotten of him is this, that he was the kind of person who was who he was wherever he was. And, you know, whether he was in a boardroom or acting as a CEO or honestly as a granddad, he was a man of faith and of hard work. And it's that same sort of seamless life and integration of faith and work that we seek to support people in at the Dupree Center. And what we sometimes say is we want to leverage the resources of our seminary, which is, you know, takes all sorts of shapes and sizes for the sake of marketplace leaders, people who are not traditionally served by seminary, because seminaries would historically be aimed at helping church leaders. That's a bit about what we do at the Dupree Center.

I love it. What's the road that brought you to this work? Like what was your path?

If you, a decade ago would have told me that I would spend my time talking to people about their work, I would have laughed in your face. Honestly, I might have said, that sounds boring. I don't think I want to do that. And yet here I am just feeling like this is a very good fit. And so the, the road here is certainly part of that. About a decade ago, I got a master's at Fuller in M. Div. And met my husband there, and we had our master's and we were graduating. And it was 2010 and 2011, which here in California was right in the height of job freezes and et cetera, based on the Great Recession. We quickly learned that in a recessed economy, theology actually wasn't that marketable of a skill. And so there we were, trying to figure out what to do. And I come from a family of teachers and entrepreneurs and, honestly, working class folks back in the Midwest, in Nebraska. And in that moment of not quite knowing what to do, I proposed to my husband. Let's start a business. That's what I think we should do. That's how I think we should work our way out of this unknown and terrible economy. Yeah, I know, right? Who does that? And we should try to pay our rent by doing this wildly unpredictable and risky thing. And Jordan, he's a really good sport. So he said yes. He said yes to that. And we started our company. It's a branding and video company. Did that for several years before. Eventually I had some mentors back at Fuller say, basically, Mikayla, we feel like you've got gifts for the church. And I said, I feel like I'm exercising those gifts right here at Long Runner Media. They kept kind of coaxing in a way that I've learned. I don't know about you, but I've learned to listen to trusted mentors and when they keep coaxing, to really not just do what they say, but to trust the path that they've walked before. And that eventually led me back to Fuller, led me to some dissertation work, led me to the Max Dupree center for Leadership, where now, through a bunch of series events over the last four or five years, I am the executive director.

I want to go back to something you said because I think this is really important. I think a lot of the advice people get when it comes to making career decisions is it's very introspective, right? It's what do you want to do? Are your kids old enough to love Moana? Yeah. The movie Moana.

Yes. I Have an almost six year old. So we know the songs well, Jordan.

So the call isn't out there at all. It's inside me. Right. Like, it's just very. Like I get to choose what I do. But there's so much. If we believe that work is service to others, and as Christviers, I think that's pretty clear, then we should probably pay attention to what other people are saying about where we should spend our vocational energy. It sounds like that was a big part of the equation for you, right?

Yeah. I mean, two things there. One, let's just dig into Moana a little further.

Oh, my gosh, please. Yes.

All day. If you have not seen the movie, the quest for Moana's kind of search for significance, professional significance, eventually doesn't end in what people are telling her to do. It ends in her making a decision. But the irony there, and the part that I think is really important to highlight, is that it's this moment when she finds this thing that the characters have been looking for all along, and in a moment of empathy, realizes that it actually belongs somewhere else. And so she sees a character called Te Fiti. Right. Again, I know this movie well. So first of all, the idea that we would be able to discern what we ought to do next outside of empathy is I don't know that that's possible. So that's one thing, but it's not actually what you mentioned. You were talking about, like, mentors and guidance, people who have empathy for us, people who know us, people who have watched us. And people will give the advice. Okay, Just kind of figure out what you're passionate about and do that. And I don't know about you, Jordan, but it's taken me a long time to learn what I'm passionate about and a long time to understand my sense of giftedness. And that's just because I think that's the way it goes. So when we get other people in our lives who have spent a long time doing that work, both in themselves and have watched other people, they can become a real gift to helping us sort through the chaos and get clear.

Totally. So you're hitting on one of my all time favorite topics. Over the past few decades, many in the west have had more opportunity than ever before to follow our passion and do what makes us happy. Kind of this overriding millennial Gen Z career advice. And yet we're the least happy generation ever at work. Like, why is this, in your opinion? Like, what's the disconnect? Why is following our passions not leading to the satisfaction, sustainable satisfaction of vocation.

I think that's a fantastic question. And I know that you and I share some energy around this, so I'd be curious even to hear what you think after I say this. I actually think that the setup is one that's not setting us up for success. As you know, through the large arc of human history, work has served more of a utilitarian aspect. And that doesn't mean that everybody hated what they were doing. And certainly I would be in the camp that work is a good and holy gift from God, appearing before the fall in Genesis 1. But it's unique that now work is a container in which we are supposed to make sense of ourselves, in which we are supposed to realize who we are and do that self actualization work. And honestly, that's a lot of pressure to put on work and kind of too small of a container, right? If we're people, if we're people who are wired to one another and wired to what God's doing in the world, then we have to imagine that there is opportunity for meaning making everywhere. And then the last thing I would throw in is, you know, right at the time that we're asked to do that is pretty young in our lives. So we're in our early 20s, graduating college, some of us go on to grad school and. And we quite honestly don't have enough life experience to have the whole picture of life. So it's at that point that we're being asked to go out in the world and work toward our passions, which in all likelihood we are just starting to really learn about. That's something that people in their 40s and 50s and even later on have a much different perspective on than people in their 20s. And I say that from a front. You know, that was my journey, right? It's kind of like, what am I going to do? I should know. I should have clarity. I should know what I like to do. I should know what I'm passionate about. I should know, I'll throw in another phrase, what God's calling me to. And yet I don't. And yet it's trickier. And so I've become an advocate much more for the kind of a day by day on the way theology of vocation, an attitude that would encourage us to dive in and experiment and learn about what it is we like to do and to stack up the result of that experimentation toward the conversation about what God is calling us to do. But I know you swim in this too, Jordan, so I'm curious what you think?

No, that's like spot on. Right. You basically just summarized a lot of one of my previous books, this book called Master of One. And then I talk about we're asking kids to choose their quote, unquote, one thing vocationally, way too early. Way, way, way too early. Like I even think the 20s is too early for most people to know that, man. Yeah. This is how God designed me to operate. And this is the thing I'm going to choose to go really big on.

Right.

It takes a lot of experimentation, a lot of trying and failing so that we can find the thing that we can do best in service of others.

Right.

And I think that perspective is really important, right, because the passion hypothesis is incredibly self serving. Right. It's all about what value can a job bring me, what self fulfillment can a job bring me? But if we flip the coin and say, how can I best serve the world? How could I best serve others and make others people happy? I think that's a much more sustainable path to finding vocational joy for ourselves.

Right.

There's good, like, data coming out about this. I've talked about this a bit on the podcast. There's this researcher out of Yale named Amy Rezneski. Are you familiar with Resnesky's work?

I'm not, no.

All right. She's fascinating. So she spent her whole career trying to figure out what leads people to call their work a calling as opposed to a job or a career. And she studied this with doctors, computer programmers, administrative assistants. And consistently, the number one factor in describing somebody's work as a calling is not whether or not they were quote unquote, passionate about the work when they started it. It's the number of years they have spent practicing their craft. Like passion follows mastery. We get to love what we do by getting really good at it. But we got to experiment a lot before we pick that one thing that we're going to get really great at. Does that make sense?

Yeah, I think that's fantastic. And then the implied bit there is that we're going to experiment and actually have a bunch of other things that don't go super well and that drain us. And we've got to pay attention to that data in order to be able to pay attention to those experiences and make sense of them. We've got to be comfortable with that concept that we're going to try a bunch of things that might not work. And I think failure, we all have really different relationships with failure. I mean, one of the things that I ask people for this book. And I asked them four questions like, how have you learned to define success? How have you learned to define failure? What practices have moved you towards success and what practices have helped you deal with failure? And by and large, people that were objectively successful, both in, you know, the official research I did, and then a lot of conversations. Since people who are objectively successful are more comfortable talking about failure than they are success, they're more comfortable saying, oh, this one. One time we tried this and it didn't work out, but here's what we learned. And all this other time I was trying my best and I fell flat on my face. And, you know, that was really tough, but here's what we learned. And then when you ask them about success, they're like, yeah, you know, we've done some good work and I've done some good work, but there's so much more that, that we want to do. There's so much more that God's calling us to. So that relationship with longevity and learning about ourselves that necessitates, yes, finding out what it is we're meant to do and how calling takes shape, but also all the bumps along the way, I think that's really critical.

Yeah, I think it speaks to a common theme. Maybe the common theme I've heard on this podcast, like humility is the trait of people who are truly world class at what they do. And that's why they're more comfortable in the skin of talking about what went wrong and what they've learned, their serial learners. And you can learn a heck of a lot more from failure oftentimes than you can success.

Right. And it goes back to the identity thing. Right. So if work is our main container for identity early on, and it's where we're trying to make sense of ourselves and things aren't going so well, or we can't quite get there, or we're very unsure, our sense of identity becomes really wiggly and then doesn't feel great. That is a less secure position to be in. And when I encounter people who are humble, I also encounter a real sense of secure identity in God. Right. That's where I think that humility comes from. And so it's ironic that the very thing we are searching for, which is meaning in our work and significance and putting our hands and our hearts and our heads to things that matter, comes in part by relocating our identity back squarely to Christ. So that as we come back to the conversation of work, it just doesn't have as much pressure on there. And we enter it from a humble posture.

It's this idea that, like, work becomes an expression of our identity in Christ rather than the source of that identity. Right.

And that's a key shift. And I think that if we said that to most people, they'd be like, yeah, of course, of course. Work's an expression and not the source, but in action and the messages that we swim in. I don't know that that's quite as clearly enough course.

So go a level deeper here. How do we make the leap from this being head knowledge. Christ is my identity, not ultimately my work, to this being functional day to day? Like not just intellectual salvation, but functional salvation.

Yeah, that's a great question. So I'm a practical theologian by trade. And so the question of how does it actually look is. Is one that's really critical. I will go back. I'll start with empathy, Right. Because I think that this is one of the key things that takes us out of our questioning and spiraling. I encourage people to do a very simple exercise, both in the book and just anytime I'm, you know, teaching a workshop. And the exercises, making a list of people that you encounter every week in your work. Depending on our job, sometimes that's a pretty small list. So sometimes I ask people to expand out to a month and look at your calendar, quite literally, who are you interacting with over the next week or month, and list all those people down and spend some time with that list and start to ask God, okay, who on that list might God be inviting you to move toward this week or this month? And as I do this, I encourage people, I encourage you to narrow it down to three. And all of a sudden you got three names circled. And then I say, okay, I'll just pick one. Pick one person that you're going to intentionally move toward this week. And then people do it. And Jordan, I kid you not, when they come back, they're like, oh, wow. Like that led to this conversation or this or. And they're just very surprised by the result of intention moving to one another. And I think that's a critical step in terms of humility and practice and discernment because it's a first step in just getting out of our own head and actually getting in moving toward people in relationship. Because what happens in those conversations, it's. You're sort of in you, if you will, manufacturing water cooler kind of moments, which are increasingly rare, certainly, as people's work has moved in many different ways in the last 18 months. So there's this start and then out of that, all kinds of stuff comes. Right. And you can break that down into little itty bits. But, you know, I won't go into over and over right here. I think the very first thing in terms of making all this stuff practical is actually getting out of our own head and getting into relationship with those we're working alongside.

You've danced around us a couple times. I want to ask you this a little explicitly. What does the Bible say and not say about calling?

Right.

This has become a very loaded term, I think a really confusing term for those in the church today. I know you address this in your book, so break this down for us. What does scripture have to say about calling?

Yeah. Thanks, Jordan. I agree with you that the word has become very loaded. In fact, as part of my role at Fuller Seminary, I teach classes and I walk in on. I teach a class called Practices of Vocational Formation. It's all the spiritual practices that help people be formed and fit for whatever God is calling them to do. And on the first day of class, I walk in and I ask my students, what is calling? What actually is calling? And we sort of do some group think here. And what usually ends up resulting is something like, calling is the thing that I was made to do, or calling is a job I really love, or a calling is a job I am passionate about. That's usually where we get. And you know, Jordan, I would love if that was actually a biblical definition of calling, because all those sentences sound really nice. The problem is nowhere in the Bible does it say, calling equals paid work or profession. That's just not that equation that we've done is a cultural and sociological and church equation. It's not a biblical equation. And I think part of the reason that we've done it is exactly as you said. Calling is kind of a confusing word. What does it really mean? What's the concept? How are we to supposed. Just to think about it. There's a long lineage of theological study on calling and parsing that out. And without going into, you know, 2,000 years on church history. Not that it's not valuable or that we couldn't do that.

That sounds great. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm sure. To you and I. Right. And everybody else is like, wow, no, thank you.

Go back to Moana fast. Right.

Go back to Moana, the heart of Te Fiti. It's been helpful for me to come up with a picture for this. And the picture is a set of nesting dolls. And. Yeah. And so I like to think about calling as a set of nesting dolls to really capture the layer. Sometimes we talk about calling as central and then particular, but even in the way we talk about it, there, there's a bifurcation between them and they're kind of separated. So it's been helpful for me to think about calling like a set of nesting dolls. In that very, very core is the call to belong to Jesus. Right? This is Matthew 4 stuff. This is. Follow me. And that is the central, most call, which is expressed in work, to use your terminology of earlier, but certainly is not a work thing, right? So the call to belong to Jesus. The next nesting doll out, I would say, is the call to participate in God's mission, right of redemption and restoration of justice, love, shalom, however you might want to term that. And I like to go to 2 Corinthians 5 here, right? We're. We have the ministry of reconciliation. We're ambassadors of Christ, so really to work toward whatever God is working to in the world. So belong to Jesus and then work towards God's mission of redemption. The third layer out is one that I think you might have a lot to say about based on your first book, and that is all the way back to Genesis 1. And that is God's call to create. We're creative in our DNA. A lot of us have lost that in the process of becoming adults. But I'm a firm believer that we've all got creative DNA in us. And so the call to belong, the call to participate in redemption, the call to create really in loving service of each other. And then finally, the outermost doll is the call towards all the particulars, right? And that is usually where we start and where we usually locate and where we usually try to say calling is all about work. You know, we've got Moses as a leader. We've got Esther. We've got, you know, the Mother Mary. There's. There's all these examples of how God is asking people to do very particular things. And that can be work, but it can also be going places. It can be relationship with people. It can be beyond just paid work. And those particular callings are places to express everything else that's nested within. That's a picture of how I like to think about calling.

It's probably the best picture I've ever heard. That was really great. That was really helpful. I can see our listeners nodding with me. No, I really love that. I don't think I've heard it put more beautifully than that. So you blogged about this recently. I want to dig in a little bit. It's so timely. The Great Resignation. According to Gallup, roughly 50% of people are actively considering quitting their jobs. Yeah. I'm curious if you think the Great Resignation is being driven by a perceived lack of purpose in the jobs that people have. Is it exhaustion? Is it something else like what's at play here? There's probably no simple answer to this, but I'm curious to get your take.

It's a great question. And in some ways, I think the Great Resignation is the latest manifestation of work dissatisfaction. Any point over the last several years, you could Google how many people don't like their work or how many people are disengaged. Yeah. And you get really high statistics. But there is this really timely phenomenon where now many people are not just saying they don't like their work, they're actively considering leaving their work.

That is new.

That is new. Yeah. And in, I think it was August, maybe September, one of the previous month this fall, we're starting to see record numbers and numbers that haven't been at play in the last 20 years. It's not just a hypothetical phenomenon. So the question is, what's happening? And I do think that this is multi layered. I think one important thing to talk about is that there are, you know, many industries in which it is difficult to work and to get some of the basic rights of work. I'm thinking about the hospitality industry and. Or the restaurant industry. I won't pretend to be an expert on either industry, but if you've dined out at a restaurant in almost any city in America in the last several months, you've bore witness to the fact. You know, we talked about Maine at the top of this. Jordan. We couldn't go out to eat in Maine this summer because there's nobody working. We had to get reservations two weeks in advance. And it was not the standard tourist experience. There is a question. Okay, we've got certain industries that aren't necessarily working for workers. And I think we're seeing some exodus there. And in an economy with so much opening around, people have choices in ways that they don't always have choices. I think that's one part. And there's also this purpose bit. Right. One, because work is a container in which we believe that we should have purposeful interactions and do things that matter, which I would be a proponent of. We want our work to have purpose. And so again, in a time where a lot of us in the last two years, because of COVID and the pandemic, for all kinds of reasons, have reassessed what matters have reassessed how we do things, some of us more drastically than others. We're reassessing work, we're reassessing our relationship to it, and we're reassessing if the kind of work we're in is actually working for us. And I think those questions are going beyond just individual choices. I think people are saying, are these industries working is the way we're working is, you know, we started to see companies say, you know, it's, it's permanent work for home. And one statistic that or one article I read, I can't remember where, I should remember where if I'm going to talk about it, but I'm gonna do it anyway. Basically, Amazon was going work from home from now on as a thing to sort of meet this moment. And Jordan, you know what I thought is, not all Amazon people are going to work from home. Like I saw the Amazon delivery driver on my street three times today. So there's a divide that's happening that we have to really pay attention to, and who's getting mobility and choices and getting to participate in the great resignation in a more privileged way and who's not and how might we think about systems that support everybody in the economy? So I think it's complicated and I certainly, certainly am watching it just like everyone else is and trying to make sense of it along the way. I honestly, I'd be curious what else you're seeing. Jordan.

I think there's a ton of factors here and I wholeheartedly concur with this idea that we, as Christmas in particular, have got to be thinking about ways to make this economy work for all and not just for the privileged. I do think purpose has a lot to do with it, but I think this is a perennial problem. I think if you get this, there's this huge spectrum about what workers believe about the meaning of work, right? And I think a lot painting with very broad strokes here, right? But my parents, generation baby boomers, I think we're on the left end of this spectrum. Work has no meaning. It's a meaningless means to an end. I go to work to get a paycheck, to enjoy the truly meaningful things in life. My family, my local church, institutional things, right? And now millennials and gen zers, we've swung the pendulum in the complete the opposite direction. We've been talking about this, this whole podcast. We expect work to provide us with ultimate and satisfaction. We don't look to the institution of church or state or family to provide that. We look to work. And now we're all finding, oh, wait a second, that's also disappointing. And in scripture, I think you find the only middle third way, right. This God who works and says that all work can be good work and is good and God given, but that nothing but Christ, right, can provide that ultimate sense of purpose and meaning. I think this is a great opportunity for the church to come alongside people who are struggling with purpose and work and point them to Jesus.

Right.

In a very winsome way with those that we have relationships with, the people we're intentional of building friendships with. It's a great opportunity to point them to the ultimate purpose of life, which is Christ.

Yeah.

Those are a few thoughts, but I am curious, like, how do you think Christians ought to be set apart in our response to this moment, this great resignation?

I was just thinking that and I would affirm everything that you've said as Christians, I think that we have multiple responsibilities and I would frame them, like you, Jordan, as opportunities here. I think a lot about, and probably this is because I've been writing about this. It's sort of timely with your new book, actually been writing about the rhythm of work and rest, right. And what does time look like and what might that be? And that's taken me back to the book of Exodus and the contrast in the kingdom of Pharaoh and the kingdom of God. Right. And okay, in the kingdom, in Pharaoh's kingdom, work was exploitive, it was harsh, it was greed centric, it was anxiety driven. And it just, it was hard and it was not good for all involved. And God rescues the Israelites and delivers them, they're no longer enslaved, gives them the ten Commandments and includes Sabbath rhythm as part of that and says, you know, and this is obviously modeled after God's own Sabbath rhythm that we see in Genesis, but says basically, you will not be like Pharaoh's kingdom. Your rhythm will look different. It will actually look different. And you will rest. And it won't. The rest isn't just for you. It's for everybody who's entrusted to care. It's for everybody here. Rest is a communal thing. And the reason why I think this is a good starting point is because this is such an issue. And when you talk about the great resignation, so many people are asking questions of purpose, but also pushing back on what's felt like boundaryless and always on work in the last year. You know, okay, if, if we're working from home, then we're always at work. That's problematic in many ways. So the first thing I would say is that our Very rhythm of how we work should look different. And this is in contrast to hustle culture, grind culture. You use the word hurried, right? It's in contrast to that. And that is a distinct choice and a distinct mark. I think of people who say, you know, here we are existing, living in a world where there still are lots of pharaoh like forces, right? Lots of pharaoh like kingdoms at play. Of course there are, because we're in the human world. But the kingdom of God is also here and we are going to pledge allegiance to that and our actions are going to look like that, starting with rest. Then you go back to a whole bunch of other things that mostly come down to the way we work, the way we treat people. I talked about calling earlier and one of those things being to work toward redemption. I'll give a very practical example. Now I've got someone on my team. He's just so skilled at operations and Google Drive and project management software. His gifts make me a much more productive person, actually, because he cuts through a lot of chaos. When he first got into all of our Google Drive folders, he's like, these are messy. These are very, very messy. And I was like, okay, yes, I didn't set them up, but I have not been part of the solution. Another way to say that, Jordan, is these are broken. These systems are broken. These, these Google Drive systems. So now I'm not talking about big systems that are at play. I'm talking about something very practical on our computer screens. Yes. And he went in and cleaned them up. And he went in and cleaned them up. And I kid you not, it probably saves our entire team a collective five hours, maybe eight hours a week in work. And he was redeeming something that was broken. So noticing those opportunities, so one, being oriented by a rhythm of God's work and rest, but then getting very specific and moving again. That's an empathetic choice. Moving toward others in empathy and saying, I've got resources and I can be part of that solution and I can help to redeem broken systems. Let me put my shoulder toward that work. If we had Christians doing that in the very bland, even mundane spots, I. E. Google Drive throughout companies and organizations and interactions. Imagine the ripple effects of that, Jordan, imagine. And so when I think about how Christians participate or don't participate in this moment, it actually starts with getting very, very tangible and building on some of that. And then these are experiments again. And then seeing what happens, are those leading us on a path to say, yeah, we need to realign our basic structure of Work towards another organization or, you know, there's actually a lot of good work to be done right here, right in front of me. And I feel like God's got me here and God's asking me to stay here. So in order to ask the big questions, I would say we've got zoom all the way in and start very small.

I love it so much. And to zoom out to the macro level for a second, right? Like, the economy's a mess, right? This is not a political statement, right? Like, it's a mess. The unemployment problem is a huge problem. You know, a headline I'd love to see in the New York Times that the church just rolled up their sleeves and got engaged. And it's like, everyone to work, find something to fix. Find something that's broken in your local economy and your local coffee shop in your local marketing agency and get to work and fix it.

Right?

Because we believe that broken things don't belong in the kingdom. I think it'd be a pretty powerful testimony to the world. So, Mikaela, you just posted this great blog post for really aimed at people considering leaving their jobs. And you outlined these three helpful things to think about. These three helpful steps as you evaluate this decision. Can you share those with us?

Yeah, absolutely. And these are all principles from the book. I'll do them in some brevity here, but there's certainly more. There's three things, so reflect on the road thus far, try and name where you're stuck and identify and take next doable risk. Let me just unpack each of those a little bit. I think one thing that is often missing when we're trying to discern, right, Should I stay or should I go? Should I take this thing? One of the steps we often miss is actually the step of reflection and kind of like what has happened so far, what has already gone right or wrong. And so one of the things I have people do is I actually have them draw in terms of reflecting. I have them get out a piece of paper and I have them draw out their road of calling thus far. And I tell them your road might feel like it's zigzag or there were some cliffs or it might be windy. Your road might be out next to a beach in Hawaii or in downtown Manhattan. You know what your road looks like, and so go ahead and draw it. And they draw it and they do it. And I say, okay, now start to add the big milestones. Add the milestones of things that have felt particularly significant on your road of calling thus far. And Jordan I don't define calling for the people. I just let them do what they're gonna do here. And people put milestones down and encourage them to add visual representation here. Okay, if this was a season that you felt like God was really dealing with you and it was difficult, add some boulders. Right? If this was a season where a lot of friends really came around, you put yourself in a road trip car and to really get visual about that. And as people are doing that, they're able to start to stack up the patterns of God's faithfulness thus far. It's doing the biblical task of remembering. And I think remembering is key to even naming where you're at. Once we do that, then the second task is to try and name where you're stuck. And again, this is an exercise that we use with people at the Dupree center in a program we call Road Ahead. The exercise comes this. Now talk about iteration and experimentation and failure. I think I Now use the 35th version of this exercise of people. And it literally took me 35 tries to get something that was really solid. But. And so I won't explain the whole exercise, but I'll tell you the two basic questions. One, and this is what I encourage people to ask next. Where do you have frustration, disappointment, or even pain in your current work situation? There's probably not just one answer to that, so you can list it out. I like to use sticky notes and just really get an exhaustive list there. And if you have two or three things, I would encourage you to keep going. But here's the churn. Jordan is asking, what do each of those stuck points and. Or pain or frustration or disappointment reveal about what it is you're actually longing for? Right? So this is the hope side of the pain or the frustration. And then all of a sudden, people have a list of two or three things that they're longing for. And then I say, okay, now pick one. Which one feels most pressing right now in the season? Which one are you really longing for? Which one is God talking to you through? And people pick one, and they've got one. And now that you've got a sense of what it is you're longing for, that starts to be the context in which we take next doable risk. Okay, that's number three. Identify and take next doable risk. This phraseology, next doable risk, is very important for me. I am from Nebraska, and so we speak in a lot of farm metaphors. I've learned. I learned that through marriage. My husband's like, why are you always talking about the farm, you grew up in a city. And so one thing we'll talk about are Bet the Farm kind of risk, right? These are the risks that you gotta go all in on and really put it all on the floor, right? And there are certainly moments that God is calling us to Bet the Farm, Jordan. But I think by and large there are many smaller, safer, if you will, risk along the way. I'll give you like some parameters and examples. So what I like to say is this is a risk that you already have the resources to do and that you can do within the next week. Something that you already have the resources to do. Resources being relationships, sometimes money, certainly time, a certain skill, right? And something you can do within the next week. So let's say, let's say for example that, you know, I've got a book coming out and I want to be able to talk to somebody very wise and well known and trusted about this book named Jordan Raynor. But I don't know Jordan and I don't know necessarily how to get to know him. But I think, you know, we would have a lot of connection. Okay, I have access to the Internet, right? I have access to, you know, Jordan Rayner is a person who makes himself somewhat available. I have already subscribed to Jordan Raynor's email list and so what if I sent Jordan Raynor an email just saying, hey, I truly love what you're doing and I think there could be some overlap. Now we don't know if Jordan Raynor will ever respond. We don't know if that will ever lead to conversation. We don't know if we'll ever do a podcast together. But I know that I can try because I have an email account and I have seven minutes to craft an email and I have a somewhat of a relationship, at least a one dimensional one, with Jordan's content he's already put out. And so that's a next dual risk. And when we're talking about what it is we're longing for and risk that we have the resources to take within the next seven days, I would imagine that there's probably actually a handful of risks that most of us can identify.

That's really good. I loved your hypothetical. Just hypothetical, hypothetically if it happened. No, it's so, so great and so helpful. So, yeah, listen, like, knowing when to take that next doable risk is an important quality for any leader. Clearly you're a great leader. I gotta bring this up. I couldn't believe this when I saw it. In preparation for Today's conversation. You guys just published the Ted Lasso leadership lessons.

Yes.

On your blog. I know this is the greatest thing in the world. You guys got the showrunner for Ted Lasso to talk about. Okay, first of all, how in the world did you get Bill Lawrence, the showrunner for the show, to do this?

Oh, yeah, I love Ted Lasso, too.

Let's talk about this for the rest of our time. I love Ted Lasso.

Yes. Oh, I just finished season two. So I'm right there and totally caught up to date and love it. And I am also aware that Ted Lasso is not for everybody. Right. Lots of salty language and certain situations. So certainly I like to give a disclaimer whenever I talk about it and get very excited about it. But I do think that there's a ton to learn from there. So how do we get the showrunner, really, one of these happy accidents and one of these next doable risks? My colleague, Todd Bolsinger, he put on Facebook, hey, I. I love Ted Lasso. And he was starting to kind of digest some of the leadership lessons. Somebody else on his Facebook said, hey, I actually know Bill Lawrence who works on that show. And you know what Todd did? He said, hey, could you connect us? Right, There we go. A next doable risk.

There you go.

Could you connect us?

So you guys have got, like six of these, seven of these Lasso leadership lessons. What's one that you love or that you just love to share with our audience?

Oh, there is a phrase, be the little girl. And there is this idea that comes out of the show that anybody can find themselves in a leadership moment. A lot of times when we picture leaders, we picture the people who have a lot of structural power, have accumulated a lot of accomplishments, and perhaps even get to tell a lot of people what to do. But there is a scene in the show and one of the lessons where we talk about anybody. Even little children find themselves in leadership moments, and I think that's such an invitation to see ourselves wherever we're at. We do have influence. We have leadership, and it really flattens the field in a nice way.

Wait, so I can't recall this scene. What's the scene where the little girl steps up and leads? Oh, assuming there's no spoilers here.

So this is. What episode did they link this back to? It's Roy Kent and his niece. I don't know. I'm not going to be able to call the exact moment.

Somebody's going to figure this out and email us, because I tell us Roy Kent's my favorite character. I love the relationship with the niece. So, man, we've covered Moana and Ted. This is the greatest episode of all time, easily, hands down. All right, Michaela, three questions we wrap up every conversation with. Number one, which books do you find yourself gifting most frequently to others other than your own?

Yeah, my own. Right? Giving that one away a lot recently. The book I probably buy the most for people is a book called Designing youg Life by Dave Evans and Bill Burnett. Dave's a good friend, and it is just they take the theory of design thinking and apply it to career development, and I think it is accessible and brilliant.

Yesterday I was having lunch with somebody telling me how great Design youn Life is.

Have you read it?

I haven't. So I've been a fan. I actually think I bought it yesterday. I gotta check my Kindle account. But I've been a fan of Dave Evans from afar for a long time. I really need to invite him onto the podcast. He'd be such a great guest. I gotta read this book. All right, who do you want to hear in this podcast talking about how their faith influences their work?

Yeah, well, now I want to hear Dave Evans because we just talked about him, but actually it's someone named Uli Chi. Uli Chi is part of our devotional writing team at the Dupree Center. I am convinced that after knowing him for years, he is the wisest person I have ever met in real life. And he's one of my advisory board members. And so I get a lot of time with him. He is one of those hidden gems. We're all encouraging him to write a book so he'll eventually have a book out on wise leadership. But he is just someone I think everyone needs to be listening to.

What's one of the top things you've learned from Uli?

Just last week I was talking about something that was upsetting me and I felt bad about and I was taking a lot of emotional responsibility for, and I wanted to make everybody happy. That's my diagnosis of myself. And he said to me, mikayla, like, one of your biggest journeys is going to be to learn when to care and when not to care. And the when not to care is just so foreign to me. And of course, he doesn't mean in a write people off, but just in a differentiating ourselves from our role and our work and being able to let things go at the end of the day. And so that is the piece of wisdom that is currently rattling in my head from him.

I'm terrible at that.

Yeah, it's hard.

Really bad at letting things go like that. That's a wise, wise word. So he's your Yoda.

He is. He is. Yeah.

Okay. All right. Hey, what's one thing from our conversation this last hour that you want to reiterate or highlight for our listeners before we sign off?

I think that empathy right in Moana, certainly risk taking, I think, cannot be undervalued and that those are deeply Christian ways of being in the world. And so I would just say that this career advice, the stuff that actually leads towards generativity and towards discovery and towards helpfulness in our profession, is the very same stuff that aligns us with what God's doing in the world. Just to root those things. Empathy, imagination, risk taking, even reflection in the story of Christ.

Very beautifully said. Mikayla, I just want to commend you for the exceptional work that you do. I love. By the way, I didn't mention this or Lord knows we need more women in this faith and work conversation. Drives me crazy how many white dudes like me there are talk about this stuff. So just thank you for helping us discover the meaning in the jobs we already have and for just taking a really biblical approach to this conversation. Guys, the book is Make Work Matter, your guide to meaningful work in a changing world. It's available everywhere now after a paper shortage, right? You laid the book fun times talking about our current moment. Mikayla, thanks again for joining me.

Thanks for having me, Jordan. This is great.

Hey, are you enjoying the podcast? Do me a favor. Pull open Apple podcasts on your phone or if you use Spotify, listen to something else. Go to your desktop and pull open itunes. Find the call to mastery and rate the show. Leave a review, tell us what you like, what you don't like, what we can do better. We're always trying to put more weight on the bar and make this content serve you guys better so you can help connect the gospel to your work and your pursuit of doing great work for the glory of God and the good of others. Love you guys. Thank you for listening. I'll see you next week.