When Good Men Do Nothing: Lessons on Leadership and Accountability

Welcome to the Optimizing Beyond podcast. I'm Josh Negron, and this show's all about sharing lessons, ideas, and strategies that sharpen your thinking, strengthen your habits, and push you to grow beyond comfort zones. Let's dive in. Hey everyone, today we are walking right into the fire. If you look around at culture right now, or maybe even inside your own business or home, you might feel like things might be fraying. It might feel like the value of everything— our relationships, resilience, maybe even standards— is slowly going down. It's depreciating with more division everywhere. Now, the world has told us that part of the problem is toxicity, especially a phrase tokened— I think we all know— toxic masculinity. They tell us that men or leaders are too aggressive or too much. But I've been wrestling with a different truth over the last few years. I don't think the problem is too much strength. I think the problem might be absence. It's what happens when capable people step back to keep the peace, only to realize that stepping back, they've actually opened the door for chaos to walk in. Let's call that abdication. I read a powerful quote this week that played into this dynamic, and I knew I had to share those thoughts with you so we really can take a look at this. So step right into this with me and let's get into it. Now let's start by reading the quote from Edwin Cole this week. The book is called Maximizing Manhood, and the quote is, people appreciate or depreciate based on the value placed upon them. Let me read that again. People appreciate or depreciate based on the value placed upon them. So let's get into the words of this quote. So appreciation isn't just being nice, it's actually defining an economic value of going up or going down, like, like almost an investment. This struck me when I read about it, particularly when you think about the most important relationships in your life, like say with your spouse or your kids, or maybe, you know, employees and other people that are close to you. So let's go with the example of spouses. It's super common in like sitcoms and things like that where the joke's always made that The spouse would love a gift or something that signifies thoughtfulness just for no reason whatsoever. Why is that so critical? And why is that so meaningful? I think it starts to scratch at the surface of what this is talking about. You're taking those instances to appreciate that person. Oftentimes it can be more meaningful when it's not tied to something significant like a birthday or anniversary. Just letting someone know, hey, I thought of you. Now, this can be done in very simple ways, like just via a simple text or a call, like where you're not asking for anything, you don't want anything from them, you're just seeing how they're doing. You just wanted to let them know that you were thinking about them. These kinds of things have power, and we all know that because we've all had instances where we've practiced this and seen how it affects someone else. Now, because this is true, the inverse is also going to be true. There are moments that we can all recall to where in interactions with other people, We depreciated them in a certain way, and you can tell with body language and how that person responds that it might have a lasting effect on how they view you, and probably most importantly in this conversation, how they view themselves. In the book, the author gave examples of spouses that started living up to their spouse's beliefs of them. Particularly in those examples, those were negative examples and viewpoints of the opposite spouse. So spouses with poor relationships. Skills where they call each other names and belittle each other, it creates this pattern where the spouse starts to live up to the expectations of the other person. We've talked about the power of expectations in previous episodes. Those are expectations you have of yourself, but why wouldn't it also be true of the expectations you have of your spouse? Now apply this to a kid. We were all kids at one point, and we remember instances where people had very low expectations of us, or they were dismissive of us. And while that can sometimes spur you. To prove them wrong. A lot of times it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. You're somebody that gets bad grades or whatever, and you just end up being like, fine, I'll just, I'll just prove them right. It's not worth it. So this is a super big reality check. This is saying that spouses, kids, and even employees live up or down to the value that we assign to them. Now think about that. Do you actually believe that? We're gonna dive in more of this. Let's check it out. Now, I've been wondering for a long time if this is a problem of abdication. See, culture might be getting it wrong when they talk about men right now, that maybe the main problem isn't toxicity, maybe it's abdication. Now, I want to be clear that I'm not talking about the douchebag dude who is a terror to his spouse and to his kids, always pushing his way. That is not the type of masculinity that we're talking about, but it gets easily categorized in that section. When I mean abdication, I mean stepping back or checking out. Now, there could be multiple reasons why a man would do this, but I think there are examples going back a long time ago of men abdicating their place in the family, in the community, and just not Doing anything meaningful whatsoever. Now, this kind of abdication can be something as simple as laziness. Laziness is something that grips young men. I know that when my wife and I had been married for 5 to 10 years, she worked in the higher education space, and we often had conversations with newlyweds in college that had a lot of questions, and we were in their lives, and they had a lot of frustrations in that first year of marriage. A lot of them were talking to my wife. A lot of them were ladies, and they were frustrated that their husbands were playing video games all the time and that they weren't helping with things around the house. And over time, that was frustrating them. They felt like they were more their mother than an actual spouse in a partnership, in a relationship like that. This is exactly what I'm talking about. So this plays into the laziness piece, the not taking responsibility piece. But I think also abdication can also come from the avenue of trying to keep the peace. There was a recent message that I heard trying to delineate the difference between peacekeeping and peacemaking. The premise was from Cody Walker was that peacekeeping is that avoiding conflict, that not wanting to cause a rift. And if there's something that needs to be said, you don't say it because you just don't want to mess anything up. And you can imagine situations where that would really, really be detrimental. To the person that might need to hear that information. If somebody is headed down a road or path that is not in a good direction for their life, you have the responsibility to say something, especially if they respect you and you care about them. But if you don't say anything just to keep the peace, you bear some responsibility for what happens to them. Now, to contrast that, peacemaking is the active art of making peace in a situation. And what that means is when necessary, saying what needs to be said. Now, that does not mean that you need to be rude about it or disrespectful about it. The concept of speaking truth in love is something that I strongly believe in. I think it's a horrible cop-out when people say, well, the truth hurts. You just— that's just how I say things. I'm just real and direct. Yes, I understand. However, truth in love is a very, very good phrase because it juxtaposes the power of truth that already will impact someone in an intense way if you're willing and brave enough to say the truth. That you don't need to package it as well and kick the horse while it's down in an aggressive, horrific way. So I think when men abdicate and they step back or check out just to be lazy or keep the peace, for 2 big examples, I think that creates a vacuum where responsible men step back and chaos is allowed to step in. There's that famous quote that I think we all know, where all that evil needs to progress is for good men to do nothing. Now, I think that's pretty powerful. And I'll also reference one of my favorite people, Dr. Jordan Peterson, who's a polarizing figure, let's face it. I hope he's doing well. I know his health has not been the greatest as of late, but I think there's a reason why his message has had such a response from young men across the world. I went to see him in Tulsa, Oklahoma. At the BOK Center, and I will tell you the amount of young men that were there dressed suits and three-piece suits even. And a lot of them, you know, you're just listening and hearing people talk. You could also see how they were dressed—that maybe it was the first time that they wore something like that. Maybe they didn't know how to tie the ties, or things were just put in a way where you're like. One of my favorite ways to notice is on the on the back of a suit coat. You can see the stitches still there. They didn't know that those can be cut, so the jacket flaps are open. And I could tell the impact that he had had on those young men. And they said, no, I need to get my life together. I need to take responsibility for my life and for the people in my life and to do something and be something meaningful. How is that bad? How is that toxic? This is the kind of thing that I'm talking about. So He says a lot in his content that men do need to be responsible and argues that strong men can be the immune system to a failing culture, not the virus that caused it in the first place. Do you believe that? Is it possible that this is true? It's very thought-provoking. Now, when I reflect back on my own past, I can identify places where I can see the truth of these things come to life. When I was first married, I've shared before that I wasn't the leader in my marriage that I should or could have been. And because my wife's a Type A, it was pretty easy for me to, yeah, be lazy. And it wasn't about conflict avoidance, at least in my marriage. It was more just, she's making the choices, she's calling the shots. Why do I need to do anything? And it was really just easy to not lead, to not have an opinion. But like she said in the episode that we talked about that, that isn't very engaging. I don't think that's something that a lot of people think or talk about, both men or women. I don't hear a lot of women say that they want a partner that is engaging and interesting. And with that comes conflict and disagreement and toiling. That whole thing of like, that a helpmate means a sparring partner, that doesn't really sound like a punching bag to me, right? And so how do you, how do you engage your spouse In that way. And I realized about 5 to 6 years in, I was abdicating some of that responsibility. I hadn't heard of Jordan Peterson or anything like that. I just had really good mentors in my life. I saw how they were amazing spouses, particularly ones that were more passive personality types. They were still incredible leaders at home, and their wives had such tremendous respect for them because they were cherished and taken care of. And they were also engaged in very interesting ways. And this was a great role model for me. This really illustrated early on in my relationship that leadership has important aspects for men that defies just personality types. I think a lot of people categorize themselves and pigeonhole themselves out of leadership because they may not be a Type A, or they may not be a super charismatic person. I loved reading Jim Collins' book, Good to Great. Because so many of the CEOs that he talked about in those great companies were not these giant charismatic CEO types, which gave me a lot of hope and really pulled me into kind of trying to figure out who these guys were, especially the Kimberly-Clark CEO. I don't remember his name, but I remember he was described as this very meek and mild leader, but people would follow him to the ends of the earth, which I just found like a really good role model. And then it makes me think of the culture as a whole. I think right now a lot of times there's just a lot of pointing fingers at who's the problem and who did what wrong and who's contributing to all the issues. And there's not as much taking responsibility for, yep, this is my part, this is my issue, I caused this, I contributed to this, and here's what I'm going to do to fix that. And I think that if there are more people that are willing to be humble enough To do that and to take that up. And that could be an interestingly powerful thing. Now, additionally, in my own life, there are also instances that I can think of where there were moments where I knew the truth someone needed to hear. I'm a very analytical person on the Myers-Briggs. I am an INFJ, which is 1% of the population. I often feel pretty misunderstood. I have difficulty articulating the things that I want to say because In my head, they're difficult to apply words to. And so sometimes words are inadequate. When I do use them, they can get me in interesting situations because I'm not quite able to describe what I want to say. With that comes the burden of really analyzing almost everything. And a lot of times I'll look at somebody and I have something very beneficial that I could offer them, but I haven't figured out a way to share that through mind reading quite yet. So it always bears the burden of having to say something to that person. And so since my personality is naturally inclined to avoid conflict out of the box, there's been a lot of times in my life where I know that there is something that someone would benefit from hearing, and I'm ashamed to say I didn't say it. And so in those moments, you can see how They might continue on the path that you could have helped them bring awareness to. And again, like I said earlier, that responsibility bears weight. And when you feel that over and over, you start to realize, hold on a second, I have a role to play here and I can make the world a better place by saying something, which requires strength and care for others. So what was the cost? What was the cost of those times in my life where I did nothing, right? When I was that good person that did nothing and things that weren't that great were allowed to continue. The problems got bigger. The person could have potentially depreciated in that aspect. There are times where, particularly as a boss or a leader, there are people that you witness that aren't maybe doing the greatest job. I'll actually tie this to a book, Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara. It's one of my favorite books. And Will Guidara is a restaurateur that brought Eleven Madison Park in New York to the number one best restaurant in the world. Now, that wasn't very fast. It took many years to do so. And this book is about the journey of how they accomplished that. One of the stories in that book that we reference as a management team often is the wrinkled shirt story. Now, if you read this book, you know exactly what I'm talking about. And it's the employee that comes to— came to work to the restaurant with a wrinkled shirt, and the bosses would see it and get frustrated that that person Wasn't ironing their shirt, but they wouldn't say anything, which is crazy, right? But it's so easy to do. You just avoid it. You got to work. It's, it's whatever. And maybe you almost always use the, the rule of positive intent for an incorrect reason. You're like, well, you know, you give them the benefit of the doubt in the bad way so that you don't engage them. So maybe the thought is, well, maybe he was rushed to work and he couldn't iron his shirt. He'll probably do it tomorrow, obviously. And the Day comes and goes, and the next day it's a wrinkled shirt. So what do you do then? Do you say something? Well, you don't. And then it goes on and on for weeks. And he said the manager's frustration level is just going to continue to build and build until if you finally say something to that person, it is so loaded with emotion that is not helpful to that person at all. You're definitely going to depreciate them in that conversation. And to be honest, they're not going to understand why you're so amped up. And that boils down to it's your fault. Because you didn't tell them that their shirt was wrinkled to begin with. So he gives the example later in the book where if you notice somebody's not doing something right, go up to them, put your arm around them and say, hey, here's what I noticed. Let's work on it. Let's do this together. Something like that. Especially the first time, the first time you notice something and you say something, you need to make sure that you're approaching it. Like I said earlier, in a respectful, kind, and helpful way. And then the more it goes on after you've said something, You have that conversation to reference back to. So it's easier to mention and also can carry more weight the second, third, and God forbid, fourth time. You're like, hey, we've talked about this. Like, we need to get this dialed in. It's so much easier. And it's way better than 3 weeks of not saying anything and just blowing up. Now think of both of those stories in that book. Think of how that employee with the wrinkled shirt approaches both of those responses, right? And so, that's a real reality of appreciation or depreciation. That single employee, we've all had them where they don't live up to our expectations. And sometimes the culture just, oh, well, that's just that person. They don't ever do anything right. They're a slob. They don't, you know, whatever. I think we've all had an example that we can call to where, you know, that guy just never, I don't even think he knows what an iron is, right? And we're just making fun of that person. And it's just not, how is that, even if they don't hear the words that you, maybe you don't even say them out Maybe it's just what you think. Those things are going to come out in your body language, how you treat that person. One of the things that I teach leaders is when you have the feeling that you want to lean away from an employee in whatever way that feels like, lean away from a conversation, lean away from them physically, or avoiding them in the hallway, anytime that you feel that as a leader, that is your cue to lean in, that it's time for you to engage that person, maybe even just If there's not a particular conversation that you need to have, maybe it's just showing that person attention, saying hi, and letting them know that they're seen. All of those things can be ways that you can appreciate that employee. So the lesson here is, of course, it's easier to be nice in the moment, but it's always definitely harder in the long run, like in the book example with Will Goddard. So going on, what is the distinction here? Because this starts to be categorized in the red pill arena real fast. Obviously. Obviously, I'm sure there's plenty of people who have already put me in that category. So how do we optimize how to be a man of strength? That is what we all should aspire to be. Like I said earlier, this is a far cry from what the young men fall into online in the red pill anger or domination idea. This is not the view of responsibility that I'm talking about. Neither of those two things are responsible in any way. So I would draw the distinction like this. Red pill focus is boiled down to what can I get, whether it be status, money, submission, what can I get from people to get what I want versus what we're talking about on what can I give to others, whether it be protection, clarity, provision, joy, feedback. This is what servant leadership is all about. Trying to find ways that you can give to others and build them up. Appreciation. Now, Jordan talks about this in the idea of service through strength. And again, he— we— I've touched on this very lightly in past episodes, but he talks about this as men that are monsters that are under control, and that that is what he considers as apex attraction in, in a man. I don't know if you'd go that far, but it's an interesting thought-provoking idea. And again, in the conversation with my wife recently, I talked about the Aslan example in Chronicles of Narnia where Beaver asks, you know, a lion, that's intense. Is he safe? And they said, safe? He's a lion. No, but he's good. And so that illustrates that example of a monster under control, someone you can trust, but someone that's capable of great and terrible things. But won't do terrible things because they are trustworthy. That's a super powerful idea. That's something I think all of us need to wrestle with. I think if you're listening to this and maybe you realize that you've checked out, you know, what, what are, what comes to your mind right now? What is an area in your life that maybe you are doing less than you know you can do? That's a common question for mentors to ask. What could you do today? that if you did it could have the biggest impact into tomorrow? Or is there an area in your life that you know you could be doing more, but you're not? And what could happen if you did just a little bit more? That's a super powerful question. The biggest areas are in marriage, with your kids, or in business. So what's the first thing you should do tomorrow? That's a really good question. You know, I love back at work. I have had a lot of growth with the management team I've been on. We've hired such an amazing amount of mentors over the years, and they have taught us so much. And one of the biggest joys that I've had is seeing my colleagues who are, who have small children. And most of them, I'll say 4 to 5 years ago, we had a mentor that had us share a 20, 30-minute It might not have been that long, maybe 15 to 20 minute summary of all of our childhoods. I think I only remember 1 or 2 people who had what you would describe as a good childhood, and everybody else had absolutely horrific experiences with their parents in home, out of home. It was crazy. And what was super incredible was how far we had all come from those experiences, which is amazing. But the biggest part out of all that is to see how they all evolved over the last 5 years as parents. Now, I tell you, I don't have any kids. I just have my marriage and my work and my entrepreneurial things. But it's been amazing to see my colleagues really dive into their kids' lives, recognize the areas that they saw major deficiency and areas where they are currently And have past healing experience with their childhood unmet needs and are unwilling to repeat those patterns. So, you know, you hear the concept of breaking those chains, and so many of them have done that. It has just been amazing to hear those stories, and they're so in tune with it. They recognize those moments now, and it's almost like in our vernacular at work when we talk about it. And even just this week, we were doing some reflection on 2025. And a lot of the managers just described with their young kids how they were— one example was super powerful where he said, I started this practice. I'm not telling you guys need to do it. But anytime my son walked in the room, his son's in high school, he's like, I'm just going to put my— I just started putting my phone down. And he just, he's like, I could tell it just made him feel seen even more. And I realized my phone is going to be here after the 5, 10, 15 minutes that He says whatever he needs to say and it's done. And even if it's more than that and we're just hanging out, that is such valuable time that again, you'll never get back if you squander it. And so again, those are just such incredible moments and I want those moments for you if that's something you realize is an area of opportunity for you. So my challenge to you is pick one person or area where maybe value has dropped over the years, or, you know, let's, let's admit it, maybe like in my marriage areas where you recognize that the value hasn't dropped. It just hasn't been to the level where you know it can be. Remember, we're not about perfectionism here. We're more about progress in excellence, not fear of failure, but just wanting to get better every single day. So what is that one person or area? Think about that. I want you to write it down and start tomorrow, whether that's getting your spouse some flowers, whether that's putting your phone down when your kids want to talk to you. You know, when your kids are at that age, Daddy, Mommy, watch me. You're like, It is not always going to be in the most convenient times. In fact, I think they wait till the most inconvenient times to challenge you to see what is most important in your life, you or whatever you're doing or them, right? So we want to consistently place a high value on these people or these places, right, in your life. And when you do that this week, I think you'll see some pretty quick feedback To watch them rise to it. The author of the book Maximizing Manhood I mentioned earliest, they told a story of a husband and wife that came with their daughter to a conference. He noticed the daughter was very, very unengaged and did not have a great relationship with the parents, especially her father. With a little bit of digging, he realized that the father was never willing to listen to his daughter. And she knew that she, she confided in this author that anytime that she tries to talk about anything, her dad always has an opinion. He won't hear her out and he will just dominate the conversation, give her his opinion or decree. And she never felt like he was interested in her and really felt depreciated in the relationship itself. They said, well, can you fix our daughter? And he says, well, actually, I have a challenge for you, sir, if you're willing to take it. So I need you to agree to it before I tell you. The guy was really uncomfortable with that because you could tell he had some control issues. And he finally decided, you know, my household is important to me. So yes, I will. He goes, perfect. I need you to agree to listening to your daughter. And for 30 days, you have to commit to not saying anything to her in response. So I need you to just let her talk and don't say anything. Yeah, he was honest. He was like, I honestly don't think I can do that. She says some pretty dumb stuff, some ridiculous stuff. And I don't think I can do that. He goes, well, That's the commitment. 30 days. She says whatever. You're not allowed to fix it, give your opinion, reframe anything, nothing. Listen, shut up, don't say anything. I said, okay. So he saw them about a month later, and they were a totally different family. The young daughter was smiling and beaming from ear to ear, and they were in just in close physical proximity. And he was like, man, how did, how did it go? And the dad said, you know, that was one of the hardest things I have ever done. But honestly, we made it like 3 days and she had nothing left to say because she finally felt like I had heard her and she felt super valued and all the tension was gone. It was just that crazy. So that's what I'm saying. I think if you implement these things and you start to do things with intentionality, like we talk about so often, if you get curious about fun ways, I mean, you can even chat with AI. Hey, this is my relationship with my spouse, with my kid, with my whatever. Can you help me think of 5 random ways where I can show them appreciation. Or you could say, ask me 5 questions that you need to know about our relationship to help me personalize ways of appreciating them a little bit more. That way you can get some answers that are a bit more specific to your situation or your relationships. And I'm telling you, I think you will see in a ridiculously short time, you know, so many of the things we talk about, they have long-term implications. Do this for 60 days, 90 days, and you'll see a change. Well, today is different. You can do something in just a week with intentionality, and you can watch someone absolutely blossom. Wouldn't that be great? This is the exact thing that speaks into the daily anything changes everything. So I hope you're able to think of some creative ways that you can do that. I really appreciate you. Thank you so much for listening to the Optimizing Beyond podcast. Now remember, Growth happens when you take action. So share this with a friend, subscribe, and most importantly, take what you learned into practice. And until next time, keep moving forward because daily anything changes everything.