How Leaders Build Character Under Pressure | John Lentini | 707

How do you turn life's most defining moments into a framework that others can use? For John Lentini, the journey to thought leadership didn't begin with a model. It began with lived experience. From surviving 9/11 to leading through global crises, Jon spent decades navigating moments where character wasn't theoretical, it was tested. Over time, his experiences evolved into a system, a language, and now a book focused on one idea, that character can be built intentionally, one decision at a time. I'm Bill Sherman, and you're listening to Leveraging Thought Leadership. Let's begin. Welcome to the show, John.

Thank you, Bill. It's a pleasure to be here.

So I want to begin with a question, and attention, your book, which is coming out later this year, is about engineering character and really character as revealed in difficult moments, right? How do you put those choices into a framework, let alone a book? How do you make characters something that you can teach, communicate, rather than— because I'm sure some people would say, well, that's what you're born with, right?

Yeah, absolutely. I compartmentalize into two different segments. You need to learn to lead yourself before you can really take on the privilege of leading others. So I've conceptualized that into what I call a 3-dial system of discipline, mindset, and resilience to essentially lead yourself and achieve determination to achieve your own outcomes, to lead yourself, not necessarily to other people. But then once you've achieved those outcomes, a different onus of responsibility comes into play and you need to learn to lead others. And that's where my second set of dials to build out the full Six Dial Framework comes in. And those are integrity, empathy, and influence, which yield trust. And together the Six Dials build character, which I feel is a dwindling resource in our society. So I felt there's an opportunity to give people a system to build it.

So talk to me about the Six Dials. When did they come about and when did you sort of start seeing them, using them? Because. Some people scratch out frameworks and say, hey, I've been using this for years. And others, as they write the book, the framework becomes clear for the first time. What was the experience for you?

Yeah, there's a kind of few factors that organically developed this whole concept for me. Uh, firstly, I, I certainly believe in thought leadership, and I feel many of us are really thought in the, in the space of fuck buildership, right? Because there aren't too many brand new ideas. We often build on ideas. So the initial concept, the discipline, mindset, and resilience was introduced by a, a mentor of mine within the Crestcom network as the 3 things you need to navigate your business. And it, it immediately resonated with me and I was working with that and that drove success through a very dark period. I founded my business just before COVID which was very challenging to, uh, be starting something. I, you know, just really gotten off the ground in February of 2020 and everything came to a crashing halt. So those three elements of discipline, mindset, and resilience in concert with each other were really what enabled me in, in real life practice to see my way to the end of, end of that dark tunnel to the light. That ultimately led to a TEDx talk. So I delivered a TEDx talk in June of, uh, 2025 that essentially focused on that first component of three dials to lead yourself. That's where the, the framework started to crystallize. And I of course have a corporate history in leading large organizations, so I've seen—

and I want to get into that in a moment, right?

Yeah. So that, that kind of the backstory. Yeah. Okay.

So it's been in an evolution process, and it sounds like you had forcing mechanisms such as the TED Talk where it's like, okay, These are things in my head. How do I communicate them in a way that's clear? And the framework becomes a tool, right? Now, you talk about leading in organizations. You've led through and been in some very difficult times.

That's right.

Yeah. Are you comfortable sharing some of that context in how that impacts why you do the work you do?

Oh, absolutely. I, I mean, there's a few elements that led to the space I'm in now and more of an entrepreneurial thought leadership space. And certainly a lot of it was forged through crisis, real world crisis. And I was involved in some historic crisis. The biggest and most— yeah, the biggest, most prominent, of course, is I, I'm a 9/11 survivor. So I, a plane went through my desk on the 80th floor of 2 World Trade Center, literally You know, my, my seat was 3 feet from the window that the plane entered on, on, on Tower 2. Um, so it was a very challenging period for me to say the least. I, I lost about 40 people, uh, that I knew, some of them very close to me. Uh, it was a very dark tunnel back then for, you know, 2 years I'd say it was a bit of a blur, but I didn't really talk openly about it for about a decade. It's only recently that I've come to grips with it's shaped who I am in so many ways. It's, I, I need to stop hiding from it. Um, so that's the first component, 9/11, clearly a big story, which is, you know, part of my TEDx talk, certainly part of my forthcoming book. Um, another, you know, historic event which I was involved with managing teams in Asia was the Fukushima nuclear event. And I had a team on the ground in Tokyo and I was at odds with my senior leadership and how to navigate some of the individuals who were adversely impacted, having learned from 9/11 in a way that others had not. And, uh, that certainly informed a lot of my model.

And I want to stay there for a moment and sort of sit in the moment here, right? Um, you talk about character and you're, you're talking about serious moments that are often short, both shorthanded by dates in their respective cultures, 9/11 and 3/11, right? Yeah. So those moments, did you think about character in those moments, or is it the processing afterwards? How do the pieces come together? Because I genuinely believe that when it comes to thought leadership, our lives, our identity, our defining moments really push us as to what we're passionate in talking about. So I want to give you the space to say, how did those shape you? Both in leading and then choosing to speak about ideas.

Yeah, I think the term character came later as I put together my 6 style model. I saw the result as a leader of character that just organically came to me a, as a natural outcome of what would happen if you navigated these 6 attributes, you know, properly. Really the precursor was having seen what bad leadership looks like in corporate life. I've certainly had the good fortune to work for many good leaders. Fortunately, many of them early in my career, which had a very positive developmental you know, impact on me. But I'm also extraordinarily grateful for many of the very bad leaders that I worked for, quite frankly. And a lot of the poor leadership attributes, behaviors, decisions, and, and frankly, not, not blaming individuals, the culture that rewards the wrong behaviors in corporate life, certainly in the investment banking industry I came from, informed me as to what I think is needed to build a better brand of corporate leadership, which is really what I'm trying to drive with the mission of my model.

Let's circle here for a moment. You talk about bad leadership and good leadership. Going to 9/11, what leadership did you experience in that crisis?

So that's an interesting story, and it's the open of my book. Um, you know, I had leadership— I should say there's a strong Japanese theme Throughout my work, and that came to me as I started to really draft my book. I didn't realize how many of the dots were connected through Japan. The bank that I worked for on 9/11 was a Japanese bank. The 5 senior executives who were all lost evacuating our floor were all Japanese nationals. As Americans in an American subsidiary, we often felt the very real frustration of how the Japanese approached banking business. You know, very much, you know, zero tolerance for imperfection. It seemed to be teetotaling at times, lacked practical application. So there was constant friction about their approach. You know, we saw as, you know, um, penny rich for pound poor sort of thing. Um, so that was constant. But on 9/11, I learned the real value of their culture of preparation. You know, we had taken on a, a very severe and, and clear approach around response to disasters because we'd been attacked in '93 in the Trade Center prior to my time joining the firm. But we had that legacy history. So everyone in our organization had an emergency grab-and-go bag in our desks as a constant reminder of what was at stake. Our fire drills were always conducted with military precision. They were never treated as an unwelcome distraction. People understood the need. You know, you're on the 80th floor of a tower that had You know, been attacked not too long ago. So our senior leadership took this very seriously and ingrained in us in that Japanese way, zero tolerance when it comes to life and human capital, which as it turns out, believe it or not, even in banking is our most precious asset. Not the financial capital we're chasing all day, every day.

It's not the deal itself. It's the people behind the deal, right?

There's no deal without the people, right? There's no firm without the people. Exactly. So on 9/11, Many people were lost. Many of them I know because it was announced in the building, false information. A small Piper jet had hit the other tower. It's safe to return to work. My senior leaders, I was on the street. I hadn't gotten up. I was running a bit late from the gym. My senior leaders evacuated everybody without pause while many others were lost because they were listening to this false information. But they took their approach, which on a daily basis may have caused frustration when it really mattered. I learned what Simon Sinek meant by leaders eat last. And tragically, they were all lost that day, but they died as heroes in my view.

And that's a powerful story and one I genuinely appreciate you sharing on vulnerability. Um, I want to take a step forward then. 3/11. Instead of someone being led, you're now in the role of leader. How does that influence your actions, consciously, unconsciously?

Yeah, this is where I think the evolution of corporate politics impacted me adversely. I ended up kowtowing, or I'd say acquiescing to senior leadership views. I had a brand new hire on the ground in Japan from New York. He had just landed months before that. Now, I don't know if you have any experience in Japan, but experiencing your first earthquake there can be pretty unnerving, to say the least, right? So those who are veterans who are born there or expats who've lived there for years are used to it. There's some, you know, bedding down of the anxiety. But if you're brand new and you've never experienced an earthquake, and then all of a sudden you have the worst earthquake in recorded history, you can imagine the, the response of terror that you'll be feeling. So I had an individual who was new who wanted out of Japan. He was terrified. And there were real risks. This wasn't just overreaction. We had a nuclear reactor that was now, you know, sending radioactive materials into the environment. So we didn't know where this might end.

I, my sister was in Tokyo doing, uh, studying program there on language fluency on 3/11.

Oh wow. How do you like that? Incredible. Very, very traumatic for a very long time cuz you didn't know what the long-term impacts.

And you're watching the news as an outsider not knowing what's gonna happen, right?

Yeah. And, and the reality was this one individual wanted to get outta there. And my view was I should cater to that. Now I understand corporate protocol. You can't allow mass evacuations. There have to be protocols with disaster recovery. Certainly understand that element. I understand the business reasons to want everyone to behave in the same way, but there was a level of empathy for a situation and a real level of liability because there were potentialities that were out of our control at that point. Now, coming from the place I did where I had seen— you know, 24 people from my previous firm and close to 40 people who perish on 9/11 due to, you know, due to decisions that were and were not made by my leadership and others. I had some experience that you can't play games. And if somebody felt that their life was at risk, and there was certainly real reason to believe it could have been, you needed to cater to that. But I played the hard line. He ended up flying out of Tokyo against his, against orders, essentially on his own dime., met, met up with me in Hong Kong where I was on a business trip. I should say I was actually, I was living in Singapore at the time. I was in Hong Kong on a business trip. I was due to leave for Tokyo that morning, the next morning. I was on my way from Hong Kong to Tokyo. And then when this earthquake happened, of course my travel plans were canceled. So that was, I was essentially settled down in Hong Kong, hadn't canceled my trip to Tokyo because of this, managing my team remotely cuz I had teams around the region. But when I look back, I wish that I had, you know, stayed truer to my personal values and integrity and, and towed the line of what was right. And this is where experience matters. There aren't too many people, and it's not a pride thing, it's not a braggadocio thing, but there aren't too many people who've lived through loss of life on the job in that industry. I was probably the only one that, at least the only one that I'm aware of, I, in hindsight and, and in even at the time, I think I would've appreciated some more, you know, deference to someone who's been there and done that rather than this is the BPM, you know, listen to your chain of command. And that is a lot of what informs my model of integrity, empathy, and influence. I, I, I saw a bit of a lack of what I consider pure integrity, lack of empathy, certainly for this individual. And, and from my standpoint, a weakness in influence to influence what I thought was the right approach. And that's largely where the second set of dials was, was grounded.

So, John, we've started a journey that's leading towards thought leadership in a book, right? You've experienced exceptional leadership on 9/11, right? You faced your own test on 3/11 and had to navigate corporate and individual sort of, you know, character tension, right? You could have continued to lead in investment banking. You could have even been a leadership coach or facilitator, right? Something caused you to want to speak up about character and to give that idea voice in this space? Why? Because you didn't have to.

Yeah, it's a fair point. I did continue to lead within banking for years thereafter. I moved around, right? It was in— back in New York. The industry changed. That was a big component of it. The banking industry you know, really continued to consolidate and, and, uh, became far less inspiring in the post-Lehman fallout, which continues to this day in many respects. I ultimately felt that I could be more effective developing leadership from outside of corporate life than I felt I was able to from inside. The more senior you get in those organizations, which is part of my motivation for this model, the more it becomes about leading up and less about leading the people who are within your charge. It's more about appeasing the people who are in charge. And, uh, I, I just felt I could be a better coach, mentor, and leadership, um, you know, developer from outside of corporate walls than inside.

But what makes you write a book? When did you realize, hey, I'm being pulled into the world that many would call thought leadership, right? That's a choice to speak on a different level.

Mm-hmm.

And my question is why? What, what lights you up and what motivates you to do so?

Yeah. And I think this stuff is innate for those of us who like to do these sorts of things. And for me, it probably dates back, the earliest place that I could probably pinpoint would be my 8th grade American history class where I had a teacher who was probably one of the most impactful of all the teachers I had throughout college and MBA. Uh, I had him again for AP American history in senior year of high school, so I had him twice. And he forced me to look through the lens of American politics and history very much through a political science lens of John Locke and Thomas Hobbes. And I carry that conceptual lens with me today through everything in current events and life. So I always found myself to be very conceptual, which I think is a big piece of all of this. So that conceptual piece was always there. I'd say I probably wanted to be a history teacher originally, and my book does incorporate a lot of historic biographical supporting, uh, you know, narratives, which Scratches that itch. Moving into the space of leadership development training, which I do training and facilitating, scratches that itch to some extent. So I'd say inorganically I landed back where I probably would've gone. You know, I ended up in banking because I landed an internship in the World Trade Center through serendipity, through my network. The summer after my freshman year of college, I switched from a history major till, you know, a number of times to ultimately switch from liberal arts to the business school, graduated as a finance major, worked in banking for over 20 years.

That's a huge switch.

It was. And you know, I'm not a left-brained thinker. I'm not your typical finance guy. In many ways, it's how I thrived because I was the right-brained thinker who had creative ideas and could coach and mentor and inspire large organizations. And that's where I found my passion ultimately was leading large organizations. I, you know, I managed groups of hundreds of people across, you know, you, you know, Europe, Asia, and, and the US. And the people leadership became the passion point for me. The derivatives, which I mostly worked in, and the financial and operational elements became far less interesting the more senior I got. The politics became very uninteresting, which is really one reason I decided to, you know, go out on my own and try to impact the world with my own worldview rather than trying to plug into someone else's, if that makes sense.

So John, you're in the process of publication. You've turned in manuscript, right? And you have a pub date coming ahead either later this year or early in 2027. Mhm. What does that look like for you? What do you want to happen with this book?

Oh, the book kind of un— unveils my soul of what I think good leadership should look like. The real premise is that I feel character is a diminishing resource that we haven't acknowledged is dwindling. And I'm hoping my book gives everyone a mechanism to rebuild character. I believe that character was organically developed in previous generations through what I call fountains of formation, through military and, you know, community and religious institutions. A lot of that has been degraded over the generations. And with it, we've lost a lot of character. You know what Tom Brokaw may have framed as the greatest generation in his book, right?

Mm-hmm.

And to get back there, I think we have to do it with intention. It's not going to happen on its own. And it's my hope that my six style model will inspire people to develop themselves and to lead others with greater character. So the more people, obviously the book gets into, it's a mission-driven concept, then the greater character will be, you know, driven in our society.

You use two words that I want to return to. It reveals my soul, right? I think personally, I look at books and grew up with books. My dad was a librarian and I read plenty of books. Those words really wouldn't have landed with me in the same way until I went through the writing process and realized how much of yourself you have to put in the book. And it requires sort of facing, at least for me, my own demons and trying to find meaning that's not just me, but what do I know and how can I share it with others. Talk to me more about that writing and revealing your soul process. I'd love to sit there for a minute.

Well, it's interesting because people will often ask me, how long did it take you to write this book? And the true answer is my entire life. Because this book is cumulative in so many ways, and I don't want to reveal all of it. There's actually a twist ending. It's a leadership book with an M. Night Shyamalan twist ending of sorts. So it's very personal. So many of the figures that I profile, I've sort of been digging into as a private scholar of sorts my entire life. So that's why I picked some of the, uh, characters that I did to profile in part 3 of my book. But in earnest, it took me probably about 2 years to write this. You know, it's a myriad of things and, you know, we'll see how it plays out because, you know, if everything's a priority, nothing's a priority, where is the focus? But, you know, the, the first 3 dials are essentially a self-help book. The Second Three Dials is essentially a leadership book. The book is part personal memoir. It is a lot of personal stories, some pretty, uh, vulnerable stories. And there is a—

were those easy to write or were they hard?

Easier than I thought I would say. You know, I— really? Because you don't know until you start. And I had the ideas of which stories and other stories came to mind as I, as I went through it that I would pepper throughout the narrative. But you know, those core stories of 9/11, you know, certainly drafting the script for my TEDx talk gave me a big jumpstart on that. I didn't know how the Fukushima story would play out because there's some sensitive, you know, kind of, um, political and corporate questions. Right, right, right. Right or wrong. And I hope that it came across that I'm not pointing fingers. I tried to take ownership of where I failed in all cases because I did fail in all cases. There's two sides to everything that goes wrong. So I don't want this to ever come across me pointing fingers at, look at the bad leaders, I could have done better. 'Cause that is not my view at all. A lot of this is what I've learned and what I could have done better. Um, and I, I took pains to hopefully achieve that in, in the way that I, uh, you know, delivered the messaging. But you know, when you've got something that is so, you know, personal and emotional, I think the words sort of flood out of, out of your fingertips in some respects. And it flowed a little more naturally than I might've expected. Uh, and it required some revisions, of course, but we'll see how it's received so far. You know, the handful of people who've read it, the feedback has been quite positive. The editor's feedback's been very positive. So we shall see.

So you've talked about teaching leadership, you've written a book, you've done a TED Talk, right? Where do you go from here? And what's the next hill you want to climb?

Yeah, I have a second TEDx talk planned. It was originally going to be later this year. It still may be, but it may make sense to push that to next year for a host of reasons. I have a second concept for a book, of course. You know, that's what happens when you start one. I actually have concept for 2 or 3 more books, but I know what the next 2 will be. So I'll always be writing. I want to do more speaking. You know, I've done a lot of speaking throughout my career, both when I was in corporate and since, and I obviously still facilitate with Crescom International in the leadership development space. But I, you know, am a member of the National Speakers Association and looking to build out more of a keynote with my own intellectual property. This book will be the primary foundation for that, and there'll be a lot to build on. So I'm working on a number of assets to support this 6-style framework and this concept of engineering character and my own kind of profile as a leadership engineer. And a lot of that, I should say, comes from my father who passed last year. I found out he passed the morning of my TEDx talk. If you watch my TEDx talk, you'll see that. I had to live my framework in real time on the stage. I was informed, you know, that day as I entered the stage. And my father was an engineer by trade. He left engineering early in his career, which turned out to be a massive mistake. But he was, he had the DNA of an engineer. To be perfectly frank, I do not in that way. I didn't inherit that from my father. But much of the engineering concept is a bit of an homage to my father. Whose passing was a pivotal moment in my transition with the TEDx Talk and a lot of the inspiration for the book and the concepts.

I have a question I want to ask. The question I want to ask, John, so you chose to do a hybrid approach for publishing. What were you looking for in terms of working with a publisher And what was important to you in making that choice?

Yeah, it's an interesting journey cuz I knew nothing about it going into it. Many may have more insights than I had. Um, but I dug into—

well, almost every author is at least once a first-time author, right?

I, I, I, I imagine that must be true. So I looked at all three components, all three elements of self-publishing, hybrid, and, uh, traditional publishing. I was very, you know, it was very easy for me to zero in on that hybrid publishing offered me the sweet spot. You know, it gives you the support you need. It certainly gives me the distribution because I'm working with arguably the top hybrid publisher with Forefront Books out of Nashville who has, you know, real gravitas and distribution channels through Simon Schuster. But I also maintain all ownership of my intellectual property, full control of it. Obviously you invest to publish rather than getting paid and getting paid is always nice up front. But I can retain the earnings, so I'm more motivated to continue to make sure this book sells because I retain more of the royalties on it. Not that I expect the money from the book to be the prime, you know, a real financial driver.

No, but it's, it's a door opener. It's a conversation starter. It's an opportunity creator, and it's a capital asset that you'll use for 5 to 7 years. Rather than being part of either a spring or a fall catalog, right?

That's exactly right. And the other factor, which is critical with hybrid versus traditional, is I have control as to when the book is released. With traditional, there's a very, very long lead time, which is out of your control. A lot of what you're writing about could even become obsolete by the time it comes to market. So that was critical ownership of the IP, you know, greater retention of long-term royalty to a lesser extent, frankly. But the, um, certainly the opportunity to control when and how the book is released was, was a critical factor in my decision-making.

So last two questions. What has most excited you about practicing thought leadership? What charges you up and makes you want to do this, right?

Well, this word has been getting a lot of grief for being overused, but I'll use it anyway. And I think if, if there's one word that just—

it's the name the field has. I would wish I had a magic wand to change.

No, I don't mean thought leadership. I mean the word I'm about to say, which sprang to mind when you said that. The word that came to mind immediately is authenticity. I, I felt within corporate life, as much as there's a lot of pride in being a senior leader in a revered organization and, you know, the business card, the LinkedIn profile, and, you know, there's a, a lot of pride of connecting yourself to an an outside organization, what I felt was missing was my ability to be fully authentic. And in some ways, as a Gen Xer, I think that sets me apart. 'Cause I think that's where Gen Z is. I think that's part of the challenge we're navigating. The younger generation refuses to align with corporate values that don't match their own personal values. My generation, the boomer generation, we were used to that. You knew that you had to leave a part of yourself at the door when you joined, when you went to work each day.

You put on the team colors.

Exactly. And, and I was comfortable doing that for decades, but you reach a certain point, the more senior you get, the more political it gets, and you feel that some of the stuff starts to feel a bit meaningless and you can't really impact the world the way you'd really want to if you were to exert your true authentic self. And if I were to narrow it down to anything, I think that's what drives me.

And then I'm gonna ask the counter of that question. What is it that you wish you had the magic wand to either understand about how all this works a little bit better, or that you could change? Because if authenticity is the driver, what's the thing where— that's sort of the challenge?

Well, I'm working with a Brand Builders Group, if you're familiar with them, an excellent organization. This is an unpaid plug, but Rory Vane is their founder. He's a great thought leader and public speaker himself. He talks of something called Shi Yan's Wall that he named after a, a previous influencer for him. And this is essentially about a tipping point. You know, how do you break through Shi Yan's Wall? Because the whole point here is not to become rich and famous, but to get your message out to the world because you have a true belief in your message.

Impact. This is what it's about.

So the question is, how do you penetrate Shi Yan's Wall to get the other side of where your message actually starts to break through to the public domain? That's the big challenge. That's the secret sauce. I think all of us are looking for, but the journey is fun. I always focus on the journey, not the destination. But I do look forward to penetrating in whatever degree I can Xi'an's wall and getting my message out to as many people as it can positively impact.

So John, thank you for joining us today for the conversation. Good luck on the book launch, and we look forward to hearing more from you, not only on character, but authenticity and the leadership journey.

Much appreciated. It's been a pleasure. Thank you, Bill.

Okay, you've made it to the end of the episode, and that means you're probably someone deeply interested in thought leadership. Want to learn even more? Here are 3 recommendations. First, check out the back catalog of our podcast episodes. There are a lot of great conversations with people at the top of their game in thought leadership, as well as just starting out. Second, subscribe to our newsletter that talks about the business of thought leadership And finally, feel free to reach out to me. My day job is helping people with big insights take them to scale through the practice of thought leadership. Maybe you're looking for strategy, or maybe you want to polish up your ideas, or even create new products and offerings. I'd love to chat with you. Thanks for listening.