In this solo, reflective monologue Tim Pratt Jr. explores the danger of mastering the language of leadership—terms like trust, vulnerability, empowerment—without cultivating the underlying character and posture that give those words meaning. He cites Jackie Hill Perry’s metaphor of the dead learning the language of the living to illustrate how people can masquerade as leaders by merely sounding the part. Pratt underscores that Scripture repeatedly stresses that character, obedience, and fruit outweigh mere speech, and that gifts and skills are only valuable when carried by a godly character. He warns that the AI era makes it easier than ever to generate polished, mature‑sounding leadership discourse without the depth behind it, increasing the need for discernment. The piece concludes with a challenge to listeners to look inward, ensuring that their lives and leadership truly embody the language they profess.
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Yo, what up family? So I just wanted to share this real quick video that was on my heart. I was thinking about something Jackie Hill Perry— when something like this said in a video I watched, she said something along the lines of the dead learning the language of the living because it allows them to masquerade among the living. And I was thinking about that in context of leadership today because people can learn the language of leadership without developing the posture and character of a leader. For example, we can talk about trust, vulnerability, character empowerment, all this type of stuff. Can we become very skilled in our communication and how we present things and, and, and shape them up without actually allowing it to form in the way that we show up, form in the way that we lead? And if I can just speak about my faith for a second, uh, scripture is consistently like clear on this. It points it out all the time that character, obedience, fruit, all of this matters more than simply what we say Uh, it is what we are embodying. Like, again, scripture is very clear. Now, it's not to downplay skills and saying that, uh, being incompetent and all that type— so that's not what I'm saying. All of that matters. Uh, gifts should be cultivated, skills should be cultivated. But to me, character determines what kind of person is carrying that. In other words, it determines what kind of person is carrying those skills, carrying those gifts. And then now in this AI age, it makes it a little bit more easier for people to sound or produce language language that sounds thoughtful, that sounds mature, that sounds deep, without again possessing the depths of the— without possessing the depth of the words that they are speaking. In other words, do what they speak— is their life a testament to the words that they use? I hope that landed and makes sense because I'm not gonna edit this. So anywho, um, we just have to be careful, man. And I think this requires for us to have even more discernment, uh, in, in the context of this day and age, because leadership language, again, it could be learned. Uh, leadership language which, uh, it again, it's no shortage of from podcasts to books to conferences and all of that, but it has to be formed. So I would just challenge all of us to look inward and pay attention to whether our lives and our leadership actually is becoming what we've learned to say.
