Robin Pugh joins us to talk about his new book, Leadership: What does it require to be a good leader? That and more. Learn how you can protect your wealth with Noble Gold Investments, a company that specializes in gold and physical delivery of precious metals. That's where I buy all of my gold. Go to NobleGoldInvestments.com/TheCharlieKirkShow and use the promo code: "ELISSA" to receive $10 and contribute $10 to OWLS Lacrosse you download the app. That's right, you get 10% off your entire purchase when you become a Member of the Club, and you get an ad-free version of The CharlieKirk Show wherever you get your ads. If you like what you hear, please HIT SUBSCRIBE and tell a friend about it! It helps us keep bringing high quality, high profile guests to our shows across the country. Thank you so much to everyone who has been a supporter, listener, supporter, or just wants to support the show. We appreciate it. Sincerely. - Charlie, Kristy, Sarah, Kurt, and the Crew at The Charlie Kirk Show. -Kurt Schlichter, and all the hard work that goes into making it what it is. -EDUCATION AND SUPPORTING THE MAKING THE MOST IMPORTANT THINGS MOST EFFECTFUL FOR OUR CHALLENGING VOCABULARY AND SUPPORTED IN OUR SOCIAL MEDIA AND VOCAL SUPPORTED ATTRACTOR SUPPORTED AND ACTIVATED IN OUR PODCAST AND WELL SUPPORTED BY THE CHALLENGE AND SOCIAL SUPPORTED TO SUPPORT OUR MESSAGE AND SUPPORTER INSTAGRAM AND FACEBOOK GROUP AND LINKED TO SOCIAL SOCIAL GROUP AND INSTA CREATING SOCIAL PRODUCER AND PEDCAST AND OTHER LINKS AND LINKS TO SOCIETY AND OTHER PLACED IN SOCIAL PEDIARES AND APPEARANCE PEDOR AND SOCIALLY SUPPORTED THROUGH THE PODCYPRONE CORPHAR AND SOCYNEARLY SUPPORTED ON SOCIAL LANES AND OTHER SPOTIFY AND SOC INSTA AND OTHER THIRD PLACE? AND MORE! - - "The Reluctant Disciples" - "Mr. Pugh's Book "Leadership: What Does It Requests It Needed To Be A Good Leader?"
00:00:18.000Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
00:00:20.000Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
00:00:22.000I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
00:00:26.000Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
00:00:29.000I want to thank Charlie. He's an incredible guy.
00:00:31.000His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA. We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
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00:01:21.000Kurt, your grade, your reaction to the debate we saw last night.
00:01:27.000Look, everybody talks about how good J.D. Vance is.
00:01:30.000Of course he's good. He's an attorney, and he's a good attorney.
00:01:34.000Keep in mind, Not all attorneys are like that.
00:01:38.000I never cease to amaze me, the poor quality of litigators that I see in other courtrooms who can't put together an argument, can't string together the words to compose a sentence.
00:01:50.000But J.D. Vance went in and he did a really good job.
00:01:55.000Definitely a strategic choice of his to be nice.
00:01:59.000He could have been a lot more brutal, and there were a lot of openings that he didn't run through that I think he skipped on purpose because he was trying to introduce himself to people who didn't know him.
00:02:13.000We haven't talked enough about Tim Waltz in this big conversation, I think.
00:02:18.000And I gotta say, I don't think Tim Waltz was terrible.
00:02:25.000A lay person's job, a person who doesn't argue for a living, a person who's in a blue bubble and doesn't usually have to argue to defend his points.
00:02:34.000For that, I don't think he did terribly, and I think he's going to appeal to some people.
00:02:38.000So we shouldn't get out over our skis.
00:02:41.000But the fact that J.D. Vance was so good, and he was very, very good, really shouldn't lead us to underestimate the appeal of a guy like Tim Walz.
00:02:53.000So, as we kind of break down some of the elements here, what did you make of J.D. Vance's back and forth with the moderators and his handling of that situation?
00:03:05.000Well, Charlie, it's very smooth and it's almost obligatory now.
00:03:11.000I mean, after we saw how Newt Gingrich started by calling out the biased moderators, Donald Trump calls out moderators.
00:03:46.000When they started pulling their shenanigans, he started mansplaining.
00:03:51.000And frankly, those ladies, I guess, needed a man to explain because they either didn't know what the hell they were talking about or they were lying.
00:03:58.000Either way, they were giving their audience bad information.
00:04:01.000And J.D. Vance wasn't going to stand for that nonsense.
00:04:04.000So a lesser reported news story seems to be about Doug Emhoff.
00:04:09.000You know, there's this whole idea that, you know, Doug Emhoff is the best version of the American male.
00:04:15.000And let's just understand, here's what we understand about Doug Emhoff, is that he impregnated his kid's nanny, he then physically assaulted his girlfriend, lectured us on toxic masculinity, and then hailed for redefining masculinity, and now allegedly...
00:04:33.000Walk us through the latest revelations here, Kurt.
00:04:36.000Well, apparently he was off with his girlfriend, who was another prominent lawyer, and they were in France, and apparently she dared talk to somebody else, and he decided he was going to smack her.
00:04:53.000You know, as conservatives, you look at this and you're like, we know who that guy is.
00:04:59.000He's the loudmouth in a bar screaming at his girlfriend and threatening her, and then you've got to get up and go, hey, dude, you need to chill, or, you know, somebody's going to get smacked, ain't going to be your girlfriend.
00:05:11.000The thing is, the feminists, you know, these bizarre MSNBC feminists, Have embraced Imhoff as this new kind of man.
00:05:29.000And I think they, look, I think at some weird subconscious level, because I think feminism is really the manifestation of a lot of daddy issues and personal psychodramas among affluent girls who never fully grew up.
00:08:18.000We agree that it's important for every single American citizen to be respected and have a say in his or her government.
00:08:25.000It's important that every American have the right to speak freely, even if it's things you or I don't want to hear or they don't want to hear.
00:08:34.000You know, these things used to be common ground.
00:08:38.000But now you have Walsh last night explaining that the government can censor speech as long as it's labeled hate speech and citing that idiotic shouting fire in a crowded theater meme that's Speaking of a lawyer, you're going to have to trust me, not a thing, okay?
00:08:59.000The beauty of this coalition is this is a coalition of normal people 30 years ago, okay, where we all agreed on some basic things and we disagree on others.
00:09:09.000Maybe RK and I have some disagreements on vaccines.
00:09:12.000Maybe we have some disagreements on foreign policy between me and Tulsi Gabbard.
00:09:27.000The left today, Charlie, does not agree on the premises.
00:09:30.000It does not agree that every American should be treated equally.
00:09:35.000It does not agree. They do not agree that everybody should be able to participate in their government.
00:09:40.000And they certainly don't agree that everyone should be able to say what's on their mind.
00:09:44.000Kurt Schlichter, plug your book, which is awfully applicable given what's happening in the Middle East right now.
00:09:49.000The attack. It is a novel, but it's a with a lot of detail and realism about a massive terrorist attack in the United States, facilitated by our wide open borders.
00:10:05.000That's why whenever I can, whenever I'm in a free state, I carry a weapon with me.
00:10:10.000Why? Because you never know when this is going to occur.
00:10:13.000It's not going to be just one guy, not going to be 10 guys.
00:10:16.000It's going to be hundreds of guys allowed in to our country by the negligence of Biden-Harris and a distracted FBI that's not bothering a terrorist, not bothering a school shooter, only bothering with Americans who simply want to participate in their own government.
00:10:32.000Kurt, thank you so much. Excellent work as always.
00:10:38.000As we gear up for another important election year, remember that we vote every day with our dollar.
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00:11:42.000Thanks for having me. Author of a very important book, The Reluctant Disciple.
00:11:47.000It's funny, I was having lunch with Robin earlier this year, I think it was in January, and you were telling me this story on how you went on a mission trip and you got kidnapped.
00:11:56.000And I was like, you need to write it in the book.
00:11:58.000You're like, actually, it is in a book, and you're writing it.
00:12:03.000I mean, it was the impetus of this book, and you almost died, you got kidnapped, and it was this divine intervention.
00:12:09.000Tell us all about it. Yeah, so the book, The Reluctant Disciple, is a fictional parable that is based on just this true story that you're mentioning.
00:12:17.000So in 2007, headed to Africa on a missions trip with our church, and it's a very long story, but the crux of it is we were coming out of the bush after a welcome celebration for the Village that we were going to be serving for 10 days, Jathini, about five hours from Nairobi at the base of Mount Kenya.
00:12:37.000And we got pulled over by a rogue band of thugs.
00:12:42.000And I was sort of thinking, well, you know, just get them their $400 and we'll be on our way.
00:12:48.000And our project manager, Protazio, who was sitting in front of me, started screaming in Swahili.
00:12:54.000And I realized he was otherwise a pretty cool customer.
00:12:57.000And something was not going to go right.
00:12:59.000And immediately I heard a loud pop and the window shattered and he slumped forward and they reached in, opened the door, and he fell out lifeless.
00:13:09.000So the whole time I thought that they had shot the gun and that he was dead or dying.
00:13:14.000What had ended up happening just to suspend, you know, all the suspense was that they had broken the glass with the butt of the gun and knocked him out.
00:13:23.000And so what happened was they started tapping on my window, and I really looked away because I was trying to disappear myself.
00:13:31.000Like, this was happening, but my brain wasn't catching up to it.
00:13:36.000And so with my own free will, I literally had to reach over and unlock the door because I had seen right in front of me what would happen if I didn't And I opened the jump door and what transpired was two hours of being held against our will.
00:13:54.000It was the most verbally brutal and physically brutal event that I could ever, you know, hope to not have happen.
00:14:02.000And I don't even like to say that we Americans were even mishandled, even though we were mistreated, because they beat the holy tar out of the Africans that were with us.
00:14:15.000The expats that were with us and all the, you know, our hosts.
00:14:18.000And so that was really, you know, problematic, but it just showcased the evil.
00:14:22.000Anyway, at the very end, or what ended up being the very end, they stood us up, did a very official police pat down and said, we will not hurt you, and they laid us face down in the ditch by the side of the road.
00:14:33.000And so how did that segue then into the book?
00:14:51.000And then I realized that if 13 people were dead or dying in a ditch by the side of the road in otherwise peaceful Kenya at that time, the whole world was going to know about it, especially if we were Christian missionaries.
00:15:03.000And then I realized, oh my gosh, the purpose of my life is going to be my death, because in my death, God would shine a light on this region and eradicate this evil.
00:15:14.000And so I just started saying the Lord's Prayer and got to deliver us from evil, and a set of headlights was coming down the road and spooked the bad guys off.
00:15:24.000And so as we scrambled to get into the vans, the headlights caught up to us, and it was an all-white delivery van.
00:15:32.000Deliver us from evil and here's a delivery van standing between us and the bad guys.
00:15:35.000We'd see no cars going in, no cars coming out.
00:15:37.000There were no homes to deliver anything to at 1030 at night.
00:15:41.000And so in my own personal debrief, I was like, okay, wait a minute, Lord.
00:15:48.000Appreciate that. But second, if the purpose of my life was going to be my death in that ditch and you miraculously saved me and now I don't have this purpose, what is the purpose of my life?
00:16:01.000And he said, Robin, tonight I do not demand your life.
00:16:04.000Knowing that you would give it to me is all that I ask.
00:16:07.000Get up, dust yourself off, and let's get to work.
00:16:11.000And so from that point on, I'm living on extra days because I died in that ditch.
00:16:17.000And so taking this book and really making it available to everybody to understand these types of circumstances in your life, because every single person that's listening to this right now is either going into a ditch, in a ditch, or coming out of a ditch.
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00:17:50.000Robin Pugh is with us, author of The Reluctant Disciple, a parable about reconciling faith and business.
00:17:57.000So let's talk about that. A lot of people here are listening on podcasting, and they're in a business world where it's hard to share their faith, hard to share their values.
00:18:05.000Talk about how you should reconcile your calling for Jesus or your calling in the marketplace.
00:18:10.000Yeah, I mean, somebody once told me you either need a missionary or you are a missionary.
00:18:15.000And so if you need a missionary, then, you know, make sure that you're walking with somebody who can, you know, be on that faith journey with you.
00:18:21.000And yet, if you are a missionary, not everybody's called to vocational ministry.
00:18:26.000And so most of us are called to the marketplace.
00:18:29.000And if you have faith as a priority in your life—so you may not be a sold-out believer, but you're not hostile to it—if you're sitting in the pews at church, the pastor's telling you, go love on people.
00:18:43.000And so men in the marketplace and women who are wondering, well, wait a minute, I have to swim with the sharks Monday through Friday.
00:20:28.000So some of the best compliments I've gotten are I've never been in the head of a main character of a book as much as I was in Peter Christensen, the protagonist of this book.
00:20:40.000And so that's the whole purpose of making it available for people to be able to put themselves in this story and say, okay, this is what it means to actually step forward and marry my faith with my marketplace calling.
00:20:54.000Why do you think that so many Christians are hesitant to speak their values and express their worldview in the marketplace?
00:21:02.000I don't know that they know what their values are.
00:21:05.000I think we've got a massive identity crisis.
00:21:07.000And so if I'm thinking about my identity in the marketplace, I'm only as good as whoever's telling me that I'm doing a good job on that particular day.
00:21:15.000What we're talking about here is your identity in Christ and true truth.
00:21:20.000And so if you're not understanding what true truth is, like who you are in the faith in Christ, then you will never step out, hot sports opinion, you will never step out and actually share that because you're just day trading on your position inside of the marketplace.
00:21:37.000But if you're anchored in the truth of who you are and who God is and who you are in your relationship with him, Then you'll step out more boldly.
00:21:47.000So the part of also what you do professionally is developing leaders.
00:21:51.000Talk about that because there seems to be a leadership crisis in the West of people that aren't sure, you know, who to follow, what a leader actually is, and how does that intersect with your book and, you know, our desire to fight for liberty in Christ.
00:22:08.000Yeah, so I started a leadership development firm about 14 years ago, trained and practiced law for five years, owner-operator of different businesses over a decade, and then I found this industry, if you will.
00:22:20.000And so I used to build businesses, and now I build into the leaders who build businesses, because leaders cast a long shadow.
00:22:27.000And that shadow is either a positive impact or a negative impact.
00:22:31.000And the leaders that I work with, I only work with successful leaders, I don't pick them, they pick me.
00:22:36.000If you don't care about your people, then you're not hiring an executive coach or a leadership development expert to help you improve your leadership.
00:22:45.000They almost to a person say, I fear I'm becoming the leader that I swore I would never be.
00:22:53.000Because bad leadership leaves a significant imprint on us.
00:22:57.000And if we don't know how to actually be a good leader, we will just continue that generational impact from bad leadership.
00:23:06.000So when you deal with leaders, what are the characteristics that define a good leader versus a not so good leader?
00:23:13.000Yeah, so Collins in his book Good to Great sort of imprinted on all of us a couple of decades ago, and the number one thing that he says, a level five leader, is humility.
00:23:23.000So think about a captain of industry who's raising his hand or her hand to say, you know what, I need a coach.
00:23:31.000So Harvard Business Review did a survey of the Fortune 500 CEOs that utilized a coach, and it was only about 50%.
00:23:43.000And when they took all the qualitative data and they quantified it, they were able to say, gosh, the leader, like I said, casts a long shadow.
00:23:50.000When the top leader is focusing on raising their leadership lid, the entire organization benefits.
00:23:56.000So if you start with humility to say, hey, I need some assistance, these are the same people who are hiring fitness trainers and nutritionists.
00:24:03.000I mean, they're trying to operate, optimize for their maximum.
00:24:07.000And so I would say that's the number one trait.
00:24:09.000And then the second is that they care about their people.
00:24:12.000They genuinely have care and compassion for the people that they work with, that they do their leadership in and through.
00:24:19.000Do you believe that leadership, you're born a leader or that it is developed?
00:24:25.000So I believe that there are some natural-born leaders, but the majority of us are developed leaders.
00:24:33.000We're trained leaders. In fact, I'm betting my entire career on the fact that leaders can be built, that they can be trained.
00:24:40.000There's an entire science to leadership.
00:24:44.000And leadership really is just influence.
00:24:46.000You either have functional leadership or positional.
00:24:49.000So have you ever worked at an environment where the front desk person has more influence than almost anybody else in the organization?
00:24:57.000They're a leader because they are able to utilize their role to influence others.
00:25:03.000So leadership isn't this high-minded thing.
00:25:05.000It's basically your ability to understand your influence and use it for good.
00:25:10.000So when you try to replicate other leaders, what is the one, two, or three, I'm sure you talk about this in the book, of the standard operating procedure to try to do that?
00:25:21.000Yeah, so we've got a five-part leadership development framework, and we call it the confident leader.
00:25:27.000If you're 70% confident, which sounds like a pretty high percentage, you're 70% confident, You're 30% doubtful, and doubt changes your performance level every single time.
00:25:41.000So the three things, if I were to pull out of our five-part framework, is you've got to have a vision.
00:25:46.000So think about a leader that isn't able to communicate where they are going or where they're taking the team.
00:25:53.000I mean, this is playing out right now.
00:25:55.000Without a vision, people perish. Yeah, without vision, people perish.
00:25:59.000And write the vision plain on tablets so that he who runs may read it.
00:27:09.000Well, and think about Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning.
00:27:12.000One of my favorite books. 30 million copies sold.
00:27:14.000He, you know, bases that on Nietzsche, who says...
00:27:17.000He who has a why can bear almost anyhow.
00:27:21.000So how you have to march through the next 33 days might be very challenging, but you're armed with your why.
00:27:29.000I mean, Simon Sinek has made an empire on answering this age-old question, why?
00:27:34.000Start with why. And it's very powerful.
00:27:36.000So vision, identity, and why would be three pieces.
00:27:39.000From your perspective, just generally, and I know this is one of the reasons you wrote the book, why is it that so many young people are lacking a why?
00:27:49.000I think that if I were to summarize it, I think everybody else has been telling them what their why is up to this point, and they haven't actually had to think about it for themselves.
00:28:00.000And if everything is served up for them and their parents or other people are answering that question for them, it's like, wait a minute, now I'm in the real world, perhaps?
00:28:09.000Who's going to answer that question for me?
00:28:11.000That's why I Anybody that is dissatisfied with their life either doesn't have the answer to the question why or somebody has answered that for them.
00:28:19.000So you're either going to have somebody else define your why or you're going to stand on your own ground and say this is why I'm doing this.
00:28:27.000And if a Christian is lacking a why, that's a problem, because you should have an ultimate why as a Christian, correct?
00:28:34.000Yeah, I mean, the grand why is to glorify God, and then the calling, which is based on how you're uniquely wired, that's your individual unique why.
00:28:44.000And in the book and in your work, you help people develop that.
00:28:49.000Yeah, I mean, it's central. I mean, your why is your intrinsic motivation for everything that you do because sometimes we're lazy and we just don't want to do it.
00:30:42.000Yeah, well, and this is happening with the great resignation, if you think about it from a couple of years ago, if you've got this flight of leaders leaving your organization, The way that you keep the people who are still there is that you promote them.
00:30:57.000And so a little bit of an epidemic is people being promoted beyond their skill level.
00:31:02.000And so you will hear these leaders, so talking about managers or directors or vice presidents, they're like, oh my gosh, Robin, I'm an accidental leader.
00:31:11.000Like, I don't even know how I got here.
00:31:13.000I do the thing really well and now I'm in charge of the people who do the thing.
00:31:18.000And some of those people are my peers.
00:31:20.000And so the question is, do you have the will or the skill?
00:31:24.000If you don't have the will to be a leader, then you should question whether or not you should be in that spot.
00:31:28.000If it's just a function of, I desire to be a leader, or I desire to steward this role really well, but I don't have this skill, then that goes back to, well, we can develop those skills.
00:31:39.000I mean, we have a six-month leadership intensive that we do for...
00:31:46.000Yeah, so we bring them through a pretty significant curriculum that is anchored by an emotional intelligence assessment.
00:31:54.000We think that the emotionally intelligent leader going forward is going to be the one who wins the day.
00:32:01.000So emotional intelligence, people think, oh, it's based off of emotions.
00:32:04.000They're emotional or not emotional, and that's not really what it is.
00:32:07.000It's 15 specific skills that you can develop.
00:32:11.000Name some of them. Yeah, so there's reality testing, there's optimism, there's flexibility, and so it's how well are you aware of the emotions that you're having, how are you expressing those, building relationships, managing stress, and making decisions.
00:32:28.000The two emotional intelligence skills that I think are the most important are reality testing.
00:32:35.000Are you seeing the world the way it actually is or the way you want to see it?
00:32:40.000What do you find? That's super interesting to me.
00:32:57.000Yeah, you want to be able to see the facts as they are.
00:33:00.000So how do you go about making sure that you, Charlie, are seeing things the way they are?
00:33:04.000What are some tactics? I have no idea.
00:33:06.000Okay, so you would surround yourself with other people or like, are we seeing the same thing?
00:33:10.000And so you're able to actually communicate with others.
00:33:12.000Yes. Because then leaders go make decisions on those...
00:33:16.000Based on that. So is there a practice that you can go through to be more in the real and less in the pessimistic or optimistic?
00:33:25.000Yeah, I think being on your leadership team, being able to have people communicate, no, you're seeing this more skeptical than it actually is, or you're seeing it more optimistic.
00:33:34.000And so if you've got this feedback culture where you are actually open as a leader for your team to give you feedback...
00:33:44.000Well, if you say but to them, that erases everything that they just shared.
00:33:49.000In closing here, you mentor, coach, top business leaders.
00:33:52.000Not all of them are Christian or godly.
00:33:55.000Can you talk about the kind of the people that are very, very wealthy, but they don't have God and the emptiness that sometimes you see in their life and the need for advice for people that are young, that it's not just about business success, but putting the divine, the eternal and the beautiful at the forefront.
00:34:11.000Yeah, so I'm not a Christian executive coach or leadership development expert.
00:34:17.000I want to be the best executive coach that I can possibly be because I want to be able to be in the company of influencers so that I can influence them with God's wisdom, not my wisdom, because I'm going to run out of stuff.
00:34:31.000So if God's going to give me supernatural wisdom...
00:34:35.000How then do I show up for those people?
00:34:37.000So they find me, and, you know, prior to writing this book, they may not even know— It was word of mouth, yeah.
00:34:43.000Yeah. Well, but I'm saying even from a faith-based perspective, well, now that I've published a book that is clearly faith-based, it's like, okay, this is what his beliefs are.
00:34:51.000But the point is, is that as I'm chatting with them, everything that's rooted—everything that I coach is rooted in Scripture.
00:34:59.000And so even though I may not be quoting chapter and verse— God's Word does not return void.
00:35:05.000And they're like, wait a minute, write the vision plain on tablets so that he who runs may read it?
00:35:09.000Where'd that come from? I'm like, oh, it's an old parable or an old proverb.
00:35:13.000And so just being able to offer that to those folks.
00:35:17.000The reluctant disciple, check it out, Robin Pugh.