In this episode of the 5 Leadership Questions podcast Todd Adkins and I had the pleasure of speaking with Dr. John Townsend. Dr. Townsend is a leadership consultant, a psychologist, a NYT best-selling author, a theologian, and even a musician. We talk about all of that in this episode and he drops some absolute pearls of wisdom. His insights in entitlement from his new book, The Entitlement Cure, are especially helpful. Enjoy!

BEST QUOTES

“The cure for entitlement is the hard way.”

“The actual wiring of the brain can change with two things: relationships and intense experiences.”

“Transformation happens when you have an overlap of knowledge, experience, and coaching.”

“I don’t think we have the right to pick and choose; we’ve got to read all of the Bible.”

“You can learn about leadership from Leviticus.”

“We can’t hide behind the cross and be B-level players.”

“If you have character without competency you have a really nice person who doesn’t get anything done.”

“If you have the competency without character you have someone nobody wants to work for.”

“There are certain areas you can’t fix in competency, but there is no limit in character.”

“There’s no ceiling on character. There can be a ceiling on hunger for character.”

“If you set a ceiling for yourself in character that ceiling perpetually gets lower. If you’re not striving forward you are moving backward.”

“If you review it you keep it.”

“Leaders will confuse strategy and tactics, and that will really bring down an organization.”

“Once you have a strategic plan, no matter how great the tactics are, they must bend their knee to the strategy.”

“Entitlement is not a demographic curse. Entitlement is a human problem.”

“If one person is entitled the toxicity can really take down a team.”

“I understand the need to connect with your children, but God created a generation gap for a reason. You need to give a child something to aspire to.”

“The characteristics of a great leader are very similar to characteristics of a great parent. There are always two dynamics: they are highly warm and also strict.”

“Concentrate more on your internal growth and less on your tool kit.”

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES

The Entitlement Cure

Boundaries

Townsend Institute for Leadership & Counseling

Rocktangle

The Leadership Challenge by James Kouzes and Barry Posner

Primal Leadership by Daniel Goleman

The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker