Beyond Command and Control: The Rise of Transcendent Leadership, with Greg Stebbins
In this episode of the Spirituality in Leadership Podcast, host Andrew Cohn speaks with Greg Stebbins, a pioneer in the intersection of spirituality, wisdom, and leadership. With decades of experience as a coach, consultant, and educator, Greg shares the importance of self-inquiry, values alignment, and transcendent leadership—an approach rooted in reflection, presence, and authentic connection.
Greg reflects on his upbringing in a military family, his spiritual journey (inspired by his mother, “Swami Mommy”), and his path from sales and consulting to founding his leadership development practice. He emphasizes that true leadership requires ongoing wisdom development, aligning beliefs and values, and uncovering the authentic self beneath ego-driven facades.
Together, Andrew and Greg explore how prayer, meditation, and contemplation foster clarity, how leaders can embody presence rather than simply perform it, and why younger generations are demanding congruence between words and actions in business. Their conversation weaves personal stories, practical tools, and deep reflections on what it means to lead from the inside out.
Key Takeaways
Spirituality and wisdom are deeply connected, and leadership growth comes from developing inner wisdom.
Transcendent leadership goes beyond charisma and relies on authentic presence and self-awareness.
Gen Z leaders and employees expect alignment between words and actions, with little tolerance for hypocrisy.
Practices like prayer, meditation, and contemplation bring clarity to decision-making, emotions, and vision.
A leader’s values shape their organization’s purpose, making values alignment critical for trust and direction.
Genuine presence cannot be faked; it emerges naturally from compassion, empathy, and love.
In This Episode:
[00:01] Historical connection between spirituality and wisdom
[01:00] Introducing the podcast and guest
[03:39] Greg’s background: military family and spiritual beginnings
[07:20] Professional path: sales, consulting, and leadership
[10:01] Shifts in business receptivity to spirituality
[11:42] Practices for integrating spirituality in leadership
[15:49] Wisdom through experience and self-inquiry
[19:06] Never-ending wisdom and interpersonal skills
[20:34] Defining meditation, contemplation, and prayer
[22:30] Values hierarchies and organizational alignment
[24:17] Ego vs. authentic self in leadership
[25:39] Charisma, presence, and holding space
[27:12] Generational learning and leadership evolution
[28:43] Ego’s role and command-and-control cultures
[29:08] Reconciling military upbringing with spiritual path
[33:27] Self-inquiry, self-reflection, and wisdom moments
[35:56] Challenges with 360-degree feedback
[39:36] Self-awareness and organizational alignment
[41:07] Respecting values and purpose in teams
[42:48] Closing and contact information
Resources and Links
Spirituality in Leadership Podcast
Gregg Stebbins
Phone contact: (310) 433-5020
Website: https://peoplesavvy.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregstebbins
Andrew Cohn
Music:
Watch our Podcast episode
Transcript
Greg Stebbins: There is such a connection between spirituality and wisdom. If you look historically at it, I mean, if we talk about the Bible, there's over 222 references of wisdom in the Bible, and then it doesn't matter what religion, or whatever their main text is, there's references to wisdom. So I just change things a little bit and really talk about wisdom. But I'm really talking about spirituality.
Andrew Cohn: What stories or practices or effective practices might you talk about? About how leaders can bring their core spiritual dimensions, regardless of what the source or anchor or practice related to those dimensions is? But for bringing those dimensions into their leadership.
Greg Stebbins: Take a look at what the values you learned in whatever spiritual slash religious organization you grew up in. Big question, are you exhibiting and demonstrating those values?
Intro: Welcome to the Spirituality in Leadership podcast, hosted by Andrew Cohn. Andrew is a trusted counselor, coach, and consultant who works with leaders and teams to increase productivity and fulfillment in the workplace. If you'd like to connect with Andrew about individual or team coaching, leadership workshops or team alignment, Please go to www.lighthouseteams.com. Enjoy the podcast.
Andrew Cohn: Welcome back to the Spirituality and Leadership podcast. I'm Andrew Cohn and in this conversation, I speak with Greg Stebbins. Greg has been in the space of the intersection of spirituality and leadership for quite a while. He's really an elder in the space, as you can tell, pretty much straight away and he just has a lot of basic wisdom to share. That's so helpful. And I'm struck by the impact of some of the basic things he's talking about that are just so important. He talks a bit about his own story in the background of a military family. He talks about inner wisdom, how the wisdom development is never-ending. And he actually later on talks about an evolution of leadership to what he calls transcendent leadership, which is based upon reflection, to develop wisdom, and the three components of one's leadership identity he discusses. And really, maybe most importantly I think, he talks about the importance of self-inquiry and self-reflection, knowing who you are and where you're coming from. A lot of experience and wisdom in this conversation with Greg Stebbins. Enjoy.
Welcome back to the Spirituality and Leadership podcast. I'm very pleased to have my friend and colleague Greg Stebbins on with us today from Green Bay, Wisconsin, a mere 1400 miles away from where I am, or so, probably a whole different ecosystem, but, welcome, Greg.
Greg Stebbins: Yeah. Green Bay is kind of like moving back into a 1955 Norman Rockwell painting.
Andrew Cohn: Yeah. Well, better than Madmen, but yes. Good. And, Greg, as far as from my point of view as Greg was one of the real pioneers in the connection between spirituality and business and leadership. He has had his own practice in coaching and consulting for more than a few years since the last millennium, as I sometimes like to explain it in terms of my own practice, and he has put to use his MBA and doctorate in education into his practice, and he'll may talk more about you, may talk more, Greg, about some of your education and how that's come to shape some of your views.
But we've talked a bit about this topic. You and I met as you were involved in the formation of the Transcendent Leadership Masters program at the Peace Theological Seminary and College of Philosophy in LA. I was just about to say, your native LA. Is that where you're from or just where you were educated?
Greg Stebbins: I actually let me give you a little background about this because it's kind of interesting. I grew up in a military family. My dad was the West Point grad who was in the Air Force. So we never lived in one place more than three years when I was growing up. The shortest was probably six months. And the family tradition has been West Point. His brother, my grandfather, and going back to the early 1800s with family. So there's some interesting sidebar conversations about that. I got involved in, really thinking about spirituality and wanting to be involved in some sort of group when I was at University of Miami, and that was in the late 60s, early 70s. But the beginning of that quest was actually from my mother, who I like to refer to as Swami Mommy.
Andrew Cohn: Nice.
Greg Stebbins: My brother and I couldn't get away with crap. I mean, she knew how she knew, I don't know. I mean, it's just it's like. And even when I had moved out to LA to be more directly involved, I get a call every so often. Okay. What's going on? Nothing, Mom. Don't lie to me. Tell me what's going on. You know, I just–there's no way to hide it from her. She just knew what was going on. So when I was about 16, she used to buy me Jean Dixon books. At that time, Jean Dixon was a very prominent psychic. And, she would just hit me the book and say, yeah, I think you may find this interesting. And that was it. Of course I just absorbed it and you know, and that was really the genesis that caused me to want to look for a more direct spiritual group to be involved in. So I've been involved with the spiritual group I'm involved with, since 1970.
Andrew Cohn: Wow. But so interesting. So your mom. So Swami Mommy, military family, longstanding generational military involvement. And yet she's picking up these books and sharing them with you to help you, presumably along with, you know, checking in on you, she hands you these books to help keep you on the right path, maybe would be an expression that she would use.
Greg Stebbins: And that would actually be a very good description of what she was hoping to do, given my propensity for attracting trouble. But the funny sidebar is in the middle of my junior year, I decided to drop out of University of Miami and move out to California. So I went home Christmas and told my folks that I would be jumping in my car in January and driving out. You know, using a military analogy is not like rolling a hand grenade across the floor.
Andrew Cohn: Okay.
Greg Stebbins: So my dad said, you finished out your junior year, and I'll pay for you to go out to California. When he didn't want to do something, he’d looked at me and say, I'll take it under advisement, okay? So that’s what I told him–I'll take it under advisement.
So January 20th, I jumped into my car and drove out to LA. And then, education was on my path, so I went ahead and finished my bachelor's degree out there and my master's degree and the doctorates from Lyon School of the Education and Psychology. I actually worked with psychology dissertation, which is what allowed me to become a member of the American Psychological Association. So I look at things from a spiritual perspective and psychological perspective, which is very helpful when I work with leaders.
Andrew Cohn: And what's been, if you could quickly–not that this needs to be our focus–but talk a little bit about your professional path and how it's led you to where you are now, and some of the some of the things that are connecting to what we talk about here on this podcast.
Greg Stebbins: Well, it's interesting because I've always had a natural inclination for sales. My dad was stationed in Denver. I went to summer camp that had, two water fountains on 20 acres of land, and I convinced my mom to buy me a little plastic canteen so I could carry water around with me. So then the bigger kids started coming out and pestering me for water. And I'd say, okay, a nickel a swallow. And they would, of course, drain the canteen and then hand me the nickel. I didn't care because my fixed costs were nothing, right. And, so that went on for a couple of days. And then the third day, the camp counselor came to me and confiscated my canteen. And when my mom came, he looked at her and said, don't ever let him bring this back in–what he's doing is bad and wrong. The only thing I hadn't figured out was how packaging and distribution we go by. We all buy bottled water now. So, I was early, early part of it. And I did a lot of selling when I was in school. And so my first real commercial sales job was when I started doing commercial real estate in the late 70s, and I did that probably till about ‘85, and I wanted to get into the consulting business.
And I joined the guys doing consulting, doing seminars and learn how to do that. And in about 1990, I formed my own company, because I wanted to do things differently. So that's really when I started doing, leadership development and bringing forward the spiritual stuff in terms of leadership development. There's such a connection between spirituality and wisdom, if you look historically at it, I mean, if we talk about the Bible, there's over 222 references of wisdom in the Bible. And then it doesn't matter what religion or whatever their main text is, there's references to wisdom. So I just changed things a little bit and really talk about wisdom, but I'm really talking about spirituality and I, what I'm doing is talking about inner wisdom, which is the same thing as, you know, coming from your spirit–that's been going on since 1990.
Andrew Cohn: Wow. Wonderful. And so I'm curious to know how there's so many questions I'd like to ask you, but one place to start might be how have you seen things change, in terms of a receptivity for these kinds of conversations, particularly in business? I'm actually assuming that you're primarily focusing on business – is that accurate, or are you interested in property nonprofit or education?
Greg Stebbins: Yeah, primarily business. Well, in the late 1990s, Judy Neal, who you have talked to, I think you've interviewed her, put on a series of programs for business, and it started to take off. And then what happened was in a lot of corporations, people went religious, so “my religion says…” and the senior executives started going, nah, we're not going to do that. And there was a big drop off. So probably 2002 through about 2006, 2008. But now it started to come back en vogue again. And I have people like Jim Collins is the author of Good to Great. You know, a quote of his is, you can't go through your life working in a business you don't love, with people you don't love. So there's a, there's a very big voice in business talking about loving leadership, which leads us into spiritual leadership. So. Right. It's come back full circle as I start to pick up steam.So you know, your podcast’s right on target.
Andrew Cohn: Great. Thank you. And thanks for being with us. So what stories or examples–I hate to say best practices because I always think best practices are limiting–but what stories or practices are effective practices might you talk about about how leaders can bring their core spiritual dimensions, regardless of what the source or anchor or practice related to those dimensions is, but for bringing those dimensions into their leadership in an inclusive and effective, productive, holistic way?
Greg Stebbins: I think Stephen Covey said at the best and said, you're talking about universal concepts. You're talking about coming from compassion, coming from empathy. And if you can't swallow the word loving, you're coming from positive, unconditional positive regard like Carl Rogers talks about. Those are three of the big things. And then take a look at what the values you learned in whatever spiritual slash religious organization grew up in. Big question you ask yourself is are you exhibiting and demonstrating those values? And a lot of people find out that, yeah, they got the words right, but their actions are very different. And are we generations are now coming into leadership roles. There's a very low tolerance for people who do not exhibit what they talk about. In fact, there's a huge disconnect. They just say, no, I think I'll go work somewhere else.
Andrew Cohn: Because of the incongruity, or you're not practicing what you preach sort of thing.
Greg Stebbins: Exactly. And they're very adamant about that which is, which is nice to see, because people of my generation, generation X and some, some in Generation Y, were kind of like, yeah, I'll put up with it because my real life is outside of the business. But the generation Z seems to want to have a holistic kind of environment so that what they do at work and what they do in their personal life, there's no difference. So they want to know if the purpose of the organization is. And they want to know that the people who are working for the greatest good, or, if I might say, the highest good. And there's a lot of corporations that's still run and command and control, and you work for me, I pay you a salary. And that's the only relationship we have. But that's beginning to fade out. People who do transformational leadership are looking at their leaders to be the kind of people who get them enthused. So charismatic leaders and you move into transcendent leadership which is really are you leading from the core of who you are? Are you learning leading from that presence? Do you carry that presence with you, or is it just a facade that happens to come in, in a room with you at the same time? So that's probably the biggest thing.
Andrew Cohn: Well, let's talk about the biggest thing. And I'd love to connect the biggest thing with something that is sort of the hypothesis of this, of this podcast about these core spiritual dimensions. So tell me about the relationship as you see it. And I'm sure you have a clear point of view about this between these core spiritual dimensions on the one hand, and demonstrating real presence and authenticity in leadership. How do those two connect in your experience?
Greg Stebbins: The easiest thing to say is, from my perspective, if everybody is spiritual, they may not know it though, because they haven't taken any effort to uncover that part of themselves that I wrote.I operate from a point of view that everybody is spiritual, and what I wanted to teach them to be spiritual, that help them uncover that. And the three biggest ways to uncover it actually came from Saint Ignatius in the 1500s, when he wrote a book on spiritual exercises. And they were prayer, meditation and contemplation. Those are the three biggest things I do today on a regular basis. And I've been meditating probably for 55 years, about two hours a day on average. Some days not so much. Some days a lot more.
Andrew Cohn: And what does this isn’t rhetorical; I’d love this to be very practical– what does that do for you, and for others whom you touch?
Greg Stebbins: My experience when I talk to you who do that kind of work for themselves, they have a clarity of thinking, clarity of making decisions, clarity in emotions, and clarity in imagination. So those four things make a huge difference in how a person leads. Because you need to have a clear imagination for developing a vision statement. Some leaders I've met don't even know what to get for lunch, know the reasons for their organization, right? With the advent of emotional intelligence about 15-20 years ago, people are much more versed in what they need to do to get a handle on their emotions.
So I would say there's not as much not that there isn't any emotional blow ups within organizations because people still hit that rough, rough patch, and that's just a sign that they haven't done the internal work. So when we talk about wisdom, the old expression was the experience gives wisdom, so everybody thought. Okay, I get old age, I'll shall have wisdom. The only problem is, is it's really the learning you have from the experiences. Because there's not some people who have the same experience at 20, and they have it again at 70 and, you know, 50. And you just track back. They never get past that experience. They never get the learning that's available to them. So that's a lot of what I do when I work with an executive is help them get that experience and say, what's the learning from that experience? And usually when you do it that way, you can slide in sideways and and bypass all of the defense mechanisms not that any of us have those.
Andrew Cohn: Oh no, of course not. I've heard about it though... But. Yes, but but the way you're framing that is it's not sliding by in some sort of end around or manipulative way. It's a very practical way to–it sounds like what you're doing is you're sort of bypassing the philosophy and getting to a very practica–what are you learning, distilling the learning from that experience?
Greg Stebbins: Absolutely. And I say, okay, what's the experience? The challenge that most people have is, we all have perceptions about or perspectives about what the world is. Some of those are perceptions. Some of those are projections that come off of our unconscious. If you listen to some psychologists, they will tell you that all perceptions are projections. So when I talk with a person, I say, well, here's my perspective on that. Say, okay, how much of this perception, how much of this projection? At first blush, they always say, there's no projection here.
Andrew Cohn: Oh, no. No, because we're not aware of typically what is what that lens is clouding.
Greg Stebbins: Right. Right. So then I spend time talking to them about have you ever done something and realized that you're either creating, promoting or allowing that situation to happen and then they go, oh yeah. I said, is it possible that that might be true here? And when they stop and really start looking at themselves. You know, if the problem is, if you go try to go directly into the unconscious, you'll go to understand why it's called that, because you'll go unconscious, you know, you'll fall asleep. However, that's where contemplation comes in. When you really hold that and just say, okay, what is this? What is it really here? So whether there's a thought or emotion or imagination, you just hold with it and say, what is here? And then whatever it is reveals itself to you. Now, for a lot of executives, that sounds like gobbledy-gook, but when I work within the practice and oh my God, I've been doing this since I was six years old.
So yeah, it's probably imprinted in you by your parents or your friends or your friends’ parents or whatever religious institutions are involved in whatever school systems were involved in. I mean, I've been at it for a long time, but I still uncover stuff. I go, oh, Christ, you know, that's where that came from. You know, so it's classic never ending story. And that's the thing about wisdom. There is no end to it. It's just a very, very deep pool. And I would say the same thing about bringing your spirit fully born in a business environment. It's never ending. It's a very cool. There's more and more you can learn about yourself. And then if we do learn interpersonal skills, what we call outer wisdom, you learn more and more and more about people, and you realize they have a very different view of the world than perhaps you do. And that's why listening is so important, because you want to understand that view they have of the world, because otherwise you're not going to do be effective communicating with them.
So that's the second piece of it is like, that's why our company is called People Savvy, because that was where, where we started. And then I started bringing in what I've been learning over the last 45, 50 years, more and more, into what I do.
Andrew Cohn: Yeah, there is a lot there. You know what? Before I lose this, this thread, something you mentioned about prayer, contemplate–meditation and contemplation. So prayer, I think we all have a pretty clear sense of what that is. That's between me and something higher. Something divine. Something like that. Could you just briefly talk about your definition–the distinction between contemplation and meditation and how you talk about those two, please.
Greg Stebbins:Meditation is a way I do it is a very active form. Some of it is total meditation. Some of it is, what's referred to as a yantra or visual meditation. But it's a very active part of you. Contemplation is much more reserved, and it's focused on, let's see what this reveals to me.
Andrew Cohn: So it's reflective that way, it sounds, okay.
Greg Stebbins: And, prayer from my perspective is a 1 to 1 conversation. You know what I refer to is a divine source or divine presence. Some people like to call it the source. Some people refer to it as God. I mean, you know, it just all depends on the culture of the person I was raised in, what they're comfortable referring to or not. And, that's the thing about our leadership identity comes from our beliefs, our values and our attitudes. Those things shape our leadership behavior. Most leaders are not familiar with all the elements of those three things– beliefs, values, and attitudes.
Andrew Cohn: For themselves, you mean.
Greg Stebbins: Right, for themselves. Right. So beliefs requires going back to when all that was imprinted in you and values –some people have really taken the time to understand what they value and what they don't value. The challenge is how you define values give you an example. I was working with this one business person, that had been approached by another business person in town, about combining their businesses, and I said, well, it’d be good to ask him what his values are.
So now you sit in a hierarchy. You're more willing to sacrifice lower level values to keep low upper level values intact.
Andrew Cohn: I've heard it called some values are subjugated to others.
Greg Stebbins: Yes. Same thing. So as he worked with this guy and he got to the top two, his personal values were integrity then making money. Guy he was working with had them reversed. Making money and then integrity. And I said, here's what's going to happen. And he was going to show up. It's going to because you to go, no way would I ever do that. And he's go, what are you, nuts? Look how much money we're going to make. And that's where the relationship will fall apart. He entered into the relationship and they combined businesses and it was going great. And then a deal showed up where they just had to shade the truth a little bit, and he was aghast. And his partner was like, what's wrong with you? What Look at the money we're going to make? And they split, went different ways.
So knowing what your values are is critical because it's going to shape the kind of organizations you're leading. How do people relate to that organization? From the values, purpose is going to flow and if you’re unclear about the values the purpose is going to be unclear. So people are not going to know where to hook their wagon to.
Andrew Cohn: Which makes followership very difficult.
Greg Stebbins: Yeah, difficult would be a nice way of phrasing it.
Andrew Cohn: Difficult at best.
Greg Stebbins: Yeah Probably impossible. But the problem is, if you're wrapped up in your ego of what's going to go on, you won't see it. And so a lot of spirituality and wisdom is realizing what's ego driven and what's self driven and I’m speaking Self with a capital “S,” not small self.
Andrew Cohn: Okay. And define what that means for you please.
Greg Stebbins: Capital S is your authentic self. Some people call it your soul. Some people call your Atman. Whatever language, whatever religion you were brought up in. It's your presence, but more divine presence than just showing up. I mean, you go out on the internet today, you can find workshop after workshop, about how to fake presence until you make it problem is, you can't fake real presence.
Person walks in a room and everybody goes uh, wow, this guy really knows what he's doing. And you haven't even said a word yet, because who you are broadcasts out and is received by all the people who are open to receiving it. And so when you’re walking in with your divine presence and your courage and compassion, empathy and loving, people go, I don't care what we're doing here, I just want to be part of it.
Andrew Cohn: Yeah. I appreciate the way you're saying that because I for me, that can often be, and, you know, when you were talking about self, that's the way I would describe that sort of core dimension, what I might call universal dimensions of human beings, universe all around the world. We all share that. But it's below that physical, emotional, mental levels. And it's what's that core level. But I appreciate your saying that it's it's recognizable, but it's not necessarily the same as charismatic leadership, because somebody could walk in with a great sense of empathy and compassion and loving and presence and it's not, hey, follow me. It's pure like I can hold space for this group. It's not necessarily I'm particularly interested in leading you all up the mountain.
Greg Stebbins: Yeah, exactly. And, a lot of people have been led up the mountain, and when things get tough, the leader disappears.
Andrew Cohn: Right.
Greg Stebbins: And then you're up the mountain going, what the hell do we do now?
Andrew Cohn: Right. Well, to your point, and that earlier point about the difficulties of followership, if if someone's not congruent or clear, and again, as you said earlier, I think that the workplace now is so much more interested is really demanding, you know, I need to know that you can hold space for me. That's what I hear and see from my clients. And I'm very fortunate because I coach senior level leaders. I also coach MBA students and my MBA students, like I hear from them who they're looking for, and they have choices. I mean, coming out of, coming out of Wharton, for example, the people I work with, they have choices, and they can smell bullshit a mile away.
And it's not they could be smarter than their person they're going to go work for. They're okay with that. But they could still learn from them and they can still follow them.
Greg Stebbins: You know, there's an interesting merger happening between emerging leaders and experienced leaders. We've learned from each other. It's almost like the emerging leaders come in hard wired for all this stuff. It's like a generation X and the millennials came in hard wired to operate computers. They just knew how to do it.
Andrew Cohn: Right.
Greg Stebbins: You know or and the early generation X when somebody says, you know, my VCR still goes 12 12 12.
Andrew Cohn: Right.
Greg Stebbins: Right. We have a nine year old in the house. Ask him.
Andrew Cohn: Right.
Greg Stebbins: Right.
Andrew Cohn: You know, it's like. But of course. And now it's like, what's a VCR, right?
Greg Stebbins: Yeah, exactly.
Andrew Cohn: They have to be careful. Well, and perhaps they're so conversant and fluid with it because they weren't raised to be or they didn't learn to be afraid of it.
That's what I find. It's like, you know, younger generation just isn't afraid of erasing everything.
Greg Stebbins: And this generation is not afraid of crossing the line the other generations had as a wall. They want the kind of stuff that you're talking about that I’ve worked with the senior executives on, and with a lot of emerging leaders as well, because they're hungry for this kind of thing. So having a voice. And the trick is you gotta listen to yourself. You gotta be very, very much in touch with yourself. And I'm talking about the big S, and you got to know when you're coming from an ego. The thing is, a lot of people have had a word of things. You have no ego, but if you had no ego, you'd sit and lay in bed all day in a fetal position. You never get anything done. So having ego is not a negative thing. Parading the ego as a form of dominance, like in command and control cultures, that is devastating to people.That's what I came from.
Andrew Cohn: If I could ask you a personal question, and I just. I'm not sure why this is coming up for me, but I want to follow it. But when you say command and control, command military is about as command and control as you can get and that's from whence you came. So I wonder, like, did you ever circle back with Swami Mommy and your dad about what you do and what's important to you and what your priorities are, and how did they respond to that. If you did.
Greg Stebbins: Well with my mom, yeah. My mom's passed. My dad passed in 1990. His comment to me was, I don't buy what you're into, but I say that with no rancor. I said, okay, but what you asked asked the question about–West Point teaches classes on transformational leadership. They don’t teach classes on transcendent leadership yet, and yeah, that's a big jump. And there are a lot of people who consider West Point to be the preeminent leadership school in the United States.It's certainly in the top five.
Andrew Cohn: Well, and one of my other podcast guests has a very strong Christian faith and who comes from a military background. And she was a psychologist in the army in various locations around the US and in Germany, she said that the Army has a very long history of of theism. There have been chaplains in foxholes for a very long time. They're not shy about talking about religion. I'm in no position to evaluate how well they do or they don't, but they're not shy about talking about it. It's a, it can be a welcome and helpful conversation.
Greg Stebbins: Yeah. But it goes it goes beyond that. Andrew. because it really talks about the person getting in touch with themselves. And that's what military academies, all of them, in fact, have had as a subtext. But now it's more open, more direct from my experience in just reading the curriculum. One of the advantages of my having my father was a West Point grad is my wife and I went back to their their, reunions every year, every year. And so I got a chance to talk with a lot of the guys that graduated in ‘45. Not everybody made it out because some of them went to Europe and some of them went to Japan. So there's a lot of people. In fact, the guy who wrote the book about the Vietnam experience We were Soldiers, there's a Mel Brooks movie made, and, was a dear friend of, my father. They both passed, of course, but I remember driving up to his house when we lived in Denver and he was in Kansas, and we’d hang out with the family. So, you know, that was the kind of experiences that I had. You know, when you grow up in that environment and you're in a movie theater, a civilian movie theater, and you stand up for the first time waiting for the Pledge of Allegiance to come on, and then you look around and no one else is standing up–there's things you gotta adjust to.
Andrew Cohn: Well, and I appreciate, I just, I just feel like I want to just, you know, give a shout out and honor your dad for being open minded as he was, notwithstanding his strong indoctrination.I don't mean indoctrination as a judgment, I mean indoctrination as indoctrination. That's what he grew up with. He could acknowledge what you were doing and say, okay, I'm not buying it, but I can respect it, is what I'm hearing.
Greg Stebbins: Well, he was a very unusual man with some more background on that. When I was 19, I filed for conscientious objector. That was the height of the Vietnam War. Meanwhile, my dad was flying munitions over to Vietnam and bodies back. It was a whole lot for him. My sister told me there were some very loud conversations that came from my parents bedroom. Of course, I was at college and I didn't know anything about that. And he talked to me one time about global military theory and then never said another thing about it. He actually was more upset with my brother, who was 4F, because he had asthma as a kid, and he thought my brother used as a copout, but because I made a conscious decision to not do that, he respected it.
Andrew Cohn: Right? He respect, he respected that challenging position that you took. Yeah.
Greg Stebbins: But still, you know, I said, I'm going to go stay with my guru. I really was rolling the hand grenade across the floor.
Andrew Cohn: Yeah. More loud conversations, right, coming from the bedroom. Yeah. Yeah. Nice.
Greg Stebbins: So I guess the important thing here is, what are you doing? Or what is the leader doing to understand more about the core pieces of himself, which is really where we get into in terms of spirituality or wisdom depending on what word you want to use. And that is looking at all your experiences and say what did I learn from that. What did I learn from that. What did I learn from that. And you'll find out that there's a lot that you learned and there's more that you could learn. But going through the process requires self-inquiry. Just asking yourself about the experiences. Unfortunately, a lot of leaders don't do self-inquiry. They do self inquisition. Yes, and it's like, yeah, I shouldn't have done that. And then the next step is self-reflection. And that's really where you start to go very, very deep into it and then go into really understanding the core thing to understand what your intuitive insights are and the intuitive insights are when you really begin to contemplate what the reality of that is, what caused me to have that experience? Sometimes you'll never get to the root of that, but if you begin to chip away at it and just hold it and let it reveal itself to you, it becomes more and more evident. And then you'll eventually have what I refer to as a wisdom moment. Sometimes that's referred to as the a-ha moment. So you go, oh my God. And you start bunching all of those a-ha moments together. That's really the precursor that takes you into transcendent leadership. So transcendent leadership as a methodology is bound by wisdom development and front end and continued wisdom development on the rear because wisdom development has no end.
Andrew Cohn: Which in turn relies upon taking the time and taking the energy to do that sort of active reflection, which in my experience is one of the biggest battles for leaders. You know, it's taking the time. I am not sure what my values are. Let me take an assessment, you know, 15 minutes online and it'll tell me what my values are. And I can do that. And I've done that with leaders. But of course, that's the beginning of the conversation, not the end of the conversation, because we don't need more, you know, mouse pads flying with values statements flying over people's heads like frisbees. We need conversations about them. And I think from what you're sharing, which is my experience as well, is that especially in an increasingly younger workforce, there's an appetite for this, if not an expectation that we need to be out with our values.
Greg Stebbins: There's another piece that you have to be very careful with, and that's the whole 360 degree surveys, because the comments a person makes about another person is a perception or is a projection. And you know, until you have like you say you have a conversation with a person. The problem is typically in a lot of organizations, you don't poke your head up above the horizon. So I give you an example. I was doing a program in South Africa where you had 360 instruments that were using. And usually if you scored high in one part of the instrument, you score low on the other part of the instrument because they're mutually exclusive. So a couple of people who were co facilitating they came to me and said, how come it's perfect fives all the way around. I said oh that's easy. The person said I want you to fill those out and just give me all fives. And you have a job that's allowing you to eat, much less live. What are you going to do? So we had a number of leaders in there that had perfect fives all the way around. Is it profitable probable? No. Is it possible? Yeah. Maybe. Impossible. Probably not possible.
Andrew Cohn: Right. Yeah.
Greg Stebbins: When I, when I worked for the leader through wisdom development and I don't do a 360 assessment. And so have you ever gone in 360 assessment where you knew who did it because that's what they do? And I said, yeah. I said, yes. You know, how much that assessment is projection? And that's, that's the hard part. You got to wade through all the projection. I worked with a guy a long time ago that that was his modus operandi. I did no wrong. I projected what I did onto you. And fortunately, I was big enough just to handle it because he could not handle it, so he had to project on somebody else. So. Wife and family.
Andrew Cohn: Yeah. Well and I consider myself fortunate because for a lot of my clients I do qualitative 360s. And I talk to a lot of people and a lot of stakeholders and I can say that I can always detect when people are hiding or concealing or framing. But I'd like to think that I often can, and it's you could just get better information that way, and especially feedback in people's own language, not necessarily in the language of the assessment, which I think is helpful. But. Yes, absolutely. Well, I mean, we talk about the value of feedback, but if the feedback isn't good, it ain't much value. So we get useful feedback.
Greg Stebbins: Well, Andrew, I'd say based on what I know about you, you probably pick up the bullshit about 99% of the time. It's just 1% that is, you know, I don't know, maybe it is, maybe it isn't. But let's explore this for a second. What do you mean? And then read your conversation with the person.
Andrew Cohn: Exactly.
Greg Stebbins: Yeah. And they uncover themselves when you're in conversation.
Andrew Cohn: Yeah. And as I like to say it's it should, these conversations these I just had one this morning with a, with a CEO of a mid-sized business and speaking with somebody on this staff. And as I like to say about this, this should not, what we're talking about here should not be confidential. Anonymous, perhaps, but not confidential. So what do you really want this person to know that will make everybody's life easier. And we start framing things that way. In any case, I digress a little bit from our, from our thesis.
Greg Stebbins: I actually, no, you're you're right on target with your comments because, as a person becomes more self-aware, which is a critical part of spiritual development in leadership. You got to know who you are and where you're coming from, and realize also that not everybody is coming from the same place. So here's an example of that. I was working with an executive team, and the CEO wanted to change the direction of the company. Everybody in the company between marketing, VP, sales, Human resources. Wrong alignment. The CFO was not in alignment. He thought it was ridiculous. So I had a private conversation with the CEO, And I said, you know, if you don't get him into alignment, you're going to need to make a change. He goes, Greg, I can't, this guy's a lifelong friend. I said, oh, he may be a lifelong friend, but he's going to destroy the company. So what we worked out was the CEO, took it upon himself to help find this guy a new job where he’s in alignment with purpose in the organization. Today, they're still friends. He got a CFO that was in alignment of where they want to go, and the company has taken off. So that would be another piece to bring your spirituality to work. Making sure everybody's in alignment. And that's having a clear purpose with the company is and where they're going.
Andrew Cohn: Well, it's being very clear about that. And also what I'm hearing is, correct me if I'm wrong, but also respectful of other people's values and purpose to see if they are aligned. It's a choice. It's a, he didn't throw a rope around all these people and say, we're coming. He, you were all aware enough about whether somebody was aligned and on board or not and respected that. That doesn't mean that they everybody gets their way necessarily. There is a leader, there is an organization moving in a certain direction, but there's a respect for where somebody is–not shaming them for not being on board with a shift.
Greg Stebbins: Yeah. If a person's not in alignment, it just means they have a different agenda than they need to go fulfill. It's not necessarily I have no, I don't like your agenda and your beat is just I have a different agenda. So help me find a place where I can put the agenda into effect. And he did that. And he kept his company.
Andrew Cohn: Nice and beautiful and cared for his company and cared for the friendship.
Greg Stebbins: Yeah. And what was more important, him doing that, the other members of the executive team were not in the dark about it. They saw That. They saw what the leader was doing, and they said, Yeah, I can follow this guy. I feel like I'm part of a team. You know, so that's a significant purpose for those people because, you know, the, the battles that go on for people who want the CEO role, and end up silencing siloing your organization so they get the glory–you know, that just destroys organizations.
Andrew Cohn: Well, you talk about different people's agendas. And I appreciate your agenda and your voice in this space. I would refer people to many of your articles on Forbes. Is it Forbes.com? Is that the way to go? They could search by your name or Transcendent Leadership or Transformational Leadership, but certainly in a Greg Stebbins on the Forbes website, they'll see some of your writings there. And if people want to contact you or want to learn more about your work, what's the best way to do that?
Greg Stebbins: Call me.
Andrew Cohn: Just call you. All right.
Greg Stebbins: Call, Yeah. You want the phone number?
Andrew Cohn: You tell me. You could do a phone number. You could do a website. You could do a LinkedIn. You tell me, how would you like people to know?
Greg Stebbins: [310] 433-5020. I like the conversations. I do a lot of stuff online. I do a lot of online coaching and stuff. But, I need to have that personal contact before we begin.
Andrew Cohn: Perfect. Sounds very aligned. And that's, that says something about your values as well.
Greg Stebbins: Yeah.
Andrew Cohn: Beautiful. Well, thank you so much for the time.
Greg Stebbins: Thank you, Andrew.
Andrew Cohn: And sharing your experience. I didn't realize there were skyscrapers like that in Green Bay, but apparently there are behind you.
Greg Stebbins: That's the only false thing on this video is the background and they're not skyscrapers in Green Bay like this.
Andrew Cohn: Fair enough. Great.
Greg Stebbins: Maybe the one off to the side here is, but not the big one behind me.
Andrew Cohn: Right. Great. Thank you so much. Appreciate sharing your wisdom and experience. And I'm sure I look forward to continuing the conversation with you in some form or another.
Greg Stebbins: Great. Thanks a lot. Take care.
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