Ep. 111: Erwin McManus on Why It Doesn't Take a Genius to Think Like One

Speaker A: Welcome to the Trusted Leaders Show. I'm your host, David Horsager. Join me as I sit down with influential leaders from around the world to discuss why leaders and organizations fail, top tactics for high performance, and how you can become an even more trusted leader. Welcome to the Trusted Leader Show. It's David Horszager and I'm super thrilled to have, uh, our guest on today. I heard him speak probably 30 years ago for the first time. He's written several books since then. He is, uh, you know, he's consultant to folks in the NFL and uh, the Pentagon, and he's a leadership coach and he's written a load of award winning books. He's also pastor of a, uh, movement, Mosaic, uh, in la, where I'm talking to him from today. But, uh, please welcome Erwin McManus. Thanks for being here, bud.

Speaker B: David, it's so good to be with you. I spent so much time in Minnesota over the years and it's amazing what you guys are doing. I didn't realize the breadth of your impact. It's pretty extraordinary.

Speaker A: Well, thank you. Uh, we're just, uh, grateful to be a part of this. So, um, I'm going to get into your new book and everything, um, a little bit. But before we do, you know, some people, a lot of people know about you. You've spoken all over the world. Um, we've been on, uh, some similar stages. But, uh, tell us, give us the three top things that maybe people that don't know Ern would ban us. What about you?

Speaker B: Wow. My life is, uh, so private and so public. I don't know what people don't know about me. Um, uh, but I guess if people don't know much about me, I'm actually an immigrant from El Salvador. Spanish, uh, was my first language and my name's an alias. And so those might be three things that are a little bit different than a lot of people.

Speaker A: That's. There you go. That's fun. What do you love? Like, what's a. I don't get into it too long, but what do you love to do when you're not writing books, leading people and coaching and running, you know, your family and life? What do you love to do?

Speaker B: Anything competitive. Um, I, I love playing basketball and I love playing chess.

Speaker A: Oh, good.

Speaker B: Yeah, so I learned how to play chess when I was three years old. And so it's been a part of my life, all of my life. And so that's one thing I love to do. And I love to play basketball, paddle tennis by the pickleball uh, any, any, any sport where there's a winner and a loser.

Speaker A: There you go. I love those two. Everything you named, I love it. Um, well, let, let's, let's get into this a little bit. I'm going to go to the book and then we'll go. Go backwards. I'm just a curious guy. I want to keep learning, um, before I do, you know, I, I think this is a thing a lot. We talk about so much about authenticity and trust, and there's so many people that look like this, but they look trusted, but they're not. And we're, you know, all these kind of things. What about who are, you know, you're leading so many others. Who do you go to? Who do you get led by? Who do you get pouring into you? Who do you get mentored by?

Speaker B: Well, David, one thing is, uh, I'm 65 years old, and so I've been around a long time. And as you go through different phases in your life, you, you want to access different, uh, aspects of learning. And so I think when you're in your 20s, you want to make sure you're accessing people who have a lot more experience and have, uh, a huge texture of their life journey. When you're older, you want to make sure you're accessing people who maybe have a pulse on the emerging cultures that you may not be as aware of. And so the people that really are most influential in my life are my son Aaron, who's 35, my daughter Mariah, who's 31. They're both extraordinary leaders and really wonderful people, and they both work really closely with me in different arenas, uh, of life. And they're probably the two most influential people in my life in the way that I process information, what I pay attention to, um, what I'm looking at, where I'm focusing my time and energy.

Speaker A: Love it. Um, let's jump right in on the book. You got the new book coming out, Mind Shift. You've had some other amazing books and just, uh, uh, you know, we have Mutual Friend and John Gordon and many others. But, um, Tell me, give us the, the overall. In fact, I was taken by something as I was reading this whole idea that, um. Where is it? Oh, yeah. Near life. Many of us have near life experiences. What do you mean?

Speaker B: Yeah, uh, you know, when I was opening up the beginning of the book, in my books, I almost always have a chapter 0, and chapter 0 is the chapter where I'm invited you to see reality from a different perspective. And one of the things I looked at in chapter zero was how oftentimes, um, our internal mental structures limit the life that we live, that we experience, that we know. And we don't even realize that we're the self limiting barriers that are keeping us from the life we long for. We think it's other people, it's other institutions, it's the circumstances, it's the world around us, it's what our parents didn't do or what they did do. And so oftentimes when we're trapped and we're just existing, we tend to think that the prison that we're living inside of was created by someone else. When we actually live fully, when we're fully alive, when we're having near life experiences, we actually take responsibility for our lives and realize that the ceiling is us.

Speaker A: Mhm. Absolutely. Interesting. So once again, mind shift. It doesn't take a genius to think like one. And I think there's a lot more to it. But basically you jump into these 12 frameworks and they're intriguing and I want us to jump into a couple of them. You know, we're going to, we want to get people to go get the book. Uh, that's really not the goal. We just care about truth getting out there. But there's a lot in here we're not going to cover today. So let's just scratch uh, the surface and uh, everybody go get mind shift. It doesn't take a genius to think like one. Um, but a couple, I'm gonna pull out a couple here and then you can jump into other ones you want. There's a lot of overlap with our trust work, things like gratitude that you talk about and other things. But you have to choose between acceptance and uniqueness. Tell me more.

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. When uh, I look at my own life journey and by the way, one of the questions that drove me to write this book is that I would constantly get asked this question. What would you say to your 25 year old self? That just seemed to be everyone's favorite question. What would you say to your 25 year old self? And when I wrote this book, I was writing, having a conversation with myself at 25, going, if I just understood this, it would have changed my life faster. It would accelerated uh, my journey into the future that I imagined and longed for. It would accelerated my own journey to becoming the person I wanted to become. And one of the things I noticed very early on is that um, you have to decide to stop living a life of obligation and to live a life of intention. And that when as Long as you're living a life of obligation, you're being shaped. Your identity, your values, uh, your direction is being shaped by the opinion of others. And then you're being dominated by external factors. But when you begin to live a life of intention, now you're making decisions based on values and, and principles and your own internal compass, which is really, really significant. And so when I'm writing that section and I'm really talking about how you need to begin to understand that at some point in your life, you got to stop living for the opinion and validation and applause of others and begin to live your life for your own deep sense of intention and calling.

Speaker A: What do you do? Uh, you know, we're in businesses. You and I both have been on a lot of our lives, and a lot of what we do is on a stage or on a stage at least, and in front of people. And, and, uh, you know, it's like we want to please them. And yet you and I both seen people in our industry fail and fall because they've. It's, in fact, I, we. At least I've seen. I want to speak before you, but people in our space even use the audience as therapy, and I call that abusing the audience. But, um, but what do you do? You know, there is this thing of pleasing them, serving them. And frankly, it's not so bad to be obligated to something like that's a, that's a service heart. That's a serving others heart. Right. Not just my intention. Kumbaya. Uh, but this, this, this view of like, you know, I'm obligated to something bigger than myself. So let's get a little differentiation there.

Speaker B: Yeah, I honestly, I hate the word obligation. It's just, it's not something that.

Speaker A: But you were obligated to use it.

Speaker B: Yeah, I, I just think whenever a person is living out of obligation, it's a much lower level of intention. And, and, um, like, I'm not obligated to, to be married. I've been married for 40 years. But I have a commitment and an intention, but not an obligation. My wife is not an obligation to me. She's a responsibility, she's an intention, she's a commitment. And it's a very, very different thing because obligation in some sense implies there's no love involved. Obligation means it's something you're forced to do, not something you choose to do. And I think whenever a person uses a language where they're not choosing, um, they're actually becoming powerless and living within a victimized Narrative. And I just want to destroy that in people's lives.

Speaker A: I love that. And all this sounds great, right? But how do we actually do it? And I watched you in a coaching session with the USFL talking through some of this, uh, with those athletes. But how do you actually do this? Like, okay, it's great. Be more grateful. Okay, it's great. Do this thing. Like, how do I actually live more intentional, let's say, how do I do it? What do I take? And how do I make the move?

Speaker B: Usually, um, it begins with making commitments to yourself and then keeping them. And you have to just start in some small space. I'm 65, and, um, physical health isn't something that happens accidentally. You can't be 65 and still run and lift weights and, um, live a physically active life without discipline, without, um, commitments. And let me tell you, everything in life tries to steal all my time to get into the gym. Everything in life tries to steal my time from getting, um, physical exercise. And it's amazing how gravity pulls pizza in my direction. It's like there's like a force. Force that brings donuts and carbs into my life. And I have to actually choose to push those aside at least some and eat healthy foods. And one of the things I've noticed about us as humans, and this is where I feel like we're factory defects, is that, um, bad choices are easy and good choices are hard. And it's true across every domain in life. Having bad character is easy. Having good character is hard. Being a bad employee is actually incredibly easy. You don't have to practice. Being a great employee takes incredible discipline, and it's incredibly hard. And by the way, being a good husband, it's really, really hard. Being a bad husband is so easy. It's like a gift.

Speaker A: Ye.

Speaker B: Yeah. And so I think you have to resolve that, uh, the worst expression of yourself has a gravitational pull, that when you choose nothing, you become that you will never accidentally become the best version of yourself. So when you ask me, how do I start, how do I get all that? You start with action. Your brain. I, um, would say, like, your brain knows when you're lying to other people, and it also knows when you're lying to you. And when you get up and you make a resolution, you know, I'm going to change my life. I'm going to start walking whatever, 10,000 steps every day, or I'm going to, you know, stop eating carbs or whatever it is. I'm going to stop having negative thoughts or I'm going To stop using profanity or whatever it may be. Your brain knows you're lying to you.

Speaker A: Uh-huh.

Speaker B: The only language your brain listens to is action. And when you act differently than you have before now, your brain begins to believe you, um, that you're resolved to take on a new pattern for life.

Speaker A: I love that. The only language your brain listens to is action. The contribution pillar in our trust framework. You know, you said something else. We talk about this all the time. We have a framework for how trust is rebuilt. But the end, uh, the last of the 10 things, the most important thing, and really the only way to rebuild trust. People often ask is, how do you rebuild trust? Whether you're a big company with an oil spill or you're an individual that lost trust. Right. How do you rebuild trust? Well, one thing we say is, it's not the apology. It doesn't mean you shouldn't apologize to open the door. But you never rebuild a trust in the apology. You only rebuild trust when you make and keep a new commitment, which is exactly what you said. And that's what trusting yourself. You hear the idea. Love your neighbors yourself. Find someone who doesn't love themselves at all. You find someone who doesn't love, you know very well. And it's the same with, same with trust. Uh, if you don't make commitments to yourself, you don't trust yourself. Well, and then you poison the team. So, um, very interesting. So, you know, you said some things, and I don't. I can't remember which, um, which framework it's under, but you, you kind of touched on it right now, but you said some things, uh, before in talking to those athletes, and in some of what I've read about the little things, we. We have a sign up in our office 20ft from me. It's the little things done. Cons make the biggest difference. But you said something about discipline. It was like being faithful in the little things. What was the framework that. That comes under? Um, uh, it's all about people or one of your. One of the frameworks in the book, but it was, it was just a lot about the little things. Or discipline matters more than ever. Was that under a certain framework, um,

Speaker B: I can't remember what chapter that was in, but it's actually a part of a larger framework called the character matrix, where I talk about how virtues are actually developed. Because one of the challenges sometimes that we'll tell people you need to have courage, but we have no way of giving them a process to become courageous. And so in That I take people through a process where I help them see that courage actually is an extension of integrity. And that courage is not the absence of fear, but the absence of self. But then you go, okay, how do I build integrity? And no one ever tells you how to build integrity. And they just tell you to have integrity. And a part of what this process shows them, that humility actually builds integrity, and integrity builds courage. And in the same way, when you're looking at faithfulness, which you're talking about the details, that process is actually moving us toward wisdom. How do you gain wisdom? Well, wisdom comes from perseverance, and perseverance actually comes from faithfulness. And so when you're faithful in the small things, when you take on the basic disciplines of life, you actually begin to develop a resilience that allows you to persevere hard times. And it's when you persevere the crisis and the challenge and the conflict and the pain of life, that's actually when you develop wisdom. You can have a lot of experiences and still be a fool and never actually gained wisdom. And wisdom doesn't come because you've gone through a lot. Wisdom comes because you've learned through the lot you've gone through.

Speaker A: Yeah, very good. What do you think? Let's, uh, move to another one. You say this in the book. Talent is a hallucinate. Hallucinogen. Let's see. Hallucinogen.

Speaker B: Oh, yeah, hallucinogen. Yeah. It's really, to me, this is so important because I work with a lot of top tier people and they're the best in the world at what they do. And one of the things you find is that when people have extraordinary talent at a young age, external structures are built around their life to make sure they succeed, because people want to extract all the talent out of them. But the moment those structures are gone, they collapse. That's why about 75% of pro football players are drug addicted, divorced, dead or bankrupt within five years after they leave the NFL. It's because they were, uh, prodigies. They were talents as young children, talents throughout middle school, high school, and college. So external structures were built around them that pulled out the success, optimized that success, and they thought they had the internal structures for success, but they did not. And the moment those scaffolds are removed, their lives collapse. Talent is a hallucinogen because it convinces you that talent is what makes the difference between being great, uh, and being extraordinary and achieving a level of greatness that's historic and that it will sustain Success only character gives you the infrastructure for sustained success. Talent actually gives you the environment where you do not need to build the internal structures for success. Talent may be the most dangerous thing a person ever has because they don't have to go through the time and pain and struggle and suffering of building the internal structures for success. Wow.

Speaker A: Uh, yeah, so true. I've seen that. You've seen it too. I was uh, you know, uh, Tim Keller passed away not too long ago. But the, the. We were talking about some, a pastor that had had a, um, massive audience that had fallen and he was in his 20s or 27 or something like that. He was asked to speak at pastors conferences and here he is, 27. He hadn't built the character to deal with this. Whereas Keller said it was little by little, you know, for him it built over 30, 40, 50 years where his, his uh, speaking, his audience grew and he had to build character with it, um, in full humility. He talked about that, his humility. But many people in any realm, they get a stage too early. They didn't build the character, have the infrastructure. We see this all the time, whether it's in speaking or sports or uh, coaching or whatnot. Is there a story you've coached some amazing folks and leaders. Is there a story you can tell of like this is someone, this. They started here and they actually made a mindset shift here. And here's what happened. Something about that process, noticing it, helping it, coaching it.

Speaker B: I coach, um, a business guy named Edwin. And Edwin Noriave is like a really extraordinary person. His family is Colombian. His parents were a part of the Colombian drug cartel. His parents, um, were both arrested I think by the FBI. Um, and later his dad was imprisoned as um, a drug runner, a drug lord. Um, and then he went from having a family that was in the cartel and the next thing he's in abject poverty and living in South LA. And so he has to find a job at 14 and can't uh, get hired anywhere and finally gets a job and within 10 years buys the company that he didn't get hired for at first. And when I met him he was wild, you know, you know, Lamborghinis, the whole, you know, the jet setting the cars. He was married, but you know, he's married to a celebrity. And then he was having affairs everywhere. And you know, he was known for partying, he was known for drinking and for um, he would travel as a rock musician for several years and just every. He was trying to live the idyllic life of the, um, bachelor guy, even when he was married and had a life changing transformation, um, through an encounter with Jesus. And, you know, I've had the great, uh, privilege of mentoring him. And I started working in his company and helping him, um, elevate his company into the hundreds of millions. And one, his top salesman, who just this year made $5.2 million, that's a sales guy, uh, asked to zoom with me. And we zoom. And he says, you know, I've been on private planes. Cause he's already. This kid's already a millionaire, and he's 34. And he said, you know, I was flying around on the private plane with my friends, and we're all partying. And I realized all I know about them is that they're partying. And I realized all they knew about me is that I'm partying. So he zooms with me and he says, hey, I want to become not like Edwin was. I want to become like Edwin is. And then he named another business guy named Ed Milette. And he goes, I want to become like Ed Mylett. And you and Edwin, how do I do that? And it was this great Zoom conversation where we actually said, hey, this is no longer a business call, you know? And, um, because what Edwin and Ed and I have in common is a life changing relationship with Jesus. And so I went through and just walked him through that. And in that Zoom call, he actually makes, uh, a decision to become a follower of Christ. And the reason I tell you this story is because when you ask me what mind shift did I see in a person, I didn't just see a mind shift. I saw a life shift in Edwin. And he's running this massive company. He's aspirational. All the sales force in his company, whatever the thousand of them, they all want to become him. And when he was, like, drinking and womanizing and partying and, you know, living the nightlife, they all wanted to be like him. And then when, um, when he had this radical shift, and now he's the most generous guy in the world, and when he talks about making hundreds of millions of dollars, he doesn't talk about buying cars anymore or buying airplanes or buying yachts. He still likes them and occasionally still buys them. But is that what he's aspiring people toward? He talks about getting to be generous, about serving, um, you know, Mosaic and about, uh, investing money to build a school, like, in Africa. And his entire mind shift has transformed the organizational culture of the whole company. And that, for me, is the epitome of what I love to do, uh, to watch, um, the culture changed, not just so the company can make a great deal more money, which I love helping companies do that because I want good people to have millions because they're going to use it well, and billions. But I also want to create a culture where the aspirational, um, epicenter is the person we're becoming, not the toys we're buying.

Speaker A: Yeah, I love that. Well, tell me one more thing. Tell this audience one more thing. You want everybody to know from the book, what's one more idea or, uh, one part you're most passionate about?

Speaker B: First of all, I really love this book. I know it sounds crazy, but I've had a chance to write about 12 books in my life and this is the first social psychology book. And it's in the business section, it's in the personal development section of the bookstores. And, and I wrote it very specifically to help destroy internal limitations. And there are certain chapters that I think are really pivotal, but they'll be pivotal for different people. Like chapter three says, you can't take everyone with you. And I think this is a really significant chapter for a lot of people who are so genuinely good hearted and they don't want to leave anyone behind. And every time their friends, um, speak negatively into their life when they try to change, they go back to their previous form. Someone asked me this past week, is it lonely at the top? And, um, I said, you know, I do think I'm at the top of my game and in a lot of places I get to be the top in my field. But it's not lonely at the top. I actually have more friends now than I've ever had my entire life. Where it's lonely is in the transitions, because, uh, when you're one way in your life and you have friends who like you that way, and then you decide to add more discipline to your life, you decide to become more ambitious, you decide to sacrifice more so you can accomplish more. Your friends will not cheer you on, they will not celebrate you changing. In fact, they're going to say to you, you've changed. But what they're really upset about is that you've grown. Because when you grow, it becomes an indictment that they're not growing. And when you elevate, you will lose that friendship circle, but you will not gain a new one because you haven't earned the respect of that new circle and you've lost the trust of the last circle. So now you're alone. And I think that's where a lot of people Give up. Because the loneliness of those dynamic transitions become more than they can bear.

Speaker A: Yep.

Speaker B: And. And one of the things you want to find are the people in your life who celebrate the best version of you. They don't celebrate who you are, they celebrate who you're becoming. And I think that's really, really important. And throughout my life, my wife and I, we've been here in LA for 30 something years. And we always had this ideal, you know, sense that we would do life forever with people, they would do life with us forever. We would invest in them and they'd stay. It just was never real. And it didn't mean that the relationships weren't real. You have to realize that a lot of people come through your life and they're seasonal and they're not being disloyal when they leave. It's just time for them to do something new or fresh or different in their life. And I have literally had friends who I sat down with and I said, hey, we were so close last year. Like, what happened? Cause you guys sort of drifted from us, and you're still in the community. We see you have great friendships, and we just want to know if we did something. And I remember, uh, it was one couple. One went to Harvard and the other went to Duke, two of the most prestigious schools in the world. And they said, we really love you guys, but whenever we were close to you, we felt so much weight to become more, to accomplish more, to do more with our life. And we said, we never told you that you should do more. Or they said, no, just by virtue of the way you live your life would make us leave with the sense we need to do more. And I said, I have never felt more comfortable with you choosing other friends. And because they chose friends who had less ambition, who had less drive. Look, I have massive drive. I get up in the morning wanting to change the world. Um, I've taken psychological assessments on energy, and I have almost a maximum amount of measurable human energy. I've always been like this. I used to live on basically four hours of sleep a night. Not because I had to. That's just all I needed. I realized the rest of the world isn't like me. And everyone has to find their pace. Everyone has to find, you know, the right, um, intensity of their life. And. And I want to celebrate that for you. But I don't want your slower pace to measure what is actually spiritual or appropriate or healthy. I want to, you know, I'm a Navy seal, you know, and, uh, I'm a Top Gun pilot. And I want to fly with those people. And if you want to keep elevating in your life, you better accept transitional loneliness. But if you do it right and you love people and you serve people, you'll find friendships at every level along the way.

Speaker A: Good word. Well, there's a lot more here, everybody. We could talk more about it. A lot of other leadership tips, a lot of other ideas. Uh, the book Mind Shift. It doesn't take a genius to think like one. The 12, uh, framework M Mind Shifts. It's um, just a fantastic book from a fantastic person. And, uh, thanks for your leadership and the legacy you've left in the world. And, um, touching me and others. And uh, you know, we got one final question on the Trusted Leaders show, and that is, who's the leader you trust and why?

Speaker B: When, um, I saw your question, you know, my mind always goes to divergent places because I wanted to jokingly try to pick like some extreme political leader that would upset half your audience and, uh, you know, say either Obama or to say Trump. And I realized something really quickly. There's a difference between a leader you trust and a leader you agree with. And a lot of times people choose a leader they agree with even though they don't trust them. And a lot of times we don't choose the person we trust because we don't agree with them. And we have to decide what actually has a higher value for us. But my answer to your question is the President of El Salvador, Naim Bukele. Uh, I was born in El Salvador. I'm a citizen of El Salvador. He has transformed a country that for 40 years had the highest murder rate in the world. The, uh, most notorious gang in the world, Ms. 13, came out of El Salvador, uh, after civil war. The country has been torn to pieces through the most violent gangs and, uh, um, in the most unsafe country on the planet. And Bukele, uh, is I think around 38 years old. And three and a half years has transformed the country. The whole nation celebrated when they had one day without a murder. Now they've had 365 days without a murder. And the United nations, the United States, the uh, LA Times, you know, all the liberal, um, um press has hated Bukele because he went through the country and arrested around 6,000 gang members. And he has taken on the ire of like, of the, of the political world to bring peace and prosperity to a country that never had a future. And uh, when you look at Naim Bukele and his wife, they're like a John and Jackie Kennedy, you know? And, uh, his wife was a ballerina. They have a beautiful little girl, and, um, they put a computer in the hands of every child in the entire nation so that every child would have access to the Internet and to education. And I just really admire him. I love, um, what he's doing. I know it's massively controversial, and I'm really, um, honored to say in two weeks, I'm going to speak in El Salvador at an event where, um, he's speaking and I'm speaking, and I consider it one of the highlights of my life.

Speaker A: Wow. Good stuff. How do we end on anything else? First time he's been used, and I love to hear that. Um, man, it's been a treat. There's so much more. I've got 50 more questions. But, um, hey, for everybody out there, you know the deal. Erwin McManus, you can find out more online. You're gonna. You're gonna look at the show notes for his books and his newest book and more about where to find more about him on the show notes. Trustedleadershow.com and, of course, uh, this has been the Trusted Leader show. Till next time, stay trusted. Let's.