Latest / The Family Teams Podcast / Teams Over Indivduals with The Smiths

Transcript

Teams Over Indivduals with The Smiths · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:03
  Hi, welcome to the Family Teams podcast. Our goal here is to help your family become a multi-generational team on mission by providing you with biblically rooted concepts, tools, and rhythms. Your hosts are Jeremy Pryor and Jefferson Bethke, and we can't wait to chat about all things family.
• 0:22
  All right, guys. Well, welcome back to the Family Teams podcast. April and I are here with our good friends, Blake and Chandler Allsmith. Welcome, guys. Thank you. Thanks for having us. Excited to be back on. Yes. I love getting their perspective on a lot of these topics. And so excited to hear how this conversation goes. So this is kind of by way of walking through...
• 0:41
  Something we do at Integrated, a business father's mastermind that Blake and I are both a part of. We've been trying to isolate what are the things that make our kind of our lifestyle different, to try to give really practical ideas for families for how to transition from kind of the Western idea family, where we're all just a group of individuals into something more like a multi-generational team on mission. So we talked to Cirillos before this about rhythms over goals.
• 1:09
  And I want to talk to Blake and Chandler about kind of this next kind of contrast that we definitely feel in this transition, and that is team over individual. And there's a lot of detail to this. This has been probably one of the ones that is the most challenging to think through and probably the one that offends.
• 1:27
  the current culture, maybe more than any of the others. And so it's easy to be over reactionary, maybe in some ways in this area. But certainly also most of us, I think, are suffering from not really even understanding this tension and how destructive it can be if we just go all the way towards individualism. So I'm going to read this little essay. Then we're going to talk about it, get Blake and Chandler's feedback. So team over individual. I often picture someone walking into a counselor's office and expressing the concern that sacrificing
• 1:57
  is hurting them as an individual. The pressure, the obligations, the expectations are interfering with their individual goals, their individual interests, and their aspirations. How does the counselor know how to respond? How does the counselor know if what's happening in that family is healthy or toxic? I imagine that for many modern counselors, embracing the expectation that you put your family's needs above your individual needs is unhealthy. Why?
• 2:27
  Because to the modern Western mind, the individual is more important than the family. Family is only healthy when it serves the needs of the individual. But it's not hard to imagine where that leads. If everyone in the family is putting their individual needs first, what happens to the family? This gets to the root of why family break down
• 2:43
  are at rates that are beyond anything we've seen in history. But now let's imagine the same individual walks into the counselor's office and expresses the concern that sacrificing for their elite soccer team is hurting them as an individual. Quote, the coach is always pushing me to do better, to practice, to pass the ball to my teammates, to put the needs of scoring a goal as a team above what I want to do in those moments. I imagine the same good counselor would listen patiently and then point out that these sacrifices are a basic part of what it means to be a part of a team.
• 3:11
  that as long as you want the benefits of being on a team, you need to be ready to put your individual needs under the needs of the team. And as long as everyone is doing this for the sake of the goals of the team, this can be a meaningful experience. And this is why there's so much at stake when deciding whether or not a family is a team. If it's not a team, then it's unhealthy to expect all the members to sacrifice their individual needs for the sake of the group. But if a family is a team,
• 3:37
  Then it's healthy to expect a high level of sacrifice from all the team members for the sake of the goals of the team. Of course, just like on a team, there are limits to the amount of sacrifice you should expect. And there comes a time when the team must sacrifice for the individuals. But no team that wants to thrive will center on the needs of each individual. This would immediately blow the team apart. And this is exactly what is happening to the family. How do we recover from this destructive trend? So I have kind of five quick points. Number one, decide if your family is a team or not.
• 4:07
  If it's not, then put the needs of each individual first and get ready for the fragmenting of the family that will inevitably result. But if you are building a team, then embrace the dynamics of the team and continue to the next step. Number two, clarify your team's mission. What are you aiming at? A big part of what makes teams so exciting is the clarity of the goals. Teams know when they score. They know when they win games. They know when they win the championship. Family teams need to work to clarify the goals of the team.
• 4:34
  Three, the father must become the team's coach. The coach brings the team together by believing in the goals of the team and cultivating each of the players. The coach of any good team sacrifices first and sacrifices most. Imagine a coach who is the last one to show up to the practices, the first one to leave. That team is done.
• 4:53
  doomed. And that's the description of too many fathers today. They've joined other teams or they've embraced a team of one. What about families without fathers? This is a tragedy so vast it's difficult to contemplate. And dealing with this problem is way beyond the scope of this short essay, but we must as a society do whatever we can to prevent this from happening. Number four, the mother must be free to address the needs of each individual.
• 5:19
  After we know we're a team and after the father coach is pushing the team into greater and greater challenge, from that foundation, the mother must be fully released. She speaks truth to power, challenging the hard-driving coach to be sensitive to the limits of each individual, including his own needs.
• 5:35
  This has the effect of making the team a place of love. Balancing feminine energy with the masculine prevents the burnout or neglect from eroding the team. And five, practice, play, win, and celebrate. Once you have a team, you need to do what teams do. You practice by preparing each player and improving the team dynamic. You take your team into the game and let the pressure and challenges bring your team closer together.
• 5:59
  As you improve, your team begins to win. You take ground. You experience victory. And that experience fuels celebrations, which in turn gives energy to the coach, players, and practices. It becomes a positive cycle that leads to more and more success. So what kind of family are you building? The family is beautifully designed by God, but we'll only experience that beauty when we embrace his blueprint.
• 6:21
  Individuals made to function in teams will only thrive when they sacrifice for the team, but a family team and both the team and the individual will benefit. I'll build a family team and both the team and the individual will benefit. Build a family as a group of individuals and you'll end up damaging both. I did it. That's a long one. All right. That was a lot. So, yeah, I'd love to get any reactions to any part of that. How, you know, big picture, we can get into the micro, but yeah, what does that sort of stir up for you guys?
• 6:48
  Yeah, I love it. We both really enjoyed kind of reading this together and kind of talking through it a lot. And this has obviously shaped a huge portion of the past decade of our life. Really, I guess we met Jeremy two weeks after or heard of Jeremy two weeks after our first born was born. And so, yeah, I feel like this has been a huge part for us. You said a couple of things that I wanted to say yes, and there's some yes and, and then there's some maybe no, but. And so I think it'll be fun to kind of go through a couple of things.
• 7:15
  Or what about or something like that. The first one is, I think it's helpful when asking. I think we, this is, step one is like an intellectual ascent to can families be a team? And I think a lot of people actually can make that jump pretty easily. The harder part is I think that what happens when you
• 7:34
  are actually presented with the sacrifice of an individual desire. And like, how do you speak to yourself when you start to see that conflict? And I really like asking the question of, what is the most individualistic culture in the history of mankind? And I think we can look right now, I think we're at near the peak of,
• 7:53
  right now or definitely within the past 50 years. And if that's the case for anyone who's listening to this and is like kind of is feeling that feeling, I think it's helpful just to say, I am a creature of a certain time in history and this time of history is the most individualistic ever. And that's created some amazing art. That's created some amazing, a lot of amazing things.
• 8:14
  But it also means that our teams are suffering more than ever. And so I like the idea of how do I take one step in this direction, given the fact that I'm swimming in a certain type of water and that water is the temperature of hyper individualism. I don't know if you thought that way or like for me, it kind of helps kind of ground my emotional reactions to kind of realize that I'm in a culture now. Yeah.
• 8:38
  Totally. Yeah, what do you think? Yeah, I think I mean, that that definitely has shaped us. It's hard to rise above it sometimes because it's such a an ingrained part of what we're around all the time. Advertising the school systems, even churches, very individualistic in how we approach schools.
• 8:55
  problems. And so it's very hard to kind of rise above that and think, or even think that it's something to be addressed because isn't that just the way things are? Yeah. People need to realize that their values, most of us don't ever question them. They're intuitions. And so our intuition that this is unhealthy came from somewhere. And so it's really hard.
• 9:16
  to address something that deep. Some people never change at that level. They don't realize that. I love the quote, we think the thoughts of dead philosophers, because people don't understand that this hyper-individualism was actually shaped by ideas that were absorbed culturally probably over 100 years ago, and then they worked their way into our lives and formed our intuitions.
• 9:39
  So, whereas if you were to suddenly get in a time machine and go back 500 years, people would have very different intuitions about this topic. Um, and so it's health helpful that yet to say we are this creature in this particular time in history that's gone as far as any culture ever has into this hyper individualistic value. Yeah.
• 9:55
  And I think any conversation like this can't go on without mentioning the movie, It's a Wonderful Life. Because I think it's the most dramatic presentation of what kind of life do you wanna have? Which is it's at the pinnacle point where there's a direct conflict between hyper-individualism. I wanna go out, I wanna explore the world. I wanna build skyscrapers and I wanna do all these different things. And also there's a community of people around me
• 10:21
  And my family is asking something of me to continue on the vision of my father to bless a community. And it's like viscerally, you see the pain and there is pain in giving up that individualism. But you also see the beauty of a life that's kind of built that way. And what I love about the movie, spoiler alert, is that the team wins in the end.
• 10:40
  And I think it's maybe the last movie that that happens in. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. The thing that's really remarkable about that movie is the writing made the decision that would resonate the most deep with the audience was to see him sacrifice. And I think the antithesis to It's a Wonderful Life is The Little Mermaid.
• 10:57
  Like Little Mermaid is like the whole, the same story, except for the pinnacle is she leaves the family who is holding her back from her true self, which is a two-legged creature who needs to, you know, be on land and all of this. And so, now we cheer for that story instead. And so, yeah, we do live on the other side of having, you could almost say from George Bailey, you know, that moment is,
• 11:22
  You can go back as far as you want in history. I think all the intuitions in terms of the majority of the population would have been aligned with that. For the first time in human history, sociologists tell us we're practicing this other thing. And so, yeah, we're on the other side. And this is a brave new world. Like, what does it look like to live on the other side of the decision that, no, no, no, it's a better story if the individual triumphs over the group? Yes.
• 11:46
  I think that's, it's probably like a better way to think about it. Not like we're trying to do this really like counter-cultural thing. Like trying to be a team is something that humans have done like forever because you had to, or else you would get marauded by the neighboring tribe or whatever. You know, like if you lived on the farm, you had to work as a team.
• 12:09
  It's just like this big experiment that we're like culturally going through. Like, will it work out? Who knows? Well, what Jamie's describing too is that these families do, or these teams exist. Humans have to be a part of teams. And it's like the concept of the company man.
• 12:26
  arose in the 60s for a reason because the family man had disappeared. And so suddenly you need to find a team somewhere. And so you find a team at work or you find a team on your local softball team or like we crave the benefits. You talked about the benefits of the team. I think it's so important for us to remember that the team is not like
• 12:43
  all costs, it actually has beautiful benefits. And it's this question of what if you could be a part of a team that could never fire you? Wouldn't that be a so much more secure existence than being a part of a team that if you underperform, you're cut forever, right? That's what a family is. It's a team that loves you. And I mean, because it's traumatizing when you're part of an amazing, meaningful team at church,
• 13:05
  or at work or something like that, and then you have to move on from that and you never get to be a part of it again, it's truly traumatizing. And that's what family is so secure that you can have those benefits for your entire life.
• 13:16
  Yeah, there's like a sense of belonging when you're with your family that you are working really hard to be a team. Because I've watched just different people that have come and gone out of our environment and how uncomfortable they can be with like, it's almost like, am I allowed to belong? Am I allowed to like being a part of this? It's like so bizarre, but like hopeful, but like makes them step back. And it's just this whole,
• 13:45
  question is starting for them of like, like I could belong somewhere and it could be positive. That could be a good thing. And I could want that instead of like, I think the opposite in this context I'm thinking of is like, don't try to control me. I'm my own person. I'm my own. I don't need to belong anywhere because I am self-sufficient and I can, you know, do it all on my own. And instead of like, no, I want to belong like admitting to themselves. I do actually want to belong somewhere.
• 14:15
  I do want to be fully accepted somewhere. Yeah. Yeah. That's really good. Okay. Let's talk through the five things that you had talked about. I think if we can kind of tick through a couple of those, I think you had a comment on the first one about decide whether you're a team or not. Yeah.
• 14:31
  I think, I mean, you can, you can leave it up to a decision, but I think like probably in reality, you are a team. And so it's like, do you want to act like you are or not? Like it's, it's not maybe in a very individual, individualistic culture, you feel like you have a choice, but I don't actually think you think you have a choice. Like this is the team that God gave you. And I don't know. Yeah. Yeah.
• 14:55
  Yeah, that was the big aha that I think we both had when we heard that sermon at Crossroads a decade ago, Jeremy, was that I felt, I think I said, I was like, oh, I didn't realize I was CEO of an organization. And it was like, I woke up and realized there was an organization that I'm CEO of and I didn't know it. And the shame and pressure that I felt from that was like, I got to get my butt in gear. So I almost would maybe challenge rather than decide whether you're going to be a team or not, is more like, it's more like there is a game going on
• 15:23
  and you have a team and you are the coach, are you, are you going to take your, take on your role? Are you going to pretend like it doesn't exist? Yeah. Yeah. That's a good, that's a good distinction. Cause I do think that it's, um, I do think it's like deciding to embrace reality. I think that's, that's, that's important. Um, and I don't, I don't know that there is an alternative that works. I think what I, I'm trying to understand, or maybe, um,
• 15:47
  you know, you have, you have somebody who like, they, they got married because they, you know, they wanted this spouse to fulfill their needs. And then they, you know, they were, they've been married for five years and like, they're kind of feeling this little, like, oh, itch till maybe we should have a baby. And, you know, and so they decide for their own individual needs to have a
• 16:05
  immediately put the baby into daycare and put it on its own individual path. The husband has a career path that's primarily outside the home. The mother has a career path. The one child they have has his or her own path. And I would definitely agree they're a team. That's a terribly neglected team.
• 16:25
  And there's you're going to experience some some real problems if you continue to do that. But I do think that, yeah, I want people to decide, like, look, there's that that decision is real in terms of you get it's a free country. You got Amish people who who are doing very extreme things with their family.
• 16:43
  Then you have hyper individual who are doing very extreme things with their family. And so trying to figure out what kind of family you want to you want to actually build. I always feel like that's really helpful for people to say that that's a decision point you need. I encourage you to make. But I do think that the you know, the idea that you can completely remake this blueprint family into something that you imagine you'd like it to be. There's too much already.
• 17:09
  too much DNA already there. And that's kind of what our culture is trying to like, is just at war against there's too much DNA. How do we, you know, there's gotta be enough technology. There's gotta be enough, you know, just like there's gotta be something to, we can do to free ourselves from, from these these things that just feel like they determine what, you know, what we, what we, what we have to do as individuals. And so that, that, that tensions, you know, I think we're just keep going that direction further and further.
• 17:35
  Yes. Yeah. I think the big, the thing that got me in gear was just kind of saying, oh, I think I was convinced theologically that this is the world that God made and I need to embrace it. Right. Whether, and that required a lot of reconstruction for us in terms of where I work.
• 17:52
  how we work, how we meet as a family. Like everything was touched by that. I'd say in terms of fundamental theological shifts, it was probably one of the biggest ones in our adult life for sure was that. And it changed, there was nothing untouched. How we did church, how we did everything. Yeah, yeah. Second, you talked about mission. Like what is the mission? I'm curious if you agree. I feel like there's like a general couple missions that we've been given. Yeah.
• 18:14
  in the Bible that we, you don't get out of, right. Being fruitful, multiplying, fill the earth, subdue it, go into all nations, make disciples. Like those are all things like, and if you're confused on, if you're listening to this and you're confused, I'm like, well, what is my family mission? Start with those. I don't know about you. We got six kids. Those are enough for us right now. We actually. Looking for any more. Yeah.
• 18:35
  We really enjoyed the process of like dreaming and creating the mission statement. And we have big aspirations of what our family is going to be. And it's on our wall and that sort of stuff. But 90% of our time is consumed in those.
• 18:49
  already. And I think that's okay to embrace and say, Hey, you don't have to be a branding expert to be a parent. You actually can just kind of look at the things that are expected and maybe stop thinking of those as individual calls and start thinking of those as family calls. Because guess what? It's really hard for you to serve widows, orphans, the poor, imprisoned, make disciples. Every single nation too.
• 19:12
  Yeah, right. All these different things as an individual is insane. So you pretty much have to just pick one and neglect everything else. And that doesn't feel right. But as a large family organization, you actually can, over decades, cover it all. And there's some over generations. And I think there's some power to that. But I'd say don't get paralyzed. But also it is fun to then start to ideate of what is that family mission for sure.
• 19:34
  Okay, can we talk, because I don't want to run out of time. I want to talk about, you were pretty prescriptive about father equals coach. And then you said mother should attend to the needs of the individual. Let's start with, I would love to know, what about the mother-
• 19:49
  who maybe has a more masculine energy, who has specifically maybe visionary skillset and a father who maybe has a more, maybe even a fast follower skillset or an implementer skillset.
• 20:04
  And we see marriages like this a lot in our community, especially. And I guess there's the question of responsibility, which I believe biblical headship in terms of responsibility, which is that I believe that at the end of the day, the performance of the family, the outcomes and how the family affects the world is you need to have one point of responsibility. And I do believe that theologically that is the husband is that person.
• 20:26
  which is very unpopular viewpoint. And it's really hard for me to get, if you have some jujitsu to get me out of that in the Bible, I'm super open to hearing it, but it's really hard for me to get around that. So in terms of, I'm not talking about responsibility, but in terms of implementation, how you do that, I'm curious what level of flexibility you see or inflexibility you see in that, depending on the individual makeup of the parents in particular.
• 20:50
  Yeah, that's a great question. I've definitely gone back and forth on this. I was, I was, I would say raised in a pretty, like, I guess, traditional environment. And then I would say I went pretty hyper egalitarian for those who don't understand, but it's like, it's just up to the family. Like, depends on, depends on the different makeup of the.
• 21:07
  of the mother or father. And I think I've been slowly every year since then, being drifting back to believing in these traditional roles. And I think, especially now with the level of gender confusion, I think it's really tipped me all the way over back into, oh my gosh, like we, this is not something I think we should, I think we need to be more prescriptive in the family. So the scenario you're describing, Blake, I would say, I think that there are women who are highly visionary, who have a lot of that ability
• 21:35
  And I think sometimes they're going to be called to use that energy outside the family. And so I would make a distinction that in the family, I would not mess with that. I would say, for example, when the father leads, the fact that he's a man and the fact that he's the father will have a different impact on his son.
• 21:55
  than the mother will have a different impact on the daughters than the mother. Like there's nothing the mother can do from an energy perspective or from a skill perspective that will make up for the gender, the engendered expression. And so another way to say this too is like, what if you had two people, and this is kind of, you could talk about this both from a personality perspective, but also from a gender perspective, like.
• 22:20
  people are asking what's wrong with having two moms? What's wrong with having two dads? What does that do to children? And so similarly, what happens when you, if you shift that energy in the home, let's say you do have, they definitely agree with you. They're, you know, in our family, for example, men tend to be more disagreeable. And so that is like, you know, equals a lot of things that happen, you know, within how masculinity is perceived than women. But in our marriage, April is more disagreeable than I am. Okay.
• 22:49
  What? Like with each other. Yes. Yeah. And just personality wise. But I can be disagreeable with our children better than she can. And I was confused about that. I used to want to say, hey, since you're better at this, this is just a skill thing. And, you know, who knows what's, you know, what a man should do, what a woman should do. Why don't you do the stuff you're good at and I'll do the stuff I'm good at.
• 23:12
  The family plan calendar is the new way to keep your family team organized. Plan your rhythms, menu, household chores, and notes for the family all in one place. Visit familyteams.com to purchase. And I actually watched the fruit in our family and it was not positive. Like I needed to be the one. Because I'm the father, there were certain things, certain limits I needed to enforce. It was inappropriate for me to delegate that to April.
• 23:42
  my sort of masculine father led coach, coaching disagreeability different. And you can see this in a business context. I experienced this as CEO. There'd be times where I, you know, I had that authority and I kind of wanted to delegate to somebody a little bit further downstream, some hard things that they were better at. I'm like, well, they're better at it. But the fact is I could, I, because of my position as CEO, I could handle taking the relational hit and it would actually hold the family together better if I held the line on that thing.
• 24:09
  And I used to, I used to, so again, I sort of, I just kept running into these. I would like basically diagnose my weaknesses, delegate the things I was bad at, and then not recognize that the role itself comes with a lot of pre-baked advantages and disadvantages.
• 24:25
  And so then I started to drift back to let's figure out what that is and embrace it. And so and so I'm making a case here, obviously, that I think the father coach is that way. I think another example is just watching how football teams run. I kept picturing this when I was writing this essay, actually, when we when Jackson on for football, there was probably like 15 fathers that were obsessive coaches in the football team.
• 24:47
  But I think one of the things that you could really underemphasize is the role of the mothers that were around the team. And they were always orbiting the team. And never did I – I never saw a mother enter into the coaching of the football team. But they were constantly concerned. They were there. They were watching the individuals. They were watching their husbands. They were caring for the team in a different way. And so –
• 25:10
  Watching that dynamic, it just felt right. And I think that, so I definitely have, yeah, I'm kind of, you can see, I'm leaning more towards there's a positional role reality that will create a different result, even though the skills may be inverted, which is totally understandable and I think happens all the time. I think the role is more powerful than the skill.
• 25:32
  And I think that that started developing more. I mean, maybe as you were growing yourself, but also like as our kids got older. Yeah, I started seeing it more and more. Yeah. It got more intense. It wasn't as intense when you, I think a lot of times people theorize about this when they have very young families or they have before they have kids.
• 25:48
  Man, if you're going to build a multi-generational team and you've got adult sons, adult daughters, you have sons-in-law, you start to see this is not, this gets more intense. Like the roles become more clear. And that's probably why I'm drifting so hard into this direction. It's really, yeah, it's more experience.
• 26:06
  Yeah. And the more it helped me see the way it freed me up to be actually more of a mother, like stepping more and more, you know, I just keep learning more and more about what is it to be a mother? What is it to be this role, this position and to be able to finally, Oh, okay. Jeremy's finally taking that on. I can like step into this part, which I actually think
• 26:31
  Now, I believe more, I have more energy for this thing that I'm like more in tune with or I'm more, I understand a little bit better, but I felt like I had to carry that thing because he wasn't doing it. Even though I can do it and I'm capable of it, it wasn't really mind.
• 26:46
  Yeah, I think there's a difficult thing that I'd love to hear, especially because April, I think you have some of those skill sets. What I think Jeremy and your family attracts visionary people and people see something that says, hey, this is a different way. I want to go that way. Right. And I think it's probably 70 percent visionary men and 30 percent visionary mothers. Right.
• 27:11
  What do you say to the visionary mother in that circumstance currently? I'm kind of curious because I think this is a real need that people need to know. What do I do in this place? What do I say? Yeah.
• 27:22
  Yeah, I would say being one, it's another challenge, like notch in the belt of becoming one with somebody is like figuring out how to be on the same page. Like if you have a vision or an idea of something, this happens to us all the time where I'm like, oh, I just had an idea. And I think that this is, I think this would really work. I think this would help. I think this would be the thing.
• 27:44
  Then like lots of communication, lots of conversation and almost like a convincing, but like not like I have to work on the not controlling or manipulating part, but just like a real rhythm of like the dance of like, hey, I have this idea. I have this vision. What do you think?
• 28:03
  Cause you, you'll see the other side of it. You'll see, you know, something that I'm not seeing. And nine times out of 10, Jeremy's like, oh, that's great. That's, I totally didn't see that. Like, okay, let's do it. But then he has to implement a lot of times. So learning the dance of like him learning how to listen to my visions and my ideas, he has to be kind of like humble enough to be able to receive that. And then me being like submitting it and just being like, okay, but honestly, like if, cause yeah.
• 28:30
  Some of my ideas are bad and it would like be really controlling and like, really like, like it would not go well long-term with our kids if we did do that. So there's been a lot of times where he's nixed some things I've said because he's like, nope, nope, that's not, we're not doing that. That's going to lead to rules and religion. That's not freedom and relationships. So, um, yeah.
• 28:48
  kind of shuts my ideas down sometimes. Thank the Lord. Yeah, it's an interesting thing. Yeah, I think I'm still trying to figure out, I think coming from the startup background, I see a lot more of leadership teams and thinking of the C-suite as...
• 29:06
  a unit that leads the organization. So you have, and in that, I kind of feel like there's certain elements that I think are completely non-negotiable, like your responsibility towards God for the outcomes for the family. I think there's, I think I still question, is there, if you're responsible for the outcomes and you get clever and say, you know what, I know you have a visionary skillset. What do you see here? Can you, and like, and seeing almost
• 29:36
  One of our coaches may be a little bit more relationally aware than the other. And so we need to turn up the volume at times on that. And one of our coaches may be more visionary aware, and we need to turn the volume on that and oscillating those skill sets and turning up the volume up and down based on the specific coach pair that you've received.
• 29:53
  and even the children that you've received, it's kind of like the Ted Lasso thing. If you look at, if you guys watch Ted Lasso at all, I feel like his number two beard is a compliment to who he is, right? He's more empathetic. And so his number two is not empathetic. There's, I don't know if it's a,
• 30:09
  it's a spectrum that we don't want to go too far on one side or the other, or if there's a third way, or if I guess, how much of this is choose your own adventure and kind of creating a dynamic for your family, because at the end of the day, is it outcome that matters or is it both outcome and process that matters? Yeah. That's a good question.
• 30:26
  That's a good question. And I've certainly, I said, I've wrestled with this forever. I think it's really, it is really challenging. I think the thing that's maybe different about a family, kind of going back to your original point than a business is that you don't get to pick. Like with a C-suite, you actually can try to find complimentary giftings and then try to, like the chief executives of the business and CEO, CEO.
• 30:48
  So you can like design that particular leadership team based on skills. And it is kind of a shifting organism. Whereas you make a covenant, you know, a man makes a covenant with a woman, a woman makes a covenant with a man. And now you are embarking on this. And there's a fixedness to that. I think because of that, God decided to give the family a father and a mother.
• 31:11
  And, and these are, I, I'm, I'm, like I said, you guys can see, I've, I've really gone much further into that. These are fixed roles. One of the reasons there's a couple of things that in the, like kind of the Hebraic mindset that really helped me. One is in the new, in the old Testament, there's not a single, there's not a word for parenting.
• 31:28
  And there's also not even a, even the word, even the word parent is not used in the entire Hebrew scriptures. It's used a couple of times in the New Testament. It's never used in the Old Testament. And I've kind of tried to go deep into that. And what that means is all of everything we do in families as men and women is either fathering or mothering. There's no such thing as parenting.
• 31:51
  There's only fathering and mothering. And so if I would state the question more Hebraically, I think we're asking, can the mother be the primary, can the mother take on the responsibility of fathering? And can the mother take on the responsibility? The father, yeah. Yeah.
• 32:06
  Can the father take on the responsibility of mothering and can the mother take on the responsibility of fathering? Is that is that is that what? And so I think part of the reason is we because we don't have these two these two ideas very well. We are immersed in androgynous environments.
• 32:22
  The business world, we have engineered businesses to be androgynous. We've engineered schools to be androgynous. In other words, we want there to be easy trade-offs. You don't want any position to be a male or a female position. Every position must be interchangeable. Gender cannot play a role. And I think this has actually caused a lot of the gender confusion that we have.
• 32:44
  Like if you imagine another world in which, you know, everything, your gender was extremely influential in how you saw yourself from the time you were a child. You would saw yourself always as, oh, I want to be like my father. I want to be like my mother. I think what's happened is because like a little girl has been in an androgynous situation her entire life.
• 33:06
  You know, she's been in androgynous schools, androgynous sports situations, androgynous ministries. And then she gets married and she has a lot of these fathering skills. And then she asks herself, why shouldn't I use my fathering skills if they're superior to my husband's fathering skills?
• 33:23
  And so then I would say the problem is we're asking the question too late. I'm like, the problem was created, you know, decades ago. And so now, you know, the argument is pretty strong. Like she is way better at fathering than her husband. And then I would say, well, we got a lot of recovery to do. And we have to embrace the fact that the family, unlike every other entity in society today, is not androgynous. It's highly gendered. And we have to embrace that reality. And it's going to be hard, hard for a lot of us to like make that transition. Yeah.
• 33:52
  Yeah, I guess I like I still wonder if there's a difference between like your responsibility as a mother or your responsibility as a father and like maybe these evangelical cultural pictures of like, well, a mother looks like this. Like if I look at like even Proverbs 31 woman, like she doesn't really look like this cute little 1950s. Right.
• 34:17
  Christian housewife. And I think I feel like a lot of people who I talked to are having like so much tension in their family is because they're trying so hard to like squeeze each other into these.
• 34:33
  evangelical Christian 1950s boxes. And, you know, like when mom comes and like has an idea or like even is coming to her husband and be like, hey, what do you think about this? What do you think about, you know, whatever. Then the husband feels like threatened and like, wait, no, this is my job. You can't tell me that. So I'm gonna shut it down. And there's just all this, like, there's all this hurt and like toxic cycles that start because,
• 35:00
  And maybe like the critique is more like, hey, no, she's on your team. I think that's probably more like, this person is on your team. And so if she has an idea, like Jeremy, you were talking about like wanting to hear those ideas and then weighing them, like the ideas that April has. I think if your wife is coming to you with...
• 35:18
  with sparks of visionary intuition, that's not something to be like clamped down on of like, no, get back in your box. I don't know, maybe, but I just don't ever see that like working out well. I just see a really discouraged, discouraged and like frustrated and like, okay, well, if I'm not going to be listened to, like, then start coming up with all the ideas because like, there's just all this, right. I don't know. Angst that, yeah.
• 35:45
  In, in a different picture, you could see like, Hey, wait, she had a great idea. Cool. Let's go that direction. And you can weigh and see that if that is a good, I don't know, a good direction or not. Yeah. I totally hear what you're saying, Chandler. And I feel like something you just said, I don't remember exactly what it was. It makes me think of like the curses in Genesis three, where it's like the woman will want to rule over their husband and the husband will be like, cool. You know? And so it's like this, this, right.
• 36:12
  We're seeing it played out in all these ways where it's just so like damaging and we have to address it for what it like, see it for what it is. And. Right. Well, I think another, another reality is that when, when you picture a family, the way we're talking about it, I.
• 36:30
  I picture basically a father and mother in their sixties with, you know, with, with five to seven children and 15 to 20 grandchildren who are trying to do enormously complicated and difficult missional things in a society. So the design is, is aiming at that. And so I think what happens is you get this young family who's like got two little kids and trying to like, he's trying to be a visionary leader and, you know, she's, you know, whatever. And it's like, they're.
• 36:55
  They're supposed to be nested inside of this larger household and having seen a very mature version. And then everywhere they look, they see mature versions of these households. And so what we're looking at is fragments of families.
• 37:11
  And then we try to bring in these roles and they are kind of like maybe overkill or underkill or whatever, because what they're instantiating, like the Proverbs 31 woman was probably a woman in her 60s. She's clearly got a thriving family. Her husband's already an elder at the gate.
• 37:32
  I mean, that's an older family and they've got assets and yeah, what that looks like as a woman, it's nothing like the 1950s wife. And, and so yeah, a big part of this is really, and this is, I'm writing this book right now called the ruling household, because I think that the, the thing we're aiming at again, kind of going back to our big picture thing is if you're not aiming at individual, because if you're going to aim at individual fulfillment, then the only real question is how am I wired as an individual? And then does this environment.
• 38:00
  fully release me. And so that's the only question people are asking. But if you're going to not ask that question, ask a different question, then you have to have a pretty high resolution picture of what this team looks like. And once you do, I think it makes a lot of sense. But people, what they're picturing in that evangelical world of the 1950s, they're not picturing the right thing. And so I think they are coming to conclusions like, whoa, that just feels like way too constrictive on the individual. Yeah. Yeah.
• 38:27
  I, yeah, I think, I think that's really true. And I think like, I've experienced like, I feel like early on in our marriage, just for whatever, I don't know, Blake's a little bit more like, just go with the flow, but like sometimes like our doors wouldn't get locked at night because I think like in my head, I was like, Oh, Blake will do that. And then I realized like, Oh, he doesn't do that necessarily. So like, I took that on as like, okay, this is my job to like make sure everything is locked up and like,
• 38:55
  Physical safety was your job. It was like my job because I think that wasn't something that you were like living. I grew up in Loveland, Ohio and Chandler grew up in Chicago. Grace for you. Yes. Right. Yeah. I think that was something that I was like, okay, you're not doing that. So I'll, I'll have to like carry that one. And, and I, and I got it. I can do it. I can lock up the doors. It's no big deal. But I think like over the years you have like that identity as like protector of our family.
• 39:25
  Not that that's not like also my job to protect our kids like but your identity is like the primary protector as that's grown on you it is it's felt like this like okay like I don't have to carry I don't have to carry that like I'm freed up to he's built for that.
• 39:41
  Yeah, I think that's what your guys are. And that's what I'm saying. I kept experiencing, like as a single man running around in college, you know, college environments, or even as a newly married man, I was way more interested in how I was wired and what I was good at. And every single year I've been married as our family has gotten bigger and more complicated and more intense and the scale has gone up, the more my gender makes sense of my role in the
• 40:11
  It's so weird, I think, today because so many people have never even seen that. So they're getting married. You're in a hyper-individualistic culture. You're aiming at really an individual fulfillment in your own marriage. And all of these things the Bible is saying all feels like it's unnecessary. And it's unnecessary restrictive. And then you add on top of that the curse April was referring to, right, where you have this tension that was actually...
• 40:40
  placed in the marriage between the husband and wife in this exact area where she is, you know, that your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you. I mean, that's, that, that's, you know, that's, that's, so you, you have that dynamic in this environment. And then I think people just want to throw off, you know, any of these kinds of gendered, like, like.
• 40:59
  roles in the home. And and so I don't think I don't really see it as a moral issue. Primarily, I think it can be. But I think it's really it's a design issue. And so it's healthy to know what the design is. And so I think in an early stage of a marriage, it's not like, OK, Blake, you're sinning now because Chandler is locking the doors. I think I think that I think the thing that I would say is that prepare for what happened to you guys, which is as you pursue being a family team,
• 41:25
  you're going to discover increasingly over time that your gender does equip you better for the role that God's given you as a father or as a mother. And then leaning into that is probably a healthy thing because it's going to make for a stronger team instead of resisting that.
• 41:42
  Yes. I'm glad that we had this conversation, although it feels slightly like an aside from the essay. I think it's probably the most palpable sacrifice for this generation to make of individual versus team is these types of conversations are the ones that are being presented to this generation of parents.
• 42:03
  And so I think that it's great to wrestle with these things and know that that's that is the tension. So this is awesome. Yeah. The last thing I wanted to say and get your guys' feedback on is I think that one of the things that one of the steps that has to be made in the tension between the individual and the team is that is that the one of the problems is that your children, they didn't choose to be a part of your team. And so and I think that really grates on the kind of modern sensibilities. Yeah.
• 42:29
  And I do think there's something challenging about that that needs to be thought through. And one of the ways I guess I've thought about that is you want, it's one of the roles of the father in particular to inspire his children to sacrifice for the team. And that you want that sacrifice to be voluntary and not forced.
• 42:47
  Now there are times like, you know, if the enemy's coming over the hill or we're about to starve or whatever, there were, you know, all of that, you know, sort of control or authority like might come into play for a survival reason. But I think that because we don't really experience those kinds of scenarios, it's much better to try to inspire your children
• 43:10
  to lay down their individual life for the sake of the team, and then for the team to reciprocate and at times lay down, you know, whatever for the sake of the individual. And that there's something really beautiful about that when it's voluntary. And there's something really icky about that when it's forced. And so I don't know how you guys have...
• 43:30
  Like, is there any tools for you guys that have worked or have you thought through that? Cause you, you know, as you're a little, as your kids are kind of grown up in your family and you're, you know, leading them to do that. How have you guys tried to try to make that happen? Or how have you guys experienced that tension?
• 43:42
  You think of anything? Yeah, I love the idea of leading and sacrifice. As Chandler and I sacrifice, our children see it, and then they follow in kind, right? Like I think about like Imogen the other day, we were out of diapers in the living room. This is our three-year-old. She saw that we were out of diapers and she needed to get a diaper. So then she went to the closet and got all of the diapers and then refilled our little station and refilled it for us and then went to go. And I feel like she's seeing...
• 44:09
  the proactivity in Chandler or I, and then just kind of reciprocating. And I think that, yeah, there's a trap, which is that maybe it's the parent's job or the father or mother's job to force the children to sacrifice for the team, right? Versus it's actually, it's our job to sacrifice our own individual needs for the team and then to watch our children as they see that as well. And to experience the joy of sacrificing. Yeah. Yeah.
• 44:34
  I mean, this just happened this week where we, so we have, we have six kids. Our oldest is 11. Our youngest is like one and a half. And so like the big three, this is it's, we're not like totally Duggar family, but like for getting in the car, the big three have a buddy and they're responsible for like getting the shoes on, getting the body in the car. And that's just like, I don't know. We've done that for a while now. And it, everyone has their, their buddy. And the other day we were going somewhere and the big kids just kind of got in the car.
• 45:03
  And I was like, you know, doing all three of the kids inside and taking forever to get out. And I just got in the car. I was like, Hey, I noticed nobody, nobody got their buddy. Like we're, we're 20 minutes late now. What, what was, what was going on? And they were like, well, we just like, I don't know. I just, why, why do I have to get, take care of them? Why can't I just do myself? And I was like, do you know what? You don't have to. And if you don't want to, I will just. Yeah.
• 45:28
  say yes to only what I can do in taking six kids out of the house. And that will probably be once a month. Maybe we will leave the house because it is so much work to take six kids out of the house by yourself. But like, that's what it will look like as if we're all living like individuals, but if we can work as a team, we're going to do so many fun things together. And I love to take you to do all these things. And so they were like, okay, I don't know. Like even just seeing like, like
• 45:53
  If we work as a team, we all get to have more fun and we get to see our friends more often and we get to do these things. I don't know. It felt like a very tangible, tangible, like there's a trade being offered, right? It's benefit and cost. Yes. Yes. Yes. You don't have to take the extra two minutes to put your sister's shoes on.
• 46:12
  But we don't ever get to go anywhere because I can't take six children out. Yeah, I love that. And I think like as the kids get older, like you're, you might start to be noticing some more of like the attitude or the independence and like the, I'm not sure if I need to or whatever. And some kids are more apt to that and some are more helpful and more like a force and easygoing. And, and so I feel like there's this moment when you have that many kids, you have this like potential. Yeah.
• 46:39
  for a momentum to happen in a positive direction. Like if that one kid who's like, yeah, we're all going to Elisa's harp concert. It's going to be awesome. And then everyone else is like,
• 46:49
  Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So there's like the thing. And then they're inviting friends to come to Elisa's harp concert, you know, and they're standing in the back and they're like jamming out to the harps. So it's like, it can become a really fun thing. But if everyone was like, but that's her thing. And I don't really, that sounds kind of boring. I don't really want to. Then it's like, you're dragging people and it's, you know, not fun, but like to be able to get the older kids to focus on the younger ones, especially as they're, you know,
• 47:19
  you know, moving into their own life, their older years, it gets, it can get tricky that way. Yes. I think, I think the sibling opportunities for their, for this to either feel like a team that we're something we're doing together or feel like an individual thing. That's, that's where this gets really practical. And it's a constant thing, especially in larger families. You're you, you have a, you have a hundred opportunities a day to put the team or yourself. And so I think that that constant practice, constant
• 47:46
  reminding constant perspective, shifting, constant vision casting that causes your children to start to see that this is like, to me, this is the essence of socialization. And people talk about socialization is putting your kids in a public school with kids. They're exactly their age, you know, for 12 years. It's like, no, no, no. It's, it's trying to get in the van, you know, and learning like you need to like put on somebody else's shoes before you get in the van. That's, that's, that's, that's what we're aiming at. Well, it's good guys. Any other last things that
• 48:16
  Awesome. Yeah. So this is, this, this, this is a real challenging, you guys can hear, like, we're constantly trying to understand what is this design? You know, what, what, what is, what, what did God make? What are we aiming at? We're in a very confused time.
• 48:31
  And so we're, you know, we're willing to ask some really, I think, uncomfortable questions about the nature of, of the way where culture is at. And there's also ways in which this has been done poorly by the church. So we're going to keep having these kinds of conversations, trying to explore what this looks like and, and, and really lean into, okay, what does it look like for us to, to see a family turn into a team and really embrace that, that idea. So cool. Awesome. Thank you guys. Thanks guys. Thank you. Bye.
• 49:03
  Thank you for listening to the Family Teams podcast. If you're enjoying this content or have learned something new, please make sure to leave a rating and review and share with a friend. To stay up to date with our events, new content, and products, you can follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Family Teams.