Core Values for Effective Leadership: Lessons from the Junior Chamber of Commerce

Speaker A 00:05 Welcome to the Wisdom Parlor, a thoughtful discussion of important ideas among people who are committed to succeeding in life. This is a gathering of leaders from a variety of industries, and our role here is to help you reach the top 1% of your field of choice. Hi, I'm Jim Cathcart. So come with me and let's discover how much more successful you could be. Jim Cathcart 00:38 Hey, everyone. Welcome to Wisdom Parlor. The purpose of Wisdom Parlor is to create an environment for you where we can talk about big ideas, silly ideas, meaningful ideas, touching, moving, emotional ideas, important ideas. The difference between this and a typical podcast would be a typical podcast focuses on interviewing a person and highlighting that individual. Wisdom Parlor focuses on highlighting ideas and the open discussion of those. Today, I'm going to be talking about the organization behind this book, Young Men Can Change the World, the JCS Junior Chamber of Commerce story by a man named Boonton Herndon. And as you can tell, it's a pretty old book. This is the new revised edition from, let's see, first published in 1960. And this edition, 1971. Whoa. I recently ordered this off of ebay, I think, and I read it again after many, many years. I was employee at the USJC's national headquarters. Now, again, that's the Junior Chamber of Commerce. I was an employee at their national headquarters in the years 1975, 76, and part of 77. Okay, big backstory to go with that. I'll try and capsule, encapsulated, whatever the proper wording is and give you a sense of why I'm talking about it. JCS is a civic organization, and it's like, in many ways, Lions, Optimist, Rotary, Sertoma, and a number of others. The purpose of those organizations is to be a social network that allows you to serve your community. And the Lions have their own adopted causes, and optimists have theirs and Rotary has theirs. And they've made a big difference in the world doing these things. The difference between the JCS and the other groups is significant. The JCS were formed in 1920 in St. Louis, Missouri, by Henry Giesenberg, Andy Mungenast, and a number of others. First as a. Like a youth social club. It was just for young people and it was called at first the Herculaneum Dance Club. And they would hold dances. They wanted to learn business skills in those days, young men, and this was specific to men at the time because women weren't active in the workforce very much. But young people, young adults, didn't have a place to learn business skills other than school. So they could go to college and get a degree in economics or business administration or marketing or whatever, but that didn't really teach them how to run a business and be successful as an adult in the business community. And they were too young to join the Chamber of commerce, so that didn't work. So they really didn't have much. And Giesenbert and his friends were taken under the wing of a business leader named Clarence Howard. Clarence Howard was with the chamber of commerce. And he said to these young people, he said, look, you want to learn business skills? You want to do things in the community? Why don't you form a junior chamber of commerce? Then I'll teach you what I can, and you can follow our practices to the degree that it makes sense for you, and you go out in the community and do good things. And they said, well, what a great idea. So they called themselves the junior chamber of commerce. And they referred to them in slang as the JCS Junior chamber. And that name stuck because it was so much easier to say than the other. And so the jcs started recording people. Now, they had a rule. You had to be at least 18 years old to join, and you couldn't be over 35. So at age 36, you rolled out of the JCS and entered the broader business community. So you would join rotary or the chamber of commerce or whatever else at that age. Okay, 18 to 35 inclusive. They formed their group in St. Louis and other cities, said, hey, we want to do one. So they started forming other chapters in other cities. And this caught on in a matter of a few years, Went nationwide and ultimately international. And so there were JC's groups popping up all over the place. And they knew that they had to be more. Have more integrity, be more structured to offer enough structure to assure the quality of JCs from one location to the next, but at the same time, loose enough to allow the freedom for people to do their own thing based on their own needs. Like the Phoenix jcs, One of their big projects was putting on a rodeo. Well, you'd hardly put on a rodeo in New York City or in Chicago or even St. Louis at the time. So each city had its own particular types of interest, its own social needs and issues, its own priorities. But they all adhered to the same central cause, which was leadership training for or through community service. Now, if they were strictly a leadership training organization, they would have become. Become a training company, and they would have had a series of courses. And you complete the courses, and you get your certificate or your degree, and then you Move on to other things. But that wasn't the JC's. The JC's purpose was to allow young adults to make the world better and learn the leadership skills in the process. So leadership training through community service. The way they did the leadership training was they came up with a structure for community service. First they would go out in the community and determine what were the needs. For example, maybe there was a, a blighted area of town where it had been, you know, near slums, and there were trash accumulated and it was just a big open space and it was dangerous to be there and not inviting. Well, the jcs might take on something like that and turn it into a community park, but there are a lot of steps involved in that process. So you don't just go down there, you know, hey, everybody piling the station wagon, which was that day's version of a suv, and go down to the community park and start working. No, they would write out a plan, a project plan, using what was called the Chairman's planning guide. And it was a simple guide. Determine the need, set priorities, establish goals, choose activities, budget, schedule, you know, and so on and so forth. And it had those steps for every project that they conducted. And at the end of it, you would write a report on how it went, detailing everything you could remember, and you would submit that to the chapter, to the leaders, your, your fellow members of the chapter, and you would get considered for an award for the best project for the year for your chapter and, or for the state or for the nation. So as it got more and more organized, more and more chapters, JC's chapters were doing more and more projects and learning the skills of running projects well. So let's go back to our imagined scenario of a community park. If you want to have a community park, first question is where? Okay, you find the place. It's a blighted area near your chapter, region, or community. Who owns the property? Well, if it's community property owned by the city, then you've got to get city approval to do anything there. If it's owned by an individual, you've got to get their approval. If it's in a residential area, you have to go to the zoning people to make sure it's rezoned to allow for a park instead of a house. If it's commercial, got to be rezoned for a park instead of a commercial property. So there are a lot of steps before you ever cut a blade of grass or move a piece of lumber or pick up trash, right? So in the JC, they didn't know this. These are young adults. They're 18, 20, 25 years old. They hadn't done this before. So they've got a process which. This tells the story of the whole organization, but it also talks about many of these processes. By the way, the book Young Men Can Change the World is a series of stories about different chapters, different groups, different communities, different causes. And it mentions names and dates and individuals and locations. And I personally knew many of the people mentioned in the latter part of this book because I was involved in the JCS from 1972 until about 1977. And I started at a local chapter in Pulaski Heights neighborhood of Little Rock, Arkansas. The reason I joined was I wanted to do something. I wanted to do something that mattered. You know, my age at that time, 1972, I was, oh, let's see, 24 years old, 26 years old, maybe. And I was born in 46. You do the math. Anyway, I was a young adult, newly married, with wife and baby at home, and I was working at menial jobs. I didn't make much money, and I certainly didn't have any leadership responsibilities. I was a member of the Army National Guard, and I went to Officers Candidate School and became a second lieutenant and was transferred to the Army Reserves. But that was military leadership skills. I needed business skills, and I wanted to do something in the community. So I joined the JCS to form a brand new chapter in my neighborhood. We formed 20 of us, the Pulaski Heights JCs and the guys who came to our community to encourage us to do this. I had heard about it through a friend. I didn't even set out to do this. I was at a barbecue, the backyard barbecue, with my friend Bill Gillespie and another friend, David Puckett. And David said, hey, Bill, weren't you in the Little Rock jcs? And Bill said, yeah, for a while, but not anymore. And he said, well, they're forming one for Pulaski Heights, and they have a meeting on, I don't know, Tuesday night at the barber shop up in Hillcrest. Why don't you go? And Bill said, I don't know. And I said, well, hey, could I go then? David said, yeah, I guess he hadn't thought to ask me. And he didn't even go. So I went and there was a. It was a small gathering, and the guys that were there included my barber, Glenn Cox, and a guy that I knew named Lloyd Watson. And the guys running the meeting. One of them was named Bill Patrick, and he was the district chair for the jcs. And he said, you should form a chapter for your neighborhood. You need 20 people. And I said, well, how do we get 20 people? He said, take this little brochure and go door to door and talk to the young people and tell them about the jcs and ask them to come to a meeting on, let's say, Friday. Where? Here at the Barbershop Spine. So we did our recruiting, we went out around the neighborhood and we called on people, people we didn't even know said, hey, we're forming a JC chapter. You want to come join? Well, I don't know. Well, come hear about it. We've got some guys there. It'll only take like an hour. So people showed up. And as it turned out, we found it. Finally got our 20. I had recruited 13 of the original 20. Wow. And I didn't know that many people that I could recruit. I just met them going business to business in the neighborhood. So we had our 20, and each one of us came up with $20. Whoa. That was a lot at the time to join. And they showed us how to start a chapter, how to hold meetings. They gave us some manuals, officers and directors guide for the chapter. And they said, okay, you need officers. Who's going to be president? Well, 13 of the people said, how about Jim? I said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I don't know how to be a president. And so they said, okay, you be the contact guy for the chapter between the state headquarters and the local chapter. They call that state chairman. You're the liaison. I said, okay, yeah, I can do that. Guy named Larry Peters, a realtor. He said, I'll be president. They said, okay, here's a little booklet that tells you how to be president. And so we had a president, vice president, treasurer, state chairman. And we started holding meetings. And one of the things we did was a group discussion using a little handbook of four chapters, four short written chapters with questions. And it was called leadership in action. And I participated in that discussion. And at the end of those four meetings, I said, man, this is great. I want to do more of this. And they said, okay, you lead it. So I recruited people to come to these meetings to go through these discussions about communication skills, leadership skills, organizing projects, thing is setting goals. And they went over well. And some of those people said, hey, if we get some other people, will you do another one? Yes, I will. So our chapters meeting once a month. We're recruiting new people to join. We've identified a few projects to do in the community, and we've Started to go out and do things and I'm the guy in charge of doing the leadership training discussion groups, Leadership in action, we called it L I A and let me shorten the story. Our chapter did well. At the end of the year I was the state. I was chosen as state chairman for the entire state, 280 chapters at the time in the state of Arkansas, state chairman in charge of leadership training. I went out and did so many JC's meetings all over the state after work and on weekends and holidays for free, on my own dimensions, paying for my own gas and everything. I would drive to remote corners of the state and lead group discussions on leadership in action. And I got pretty good at it. In the next two years, from the beginning of this process, from about January 1972 to two years later, I attended 400 JC's meetings in two years, after work, on weekends and holidays. So that's what you might call fanatical behavior. But I had found my lane. This was what I wanted to do with my career. I loved it. I went from state chairman for my chapter to president of my chapter. I went from state chairman in charge of leadership training for the entire state to district director in charge of managing five brand new chapters in my region. And I went from being a clerk at the urban renewal agency, the housing authority, my day job, to being hired by the United States ICC's national headquarters in August of 1975 to be national program manager in charge of Leadership training for 356,000 JCs throughout the USA. Mind boggling. Now think about this. I was a clerk with no college degree, overweight, out of shape, not connected in the community, didn't have any money, didn't know anybody with any money, newly married with a baby at home. And I joined a local JC's chapter and all of that took place in two years. Are you serious? Yeah. This book tells those kind of stories over and over and over again about people. Young adults today, women can join jcs. But today the jcs are a tiny little outfit compared to what they were back then. At that time, anybody who was anybody in national leadership, in business, in politics, in communities, in schools, whatever, probably had been a JC. What would make the JCs that profound? I believe it's one thing more than anything else. Not just the fact that they knew what they were about, they knew their mission to leadership training through community service that tells you what they're doing and why, you know what the end result would be. A knowledgeable leader manager, somebody that can step into chaos and Organize it and get things done. Leadership training through community service. And so everything they did was about serving the community while learning something in the process. They knew their market. Their ideal customer was 18 to 35 year olds. Not 36 years later. They raised it to age 40. But for the vast majority of the life of the JCS, it was 18 to 35. Okay, every meeting. And this is the, like the, the DNA that made it all work. Every single JC meeting began and ended with the same thing. It was a ritual. Just like saying the pledge of allegiance to a flag is a ritual. And by the way, all the JC's meetings began with a pledge to the flag and an invocation at the time. But so did most other meetings in the nation. But here's the part that I'm alluding to. It's called the JC's Creed. Their set of beliefs as expressed in one short piece of prose. Every meeting started with everyone standing and reciting together the JC's creed we believe. And they would recite the Creed. And it only took like, I don't know, less than a minute, I guess. And then they would sit down and start the meeting. And at the end of the meeting they would adjourn by standing and reciting the JC's creed with a lot of energy on the last stanza or last line. Here's the Creed. We believe that faith in God gives meaning and purpose to human life. That the brotherhood of man transcends the sovereignty of nations. That economic justice can best be won by free men through free enterprise. That government should be of laws rather than of men. That Earth's great treasure lies in human personality and that service to humanity is the best work of life. Now that's pretty powerful. If you look at great movements throughout history. Every one of them had something like a creed. They had a cause. They had something, you know, in, in America, one of the things that defines us is I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. When you state it that way, it brings together a lot of underlying assumptions and core beliefs and articulates them in a way that you're reminded of them. You say, that's just words. Hey, everything we do can be expressed in words. And if you change the words, you. You change what you're expressing and you might profoundly change the beliefs that are being reinforced. The words matter. I love you and I, like you, are just words. The distance between the two is profound till Death do us part versus I'll give it a try or two. Entirely different states of commitment. Right? Okay. Look at the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments is a quick summary of an entire belief system. The Beatitudes, the Bill of Rights to choose your organization. And you're going to find that. I'll show you something. I'm going to do a screen share here and show you something from my photos. This, this is from Rockefeller Center. John David Rockefeller had his beliefs outlined and literally carved in stone for all to see. And when you go to Rockefeller center you can see this on a huge plaque above the skating rink down below in front of Rockefeller Center. And he states clearly what he believes and it's, it's there for the world to see. But it was also there within his own view. Day to day, in his own working day, he could see his own beliefs and anytime he had a decision to make, could look at that and see if his decision stood up to the beliefs that he had committed to. So back to the jcs. The purpose of the creed was to reinforce a way of looking at the world that allows for any religion, any religion that assumes the. Assumes the existence of a benevolent Creator. That faith in God gives meaning and purpose to human life. It's not specific to a particular type of religion. It's a belief that there's something bigger than us here and no matter what shape or form it takes, that's what gives meaning and purpose to our day to day existence. That the brotherhood of man transcends the sovereignty of nations. So in other words, you and I may be American, Iranian, Chinese, Polynesian, Finlandian, you know, Chicago one Texan. We may be very different people as far as the region we come from or the heritage in our genes. You know, I might be blonde haired Scandinavian, you might be a dark skinned Pacific Islander. But the brotherhood of mankind, men and women alike, transcends nationalities. That we are humans, we have that in common. And there is within that a brotherhood and sisterhood. So if every time you meet now imagine this were a company and they were doing that, that'd be considered inappropriate for a company to require it. But imagine if all the people of a company insisted that you do it and you expressed whatever your beliefs are as eloquently as the JCS did every day. Wouldn't that strengthen your commitment to each other as well as your commitment to the cause that you're working on and cause you to be a little less caught up in the process and a little more focused on the reason the process is being done, the outcome you're seeking to produce. So I'm not going to dissect the entire JC's creed with you, although I'm happy to in a private conversation. But I want you to understand that that creed itself is something that could have great value to you and me. To use that as a template and formulate our own to live by, to look at every day, a belief system that encapsulates what you think is true about the world and the way the world ought to be. Not a bunch of shoulds, not a bunch of should nots, which makes me think of the Ten Commandments, but the Ten Commandments, Old Testament, that you know, a different point of view from what we were looking at in the JC creed. I could get caught up in a loop of 15 minutes of explanation here, but I don't want to go down that rabbit hole. I just want you to think about coming up with your own set of beliefs that you live by. I did a sermon in Church in 1974 to fill in for the JC's guy, Bill Patrick, who I had met because he was a part time preacher as well as working in his business. And he said, I want you to preach a sermon. So I did, even though I wasn't a preacher and I had only read the Bible once and I was at the time a JC and I was in charge of leadership training for the state of Arkansas. So here's the sermon I delivered. Know what you believe, Test what you believe, Live what you believe. So I was telling the people at the church that day, find out what you really believe. Don't just say what mom and dad or your preacher or somebody else told you. You know, don't just recite something, express it. Put it in writing, in short form, down on paper, say, this is what I believe, and then test it. Hold it up to the light, let other people see it, get into discussions about it. Show it to people that do and do not disagree with your particular point of view and see if it holds up to the comparison. Because if it won't stand close examination or challenge, it's not a belief, it's a facade you're using instead of having a clear belief. So I could say, I believe in fairness, okay, explain, you know, fairness. Look it up. That's not a belief, that's just something you're saying because you think it'll go over well, right? So figure out what do you believe. Second, test it. Explore other points of view. You might find yourself saying, oh well, set mine aside. I like this One better. You might. I don't know. Just test what you believe. And if whatever makes it through the gauntlet and you end up saying, yes, that is what I believe. Live it. Make sure it is expressed in every aspect of your life. Mental, physical, family, social, spiritual, career, financial, emotional. Make sure your belief system has integrity in every portion of your life so you are truly living what you believe. Coincidentally, this is 2024 that I'm recording this. Recently I was asked by my current pastor to deliver a sermon. The first sermon I had ever delivered in 50 years, since 1974. Guess what my message was? Know what you believe. Test what you believe. Live what you believe. What do you believe? That's a big question. What I believe about what? What do you believe about the purpose of life? What do you believe about the potential of every human being? What do you believe about yourself and your potential? What do you believe about your quality as a person? Do you run yourself down? Do you judge yourself poorly? Do you think you're better than others? I think all people are created equal, not with equal abilities. We have differing abilities, differing based on our gene pool. And we have different opportunities based on our circumstances. But in the eyes of our creator, we, each human being, are equal to other human beings of all types at all levels. Some of you have heard me tell the story of being in Penang, Malaysia, and walking along. I was conducting a expert summit, a mastermind event, and I was leading a group of people who all speak Chinese. I don't. So my interpreter Kitty was there with me. And we walked through a fishing village and tourist area. And there was a beggar sitting on the ground in rags with an artificial leg, playing an old beat up guitar. Had a big scar on the side of his face, didn't smell particularly good, had holes in his garments. But he smiled when I walked by and he was singing and playing that guitar and he was singing in English. So I stopped and I said, do you speak English? He said, a little. I said, what's your name? He said, ali. I said, my name is Jim. It's nice to meet you. I said, do you know any American songs? And by the way, I'd already put some money in his hat, you know, he was begging for handouts and I had already put some money in his hat. Before speaking to him, he said, I know Hotel California. I said, I know that one too. I play guitar. Can I sing it with you? And he said, sure. So my group is gathered around and they see me talking to this beggar and they're talking to Each other like, oh, no, teacher shouldn't be talking to this man. This man's not clean. So they were taught to believe in a caste system that put people above other people. And there were some people you just didn't communicate with. Well, I. I don't believe that way. So I'm talking with Khalif, and he says, yes, you can sing it with me. So much to the shock of my group and the other tourists nearby, I sit down in the dirt next to Khalifa with my left leg up against his artificial right leg. And they're all, you know, looking at each other, kind of shocked, no, not knowing how to react to all this. And Alif said, would you like to play it? And I said, certainly. So he hands me the guitar, and I started playing. And I'm singing on a dark desert highway to a wind in my hair, you know, and I do Hotel California, and he starts singing harmony. So Khalif and I are singing a duet while I'm playing the guitar, sitting in the dirt in this tourist area, and a few people drop money in his hat. And I don't know if they were tipping him or tipping me, but I don't care because he got to keep the money. And so we went on and we finished the song, and then the people applauded awkwardly, and I gave him his guitar back and I said, may I pose for pictures with you? And he said, okay. And I put my arm around him and took selfies and. And had Kitty taking pictures of us. And I thanked him once again, shook his hand, and then we left. And as we're walking away, I said to Kitty, gather the group. Why did I do that? And she asked them, and they said, because teacher loves to play guitar. No, because you wanted to do something nice for the poor man. No, the reason I did that was he sits there every day looking up at other people in hopes that he'll get just enough money and tips from people that are all looking down their noses at him, literally. And many of them attitudinally as well, looking down on him that he'll get just enough money to make it through another day. I wanted him to have a moment of feeling absolutely equal and accepted among other people. And so we shared a moment together. Then I asked the group, how long do you think he will remember that experience? And they said, forever. And I said, so will I. The brotherhood of man transcends the sovereignty of nations. I get a little emotional when I think about that, but that was such a powerful experience. When you are okay with You. When you stop judging yourself, when you stop accepting other people's opinions of you as being true instead of being their opinion, when you start realizing that you're a unique individual creation and there's never been another you. Ever. There have been people like you, but you're the only you that's ever existed or ever will. And you are capable in small and large ways of making the world better. So when you do the things that you could do to make the world better, to smile at someone that needs one, to give information where it's needed, to reassure somebody, to help out, to find a solution, to admire someone, to add your applause to the applause of others, to be the one that initiates the first of applause after someone does something impressive. When you let go of the limitations that keep you from fully being yourself, and you naturally let the loving part of your existence flow through you, you make the world better for all of us. And bonus, you make the world better for yourself. To the miserable people in the world are the people that are looking in the mirror at themselves. Oh, poor me. Oh, I'm inadequate. Oh, sad sack me. Gosh, you know, I just. I'm taking up room. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to get in the way. Oh, no, no, I'll. I'll go. No, you first. Right. All that self denial is not serving the world. Yeah, but it's a nice thing to do. No, it's actually a weak thing to do. Courtesy is one thing, but when you extend courtesy too far, it's weakness. And weakness is when you're not expressing your strength. It's not when you're absent strength, it's when you're not using your strength. You know what the most powerful thing you could do is? Be yourself. Be your natural, uninhibited self in the best ways that you can. What is best? Best meaning where it's beneficial to others and beneficial to yourself. Don't try to be the best in the world unless that's particularly important to you. Simone Biles chose to go after being the best in the world in gymnastics and did it. I didn't. I didn't choose to go after gymnastics at all. If I had, I probably wouldn't have committed to it at the level she did. I may. She's her. I chose the field of personal development. I said in a recent exercise, recent being many years ago, but in recent years, that through intelligently observing, vocally appreciating, speaking up about what I admire and appreciate, and full fully expressing myself, I inspire myself and Other people to have life and have it more abundantly, which is a paraphrase from a Bible passage, John 10:10. I've come that they would have life and have it more abundantly. Now, you might say, Jim, you're making an awful lot of religious references here, and I'm not religious. Well, maybe you're not. And I don't particularly care, except that I care about you as a human being. I don't care whether you're religious or not. I don't care what particular worldview you have, as long as it's not a harmful one. And I'm not trying to sell you a particular religion, but mine. Mine, which is a Christian faith, shows up in pretty much everything I do, and it should. I'm not recruiting. I'm not proselytizing. I'm expressing. So what if I'm talking to a room full of Buddhists? Well, I frequently do when I speak in China. I don't try to convert them. I just try to help them understand where I'm coming from so they can take the parts of me they agree with and the parts they disagree with and make a better decision on their own. Take. So figure out what matters to you. Find a way to articulate it in a concise way and then commit your life to it. Now you say, well, I can't. You know, I got bills to pay. I got obligations. I can't do that. Yeah. Excuse me. This suit may not fit you perfectly today. It may be 10 sizes too large or small, and maybe you got it from Goodwill or someone made it for you, and it's not tailored to you, the suit being your life, but you can take it in a little here and there. You can let it out a little here and there. You can patch it, you can take care of it and make it a progressively better fit for who you are for as long as you live. We should be tailoring our life, who we spend time with, what we read and who we read, you know, what sources, what TV shows and what online sources. We pay attention to the balance among those sources, the nature of those sources, the attitude behind them, uplifting or critical. We need to pay attention to who we spend time with. We need to pay attention to where we go most of the time, what we do physically and what we do mentally. What do we say? You know, if someone was doing an act to impersonate you, Are there certain phrases or statements or ways of saying things that are so you that others could almost make a cartoon of it? Well, see, if that's something that you just accumulated, like a habit that you never chose, but you have it anyway, or if it's something you selected. I think we ought to choose the habits we want. We ought to interrupt the pattern on the ones we don't want long enough to pause and occasionally make a better choice. We ought to tailor our life to be a perfect fit for who we are in our lifestyle, in our life. Activities ought to be devoted to being ourselves out loud, at our best, in all the ways that can help the world all life long. This is Wisdom Parlor. JIM I'm Jim Cathcart. Thank you for tuning in today. Speaker A 46:07 Thank you for joining us today in the Wisdom Parlor, a thoughtful discussion of important ideas among people who are committed to succeeding in life. If you are committed to making more success happen in your own life, go right now to my website, free cathcart.com and download my free ebook and then watch the video. If you decide that you'd like my assistance in helping grow your success, then come with me and let's discover how much more successful you can be.