PODCAST | Managing Leadership Anxiety (Feat. Steve Cuss)

Resources:

For more information go to https://capablelife.me/main-page/.

To connect with Steve about speaking or working with your teams, visit www.stevecusswords.com

Follow Steve on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stevecusswords/

Christa Neidig:
Welcome to the Vanderbloemen Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Christa Neidig, manager of marketing and business development here at Vanderbloemen. In today's podcast, Rick Callahan, our executive search consultant, talks to Steve Cuss. Steve has been a hospital chaplain, pastor, and he now is leading Capable Life. In this conversation, Steve talks about his new book, Managing Leadership Anxiety, and the importance of being self-aware amidst battling anxiety. Steve shares helpful tools that you can use when feeling anxious and how to not let it affect your leadership. We hope you enjoy the conversation.

Rick Callahan:
Well, welcome to the Vanderbloemen podcast. I'm Rick Callahan. I'm one of Vanderbloemen's executive search consultants. And when we do these podcasts, we want to introduce our audience to people and tools that can help us all thrive in our different ministry and leadership context. And today's guest has certainly done that for me personally and for countless others. So with us today is Steve Cuss. Steve has been a hospital chaplain, a pastor, and now leads an organization called Capable Life, which I'll let him tell us a little bit more about, but just does some great work to help us be more aware of who we are and how we're wired and how we can be present in a healthier, more helpful way with people. So Steve, welcome.

Steve Cuss:
Rick, great to see you again and catch up. And yeah, thanks so much for having me on this show. I love Vanderbloemen and the community, so I'm grateful to be here.

Rick Callahan:
Well, Steve, we were chatting a little bit before we started, but you and I first met when you offered an online cohort in the spring of 2020, and we all may recall something pretty big was percolating back then and it was a huge source of anxiety for everyone. And at the time, I was a pastor in a multi-site church and we were trying to figure out what our next move was as this pandemic became a tidal wave. And in the midst of that very discombobulating season, I came across a book you had just released called Managing Leadership Anxiety: Yours and Theirs. And I was hooked by the notion that my anxiety didn't need to be what was winning the day or driving the bus for me, but instead there were actual tried and true tools that could help me actually take back the wheel even in the midst of acute anxiety. Wasn't going to make my anxiety go away, but could actually be helpful.
And that led me to join your cohort, which I think was the first one you offered outside of your church you were pastoring back then and you offered some incredible practices and tools that have been a catalyst for my own grow. So I've been an evangelist for the things that you do ever since with the folks that I meet with in the Vanderbloemen world. So I love to start by inviting you to tell us a little bit about your journey that led to writing Managing Leadership Anxiety, and then forming Capable Life.

Steve Cuss:
Yeah. Oh, wonderful. Yeah. I mean, my journey began for those who are not familiar with anything about me, after graduating from Bible college, I plunged right into hospital chaplaincy. I was not expecting to do that, I trained to be a preacher. But I needed a job for one year and it turns out that hospitals hire chaplain residents just the way they hire medical residents, and so I did a one-year chaplaincy residency and it changed my life because it taught me the counterintuitive move that if I'm going to really help another person, I have to know what's going on inside of me because if I'm unaware of what's going on inside of me, I'm going to infect the situation with a false reality and then having infected it, I'm then going to see something false and be reactive or whatever. And of course, you might imagine chaplaincy is pretty intense, lots of death, lots of trauma.
No one really ever calls a chaplain just because they're bored and want to watch Seinfeld together, everyone calls the chaplain in the worst moments of their life. So it's very arresting. For you, chaplain is a human, we grieve, we're afraid, we're affected by what we see on the condition of someone's body. So that year of training, I still live out of it. The simple notion that before I'm going to walk into a situation, take my own pulse, put the oxygen mask on my own face, and then out of that, as you referenced, some very tangible tactical tools that come from a theory called systems theory. And I won't nerd out too much on systems theory, I'll just say that all systems theory is it teaches you how to notice anxiety in any situation. It's really quite a magic bullet. Anxiety in me, anxiety in you, anxiety between you and me.
And as a chaplain or as a pastor really powerfully, when you walk into a room and there's already a mood in the room, it teaches you how to notice what's going on, life changing. So I studied that in seminary as well. I've been practicing it informally for years, and I started teaching it in my church. I saw some of my staff that I really loved, I just saw them running into the same patterns in themselves. So I said, "Hey, maybe I could teach this thing that I learn." I don't know if I can teach it, and after teaching it for several years at my church, wrote it in the book, and now just last year, I just stepped down last year as the lead pastor. I'm still on staff at my church. I was their lead pastor 16 years, now I'm a very powerless associate pastor, which honestly Rick is so happy about.
And now I get to travel the world, I was just in Indonesia and Malaysia and Australia. Still sleeping off my jet lag, actually. And I get to teach leaders all over the world about this amazing way of noticing anxiety in yourself. And I guess I'm on a mission. I'm not alone, Rick, there's a lot of people that do this kind of very good work of emotional health, so I don't see myself as exceptional or as the only person doing it, but I'm just joining forces of saying, "Listen, the only thing you have to offer your congregation is a well-self." And I know you are trying to offer them Jesus, but the best way to offer them Jesus is for you to be well, and that's my life goal. If I can help people be well, I think we increase my chance of interacting with Jesus and my chance of sharing Jesus with others in healthy and life-giving ways. It's a long answer, but that's kind of it.

Rick Callahan:
Well, it's great. Yeah. It reminds me when we do premarital counseling, when I've done it over the years, I've often would tell couples, "Hey, the best gift you can give your future spouse is the best version of you."

Steve Cuss:
Yes. Yeah.

Rick Callahan:
So let's deal with your junk now, because getting married actually is going to exacerbate it, it's not going to fix it.

Steve Cuss:
Oh, it's so good. And there's something unique about leaders and pastors where we often, I think, it really is coming from a selfless place or sometimes we're just so driven and mission-oriented, we just don't believe that taking care of ourself is a good thing to do and we focus on others, we focus on mission. So I have found some resistance when I try, particularly, those type A driven leaders, which I would describe myself as one of those people, they're like, "Oh, who has time for that?" And I'm like, "Well, if you want to lower your staff turnover, if you want to not wake up at night worrying, if you want to help your elder board be allies and not divisive, if you want to know how to dissolve resistance when you're bringing change, rather than increase it, do this work and everything gets easier."

Rick Callahan:
Yeah, it's great work. One of those axioms I've come to believe in wholeheartedly is like it or not, you reproduce who you are-

Steve Cuss:
Yes.

Rick Callahan:
... especially in organizations. I mean, I took over a church that was in a tough spot and I realized after about 18 months, I couldn't blame the last regime.

Steve Cuss:
It's very humbling to be leading long enough that you keep running into yourself and then seeing it replicate. It's the same as being a dad, you see some of your worst traits in your kids, you're like, "Ah."

Rick Callahan:
Yeah. And we all have this spider flight kind of thing, and when we want to run to something new, that the problem is we have to take ourselves with us. So it always crops back up. So Capable Life, the word capable is very intentional word for you. Talk to us a little bit about where that came from and what that means.

Steve Cuss:
Yeah. The heart of it is the first three letters C, A, P, just to remind us that we can be connected, aware, and present. What happens when we're anxious, like clinically, what happens is we're disconnected, disconnected from ourselves, we don't know what's going on in us. We're disconnected with each other, we get combative, defensive, reactive. That also means, Rick, that we're disconnected with God. And I don't mean in some salvation way, I just mean that we're no longer aware that God is with us. So connected is really important.
And then if you can be connected, then you're aware, okay, what's really going on? So one simple example would be, I'm a chronic people pleaser, I like to help people. It's not always clear to me when am I rushing in because I need to be helpful, versus when is God calling me to rush in to actually help? Really fine line there. So Capable Life is connected, aware and present, and it's simply the tools to help you cultivate your most precious relationships, your relationship with yourself, with others, with God, so that you can lower reactivity, lower irritability, so that you can become a less irritating person yourself to work with.

Rick Callahan:
Or irritated

Steve Cuss:
Or irritated. And I hope you do that in the workplace, in the home place. So my tools translate to workplace and homeplace. And so Capable Life specifically is a set of videos and self-assessments and monthly Zooms. It's kind of a whole package. And you can go on my website capablelife.me, and you can kind of see the different resources. And some of them are free, like my podcast, and then some of them are paid, and then a lot of people will bring me out or have me do a Zoom with their organization, stuff like that.

Rick Callahan:
Yeah, it's really helpful. I'm kind of a junkie of the podcast on flights and it's really, really helpful. And so, I'd encourage folks to go back and there's, what, three years worth of them now at least, right?

Steve Cuss:
Yeah. I started in November 2018, and as of right before this interview I interviewed Mike Cosper from Rise and fall of Mars Hill, wonderful interview. His will be released end of January. Yeah, it's really fun.

Rick Callahan:
Yeah. And you guys just released this summer, your wife and you, a Capable Life journal. My wife and I have been going through that this year. It's been really, really helpful for us on our journey. And then I've often heard you say, this is not the sort of material that you just read and try and digest and figure out yourself. If you don't do this with someone, it's not going to get much traction.

Steve Cuss:
Yeah. I think this is actually worth just camping on a little bit like nevermind what I'm offering and whether people pay or not, let's just talk about how we grow and change. We need four things, we need content, then we need reflection and practice. So for example, if my content is helping you notice what makes you anxious or then in the next couple of weeks, you have to intentionally put yourself in an anxious situation so you can observe yourself. So step one is content, step two is reflection and practice, step three is debrief, you have to have some kind of community to talk about it with, and then step four is just time. And so, what the good news is, obviously I have a whole set of tools, but listen, people like Pete Casero or the rooted curriculum, which is sweeping a lot of churches right now, there's so many great tools available about emotional integration and theological integration. But so long as you are debriefing, practicing and giving it time, you can change, you can be a different human being.

Rick Callahan:
Yeah, it is so helpful. And it is a marathon, not a sprint. I mentioned earlier, I was really drawn in by this thought that we could manage our anxiety. That manage word is really important because I think sometimes, at least I thought, I want to be able to live anxiety free like, "What's wrong with me? How am I not trusting God that I'm not anxious?" Could you talk to us a little bit about that?

Steve Cuss:
Oh, I love that question because in my field, systems theory, there's actually a phrase that is the most common phrase, it's called non-anxious presence. And it's all through my book. I use that phrase when I wrote, I would not use that phrase anymore, I have stopped using that phrase because non-anxious presence gives the impression that you're never anxious. But what it really is, what it's really trying to describe is you are containing your anxiety, you're not letting it run your life. So what that looks like in my life, obviously I spend a lot of time on this that looks like that I am anxious often, but I intentionally take minutes or hours to contain my anxiety, and that little taste of relief helps me be fine when I am anxious. So the fallacy is the belief that one day we will no longer be anxious, I've never met that person.
The person that tells me they're not anxious, I don't trust that person. And I also find their spouse, is your spouse nearby? Can we get a report? But what typically happens is the person who is unaware of their anxiety is often on the narcissism scale, and they are the ones that are generating the anxiety that other people are carrying. So I have to say, Rick, I have had a few church situations where it's the lead pastor that's generating the anxiety and it's the team that's carrying the anxiety and it's very difficult. So, what it's all about is noticing your anxiety, learning to name what's generating it, and then having moments of diffusion where you can connect to God or connect to human life-giving relationships and habits. And you only need to do that a few minutes a day and some intentionality every week, and it can change your life. You'll spend 80% of your life anxious, 20% free, but you'll feel free. That's been my experience.

Rick Callahan:
Yeah, that's really helpful. So most of our listeners are going to be in a church context, all of our listeners are going to be in a family context, so would you speak a little bit about how this journey has affected, transformed your ministry context and even how you function as a family?

Steve Cuss:
Yeah, wonderful question. So the science of what I teach, chronic anxiety, it's the only form of anxiety that's contagious. So if you think about, let's talk about trauma, trauma is a form of anxiety or we could talk about bipolar disorder, but those two forms of anxiety are not contagious. If you are around somebody who's been traumatized, you don't then get traumatized. But chronic anxiety, it is based on not a traumatic event, chronic anxiety is based on a false need. We all have dozens of false needs, I've already named one of mine, the need to be incessantly helpful. If you are upset, I have to anxiously calm you down so I can be calmed down. That would be a classic example. Another false need I have is I'm a chronic people pleaser, I like people to like me. So Rick, for example, if at the end of this interview we hit end, and then off the record you said, "Steve, that was just really boring and disappointing." I'd get anxious, I'd get reactive.
So my field is perceived need or false need, and that anxiety is contagious. If I walk into a room with you and three other people and I'm what's called reactive, you'll probably catch it. So we've seen this in staff meetings. This is how marriages fight is they catch each other's escalating reactivity. A little deeper, probably a little too deep for a short podcast, but over time, reactivity forms predictable patterns. So the simplest, I helped some people this yesterday, getting your kids out the door on time for school, that situation is reactivity that's formed a predictable recurring pattern. Maybe your teenager sleeps in seven minutes too long and then they come upstairs and they're late and they want you to pack their lunch when you told them to pack their lunch last night, and then you have to get more angry and then they leave, and then you don't like that you got angry. That's a predictable pattern.
So what I do is I teach people how to notice their anxiety, notice predictable patterns, and then the next step is you just take responsibility for yourself, and you say, "What would it look like if I stopped spreading it and I stopped catching it?" And just in the way that chronic anxiety is contagious, so is health. So if the key leader, mom and dad in the family, the staff, if we can be the healthiest people, we can spread health. And then over time, 18 months or longer, that's how you build healthy culture, people start catching health instead of catching reactivity. Now what you can do is in your church, you can have really difficult conversations about change. You can talk about very sensitive topics like politics, same sex attraction, pro-life, pro-choice. You can actually have these anxious conversations calmly and connected because each person is managing their reactivity and working on connection.
And I think the surprising byproduct is it radically helps our connection with God too. And so systems theory, it's a secular theory, but they point to Jesus of Nazareth as the primary example of it, which I find fascinating, that out of everyone they could choose, they say, "Boy, this guy Jesus, we don't know what his secret was, but he really lived what we teach." Well, Jesus was perfectly connected to the Father. And so you read your gospels through a systems lens and you suddenly see, "Oh wow. He was managing anxiety." Whether he would say it that way or not, he was walking into highly anxious situations. He wasn't catching it, he wasn't spreading it, he was staying true to his mission. It's beautiful.
So that's really the vision for leaders. And it takes work, it takes intentionality, it takes time, but once you do the work and then you just invite three or four others to do the work with you, you see it start to spread. And our church as example of it, we've been doing it informally and then formally for 15 or so years, we have 50 odd people who've gone through our training. That's not a lot, but that's enough, and they blank it out.

Rick Callahan:
Yeah. When you talk about Jesus, I'm just, you wonder why so many people wanted to be with Him and it was the really anxious people about losing power that couldn't handle his not being anxious about him.

Steve Cuss:
Yeah, that's right.

Rick Callahan:
Yeah. I'm curious, again, I mentioned listening to the podcast and so many gems along the way that, again, begin to be aware and learn to react differently. I was one of those guys that classic over-functioner, firstborn, type A, I just got to fix everybody's problems. I don't remember who said it, but when my wife would get frustrated, she and I talked about this a lot recently, I thinking I was helpful would be the calm one and unintentionally communicate to her, she was being irrational, which wasn't my intent. But that was the message that I was sending, where instead when I heard, "Hey, you don't have to necessarily agree, but at least match the emotion," and that tends to be much more helpful. That was a great tip for me. What are some other things that you found along the way in your own journey they're like, "Wow, I wish I would've known that 20 years ago"?

Steve Cuss:
Wow. Rick, you're asking such profound great questions. I really resonate with that because we used to say it was calm, aware, presence and then we can change it to connected, aware, presence. For this very same reason, I had some non-white people who are outraged by some systemic injustice confront me and say, "We don't need your calm, we need you to be connected to our outrage." I was like, "Wow, that's so helpful. I have the privilege of being calm." So I really resonate with what you just said. One simple tool that, let's say that most of your audience are male pastors and they're married. It is a dude thing, I'm the same way. Something I'm working on right now, Rick, to be honest, my wife Lisa has a way of communicating that sounds to me like she's wanting me to rescue her, but she's not, she's just sharing about what's going on.
I mean, we've been married 26 years and present tense, we are both together working on, and it's usually involving a technology, "I don't know how to do this," but I hear her frustration as a request and then she feels like, "Dude, don't condescend. I need to figure this out for myself." But it's incredible how anxious I get because I love to be helpful, I like to be the hero, I like to save the day. So that would be something I'm working on right now. And so, I guess the lesson for your listeners is just learn to not trust your first instinct, that's a lot of what happened in chaplaincy. And so, if you think about chaplain, social workers, counselors, critical, like Red Cross, people who go into fires and tornadoes, we've all been trained in the same thing, we've all been trained to restrain our impulses and to respond and not to react, to be deliberative, but not to rush in.
That's what I'm trying to train leaders on and I'm always working on it myself, I've never graduated from this. So that would be one tangible takeaway is don't trust your initial impulse, just sift it, ask God, "Is this what you're calling me to do?" That's where I'd start. Well, I've got others, but I also want to respect our time if you want to take it another direction.

Rick Callahan:
Yeah, that's great. I mean, that reminds me, I mean, a lot of this how we're wired, and that's part of I think the awareness. I know my personality, some people use Enneagram language, I'm an Enneagram three, I think you are too, and I'm an achiever personality. So when I'm not in a healthy space, I hear any question as criticism. And I'm married to someone who is an Enneagram language of six, and her love language is asking questions.

Steve Cuss:
And not trust in authority, if I recall on the sixth.

Rick Callahan:
Right. So I remember when we discovered it once we were actually on our way to Colorado for an extended break and somewhere in Nebraska, we got into this conversation and it took all of Nebraska, which we all know is a very long state to drive through to get on the same page with this and come up with some code language to go, "Okay, wait a second. How can you ask questions that I am not threatened by, and how can I kind of slow down and not assume I'm being questioned when you ask a question?" And it's been so healthy for us to process in that way and come up with some code words along the way so that we can say, "This is coming from me in my stuff, don't take this the wrong way." And so some of the tools that have been really helpful for me along the way, just kind of being aware. And again, I realize being aware of something doesn't fix it, you have to actually work on it. But just being aware of those things have been super helpful for me.

Steve Cuss:
My experience, whether it's in marriage or staffing, if there's high trust and high grace between you, having that conversation gives you so much room to keep making the same mistake. That's another thing we do in our church staff. For example, anybody can sit down with anybody, like an intern could sit down with me as lead pastor and say, "Steve, here's how I experienced you." And this happened to me. One of my interns sat down, she said, "Steve, you say your door is open to us interns, but you always look so busy." And I said, "I'm so glad you talked to me. I think the reason I always look so busy is I feel so busy, and I'm sorry that I'm giving you that impression because my value of an open door trumps my hurried heart. So thank you." And then I said to her, I said, "I bet it's going to take me a while to work on this, so I would be grateful if you would confront me again." And she did a couple more times.
But having that conversation, the way you guys had the Nebraska conversation, and Rick, I'm so sorry you had it in Nebraska because, I mean, we all know Colorado is God's second home. Obviously Australia is where God lives, but God does enjoy Colorado a great deal in Nebraska. Man, that's a tough place to have it.

Rick Callahan:
Well, the good news is you could put it on cruise control and lock the steering wheel, and you're probably pretty safe as long as your wheels are in alignment.

Steve Cuss:
That's true. But learning to have what we call a process conversation rather than content. I'm not going to say what he said and she said, let's talk about our pattern. Boy, that can be powerful.

Rick Callahan:
It is. Well, again, we agreed to a certain amount of time and I want to respect your time, but I'm thinking first of all, someone who's leading an organization, leading the church who's maybe been intrigued like, "Hey. Yeah, I do have at least this undercurrent of anxiety that maybe I'm not tending to very well, and it infects how I lead and how we function as a family," where would you encourage them to start?

Steve Cuss:
Great. The first step is awareness, always. And so, can you simply answer the question, how do I know when I'm anxious? That's it. And we train people to start in their body. So the second step would be, do I notice anxiety in a spinning mind, a racing heart or a tightening body? So those would be just two tangibles. Okay, how do I know I'm anxious? And there may be something more tangible, does my anxiety first show up in spending my racing heart or tightening body? Now, some people are going to say, "All of it." Nothing wrong with you if you're saying all of it, it's just means you're flooded before you're even aware. So step one is to be intentional. Just spend a few minutes each day or a few minutes each week noticing when you're anxious. Step two, it's deeper work and you might need some tools, but it's, can I name what's generating my anxiety?
So of course, this is my field, I know when I'm caught in needing to be helpful, I know when I'm in a people pleasing phase, I know about my life that if I have six projects, I'm energized, if I have three, I'm lazy, and if I have seven or more, I'm overwhelmed. So I woke up this morning, overwhelmed. I've got a book project right now, and I just woke up like, "Ah, how am I going to do all of this?" Now, old me would've just pressed on, but what I've learned to do is notice it, name it. And before I just get back on that treadmill, I just have some time with God. And it really does diffuse my anxieties. That's the third step is diffusing. Once you've noticed it and named it, you can diffuse it. And so, I really spent some time with the Lord this morning.
"What's making me anxious? I've got too many projects." That's not a false need, I really do have a lot. And so just doing some gospel exchange with the Lord, "Is that true? Is what am I believing true? Lord, remind me what's true." Now I'm able to relax into the grace of God. And then I've been pretty relaxed all day. I've got a full day-to-day, but with God, I feel very aware of God, I'm doing the best I can. So those are the three steps, notice, name and diffuse. And I think it was Curt Thompson that said, "If you can name things, you can tame things." And that's really powerful, very simple. So what I do when I travel around and speak and do workshops is I get a lot of naming in the room, a lot of people naming things sometimes for the first time.

Rick Callahan:
That's great. How about if someone is a part of a church organization and they're not the primary leader, but God is doing some work in them, how do you lead up with something like this?

Steve Cuss:
Yep, tricky. It always depends on the health of your relationship with your leader. And so, the beauty of the field that I was trained in, systems theory is it's only ever interested in taking responsibility, and it has no tolerance for blame. It might even be that you have a leader that's really unhealthy, let's even go really exaggerate, Rick, and say that maybe you have a leader that has some abusive tendencies. Let's not worry about their motive, whether they mean it or not, but let's say that maybe you're even working for a leader that has some of that. You still have a lot of freedom in taking responsibility for yourself, particularly if you are trying to take too much responsibility for him or for her. That's a common trait. A second in command leader or a leader down the chain is over functioning by worrying their way to the leader changing.
So that would be step number one is I would ask that, I hate the term, Rick, the middle manager, but that kind of person who's on the executive team or maybe a director. Here's what you can ask. Three questions, "What is mine to carry? What is theirs to carry? What is God's to carry." In that journal that you and your wife have, we actually have a whole tool where you spend all week looking at that and detangling, because a lot of what makes us anxious is we are carrying more than God ever asked us to carry. And if you're trying to change somebody by worrying about them, even that can break you free. Now, let's swing the pendulum the other way and say that actually you've got a really great relationship with a good leader, with good character and good integrity, you can invite them into the process. And the way you do it is by testifying, not accusing.
You say, "Hey, I've been on this journey, it's really helping me. You know I'm for you, I see that you are running into your yourself as well. I wonder if we could do this together, I'd love to go through this together." So those would be the two extremes. And then there's lots of room in the middle, but I don't normally recommend that you get into this in weeks and then suddenly you're inflicting it. You really want to be living with it for months, and you really do want that kind of evangelism, that's the best kind of evangelism where somebody says, "There's something different about you. What is it?" And you say, "Oh, my life has been transformed by Christ." And so you'd ideally want someone to say, "Rick, I just noticed there's account," and then you said, "Yeah, I've been doing this deeper spiritual work, and it's profound. Would do you want to know about it?"
That's usually what I'd recommend. I will say, Rick, and this is of course your field with Vanderbloemen, there are unique situations where the only option is to leave. And I trust a group like Vanderbloemen more than maybe myself, but that's true too. Sometimes the best thing to do is get out, and obviously now we're in a case by case situation, but I did want to mention that because sometimes we do fall into the trap of more of the same and try harder and we burn out. So there are occasions where just a healthy resignation is your best option.

Rick Callahan:
Yeah, that's so helpful. As a classic over-functioner, one of the sayings that I have to have be reminded of, and I have people in my life remind me of is, "Hey, Rick, not your monkeys, not your circus."

Steve Cuss:
And isn't it interesting how often we have to remember like, "I keep over functioning, it's not like I ever graduate." That's a great reminder.

Rick Callahan:
Yeah. Well, we're coming to an end. I want to make sure I give you an opportunity to share again how people can find you, what are some of the resources you have available. I'd love to have you share that before we land the plane here.

Steve Cuss:
Great. I'd love too. Yeah. So people can find me on my personal website, which is stevecusswords.com. And then from there, you can find my free and my paid resources. My free resources are primarily the podcast, and I do a lot of Twitter threads as well, where I teach people on Twitter. It's been fun to have to be concise, and then you can also access my paid resources, including if you want me to come out and serve you or your organization. Lots of options there.

Rick Callahan:
That's great. Well, it's been such a joy to be with you. If you listen to Steve's podcast, he does a gauntlet of questions for his guests, but we don't have time to do that, even though I had some, in case we did have time. So it's been such a great joy to reconnect with you having not seen you in a few years. But what a gift you are to me personally, I think, to the church, to people all over the world who are striving to be the best version of themselves and realize they don't have to do it by themselves, that not only are there tools, but of course the Holy Spirit is active at work and partnering with us to make us into the best versions of ourselves. So thanks so much. Any final word you'd like to share with people who are listening?

Steve Cuss:
Rick, I'm really grateful to connect. This has been a rich interview for me, I've loved your questions. My final word would be if leaders could just believe that God only ever expected you to be exactly human-sized and that your wellbeing with God is the best thing, you have to offer your people. If you could believe and live into that, that would be amazing.

Rick Callahan:
That's a great word to end on. Peace to my friend, it's good to see you and have an incredible 2023.

Steve Cuss:
Thanks, Rick. You too.

Christa Neidig:
Thanks for listening to the Vanderbloemen Leadership Podcast. At Vanderbloemen, we help Christian organizations build their best teams through hiring, succession, compensation, and diversity consulting services. Visit our websites, vanderbloemen.com to learn more and subscribe to our Vanderbloemen Leadership Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts to keep up with our newest episodes. Thanks for listening.