How To: Building Relationships That Last
Today, we’re talking to Dr. Calvin Tibbs, pastor of Kingdom Dominion Church and CEO of Daylight Ministries. We will be discussing the topic of ‘How To Building Relationships That Last’. We will talk about how to bridge generational relationship gaps within communities, and how different generations can help each other in their relationship development. In addition, this episode focuses on discovering your life’s purpose and how building strong relationships is a crucial part of that. Dr. Calvin is an expert on understanding how to get different generations to work together in building impactful relationships.
The conversation highlights the particular skillsets of millennials to impact previous generations in the areas of technology. We further discuss how previous generations should be walking along side young adults to assist with life decisions they have already made.
Join us as we talk about the keys to relationship building, as well as, how to fulfill our life’s purpose together as a generationally diverse society.
Building Up Relationship Conversation Transcript:
Brent: I believe that social media may give us a facade of relationships to a certain degree and make us feel like we have relationships, but stop short of actual strong relationship development.
Dr. Calvin Tibbs: Relationships don’t work like that. They are a paint drying exercise, and sometimes that paint smells. So this generation has to connect with the older generation who might be a little bit slower, but they garner a whole lot of insight.
Brent: Welcome to the Lead With Relationship Podcast. Today, we’re talking to Dr. Calvin Tibbs, pastor of Kingdom Dominion Church and CEO of Daylight Ministries. Besides being a dedicated husband, father and grandfather, he has written four books, received a Doctorate in Ministry, and has a passion for helping younger generations build better relationships.
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Dr. Tibbs. It is great to have you on the show. I know some of the things that you focus on specifically is helping millennials and younger generations really develop in relationships.
And that’s something that we talk a lot about here and a conversation that I love to start out on is something that you see younger generations not doing really well right now, generationally in relationships. And that also something that you see may be getting right, right now, let’s kick off with that.
What are your thoughts?
Dr. Calvin Tibbs: First of all, thank you for having me. I’m so honored to be here today. It’s interesting that the generations are different. There are five generations on the planet right now at the same time you have the 80 plus year olds, the silent generation. Then you have baby boomers following them generation X, millennials.
And then generation Z. So the Z folks are pushing the envelope and they’re really pushing millennials of all things. Millennials in terms of relationships have looked at their parents and they’ve seen some things and because of what they have seen, they’ve made some conclusions and those conclusions are based in part on a generation, the baby boomers who have worked so hard.
It’s the largest amount of income than any generation in the history of them keeping this has ever been able to make. Some of that may have been at the expense. Of those millennials, those young children growing up, maybe mom and dad, weren’t at home as much as perhaps in previous generations.
And they have a thought about how that works and it affects their relationships sometimes adversely because of what they’ve seen. And now we have to see if we can come alongside the millennials and help them out.
Challenges Of Relationship Building
Brent: I love that, something that I think is particularly challenging for millennials and below that was maybe not present with some of the other generations that you just mentioned is social media and other types of media just being thrown at us and very unique ways and being thrown at us in a constant stream.
And one thing that I wonder about, and I don’t know a lot about this, but I do wonder if that impacts our ability to develop relationships in the same way that older generations do, because I believe that social media may give us a facade of relationships to a certain degree and make us feel like we have relationships, but stop short of actual strong relationship development.
Do you have any thoughts on that?
Dr. Calvin Tibbs: I couldn’t agree with you more. In fact, that’s quite insightful that things move slowly for generation for the baby boomers. It just moves slow. I remember when black and white televisions were real and I remember the first color television I saw. So if you’re talking about just the movement of technology from then to now, This generation is raised as of course, digital natives and a lot of folks who were older, just like their relationship ships were slower in concert with technology.
The folks today they’re moving that thing along. And I think what we need is a blend of both. We need the experience of those who used to watch paint dry, and we need the current knowledge of those who can make paint dance. We need both to come together in order for it to work, because we really do require, regardless of where we live in the world, we need to be able to discern what we’re really looking at.
And with so many images thrown at us, we get used to just looking at things in the next and the next things. But relationships don’t work like that. They are a paint drying exercise, and sometimes they paint that smells. So this generation has to connect with the older generation who might be a little bit slower, but they get, they garner a whole lot of insight because that generation is already seeing where the bones are buried, as they call it.
Brent: That is really powerful and insightful. And something that I think is easy to overlook is just the impact that both generations can have on each other. I think a lot of times we get siloed in our own generations and we forget to reach out generationally and pull other people into our space.
And you mentioned technology. I think that there are some unique ways younger generations can maybe help other generations in technology because we’re native at that. And that’s the way that we can impact with our own unique skills. And there’s so many life skills that we need to learn that we needed to develop in.
I think a lot of younger generations either have not realized the importance of having that in their life, or they don’t have the opportunity to really have that in their life. They haven’t gotten plugged into a community group that has a diversity in age. And I think that is something that we should be talking about more is the importance of having diversity in age, in your life.
Dr. Calvin Tibbs: It’s a great point. And I often try and forge those relationships and there is the built in tension that exists. I remember talking to a millennial, a guy who’s very talented musically. And I asked him, would he mind having those conversations with some people who are older? And he said, if they would only listen, and I thought that was compelling.
Because what he basically said was I don’t matter to them. So my words don’t have a place in their priority. And so I went to some of the older people and I said, this young guy over here said that he doesn’t matter to you as far as he’s concerned. And then the other person says they don’t listen. So what this tells me is you have the need of listening skills.
From millennials to baby boomers and perhaps silent generation as well, generation individuals as well. And we’ve got to find a way to let love out in that way, because. Love is patient more than it is passion. And because patience is necessary, whether you are a parent with a young child or you’re in a brand new relationship and you just hit those white waters, if you will.
And it’s pretty rough patients is going to be the key that takes the person through. And so young and old need a good dose of it.
Setting Goals For Relationship Building
Brent: Oh, I love that. Something else that I think quite a bit about is just. The way that we use relationships from a leadership perspective. And I know that you’ve got some great content out there on your YouTube channel and some other information talking about this topic, I’d love to dive into that just a little bit from a leadership perspective, how can we take relationships? How can we use that to power our career, power our friendships, power our marriages, whatever our relationships may be. How can that be used as a tool to really drive leadership specifically forward in a new way?
Dr. Calvin Tibbs: That’s a very good question, because when you consider, unfortunately, more people go to the graveyard full, then go to the graveyard empty. And because many people go to the graveyard for. The graveyard is one of the wealthiest places in the planet, in every state, in every city around the world, because they did not dispense, they didn’t leave behind everything that was in them.
And so then you have a generation that has to start all over based upon information that was already available. So we were really talking about how do you build those bridges from a leadership standpoint, to capture the fullness of things that a new generation needs. So that there’s not this gap between the learning curve of the next generation, because this existing force of people who could share isn’t sharing.
So we have to literally find a way to make both groups understand their value, because they both bring a brotherhood to the conversation and to the relationship the youth bring the vigor and the older people for what it’s worth, bring the wisdom. And of course there’s wisdom in the youth and there’s some bigger than the older person.
Systemically, the younger person has more life and more energy. The older person has perhaps more wisdom and more experience. This is the perfect opportunity and people can just yield a little bit and see the value in both groups, because until the value bridge has been built, the young won’t walk across it.
And the old won’t walk across it, the young, because the oldest to slow and the old, because the youngest too fast, but we’ve got to find a way to see the value. And I have some ideas about, how to get that done as well.
How To Find Purpose Of Life
Brent: Why is that so hard for us to pick up just as humans, right? Why is it so hard for us to realize that?
And I think a lot of us do realize it maybe much later in life, but we spend a lot of our life maybe wondering around how to create purpose in our life, how to create value, how to create fulfillment in our life. And that’s a lot about what you just mentioned was that we get to the end points of our life.
And a lot of us still are unfulfilled or we just get to that point feeling fulfilled. Is that a human nature thing you think? Is that just something that we have to learn and develop or what’s going on there?
Dr. Calvin Tibbs: It’s interesting. We could do a whole show and a whole series on this answer.
So I’m going to make it as short as I can, the way we consider it in terms of the development of purpose development, which is a complete different training that, that we use. And we focus on there’s something called purpose deficit disorder. PDD is the culprit behind why people groups don’t see value in people groups.
It’s the reason that racism can exist. It’s not because any particular group is better than, or worse than there’s a lack of purpose in the group. And if I don’t recognize the purpose in another individual, then I am bound to ignore the value of the hidden asset. Inside of that person and vice versa.
If the individual doesn’t see my value, then the hidden assets will never get exchanged. Why is that? Because the purpose deficit is a disease. It’s a mental disease, it’s a disease of the soul. And so if those soul of the individual cannot recognize the value in another person, the reason for that is the individual is suffering from a deficit.
And understanding how purpose works.
Brent: I appreciate that. I have never heard it explained like that before, and I think that rings true in a very logical way. I know one thing that you do talk about and I’ve read some of your content specifically about finding purpose through your life and creating a life that you can feel proud of. And one of the things that I thought was really neat that you talk about is that we have multiple purposes and I’ve also, never heard it explained that way as well. And I love that concept. I love the route. You’re going down with that.
And I would love for you if you would, just to explain that concept to our audience a little bit.
Dr. Calvin Tibbs: It’s and I remember the day when this happened, I was just thinking about purpose and how it works. And people think it’s a missions trip, or it’s a particular way that they work. And the thought just came like I was drinking water, purpose is not like looking for a needle in the haystack.
Purposes the haystack. And when I heard that in my mind, I’m like, wow, that’s really true. And it’s really cool this way, whether I am a parent of, or I am a husband or a business person or someone in the community, I literally find that the haystack is everywhere because I can be what I, whatever I’m supposed to be on any front that fits what’s inside of my heart to be.
So I can literally be a great father, a great businessperson, a great community leader and just a great friend. I can be all of that because purpose runs across the landscape of every area of our lives. When purpose is not presented as the opportunity that it is, then it can not show up in the strength that it brings.
And I’ll talk a little bit about what’s called meaning making, which is connected to purpose and it changes lives when people can make meaning in their purpose across those landscapes can be easily traversed. We’ll just say, okay.
Brent: Yeah, we’ll talk about that. That sounds really interesting. What would be your insight?
Dr. Calvin Tibbs: There’s a man who is retired from Harvard university and his name is Victor Frankl. Viktor Frankl was a Holocaust survivor. And when he finished with all of them, that, and the war was over and he made his way to Harvard and he went into the psychological evaluation department. They began to talk about things that were already in place concerning how they felt people did what they did.
He turned it all on his head. He said, here is the reason that people do what they do now. He has, in his case, real life experience of family members being killed friends being killed. And somehow they have to be a will to live. He called that meaning making and meaning making he called it a skill and meaning-making is connected to value.
If a person cannot assign value to what they are thinking. It has no meaning. The second component of meaning-making is meaning has to be connected to belief. So if you connect belief to value, you just make meaning. So things that are meaningless to people have no value. That’s the reason, why people in some regards couldn’t care less about money.
They don’t want to do the money thing. The management piece of it, because money to them has no value since it has no value, they don’t believe it has meaning. And so to whatever extent they struggle, or it’s just difficult to be honest about the requirement there.
On the other hand, you have folks that money means a lot to, and therefore they value it. Those who value it tend to save because there is a meaning connected to saving. So when meaning and value come together, It causes what Victor Frankl said, a value loop. And it’s inside of that loop that when people can live their lives, come up with a reason to keep going.
They come up with a reason to add value. They come up with a reason to believe they come up with a reason to have worth. And when people live their life on that track, if you will, they can do anything. And their purpose comes alive. They’re never without purpose. They’re never in a deficit of what they should be doing.
Relationship Building Objectives For Work And Life
Brent: Again, I have never heard that explained that way before, that answers a lot of questions. I love talking about value creation. I love talking about how people view their own personal uniqueness within their value creation and that just hits so close to home.
And that’s actually a great lead in to one of the other things I’d love to hear you talk about, and that is the different types of relationships in our lives, specifically from a career to a personal relationship. Often people I believe can be really good at one and not that great at the other. And so I would love to hear your interpretation of how we connect the two, how we connect the dots.
Maybe there’s people out there that are really excelling in relationships at work within their career, but they are having trouble really making their personal relationships, really making their personal life fulfilling. I believe that you uniquely have some great insight into that, and I would just love to hear your thoughts.
Dr. Calvin Tibbs: It’s interesting that you’re right. It’s like people put on the Superman Cape and they take the Superman Cape off. And it just depends on the version of themselves that shows up and what’s going to cause the existence. Compare to the performance to be what we, if you will, are hoping for. I want to use that term that’s inside of corporations, which is the KPIs and everyone understands the key performance indicators and how that’s fed.
And often companies drive their expectations based upon the key performance indicators. But what’s very rarely looked at is something called the K E I. The K E Is affect the K P Is because the K E I S is what’s happening in the existence of the person. If the person’s key existence indicators are low because they’re having domestic problems, they are sick.
They’re fearful. They’re stressed out that. K E I is the exact connection. To their performance, but what companies normally look at is you’re not performing, right. And so they crack the whip. You better do better. And here’s a write-up or here’s a deduction or whatever. The reason why they crack the whip is because they don’t know how to crack the code.
The code is the purpose of the individual that’s going on and what’s inside of them in terms of the existence requires inquiry. It requires interest, human engineering, caring, what’s wrong, what’s happening. And from there, we can build a bridge to a better performance, but a better performance is not sustainable.
If the existence of the person is lower than the expectation that has been set for them inside of the company.
Brent: Wow. That is profound. I really appreciate that explanation. I think a lot of this is just something that we haven’t heard of before we haven’t heard it explained in this way before. I do want to talk about, I know you have a book coming up soon, and I want to talk about that just for a second, because I know it will have some amazing content in there. I’m going to, I believe it is called Running Laps. Is that correct?
Dr. Calvin Tibbs: That is correct. Running Labs is a book that is designed to help people bring content to life.
You look at America around the world, we’re considered the entertainment capital of the world. I don’t know if we really want that distinction, but we have it. Contents coming at us at such alarming rates video content things. We can see audio things we can hear, and even things that we pay attention to where both of our sets of senses are engaged.
So when you consider how much content comes into a person’s life, the question is how much of that comes to life? It just depends on how much they cognitively hold on to. And some. Subliminal. And some of it is more more direct in terms of the cognition. What this book is all about is how do you take content and bring it to life.
There ought to be something that clicks inside of the individual to help them bring the content of being kind and being fun to life. This book is about that. How do you do what you do when you’re sitting in front of reading or listening to content? And so Running Laps helps people bring content to life.
Brent: Oh, that’s perfect. And that leads right back into what we started talking about at the beginning of social media and being able to really handle that better in our life, especially for younger generations. So I encourage people to go check that book out. Will it be I’m assuming on Amazon?
Dr. Calvin Tibbs: Yeah, it’s going to ultimately be on Amazon. New degree press is where they’re going to be able to find it as well. And for all the authors out there, I highly encourage you to check out new degree press because. They helped bring the story out in a very compelling way through a class, believe it or not at Georgetown university.
And I never thought I would be in a class that leads to the writing of a book the way they construct it. But I love it. I know that I’m going to end up writing another one, but through that, this is actually my fifth book, but I think I really want to just let this would work now. Cause it’s a lot to get done.
But it’s one of the greatest feelings that a person could get. If they can just put the thing together and new degree press helps them to get that done.
Brent: Oh, that’s awesome. I, for one am excited for it to come out. Dr. Tibbs, it has just been a pleasure to have you on amazing conversation. I appreciate your insight.
I encourage all of our listeners to go check out your content, look for your book when they come out. And again, thank you so much for coming on, Dr. Tibbs.
Dr. Calvin Tibbs: Thank you so much. It was my pleasure and enjoyed every minute of it.
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