Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Manhood often feels like navigating through uncharted territory, but you don't have to walk alone. Join us as we guide a conversation about how to live intentionally so that we can join God in reclaiming the masculine restorative presence he designed us to live out. Laugh, cry, and wonder with us as we explore the ins and outs of manhood together.
Lantz Howard: Wholeheartedness, Ambition, and Personal Growth
00:00
Welcome to another episode of the Restorative Man podcast. My name is Cody Burriff. I get to be one of your hosts today and I'm joined by my buddy and coworker, Jesse French. Jesse, how are you? I'm good, Cody. How are you doing, man? I'm doing pretty good. I'm glad to be here. This is going to be fun. Yeah. Yeah. Today we get the chance to have a conversation with kind of a newer friend to Restoration Project, a guy named Lantz Howard, who's down in the Texas area. And
00:28
Just excited for a chance to be able to chat with Lantz as we've gotten to know him over the last kind of couple of weeks. It just seems like there's a ton of shared vision and shared heart. And so Lantz, thanks for joining us, man. Jesse, Cody, I'm honored to be here. I look forward to our conversation as well. Thank you. Yeah, us too. Us too. I would love to just start with a Cody Buriff special question. So we'll get to the like, it give us a little sense of who you are. But even before
00:55
Like where you live, what you actually do for your job. What do you do for fun, Lantz? Let's start there. So the real boring side of me, right? Yeah. No, no, no. So I've been married 20 years. I've got four girls. So a lot of my fun activities are around picking up panties and painting fingernails. So that is the real story. Prior to a backpacking trip back in the fall, I
01:25
ended up with plantar. I was in the pickleball rage, much like everybody else is or was. I don't know if people are still doing it. I haven't been in many months now. But really for me, this idea of having fun is just trying to be in the moment, whether it's trying to invite some guys on even just the other day texting, hey, are we going backpacking again this year? Trying to explore new adventures, new opportunities. One of my goals for 2025 is to spend more time with my mentor and go to his ranch and go fishing.
01:55
So fun in theory is like just trying to like look for the invitations of what God is up to and trying to meet him in those spaces. Yesterday our family had to drive an hour south down into the Metroplex and go to one of my daughter's basketball games and like we bought unnecessary coffee and silly cream at the grocery store at H-E-B. If y'all probably aren't familiar with H-E-B. But no, hang on. Isn't that where like, because you're in Texas and isn't like H-E-B like their commercials are legendary with the Spurs, right? Tell me.
02:24
Is this true in San Antonio? This would be the part when I'd be like, I don't know. Like I watch so limited TV, like I don't even know what a commercial is anymore. So yeah, fun is like games with the family. I mean, y'all's question is a very valid question, especially for men listening. It's the same question I asked men that I coached. It's like, what do you do for fun? And I think that looks different from season to season. I think we have to be okay with that. Yeah. Makes sense.
02:51
Well, Lantz, can you give us a little bit more background? It's like, who are you? What do you do? I know you mentioned coaching. Tell us a little bit more about yourself. Yeah, so at this current season of life, I find myself serving as a professional coach, integrating marriage therapy background alongside an executive coaching background. Prior to that was two decades of pastoral work. I've always say that like coaching's actually something I've been doing for a very long time. I mean, my first role.
03:19
post-college was coaching seventh grade boys basketball. So I think it's been this wild journey of really trying to pay attention to like, okay, how do I serve faithfully in a local church? Even though I was an accidental pastor, like I don't think I ever set my intention to be a pastor, even though I ended up doing it for 20 years, but I'm really thriving in this season of serving men primarily and their teams, senior leaders, owners, operators.
03:47
helping men to become healthy in the workplace environment versus the traditional church context where unfortunately we're just not reaching the traditional man anymore. Okay, I'm gonna chase a squirrel. I'm curious. So you said, before you got into coaching, you accidentally became a pastor for like two decades. Have you heard of this thing called people pleasing?
04:12
I think 98% of pastors out there are people-pleasers and we get into it and we don't realize it until burnout happens, right? I think some people truly have a God-ordained calling upon their life and they call it pastoral work, right? But others like myself, there's way too many stories to unpack, but there's nuances around it that I've realized that it really comes back to people-pleasing. Like I'm good with people. But...
04:41
I don't think I ever said like, I want to be a pastor. Like in eighth grade when I was 13, 14 years old, I was doing the Sunday night prayers in church. I was leading the devotionals. I was doing the little mini sermons, right? It's a small community, small church. You know, you're raising up men to do those things. And so those gifts and talents grow. And sometimes you don't know what else to do with it other than like, oh, this college is going to give you half their tuition.
05:07
Your mother is encouraging you to go there because it's going to save the family a whole lot of money. And you have this weird dynamic with your mother because of divorce. And it's like, Oh, like looking back, I actually said yes to that. And I ended up at a school that I didn't really prefer to go to, you know, because of the people-pleasing dynamics at play. So I think God used me and all those messy environments to mature me and grow me and pray by his grace and other people were influenced along the way as well.
05:37
Cool. Wow. I would love to hear more like around the people pleasing side of things. Like let's just kind of dive in. Cause that's a piece that has been true in my life that is there's a draw to like the generation of approval from other people. And so Lantz, how have you come to understand that piece of who you are? Like you kind of talk a little bit about like, Hey, I found myself in an environment where that was fed or that was supported or asked for, like as you look at your life, like
06:05
Give us a little bit of the arc of how you've, you've come to understand people pleasing because I would imagine you said it right. Like some of the men that you work with, right. That's a piece like this desire to have approval from other people. Like just in your own life. Yeah. What does that arc look like in terms of your understanding of that? Uh, that study. Here's what it sounded like today. And I'll maybe go backwards in two different coaching conversations today. I said, Hey, I have a hard stop five minutes before one.
06:34
Like right. It's very, being very clear with my intentions and purpose and boundaries of knowing what I want and ultimately what I'm going to do in this relationship. Another coaching conversation earlier today, I was like, Hey, our time's over. Like I can't keep going. You're late to the phone call. He knew he was late. I was like, I've got to go to the bathroom before my next conversation. I look forward to our next one. Right. So it really comes back down to the sense of like, be honest and truthful with yourself.
07:03
And one of my goals even for this year is to garner more respect by just sharing simple truth. Like those are so baseline fundamental boundaries that I think most people are missing. I'm super active on LinkedIn and so one of the articles I just recently posted there was about how many times do we see somebody say casually at church and be like, Hey, let's go grab a beer. You know, Friday night, Hey, let's go get lunch this week. B S stop.
07:31
like stop like the mediocre, like half truce. Like, and so probably about, about five years ago, I realized how frequent that was in conversations that I really started guarding, like what came out of my mouth, because like ultimately end up in these halfhearted relationships with people and you're not really strengthening one another. Where I need to grow right now in this season is calling people at a higher standard of being like, hey, I know that you've said this, but you really haven't followed up on it.
08:01
one of my closest relationships previously back in my ministry days. I mean, we were running together, but he didn't really honor our or reciprocate time together. And so once I noticed there was no reciprocation, uh, honoring time, uh, that I was giving to him. Like, I'm like, you know what, if he initiates again, then I'll try to honor it. But once I realized like, I'm the one always initiating this relationship, I'm like, okay, it's time to let it go and move on. So.
08:30
I think people pleasing is going to look like a lot of different things, but getting to the root of it, the story of it, wrestling with the forgiveness around it is what I really had to do in the context of my mother, in the context of a couple of different times with my wife. It's like, you know what? There's a silent bitterness and anger, resentment that's been festering and growing here. And I can't continue in this direction. And I need to extend forgiveness for whatever this story is really about. And that's part of my desire around, you know, what I call...
09:00
Wholehearted leadership is just like the more honest that we are with ourselves, the more honest we are with other people. I think it builds stronger relationships. Is it easy? No. Uh, I'm a, I'm a work in progress and I know that I still tell half truths, but I think it's up to me to figure out how much capacity I have to share full truth with other people and allow that to be reciprocated as well. Man, so I'm curious. So you, you said wholehearted.
09:27
And you know, in that context, I guess I'm wondering like, what does it look like for somebody to not be wholehearted? And what does it look like for someone to be wholehearted? What do you mean by that? Sure. Vocationally speaking, I think is how most men see it or experience it. At least that's how it showed up for me. Even a couple of coaching clients or anticipated coaching clients typically come through the door because it's a vocational strain. Right?
09:56
that they have ended up in a VP of an organization because they're high achieving, they're people pleasing, they know how to work the board, they know how to work the relationships, and next thing you know, they're making $300,000 a year, and they're like, man, how did I even get here? This is not who I am. And so, wholehearted for most men, I think is gonna show up in the context of their vocation first. The downstream effect of that is that they take on coping mechanisms that are unhealthy.
10:25
right? Whatever that coping mechanism is for me, it's the passive aggressive, withdrawing from meaningful, enriching conversation with my wife. For others, it's going to be like numbing activities, uh, whether it's substance abuse, whether it's pornography. So I think oftentimes we're going to notice it in the downstream effect. And then we have to figure out all the convoluted spaces of like, do I really want to have the courage to move forward in my life to say, you know what? I don't need X amount of money.
10:54
live a spacious life? How do I actually create a lifestyle that has more freedom and impact and influence if it means that we have to downsize our house and have to sell a different car? So I think that's ultimately what I'm trying to help other men pursue. And then finally, of course, the last pieces of this is the relationship that we have with our father. You know, I mean, over and over, especially in so many Old Testament stories, you see this echo of wholeheartedness that he's yearning for.
11:21
And this pursuit of like, man, just be fully devoted to me. You know, even in Colossians comes to mind is like, whatever you do, do it with all your might, right? Not, not for men. So there's probably a lot of nuance around that, but that's primarily how I experience it most of the conversations that I have. What would you, and I appreciate you saying that, right? Like there is, there's nuance, there's depth. Uh, there's layers to it for sure. What would you say?
11:45
Maybe to someone who hears this phrase of wholehearted, maybe for the first time, and there's like, Hey, there's, there's a desire for that or some intrigue around like living from an integral whole place of who they are. Obviously there's a ton of work and time needed to embrace that. But like, what would you say, Lantzr, some of just some of the first kind of dump, first few dominoes that kind of need to fall into place in the pursuit of that in our lives as men?
12:15
struggle is to always see ourselves the way that God currently sees us. He sees us as the righteous beloved sons of his. So I think when I'm personally out of alignment it's because I'm not spending time in the Word. It's because I'm not spending time journaling. It's not because I'm not spending time worshiping. And even even going back to the fun equation during my burnout season you know hindsight basically a three-year period that I look back now and I'm like
12:45
man, I didn't do one triathlon, marathon, Spartan, like whatever it was, I didn't have any extra curricular adventure upon my life in that season, right? Four girls, super overwhelming, took on an executive role at church. And so I think that's an aspect of this wholehearted conversation. But I think ultimately, whatever we need to do to come in alignment with seeing ourselves the way that God sees us, I believe that happens really, really good in the context of other
13:14
men, especially men that are probably a couple of seasons ahead of us that have some maturation upon them that can reflect back to us what we don't even see in ourselves. I mean, I'm just incredibly indebted to three or four mentors I've had over the last two decades that have just reflected back the sense of like, oh, this is a path that you're on. It's a good path. It's hard, but they speak life and vision and purpose in me when I can't even see it myself.
13:44
Yeah, I love that. We kind of talk about that sometimes. Say like as men, we can't see our own faces and we need our brothers to like call out, you know, God is his glory that is in us. Remind us of the gospel, you know, instead of like an accountability, like, hey, this is how I send this week. It's like more of like an accountability to who I actually am. And I need that reminder all the time. It's interesting, too, Lantz.
14:13
I appreciate what you said about like our identity as beloved sons and then the brotherhood piece that, Koda, you're touching on too. Because in both of those examples, like those are relationally based, right? Like I love that you didn't say, hey, the first step is to just like white knuckle it and figure your like 30 point checklist out and bust your butt. Like you said, no, it actually wholeheartedness is framed in the understanding of our identity as a beloved son.
14:42
It's fed and nourished by deep relationships with other men. And I think that just is so counter, right? Like how you just gave the example, right, of guys that you coach, right, who climb the ladder who are, I'm sure, incredibly driven, hardworking guys and reap the benefit of that from a certain paradigm. But what you're saying is like, no, actually this journey towards wholeheartedness is not
15:12
your steely work ethic. Our identity is actually formed more by the significant relationships we're in. Even on that, just for a moment, just reflecting back eight plus years ago now, I was withdrawing from men in my life because I wasn't doing anything morally wrong. I wasn't sinning, but I didn't know who the safe people were in my corner because I had been betrayed by people and colleagues at work.
15:41
I think if anything for anybody's listening, if there's a sense of fear, if there's a sense of shame, if there's a sense of like, I don't have safe people in my life, then you need to fight to find those safe people. Because I probably could have saved myself a little bit of heartache if I were to work a little bit harder being like, you know what, instead of pissing on this relationship, I could probably fight to try to find somebody a little bit safer. Like right, like in just honor, like it is what it is. Like I don't know what to do with it.
16:11
but I can at least own my part of it and go find someone safe to talk to about this current struggle. Okay, I wanna push in a little bit more there because you've kind of danced around it a little bit. You mentioned, you know, a burnout season. You've talked about, you know, different things from several years ago, you know, and even on your website, in your about section, you're talking about experiencing a painful wilderness season that kind of shifted life for you.
16:36
Can you kind of step back and paint a little bit of a picture of like, what was going on? What was this season? What happened? Sure. So in particular, right, goes back to my pastoral story, jumping into it. I got my marriage and family therapy from Las Vegas, moved back to Texas, couldn't pass the exam. I was like, I don't know what to do. And so I just surrendered to the Lord. All right, I'll just stay in ministry a little bit longer. Well that really just turned into this kind of sense of resentment. Because I...
17:04
14 plus years ago, I said, man, I want to do something like John Eldridge meets a John Maxwell. I didn't know what that meant. I didn't know what that looked like, but I think it really meant that you've got to get beat up a little bit and have some gray hair. So the only thing I could really make at the time of that is that it looks like the traditional church context. And so for girls, family, the only path I knew what to do next was like, well, I'll just go be an executive minister. Like, right?
17:32
There's an executive in front of the title. So surely they make more money. So there was, yeah, got that nice percent and a half bump, you know, so, uh, yeah, lucrative, but even with that, the irony is like, I had conversations with men of like, I want to do executive coaching and like, I didn't really have that sense of going back to wholehearted, I didn't have that sense of conviction or seeing myself in that light.
18:01
to really go after it and pursue it. I thought, I was like, oh, I've got to have the title, I've got to have the data, the excels, and I've got to do the deal before I go on to do what I really want to do. And I think it's C.S. Lewis that talks about half-hearted creatures, slinging mud pies in the slum or whatever. So I think that's what actually ended up happening to me. I ended up playing the victim role of realizing that I was half-hearted and these other people were the problem. Yes, I mean, the organization
18:31
as a whole, I mean, it went from X number to three fourths of that over the time period I left, other people left, other people left. I mean, there was unhealth happening, but my passive aggressive, quote unquote, in that season, I was like jumping out of faith, right? But I didn't really have the courageous, crucial conversations that I needed to have that I should have honored other people with having. One in particular conversation really just festering me for six plus months.
19:01
instead of trying to be like, man, that just didn't settle with me. I need to sleep on that for 48 hours, 72 hours, and I need to go have that conversation. So I think when those things start to happen in somebody's life, you need to lock arms with other people that can hold you up to go do the hard work and necessary work to honor yourself and to serve other people with the gospel and out of truth and grace as well. So this is a, we were talking about it before we hit record and
19:29
This is sort of a selfish question. So that's why I'm going to ask it. It's like the joys of being a host. So coaching, Jesse. That's right. You can, you can coach me up here, Lantz. No, I, one of the things that just stuck out as it was kind of got to you a little bit is just the way that you have talked about this idea of ambition and like men that you work with and like understanding ambition.
19:53
And I'd love to just like throw that concept out because in here, like, hey, how do you maybe even just start? Like, how do you hold that in your own life? Because for me, that word ambition is one that just it feels like it has a very narrow understanding and a very narrow lens of like the only category I have for that is this like complete self-serving, selfish motivation for like climbing the ladder. Right. And certainly I think that can be true.
20:20
But I'd love to hear your thoughts, Lantz, like as you've been in conversations with men that are wrestling with ambition in their own life, trying to hold that well as you, I'm sure in your own life are seeking to hold that in a healthy way. Yeah. Love to hear thoughts on ambition. Like what, what ready go fire away. I'm all yours. Uh, go get John Tyson's book, fighting shadows. He has a whole chapter about ambitions. There we go. And all, and all sincerity. I mean, John and I had a conversation about it several months ago, but.
20:50
I think what really comes to mind for me is gratitude and working out of a posture of gratitude because we are of Adam, right? So Adam was put in the garden to work and work is worship. Unfortunately, our culture has idolized and romanticized this idea of the glitz and the glam and the fame and the money and all those things. But I think just coming back to this sense of gratitude of like, man, I get...
21:20
wake up and go serve these people and love these people and help these people become a reflection of who God has called them to be in this XYZ environment. And so I think just trying to hold that ambition in a sense of that space of gratitude because it is, I mean, I wrestle with it. My wife wrestles with it. We talk about this idea of contentment. Like what does contentment look like? Because every man that I know has a number in their head that if you ask them of like, hey, what's the income that you want? Like, right? And so
21:50
That's the first posture I would really come at it with is like, okay, gratitude first, then let's try to figure out the genesis of our story is really like work is worship. And so let's serve out of that posture. And then let's just get our lives in alignment with whatever that assignment is that God has downloaded upon us. Just be faithful to walk in that. I think just for me personally, it's okay to make quick decisions and move on, like letting go of things and if it's not working out.
22:17
But yeah, holding ambition loosely with a sense of gratitude is what I'd finally say. But even when you teed me up for that earlier, sorry, nothing like being like, oh, that's the final thing I would say. I think we have to, I think we have to be aware too of like how ambition shows up in other spaces of we can put the fig leaf on whether it's me pursuing another Spartan race, it's like, okay, why do you want to do another one? Right.
22:44
you know, other buddies, they want to go on another hunting trip to get another 12 point buck. Like, why? Like, right? So I think we have to be honest with ourselves about, okay, what is driving this belief? Okay, what is driving that desire? Those aren't wrong, but let's check our motivations about are we sacrificing other relationships in pursuit of something else that ultimately has become an idol, but we're calling it good. And so I think going back to surrounding.
23:13
brothers in our life to call us up higher would be a good word. Yeah. I feel like it does shift, or at least my vantage point shifts when you begin to ask that question that you just said of like, what is prompting this? Like, what is the deeper desire to like kind of mine at that? Right. And it begins to open it up to say, Hey, you know, in that desire for the next 12 point buck, like is.
23:39
Like I actually want to share camaraderie with other people in the midst of that. Right. Or like whatever it is, right. But to unpack and dig at that deeper, I think then begins to shift it, right. To say, okay, the, the desire that is feeling this, like, let's actually sit with that and let's actually be curious around that. And I think, like you said, right. To be able to articulate, Hey, there's a deep desire for belonging or for connection, right? Like, let's call that good, right? Like, of course the expression of that, the pursuit of that, right. Let's examine that. But I think that.
24:08
At least for me, when the desire within that ambition can be examined, it feels like it starts to open up and be seen in a broader way than just this, you know, narrow selfish thing. That's good. Yeah, I feel like there's a lot of the, you know, again, nuance and just there's kind of this tension between like a, you know, ambition and desire in that way. There's like holy dissatisfaction. There's like, you know, desires and needs and wants.
24:37
trying to tease that out, like, because the reality is, is like, motivations are mixed all the time. Like no matter what, you've got lots of motivations and some of them are good and some of them aren't. And so just even being able to be honest about that. And then Jesse, like you're saying, curious about some of those motivations and what's really going on under the surface. I would add even just as we talk further, this is fun having three people on a conversation. Even the idea of ambition of around how we pursue
25:07
our wives, right? And the pursuit of, am I really pursuing her, loving her, trying to allow her to become a radiant reflection? And in particular, here's what I'm trying to get at is like, what happens to your ego when that ambition is pursuing her for sexual preference desire or want? And she says no, like, right? Are you able to hold that very
25:37
two-year-old that gets hurt and wounded because of some previous story and then go and pout for the next three days and then you are like fighting and you're like, all I wanted was this, right? And so ambition is going to show up in many different ways. And I think if we're really trying to keep unpacking the layers of stories that God is trying to wrestle through and mature us in, you know, it's a wild adventure out there, especially in the context of the person that we love the most that has the most power to hurt us as well.
26:07
Which feels like it connects a little bit to what we were talking about being wholehearted, right? Like this willingness to excavate and wonder around what our motivations are as complex and layered as those are, right? But to sit in that place, especially with ourselves, like such a risky and hard thing to do, but ultimately is like some of that journey towards living from a whole and centered place, right? To be able to go through the messy hard work of that alongside people that are closest to us.
26:37
Yeah, feels good. And then just because she says no, right? Just because you don't get the raise at work does not mean that you're broken. Like right? Like I, I've been very fragile at times and seasons in my life and I'm like, oh man, I have so much more work to do. Yeah, I hear you. We're accepting members. Yes. Let's form a club.
27:06
Lantz, I'd love to, as we kind of wrap up, like, how can guys find you? How can they connect with the work that you're doing? Yeah. Tell us some, some on ramps there. Yeah. So LantzHoward.com L-A-N-T-E-Z Howard.com. I'm active on LinkedIn daily. If you want to find tidbits and fun insights and join the conversations there. Wholehearted Leader is the name of the podcast. I have wild, amazing, fun conversations. Most excited about one coming up with Henry Cloud.
27:35
So yeah, things are rocking and rolling and I'd be honored to serve anybody listening in a powerful conversation to help them figure out their next growth phase. And if there's any synergy after that, we can talk about a partnership. Cool. Lantz, thank you for giving us some of your time. It's been a really fun conversation. I know we kind of, you know, worked our way around some things and it was really fun. Thank you. So thanks. Well, I'm honored by you guys and keep up the good work. Thanks, Lantz. Take care.