Leadership Sovereignty Podcast: Career Growth and Promotion

Most professionals say yes to everything — and wonder why they never get promoted.

In this episode of the Leadership Sovereignty Podcast, host Ralph Owens and co-host Terry Baylor sit down with Rob Zelinka, veteran CIO with over 30 years of enterprise leadership experience, to tackle one of the most misunderstood career skills: saying no strategically at work.

Rob breaks down why professionals at every level are afraid to say no, what that fear is actually costing them, and how the most promotable leaders have learned to redirect without resisting — protecting their highest-impact work while building credibility with senior leadership in the process.

Ralph shares a candid story about learning grace toward a father who didn't believe in the traditional college path, and Rob delivers one of the most powerful closing stories of the season — a moment 30 years in the making between a son and his father. The conversation goes beyond strategy into the human side of leadership that no one talks about.

If you have been saying yes to everything and still not moving up, this episode will change how you think about your career.

What you will learn in this episode:
  1. Why professionals are afraid to say no — and what that fear is really about
  2. The difference between being productive and being promotable
  3. How to redirect without resisting — protecting your priorities without damaging relationships
  4. What "steady Freddys" are and how leaders identify who is truly ready to grow
  5. How saying no to the wrong thing is actually saying yes to the right thing
  6. Why building psychological safety and trust is what makes your no respected
  7. How your response to adversity — not the adversity itself — defines your leadership

This episode is for you if:
  • You feel overwhelmed by requests and don't know how to push back without political fallout
  • You are working hard but not getting recognized for promotion
  • You lead a team and want to model strategic thinking over reactive busyness
  • You are navigating the shift from individual contributor to executive leader
  • You want to build the kind of credibility that gets you promoted before you ask for it

👤 Rob Zelinka's Guest Profile


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🧾 Chapters
  • (00:03) - Introduction to Career Growth
  • (02:02) - The Fear of Saying No
  • (04:53) - Strategic Thinking in Leadership
  • (07:52) - Building Psychological Safety
  • (11:57) - The Jedi Mind Trick of Leadership
  • (13:13) - Productivity vs. Promotability
  • (15:47) - Leadership Styles and Growth
  • (18:32) - The Power of Belief
  • (21:15) - Lessons from Parenting
  • (25:01) - A Father's Pride
  • (30:02) - Forgiveness and Understanding
  • (30:58) - Closing Thoughts and Resources



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📄 Full Episode Transcript




Creators and Guests

Guest
Rob Zelinka
Rob Zelinka is a transformational CIO and senior technology executive with over three decades of experience leading enterprise-wide digital, cloud, and operational strategies. Most recently, he served as Vice President & Chief Information Officer at Jack Henry, where he oversaw technology strategy and operations at one of Forbes’ Best Places to Work. His career also includes transformative leadership roles at TechnipFMC and PROS, where he drove operational rigor, digital innovation, and large-scale technology transformations across global organizations. Recognized as a three-time Orbie CIO finalist and active member of the WSJ CIO Council and CNBC Technology Executive Council, Rob is a trusted voice in the future of leadership and technology. He serves on multiple advisory boards, guiding executives and organizations through disruption, growth, and cultural reinvention. Today, Rob channels his experience into advisory services, thought leadership, and leadership development. Through his Leadership, Life & Legacy platform—including his YouTube channel—he shares practical insights, personal reflections, and lessons learned from both the boardroom, the baseball field, and beyond. A former professional umpire,Rob uses sports metaphors and storytelling to illuminate the human side of leadership, helping others lead with clarity, courage, and connection. At the core of Rob’s work is a belief that transformation begins not with technology, but with people. His approach blends strategic insight with relational intelligence, empowering leaders to build resilient cultures, elevate others, and leave a legacy that lasts.

What is Leadership Sovereignty Podcast: Career Growth and Promotion?

The Leadership Sovereignty Podcast, hosted by Ralph E. Owens II and co-hosted by Terry Baylor, is a career acceleration platform

Leadership isn’t just a skill — it’s a career strategy for professionals seeking growth, influence, and promotion.

Hosted by Ralph Owens, Chief Information Officer, and Terry Baylor, CEO of a healthcare technology startup, the podcast delivers practical, real-world leadership strategies you can apply immediately. Each episode focuses on increasing visibility, navigating corporate dynamics, preparing for promotion, and leading beyond your title.

Expect short, high-impact conversations designed to help you think, act, and position yourself like a senior leader before you’re given the title.

You’re not just an employee. You’re the CEO of your career.

New episodes are released bi-weekly.

Rob Zelinka:

I think there's a difference between being productive and promotable.

Ralph Owens:

If you're a professional who constantly delivers results but keeps getting passed over for a promotion, this episode is gonna change the way you think about your career. Rob Zelinka is a CIO who spent thirty years leading enterprise technology teams, who learned the hard way that being the hardest worker in the room is not what always gets you to the next level. Today, he breaks down the strategic skills that separate people who do great work from the people who actually get promoted for it. By the end of this conversation, you have a framework for saying no at work that protects your priorities, builds credibility with your leadership, and positions you as the strategic thinker that they want to promote. Welcome to the Leadership Sovereignty Podcast, where professionals learn to navigate challenges at work through the power of leadership principles.

Ralph Owens:

I'm Ralph Owens, Chief Information Officer in the financial services industry, alongside my co host Terry Baylor, the CEO of a healthcare tech startup. Together we've spent decades building teams, transforming organizations and coaching individuals through the moments that define their careers. We unpack the mindset, strategies, and habits that help you lead with confidence, expand your influence, get promoted, and increase your income. Now let's dive into today's episode.

Rob Zelinka:

Yeah. Patty Alarillo, is is the person that mentored me. She's written several books. Just a spectacular leader. She is so versed and skilled at getting the most out of people.

Rob Zelinka:

And here's the challenge, the higher up you go in your career, the more prone you are to this, for lack of a better word, godlike concept. Hey, I got here. You know? I know what I'm doing. Sometimes we need to be humbled, and Patty was the person that humbled me at a stage in my life where I needed to be humbled.

Ralph Owens:

Wow. Wow. That's heavy. That's heavy. Thank you for sharing that.

Ralph Owens:

That's awesome. That's awesome. Let's move on to the next point. How to say no at work without hurting your career. This is a good one.

Rob Zelinka:

Is a

Ralph Owens:

good one. Is a good one, because a lot of people fall into that trap of, I gotta say yes to everything. Otherwise, they're gonna look at me as incompetent, or that I'm not good enough for the role, and things of that nature. Rob, why are professionals so afraid to say no in the workplace?

Rob Zelinka:

Yeah. Well, Ralph, it's basic fear. No one wants to be viewed as the person of no. The fear of refusing a task, how will that damage my reputation of being a team player? Will someone not come to me?

Rob Zelinka:

It goes back to as children, if we played a sport, baseball, basketball by the way, I was not a good basketball player because I was the shortest kid on the team, but I finally got thrust into the game, and I was afraid. What was I afraid of? Failure. And so at the end of the day, I think we have to learn how to manage our fears, our anxieties. Failure is okay.

Rob Zelinka:

We're going to fail. We learn from the failure. We grow from the failures. But I think at the root, Ralph, people often are afraid to say no for the fear of what that will mean to them. Will somebody pass them over for that next promotion or next task?

Rob Zelinka:

Will they get demoted?

Ralph Owens:

That's good, that's I

Terry Baylor:

got a question around there, Rob. So you have a person who, let's say that they have just always performed, right, and I think one of the things that I definitely wanna kind of bring out, because I think this is one of the things as I was in management and leadership, executive management, how do you continue to You know, you have so many wins behind you, right? How do you continue to pursue the wins ahead of you? And on one end, have a precedent that you've set, right? How do you continue to maintain that thrust in the Now with the framework of, okay, this one I just can't support.

Terry Baylor:

How you leverage your wins to balance the no, I guess is what I'm trying to say. How can someone do that? Because not every decision that your leader has brought to you, you've always been on board with. I mean, you navigate how it?

Rob Zelinka:

Yeah, it's really a profound question, Terry. At the end of the day, I go back to the KPIs, the metrics that are materially important, the needle movers for our company, for the people we serve, the communities we're in. At a high level, it's a strategic negotiation, quite candidly. It's about redirecting without resisting to protect the space that we need for essentially what are our core responsibilities. And I think when leaders see that we have the capability of thinking in a bigger context, seeing the bigger picture, so to speak, they recognize that sometimes saying no is the right thing.

Rob Zelinka:

And I often say this, as long as we have situational awareness, by saying no to this, we're probably saying yes to something else. We want to make sure that that yes we're committing to is the right yes.

Ralph Owens:

That's so good. So Rob, let's just dig into that just a little bit more, because I think you touched on something very profound. You said that as a leader, you know, you've had people who were direct reports to you, people who you may say, hey, I want to do this, I want to do that, and they actually say no. Yep. They're not saying no to say I'm being, you know, disrespectful or defiant, but they're saying, Rob, I would recommend that we probably focus on this.

Rob Zelinka:

Yeah.

Ralph Owens:

To tell the people why that's such a critical skill to have if you want to be promotable.

Rob Zelinka:

Yeah. Yeah. Ralph, this takes a little time. So anytime I come into a new organization, people are getting to know one another, and sometimes there's barriers that have to be broken down. So for example, in the last two organizations I was a part of, I had to break down barriers from prior leaders who had more of a command and control style of leadership.

Rob Zelinka:

And, by the way, I I had that style of leadership when I first started, and it was beaten out of me, not literally, but figuratively. And here's how the conversation went. I had someone below me who had retired from the military, and of course I just thought, well, there's nothing more there's no more profound example of command and control style leadership than someone in the military. So I told him, I want you to do this. I want you to do it this way, and I want it done by this date.

Rob Zelinka:

Do you have any questions? And his response, it was funny. I didn't find it humorous at the time. I do now. He said, Yeah, I have one question.

Rob Zelinka:

Why are you asking me if I have a question if you've told me what to do, how to do it, and when to have it done by? I thought he was

Terry Baylor:

kind

Rob Zelinka:

of being a jerk. And he pulled me aside. He said, Look, Rob, I'm older than you. This is my first civilian job after retiring from the military with a storied career. Mhmm.

Rob Zelinka:

I see leadership in you. This might seem unorthodox, but I'm gonna give you feedback. That's where I learned feedback is a gift. What we do with it, completely up to us, but I try to do everything I can with feedback because someone is investing in me, and they are wanting me to be the best I can be. So to that end, I changed my leadership style the very next day.

Rob Zelinka:

Wow. So back to your question, I try to create a culture of psychological safety, where people check their egos and their titles at the door, and we are all equals there to solve a specific problem, drive a specific outcome, but we're there together. But it takes a little time for people to believe you are what you say you are, because if they had been in an environment where they had a command and control style leader, and they were not interested in creating and fostering an environment where psychological safety is the foundation, where people can speak their mind. Tell you, Rob, I don't agree, and here's why. Rob, I think you're missing a key element.

Rob Zelinka:

Let me open your eyes to it. I walk in, and we've heard these cliches before, Ralph, Terry, but they're so true. I really sincerely try to move into a room where I am literally the dumbest person in the room. I surround myself with people that are smarter than I am, more knowledgeable, more experienced. Why?

Rob Zelinka:

Because I want to learn from them, and I want to grow, and I want them to push me in the same way I'm gonna push them. That's how you build trust. Mhmm. If you don't have trust with your team, you are not gonna execute. Going back to the football analogy, Tom Brady is not gonna hand off to a running back that fumbles a ball every time he hands it off.

Rob Zelinka:

Not gonna throw to Rob Gronkowski if he can't catch. By the way, why did he throw to Rob Gronkowski all the time? Because he caught the ball, and he could advance the ball, and that's how we win in life, advancing the ball.

Ralph Owens:

That's good. Man, that's good.

Terry Baylor:

Yeah, Rob, I wrote down a couple things, man, that are just, actually three things. I believe this is a whole topic in and of itself, redirecting without resisting. That is profound. Is

Ralph Owens:

Terry, we the call Jedi. Is the Rob, we talk about EQ as almost a Jedi type power, Right? And that is a Jedi move.

Rob Zelinka:

Oh my god. Me share something with you guys here. So yesterday, just yesterday, one of my people was extremely frustrated with his interaction with another executive leader at the company. And he's my barometer. He's the type of person that is chilled all the time.

Rob Zelinka:

If he gets upset, you know you have a problem. Right? And so he was he was asking me. He said, Rob, I'm just I had to walk away. I was so frustrated.

Rob Zelinka:

And I said, yeah. He says I I said, that happens. And I said, let me share something with you. You have to use Jedi mind tricks. And he said, no.

Rob Zelinka:

Because you again, going back to learning the person, I knew he was a huge Star Wars fan. Mhmm. And I said, think back to Obi Wan Kenobi and what he taught. You have to learn the language of the person, how they operate, what motivates them, and speak in that language. Mhmm.

Rob Zelinka:

And essentially, what you're doing is you're driving them to the outcome that you want to get, but they're the one doing the driving, and they don't even realize they're doing the driving until all of a sudden they realize, oh my goodness, he used Jedi mind tricks on me. So thanks for the reference to the to the Jedi, Ralph. Yes, that's awesome.

Terry Baylor:

I love that.

Ralph Owens:

That is spot on.

Terry Baylor:

Learn the language, yes. No, I mean, this stuff is, you know, feedback is investment.

Ralph Owens:

Oh, It's killing. Yeah, yeah, that is killer. That is killer.

Terry Baylor:

Go ahead, Ralph.

Ralph Owens:

Now just what I'm getting out of this is this, that mature focus, right, your ability to be able to redirect, right, without, you know, refusing and being able to ask the right questions and lead people, it builds credibility. Right? That builds credibility that plays to your favor when you wanna be promoted later. Because again, Rob, you've been there, right? You've had to promote people.

Ralph Owens:

Some of the things that come to mind when you're looking at, is this person ready? Are they mature? Can they focus, or do they get distracted all over the place? Things of that nature. So that is fantastic.

Ralph Owens:

Any other thoughts on that, Rob?

Rob Zelinka:

Well, so you mentioned promotable. I think there's a difference between being productive and promotable. For example, we have what I call Steady Freddies on our team. These are people that are not interested in climbing the corporate ladder, but they're highly productive people, and they're very valuable. As a leader, you have to determine who your Steady Freddies are, who are the ones that are emerging that have the potential to grow.

Rob Zelinka:

And then again, having the potential to grow and being able to grow, two different things as well. There's lots of people with potential. We can never extract the potential out of them. You know, when I think of what are the characteristics of a promotable leader, I think about how their productivity produces a specific positioning. Those people tend to focus on leveraging their work, which prepares them today to solve the problems of the day, but prepares us for tomorrow, and that's how they position themselves to bring more value.

Ralph Owens:

That's so good. That's so good, that's so good.

Terry Baylor:

Yeah, it brings a thought for me, I've worked with people and I've seen folks who were great, you know, at doing what they do, and they were put in a leadership or managerial role and they struggled the entire because they weren't willing to let go of whatever that thing was that made them who they were, right? I mean, we all know this, what got you there, we've heard it before, what got you there won't keep you there. It's as simple as that.

Rob Zelinka:

You know, Terry, it harkens me back to something Ralph said about being a desktop support engineer. I started my career there too, and my job was to I'm going to date myself here, but it's okay. I think everybody knows that I have the stars, the bars, and the scars over thirty years. Nice. I was responsible for building Windows 2,000 laptops.

Rob Zelinka:

Wow. Everybody had Windows 2,000 on their laptop, and I had this system. So historically, you'd take them out of the box and you'd go through all the prompts, and it was laborious. It would take you a couple hours per machine. Well, you had a team of twenty, thirty, 40, multiply the time out.

Rob Zelinka:

That's weeks. Right? So I learned the art of scripting at a young stage in my career. And I had this process down and it was scripted, it wasn't documented. It was all up in my head.

Rob Zelinka:

And then all of a sudden, someone did what we tend to do in technology, promote the most knowledgeable skilled worker into a leadership role, and they'll just figure it out.

Ralph Owens:

Exactly.

Rob Zelinka:

And I that's where my command and control style came in. And like you just said, Terry, I had to do it all myself. No one could do it the way I wanted it done, and therefore I hovered over people. And I corrected every step because I sought perfection. And I realized that's not a sustainable model, and it wasn't until someone had the courage and commitment to me to grab me and figuratively shake me.

Rob Zelinka:

Literally, they grabbed me by the arms, and they say, Rob, I want to challenge your thought process. Now I had to be receptive. I had to open my heart, my mind, and my soul, and humble myself to realize that while I might have been the best engineer that ever graced that company, as a leader, I had a big gap. Had to change my thought, because a leader is able to get the most out of their people and make sure that they're put in positions to be successful. And it's going back to that weight room analogy.

Rob Zelinka:

When you see someone and you know, let's just say for the first time they're going to try to bench press 300 pounds, and they don't think they can do it, but you as the trainer know they can. So you're there, and you're spotting them, and they're struggling, you can see the right hand is their dominant arm, so it goes up, the weights are tilting. As a trainer, you know exactly how to push them, how to motivate them, what to say, what not to say, when to grab the bar, when to give them just a little nudge. That's leadership.

Terry Baylor:

Yeah. You know, when you put the little finger on there, you're really not doing anything, but it's like you're lifting it up. Exactly. They're like, you have is a finger.

Rob Zelinka:

You're spot on, right? But that finger was all they needed to get to get that. And once they achieve that once, they're gonna do it again. And then you know what they're gonna come back and say? Yeah, Terry, it's time for us to go up to let's get to 03:15 next.

Ralph Owens:

Yep. Yes. You know what's so powerful about that analogy? Is the fact that, to Rob, to your point, the ability was already there. Terri, to your point, the finger just got them to believe they could do it.

Rob Zelinka:

Yes. Yes.

Ralph Owens:

Right? And that's the most powerful thing about what we do as leaders is we see that potential, we see that ability in there, we ought to help them believe that they can do it.

Rob Zelinka:

Just to show how our professional lives and our personal lives are integrated, I have an 11 year old son, and he plays baseball, and he's been appointed as one of two team captains for a 13 and under team. So he's two years younger than the rest of the kids on the team, but his coach sees leadership in him, but he's really struggling right now. So he's making lots of errors. He's getting in his own way. That happens in life.

Rob Zelinka:

We get in our own way. We're our own worst enemy, so that's manifesting itself into bad behaviors. So he cried last weekend. The coach gave him the old line from the movie years ago, There's no crying in baseball. And then he threw his helmet, and he was benched, as he should have been.

Rob Zelinka:

Right? And so I had this conversation with him about leadership, and I brought him back to the Los Angeles Dodgers, and I asked him, Who's the captain of the Dodgers? He says, It's Shohei Ohtani. I said, I want you to think about something. What because my son was really frustrated that one of the members of his team happens to be a little girl, got her first hit, scored a run, stole a base, and he was embarrassed that a girl performed better than he did.

Rob Zelinka:

I said, Well, that's life. I said, As a captain, what I want you to see is you need to be the first kid out of the dugout to congratulate her. Pat her on the back and say, You did a great job. You scored a run. You got on base.

Rob Zelinka:

You did all the things we need to do to be successful, to move the needle, as Ralph says. In the same way, when she strikes out, you're the first out of the dugout to pat her on the back and say, It's okay, Lily. You get them next time. Now, when Lily is getting in her own way and you see it, you're the first one out of the dugout to kick her in the butt and say, Lily, you've got it in you. We need you to get your head in the game.

Rob Zelinka:

And you could see he was processing. Ralph, I've led people over thirty years, the hardest thing to do is get your kid to listen to you. So back then I got an 11 year old to listen to me, that was success. It manifested itself the very next week in practice. So Tuesday night, my wife said, Rob, he listened.

Rob Zelinka:

You should see him. He's like a different kid. Go ahead, Terry, you had a comment.

Terry Baylor:

No, no, that's a great story that leads into what I was gonna say. So I was speaking with one of my clients this morning, and he was sharing with me about, he was like, Terry, I got a little homework for you. I'm like, okay, what is that? He was like, when is the next marathon in Houston? I'm like, bro, I got a story for you.

Terry Baylor:

So I'm not gonna tell the story now. But at the end of our conversation, I was like, hey, I'll do that research with you and I'll run it with you. And I shared with him because I had gone through the experience before and I think this kind of caps your story along with what Ralph was stating. I said, there are only two other things in my life that compare or that are like, this is just under these two other things, right, when I ran that half marathon. It was getting married and having children.

Terry Baylor:

The sense of self accomplishment, I think that the term I stated to him was the level of awareness and accolade of self, what self could do. It was a self awareness. I don't know how many times in life do we really feel proud of ourselves, but when you accomplish something and you overcome something that you didn't know you could do, or it was a level of awareness, and it sounded like to me your son had that level of awareness and wherewithal to say, Hey, you know what? I went to another plateau at this moment in my life. And that is one of the most rewarding things, not from a self of glory, but it is a humbling to realize, I didn't think I could, but I'm somewhere I didn't imagine I could be.

Rob Zelinka:

I'll share another story. I beg your indulgence. Life's about stories, Right? Yes.

Terry Baylor:

We love

Rob Zelinka:

it. So in my intro, told you I didn't expect to be in technology. I was there by accident. I was going to graduate high school, and I was going to go to college to become a Spanish teacher because I love teaching people. And Spanish I learned Spanish from baseball.

Rob Zelinka:

And so it but here's the challenge. I like nice stuff, and teachers don't necessarily make a lot of money.

Terry Baylor:

Hey,

Rob Zelinka:

And you got to balance so I remember here I was. I sat in the kitchen with my father and my mother, and I said to my father, Dad, I'm not going go to college. And he said, Really? I said, Really? He said, What are you going to do with your life?

Rob Zelinka:

What are you going to do with yourself? I said, I'm going go and work in technology. He says, Really? He says, What do you know about technology? I said, Not a damn thing, but I'm going to learn it.

Rob Zelinka:

I know people. And he says, Rob, for goodness sakes, you're not even 20 years old. You don't know people. And he wasn't wrong, okay? But I was so defiant, Terry.

Rob Zelinka:

So I said to him, Well, I'm going to figure it out, dad. And he said, Rob, if you do not go to college, you will be the biggest disappointment in my life. Imagine your father saying that to

Ralph Owens:

me. Wow.

Rob Zelinka:

Ralph, I got up. I looked at him. My lip was quivering. I said, dad, I'm gonna prove you wrong. And I turned my back on my father and left his house.

Rob Zelinka:

I grabbed the door, and in my head, I said, what the hell are you doing? Just go to college. But here's here's the situational awareness that I had. My dad never went to college. My dad never graduated high school.

Rob Zelinka:

He had to do it the old fashioned way. His school was the school of hard knocks. Right? And he just wanted better for his son. So fast forward thirty years now.

Rob Zelinka:

I'm boarding an airplane coming home to Houston from Rio. My dad calls me. He said, Rob, I just had dinner with your wife and your son. My son was a baby at the time. I said, Thanks, dad.

Rob Zelinka:

I'm glad someone's having dinner with my family. I'm out of the country. Right? He said, I want you to know how proud I am of you. And I said, Wow.

Rob Zelinka:

I mean, my eyes welled up. My voice cracked. I said, Really? He says, I am. I said, Dad, do you know what's so ironic about this?

Rob Zelinka:

He says, I know. I said, Do remember the last thing you said to me thirty years ago when I got up from your kitchen table? He says, I do. He said, You proved me wrong. Wow.

Rob Zelinka:

And boy, that was so powerful. Now here's one other thing, and we talked about accolades. This is a cool thing for me. This is where those accolades mean something, because there's people behind us that got us to where we are. My dad was one of those forces.

Rob Zelinka:

Mhmm. I happen to have been blessed by being one of a select few people that was on the Wall Street Journal tech council. So I was I was part of that council, and and a couple times a year, they publish a full page ad with all of the names of the people, the leaders that are framing technology for the future. My dad has one of those framed in his Wow.

Ralph Owens:

Wow. Wow. Wow.

Terry Baylor:

That's a great story, Rob. I will tell you, man, one of the things that brings to mind for me, and I tell folks this story who have that kind of because we all have some element of that in our childhood, right? And I remember there was a story, and Ralph you'll appreciate this because I heard this story from Joel Osteen and he said that he was talking about his dad and his dad was really trying to do something different similar to you. And years later, of course, he's successful, whatever, and he was still thinking about, man, my dad did this and that, and he said, God spoke to his heart and said, look, your dad did the best he could with what he had. Could you have done better?

Terry Baylor:

And looking at it with that framework, right? Because you understand, no matter where I am and what I've done, at the end of the day, I'm standing on Willie George Baylor Sr. Shoulders. There's no doubt about that. I'm standing on Maddie Baylor's shoulders, right?

Terry Baylor:

Because of the platform that they created for us to launch from, man. Really appreciate you sharing this story. I hope that our listeners, if you're in a similar situation like that, just the amount of gratitude and grace in that story both ways, right? There's amount of gratitude and grace both ways, Rob. So I really appreciate you sharing that story, man, and you know, there's always a segment that we're gonna talk about this, so look, look, God is great and man, he ushered in a tool called forgiveness.

Terry Baylor:

Bro, all of us, sisters, brothers, let's all exercise that tool, man. Is one of the most valuable tools in humanity, so let's exercise that.

Ralph Owens:

I'd be remiss if I didn't comment on that myself. There was a point in time as a man that I came to that same conclusion that Rob came to. We tend to pattern our lives based on what we think we didn't have when we were young, or based on who didn't support us. I was just telling my wife this story this morning, how when I graduated high school, my dad was like, I'm not paying for you to go to college, you need to get a blue collar job. But But it didn't hit me until later, same thing with Rob, that he was doing the best he knew how to do.

Ralph Owens:

And really, he was doing better than the generation before him. He was trying to get me to have the same success. He wasn't trying to limit me. He was basically giving me advice based on what he knew and his experiences, right? Yes.

Ralph Owens:

Rob, same thing, you know, years have gone by, and I've been able to achieve a few things, and he would just tell me all the time how proud of me he is, right? And had to learn, and this is the point that I just really want to make for all the listeners out there who are holding a judgment,

Rob Zelinka:

or

Ralph Owens:

someone who has spoken something negative over you in the past, you don't know what that person was going through that made them say what they were saying, right? And you have to give them grace, to Terry's point, in forgiveness, right? Because they were probably doing the best they could with what they had, right? So I don't want to miss that point, because that was big for me. It was big for me and my development as a man to say he wasn't trying to hold me back, he was only trying to help me based on what he knew.

Ralph Owens:

So Rob, thank you for sharing that, man. Really helped.

Terry Baylor:

Great story. I love it.

Rob Zelinka:

Ralph, one thing you said that resonated with me there, and I learned this lesson as well along the way, and this is a really in your face comment, so just hang with me for the moment. So when someone speaks badly about us, you're exactly right. We have no sense for what's happening in their lives at that moment in time. But let's just say it doesn't matter what's happening necessarily. It's really not our business what people think of us at the end of the day.

Rob Zelinka:

Only thing we can control is how we respond to them, not how they react and what they do. That's on

Ralph Owens:

Yes, sir. Sir. Terry and I have said that same thing on this podcast. It doesn't matter what happened to you or what somebody said about you. The only thing that matters is how you choose to respond.

Ralph Owens:

Yes. Because that is 100% in your power to control.

Rob Zelinka:

You bet. Yes.

Ralph Owens:

Yeah. No. That's awesome. That's awesome. Thank you for listening to the Leadership Sovereignty Podcast.

Ralph Owens:

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