Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Sex, Love, and SuperPowers Podcast Show. I am your host, Tatiana Berindei, and I am so honored to have with me today Dr. David Gruder. We are going to be discussing understanding men in the wake of Me Too. David Gruder has a very impressive bio. He’s a Ph.D. He’s a clinical and organizational psychologist who’s president of Integrity Culture Systems. He’s also the director of The Center for Integral Leadership at the California Institute for Healing Science. Since the 1970s, Dr. Gruder has provided keynotes, training, consulting, and mentoring to executives, entrepreneurs, thought leaders, helping professionals and their teams in eight countries on three continents on over 100 topics.
Among his multiple hundreds of media interviews and articles, he’s been featured twice in Inc.com and 18 times in Forbes. Named America’s Integrity Expert in 2008 by Radio and TV Interview Reports, Dr. Gruder was the recipient of a leadership award and a culture creation award. He’s authored or been featured in 23 books, and his own books have won eight book awards, six of these for his book on restoring integrity in society, leadership, business, and personal life, called The Integrity IQ. He was the founding president of the 20-year-old Association for Comprehensive Energy Psychology and co-architect in two of its certification programs.
He’s on the faculty for and has served on the board of the business development organization, CEO Space International, and he is a Certified Ritual Elder with The Mankind Project. I also just so happen to know that he sings a mean version of Puff the Magic Dragon. That was such a fun jam session, by the way.
It was.
I am just really excited to have you here today, Dr. Gruder. Thank you so much for coming on the show.
Oh, it’s my pleasure, Tatiana, and when I’m listening to these kinds of introductions, there’s a really big part of me that’s sitting back saying, “Wait a minute. Who is that person?” It’s exhausting. Just to listen.
You’ve done a lot. Like I said, I’m really honored that you’ve taken the time to be with us here today. I think it makes a lot of sense that you’re a leading expert on integrity because you carry that at the very core, the fiber of your being. Integrity is absolutely the word that I would use to describe you, and it just emanates from you.
Thank you.
You’re in the right line of work, according to me, my little humble opinion.
I was going to be held to an inhuman standard around integrity.
Well, just by way of a quick story, I asked people … Gosh, it’s now, oh, about 20 years ago, 18 years ago, something like that, that I asked them about what is my brand. It’s like I don’t know. I have so many different interests, and I’ve got my fingers in so many pots, I don’t even know what people see me as standing for or representing. Almost universally, people said, “Well, that’s a no-brainer. It’s integrity.” My internal reaction was gulp, oops, wow. I don’t know if I really want to be the standard bearer for that, and then when the guidance came through about … Well, actually, the integrity book that I wrote came out 10 years ago now as we’re recording this, so back in 2008, and when the guidance came through for me to start writing that book, I did a really big gulp because I realized that if I was going to follow that guidance, I was going to have to be willing to hold myself to an impeccable standard of integrity because if I dared to write on that topic, I was going to be held to an inhuman standard around integrity.
Otherwise, who was I to be able to write on that topic. It was a real challenge for me to finally step into surrendering to the guidance around writing that.
To also that you’re human, and we’re all human, but I definitely understand that place of, “Oh, my gosh. Am I really going to step into that space? Then I gotta live it,” right?
Mm-hmm.
There are all eyes on you now.
There’s no way to do a topic like this around do as I say and not as I am. That’s just not going to fly with this topic.
That’s right. That’s right. Of course. While we’re on the topic of integrity and maybe this is your answer, but I do like to ask everyone who comes on the show, what are your superpowers?
Well, it’s a great question. I think that my biggest superpowers are, first of all, wordsmithing. I come from a family where I got edited to death growing up, and I got edited to death by two parents whose voicing couldn’t have been more opposite. My dad was an attorney who did a lot of technical writing, and so he edited me from a very technical perspective and a critical thinking perspective and all of those things, and my mom was a published poet.
Wow.
I got edited from as diverse and opposite set of voicings that you could ask for. That, I really bless my parents for driving me crazy as a kid. I really hated it, but throughout my adulthood, starting in early adulthood when I was a proofreader for and then ultimately became the executive editor for a newspaper. I became deeply grateful to them for that. That’s one superpower.
The other, honestly, is that I am blessed with being able to take high-level vision and good intentions and values and goals and translate those into step-by-step, practical procedures that enable leaders and entrepreneurs and their teams and just everyday folks like you and me to walk our talk rather than just simply stay at that good intention, philosophical level of wouldn’t it be nice if.
That is quite a superpower because I know a lot of people, myself included, can get stuck there, for sure.
It took me a while to realize that that was a superpower because, as you know, when we have a natural superpower, meaning one that we didn’t deliberately craft or take it upon ourselves to develop, we tend to think that that’s not a superpower, that that’s just what everyone does. It’s as obvious as breathing, and so for a very long time, I didn’t realize that it was unusual for a leader to be simultaneously capable of high-level visioning and rubber meet the road implementation. I thought everyone rolled that way, and, finally, I was taken to task by people saying, “You know, you really are being arrogant and putting your expectations onto other people and onto other leaders that they should be able to do what you do simply because it’s so natural to you, but we gotta tell you, this is really unusual. Most leaders are either visionaries or detailed implementers. Very few are both.” That’s the other superpower.
Well, that’s beautiful, and it’s really good that you have sort of a community of people to call you out on that. I think that’s a gift that not everybody has, and sometimes that makes all the difference between people claiming it or not. It’s having those around you say, “Hey, look, this is something special that you have, that not everyone does.”
Love is not the only nurturance.
Oh, yes, Tatiana. It’s so important. My bias is that it’s important for all of us and my bias is that it is not optional. It is absolutely mandatory for leaders to be surrounded by people who can, when useful, express nurturance toward that person, and whenever needed, to challenge that person, to hold their feet to the fire because love takes both of those forms. Love is not the only nurturance. It’s that beautiful alchemical blend of nurturance and challenging, which is the feminine archetype, the feminine energy in all of us, men and women, and the masculine archetype or energy in all of us, men and women, that energy of nurturance and challenging.
Which I think is really … I love that you brought it back around to that in light of the topic that we’ve chosen for today because I think that that’s a lot of what we are seeing right now is leaders being called into some serious accountability. Before we dive in, we do have to go to a quick break, but I’m really looking forward to getting into this topic with you because I really value your perspective, all the work that you’ve done in The Mankind Project, and just who you are as an individual and as a male leader. I think that a lot of men have a lot to learn from how you walk in the world, and so I’m just really excited to dive into this topic with you on understanding men in the wake of need to, but before we go to this quick break, would you just let people know where they can find out more about you and your work?
Sure. My main website is drgruder.com.
Beautiful. For those of you who are wanting to just unpack this topic a little bit more, stay tuned. We’ll be right back.
To listen to the entire show click on the player above or go to the SuperPower Up! podcast on iTunes.
Music Credit: All instruments played by Amanda Turk. Engineered and produced by Tatiana Berindei and Daniel Plane reelcello.com
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