Bill English
Hello. I’m Bill English, and I want to Welcome you today to Profiles and Stewardship, where I have conversations with business owners about how they integrate their role as business leaders with their faith in Jesus Christ. Today I’m talking with Kirby Spike, an upper level manager who worked for over a dozen bosses in his 30 plus years. At Three M in St. Paul, Minnesota, kirby has deep experience working for difficult bosses and working in a multiethnic, multireligious environment. I’ll talk with Kirby about a wide Range of issues, including how to work For a difficult boss and how to stay faithful to Christ. When you work with people who have widely different religious beliefs than you do, I hope you’ll find our conversation helpful and encouraging. So I’ll invite you to sit back, grab a cup of coffee, and learn from Kirby Spike in this Profiles and Stewardship episode.
Bill English
And good morning. I’m Bill English, the publisher here at Bible and Business. Bible and Business exists to help Christians in business integrate their leadership role with their faith in Jesus Christ. And we do this to understand all that the Bible says about owning and leading in business. So I want to thank you for joining us today. Today’s episode is part of an ongoing series titled Profiles and Stewardship. These interviews are intended to illustrate what Christian stewardship looks like in the real world for Christian business owners and leaders who lead in business. So from time to time, I talk with business leaders about how they integrate their role with their Christian faith. These profiles and stewardship interviews are unscripted. I only do one take. I don’t go back and edit them. And they are hosted on the Bible and Business YouTube channel. So today I’m talking with Kirby Spike on the topic of Christians who work for difficult bosses in multicultural environments. Now look, difficult Bosses are everywhere. They exist in business, ministry, churches, politics, sports and elsewhere. In her book My Boss is a Jerk, kathleen Rayo describes Difficult Bosses as insecure, childish, selfish, dictatorial and egocentric.
Bill English
In more extreme situations, these bosses can be rightly thought of as narcissistic. Difficult Bosses violate known rules of civility for their own purposes. They often live in a world of damaged relationships. They mistreat others through verbal abuse, anger, intimidation, humiliation or superiority. And when they’re not in control, they may become anxious and tense because they can have an even greater fear of failure. These Difficult Bosses are usually gifted individuals with a track record of success. Even though they may have a wake of hurting and damaged individuals, business and ministry leaders often look the other way in quiet tradeoff decisions. Between the success difficult Bosses bring to the organization and the damage these people do to their direct reports, some days, perhaps most days, they’re really good to work with. Ratios are 95 good times to 5% bad times. The 5% can outweigh the good times. Kirby has experience working for difficult bosses. Kirby is a former It director for three M in St. Paul. He was responsible for a number of things, like setting up and overseeing global It service centers in Poland and Costa Rica and the Philippines. He has deep experience in It governance and strategic planning, as well as Sigma, and he also managed vendors and did a lot of program management as well.
Bill English
Kirby spent over 30 years working at Three M, but in addition to his work at Three M, he served as an elder in his church, has led small groups, and participated in mission trips to Haiti, Romania, and Liberia. So, Kirby, welcome to Profiles and Stewardship in Bible and Business.
Kirby Spike
Well, thanks, Bill. It’s an honor to talk with you.
Bill English
And full disclosure, my wife and Kirby went to college together. We won’t say how long ago that was. Housekeeping, a couple of housekeeping things. First of all, we do have chat services, so if you’re watching, you can enter in either the YouTube or the Facebook UI. There should be a way to enter a comment or a question that will show up here at our end, and we’ll be happy to incorporate your comments or your questions. Secondly, I have a screen to my left, and sometimes I need to look at that screen. So if I turn away, doesn’t mean that I’m not listening to Kirby. It just means that I’m looking up something on my screen, or if I look down, I’m taking notes. So with that, let’s go ahead and get started. Kirb, we wanted to start today because you’ve worked for some really great bosses and some really difficult bosses. You’ve been all over the map on this. How do you have a servant mindset as a Christian when you’re working for a difficult boss?
Kirby Spike
Well, I think we have to know who our real boss is to begin with, and that’s the Lord Jesus Christ. And even when you have difficult bosses, you’re serving him and you’re serving the boss that you work for. And that’s part of your witness in the workplace.
Bill English
And were there any particular scriptures that you relied on that kind of helped you in that way?
Kirby Spike
Well, I go back to Mark Ten, verses 43 to 45, which basically says, if you want to be great in God’s kingdom, you want to be a servant of all. And I think that servant mindset is so important in the workplace because a company serves its customers, a company serves the shareholders. As an employee, you serve the company. So service is really painted through every aspect of business.
Bill English
Yeah, it really is. And the here and now, what’s going through my head is that the here and now often takes not precedent, but also just becomes all that we can see. Yeah, we’re serving Jesus, but Jesus isn’t physically here with us. And so we see the boss in front of us, and that’s our whole here and now. And yet what you’re saying is serving Christ in the marketplace by serving your boss, whether they’re great boss or bad boss, serving the shareholders, that’s really part of serving Christ.
Kirby Spike
I think God gives us assignments in life, and we don’t know what those are all the time. And I’ve gotten on that kind of an assignment theme lately because there are times in my life when I’ve really felt called to certain situations and obeyed that call. There are times when it was a human call and I didn’t listen to God, and I saw the difference of how those two calls manifested themselves. But I think the call in the workplace is to serve.
Bill English
Yeah. How do you discern so I’m going to bunny trail with you for just a moment, since you brought it up. How do you discern God’s call? How do you discern between a human call and God’s call for you? And I’m not saying this is going to be normative for everybody, but for you.
Kirby Spike
I think when God calls me, he just gnaws away at me and it keeps circulating through what he wants me to be doing in a way that I can’t ignore. You know, I don’t I’m not saying that I’m the most perceptive person when it comes to God, but I can think of instances where he just called me into something and said, you need to take action or you need to do something.
Bill English
Yeah. And it becomes easier to do the difficult things when you know that God has called you. If you’re doing it out of your own effort, it becomes a lot more difficult to do those things. Did I say that right? It becomes less difficult if God has called you, more difficult if you’re doing it out of yourself.
Kirby Spike
Yeah. And the other thing I would say being I always say I’m in the fourth quarter of life now. If you think of it as a game, it’s easier to do that the older you get. Because of all the experiences you’ve accumulated along the way, I think you develop a great perceptiveness. And also, I would say your willingness to confront difficult situations gets easier because you know the situation isn’t going to go away unless you take action.
Bill English
That’s interesting. Easier to confront the older we get.
Kirby Spike
I think some of that, too, is you don’t have as much time left. So if you don’t deal with it, you might run out of time or.
Bill English
It might run you out of time. So difficult bosses, you sent me a list of bosses. I’m not going to read them because that would probably be a little bit much. But the way that I describe difficult bosses after reading The Matrix that you sent me, of all the kinds of bosses you’ve worked for, I feel like my description is too narrow. Sometimes the difficulty in the boss is that they’re immature and they can’t make decisions, or the difficulty in the boss is that there are cultural differences or something like that. Can you speak to that a little bit?
Kirby Spike
Yeah, I think obviously I started out out of college, and my first boss was like a supervisor early in their career, and at the end I was working for executive Vps who reported the CIO or CEO. And early on, you might be working for somebody that you’ll be their boss someday, and you have to recognize that they aren’t equipped the same way as a fully mature supervisor or whatever. But as you go on and work for the senior executives, they have a different burden they carry. And I think always with a boss, you have to put yourself in their shoes and say, what are they up against? What are their problems? Because as a direct report, I’m here to do a job and to make my boss’s life easier. And I’ve seen cases where people go and ask their boss what to do all the time. And if you have to ask your boss what to do, you’re probably not the right person for the job, because you as an individual, are the expert, and you need to carry that forward and keep them informed. So there’s a distinction there where I’ve seen people stumble working for different types of bosses who expect leadership out of their direct reports.
Bill English
Yeah, I think there’s a difference. For lack of a better term, I define the difference between a leader and a manager. The manager can point out what’s wrong with a situation, but they can’t come up with solutions. Leaders can leaders come up with solutions.
Kirby Spike
Yeah.
Bill English
I’m curious. I want to kind of rummage around in this, and I know this isn’t on our list of questions, but that’s because I’m creative this way. I want to go both sides of this. What were some of the characteristics of bosses that you had that were really great bosses? Sure, they had some great ones, and then I want to do the other side of direct reports, but let’s start with that. What were some things in the really good bosses that you had? What were some of their characteristics?
Kirby Spike
I think they had an incredible ability to listen and understand. This one I think of in particular, you left the meetings with her feeling better than when you came in. They filled you with energy and excitement, and they understood the challenges. They challenged you back in a motivating way. So I think motivating, listening, thinking, strategic, focused on making things work, those were some of the characteristics I would say are important, were indicative of that particular person.
Bill English
Yeah. And so if you’re a Christian leading in business, or if you’re a Christian business owner, you need to hear some of what Kirby just said, because we need to be people who listen. Be quick to hear, slow to speak. Right? Quick to hear, slow to speak. That’s that passage from James and slow to anger. And then challenge in a motivating way. I have a phrase that I have picked up in the last year, Kirby, and I’m now using it quite a bit. And it’s be tough on the issues and soft on people so that you can draw the people in and help them become part of the solution. But if we just pound on people and blame, we’re not going to get anywhere. So challenging in a motivating way, listening and understanding, helping them feel better leaving than when they came in. All those things in my mind are kind of the soft on people, but we got to be really tough on the process, really tough on the issue, and let’s come together to fix this problem that we have sitting in front of us. So the other side of that coin then is direct reports describe what went on inside of you when a direct report took time to understand how you were being measured and took some time to help you accomplish your goals.
Kirby Spike
Sure, yeah, those are well, I think of different people that worked for me and you learn about bosses and you learn about direct reports equally in different ways. You learn from good bosses and bad bosses how to treat your people, and then the people that work for you, you know better how to hire the ones that are going to make a difference. My strategy in hiring people is always to find people that are better than me at what they do.
Bill English
Right.
Kirby Spike
Yes, I have some technical skills, yes, I have some management skills, but I am nothing without a good team. And so I really put the effort into assembling the team that could be successful and sometimes helping those people to the next step. I looked at people at work for me and their development, as my job is to open doors, but I can’t make them go through the doors of opportunity, but I can make sure they’re presented. So encouraging them, them taking initiative I thought was one of the things I valued most. Because if, if they can solve the problem, it’s something I don’t worry about then, and then I can go on to other things and manage those. So I think that taking initiative, owning the problems or the challenges they have coming to me for advice or support, but not to solve the problem. I can solve the problem, but if I dive in and solve that problem, I can’t do these other things over here. Even on that list of things that you talked about that I was responsible for in my last job, I didn’t do all those things that was within my domain of what I managed, but I wasn’t the expert on acquisitions and divestitures and vendor management and strategic planning and all of those things.
Kirby Spike
I had people that did that, but my job was to support and lead them through that, but give them the opportunity to really grow in those roles and help them succeed.
Bill English
And in doing so, you’re growing them. You’re growing their professional skills, their professional development, so that they can one day maybe take your place as you move on to something else.
Kirby Spike
Absolutely.
Bill English
I have found that when I’m trying to grow management teams, of course now I’m in a little bit of a different situation as the CEO of a healthcare company, but what I tell my management teams is I try to get through a day without making any decisions because I want them making all the decisions. And then I tell them, Bring me the CEO, the most crappy, horrible decisions that everybody’s going to be mad at. The board’s not going to like it, the staff isn’t going to like it, the patients aren’t going to like it, everybody’s going to be mad. Give those to me. I’ll make those decisions and I’ll take the arrows kind of thing. What’s that?
Kirby Spike
It’s leadership.
Bill English
Leadership is yeah, leading is not a lot of fun sometimes, I’ll tell you. It’s just not. But what you do is when you keep pushing those decisions out to your management team or to your staff, you’re actually helping them grow. If they will trust you enough to come in and process what they’re doing.
Kirby Spike
They need to know you’ve got their back.
Bill English
Yes. I tell the staff that I have in the home office that I will always defend you in public. In private may not be so much, but I’m never going to diss you or throw you under the bus in front of a patient or in front of somebody else on the staff. I’m just not going to do that. We don’t do that here, is the phrase I use. We don’t do that here. So I’m talking with Kirby Spike, a former It director at three M in St. Paul. Kirby, if somebody wanted to get a hold of you and just ask you some additional questions or whatever, how would they do that?
Kirby Spike
Sure, I’d be glad to share my email address. It’s. Krspike spike@gmail.com.
Bill English
All right. Krspike at Gmail. That’s easy.
Kirby Spike
Yeah. I have always enjoyed mentoring people and helping people talk through problems. And if there’s people I can help, I’m happy to do it.
Bill English
And so Kirby was the guy who introduced me to Ken Larson, who’s the founder of Slumberland, who I interviewed last week, who actually had dinner at the table that you’re sitting at there.
Kirby Spike
That was one of those God prompting things we talked about early. It’s just like, there’s a dot over here and a dot over here, and these two guys need to talk.
Bill English
Oh, that’s funny. All right, let’s move on. How to manage and maintain your faith in a multicultural, multi faith work environment. Three M, I bet, had a truckload of different faiths and a truckload of different values. Personally, people and just rummage in that area for a little bit. How did you work with your Christian witness in relation to a number of other people who had a number of different faith walks?
Kirby Spike
Yeah, I would have to say it’s easier than you think. And the ways that it’s easier is in the casual talk you have with people. You just talk about, what did I do this weekend? Well, we went to church, or we went here. And there one of the things when I took some of those mission trips, I talked about it, and one of them, I actually blogged, and I said, look, if you guys want to read my blog about this, here it is. You don’t have to, but you can. And people read it. And so it’s a way to not force it on people, but let them know who you are. That’s who I am, and that’s a part of me I can share. I don’t get preachy in the workplace. I just let it flow out of who I am. As a man of faith in the actions I take, people know that the one person who I would call kind of the superstar boss I had in my career drives by our church when they go into the Twin Cities. And she always said, well, that’s Kirby’s Church, because in your annual performance appraisal, you were encouraged to talk about things you did outside of work, too, that are leadership oriented.
Kirby Spike
So I’d put that stuff on there, and it’s a way to just tell your boss who you are. When I came to Three M, where I met your wife, Bill, Kathy was through Inner Varsity Christian Fellowship. I put on my resume for applying at Three M that I was a small group leader in University Christian fellowship. Well, it happened to be that the guy that hired me was the son of a pastor. Sometimes those little things can open doors. I’m sure it was more than that, but I always think we’re in the business of planting seeds as Christians, and those are some of the seeds you plant. So be who you are.
Bill English
Yeah, I like that. Be who you are. Most of us are not evangelists. Most of us do not go into the world. It’s not like we get on the airplane in Minneapolis and we’re flying to Los Angeles, and by the time we land, the whole cabin has been led to Christ. Right.
Kirby Spike
That’s not who I am. But I am. The things that I did at work and the behaviors that I had, I wasn’t perfect all the time, for sure. I’m very human, but the fact that people could see some of those things is my way of planting seeds.
Bill English
And did you ever find that people of other faith tried to share their faith with you in an evangelistic or conversion way?
Kirby Spike
No. In fact, it was kind of interesting, because I thought it was ironic where the Hindu guy from India is wishing Merry Christmas at a time at workplace where you weren’t supposed to say Merry Christmas. He’d say? It says Merry Christmas. I thought that was kind of cool. I had a Jehovah’s Witness work for me, different things. And you tiptoe around things, I suppose, a little bit, but I never found it to really be a huge issue or problem.
Bill English
Yeah. I’ve always been cognizant in the workplace of the power imbalance inherent in the employer, employee, manager, direct report relationship. And so I am hesitant to share my faith in the company that I lead precisely because I think other than maybe one, maybe two people who would have the backbone to tell me to be quiet, everybody else would sit there and politely and they would just put up with it. And then they would go on and think, why is he talking about this? And so I’m able to use my God talk in a natural way like you did. I don’t let that go. But in terms of trying to share the gospel with other people, I don’t think it’s shared well when there’s a power imbalance in the relationship at work.
Kirby Spike
Yeah, it’s something you really have to be careful with, I think.
Bill English
I think so too. So we’re talking with Kirby Spike, a former It director at three M in St. Paul. You can get a hold of Kirby at Krspike. Spike@gmail.com also want you to know that we have some both YouTube and Facebook Watchers right now. People who are watching you can use the chat services in either of those user interfaces. If you want to ask a question or make a comment, that will show up here at this end and we can incorporate what you are thinking or wanting to ask. We can do that, live here while we’re doing it. So, professional development, you had to live overseas for a few years. So rummage around in the area of how Christians, a how they professionally develop, and b why professional development is important for Christians and just share with us some of your experiences there.
Kirby Spike
Well, first of all, I had the opportunity to work overseas. I didn’t have to do it.
Bill English
Oh, really? I thought at Three M, in order to get above a certain level on the corporate ladder, you had to have a few years overseas somewhere.
Kirby Spike
It helps, but you have a certain amount of choice, I think, from career development. I’ll tell you just a little story. When I went to school up at St. Cloud State University in central Minnesota, and I got a job through kind of a teacher who was teaching a night class at a local company, and I learned a certain I was an It, so I learned a certain technology. When I interviewed for the job, I had to go to the library to look up what they meant because I had no Google. There was no Google to say, what is this? So I get the job. I worked there almost two years and then my wife and I graduated at the same time, and we decided, let’s move to the Twin Cities because there’s more job opportunities. So I ended up getting the job at three M at that time, and I got the job because I put that University of Christian Fellowship leadership thing on my resume. But also I had a lot of experience with a technology that three M was just getting into. So I think that was the carrot that got me the job.
Kirby Spike
There certainly wasn’t my GPA because I wasn’t a great college performer, let’s put it that way. So I did that job for about four and a half years, and my mindset was that, boy, my world. I can go to any company in the Twin Cities, and I know this technology and it’s really great. Well, then I had an opportunity to do a different job, which meant throwing away that five, six years of expertise and going into something new, and I thought, Boy, I hope that’s the right thing to do. I did it, and all my peers thought I was nuts, but it was the best thing I ever did, really, the pattern for how I approached work the rest of my life. And what I realized is that my value was in me as a person, not in technology I knew.
Bill English
So you’re doing something on your desk that just muffled your microphone.
Kirby Spike
I’m sorry, I moved the paper there. How’s that? I went or branched off, did this totally new thing. Well, that led to then another three years later, branching off and doing another totally new thing. You build kind of a reputation of, here’s a guy who can take on new things and make them work and learn. And that was a proving ground for me, too, to just develop the confidence to say, it’s not what I know, it’s how I interact with people and my ability to learn and those types of things. So that kind of got in. I suppose at that age, I would have called it a risk take. A risk, sure, but eventually that became a pattern of seeing opportunity. So going and working in Europe for that amount of time and coming back and having a variety of different jobs just was the way I grew my career. Just proving myself in many different work situations.
Bill English
Learning a new technology, kind of going from A to B, and then being successful with B, that’s a whole skill set in itself. But it’s not a skill set you can learn in a book. You have to just do it.
Kirby Spike
You have to do it. I look back at college and say, well, what did that teach me? It taught me fundamentals. But the reality is, everything I did at work, I had to learn. It was a new learning experience. And I think for me, being in a technology field, I had some less introverted characteristics than my peers. So that allowed me to branch out and do some things that involved people that was different than maybe the people I was competing against in the workplace. Sure, yeah. When it comes to technology, I kind of did stuff maybe the first five to ten years, and then after that you talk about technology conceptually, but you don’t really touch it.
Bill English
Right. You’re not actually in the UI doing configurations or implementations or anything.
Kirby Spike
Right, right.
Bill English
Yeah. And you mentioned your average GPA in college. Mine was very average, too, and I had kind of a bad attitude, frankly. And I remember saying this to people, I get the same degree whether I have a two five or a 40. And that didn’t serve me well. But if you were to go to look at the Fortune 500 CEOs, you would find that fully half of them in college had a 25 or lower GPA.
Kirby Spike
Yeah.
Bill English
Interesting. GPA does not indicate your ability to be successful.
Kirby Spike
That’s right. I had to laugh because I was it in corporate marketing for a while, and I had a lot of manufacturing plants under my domain in my production management class. And my marketing class in college weren’t my shining stars for grades, but I managed to work for a Fortune 100 company that had 100 manufacturing plants in the US. And I was responsible for half of them.
Bill English
Isn’t that something? So I have found professional development with Christians, and I shouldn’t say this is Christian, this is just people in general. But Christians fall into this camp. A number of people develop just enough to do the job, and then they’re done. And they get really scared when they’re asked to either have a job enlargement or expand their job duties, or we want you to take on this new job. I think a number of people just shy away because they just don’t want to be bothered with it or in their minds, it’s too difficult to upgrade my skills, that kind of thing. And I’m not sure that that’s what Christ desires professionally for his people. I think he desires us to keep abounding. You see that phrase in the New Testament over and over. Keep growing in keep abounding in, keep becoming, so to speak, in various things. And I think I would like to see Christians do more with their own skill sets and push themselves more so that they have more credibility in the marketplace and can be thought of as people who are kind of the go to people, and that then reflects well on our faith.
Bill English
I’m kind of monologuing here, but just to want get your take on that.
Kirby Spike
Just a comment there. As I reflect on different people that work for me, different people I work for, people work for different reasons.
Bill English
They do, don’t they? That’s right.
Kirby Spike
It might be a person is just trying to hang on and survive. They’ve got a sick spouse or they’re a single parent or whatever. And they want a job that just provides for their needs and they don’t have the bandwidth or energy to really push in further than doing that job. And others may be at the peak of their capability, but I think all of us are wired a little differently in terms of how far we want to pursue things. That doesn’t mean you can be in a job that’s at the top of your career potential and just do really good at that. That’s totally honorable, in my opinion.
Bill English
Sure.
Kirby Spike
But I just make a mental note. When I looked at people to say, what is their situation? It’s always helpful, whether it’s a boss or an employee, to try to sit in their shoes and look at the world from the cards they’re dealt in life.
Bill English
Yeah, you’re right about that, because the personal life does bleed into the professional life. Right. I mean, who we are at home dictates a lot of who we are at work.
Kirby Spike
Yeah.
Bill English
That’S good.
Kirby Spike
The problem I had sometimes is sometimes you push and you challenge people, but finding that, not having them break under the pusher and the encouragement, you have to be sensitive to that, too. And I had cases where I thought somebody had potential to do more, but they just didn’t want it, and they ended up retiring early. They had enough of the work. Workplace people are motivated differently.
Bill English
I don’t want to get off on motivation, although I think that’s an interesting topic. Yeah. Okay, let’s move along. And my questions went away, and I don’t know why. So I’m going to find my mouse here and bring them back up. Here we go. Managing conflict. Let’s talk about managing conflict for just a moment. I perceived you as a guy who really knew how to manage conflict well. I never worked with you or for you, although I did work at three M for just, I don’t know, eight or nine months. But managing conflict, how do you do that well in the marketplace?
Kirby Spike
Well, you don’t always do it well. Sometimes you screw it up. But I think not avoiding it is the most important thing. Sometimes you have to have the conflict to work out the problem that’s occurring. And if you ignore the conflict, it tends to fester and develop into something worse. So that’s where I mentioned earlier, I think the older I got, I was more willing to confront issues, and sometimes those were issues of conflict. And it’s hard, but it’s better to address them than to let them sit. That was always kind of my opinion, get past them.
Bill English
So if you have a conflict with a difficult boss, how do you approach a boss? And especially one that you know that when you bring it up, it’s going to be volatile, it’s not going to be pleasant, and it is easier just to avoid it. Much easier, sure.
Kirby Spike
So, for example, I’m going to talk very frankly here. Here’s a situation. I thought my boss had a really dumb idea. This is me, this is a dumb idea. And my strategy, because this was a boss that was a fairly high ego, and instead of going in and sitting down with him and saying, I think you’re wrong, I went in and said, help me understand where you’re coming from on this, because maybe I’m wrong. Let’s talk through this and tell me why you want to do this versus that. And it’s a non confrontational way of getting dialogue on the table, so I have the freedom to bring up my ideas and I understand that other person better and where they’re coming from. If I thought my boss had a dumb idea, it was a way to kind of talk through that with them in a non confrontational way.
Bill English
And did that work for you?
Kirby Spike
Yeah, it worked. Yeah.
Bill English
That’s a good idea, I think.
Kirby Spike
Another thing, early in my career when people I was kind of in this consulting mode on this software product and people would come and I thought that was really dumb, I would always say, oh, that’s interesting. If the people sitting around picked up on that say, that’s interesting, rather than saying this is really stupid, or there’s just different ways to approach things, to respect the other person and to still get to the bottom of the problem.
Bill English
Yeah, two good approaches. Help me understand if you want to approach somebody about an idea that you don’t agree with or situation, and the other one is when they bring up something that you don’t agree with, well, help me understand. That’s interesting.
Kirby Spike
Kind of the same.
Bill English
It still helped me understand. Right?
Kirby Spike
Yeah. It’s all about listening. In one case, it’s listening to a boss to hear them talk it through. Another case it’s listening to somebody you’re helping or a direct report and letting them talk it through. But those strategies worked for me. That was helpful.
Bill English
Okay. Yeah, no, that’s good. So you’re retired now from three M, but you’re still busy. Tell us what you’re doing these days and what are you doing to further the kingdom?
Kirby Spike
Well, I’m collecting grandchildren, so that’s been way fun. The oldest two are turning seven, and the 6th one is in the hopper right now, due out in July. So that has been, I think, one of the gifts of life. I don’t know if it’s more fun than having your old kids, but it’s a lot of fun, let’s put it that way. And you spend time and they’re old enough. Julie and I like to do some RV, so we’ve taken the oldest one on a little trip and that’s quite fun. We’re doing a fair amount of travel. I think the other thing I’ve been able to do is just go deeper in my faith in Bible study because I don’t have the boundaries of time that are so severe.
Bill English
Sure.
Kirby Spike
The last job I had at three m. You’re working in a global environment. I’d have a call at seven in the morning and at nine at night, and I’d be at work during the day. And it got to be fitting other things in. And we didn’t have kids at home, so it was easier to do at that time. But now my tip, I usually get up before my wife and I make the coffee and I have breakfast, and then I go and sit down and do my quiet time. And it might last 20 minutes or it might last 2 hours. It just depends on what I have going that day. But it’s giving me some freedom to go a little deeper and to understand my faith better. So that’s important. I’m doing some typical retiree things too. Like I like to golf. So I just got back from a golf trip in Florida with three other guys and that’s fun. And we’re leaving again on Tuesday for another trip. I know you’re never going to retire, but I’ve heard you.
Bill English
I don’t plan to retire anytime soon. I’m 62 at the time of this recording, but I don’t plan to retire anytime soon.
Kirby Spike
You do different things and you have more time to do it.
Bill English
I’m going to show this real quick, by the way. If somebody wanted to get a hold of you, you’re welcome for them to contact you and maybe ask a few questions. Absolutely. So you can get a hold of Kirby at krspike S-P-I-K-E. Kirby. Spike Krspike@gmail.com. And I know he would enjoy dialoguing with you. And we’re recording this in March of 2023. But if it’s March of 2025 or 2026 and you’re watching this, you’re more than welcome to get a hold of Kirby. Although he may be on a golf trip in Florida and you may have to wait a few weeks for him.
Kirby Spike
To respond, I do want to emphasize the fact that I am very open to that. It’s one of the things I have a passion for. I just got off a video conference with a person from Poland yesterday, kind of talking about next jobs and those types of things. It’s just something I like to do, so I’m happy to do it.
Bill English
Good. Thank you for making yourself available. If you are a manager in business, I’m just going to push this up here for just a second. I would invite you to take a look at my book, biblical Wisdom for Business Leaders, 30 sayings from Proverbs. And if you’re a business owner, I would encourage you to pick up my book, a Christian Theology of Business Ownership an Introduction for Christian Entrepreneurs and what the Bible Says about Owning a Business. And so both of those you can get at Amazon or at really most online retailers, and you can also learn more about them at my site, Bible and Business. So Kirby, I just want to thank you for joining me today. It’s been a real pleasure to talk with you. And do you have any last thoughts for those who will be watching this?
Kirby Spike
I think in the workplace, whether it’s working with your boss or working with peers or other employees, be yourself. Let your faith show it through in the way that’s right for you, and know that God has something special in mind.
Bill English
That’s excellent advice. Well, thank you for joining us today. I am Bill English, the publisher here at Bible and Business. We will be doing another profile in Stewardship, I think, in about three weeks. In that one, we’re going to work with Rob Murphy out of Huntsville, Alabama, and his wife. He owns a staffing agency in Huntsville, Alabama. Those two and my wife and I are going to hop on a call. And because we’re both business owners and both entrepreneurs, we’re going to talk about how God has provided miraculously for us during really difficult times when the businesses weren’t doing so well, how God provided financially. And we’re just going to share testimonies and stories. And instead of it being an interview style, it’s going to be more of a back and forth, telling stories and really encouraging everyone on God’s sovereignty and provision for his people. So until we meet again, thank you for joining us. Be sure to head out to Bibleandbusiness.com and take a look at all the podcasts or look at all the blogs and listen to all the podcasts and other resources that I have for both.
Speaker 3
Business owners and business leaders. I want to thank you for joining.
Bill English
Kirby and I today.
Speaker 3
I hope you found our conversation helpful as you grow in your faith in Jesus Christ. If you’d like to speak with me, just send me an email at bill@bibleandbusiness.com. I would enjoy connecting with you and talking through some of your most difficult situations. I hope you’ll join us again for another Bible and Business Profiles and Stewardship podcast.
Bill English
So until then, may God rich bless.
Speaker 3
You as you serve Him today.
Bill English
Take care.