Leadership Lessons with Dr. Louis Guiden Jr
Join us in this inspiring episode as Dr. Louis Guiden Jr. shares his remarkable journey in leadership development and community engagement. Dr. Guiden emphasizes the importance of moving beyond past mistakes to focus on the present and future. He delves into the mentors and leaders who have shaped his life, revealing how their influence has crafted his unique approach to leadership.
Discover Dr. Guiden’s innovative methods, which prioritize vulnerability, relevance, and building a foundation of trust. Hear compelling stories of his work with juvenile delinquents and the transformative power of strong relationships. Dr. Guiden also addresses the pressing challenges in youth leadership and community development today, advocating for creative strategies to overcome them.
Envisioning a pioneering society, Dr. Guiden introduces “Guiding You For Life,” a revolutionary initiative aimed at supporting 21st-century leaders. He calls on listeners to start caring, sharing, giving, serving, and loving within their local communities. Tune in for an episode filled with wisdom, inspiration, and actionable insights for aspiring leaders.
Transcript
We welcome Dr. Lewis Guyden to the pockets. How you doing today,
Dr. Louis Guiden Jr (:I'm doing great, how you doing, sir?
Dr. Keith Haney (:I can't complain. I'm looking forward to having this conversation with you. This is your first podcast, so we're going to ease you into this a little bit.
Dr. Louis Guiden Jr (:I don't think you ease anybody into anything, so yeah.
Dr. Keith Haney (:Well, we'll see. But I'm gonna give you an easy question to get you started. What's the best piece of advice you ever received that has kind of resonated with you through your
Dr. Louis Guiden Jr (:One of the best pieces of advice that resonated with me in this journey of career and life was stop beating myself up for my past mistakes because I would always go into the past of things that I made mistakes in, things I should have knew better of. And with that, said, and keep your hands to the plow.
You have to keep working. You have to keep laboring and stop looking behind you and also learn to be thankful and grateful for the opportunity to be a change maker and a curse
Dr. Keith Haney (:I like
Who said that to
Dr. Louis Guiden Jr (:And you know, when I think about it, well, it was actually a friend of mine, probably back in 2004, and I was really going through this phase of kind of really trying to figure out life. he told me, I always see you looking back. You're always looking back to your mistakes. You keep beating yourself up. You keep telling yourself you're not good enough. You keep telling yourself you're not above.
leader, great husband, and he was a dear friend of mine who was actually seeing how my life was impacting his life. And he told me, says, when you're not really focused in keeping your hands on a plow, you get very dark. And then now you're not clear on what you're supposed to be doing. So he was a great friend of mine. He was younger than me too, as well.
Dr. Keith Haney (:powerful passage.
Dr. Louis Guiden Jr (:Mm -hmm. Yeah.
Dr. Keith Haney (:I'd love to ask my guests this question too. Think about this. Who were some mentors or leaders in your life who impacted your life and how did they influence your
Dr. Louis Guiden Jr (:Oh, I've had many mentors and I still have several mentors today, right? And when I think about the word mentor, I think about men that are on a tour of life. Does that make sense? Men who are on a tour of life. Back in around 1999, I met some businessmen, but they were businessmen in the faith -based community.
And these men really influenced me on who I was. They gave me a book called Anointing for Business. And I read this book and they said, you need to read this book because this is what you're anointed to do. You're anointed to do business in the marketplace. And that really was a great impact on my life. It influenced my path to continue to stay in the marketplace, to do business, community.
And really what it did is it helped shape my role to become an evolutionary transformational
Dr. Keith Haney (:that's powerful.
Dr. Louis Guiden Jr (:And at the time what these men were doing, they were doing business. They were mortgage brokers, investors, had security companies for like private security. They were very influential in business. And I think coming from my story of just, you know, they helped me to learn transformational skills, how to transfer the skills I've learned doing things the wrong way and use them in a business setting.
So they were very influential in my
Dr. Keith Haney (:So we're gonna get into your journey now, because I'm curious about your journey. So share with us your journey and how that led you to become the CEO of Guiding You For
Dr. Louis Guiden Jr (:Thank you. 1993, I left Shreveport, Louisiana on a Greyhound bus. One of my family members, my first cousin had married a gentleman who moved her there. And they told me at the time, if I graduated from high school, I can move to Seattle. At the time, there was a lot going on. If you know Shreveport, Louisiana in 1993, you know, we had the violence, the crack epidemic.
,: st,: Dr. Keith Haney (:my.
Dr. Keith Haney (:Mm -hmm.
Dr. Louis Guiden Jr (:I can feel the heat. I can feel the wings of the demonic angels that had my soul and the Lord sent an angel to come and get me out of hell. So fast forward to your question from 1993 to 1998, I had had about eight surgeries on my ankle. They were trying to rehabilitate my ankle. I had a lot of psychological damage. had had by the time
,: EO of guiding you for life in: Dr. Keith Haney (:It's funny you mentioned that, and you're from Shreveport. I'm from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. So I do know the area. In 1993, I was already gone, though. I went to Southern, graduated in 87, and moved to St. Louis. There's another little school up there in Shreveport I don't talk about very often.
Dr. Louis Guiden Jr (:okay. You understand me. You not. Okay. Southern. Okay, Southern. Jaguar. Okay.
Dr. Louis Guiden Jr (:Don't worry about it. As they say, when they say no good thing come out of Shreveport, yes it do. Yes it do. That's what good things come out of Shreveport.
Dr. Keith Haney (:Yeah.
Dr. Keith Haney (:But that event you described though is interesting to me because I wonder as you look back on it, because I'm sure that that had to impact your life for a while. So what made you take that event and say, want to dedicate my work and my life to developing leaders?
Dr. Louis Guiden Jr (:And that's really what happened because this work is both personal for me, both me and my wife, Dr. Ebony Guy. At the time I met her in 1999, we were dating. We were both just seeking the Lord, trying to our hope and purpose in Him. At the time, we were not engaged, we just friends. And we had got engaged in 2000. And I just
ays for years witnessing from:things that was happening in my life. And I remember she just really started saying, she encouraged me to say, you know, have you ever thought about, you know, taking all this passion, all this pain, all these things you've done, have you thought about putting it into a book, maybe a documentary, or even into working with others? And that was really the seed that got used to kind of ignite, like, wait a minute, I never thought about that. And, you know, my wife,
is a journalist. So she would capture from years of me talking to her in the car, just things I would say to her. And basically that's where I began to leverage the pain and repurpose it into what I'm doing today. It was really her saying that and speaking that. And we know the Bible says, he that findeth a wife, findeth a good thing, and obtain favor from the Lord.
She's been my favorite. She's been one that really helped me to see the greater purpose of this. And she's really the scholar behind most of this work, the writing, the content. She just takes the story that she's seen and we have built guiding you for life together.
Dr. Keith Haney (:So tell me exactly what is your unique approach to leadership development and community engagement?
Dr. Louis Guiden Jr (:You know, our approach is very, you know, unique. One of the things that's really unique about the approach is that I have to use my relevance of my story, right? The approach. How I approach things is I always want to use the relevance of my story.
As I really think about the journey I've gone through, I have to approach folks with the experiences that I've gone through. So I always have to be open and willing and show them my vulnerability, which we know that for a black man in leadership and in community, that's not really common. Cause a lot of times, you know, I would find, you know, me and black men.
or leaders like myself that would not really be vulnerable about what they've gone through. And what that did was gave me a relevant context that I was able to create an environment where the people that I was sharing were doing leadership, coming in to facilitate, talk to, they were able to now feel the trust to say, okay, I can be vulnerable and share my concerns, my beliefs, my failures, my barriers, my pain.
and my fears. So that approach is how I always approached it with my personal experiences. And it always connected these three words, DTE. It created connection, trust, and engagement. So that's what I always did. Use my vulnerability, use my story, use the things I've gone through, it brokenness with family, mother, even how I may have, you know, saw God, relationships with women, men.
all those things to create an environment where others could be vulnerable and share themselves.
Dr. Keith Haney (:Everybody doesn't receive leadership well. So how do you, I've worked in the inner city in Detroit, in St. Louis, in Milwaukee, and I've discovered that a lot of times, especially men, black men, first of all don't recognize leadership when they see it. And oftentimes they're not sure what to do with when it's in their
Dr. Louis Guiden Jr (:Yes.
Dr. Louis Guiden Jr (:Mm -hmm.
Dr. Keith Haney (:I noticed you worked a lot with juvenile delinquents. How did you walk into that brokenness and help lead them when they don't usually know what leadership, especially godly leadership, looks
Dr. Louis Guiden Jr (:Mm -hmm.
Dr. Louis Guiden Jr (:Yes, absolutely. You know, even working with juveniles, right? First of all, I had to think about my own story as a juvenile. Number one, I was always mine when I come into a space. Number two, I'm a black man myself, which means that as a youth, I really did not see black men modeling leadership. Leadership means influence. So I always would remember that coming into the space.
But what I realized was that I had the cultural awareness to understand these young men experiences with injustice, marginalization, poverty, oppression, feeling less than. So I always considered that to be the first and most essential step in the process to build a strong, trusting relationship with young men. And that takes time. Relationship takes
There would be times where I may meet young men and it may take three, six months, nine months, it may take three sessions, 30 minutes, 30 days. So what I always did was use my personal experiences and also I had to be aware of the multiple triggers that could basically cause explosive anger based on what I may say or what I may do. So I always had to remember me.
What was things that I know people come in the room and say that can make me be explosive and make me give up on myself, which is really give up on the relationship. Because I was always as a kid, and even becoming an adult, was always looking for a way to detach myself from a relationship to say, see, people don't like me. So I always would use that. I would always anticipate it so I can avoid provoking the response so that they would not push away and then I have to start over.
So really it was about holding myself accountable and allowing the youth to hold me accountable. When I did things, I would allow them to hold me accountable. And these were kind of the holistic things that I had to use because it really required a lot of patience and understanding from what these young men have gone through, what their experiences have been. And I think that's what really made it, I would say, young men really excited about seeing me each week because they knew that that's how I would always show
Dr. Louis Guiden Jr (:I was always gonna be patient, I would always understand. And the biggest thing, man, God, was that they always felt the love that I had in my heart for them. They always felt the love. They would see me cry and say, man, I love you. Like, man, I don't, this, no, I'm here for you, I love you. I understand that they bust your level down and they didn't let you talk to your mother, but I'm here for you. I'm gonna show up every week. So it really was my consistency. Consistency.
Dr. Keith Haney (:I think that's the most important word in this conversation, especially in working with young people, especially troubled young people, is consistency. They are used to people coming into their life, making promises, and then not being
Dr. Louis Guiden Jr (:Mm -hmm. Absolutely. Absolutely.
Dr. Keith Haney (:So how do you, especially when you bring other people into your sphere of influence, how do you make sure they understand it's really important that you stay? That you don't just come and you put your two weeks in and then you disappear from these kids' lives.
Dr. Louis Guiden Jr (:Mmm.
Dr. Louis Guiden Jr (:Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. You know, that was always, I had to be very intentional, number one, about vetting the men that wanted to work with these young men. And a lot of men didn't like that because the approach that I approached the young men with, I would approach the men with. I would bring the men in a room and see if they wanted to be vulnerable. Okay.
Now, a lot of times when I was working with men of a faith, they would come in with this like hierarchy, I'm here, everyone is here. And I would always bring them down off of their pew and say, you're gonna sit amongst us. And I wanna know that number one, you're stable emotionally. If you're not, how do you deal with your own emotions, your own pain, your own trauma? So I would vet the men and really take them through a process to see where they're
And it was always two things I would do. Some men may be great with one -on -one mentoring or engagement. Some men may be great in a group setting where there's more accountability. That was a process. And I really had to be intentional because of the brand that I was representing with these young men. These young men trust me. Not only did the young men trust me, the staff trusted me, the directors, the superintendents, all of these high level folks says, Louis, at the time I was Louis, Louis, we trust
And we know that you have a brand and a reputation that any man that you bring in front of these young men is a DNA of yourself. So that was always my approach. And I tell you, a lot of men would challenge me, you know, y 'all, need to these young men accountable and they shouldn't be talking like that. And I would say, okay, so change is something we evolve in. So you expect in 30 days that this young man is going to change a course of 16 years.
of what he's going through. And you profess to be a man of God, and you talk about grace and mercy and forgiveness. So God did a quick work in your life, and you know it, Enoch, and all this stuff happening to you in 30 days, help me understand how that's gonna happen. So I'd always use the relevance of the word. And if they wasn't believers, I would just use the human piece, which is understanding that we all have gone through things, and we need to know that we have to be patient. So that was kind of always my approach.
Dr. Keith Haney (:I love that. So thinking about your strategy, I always like to look at what's the end that builds on the strategy. So what was your end goal in working with these young men? What did you want to say? It's like the ideal outcome from you working with them. And then tell me how you got them there.
Dr. Louis Guiden Jr (:with me.
Dr. Louis Guiden Jr (:Relationship, the end goal was sustaining the relationship. Relationship, relationship, relationship. Because when you have a deep relationship with someone, there is an established foundation of trust. And anything from there that you want to engage them in, whether it be education, workforce, resolving issues with family, resolving issues with their own personal life,
mother of their children, their grandmother, even if they looked at someone white who they feel put them in this situation, it was really about establishing a foundation of relationship. Because at the end of the day, when these young men knew that I was going to stay in relationship with them, no matter how they showed up, no matter what happened in their life from the time I met them.
to where even throughout that journey, if they fell off, something happened, they re -offended, didn't do well, I stayed in relationship with them. And that was the key, relationship. My outcome was always the relationship, staying in relationship with them. I have young men that text me today, call me today. They're in their 20s. They'll find me on Facebook, find my number. Hey Coach, little man, thanks when I met you 10 years ago.
Here's a picture of me, I'm doing good. Hey, I thank you for everything you did. At the time I didn't want to hear it, but now I'm married. got a son. I've got a job. I'm working and just thank you for just being there for me. So really it's all about planting seeds and we have to know that seeds take time to grow. So it's keep planting, laboring, gardening, weeding, but really staying in the relationship with
Dr. Keith Haney (:As you think about all the young men you've impacted over your ministry, is there one story in particular that stands out as really kind of, that encompasses the core philosophy of guiding you for life?
Dr. Louis Guiden Jr (:I know many, there's one that sticks out of a young man who, he was a baby of a big family. He was the baby. And the family was huge. I mean, they had a culture of just some things that had happened as early as he was in third grade. And I just remember he was a young man I met that at first he didn't want to engage with me. And over time he would come and just look at
He would come and just look at me. Then over time he would start engaging with me. And I remember one day he was just talking about his family. You know, I'm the baby. I really want to, know, Coach Louie, you're helping me to see that I need to really look at my family different. I need to think about my father, my sisters, what happened. And he says, man, I'm trying to figure out a way that they'll come to this event we're going to have. I said, okay.
So he didn't know behind the scenes what we did was we reached out to his family, them about how great they had been doing, how they should come to the event. And when they came, the father came, him and the son cried. The sisters came, his older brother came, and he cried when we did a panel discussion. He just broke out and said, this is one of the greatest moments of my life. And I'm almost crying now. He was just
My family came to see that I changed. And that was a moment that I realized that every young man wants to be reconciled to his family, no matter what's happening. And the father began to come, be more engaged in his life. And this young man is doing amazing today. He's doing amazing. He's got married. But that was that one that broke me. And I'll be honest, he was a Muslim.
But this is what he told me. He says, Coach Lou, you know, I would probably come to your Bible study if you was a pastor. He would always say, if I was a pastor, right? He was like, I know you're a man of God and all that, you know? He said, I would come to your church if you had a church. That's what he told
Dr. Keith Haney (:Wow.
Dr. Louis Guiden Jr (:So think about that, that relationship dynamics. So that was the one that really moved me because of just our faith, right? What he believed and what I believe, but we had a relationship.
Dr. Keith Haney (:That's powerful story. As you look at the landscape of where young people are today, what do you see as some emerging challenges in youth leadership and community development today?
Dr. Louis Guiden Jr (:You know, it's a lot of articles I read, lot of things that I pay attention to. But when we really look across this country and we look at just all of the changes that's happening, we got a growing population of disadvantaged youth in our American context. We have a lot of youth children who are living below the poverty line, single parent homes.
have doubled between:trauma, violence, assault, it has really created a huge pipeline of youth that are disengaged from education, disengaged from family, disengaged from community. Because I believe when we have families, we have a community, right, where there's a lot of help. And these conditions, and then we got to talk about the racial disparities that are huge.
the economic conditions. mean, we have a lot of inflation right now. We have folks who can't even afford rent to live, can't even afford food. And then we have the cultural incompetence, right? In the systems, we have disruptive family models. This has bred a generation of misguided youth, which will require unconditional, innovative forward thinking strategies to invoke sustainable
Affirming a change and reroute the course of their lives. I mean, it's really going to take some real innovation, thought provoking, forward thinking strategies and untraditional ways to reroute what we're seeing.
Dr. Keith Haney (:If you could fix one problem in the culture that you think would make the biggest impact or change one thing, what would that be?
Dr. Louis Guiden Jr (:that's a loaded question. But really, if I can do one thing, it would really be thinking about the next century of 21st century leaders, which is leadership development. How do we really do more leadership development, which is giving folks an opportunity to lead from the capacity, looking at my story, listening to my
How can we find these individuals that people see a certain way as, he's not going to be nothing. He doesn't want this. He's only going to be that and really tap into that innovation in leadership, which is influence. Leadership is influence. So how do we really tap into the creativity and the leadership abilities that they have and really strengthen that? That's the one thing I would say.
Dr. Keith Haney (:Yeah, as I worked in the city, the one thing I really tried to fix, I guess you could say, or enhance was, you mentioned it, strengthening the family. Because it seems to me like the breakdown of the family, especially in the city, has created so many other problems. have the income is a big problem. We have the unguided young people, men and girls.
Dr. Louis Guiden Jr (:Mm -hmm. Yes. Yes.
Dr. Louis Guiden Jr (:Yes.
Dr. Louis Guiden Jr (:Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.
Dr. Keith Haney (:And I remember it just like growing up, the music I listened to, and I don't want to blame the music, but I remember what the music elevated, because I grew up loving rap.
Dr. Louis Guiden Jr (:Yes, yes, all of us did.
Dr. Keith Haney (:But rap changed from being social poetry to highlighting a culture, a gang culture to me, that just did more damage to our community. It was from being fun and deep thinking to celebrating lots of kids, celebrating drug use, celebrating gun violence. I'm like, that really wasn't what it was about initially. It really was.
Dr. Louis Guiden Jr (:Mm.
Dr. Louis Guiden Jr (:Yes.
Mm -hmm.
Dr. Louis Guiden Jr (:No, it wasn't.
Dr. Keith Haney (:There was some brilliant poetry that was being communicated through music that I kind of missed, like that Renaissance or what that was.
Dr. Louis Guiden Jr (:Yes.
Dr. Louis Guiden Jr (:Mm -hmm.
about the gang culture around:being a part of the culture. How can we really understand to your point, what it was intended for? When you think about the definition of a gang, it says two or three people coming together for a common activity. Okay. So there is something good to start a five, one C three. need three people, treasurer, secretary president to come together for a common goal. So how can we look
Dr. Keith Haney (:Right.
Dr. Louis Guiden Jr (:the intentionality of gangs, but how do we leverage it to really help to shift the mindsets of how we help individuals to see their influence, which is really re -educating them of the purpose of gangs. When gangs started, it was because blacks were trying to protect themselves because they had moved west from the great migration, they moved north, and they were trying to protect themselves from whites.
other ethnicities that were messing with them. So when they started out, they were only trying to protect themselves. But then it became a culture that was influenced by other things outside of us, which is music, media. Media played a big part in the game culture. You think about, you know, we got to look at, I don't want to say it, but we got to look at just other systems that was outside of our control that began to impact. And you're right, it really has taken an impact. But I
There is good in folks who have been lost in that culture and you're looking at one of right now. And I work with many other brothers across this country and we use our stories of coming from that culture to go back in and to help people to see how to support these kids. But families are key. And even when I'm talking to families, I have to remember number one, my mother, what she went through.
Dr. Keith Haney (:All right.
Dr. Keith Haney (:Right.
Dr. Louis Guiden Jr (:what my father went through. Okay, number one. Number three, number two, I'm a father. So even when I'm talking to parents, I have to see myself in them. I don't judge them. I don't talk bad about them. I don't even let staff talk about, those kids, it's their problems, their parents. Wait a minute, hold on, wait a minute. Nobody want nobody talking about their mom. Nobody want nobody talking about their daddy. So let's not say
Dr. Keith Haney (:Right.
Dr. Louis Guiden Jr (:Okay, because you don't know that father story. You don't know that mother story. So I'm always trying to have the compassion in my heart to say, wait a minute, this mother loves her child. This father loves his children and somewhere along the way something impacted that relationship. So how can I bring some hope to this father and this mother of loving their children?
Dr. Keith Haney (:Yeah, I love that. It's funny as you think about that, I'm kind of curious, what do you see guiding you for life in the next decade? And what legacy do you hope to leave?
Dr. Louis Guiden Jr (:Oh, well, first of all, I want to continue to build a legacy for my wife. Number one, we just celebrated 24 years, right? 24 years. And, you know, the legacy of marriage is, know, black man, young man, married for 24 years. I want to continue to create a legacy of what marriage looks like and a legacy for my wife. I'm gonna my children, you know, I have kids that are in HBCUs right now.
Dr. Keith Haney (:Congratulations.
Dr. Louis Guiden Jr (:I have grandchildren, so I want a legacy for my children, my wife, my children, my children's children, right? Which is the children that would come from my children's legacy. And then my extended family with the hope of wealth. I want to really create a legacy for the family, one, of all these people that I have influence with, of reshaping a legacy with the hope of wealth with this company, with this business.
fall of this year, September,:be launching a Guide You For Life Leadership Academy platform, which will have asynchronous coaching and micro learning with 300 plus sessions that you can go through. We will have self -paced courses of over 130 soft skills for leadership things. We'll have 100 plus audio books. We will have personal support forms and templates where leaders can download forms and templates to support them.
uilding. And then later on in:doing more of this podcast, sharing my story, reaching an audience where I can really have an opportunity to share more of my story with other leaders across the country. So those are the three pivotal things of the legacy for Guy New for
Dr. Keith Haney (:exciting stuff there. So for somebody who's inspiring to do what you do in their community, what would you be a key piece of guidance for
Dr. Louis Guiden Jr (:Thank you.
Dr. Louis Guiden Jr (:You know, it's really simple, not complicated. tell people, just start caring, start sharing, start giving, start serving, and start loving others in your local community. This is what people who have lost hope need more than anything else. And leadership is really about empowering the next generation.
It's about supporting, coaching, and it's about creating opportunities as well as to lead. So really it's about just starting in your local community of those things. Caring, sharing, giving, serving, and loving. It's just that simple. Right where you're at in your local community and really use your leadership, which is influence, to really empower others to lead. It's pretty much
Dr. Keith Haney (:Love it. As we wrap this great conversation up, is there a message of hope or a call to action you want to leave with my listeners
Dr. Louis Guiden Jr (:You know, I would say this, we are the brand that others see. We are the brand that others see. And people really don't care about our callings, our talents, or our skills. They need to see a model of character, integrity, and values in us first. And really, this is what I call the blueprint or the architecture design. Pretty much that's it. We're the brand.
We're the model that people are going to see. So it's really knowing what you want your brand to be and really think about the character of your brand, the integrity of your brand and the values of your brand that people need to see first. Because you are the blueprint. You are the architect design. Because when I think about a builder, when I see a builder has built a great house, I want that model. Hey, can you come build me the same house on my land? So it's really.
We are the brand that people need to see. That then they will want the model and allow us to say, can you help me do what you do or help me change or help me grow? And that's what I would say to listeners today.
Dr. Keith Haney (:That's awesome. Where can people connect with you and learn more about guiding you for life?
Dr. Louis Guiden Jr (:Well, first of all our website is www .guidenu4life .com That's G -U -I -D -E -N the letter U the number for life L -I -F -E dot -com Also linked in you can reach me at linkedin dr. Louis Godden jr. Or if you want to call you can reach out at 888 -471 -4443 It's how you can connect with me and yes
Thank
Dr. Keith Haney (:Well, thank you for being a guest on my podcast. May you get more people to invite you on their podcast. You can share this story because what you're doing is so critical in our communities and the way you're pouring into young people is inspiring. So may God continue to bless the work you're doing and may you continue to influence lives and give them hope in the midst of sometimes some hopeless and difficult times.
Dr. Louis Guiden Jr (:Well, thank you as well for having me being on here. This is the first podcast. So you have set the stage, I guess.
Dr. Keith Haney (:You have set the standard, there we go. So good to have you on,
Dr. Louis Guiden Jr (:Thank you. Thank
