Episode #28
028 Teach Me to Care and Not to Care | Biola University President Barry Corey
Barry Corey is starting his twentieth year as president of Biola University. He says he is on his third presidency at the same institution. Early on, he hired a senior leader he liked and respected. Years later the university had moved and the role had moved with it. Barry agonized for weeks over a decision he already knew was inevitable, and when he walked in to deliver it, the office started to spin and he nearly passed out. That decision, and what it cost to make, sits at the center of this conversation. Barry has also written a book, Necessary Burdens , with contributing author John Townsend, on the fourteen burdens carried by the one person at the top of an organization. His argument is that those burdens turn into assets once a leader stops reading them as evidence of weakness. This conversation covers why the top leader personifies the organization and absorbs its criticism as personal rejection, the distinction he draws between wanting to "be president" and wanting to "do president," and how fifteen years of retreats with a small group of other presidents has sustained him in the work. He also talks about the T.S. Eliot line he leads by, the five things he told his board he would do himself and delegate to no one, and why he calls it the president's office and never his own. Barry Corey is president of Biola University, a 5,500-student university in Southern California. His book Necessary Burdens , written with John Townsend, releases today.
