How to Display Integrity in Leadership | Ep. 22 with Dr. Robert Andringa
What is integrity, why is it critical in our lives, and how do we maintain it?
Listen in as Dr. Robert Andringa answers these questions and more.
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Transcript
Host
You're listening to the No Grey Areas podcast with Patrick McCalla. Today's guest is Dr. Robert Andringa, author and consultant. Bob focuses on the skills needed to live a life of integrity and how to acknowledge it in others.
::Host
Let's dive in.
::Patrick McCalla
Well, Bob, welcome to the No Grey Areas podcast. We've known each other for over a decade now. Yes, and you've become almost a mentor to me and a lot of ways like I've had some, some pretty tough times in my life where I called you up and said, Hey, can we meet and you've you've talked me off
::Patrick McCalla
some cliffs, I think at some points and given me some great advice. But man, you are going to be such a perfect guest for what we're wanting to do with this podcast podcast, as I shared with you. It's called no gray areas and it's built around really this concept of we want we want to help eventually young
::Patrick McCalla
people, especially, but all people understand the value of the decisions we make. The choices really matter. So we're going to get into that in a little bit with you. But I want I want, first of all, our audience just to get to know you.
::Patrick McCalla
So where were you born? Where are you from?
::Dr. Robert Andringa
Small town in western Michigan.
::Patrick McCalla
Western Michigan. So, you know, cold weather, then definitely.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
I don't go back there in the winter.
::Patrick McCalla
Yeah. When did you stop going back there in the winter?
::Dr. Robert Andringa
Oh, when we left Michigan State University, my wife and I were assigned to Washington, D.C. Yeah, with the economy. So that got us out there and we go back there in August for a week. That's it.
::Patrick McCalla
Yeah, yeah. Well, just a really quick side note. You go back, you and your wife are still friends. You have some friend groups that you've been doing stuff with for decades, right?
::Dr. Robert Andringa
47 years now for couples have been hanging out together every year for a week or two.
::Patrick McCalla
That's unbelievable. Like that kind of friendship and the depth, and it's fantastic.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
All of our kids know one another and the grandkids. We've been to all the weddings, all the college graduations.
::Patrick McCalla
d group started in college in: ::Dr. Robert Andringa
We were all out of college. Wow.
::Patrick McCalla
Wow. Well, we're getting ahead of ourselves a little bit, so let me go back. So. So you grew up in western Michigan? Right. And then and then all through like high school graduate high school.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
There I did from a small school, 72 in my class.
::Patrick McCalla
OK, well, you beat my mind was 18, my graduating class. See? Yes, small town in Montana. So OK, so where did you go from there?
::Dr. Robert Andringa
Well, I went to Michigan State University and Sue came from the Detroit area and we met the first week of college. We married after four years and I stayed four years for a doctoral degree and she taught helped me through graduate school.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
And then we left in 67 for Washington, D.C..
::Patrick McCalla
And then what? What what were you going to Washington, D.C. for?
::Dr. Robert Andringa
I had a deferred ROTC commitment. Took me there and got involved with the National Prayer Breakfast and some of the good things there. Good churches and out of that time, meeting one of the Congress persons for Minnesota was invited to come up to the hill and help rewrite the Higher Education Act.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
Higher Education was my graduate program. So I spent two and a half years developing and trying to sell to the Democrats. What's now called the Pell Grants? OK. And that was probably two thirds of all of my time there.
::Patrick McCalla
Hill Yeah. Wow. Wow. So how long were you guys there in D.C.?
::Dr. Robert Andringa
How together? Throughout our career, two tours there totaling about 22 years.
::Patrick McCalla
Oh, a lot of a lot of your.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
A lot of years.
::Patrick McCalla
Yeah, yeah. And were you were you working with education when you went there? Is that why you were going there? Well, it was that kind of.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
I thought I would go back to a campus right after the army, but I've never been back to one campus in that.
::Patrick McCalla
How life works.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
But I've never applied for everything that I've done and people think I'm a planner.
::Patrick McCalla
Yeah.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
Except for my own life. Yeah, you know, I think God was much more creative.
::Patrick McCalla
So, yeah, I would think that you're a planner just knowing you a little bit that I know about you, but you're saying most of how your life has gone. You didn't really plan for.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
None of it.
::Patrick McCalla
I think that's probably more how most lives are, don't you think?
::Dr. Robert Andringa
Well, I think a lot of people don't end up in a career that matches their undergraduate choices. So that's pretty, pretty normal. But for me, I was very happy where I was and then got a call and we prayed about it and said, Well, this seems to make sense.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
And so all of my career has been really, I think, the Lord opening doors that I never thought of.
::Patrick McCalla
Yeah. You've opened up a lot of doors, too. That's what's amazing. So you went from. D.C. And then you end up you are Minnesota, right, was that after D.C.?
::Dr. Robert Andringa
Well, the congressman that I work most closely with Al KWI from Minnesota chose to run for governor. And on a one day's notice, we decided to accept his invitation to manage his campaign. Never been in Minnesota, except for one day.
::Patrick McCalla
At noon in Michigan, right? Pardon. This is cold. As Michigan, it's colder.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
Yeah. And so without any knowledge of managing campaigns or of Minnesota, in three days, we had sold the house, bought a house and we're in Minnesota.
::Patrick McCalla
And you're in charge of running a campaign.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
And I'm in campaign. No money, no staff. No knowledge. Wow. Yeah, wow.
::Patrick McCalla
So how did that go?
::Dr. Robert Andringa
Well, we won by five points.
::Patrick McCalla
Hey, that's that's a success.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
Something. Something went.
::Patrick McCalla
Wrong. Something went right.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
Yeah, yeah. And then I was in the governor's office and then join. That was director of strategic planning and some other things, and then got a call from a state senator asking if I would be CEO of what's called.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
The Education Commission of the States is based in Denver, so the governor I work for encourage me. He's he's an education governor. And he said, if you go out there, you'll be able to help us from there.
::Patrick McCalla
So you were you were working a lot with with in both government and education, kind of a combination of those two.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
Policy at the state level and national level.
::Patrick McCalla
Yeah, yeah.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
Education policy. Yeah, I enjoy it a lot.
::Patrick McCalla
Yeah. So what happened after Denver track and with your life here now?
::Dr. Robert Andringa
Yeah, really? Well, I worked for a board of 55 people and I'd never worked for a board, never thought anything about working for a board. A third of them were governors and a third of them were legislators, and a third of them were state education officials.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
And of course, 35 was pretty dysfunctional.
::Patrick McCalla
Yeah, that's a that's a large board.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
But I had worked in Congress, which is a lot larger and more dysfunctional. So but I left and I said, I want to do something to help Faith-Based nonprofits understand good governance and jumped into that. And I'm I'm still quite involved in that topic.
::Patrick McCalla
Yeah, yeah. You've been doing a lot of that for. In fact, you wrote a few books about that, right? I have. Yeah, yeah. How many books have you written?
::Dr. Robert Andringa
Uh, depending on how you count them 45, maybe. Yeah, I usually do them with a coauthor. I like iron sharpening iron when you're writing a book and trying to capture good content, not just one author's personality. Yeah.
::Patrick McCalla
So this podcast isn't necessarily about board governance, but I think that there's a lot there's there's a lot of things that connect, right? So why was it that you wrote those books like what did you see? What was the gap that you saw that needed to be filled?
::Patrick McCalla
Right?
::Dr. Robert Andringa
The first book that we started on was about presidential transitions. Later in life, I was twelve years president of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities. And I saw over 100 presidential transitions in twelve years, and I asked a colleague who was a CEO of another private college association to join me.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
And we just wanted to help people know whether becoming a president was a good fit for them, how a campus should successfully transition from one president to the next and things like that. Yeah, yeah. And the next book was the nonprofit board answer book that was with Ted Engstrom, who is one of my mentors.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
He was twelve or 15 years older than I. Mm-Hmm. And he had written 40 books in his lifetime. So I said, Sure, let's write a book. Ted, that's awesome, you know? And I was overwhelmed. Yeah. And I learned how you write 40 books.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
You write three or four first, and then you get people to be a coauthor and they do 90% of it.
::Patrick McCalla
So you did 90% of the work on that one.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
At least.
::Patrick McCalla
Yeah, yeah, I read that one. So most of that was years.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
Yeah. Q and a format was good. Yeah.
::Patrick McCalla
Yeah, it was very good. Yeah. So the transitions that was probably you said you saw 100 transitions in in how many years.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
twelve.
::Patrick McCalla
Years, in twelve years. So what percentage would you say of those went well or smooth?
::Dr. Robert Andringa
Um, two thirds. OK.
::Patrick McCalla
two thirds went well, but there's still a third. And that's that's a pretty good chunk, though, that.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
Yeah, there there are a lot of reasons why a presidency doesn't go well. Often, it's the process of selecting one. Often it's problems that the board creates like. Inviting the former president to hang around for a year thinking that they can help raise money or whatever.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
And part of it is some presidents don't like to be evaluated. Yeah, in a number of those who were asked to leave. Never had an annual evaluation, which is really critical, I think.
::Patrick McCalla
So working with boards and doing a lot with that, what would you say are some of the I think of what Peter Drucker wrote way back in there. Wasn't it the eighties or something where you said 75% of boards are dysfunctional?
::Patrick McCalla
And I don't know that that's changed a lot. But what would you say are some of the reasons for the dysfunction on boards? And again, I don't know that we have like a large listening audience that are dealing with boards, but I suspect we have some people that are on boards or maybe will be working with boards
::Patrick McCalla
in the future. So what what leads to that dysfunction?
::Dr. Robert Andringa
Well, a lot of it is lack of clarity of roles. What is the role of the board vis-a-vis the CEO and executives? What's the role of committees? What's the role of the chairman of the board? Is he the leader of the board?
::Dr. Robert Andringa
Or is the CEO, the leader of the board, which in some cases is a dysfunction? How does staff get involved? How do you keep boards focused on policy rather than management issues the size of the board, sometimes too large to be functional?
::Dr. Robert Andringa
No term limits some boards you can be on for 20 or 25 years and there are.
::Patrick McCalla
Causes problems.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
Today. Today, mainly there are still a lot of faith based organizations that, as I've said in one article, are too old to white and too male. So the diversity is important on a board, I think. Mm-Hmm. And those are some of the reasons.
::Patrick McCalla
Yeah. Bob, you have you have just decades of experience and government governance with education. You had just mentioned that you were the president of this is a lot of letters in here. But cc q right. That's right. Gives you a list of colleges and universities.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
And all that is really close console for Christian colleges and universities.
::Patrick McCalla
OK. OK, I was close.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
Well, we changed the name in my early years there.
::Patrick McCalla
So OK. And wasn't. There was something like 200 universities or colleges.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
Or about 180 and 20 some nations now and 20 different denominations plus non-denominational colleges. So it's it's quite a mix. Yeah. And those are the ones left historically from 900 religious colleges. Many of them have gone down the slippery slope, or some would say, Yeah.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
So there aren't maybe one out of nine remaining that are distinctly Christian.
::Patrick McCalla
Wow. So and all these decades of experiences you've had in leadership watching other leaders, and especially because this podcast is no gray areas about the importance of integrity. How do you see integrity played out? The importance of integrity played out in both our individual life?
::Patrick McCalla
But but even leadership, why is that so critical?
::Dr. Robert Andringa
Well, you tip me off at this topic would come up, so I've given some thought about it, and first I try to define it for me what I've considered it to be in my mind, it's a fruit bowl of positive attributes of a person.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
I couldn't come up with one, but I but I added, It's a fruit bowl. A positive ad attributes a person lives out with consistency. You find a lot of people who who, who, who show integrity in one area of their life, in another area of their life.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
Not so. So this fruit bowl for me, I wrote these down honesty you can count on in all situations the person keeps his or her word. Now he or she treats all people with respect and dignity. There's a big element of authenticity, which might include transparency, being vulnerable, being humble.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
And then the leader of integrity is usually good at discerning truth. Hmm. Makes wise decisions and knows how to say no based on discernment. Yeah, it's tempting, you know, as a leader to always see something that's a little bit bigger or a little bit more prestige or a little bit better pay a little bit better location or
::Dr. Robert Andringa
whatever. And so people get in trouble. I think saying yes to things that they should not because they lack discernment about themselves. Yeah. As well as maybe the role that they're being asked to play.
::Patrick McCalla
Yeah. Anybody who's listening right now knows why. Any time I would meet with you, I'd bring my notebook with me and a pen because you always have such great stuff and I end up having to write things down like that.
::Patrick McCalla
That fruit bowl is so good in what you're saying is that every one of those is important, right? There's actually a lack of integrity. If you had like three of those that you're doing pretty well and you're ignoring the other ones.
::Patrick McCalla
Exactly right. So all of those are important.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
That's the way I see it. Pat, I see it as a plus B plus C plus de plus equals integrity. So if you leave out C. You're not consistently a person of integrity. And we all have pieces of our life, I suppose, that we would not want to have public and money, sex and power.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
We've seen almost weekly. Yeah, is one thing that does people in. Yeah, we mentioned earlier one of the big star anchors just imploded. Mm-Hmm. We've seen pastors and leaders of major parish church ministries where they didn't have transparency and maybe in their evaluations they didn't have honesty.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
I mean, they lacked some things, but they were they were successful in many other areas. And today, sadly, I think it's difficult to find people of integrity in in in the public eye at least. Power corrupts.
::Patrick McCalla
Yeah.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
Money corrupts.
::Patrick McCalla
We see throughout history right across the.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
Board, history.
::Patrick McCalla
Full of history.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
People really corrupt. It really is. And so a person of integrity knows that and builds safeguards around their life knowing that they're vulnerable.
::Patrick McCalla
And I love that building safeguards because that's part of the problem, isn't it? Especially the higher you go in leadership, the less you hear, the higher you go in leadership to less people talk to you? Maybe. Now how are you going leadership?
::Patrick McCalla
The easier it is to have masks on and start thinking, and especially you just mentioned this as long as you're successful in something like if if your job is to lead this company and move it or lead this thing and move it forward and you're moving it forward, people start ignoring some of those other little things sometimes
::Patrick McCalla
, don't they?
::Dr. Robert Andringa
Exactly. I don't want to name particular cases, but even in my sphere were organizations that I've worked with before. The leader has gone down big time and headline news. And people were amazed until you begin to hear the situation and one that you and I know pretty well.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
The wife was the chairman of the board. Mm hmm. The daughter was CEO. Hmm. The board's names are still not public. Hmm. There was no audit of a separate organization that the CEO used to advance this darker part of his life.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
So I think we all have to define. The lanes that we can stay in and be safe and like a highway, you go off the shoulder. Stay there too long, you're going to be in trouble, right?
::Patrick McCalla
Yeah, yeah. You talked about safeguards, used that word a moment ago, and I think that's so good. And again, we're somewhat talking about people in leadership, but this is for anybody, right? Anybody in any exotic place in life having safeguards.
::Patrick McCalla
What are what are some? I'm just curious for you personally. Yeah, this is one of the things I've I've loved and respected about you. So much, Bob. I've I think I've grew in maturity in a younger age when my twenties or thirties, I think I had a mentor in my life and I told him, I'm like, I
::Patrick McCalla
need to see you finish. Well.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
Yeah.
::Patrick McCalla
And I don't need that. And I think that's maturity where I'm going. I don't need that. I've been disappointed enough now where I go. People are human. But it is very refreshing to see someone like yourself who's further along in life.
::Patrick McCalla
You've lived decades and decades with integrity. No one's done it perfectly, but you obviously have put some safeguards in place. You've done some things that protected you from that because you've been in powerful positions. What kind of safeguards as you have.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
Anticipating that I wrote down for, I think there are more for that. I have. And I was influenced as a young man, I was in a church where Billy Graham came to, you know, to the service. And he left early with a couple of security people.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
And what I learned about that is he never rode in a car with a woman. Mm-Hmm. Now that sounds pretty outlandish to some, but I worked for this governor I mentioned earlier. And he picked up on that even though the police drove him every place in a car he would never drive with when a woman staffer with
::Dr. Robert Andringa
him, things like that. When I got to this education commission of the states we were remodeling, we had a staff of about 120 and we were remodeling to go larger and I put glass eight or ten inch glass panes in in all the doors.
::Patrick McCalla
So anybody walking by could look in and see.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
Especially my door. But I thought, Well, let's do it for every, every door. So the the ones that I jotted down as first, you have to have a clear purpose for life. Hmm. If if you don't have a purpose, you're going to be tempted to go down rabbit trails.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
Yeah. The purpose guides decision making. The second one was to be very selective in who I choose to hang out with. Mm-Hmm. It's it's not just what you eat, it's but it's like that. It's it's like garbage in garbage out.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
That old saying, I think we become a lot like the people we hang out with.
::Patrick McCalla
Can I just jump in? Yeah, I can just say again this this podcast No Gray Areas by Joe Gagliano, the book that he wrote the movie is being made one of the things she brings up as she says, Your environment, you become like the environment you're in, and that's what was happening to him.
::Patrick McCalla
Some of the poor decisions he made in his early twenties was because of the environment he was hanging out with. So that's what you're saying, right, is you need be very selective on who the people you're you're surrounding yourself.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
Yeah. Even back in college, I gave my life to Christ into my freshman year. I was in a fraternity and there were invitations to go places and do things. And I just said, you know, no, I know that I'm not that strong.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
Got upperclassmen with me and going to a keg party at a VFW thing off campus as campus was dry back then. And I said, No, I don't think so. And I've tried to hold to that. Another one is to have a few mentors who model integrity.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
Some of the men and women who model integrity. For me, we never talked about there being a mentor to me, but they were just by watching them and maybe working on the edge of what they were doing. The congressman who went to Minnesota and won the governorship, he's 98.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
He's still revered by both parties. This is a man of integrity.
::Patrick McCalla
Wow.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
And I've seen him dozens and dozens of times make choices and do things well. He was a mentor. He was also my boss and also a brother in Christ. And then the fourth one is to be accountable, to be consciously.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
In agreement with my wife and with three or four other men, in my case that you can ask anything you want. I'm accountable to you. As well as to the Lord and. I find a lot of leaders when I ask them, so to whom are you accountable and they kind of am accountable to the Lord said No
::Dr. Robert Andringa
, no. Who among your peers? Are you accountable to. Are you fully transparent, too? And not many have that. Yeah. And the problem is, you know, when you're in a senior leadership position, you don't have anyone that really feels secure enough to challenge you on things.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
Yeah. So you need people who see you informally, formally and social and athletics, whatever you need, people who know you pretty well. Mm-Hmm. And you give them permission to say.
::Patrick McCalla
They see you slipping. Yeah. And they're going to call you out on us.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
To call you out and ask questions. Yeah. And you have to be willing to say it's to my benefit that they do that. Yeah, I'm not. I don't want to be threatened by that. Yeah.
::Patrick McCalla
You know, that makes me think of Bob Dole is. Clearly, if anybody's read the Bible and not all of our listeners, our faith, faith based, but many are, but anybody who's read the Bible would know that it's very clear in there that God would not consider anybody great.
::Patrick McCalla
It's not humble. And all these things that you're talking about take an aspect of humility right to it to make yourself accountable, to someone else, to have a mentor in your life and say, Hey, I don't know everything I need to learn from someone who's further along in life.
::Patrick McCalla
Those are all take humility, don't they?
::Dr. Robert Andringa
They do. And you're right, you don't have to be a Christian to decide that you want to be a woman or a man of integrity. So how do you how do you do that? We all have strengths. We all have weaknesses.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
And if we acknowledge our weaknesses and say so, therefore I'm vulnerable there. Mm-Hmm. And how how can I define the parameters within which I can live with integrity outside of which I'm vulnerable?
::Patrick McCalla
So you mentioned four things there. You talked about living on purpose, right? Did I did? I did I cut you off or did you have another one or is at it?
::Dr. Robert Andringa
No. I think when you don't have a purpose that you're vulnerable to, you're you're tempted to go to some place that seems better. You know, the grass is always greener on the other side. If you have a purpose, you know that to be tempted to go that way is not you.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
But it just looks attractive. So I think a purpose is important. I think we, you and I share a purpose at one level, at a deeper level. We've been gifted differently. So we we want to be able to say no, because that's not part of my giftedness, my purpose, my calling, whatever you want to label it.
::Patrick McCalla
Yeah. Well, so you listed for you, said a purpose who you hang out with mentors, accountability, having accountability. So let's let's just imagine. I know you're not easily offended, but this might be offensive. But let's say someone said this does seem awful old fashioned.
::Patrick McCalla
Mm hmm. What would your response to that be?
::Dr. Robert Andringa
They are. There are a couple thousand years old if you if you're a Christian, this, but also they're proven. I've seen many, many surveys of employees. What do they want most in a boss? Hmm. You know, the leader of the company.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
Leader of the university. Leader of the team. Mm hmm. And integrity is always number one. People of all stripes, faith or no faith. There's something. In our design that wants us to be like someone with integrity, we value integrity.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
I don't know anyone do who would say terror is not what is cracked up to be.
::Patrick McCalla
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. No, no. And I loved I loved how you answered that, where you simply said when I asked, Are they old fashioned? You said they are. But isn't that one of the things that make them so effective?
::Patrick McCalla
They've been proven?
::Dr. Robert Andringa
Yeah.
::Patrick McCalla
And like you said, not just for decades or hundreds of years. For thousands of years, these things have proven.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
Yeah, I'm I'm a guy. My sort of pattern. My makeup is I look for what works. I'm I'm a collector of what works, and so even in working with governing boards. Hey, that's a creative idea that really works here, but I want to see it work at five other places.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
Now, if that idea is working over and over and over again, I say that's a principle I'm going to hang on to. Yeah.
::Patrick McCalla
And these are principles. That's what you're saying, right? Like these principles, you've seen them work.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
Over and over and over big organizations, small organizations. So I call them principles or best practices. Yeah. So in life, there are best practices. I chose not to smoke because my family had a few smokers that died from it.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
And I had a favorite uncle who was killed in an auto crash by a drunk driver. And I said, you know, the risk of doing just those two things is not because of my beliefs. It's because they're dangerous.
::Patrick McCalla
They weren't working.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
They weren't.
::Patrick McCalla
Working, and.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
They wouldn't work for me, and they wouldn't work for others that that I came in touch with. So even though I might enjoy some of that, yeah, not worth it. Yeah.
::Patrick McCalla
So where of again, you have so much experience and you've seen so many organizations and and even in individual lives, where have you seen a lack of integrity? Like, where have you seen that in a negative way? What does that do to both an organization that individual lives when people lack integrity?
::Dr. Robert Andringa
I had several heroes in Congress, and sadly, I don't see that on politics today, so that's what's in the news a lot. And it just saddens me when. An entire caucus will look at a complex bill. And just go along.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
Now, most bills in Congress, I learned. Might have 55 things you agree with and 32 things you disagree with, you have to make a choice. Am I going to vote for it or vote against it? I remember being on the floor once when a Democrat from the other side came over to my boss, Republican, who was also
::Dr. Robert Andringa
on the Agriculture Committee, and the guy said to him, and I'm sitting there thinking, this is unusual. They hardly ever walk across the aisle. And he said, Al, he said, You know, my district in Nebraska. He said, Should I vote for this bill, not ours on the Agriculture Committee, he says, I am going to vote for it
::Dr. Robert Andringa
. But honestly, for you in your district, in Nebraska, it's not going to help. Wow. And the guy said, thank you. Went back over and voted against the bill because he was voting for his district, and Al was honest enough to tell him I was among some young Turks when I was on the hill in my late twenties
::Dr. Robert Andringa
. That really wanted Senator Mark Hatfield to run for president. He had been governor of Oregon is 30 years in the Senate, chairman of the Appropriations Committee. Very articulate, good looking. Really, really liked him. Well, it was during the Vietnam War and in the sixties might have been the Tonkin Gulf resolution.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
There was a big vote in the Senate basically to vote for. It was to say send more money, send more troops. And Mark Hatfield was the one on a vote of 99 to one. Well, within the Republican Party, his chance of being a candidate for president just went down the drain, he knew that.
::Patrick McCalla
So when he voted, he was definitely voting with what he felt because he knew he was giving away his opportunity to be a president.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
Yeah, he was. He was voting his conscience. So today I look and say, Wait a minute, how can that many believe? Whatever conspiracy theory or lie or whatever, and it's really out of self-preservation, so a person of integrity has to have some purpose beyond self advancement.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
Yeah.
::Patrick McCalla
Wow. Well, well, Bob, thank you so much. Thank you. first of all, just for me personally, for being a mentor in my life, for someone who has lived this so well that you put these practices that you're talking about, they're not just something you wrote about or you talk about, but you've lived them out in your life
::Patrick McCalla
. And because of that, you've lived a good life, a life that someone like myself would want to emulate. And you've been blessed because of that. I mean, you have a beautiful wife now. How many years you've been married?
::Dr. Robert Andringa
57 and counting.
::Patrick McCalla
57 and counting. Congratulations. Thank you. And so just incredible. And so thank you so much. Thanks for sharing. So one of the ways that we we finish this up sometimes is two truths and a lie. Yeah, audience has got to know you a little bit.
::Patrick McCalla
I know you. Let me see if we can figure this out.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
You told me that you might ask me that.
::Patrick McCalla
Yes. Yeah, well.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
I had to be creative, right? I come up with something that would sell.
::Patrick McCalla
Well in its ironic to having no gray areas. And then I'm asking a lot of humor in this.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
But yeah, it is. It is. So you're going to tell me which of these is a line I'm.
::Patrick McCalla
Going to try to.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
Yes, OK. With only three, you only get one shot. Yeah. Number one, I won the state eight 80 yard run as a high school senior. OK. A number to our grandson is a Rhodes scholar at Oxford University. And number three, I worked under six different governors of both parties during my career.
::Patrick McCalla
Oh man. Oh, those are good. Those are good. I'm going to go with the 880 is true just because you call it an eight, 80 and not 800 meters right or changes. So I'm thinking that's probably true. Is that right?
::Patrick McCalla
No. Oh, I missed it right away. Right away. So the other two are true.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
Yeah.
::Patrick McCalla
So you have a grandson? That's a Rhodes scholar.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
Yes.
::Patrick McCalla
At Oxford.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
Yes.
::Patrick McCalla
OK. And then you worked on both sides, six different.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
six different governors when I was at the Education Commission in the States. I got a new governor as chair every year from the opposite party. OK. OK. So I had to get close to and understand and and serve well a Democrat in the next year.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
Republican and back to Democrat, they were all education oriented, so I enjoyed and respected them all in that area. Yeah. And but a kid couldn't do that forever. one of the Democratic governors didn't think I was democratic enough.
::Patrick McCalla
OK, OK.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
So he said, I'll accept your invitation to step down.
::Patrick McCalla
It was a nice way of saying, You're out of here.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
You're out of here. Yeah.
::Patrick McCalla
Well, well, hey, I usually do pretty good with those. So you stumped me right away. That's good. But congratulations on your grandson. What an honor that is.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
Yeah, thank you.
::Patrick McCalla
Well, Bob, thank you so much. Thanks for living a good life and for four for leading.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
Well, yeah, let me just say that you've been a mentor to me too. I don't think you can mentor someone without being mentored. So your interest in learning your interest in tapping the wisdom of others have been models for me.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
So I thank you, Pat.
::Patrick McCalla
Thank you. Sincerely appreciate it. Thank you.
::Dr. Robert Andringa
You're welcome.
::Host
Thanks for listening to the No Gray Areas podcast to dove deeper into the story. Be sure to subscribe. Follow us on social media and check out no gray areas. Dot com.
