Thanks for joining us on Season 5 of The Flourishing Culture Podcast, brought to you by The Best Christian Workplaces Institute. You’ll learn how to build a flourishing workplace culture that drives the ministry impact of your organization, your church, or your company brought to you by the Best Christian Workplaces Institute. Now here’s your host, BCWI CEO Al Lopus.
If you happen to be married, I have a personal question for you: Have you ever noticed how a lingering frustration or a serious, unresolved issue in your marriage can eat at you at work and take you out of your game as a leader?
Believe me, I’ve experienced this, and I know I’m not alone. How to build a healthy marriage in ways that can help you become a healthy, better leader in the process is what my guest is all about.
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Les Parrott and his wife Leslie have spent the past 30 years same helping others build healthy relationships. Les is a professor of psychology at Northwest University, in Kirkland, Washington, and they are founders of the Center for Healthy Relationships on the campus of Olivet University in Anza, California
As #1 New York Times best-selling authors, their books have sold over two million copies in more than two dozen languages, and include best-selling and Gold-medallion winner Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts.
Les, welcome to the Flourishing Culture Podcast.
In this episode, you’ll hear about:
- B.H.A.G to see the divorce rate reduced by a third in local churches (3:30)
- Reducing the divorce rate by a single percentage impacts the lives of a million children (4:04)
- Relationship essentials from “Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts”: Your marriage can only be as healthy as you are (8:34)
- A marriage can only be as healthy as the least healthy person in it (09:50)
- Fundamentals of relationships (10:48)
- “If you try to build a connection with another person before you’ve done the difficult work of getting whole on your own, all your relationships become an attempt to complete yourself. And you’ll fall flat.” (13:16)
- It has become routine that leaders implode because of unhealthy relationships (16:28)
- How a dysfunctional marriage can mess with a leader’s ability to lead his/her team (17:22)
- When a person is in pain, especially relational pain, it keeps him/her from having empathy (17:34)
- “We sympathize with our heart, we analyze with our head; empathy brings both our hearts and heads together” (22:03)
- Symbis assessment (24:30)
- Better love assessment (24:53)
- Yada assessment (25:38)
- Spiritual disciplines for couples to practice together (29:46)
- How to have a fair fight (30:29)
- “Conflict is the price we pay for a deeper level of intimacy” (32:18)
Additional Resources
Buy Les and Leslie’s book: Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts
Buy Les and Leslie’s book: Becoming Soul Mates
Download BCWI’s four-page guide for inspirational leadership in crisis for FREE.
Read the Transcript
Read a complete, word-for-word transcript of episode here

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