What if the strongest leaders are not the loudest voices in the room? In this episode, Louis Kim, David McAllister-Wilson, and Jonathan Page explore how leadership rooted in humility, discernment, and relational wisdom can be more transformative than authority driven by control. Drawing from his experience in corporate leadership, theology, and artificial intelligence, Kim challenges church leaders to rethink what it means to be a strong leader.
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Dr. David McAllister-Wilson: Welcome to this special episode of the Leading Ideas Podcast. I am David McAllister Wilson, president of Wesley Theological Seminary, and I’m here with Jonathan Page, director of the Lewis Center for Church Leadership here at Wesley.
Jonathan Page: Hey there, David. It’s good to be with you.
Dr. David McAllister-Wilson: In the 11th century, St. Anselm said, “Theology is faith seeking understanding.” But 10 centuries later, I think we approach theology from both directions. There are many who come to it from other fields, other ways of understanding, who are seeking faith. Seminary education for leadership in the Christian community is more complicated, and sainthood is much more elusive for theologians these days.
So I have found some of the greatest insights for church leadership come as cross-fertilization from leaders in other fields: the military, business, medicine, real estate development. This conversation is with someone who is already doing this kind of dialectic reflection in ways I find helpfully disruptive.
Louis Kim is an independent advisor at the intersection of artificial intelligence, healthcare, and global technology operations. He recently served as vice president of Hewlett Packard, a Fortune 100 technology company, where he held responsibility for business generating up to one billion in annual revenue, and oversaw external partnerships, venture investing, and mergers in acquisition in AI.
Louis now advises a small portfolio of AI and healthcare companies and is pursuing part-time graduate studies in theology and healthcare at Duke Divinity, focusing on hospice and palliative care. We just crossed a bridge in Louis’s experience. He serves on the board of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture and is also a contributor to Comment Magazine, a publication whose mission is public theology for the common good. I came to meet Louis because of my interest in how churches, and therefore Wesley, should think about the effect of artificial intelligence. We might get to that topic today, and also a fascinating project working with the Vatican. But I became especially interested in how Louis is thinking about leadership in his journey from the C-suite to the hospice ward.
Robert Kaplan, a veteran international correspondent, said something about the rise and fall of empires, something which leaders here in Washington should take to heart. He said, “Thinking tragically prevents tragedy.” Louis put this in personal terms. He said, “It would seem that it is useful to accompany a world-weary sagacity with equanimity.” I think this is how he thinks about leadership, and he has graciously agreed to share with us a presentation he put together recently. Full disclosure, Jonathan and I have not seen this presentation. We’ve seen the slides, but we are eager to hear what Louis has to say. So we are all experiencing this for the first time.
Afterwards, we will engage in what I know will be a rich discussion. So thank you, Louis Kim, for spending the time with us.
Louis Kim: Thank you, David. Thank you, Jonathan. it’s good to meet you all. Before I get into this talk about leadership, a little bit of context on what prompted it. So as David mentioned, I have a longtime career in a large corporation. Been through, I think, seven, eight CEOs, 27 managers. I’ve seen a lot of different leadership styles. I also serve on, as David mentioned, several nonprofit boards. I also founded a nonprofit. My father was a Catholic priest, ordained after my mother died. So, I’ve also seen leadership in the nonprofit context and also in ecclesial setting.
And one of the things I evolved, in terms of my view of leadership, was from a typical sort of model of developing leadership skills that I could exert my influence and authority, to being more, I guess, discerning about organizational forces that are already present in, in a group, whether it’s two or two thousand. And because of those organizational forces, it’s influenced my model of what I would call a, an appropriate sort of influence model leadership. And specifically, the question that I, I sort of wrestle with is what would be the most minimal style of leadership? What would that look like while exercising appropriate authority, often or sometimes even ferociously, versus coming in, filling the room, and sort of feeling like I have to rise of sort, some sort of charismatic leadership model.
So that’s the context. So, I’m going to go through some slides. It’s a little bit easier to kind of go through some, some visuals. So let me share my screen. All right, so this slide first, starts with, the prompt, that I just mentioned. So again, just to repeat it, what would it look like for a leader to have the lightest possible touch, in speech, decisions, presence, and this is key, while exercising appropriate authority, even ferociously when necessary.
So, this is not a soft, be nice, be in the background leadership model. It’s really about discerning what is that appropriate level of authority. And what I’m going to introduce here is why sometimes a lighter touch works because of certain aspects about human behavior in organizations. And, going back to, again, to my history, I’ve seen and been around a lot of leadership models. I myself have, deployed different leadership models, sometimes, not well. So, this is born of true experience. And one of the things I’ve seen is captured by this frame, which is there’s often an assumption that as one exercise leadership at a broader scale, I have to be more forceful in deploying my will.
So that’s kind of what’s represented here at the bottom. And often or sometimes that, deploying will at scale can lead into more of an authoritarian coercive style, and my argument is that it doesn’t have to be. And related to kind of what I just talked about in terms of the negative side of leadership at scale, I think we’ve all experienced, maybe even have, deployed elements of some of these kind of negative aspects of leadership that has, an un- inappropriate authority sort of tint to it. One, thing that sort of- made me think about what are those forces within an organization that allow a more minimal style? And I was inspired by seeing a video of, of birds flying together. So I’ll just play a few seconds of this.
[Louis shows a video featuring birds flying together in a large group exhibiting murmuration.]
So, we probably have seen behavior like this either in person or in a lot of animal videos. But these birds are exhibiting a phenomenon called murmuration. So, there’s a lot of research on why and how birds sort of follow each other very quickly, instantaneously. And they are connected in some way. I’m not going to go into the details here, but the point is within the animal world, there are behaviors where animals act in unison without a single leader dominating the entire group. And, in humans, I would argue there are two mechanisms that contribute to group behavior.
And it’s this group behavior that allows a leader to be more selective on their influence. The first factor, and I’m going to cover two. The first factor is mimetic behavior. We copy each other. So mimetic is a particular academic term for how we sort of base our behavior largely on what we see on other people. Much of this behavior has been theorized by René Girard. Some of you may be familiar with that work. I’m going to go back to here before I go to that mimetic theory. One of the reasons for being very discerning about how to exercise influence is some of these negative behaviors that I just cited are not about just being not nice to someone. It impedes the success of an organization. I would argue that the health of an organization is its ability to respond to reality, and that is impeded to the extent by which the speed of truth is inhibited by all these factors. So, this is why it matters. So let me go back to, mimetic, phenomena.
I’m going to play another video, that kind of explains what, mimetic theory is about.
Video: “Man is the creature who does not know what to desire,” said Girard. “He turns to others in order to make up his mind. We desire what others desire because we imitate their desires. Instead of being direct and autonomous, ‘I want that,’ our desires are derivative and triangular, ‘I want that just because someone else wants it.’ Girard’s insight sheds light on financial bubbles, fashion, social media, and every human interaction.
Louis Kim: All right. So, I’m not going to play the whole video, but hopefully you get the gist. So that’s the first factor, which is organizations are largely driven by human behavior, driven by mimicry. The second factor, and this is probably less talked about in a lot of the contexts that I’m in, which is what is the, I guess, the psychological glue that drives that mimicry?
And there’s all kinds of sort of theories. My observation is shame. Shame, based on a lot of research, is arguably the strongest sort of explanatory behavior in a group. It just feels bad to be left out, then to feel that corresponding shame. And my observation is that behavior you see in an organization, in a meeting, can largely be explained by our aversion to shame. And this is a psychological—or psychologist—Louis Cozolino, who also happens, has studied at a divinity school, but he’s a professional clinician and academic. This is a quote that he, that I cite often about the power of shame. Another, researcher is Donald Nathanson. Here again, he argues that it is probably the greatest influence in human civilization.
The next video I’m going to cite, or show, is from is Donald Kagan, a Yale war historian. And here he’s going to talk about as he’s researched how wars started by observing meeting transcripts and other documentation, what was the one factor that drove the decision to go to war?
Video: “The thing I suppose was the biggest surprise to me in writing that book was how potent honor was and is in the conduct of foreign affairs, which often leads to a war. That if—and people say, “Honor? Who cares about honor?” Right. That’s, that’s something that’s another … Translate honor as in ways that we would understand it today. Use a word like prestige. Use a word like shame, which is the, it’s the negative that’s most important in the honor issue. Right down to the last minute, people are infinitely concerned in what they’re talking about inside their private circles with the disgrace, with the honor, with the, the, besmirching of honor for their country than they are … Nobody’s talking about economics. And they don’t even really talk about power. More than anything that you, than you would imagine, they are concerned with this other thing.”
Louis Kim: The reason I pull that quote up is or that passage from, from Kagan is: even in situations where the stakes are so much higher than in typical organizational issues, whether it’s church or business, when lives, whole nations are, are at stake, it is this factor of shame that can drive decisions. Just staying on the shame topic, another way to kind of drive this point is to do a thought experiment.
[Louis displays an AI generated image of the inside of an airplane. There are four to six columns of seats on each side, varying by row. Some seats are filled, some are empty, and some people are sitting backwards.]
Louis Kim: So this is an AI-generated image of a plane that obviously doesn’t exist in real life. But next time you go on a plane, as you walk down the aisle, imagine that you’re—you make eye contact with individuals as you walk down the aisle, and you make eye contact for a little bit longer than is comfortable. Almost always, each person will look away. And I would argue that is representative of a hardwiring for this sort of shame instinct. And just, you know in the spirit of humor, imagine if dogs were in those seats. They would not look away.
[Louis displays another AI generated image of the inside of a plane with two to three seats on each side of the center aisle. Each seat is filled with a different breed of dog, sitting and looking towards the camera.]
So, there’s something about humans, that have—has this sort of shame sort of inflection that again is sort of a key factor in how organizations move. So just to kind of wrap up, growing up, I often, you know, I went to business school and came up through the ranks in corporations, and leadership was sort of addressed in development courses and in literature and boxes as some sort of skill, charisma, power, influence that you acquire and then the people that you lead are sort of like being showered with, quote, “that leadership.”
My model now is I think of first organizational dynamics and behavior as like a large, wide, deep river. There are forces, tectonic-level forces at play in an organization with or without you. It’s driven by, again, mimetic behavior. We copy each other. And that mimetic behavior, I would argue, is driven by a glue that is driven by shame. Understanding that these forces exist then allows you to have a more appropriate leadership style. And often that leadership style will have this sort of minimalist touch or light touch, but it is not minimalism for its own sake. It is minimalism because you have discerned more properly how organizations behave.
I’ll just close with, I always like to do sort of, thought experiments about what are some exemplars in literature or in movies. And when I asked, did some research, the one example that popped up is the way, Gregory Peck portrayed Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. So I’m going to play a little clip of sort of his affect, and then end with a quote by, or, an observation by the actress Sigourney Weaver.
[Louis plays a clip from the movie To Kill A Mockingbird.]
Video: “There’s a lot of ugly things in this world, son. I wish I could keep them all away from you. That’s never possible. In this country, our courts are the great levelers. In our courts, all men are created equal.”
Second Video (Sigourney Weaver): My daughter was studying it actually in school and she said, “He’s passive.” And I said, “Is he passive or does he just not tell people what to think and what to do?” I said, “It’s almost like he’s waiting for them to express the good in themselves.”
Louis Kim: So, I’ll just close with, some reflection questions. And, what’s important about these questions is it’s recognizing that there’s no one prescription for a leadership style. I’m putting together a perspective for people to reflect on. But people have to discern, you know, what might these principles look like in practice for you?
Often, second question addresses, often, my observation is that being able to have this lighter, minimalist style can be thwarted by your own preoccupations, your own attachments, your own unwillingness to let go for whatever reason. And then finally, there are some shadow sides, as with anything. And what are some risks to be aware of? I presented—I’ve presented this talk to different audiences. Dominican friars in the Bay Area, African priests, in Rome at the Gregorian, Pontifical University, Middle Eastern executives, both female and male, that were visiting, in Silicon Valley.
And everyone brought up, certain difficulties with this model. So again, it’s an issue of discernment, but the key point I wanted to just present today is this idea that there are forces within an organization that are tectonic and deep. That are often beyond your control. But if you recognize that, it can allow you to have a more appropriate style.
Dr. David McAllister-Wilson: Very provocative, Louis. Really interesting, interesting stuff. Let me kick it off by just asking you some questions about the concepts. First of all, it resonates with me, and it resonates as a leadership that is more pull than push. More about creating a vacuum than exerting pressure, maybe. But I wonder, what do you think is the relationship between, shame and pride in leadership.
Louis Kim: Well, you know, pride is the ultimate sin. I think we all have a worm inside of ourselves for self-justification. there’s some sense that we’re not enough, and so we look for some source outside of ourselves to address that inadequacy.
Louis Kim: So, I think pride is an outcome of that. you know, we look to credentials, status, number of people reporting to us, celebrity as a way to justify ourselves. And that comes out as ultimately as pride. And part of that inadequacy is driven by, you know, this really forceful power of shame.
Jonathan Page: Louis, I’ll jump in here and just kind of follow up on that idea of sort of how shame and pride interplay. The thing I’m thinking about specifically for church leaders is the role of confession. So, you know, as people of faith we often practice confession as a part of liturgy. So, is there a space where, you know, you talk about … You talked earlier about the speed of truth. And so, how much of the recognition of shame or pride within oneself is—how much is important to be able to sort of have that self-recognition before you can pull that out of others?
Louis Kim: Jonathan, when you say hold out for others, you mean publicly, conveying your own struggle with that?
Jonathan Page: Yes. Absolutely.
Louis Kim: Yeah … and to what, and to what extent? I think, it’s critical. I think we all know one of the risks of leadership is sycophancy. The further you go up in the hierarchy, the less you really know reality, unless someone’s willing to speak truth to power or call you on it.
And I think, part of, creating an environment where you can have more of that honesty and candor come back to you is for you to be vulnerable and obviously, you know, talk about the things you struggle with. And I think it is important to be able to then specifically say, “You know what? I also struggle. I like being liked. You know, when I’m here at the pulpit giving a sermon, it kind of feels good.” I think it’s okay to say that that is a seduction. You know? And then ask people to keep me honest about it. I’ll just give an example from work, and again, I’m not portraying myself as an exemplar, these are all born of difficult experiences. Often when I would have, adopt a new team or a new employee, I would tell … You know, most recently I had this one employee named Adam. You know, I would say, you know, “Adam, you know, every, every two weeks you have a quota. Twice a month you need to call me on my…” (I don’t wanna curse here, but you know), “Call me on my stuff,” right? And he kind of carried it further. He actually put a, a calendar appointment on my calendar for the both of us every two weeks, Adam to tell Louis he’s full of stuff.
Jonathan Page: I love that. And I imagine that creates a, a really refreshing kind of relationship, too,
Louis Kim: Well, yeah, it subverts expectations.
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Dr. David McAllister-Wilson: So interesting reference to a movie. I remember Clint Eastwood being interviewed, or somebody talking about Clint Eastwood’s directing style, which is very much like what you’re describing. He doesn’t, he doesn’t yell, “Action.” There’s not a lot of that. It’s very subdued. In fact, the way he, says “cut” sometimes is “That’s enough of that.” You know, very, very subdued. Which he learned, by the way, in Rawhide because when they yelled “action” the horses would jump. So, it was an interesting leadership lesson from, Clint Eastwood. But I want to take you to a more recent movie around the subject of shame, and that is K-Pop Demon Hunters.
Louis Kim: Yep.
Dr. David McAllister-Wilson: Which I came to because of my grandkids. But, to me, the very clear message in this was that a very clear driver was shame. But that drove in two different directions, I think, in that movie. Have you seen it? How would you respond to, the way shame is treated in a lot of these kinds of storylines where shame is the bad thing, and then you try to turn from that?
Louis Kim: I think, the recognition of, or the demonstration that shame drives bad behavior is timeless in literature and in movies. What’s, I think, different in the last couple of years is the sort of more explicit discussion of the inner psychology, of individuals. The animated movie Inside Out, you know, talked about it.
So, in K-Pop Demon Hunters, you know, it’s, a good example where pathological behavior is not just represented as simple evil, but it’s really driven by a compensation for shame. So, I think that’s healthy. I think, one thing I would point out … well, we could have, several hours on shame. I’ll just make one quick point, going back to Inside Out, is shame kind of gathers its power from this sort of totalizing indictment of yourself. “I am bad through and through, top to bottom,” right? One of the insights I think from Inside Out was that we have multiple voices and characters in our head. We have multiple roommates, and one of them is a strong inner critic, which contributes to shame.
So being able to deal with it by just treating it as one of many roommates, you know, is a very powerful kind of cognitive skill. Going back to leadership and its implication for what we’re talking about here, it’s also important to realize the person you’re dealing with, whether it’s an employee, church, parishioner, churchgoer, or your superior, you know, they’re all… most of, most of us are, you know, behind some mask of shame, and we’re compensating for it, so.
Jonathan Page: I’m touched by that, the reference to Inside Out. A fantastic film and those spaces of internal vocalization and sort of how do you—how you balance those spaces. So, I’m thinking back to the image of the birds and sort of the, this idea of flocks being able to exist without a pure upfront leader. Do you have recommendations or thoughts about how sometimes those internal voices, like we find in Inside Out, make their way out, and different people on different teams can play those different roles at different times.
So, if you’re trying to occupy more of a “with” form of leadership that’s a little bit more subdued, a little bit more—a little bit less upfront—how do you advise managing personalities on a team in that space where, where perhaps you’re needing to look at some critical behaviors or actions?
Louis Kim: I had a situation on a team where two people were just at each other’s throats, and it spilled over into meetings.
Jonathan Page: Mm-hmm.
Louis Kim: They were cutting each other off. Well, it manifests in one time, one made a quip about the other, and the other came back. This was a Zoom call, 15 people, two people sort of cutting at each other. I’ll just use John and Bob. I said, “John, Bob, let’s just move on.” And then at the end of the meeting, 20 minutes later, I said, “Hey John, Bob, would you mind staying behind?”
Louis Kim: So, everyone hung up on Zoom and there were just three Zoom boxes. Me, John, and Bob. I said, “Hey. Okay, John, Bob, we’re better than this. I’m not going to say much. I just wanted to show the team that you’ve been called to the principal’s office. That’s all I’m doing. Okay? It’s unacceptable in that meeting. You know better. So, you figure it out. Have a good day.” And I hung up. Right? So, make what you will with that anecdote.
But two things I would sort of draw focus to. One is just understanding that people are scared, and a lot of that behavior just comes from fear. And you’re pouncing on people and overly correcting just contributes to that. The second thing I want to bring up is this anti-leader ethos or whatever. Again, one of the critiques I’ve gotten in meetings, particularly the Middle Eastern one, that was really interesting, especially the males.
They said, “This sounds like a weak style.” It was interesting, later I got an email from the female member of the audience who said, “Thank you for the talk, because I did not have a way to think about how to exert authority in my Middle Eastern culture, as a female.” The thing I want to point out is ultimately this is a position of strength. And what does that strength come from? It comes from an altitude that’s really high, because you see what’s going on. There are movements of energy in a meeting. And I’ll just close with this: the mountain’s sort of like, you know, “what would Jesus do?” I would also add: what would a person who has lived 10,000 years do? Seen everything. Lost friends, multiple spouses, wars, battles, empires. What would they do? How would they behave in this situation?
Jonathan Page: I think that’s really, really helpful and it’s a reminder, both the anecdote and what you shared afterwards, that, that so much of leadership is inherently relational. That power is not, it’s not positional as much as it is relational. And being able to pull, like you said, the two people into the Zoom room, you’re practicing that mimicry of, “Hey, this is what, this is what this is going to look like.”
And you’re encouraging the relationship between the people, as opposed to trying to do some sort of top-down kind of relational emphasis. And that, that to me is I think especially for church leaders, that’s an important understanding that, that it’s only really through relationship that you leverage your power and your, and your authority.
Louis Kim: And Jonathan, you bring up, by citing relationship as kind of the primary motivation, I mean, ultimately this is about, it’s about love. If you think about a pyramid, a hierarchy of values, it is love that makes you exercise and steward the resources of an organization. Which then leads to, appropriate authority, and that may lead to asking someone to leave. This is what I mean by appropriate authority, maybe even ferociously. but, but ultimately, it’s grounded by love, you know? And love demands that you run a successful organization.
Jonathan Page: That’s beautiful.
Dr. David McAllister-Wilson: Reminds, there’s a phrase used, especially in your circles, servant leadership. And I think the way that phrase is misused, at least from what Robert Greenleaf had to say about it is I think a lot of pastors think that means they are servile and servants to each and every member of their congregation, as opposed to being a servant of the institution, a servant of the mission—a servant of, Christ, which you locate in the organization. Not in a subordinate, let’s say, call it that role with every individual within the organization.
The illustration of the birds reminded me of an Italian physicist, who studied, how these birds flock. And they did 3D models. They tagged the birds. They finally figured out there’s no leader in the flock, but each bird is kind of in touch with—in relationship, if you will, with seven other birds. And the ones that are the most influential are the ones on the outside, not the ones in the front. That’s why they turn so quickly. And it is a powerful image of group behavior and what the power is there for leaders to access if they know how to do that.
Louis Kim: As with anything, but particularly in management literature, there are a lot of phrases, and those phrases often after a few decades lose their potency. I think servant leadership is one of them, frankly. I think it’s misunderstood. You know, the reason, again, I’m not … I gave this talk, developed it. I wanted to get some thoughts out. It’s not meant to be… It’s meant to be provocative. That’s why it’s called, Anti-Leader.
I think servant leadership is misunderstood as, again, being nice and gentle and be like Jesus and, you know. But I go back to number one, why are you leading? You are leading because, you know, you love the organization, you love your people, you want it to be successful. But the key kind of distinction here is that, recognize, again, organizations are like deep, wide rivers, slow-moving with or without you.
And then you’ve got to ask yourself why. I mentioned that I’ve been through six, seven CEOs, 27 bosses. I remember often the day that it was announced that the CEO was gone, there’s a new CEO. Within minutes I would notice a change in the tenor of the organization Right. So, so yeah. Servant leadership: helpful. But I think it requires a little more discernment.
Dr. David McAllister-Wilson: Let me ask … Let me switch and ask you a little bit about your own, journey. From high-tech, AI, the kind of intellectual life that must mean to Master of Divinity and focus on palliative care and hospice. Why?
Louis Kim: It was a long process, like most discernment processes are. One of the things that contributed to that was a process of elimination of things that I ultimately cared about. I just found it hard to commit wholeheartedly to, you know, another business venture or even many of the popular social causes in light of the finitude of my life, inevitably our civilization, inevitably our species and our earth, and so on and so on.
So, you know, in a reality where even Shakespeare will be forgotten, what matters, right? So, I think Camus’, you know, kind of prompt about suicide being the ultimate philosophical question is sort of apt. You know, it’s … it’s kind of easy to be nihilistic and to sort of give up. So, I ultimately came to the conclusion that if we are on the sort of, you know, path towards decline inevitably, whether my life or the universe, we’re sort of metaphorically on a ship going down. And on that ship, there are multiple characters and archetypes of characters that we can occupy. So, we can be the alpha hero, superhero, caped crusader, whatever. There are cowards. There are people who are just frozen in fear. And the reality is you don’t know how you will behave until that moment of truth, but, you know, you can have some sensibilities.
And I just thought, you know, ultimately accompaniment with suffering, holding someone’s hand, was really what I cared about or least, you know, neutral about. And this is not to say that … Yeah, we’ll see, you know, in that moment of truth. So that led to, I had some experiences with hospice. I was present at a relative’s last breath at 2:00 AM, at night, just with my sister and a hospice nurse. And, you know, a lot of the self-conscious chatter went away. I felt right place, right time.
And so, I just ex- began to explore that field. So, I volunteered for hospice. I interviewed a lot of people, chaplains, administrators, so on. So, three years ago I just enrolled in a two-semester certificate program at Duke, in theology and healthcare. And I met a lot of doctors, people in hospice. And then, decided this is the path, you know. So, I applied to continue for an MDiv and then decided to resign after 25-plus years last September.
Dr. David McAllister-Wilson: Think of something my wife has said many times. She’s a pastor, and she’s performed maybe 300 weddings and 300 funerals. And she says what all pastors I know say. The funerals are far more meaningful as a pastor than the weddings. And it has to do with the nature of the relationship and the depth of the conversation and relationship that involves accompanying people in that time. Do you think you might end up in, in that role?
Louis Kim: So, I was exploring CPE, which is required for chaplaincy. I’ve now interviewed over 80 people, and the chaplains are the ones I relate to the most. But the more chaplains that I meet, the more intimidated it feels. It just feels presumptuous that I’m going to be credentialed to be this person that goes in, you know, in a very sacred moment. So, we’ll see. CPE needs to come up, I think, next year, where I’ll go through … I’ll probably go through it. But that’s probably the one role, either, either, formally credentialed or as a volunteer or in some other manner to be bedside, that feels at this point the most true thing. You know, I’ve also… I’m sort of always a learner and learning about self-development and performance, all that stuff, you know, martial arts. And it used to be for my ambition, but now, you know, my thinking is I just want to be a little less hysterical when stuff hits the fan. So, I can help people if I can.
Dr. David McAllister-Wilson: A little less hysterical would be useful for a lot of leaders. Wouldn’t it, Jonathan?
Jonathan Page: You could say that. Yeah, I think so. I’m curious, Louis, just as we’re exploring some of your, your own vocational space, one of the questions that you, you left us with is what attachments inhibit your leadership?
Louis Kim: Yeah.
Jonathan Page: I wonder if, has there been a time in your journey where you’ve been able to successfully confront an attachment and let go of it?
Louis Kim: I’m not sure you ever do completely. maybe some Buddhists or saints. you know, once you rip the Velcro off, you still have one half of the Velcro. So after a long career being around executives, you know, I was high enough but not at, at the, in the highest levels, but I saw up and down all those levels and, I can sort of see that, you know, sometimes the ladder’s on the wrong wall. So that’s helpful. But, yeah, I think the experience around death, you know? Yeah. I was just joking with someone two weeks ago. A YouTube video popped up on my feed of a real estate channel of high … really, like a $16 million property here in San Diego, Rancho Santa Fe. A lot of athletes, entrepreneurs, business owners. $16 million and it was like 16 bedrooms. And I just joked with someone, you know, and this was a channel for all these kinds of really expensive properties, and I think the cheapest property was like $8 million. I joked with someone, “You know, your property—if your property’s on that channel, the owners are either divorced or, or they’re in a 7 foot by 2 by 2 box.”
Louis Kim: Mm.
Jonathan Page: Mm.
Dr. David McAllister-Wilson: Insightful and provocative. I appreciate it. But I wonder if you would just quickly say what you’re engaged in with the Vatican. I don’t get a chance to ask that question of people very much.
Louis Kim: Yeah. I have a joke that there’s a difference between being invited by the Vatican, to the Vatican, around the Vatican. So, I want to, have a little bit of qualifier. Three, two years ago, I was invited to, an inaugural conference called the “Builders AI Forum”—actually within the Vatican walls. About 100 people, theologians, technical people, academics, other academics. And then, I returned the following year—that was an independent thing with USC. The Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies, they had an event, and then, there was another organization. So, I’ve been back four or five times, in and around. And some related to, some of the, the Castries, that focus on the, the cabinet level departments. I, I think I’m invited because I’m coming from industry. I have some AI experience, and then I have this theological intersection, so, you know, we’ll see how long that intersection is relevant. However, because of my hospice leanings, I have gravitated towards the healthcare topics. And so last year I and another individual from healthcare, we co-led a workshop at one of these conferences over two days.
So, four hours each day, two days, eight hours total, with about 22 people. We had, an insurance—health insurance executive. We had physicians. We had a theologian. So, really diverse. And we wrestled with, well, you know, what are we going to work on? You know, guardrails for the church, some sort of pronouncement. And we ultimately came down to what I think is a timeless topic, which is as AI gets better—and it will—as AI gets more efficient and more effective than any human—and it will—what would be the final human roles in healthcare? Even if it’s less cost efficient and even if it’s less effective, for theological reasons, ontological reasons, whatever.
Louis Kim: So, we ended up, calling—we developed a list of criteria—and we ended up, calling the collection of those criteria the “Irreducible Human Encounter.” Just kind of made up a name. Yeah. And so that’s right now one of the themes sort of, I guess, captivating my energies. Because I think it’s a timeless question, and it’s not a simple prescription. It’ll always be up for discussion. For example, I work with a company, a startup in, in Israel or, in dialogue, and they have a little tabletop robot that can—You know, it’s animated, it talks to you. And the state of New York bought several, a high volume of them and placed them in, residential homes where the elderly person in the home doesn’t really have anyone visiting them.
And, is that bad? Is that good? You know? I asked the audience, and last time I was in Rome about this, half the room said this is bad. But I said, “Okay, what if you’re a … your grandfather is in an assisted living home, hasn’t had anyone visit him for months, and there’s this little robot, you know? What would you do?” So, that’s one of the main topics that’s occupying me now and the work with, I’ll just call it the church. So, I’m in dialogue with some of the dicastery and some people in the curia. And I think it’s by now not a secret that we’re within days of the Pope, issuing an encyclical that will address AI, but within the guise of human dignity. So, this is going to be an ongoing dialogue.
Dr. David McAllister-Wilson: Well, fascinating. I think the irreducible encounter principle might be a way for seminaries and those who graduate from seminaries to think about what their irreducible role is. And I think maybe you might be the subject that, Tom Hanks will play in the next Dan Brown, novel turned into a movie as you continue to work with the Vatican.
Louis Kim: What- whatever is in that movie is not the Vatican. One thing I wanted to, mention relevant maybe to your listenership in church leadership. You know, they’ll be confronted with the uses of AI administratively. AI is already coming up as a chatbot for spiritual direction. There’s a ton of apps. So, you know, your listenership’s going to be confronted on how to, you know, discern all of this. And one thing I would … I just gave a talk in Boston to a group of Catholic healthcare leaders, and in this talk, I went back and researched technology innovations that were introduced, you know, for the last 2,000 years. And there was always a scare, right? So, printing press, the car, the telephone, the radio, people were scared about, you know, it replacing humanity, et cetera. That’s not to say AI doesn’t have risks, but there can be sort of an overreaction or a moral panic. One thing I would say to people in, in positions of leadership is to not get caught up in that panic.
What I said to this audience in Boston is, “Yes, different technologies have their own risks. Automobiles kill 55,000 people a year. Horses did not. But often what we are afraid of about technology is really just amplifying human sin or making it more pervasive. And while you worry about chatbots leading people astray let’s not get too over-focused on reacting to that risk, which would then be superseded by some other technological risk. Return back to moral formation.”
Moral formation will make us resilient in the face of that. And one example that I cited was, you know, the Bible is a great anthropological repository for human behavior. And I look at Genesis. Every, almost every human foible, greed, envy, covetousness, you know, homicidal tendencies, is introduced by chapter 11 in the Bible. Right? It sets the stage for the whole thing. So out of all that emergent wisdom, revealed and inspired, it says something about human nature that’s timeless. So, let’s come back to moral formation. That is your ultimate responsibility. Let the pundits worry about, you know, the latest AI risk.
Dr. David McAllister-Wilson: That’s, that’s very, helpful. I know others watching this will find some other YouTube [videos]where Louis Kim is talking about this and other related topics that are very fruitful for ministry and for leadership. Thank you very much, Louis, for this time and this thoughtfulness.
Louis Kim: Oh, thank you, David. thank you, Jonathan. Church leadership is you know, a really sacred area that intersects with a lot of things that we talked about.
Louis Kim: So, I’m glad I was able to contribute, a little bit to that.
Jonathan Page: Thank you so much, Louis.
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