Antoine Payne

I went into my first meeting with Antoine Payne skeptical.

Very skeptical.

I had invited him to be a guest on my podcast, and before we spoke, I knew one thing about him: He had spent several years in prison after shooting his ex and her mother multiple times (they both lived).

I’ve been on the receiving end of violent crime. I have strong opinions about serial offenders and the damage they cause.

But Antoine wasn’t a serial offender.

He made one terrible decision that changed multiple lives forever, including his own.

Still, I found myself wrestling with a difficult question:

Can someone who committed a violent crime become a leader?

I honestly didn’t know how I felt about that. It’s not a question we talk about very often in leadership circles.

Then I met Antoine.

He is one of the most thoughtful and intelligent people I’ve encountered in a long time.

And then I attended his annual event, Chains to Change, where formerly incarcerated men share their stories of rebuilding their lives after prison.

The men in these photos stood up and talked honestly about the worst decisions they had ever made, and what it took to turn their lives in a different direction.

The stories were raw. Honest. Complicated.

And they forced me to think about leadership in a different way.

In leadership, we often talk about mindset, resilience, and perseverance.

But redemption may be the harder concept.

Because redemption requires us to believe something uncomfortable:

That people are not defined only by the worst thing they’ve ever done.

And that real change is possible.

I’ll be sharing my conversation with Antoine on the podcast soon so you can form your own opinion.

But after attending Chains to Change, I’ve been thinking about leadership differently.

We often celebrate the people who succeed. But maybe we should also pay attention to the people who rebuild.

Sometimes leadership isn’t about the path someone took to get here.

Sometimes it’s about what they choose to do next.

hashtag#leadership hashtag#redemption hashtag#resilience Laura Neuman Show