Latest / Andy Stanley Sermons / Andy Stanley - When Less is More From the Vault
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- 0:05Hey, everybody, Welcome to the Andy Stanley Leadership Podcast from the Vault.
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- 0:49content right here from the Vault, Welcome to the Andy Stanley Leadership Podcast,
- 0:57the conversation designed to help leaders go further fast. Here today we're talking about
- 1:02one of the best kept secrets of leadership. Andy, Today we're going to
- 1:06listen to an excerpt from a talk that you did, and at the beginning
- 1:08of the talk you said that you wanted to start with two of the best
- 1:11kept secrets in leadership. Yeah, I really do think these are two of
- 1:15the best kept secrets that here. They are. The less you do,
- 1:18the more you accomplish, and the less you do, the more you allow
- 1:21others to accomplish. The less you do, the more you accomplish. The
- 1:23less you do, the more you allow others accomplished. Now, when you
- 1:26say less, though, you mean, yeah, I don't mean a shorter
- 1:29work week, you know, more vacation. I mean the fewer things.
- 1:33As organizations grow and as organizations become more complex, leaders, vision leaders,
- 1:38you know, the entrepreneurs, the presidents, and you know, people at
- 1:42the top of the organization have to continue to back out of boxes and do
- 1:46fewer things, spend more time on fewer things. That's what I mean by
- 1:49less. Yeah, you also talk about a couple of myths that leaders really
- 1:52buy in. Yeah. Yeah, Well, I think intuitively, it would
- 1:56sound like, to become a great leader, I need to strengthen my weakness
- 2:00is to be a great leader, I should be able to be I should
- 2:01be good at everything. Yeah. Well, yeah, I think you're right.
- 2:05I think most of our leaders listening today are going, yeah, isn't
- 2:08that what I'm supposed to do? And you know, I think that and
- 2:12it really is a myth. I think that is propagated or encouraged by the
- 2:15fact that when we see great leaders in public orhether, it's on television,
- 2:20which is where we mostly see people we consider great leaders, or we read
- 2:23their biographies, it seems like they're great at everything. My dad is a
- 2:29well known pastor and great leader, and even growing up, I just thought
- 2:32he can do everything. So as young leaders move into leadership that the tendency
- 2:37is to think, well, I need to be great at everything, So
- 2:38I'm gonna kind of economize on my strengths and try to be good at the
- 2:44things that you know I'm not naturally good at. So when did you first
- 2:47become aware of this? I guess as a leader. Gosh, I think
- 2:52I learned this the hard way, and it's one of the reasons I love
- 2:53to talk about it because I think if somebody had come along early on in
- 2:57my leadership and said, Andy, you're ten, that see is going to
- 3:00be to try to do everything and be great at everything. If they had
- 3:04planted the seed of this of this idea in my mind early, I think
- 3:07it would have been huge. But I would say probably eight or nine years
- 3:10into leadership, it finally dawned on me that my fully exploited strength was a
- 3:15far greater value to the organization than my marginally enhanced, our short up weakness.
- 3:22That a weakness would always be a weakness. So for me, my
- 3:25greatest contribution to our particular organization then was public communication. But what I would
- 3:30do is I would I would kind of cheat myself and take shortcuts in terms
- 3:35of message preparation, and then spend the majority of my time and energy on
- 3:39logistics and organization and event planning and things that I just was not good at.
- 3:45And when it finally dawned on me, wait a minute, I need
- 3:46to lean into my strengths delegate my weaknesses. That was a real game changer
- 3:52for me. That really sort of leads us to the bottom line of what
- 3:54today's talk is about. Yeah, and this is hard for people. You
- 3:58and I have talked about this. I think think that for leaders the target
- 4:01we should shoot for, and I think this is impractical, it's unrealistic,
- 4:05especially early on in leadership. But the target to shoot for is to only
- 4:09do what only you can do, to only do what only you can do.
- 4:13That is to ask the question, where do I add the greatest value
- 4:15to my organization and how can I spend the majority of my time in that
- 4:21one thing or this one or two things. And again I'm not sure anyone
- 4:25actually gets there, but I think as long as that's the goal, that's
- 4:28what we're leaning toward. That's the responsibility of the leader, and that's how
- 4:31leader adds the greatest amount of value to their organization. Yeah. I totally
- 4:36agree, But I also know there's some people out there listening wore thinking,
- 4:40you're sure you're sitting in a multimillion dollar facility. You're fifteen years in at
- 4:44north Point, got a lot of experience under your belt, and you know
- 4:47they're like, I agree, but you know, I'm starting a new business,
- 4:50I'm starting a new church. Really only what I can do. Well.
- 4:56I'm very aware of that tension we both are when we begin. I'm
- 4:59sure you remember this. We had just read the e Myth and in that
- 5:02book, the author suggests that when entrepreneurs are beginning an organization, they should
- 5:08do an org chart of what they want the organization to eventually look like.
- 5:11And we did this. We sat down, there were five of us,
- 5:14and we created little boxes, this giant org chart of a of a large,
- 5:18large church. And then, as the author suggested we went in and
- 5:21put our initials in each one of those boxes. Remember that, so I
- 5:25mean from facility and we didn't have any facilities to lawn maintenance, we'd have
- 5:30lawn, we'd have a lawn, you know, all print. Yeah,
- 5:32the newsletter, we didn't have the newsletter. We thought of everything a large
- 5:35church would need. Then we put our initials in all those boxes. So
- 5:39we all had about twenty jobs. And then over time we began working our
- 5:43way out of and hiring our way out of those jobs. And my point
- 5:46is this, early on in a career, early on in a startup,
- 5:50it's natural and necessary for leaders to do everything. It's natural because leaders set
- 5:57the pace, they set the tone, they established the work ethic, they
- 6:00established the level of excellence. So consequently, early on in any enterprise,
- 6:03it's natural for leaders to do or to try to do everything it's necessary because
- 6:09there's nobody else to do it. That thus are our giant org chart.
- 6:12But what begins is natural and necessary becomes a stumbling block if leaders don't understand
- 6:17early on even though it's natural and necessary. Now, over time, I've
- 6:20got to work my way out of some jobs. I've got to again exploit
- 6:26my strengths, delegate my weaknesses. And again, if that's the idea,
- 6:30if that's the understanding of that's the goal, then what begins is natural and
- 6:33necessary, becomes a stepping stone or a step toward a healthy organization. But
- 6:39if leaders don't know this going in, are in my case, spend seven
- 6:42or eight years, you know, trying to be good at things I was
- 6:44never going to be good at. You hurt yourself and you ultimately hurt the
- 6:47organization. And as you said, the principle is hard to argue. It
- 6:50makes sense, but it's very easy to miss. And so in the talk,
- 6:55we're going to join you talk about the five reasons leaders often miss this.
- 6:59So we're going to the talk and come back and unpack the ideas.
- 7:02What I'm about to share with you is very, very, very difficult to
- 7:06recognize in the mirror. It is so easy to recognize it in the lives
- 7:12of other leaders. It's so difficult to recognize in the mirror. Here's why
- 7:16some leaders miss this principle Roman numeral three. Some leaders miss this principle because
- 7:21they buy into the myth of being well rounded. Your goal as a leader
- 7:27is not to become a well rounded leader. Your goal is a leader is
- 7:30to create and to build a well rounded organization, and those are two very,
- 7:34very very different things. Your goal is not to become a well rounded
- 7:39leader where you're good at everything. Your goal is to build a great organization
- 7:44listen that reflects your strengths but does not reflect your weaknesses. And the only
- 7:51way for that to happen is for you to get as good as you can
- 7:55get at the things you're gifted to do, and to delegate the things that
- 8:00you're not ever going to be great at. Here's a tip I put it
- 8:03in your notes. Great achievers are not well rounded. They are men and
- 8:05women who play to their strengths and delegate their weaknesses. Letrer be the other
- 8:11reason leaders miss this. As obvious as it may seem, leaders forget to
- 8:16distinguish between their authority and their core competencies. Leaders forget to distinguish between their
- 8:22authority and their core competencies. Every leader, this is so huge. This
- 8:24is the easiest one of miss. Every leader has authority over things they're no
- 8:28good at. Every leader has authority over things they're no good at. When
- 8:33you forget to distinguish between your authority and your core competencies. You will leverage
- 8:39your authority because you're the authority in areas where you're no good, and you
- 8:43will misleverage your authority. And some of you've experienced this because you're the student
- 8:48ministry. In the student ministry, and the senior pastor keeps trying to tell
- 8:52you how to do student ministry. Right, I'm guessing that wasn't the senior
- 9:07pastor. And it's like, you're so frustrated, you're going leave me alone.
- 9:13But let me tell you about the senior pastor. He or she thinks
- 9:18they know better. This is very difficult to see in the mirror. So
- 9:24here's your tip on this one. Leverage your authority as little as possible.
- 9:33Make as few decisions as possible. This is a gigantic leap forward in your
- 9:39leadership if you'll just do this one thing, make as few decisions as possible,
- 9:45ask and force other people to make the decisions. Great leaders say this
- 9:48a lot. I'll let you make that decision. I'll let you make that
- 9:52decision. Wow, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll let you make that
- 9:56decision. In fact, some of you have never said that before, so
- 9:58we're gonna practice. You repeat after me. Type A personalities. You might
- 10:03just have to mumble it. I realized this made way too much for you
- 10:05to be able to do, all of you control freaks. Seems like it's
- 10:09not even biblical. Okay, let me tell you why, Because I'm telling
- 10:15you the world you live in and the world you grew up in, you
- 10:18have confused authority with competency. You will always have authority over things you're not
- 10:22very good at. Don't confuse those two things to Just repeat after me.
- 10:28You ready, I'll let you make that decision. Let me hear you say
- 10:31it. Now, come on with some conviction. I'll let you make that
- 10:35decision. Now here's the tough one. I don't really know what we should
- 10:45do. I'll let you make that decision. Here we go. That is
- 10:56great leadership. If you don't believe me, let me raise your hand.
- 11:00How many of you would love to be able to go back in time and
- 11:03have one of your bosses or leaders have said that to you at a critical
- 11:07junction in your organization or in your life or your ministry. That's right.
- 11:09But they wouldn't do that, you know why, because they thought, since
- 11:13I'm the authority, I must make the decision. Great leaders don't make all
- 11:22the decisions. You know why, because great leaders understand I'm an authority,
- 11:26but I have no idea what the right decision is in that area because that's
- 11:31not my area. Remember, don't think about your boss, think about you.
- 11:37You're here, they're not. Let her see. Some leaders are not
- 11:41able to distinguish between their competencies and their non competencies. That is, they
- 11:46just don't know what they're good at. Now this is there. Here's the
- 11:48difference and the previous one. The person says, you know what, I
- 11:52don't really know that much about children's ministry, but since I'm the senior pastor,
- 11:56I need to make the decision. Because they've confused already with competation and
- 12:01this one. This is the leader that really doesn't know that they don't know.
- 12:05This is the leader that really doesn't know what they're not good at.
- 12:09Tip. You are not the smartest person in your organization. You are just
- 12:13the leader. Okay, you're not the smartest. Listen. I tell my
- 12:18staff of this all the time. The reason I'm the senior pastor at North
- 12:22Point Community Church is because I got here first sep. We have over three
- 12:31hundred employees. We got a guy with a harm NBA from Harvard. I
- 12:35am not the smartest person in the organization. I just got there first.
- 12:39That's why I'm in charge. You know why I'm in charge because in church
- 12:41world, if you're the best speaker, they say, hey, what don't
- 12:45you be in charge? See some of you go to churches and your senior
- 12:48pastor is a great speaker, he couldn't lead his way through a you know,
- 12:50a staff meeting. But in church world, if you can keep people
- 12:56away for thirty minutes, hey you be the captain. Well sidebar. This
- 13:07is why I love I love love, love love multi site church. I
- 13:11love video church. You know why, because man, I got some guys
- 13:18I can say. You know what, you don't have to keep people away
- 13:20thirty minutes in a row. You just go out there and lead your brains
- 13:22out because you're way, way, way better leader than I ever dreamed of
- 13:26being when I was your age. You are not the smartest person in your
- 13:31organization, So why in the world would you want to make all the decisions?
- 13:35Listen, don't answer this out loud. Do you really want the level
- 13:39of decision making to be limited to your IQ? Wouldn't listen? Would this
- 13:48just should be selfish and self centered for a minute, wouldn't you look better
- 13:52if you figure out how to leverage the brain power of the entire organization,
- 13:56Because, senior pastor, when you make a great decision, people think,
- 14:01I mean, when a great decision is made, you get the credit.
- 14:03Anyway, Now, if you don't think that's true, isn't it true that
- 14:07when a bad decision is made, you get all the blame. You may
- 14:11not have made a great decision a long long time. So let me assure
- 14:13you, when you finally make one, or when your church finally makes one,
- 14:18people will think you are a great leader. And you may have come
- 14:20to that conclusion by saying to the people around you I'm gonna step out of
- 14:22the room and you guys decide. Because I'm not the smartest person here,
- 14:26but I am in charge that I'm deciding not to decide. Let me know
- 14:31it. Let me what you come up with. I tell people all the
- 14:33time, the greatest ideas we've come up with at our church, none of
- 14:37them were my idea. Twice I've been out voted by our elders like nine
- 14:41to one and ten to one. I mean it wasn't even close. I
- 14:46mean I argued, I, you know, I laid out that. You
- 14:48know, I've visioneered and I cast vision and I told him and it was
- 14:52all gonna be awesome. No, I don't think so, Pastor. No,
- 14:56Andy can't do it. No bad idea, no no, no,
- 15:00no, no, no, no, nine to one, ten to one,
- 15:01two times in the history of the church. And they were exactly right,
- 15:05and I was exactly wrong. We made two incredible decisions, and people
- 15:09think, Wow, Andy, Wow, I'm going If they had done it
- 15:11my way, we would have been wrong. We would have made two really
- 15:16dumb one architectural decision and one financial decision. We made a great decision because
- 15:22I learned a long time ago. I'm not the smartest person in the room.
- 15:26I'm just in charge for now, all right, Uh, letter D.
- 15:35Some leaders feel guilty delegating their weaknesses. This is me. I feel
- 15:39like, if I don't want to do it, nobody wants to do it,
- 15:41so I better do it, which is ridiculous, but this is how
- 15:46I think. Well, nobody wants to do that job. I don't want
- 15:48to ask anybody to do it because nobody want to do that, so I'll
- 15:50do it. I'm no good at it, but nobody would want to do
- 15:52that, and I'm absolutely wrong. Here's the tip. Your weakness is somebody
- 15:56else's opportunity. The thing you're no good at is somebody else's opportunity to shine
- 16:03the thing that you're just you're at best, You're gonna be a C plus
- 16:06for somebody that's, oh my gosh, are you kidding? I get to
- 16:07do that. And you can't imagine that's true because you don't enjoy it,
- 16:11you don't want to do it. Somebody wants to do that stuff. Your
- 16:15weakness is some one's opportunity to quit playing in that pool you're no good at
- 16:21it anyway, and allow somebody to get in there that knows how to do
- 16:23that. Every every once in a while, when I'm meeting with Diane,
- 16:26my assistant on Thursday, we're going through the mail and the email. She's
- 16:27got all these details, and we got a calendar all spread out, and
- 16:30she's got all I mean, it's just she's so organized. And sometimes I
- 16:33say, Diane, I I hope this doesn't hurt your feelings, but I
- 16:37would hate your job, and she says, Andy, I would hate your
- 16:42job. I go, it's awesome, let's go. We got it okay,
- 16:45let her e. Some leaders won't take the time to develop other leaders.
- 16:51That's that's the problem. One of the reasons this this doesn't work is
- 16:55because some leaders aren't going to take the time to develop other leaders. Tip.
- 16:57Leadership is not primarily by getting things done right. Leadership is about multiplying
- 17:03your efforts through the efforts of others. Or leadership, I should say,
- 17:07it's about getting things done through other people. It's not about getting things done
- 17:11right. And here's a challenge we all have. And in fact, I
- 17:14would love to spend twenty minutes on this topic. There's so much I've learned
- 17:18in the past few years about this. If you want great leaders in your
- 17:23organization, you have to allow them to do things you wouldn't do, and
- 17:29you have to allow them to make mistakes, and you have to allow them
- 17:33to waste money. And that's hard. If you want to get and keep
- 17:38great leaders, you have to allow them to lead, which means you have
- 17:42to allow them to chase some of their crazy dreams and some of their crazy
- 17:47ideas and you and your infinite wisdom. They leave the room, and you
- 17:49sit in your office and you say, God, me and you know that
- 17:52ain't or word. But here's my dilemma. Do I want to be right
- 18:00or do I want to be surrounded by great leaders? Hey, before we
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- 19:42episode, Andy, that last question is a bit disturbing. I want to
- 19:48read it. Do I want to be right? Or do I want to
- 19:49be surrounded by great leaders? Talk about that? Yeah, that again,
- 19:55that's not very intuitive. Maybe an illustration will help. When I was first
- 19:59to give it, when I was gett my first leadership opportunity, I was
- 20:00very fortunate because I walked into a mess and I had supervisors that knew something
- 20:07needed to be done. They did not know what to do. The reason
- 20:11that was a great opportunity for me is they didn't micromanage me, so they
- 20:15sort of stuck me in this mess. It was in a church context and
- 20:18they said, hey, try to fix that. Well, they gave me
- 20:22a lot of support, but they didn't tell me how to do what I
- 20:26was going to do. So consequently I made a lot of mistakes, but
- 20:29in making those mistakes, I eventually figured out what needed to be done and
- 20:33was successful. I feel like in that particular role. So when I say
- 20:36to leaders, you've got to make a decision. Do you want to be
- 20:37right about everything or do you want to surround yourself with great leaders. Leaders
- 20:41love to be given it. We love a challenge. We want to be
- 20:45told what to do, but we don't love to be told how to do
- 20:48it. So if you micromanage a leader, you essentially run them off.
- 20:51But if you don't micro manage a leader, they're liable to do some things
- 20:55differently than the way you do them. They're liable to make some mistakes.
- 20:57So I feel like in both of them, my first two leadership opportunities,
- 21:03the people who hired me supported me, but they didn't micromanage. So now
- 21:07as a leader, it's just easy to remember that. So as we think
- 21:11about the young leaders in our organization, next generation leaders, I try my
- 21:15best to give them the latitude to give them the space, the margin to
- 21:18actually lead, which means I've got to allow them to make some mistakes,
- 21:22spend some money in ways that I wouldn't necessarily spend it. But if I
- 21:26don't do that, ultimately, I think we run off the best and brightest
- 21:29leaders. Ye, so you remember experiencing this firsthand. Yeah. In fact,
- 21:33we were together in one of these. You know, we worked at
- 21:37a downtown church and our church had bought property out in the suburbs. It
- 21:40was a bunch of warehouses, and they sent the two of us and a
- 21:42handful of other people out to begin services in a warehouse. Well, nobody
- 21:47knew how to do church and a warehouse. People do it all the time
- 21:49now, but you know, seventeen years to go, eighteen years ago,
- 21:52this was a brand new thing, and so we were so fortunate. They
- 21:55said, we don't know how to do it. We want you to figure
- 21:57out how to do it. And they gave gave us the latitude to make
- 22:00some mistakes again, to spend some money, maybe in ways they wouldn't do
- 22:03it, but I think both of us would say that. You know,
- 22:07our leadership quotient escalated during that time because we had the opportunity. So again,
- 22:12we didn't do everything right, but we you know, we were a
- 22:15part of that organization and made a huge contribution. So now that I'm on
- 22:19the other side, Now that we're on the other side, I just want
- 22:22to make sure we create an organization that allows next generation leaders, young leaders
- 22:27to lean into what they're good at. But that means they have to have
- 22:32an opportunity to figure that out along the way. So they let us do
- 22:36what they couldn't do. They let us do it they couldn't do, but
- 22:37they supported us. It was a win for us, it was a win
- 22:41for them. But I think we've probably both been in situations where we were
- 22:44given an opportunity of responsibility and then somebody just stood over our shoulder and kept
- 22:48saying no, no, no, and I wouldn't do it that way.
- 22:51And you know, for leaders, that's just that's not a comfortable environment to
- 22:55work in. So as we really launched these leaders, our role is to
- 22:57help them do what only they can do right. And I think one of
- 23:02the great takeaways from this idea and hopefully from this top is that the leaders
- 23:07who are listening would try to figure out not only how to incorporate this principle
- 23:10into their lives, but how to build it into the organization through testing,
- 23:15through constant evaluation, through giving leaders different opportunities, taking their hands off,
- 23:21understanding they're going to make some mistakes, because it's how you encourage and develop
- 23:23leaders, and it's how to make sure that the leaders don't start looking for
- 23:27other opportunities outside the organization. So you and I have to lean into what
- 23:32we're best at. We've got to create an organization that frees other leaders up
- 23:36to do the very same thing, because the only way to learn to lead
- 23:38is to lead, is to lead. That's right. One of the questions
- 23:41that I'm commonly asked by leaders is what is your development program for young leaders?
- 23:47You know, you're talking about leadership all the time. You know,
- 23:48what do you do for young leaders? And as you know, we have
- 23:51some structural environments, we have some training environments, we suggest a reading list,
- 23:55we do kind of all the normal formal things. But reality is probably
- 24:00the best thing we do is give leaders opportunities and then take our hands off
- 24:03and really try to be in a coaching role and stay in a coaching role
- 24:07so that we create that win when they have the opportunity to make mistakes,
- 24:11but they have a backup plan financially, they have a backup plan in terms
- 24:15of coaching, because really the only way to learn to lead is to lead.
- 24:18Landy, thanks so much for spending this time with us, and thanks
- 24:22for joining us.