Latest / Andy Stanley Sermons / Andy Stanley - FROM THE VAULT The Dangers of Autonomy

Transcript

Andy Stanley - FROM THE VAULT The Dangers of Autonomy · Andy Stanley Sermons

0:05
Welcome to the Andy Stanley Leadership Podcast, a conversation designed to help leaders go
0:10
further faster. On today's podcast, we'll discuss the dangerous desire for autonomy.
0:16
You're calling your talk the menace, the myth, and the mayhem of autonomy.
0:20
Yes, that's some pretty serious alliterations. The menace, the myth,
0:24
and the mayhem of autonomy. Yeah, So why did you choose this topic?
0:28
Well, I think for most leaders, maybe all leaders, and maybe
0:31
I'm just you know, looking at the world through through my filter. I
0:35
think a one of the components of our personal definition of success as leaders is
0:40
autonomy. And by autonomy, I simply mean to be self governing, to
0:45
be in a position as a leader, to do what I want when I
0:48
want, where I want, to have the resources to pursue whatever opportunities I
0:52
want to, and to not being a and to be in a position where
0:55
nobody can actually make me do anything, to just have total autonomy. And
1:00
I think it's that the quest for autonomy is that part of leadership we don't
1:03
talk about. It's embarrassing. I felt funny even saying that out loud,
1:07
you know, but I think it's in all of us it's not necessarily a
1:10
bad thing, but as we're going to talk about it can certainly be a
1:11
dangerous thing. So Andy, would you say that this is something that most
1:15
leaders drift toward. Well, I think that's a nice way of saying it.
1:19
I think we actually yearn for it. I think we aim for it.
1:23
I think when we think about our preferred future, autonomy is part of
1:26
the picture. Well, lady, without getting into the like, really,
1:29
psychology of it, where does this poll come from? Well, I think
1:33
it can come from a lot of places, and again, neither of us
1:36
are psychologists. But having talked to so many leaders, I think part of
1:38
it is fear. I think our past oftentimes determines how strong a desire this
1:44
is. If you grew up in a family where let's say your mom or
1:46
dad lost their job, your family suffered, you know you grew up with
1:49
this desire. Hey, I don't ever want to find myself in a situation
1:53
where I'm dependent on someone, where I'm dependent on a company. You know,
1:57
the past can create a sense of terror about our future when it comes
2:00
to avoiding certain things. So I think that could be part of it.
2:05
I know one of my favorite, one of my best friends who's a CEO.
2:07
That's his story that he grew up and they were very, very poor
2:10
because his father continued to lose jobs based on not his performance, but based
2:15
on companies that are industries that just weren't doing well at that particular time.
2:20
And so he is driven to never be in a situation where somebody can dictate
2:23
his future. So again there's that. I think another thing that drives this
2:29
for many of us is a misunderstanding of what we see when we look at
2:31
successful people. We basically see their highlight reels. We see the highlight reels
2:36
of the rich and famous. Our corporate heroes don't have bosses. They have
2:40
boards that we assume they can control. They didn't really build something to last.
2:46
They built something to sell to Microsoft or to Apple. We don't just
2:50
envy the lifestyles of the rich and famous, we really, I think as
2:53
leaders, what we envy is their autonomy. Again, they have the freedom
2:55
to be self governing. You know, I want to be the guy whose
2:59
car is never there that somehow so I could have a black car in Georgia
3:02
during pollen season and still, you know, still look the part. So
3:06
I think that picture movies television, articles, books. I think all of
3:09
that gets mixed up in our definition of success, and again mix that in
3:14
with our natural desire to dictate our own futures, and next thing you know,
3:16
you're you're leaning toward autonomy. In your talk, you refer to something
3:22
that can develop in a leader when they realize that autonomy isn't coming quite as
3:25
fast as they want. Yeah, and this is a little bit of a
3:28
sidebar, but I think this is important to talk about before we get right
3:30
back to the core of this subject. I see especially in men, and
3:35
I'm sure this can happen in women as well, But my experience with men
3:38
is when men, you know, get to their early forties, mid forties,
3:40
maybe early fifties, and it's not happening for them as quickly as they
3:45
wanted to. I think we do we develop this sense of I call it
3:47
a low grade anger. There's just an anger, there's a frustration. Of
3:53
course, we don't take it out necessarily in the people who are above us,
3:55
but we certainly have a tendency to take it out on the people who
3:59
work for a report to us. It shows up in our homes and at
4:02
the end of the day, who we're really angry with is ourselves. We're
4:06
not where we thought we should be. And while it's easy to blame a
4:10
company, a boss, and industry, bad luck or a lot of things,
4:13
essentially we know the person who's responsible for us not being where we wanted
4:16
to be is the person we see in the mirror every morning. So I
4:20
tell guys all the time, Look, if you're not happy with your wife,
4:24
your kids, your house, or your car, is because you weren't
4:27
happy with you. And the reason is you chose her, you raise them,
4:30
and you leased it. So I think part of dealing with the internal
4:34
tension of hey, I thought I would be further along by now. I
4:38
thought i'd have more money. I thought i'd have more position. I thought
4:41
I would own my own company. You know, all that stuff gets mixed
4:44
up again with this preferred picture of what our lives should look like, and
4:47
we develop this sense of low grade anger, and again that's part of the
4:51
danger of allowing our quest for autonomy to get out of hand. Well,
4:56
Andy's speaking of danger, you specifically talked about four dangers the quest for autonomy
5:00
raises and leaders. The first one is there's a fine line between as free
5:05
as you can possibly be in prison. Yeah, and you pretty much said
5:12
it. Everybody who is in prison is imprisoned because of an inappropriate expression of
5:16
personal freedom. I mean, again, we call those crimes, but that's
5:20
what a crime is. I want something that I don't have, or I
5:24
want to accomplish something, or I want to inflict something on someone that I
5:28
think they deserve, and so I'm going to freely choose to do something that
5:31
lands me in prison. But back on the corporate side of the ledger,
5:34
how many stories have we heard about men in particular that had it all?
5:39
You know, you know, they already had an enviable lifestyle, they already
5:43
have the autonomy we all you know, want, and yet one simple expression
5:47
of their autonomy they cross a line and then what happens think of this,
5:50
They lose all their autonomy. You know, men and women in prison have
5:54
lost the they have lost complete control of their lives. So there really is
5:58
and this is really important for our listeners, there really is a fine line
6:01
between as free as I can possibly be and losing all the freedom that I
6:06
currently have. And maybe you know you're listening today and you've actually considered some
6:13
options, some expressions of freedom that have the potential to undermine all or much
6:17
of the freedom that you currently have, the freedom you've worked so hard for.
6:21
And this is where we see men and women get in trouble. And
6:24
again generally it's men. I want a little more freedom, a little more
6:27
autonomy. I'm above the rules. The rules are for the little people.
6:30
Next thing, you know, you cross a line and it's amazing. You
6:33
know, people are surprised, what you know. I can go to jail
6:36
for this. I mean, you know, surely there is someone can get
6:39
me out of this. But again, what is that. It's a good
6:43
thing that goes too far. It's that quest for as free as I can
6:46
possibly be. And then we cross a line. Adi The second danger you
6:49
list is power and wealth are intoxicating. They absolutely are. We've talked about
6:55
this before. The more you have of anything, the more you want and
7:00
power, wealth, It's an appetite and it is never fully and finally satisfied.
7:04
So again a man or woman gets to a place that they never dream
7:08
they'd get, and they're not satisfied because it's an appetite. It's just the
7:11
nature of things, and there's a diminishing return. You know, today's rush
7:15
won't do it tomorrow. More actually becomes less and as we all know,
7:19
Lane, intoxicated people do not make great decisions, whether it's alcohol, success,
7:25
fame, anything else. So back to our you know, the core
7:29
of this this podcast. As a man or woman experiences more and more success
7:32
as they experience more and more autonomy, what do they want? They want
7:36
more and more autonomy, and again they begin to make decisions that they look
7:41
back on later, unfortunately oftentimes from prison or from bankruptcy or in divorce court,
7:46
and they think, what in the world was I thinking? Well,
7:48
intoxicated people don't make great decisions. So again, the quest for autonomy has
7:53
the potential to set us up for bad decisions that again move us across lines
7:57
that we never thought we would step across, and people really begin to treat
8:01
you differently. Yeah, that's the other thing, and we've all experienced this.
8:03
In fact, most of our podcast listeners have been on both sides of
8:07
this. Our influence or power or wealth actually intoxicates the people around us.
8:13
They start thinking that we are the smartest person in the room simply because we're
8:16
the most influential person in the room. Suddenly our ideas are good ideas.
8:20
Our jokes are the funniest and as people again lean in, you know,
8:26
to the person who's on this autonomy quest, it just furthers the myth.
8:31
It just you know, furthers the journey. And again it can become unhealthy
8:33
pretty quickly along those same lines. You know, power and wealth lead to
8:37
entitlement, and entitlement is addicting. While everybody else seems to be content to
8:41
wait in line, you know, you're the one looking for a workaround.
8:45
You know, you're walking around the restaurant with a twenty in your hand,
8:46
looking for some poor college student to slip them a twenty to you know,
8:50
get you to your table, and your kids are looking like at you,
8:52
like dad. You know, not that I've ever done that, I've just
8:56
heard about this, but I'll tell you you know, even you know,
9:00
I have my mom passed away recently. My dad's eighty two. So you
9:05
know, once or twice a year, I find myself headed to the emergency
9:09
room, which just you know, stuff that you know aging parents deal with.
9:13
And you know, I on many occasions I've walked into the emergency room
9:16
with my dad hoping someone says, oh, there's doctor Stanley or Oh there's
9:22
Andy. It's like, okay, you know, let's let's get this done
9:26
this way. Yeah. On a couple of occasions, I my mom needed
9:28
to go to the emergency room, and I took her to a hospital that
9:31
was an extra twenty minute drive because I knew a whole lot of people in
9:35
the er went to one of our churches. So what is that, you
9:39
say, Ah, and you just you just love your mom. Yeah.
9:43
No, I wanted some extra attention, you know, to kind of get
9:46
this thing moving. So is that a bad thing or No, It's a
9:50
natural thing. But I think we can all understand if that becomes a way
9:54
of life right once again, that can get out of hand and lead to
9:56
some unhealthy behaviors. Ay, the third day you listed is that relationships become
10:01
a means to an end. Yeah. Before long, we see everybody as
10:05
a client, a potential client, a customer, a potential customer, or
10:09
a contact of some sort. And again, nobody does this on purpose,
10:13
but in our quest for freedom, we begin to economize on our relationships.
10:18
We're surrounded by a lot of people, but nobody's really close to us.
10:22
You know, a lot of people, but you're careful, You're always careful,
10:24
not close. And I know for me, if I'm not intentional,
10:28
I can have a thousand fans and no friends. And I'll tell you what
10:31
makes us even harder for a person with any kind of influence is it seems
10:35
like everybody wants something. And the reason it seems like everybody wants something is
10:39
because everybody wants something. Yeah. I was having coffee with a good friend
10:45
of mine just a couple of days ago, actually, and he just moved
10:48
his son to a different private school. And he said, well, it
10:52
didn't take him long, and that was his subtle way of saying he's an
10:56
extremely wealthy person. He's got offices all over the country. And he said,
11:01
I get a call from the head master, and the head master says,
11:05
hey, you know I'd like to have coffee, and he said,
11:07
so. I just said, look, I'm always open to a good cup
11:09
of coffee, but it'd be a lot easier if you would just tell me
11:13
how much you want. I did. I started laughing, and he said
11:18
there's silence on the other end of the phone, and he said, no,
11:20
seriously, just tell me how much do you want? And he said
11:24
the head master told me. I said, okay, I'll do that.
11:26
So again, that's an extreme example, but after a while, it feels
11:30
like every phone call, every email, every hey, let's get together,
11:33
and you know, every hey gets you know, there's an ask on the
11:37
end of it. What does that do to a leader? It pushes us
11:41
again into a smaller and smaller and smaller circle of trusted friends. And before
11:45
long, you know, you arrive at the conclusion everybody just wants something from
11:48
me. And again, while we enjoy the autonomy that comes with that,
11:52
it is a dangerous place to be ultimately, and andy that leads us to
11:56
the last danger and what you call the most just one of all. Ultimately,
12:01
the quest for autonomy leads to isolation. That's right. If this isn't
12:05
something we're aware of, and if this isn't something we're intentional about guarding ourselves
12:09
against, we end up isolated and isolated people like intoxicated people, they just
12:13
make bad decisions. Once relationships have really become a means to an end,
12:18
you're isolated. There are people around you, but they're all either getting a
12:22
paycheck or they're related to you. And for our podcast listeners, this is
12:26
a really important thing to keep an eye on. If you are surrounded primarily
12:30
by people who get a paycheck or who are related to you, you may
12:33
be further down the road toward isolation. Then you know and understand. And
12:39
this is why I say intentional, because if we're not intentional, this is
12:43
just the gravitational pull of success. The gravitational pool of success is everybody around
12:48
me is getting a paycheck or they're related to me. And not only are
12:50
they related to me, they're dependent upon me. And when we are surrounded
12:54
by people who need us, it is almost impossible for them to be honest
13:00
with us. And then when we announce our next bad idea, everybody nods,
13:05
but we're the ones that pay. So this is why isolation, This
13:09
is why isolation is so dangerous, especially for leaders. I have two friends
13:13
that work with high profile entertainers and many of their clients are very young,
13:18
and every once in a while, one of their clients will end up in
13:20
the news with some crazy stories, some crazy annex And so I was talking
13:26
to one of these individuals one day and I said, you know what happens.
13:30
You know what happens. You know, it's extraordinary talent, extraordinary success,
13:33
and then they blow up and this individual said to me exactly what I
13:37
just said. Well, Andy, after a while, they are surrounded by
13:39
people who are getting a paycheck, and once that happens, you can't reach
13:45
them, You can't say anything to them. Suddenly they confuse talent with maturity,
13:50
and as we've talked about before on our podcast, there is no necessary
13:54
correlation between talent and maturity, or success and maturity, or wealth and maturity.
14:03
So again, this is the danger of isolation, because once we're isolated,
14:07
we are set up to make a decision to undermine the thing that we
14:09
long for that we're moving toward, which is the ability to do what we
14:15
want, when we want, where we want, with whom we want,
14:18
and define success any way we want. So you weren't over selling it when
14:22
you called autonomy dangerous. So how should a leader respond to this allure of
14:28
autonomy. Well, the first thing, and maybe the only thing, is
14:31
to recognize that autonomy is a myth. There is no such thing as absolute
14:37
autonomy. In fact, no one actually wants to live in a world of
14:41
absolute autonomy because we are made to be relational. We are created for community,
14:46
and men or women who are isolated, they're not in community and they're
14:50
not going to be happy. You just cannot find happiness in isolation. So
14:56
what they do, or what we are at tempted to do, is then
14:58
create artificial relationship. And artificial relationships are artificial, they're not real. So
15:05
consequently there is no ultimate fulfillment there either. So I think number one and
15:09
maybe the point is to recognize autonomy is a myth. It's a trap,
15:13
and it's actually an unworthy goal. Even though you know the quest for you
15:18
know, freedom, the quest for independence, I understand that, but autonomy
15:24
is an unworthy goal. It does not lead to happiness. Andy, you've
15:28
mentioned intentionality a couple of times in this podcast. How does that play in
15:33
dust? And I'm glad you asked that the average person is in community,
15:37
whether they want to be or not, whether it's an actual neighborhood, a
15:39
neighborhood association, a PTA, the people I work with. The average person
15:43
has a boss, The average person has a manager. The average person has
15:48
a built in accountability, whether we want it or not. So for the
15:52
person who is so successful or so influential, they can actually avoid that,
15:56
they have to choose it. They almost again, they have to create an
15:58
art official sense of community, not artificial relationships, but artificial community, which
16:03
means they have to seek it out. They have to find men and women
16:07
who are in that same season of life or that same stage of life and
16:10
say, hey, we need each other, let's meet. And I understand
16:14
why people don't do this. We're busy and we like to do what we
16:18
want to do. And again, the idea of submitting myself or submitting my
16:22
schedule, or submitting how much time I spend with my family, or submitting
16:26
my finances to someone else, again that runs contrary to this quest for autonomy.
16:33
But choosing to do so is what creates the actual community that I think
16:37
keeps us in check. And Laye, we have both been in meetings or
16:41
small groups or accountability groups with men who you know, had the potential to
16:47
just go off the rails, and you know, basically the interventions again,
16:51
men especially who had the potential to you know, create their own futures,
16:53
create their own worlds. But who said to us, I don't want to
16:56
end up like the people I read about it. I don't want to end
16:59
up like my f or my grandfather. And so again, they have they
17:02
have sought out the community that creates the relationships that keep them from this,
17:07
you know, this unworthy goal of autonomy. And yeah, I would think
17:11
most of our podcast listeners are thinking, well, I hope I have to
17:15
wrestle with this issue at that level one day. Yeah. But actually,
17:18
and this is I'm glad you said that, because this takes us back to
17:21
the beginning, really the point of this podcast. If you're twenty five years
17:22
old and really just entered the job market, and you've already begun thinking someday
17:26
one day, you know, I'm going to be like so and so,
17:29
if now you can accept the fact that autonomy really isn't the goal, that
17:33
really isn't the goal, you have already begun to sew seeds that will help
17:37
you later on you maybe thirty five, forty five years old and finally gotten
17:40
that job or that position, and you're thinking, oh, I'm one step
17:42
closer to being my own boss, you know, calling my own shots again.
17:47
If you can accept now that as you set goals and as you you
17:49
know, as you think about your preferred future, to just realize autonomy is
17:53
a myth, it is an unworthy goal. And when you since yourself becoming
17:59
disconnected from actual relationships and actual accountability. If that'll be a red flag,
18:04
then again you'll save yourself a world of trouble later on. So you know
18:10
it comes down to this. You know who's cheering for you, who's weeping
18:12
for you, who can come after you if they sense that you're drifting.
18:17
Someone should always be able to answer that question. One of the questions I
18:21
ask men sometimes, but this certainly applies to the male and female leaders in
18:26
our audience. Are you willing to give people who don't work for you and
18:30
who don't need anything from you access to you? Are you willing to give
18:34
people who don't work for you and who don't need anything from you access to
18:38
you? Because that is always a decision. This goes back to the intentionality
18:42
we talked about a few minutes ago. Who outside your family feels free to
18:47
throw themselves down in front of you in an attempt at keeping you from making
18:51
a bad decision that will undermine you, know, your autonomy and your freedom.
18:55
And if no one comes to mind, or you're not sure, you
18:59
may be closer to that line than you know. Regardless of how old you
19:02
are, regardless of where you are in the company, and regardless of how
19:04
much money you make It's good to be king, you know, but it's
19:08
dangerous because autonomy is an unwathy goal. Andy, thanks so much for your
19:15
time today, and thanks to our listeners for joining us as well. To
19:18
hear more from Andy on leadership, please visit Andy Stanley dot com