By Allen Haynes • August 14, 2024 Listen to the episode. Andy Stanley (00:02): Welcome to the Andy Stanley Leadership Podcast from the Vault. Before we get into today’s content, I wanted to let you know that we do have a brand new sponsor that I actually reached out to and asked if I could advertise for them, but I’m such a fan of their products, so please join me in welcoming Ledbury Creates made to order shirts that fit better, feel better, and honestly last longer than anything else in my closet. I’ve been wearing these shirts for years, and as a podcast sponsor, they have an offer just for our listeners, if you’ll go to ledbury, L-E-D-B-U-Y ledbury.com/andy and use code Andy shirt for 25% off your first shirt. That’s ledbury, L-E-D-B-U-R y.com/andy. And use code Andy shirt for 25% off your very first shirt. You will not regret it. And now let’s dive into today’s content. Lane Jones (00:55): Welcome to the Andy Stanley Leadership Podcast, a conversation designed to help leaders go further faster. On today’s podcast, we’ll look at the tricky relationship between responsibility and authority. Andy, I’m excited about today’s podcast because you often hear people complain about being given the responsibility for something but not the authority to do anything about it. But in a recent staff meeting, you address that tension. Andy Stanley (01:19): Yeah, in a healthy organization, our responsibility will always exceed our authority. In a healthy organization, actually everybody in the organization’s responsibility should exceed their authority, which sounds a bit like a contradiction, but it’s not because, and this isn’t original with me, we want employees to feel like owners, not employees. An employee is going to stay in their lane when it comes to what’s best for the organization or what’s even going on in the organization because employee that’s a pure employee mindset is, Hey, that’s not my responsibility. That’s not what they hired me to do. They’ll just have to deal with that. In fact, that kind of mindset leads to unhealthy competition within a department division or an organization. So I want our staff to feel some sense of responsibility for everything we do, even though it’s not what we hired them to do. So again, they have authority over the area we’ve hired them to work in, but I want them to feel responsible for everything in the organization. Lane Jones (02:18): When you talked about this to our staff, you pointed to two of our staff behaviors, and we’ve discussed those on the podcast, but you pointed to those two as the impetus for this idea. Andy Stanley (02:28): Yeah, we have six staff behaviors. These are the things we want everybody to do. Years ago we spent a lot of almost a year developing this or discovering these. We asked the question, what is it that if all of our staff did, everything would go well and we accomplished what we set out to accomplish? So we came up with these staff behaviors, six of them, and the two that I talked about when I talked about this tension between responsibility and authority was make it better and take it personally, make it better, and take it personally. We want everybody to make it better, and it is the whole organization, not just their department or division, and we want everybody to take it personally. We want this to feel like this is your home, you’re the owner. I want everybody in our organization to feel the responsibility of making everything better. (03:12): Again, even in areas where they have no authority or where they’re not even sitting in meetings. I want everybody to take it all personally, the building, the look, the feel, our reputation in the community, but to take it personally, you’re already outside the bounds of your authority. I remember years ago when I talked about this, I said to the guys on our staff, I said, guys, when you walk into the men’s room and there’s water all over the counter where people have washed their hands, I want you to get a paper towel and wipe it up. I know you didn’t make the mess, but this is your building, this is your organization, this is your, I don’t want you to be like, Hey, we need to call maintenance. Or Hey, who was in here and made such a mess, I’m just going to move down to the other sink. (03:54): No, wait. If this was your home and you had guested over and one of your kids had left a mess, you wouldn’t be like, huh, get that tomorrow. Now I want you to take, that’s what it means to take it personally. You feel everything that goes on. And again, as that illustration illustrates, cleaning up the restroom is not part of your responsibility or it’s not part of your authority or your job description. So in our context, I said, if you overhear a conversation in a restaurant where there are parents talking about their kids and one of their children or students had a bad experience in one of our areas of ministry, I don’t want you to leave the restaurant and go, oh, well, I guess student ministry needs to get its act together, or Children’s ministry needs to get its act together. I want that to bother you so much that you interrupt their conversation and say, I’m so sorry I overheard you were at North Point, or you were at Buckhead Church or Woodstock City Church and I’m so sorry. How can I help you with that? And they say, oh, do you work in the children’s department? No, I don’t even know where it is. I know that’s not an area where I have authority, but I feel responsible for everything that happens in our organization. So again, there’s a tension between authority and responsibility, but boy, in a great organization, everybody feels responsible for everything. Lane Jones (05:11): And I remember you challenged the staff with what could happen if they didn’t manage this well, Andy Stanley (05:16): Yeah, if your sense of responsibility ends with your authority, you really are a danger to our mission and you’re ultimately a danger to the organization because for a couple of reasons. But for one reason, that posture is contagious. So back to the other illustration, and I know it’s contextual to what we do, but if somebody gets up from lunch after they’ve heard a bad report, and for those of you in our audience, this is not unusual for us. So many people in our communities attend our churches. It’s not unusual to be somewhere and overhear somebody talking about what happened in one of our environments, but for somebody to get up, leave the restaurant, and then they go back to the office, they’re sitting with their team and they’re like, this is what I heard. Students needs to get their act together, children’s need to get their act together, whatever it might be. (06:02): Well, now you’ve got a group of people that are like, yeah, well, we have our act together. They weren’t talking about us. So it’s so unhealthy and it becomes, again, it can become contagious. That’s broken, but that’s not our responsibility. That was really lame, but that’s not our department. I saw the mess, but that’s their mess. So it’s dangerous, it’s contagious. And lane, here’s the flip side. A person’s influence in our organization is often determined by how they manage this tension. Because when we meet someone who is willing to speak outside of their lane, outside of their department, their division, in order to make the organization better, what do we think about that person? I mean, they’re more respect, more interest. We take them more seriously. Absolutely. They gain influence with us outside and beyond job descriptions or an org chart. So one of the best ways to gain influence within your division or department or your organization is to appropriately express interest in making the entire organization better, not simply competing with other divisions or departments. Again, being willing to appropriately step outside and speak outside your area or authority. So to say that more succinctly, a person’s influence in the organization is determined by how they manage this tension. And again, a person’s influence in the organization impacts future opportunities in the organization. So when you get this wrong, it multiplies when you get this right, it multiplies as well. Lane Jones (07:29): Andy, you actually shared a particular example of this behavior from one of your teams. Andy Stanley (07:34): Yeah, I was speaking to one of our campus teams. There were about 60 people, and this had just happened with one of the young men in the room. But anyway, part of his responsibility is to market our content driven events to the community. So he’s very outward facing to the community, and my responsibility is to get him information so that he’ll know what he’s marketing. He does not report to me, but I have a responsibility to him so he can do his job. We were about to market some new content, and I sent him what I thought were some really good, pithy, marketable statements about a message series I was about to launch. I loved him, but he didn’t. Right. So what does he do in that situation? What should he do? I mean, he has a couple of options and a, well, Andy’s the boss, Andy’s the words guy. (08:21): Andy’s an author, so I don’t even work for him directly, so I’m just going to go with what he sent me. Option B, I want this to be the best it can possibly be. So does Andy and I think it can be better. So I’m going to ask him to take another shot at this, which he did, which I’m so glad he did. And in this particular staff meeting, I just called him out without him knowing whether he was in trouble or I was going to reward him for something, and I said, Hey, that was the right thing to do. Again, I felt like this was outside his authority, but he felt responsible for the messaging of the entire organization. That’s the kind of people you want, and that’s what we have to model for people. So again, he respectfully and correctly made his case for how the content could be improved. (09:05): Sent it back to me, reminded me of our story brand principles that were attempting to adhere to. I took another shot at it. I felt like I was turning in a paper for a grade and he gave me an A minus. So anyway, so the point being he didn’t allow his lack of authority to be an excuse for not taking responsibility. I’m going to say that again. He didn’t allow his lack of authority to be an excuse for not taking responsibility, and I didn’t allow the fact that I am his superior and I’m his boss to get in the way of being open to the fact that he wanted to make it better, because it’s very easy to get defensive. Now, this is especially true when it’s peer to peer and it’s different divisions or departments trying to communicate with each other because again, I don’t care how humble you are and how much virtue you have, when somebody questions your ideas or questions, your suggestions or questions, a decision, we all tend to get a little bit defensive and people can read our body language, but the moment we push back, that’s the moment they’re going to quit talking. (10:11): And since it’s not in their area anyway, it’s like, okay, I tried game over. The organization’s never going to get any better if we put those kind of lids on the communication. So as the leader, as leaders, it’s our responsibility to be a part of this communication cycle. And here’s the tricky part. As the boss, I have authority in all of those areas. So it’s not unnatural for me to reach across the aisles I’m responsible, but to create a culture where everyone feels that same freedom even though they don’t have the authority, when you do that, you have a strong, healthy organization that is going to get better because people are making it better and they’re taking it personally. We’ll get back to that in just a minute. But first I want to tell you a little bit more about my favorite online shirt company. (11:00): I have tried several online shirt companies. 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Lane Jones (12:03): Okay, Andy, for our podcast listeners who are ready to introduce this idea to their organization, what’s the starting point? Andy Stanley (12:10): I think it’s as simple as if we’re going to make this organization better, we can’t afford to stay in our lane, meaning not in terms of what we’re asked to do, but in terms of what we feel responsible for. And at the same time, and this is another big topic, and as leaders, we can’t accidentally create or encourage systems that keep people in their lane because that’s another thing that happens sometimes. And again, systems determine behaviors. Systems determine behaviors, not the other way around. Systems determine behaviors. So if there’s a system that accidentally mitigates against this kind of communication or this kind of open communication that’s going to be a lid to our ability to get better because people just are going to stay in their lane because the message is, Hey, that’s none of your business. And hey, if it’s none of my business, then you can continue to sink your business. (13:00): I’m not going to interfere, I’m not going to speak into it. That essentially everybody needs to feel responsible for more than they have authority over. And I think that’s the language that sets up the tension and creates the context for the conversation. And then the flip side, and this is where most of us live when we’re on the receiving end, when somebody who doesn’t know anything about music speaks into the music, when somebody who doesn’t know anything about curriculum speaks into the curriculum, when somebody that doesn’t have expertise, they’ve never been trained and yet they have a critique of something we’re doing, boy, that’s when we just have to keep our hands wide open and not get defensive. And if we’re able to do that, if we model that, if we train people and then if we reward people when we see that happening, the organization’s just going to be better because people, again, they’re working to make it better and they’re taking it personally. Again, what I just said, what is rewarded gets repeated. We talk about that all the time. What’s rewarded gets repeated. So if you want this kind of communication repeated, you have to model it and you have to reward it when you see it, and people remember that. Lane Jones (14:09): Well, Andy, thanks so much for today and to all of our listeners, we want to thank you for joining us and invite you to check out Andy stanley.com and we look forward to you joining us next month on the Andy Stanley Leadership Podcast. Comments are closed.