Beyond High Performance with Jason Jaggard Transcript

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Andy Stanley (00:02):
Hey everybody. Welcome to the Andy Stanley Leadership Podcast, a conversation designed to help leaders go further, faster. And before we get into today’s fantastic content, I must say, I want to tell you about a special offer from our friends at belay with countless responsibilities pulling out your time and attention. It is more important than ever to learn how to delegate well, so you can lead with focus. This is something we all struggle with, right? So if you’re feeling that pool belay can help for over a decade, BELAY has matched busy leaders with the remote staffing support. They need to delegate with confidence. And that’s the key, isn’t it? To know that once we delegate something, it’s going to get done and it’s going to get done the way that we want it to get done. They do this from administrative and marketing to bookkeeping to high level financial support.

(00:50):
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Jason Jaggard (02:16):
Thank you very much, Andy. Happy to be here.

Andy Stanley (02:18):
Yeah, well, I’m so glad you’re here. And just so for our audience, Jason was featured at one of our live events. We do a leader lab event for the community where we bring in great authors and business leaders, and Jason was here and his content was so great. We’re actually having him back for a group of people who were part of our organization. And I told him all, bring your spouses, because most of us were there without our spouses. I went home and said, Sandra, I know this was a leadership thing, marketplace content, but it was so practical. So tonight we get to hear it all over again and we’re super excited about that.

Jason Jaggard (02:52):
Thank you.

Andy Stanley (02:52):
Anyway, So I love the book and there’s so much to talk about and I want to make sure we get to the big of the book. But Jason, I want to talk about one section of the book that’s extremely practical and helpful. In fact, when our leadership team went through the book, we spent a lot of time on this, and it’s not necessarily the theme of the book, but I think it creates a framework for the broader discussion. You talk about four work archetypes, prisoner, mercenary, missionary, and athlete. So can you just tease that out and then we’ll just go from there?

Jason Jaggard (03:24):
Yeah. Well, one is I’m thrilled that your team liked that paradigm. It’s been super helpful for us and we love using it with our clients. And so most of the time when you’re talking about relationships and work, you’re talking about relationships at work, like your colleagues, your friends, your boss, your people that you manage, that kind of thing. But most people don’t think about the relationship to work. But the reality is, is that everybody has a relationship to work. And like you said, there’s, we call four archetypes. And so I’ll run through those just real quick. So you have the prisoner mindset, and that’s somebody who works because they have to. And that could be someone who’s working three jobs and struggling to make ends meet, that you could feel that way there. But also you can have the golden handcuffs. You can be like, I work because I have to, because I got to pay for Ivy League school or whatever. And that’s a prisoner’s mindset. Then you have the mercenary mindset and mercenaries don’t work because they’re forced to mercenaries work because they like to, they want to, they’re like pirates, they’re swashbuckling. Wherever the money goes, that’s fine.

Andy Stanley (04:19):
Yep

Jason Jaggard (04:19):
It’s not business, it’s not personal, it’s just business.

Andy Stanley (04:21):
Build it, sell it, build it, sell it, right?

Jason Jaggard (04:23):
That’s right. You can hire them to go someplace else, and it’s no problem for them. It is fun for them. Then you have the missionary mindset, and actually I thought I debated on calling it the missionary mindset or the martyr mindset because these are people who work because they’re called to, but the downside is work is life and there’s no boundaries, there’s no separation. Everything is mission, everything is wired in, and oftentimes these people burn out. And so whether it’s the prisoner mindset or the mercenary mindset or the missionary mindset, there are downsides to that and they’re not the greatest mindsets actually to have. And then we introduced the fourth way, which you mentioned, which is the athletes’ mindset. And these are people who don’t work because they’re forced to, because they want to, or even because they’re called to, they work because that’s the way they’re going to grow.

(05:03):
And we call it the athletes’ mindset because our firm works with a lot of professional athletes, and you quickly discover that 95% of the work that a professional athlete does, you never see them on a court with fans and cameras and everything is the 5% that you see. The job of an athlete is not playing on the court, it’s practice. And so they practice, they work hard, they show up even when they don’t want to, most of them because they know that’s how they’re going to grow. And so we discovered pretty early that if you help companies and organizations and even individuals embrace an athlete’s mindset, it liberates them from the other three and allows ’em to do things that they never thought they could do.

Andy Stanley (05:37):
And so in our discussion, and you teased this out in the book, you asked the reader, and we would round and answer the question, which one of the four do you relate to the most? And it was such an interesting conversation. And of course, I’m the boss sitting there. It’s like, I want everybody to say the athlete. I feel like a prisoner. I’m not a mercenary, I’m not burning out because I’m an activist. And again, we’re in a nonprofit. So the missionary thing sounds like, well, that’s the right answer. And as you talk about the book, it’s not the right answer. It was so interesting. And then also for me, when I was honest with our team, I felt like I started as one. And because of my season in life, I’ve changed. And that was convicting to me. So anyway, before I get too personal, why is this important?

Jason Jaggard (06:28):
Well, lemme give an honest answer to that. Well, briefly, I’ll say the mindsets change in a given day. So I can be in a meeting and start with an athlete’s mindset and then get defensive or hurt or bored or whatever, and then leave a meeting with the prisoner’s mindset. These are incredibly fluid. And so I love that you checked in with your team because not only can you downshift into a non resourceful mindset, you can upgrade to a resourceful mindset instantaneously.

Andy Stanley (06:56):
I didn’t think about that. Yeah, I was thinking more in terms of natural wiring or seasons of life. But yeah, that’s true.

Jason Jaggard (07:03):
And that’s what makes it fun. And that’s why frankly what I love about your leadership is you and your team presented this template. And what’s amazing is even presenting the template allows people to self-assess and grow. That’s the trick to coaching is I’m not importing information that you didn’t have before. I’m giving frameworks. And then you walk yourself through it and it just works a lot better that way. So here’s why this is important. I really believe in a way that it’s hard to explain. CS Lewis has a line that says, if you could ever see people the way that God designed them, you’d be tempted to fall down and worship them. And the second half of that quote, less flattering.

(07:41):
But I think about that all the time, and that just hits something in me and the coaches in our firm and our executive team in a way that, and I think you as well, that if you could only see who people are meant to be and how precious life is, and it’s a limited window of time for us to really get our potential out in a way that heals marriages in a way that serves others, in a way that connects us to God, in a way that helps us become more valuable service to others. And it is just really meaningful. And that’s what started the work in the first place. And then we wanted, were 10 years in and we felt like we had something that was really valuable for people. And so then we decided to write a book about it to capture it as much as we can to get in the hands of many people as possible.

Andy Stanley (08:20):
So I want to jump from that framework because there’s a lot more we could say about that to the part of the book that was really, really catalytic for our organization. And it’s really the theme of the book, because you write the book to get to the point where you’re challenging individuals and teams to ask a really big irritating question.

Jason Jaggard (08:40):
Yes,

Andy Stanley (08:41):
It’s irritating because I thought we were doing really well. I thought, oh, we’re killing it. We’re successful. We’re big. People want to know how we do what we do, blah, blah, blah. And then we read your book. It’s like, oh no. Now we have to and again, now I have to get out of my missionary mindset and think like an athlete. And wow. In fact, Joel Thomas who oversees the core organization that we have is the one that introduced the book.

(09:10):
And when I started reading it, I thought, oh, do I really want us to read this? People are going to start thinking really big, and they’re start dreaming really big. And I thought, wait a minute, Andy, you fool. 30 years ago, this is you thought this way. So it was convicting to me. And again, a little bit of season of life navigating some of that. So anyway, the next part of the book, you asked the question, I’m just going to throw the question out. I don’t want to bury the lead. The question is, what are we capable of? This is beyond a goal in some ways it’s even beyond vision because a vision can get tamped down over time. What are we capable of? It’s such a irritating, clarifying, motivating, inspiring question because again, in organizational life, when I get too busier, when we get too busy, we step back into management instead of leadership

(10:05):
And in management, the question is, what’s the next problem to solve? What’s the next problem to solve? Hey, we solve another problem, we’re making progress. And to not step back and create the margin to ask, okay, what are we capable of? Just talk to us about that We can just stay there. And again, this goes back to the mindset of true athlete who’s in their prime, who’s not simply thinking about the team scoreboard, but looks in the mirror and asks the question, what am I capable of? So just go and I’ll tell you when I’m thoroughly inspired, intimidated, and feel guilty. Go ahead.

Jason Jaggard (10:42):
Excellent. Yes, we’re just going to shame you into

Andy Stanley (10:45):
Shame me into this next. Yeah, go ahead.

Jason Jaggard (10:47):
One of the primary mechanisms of leadership, guilt and shame.

Andy Stanley (10:49):
Yeah, it worked. It worked. I mean, literally you’re here tonight to talk to some of our major stakeholders because we engage with that question and we bit off something really big and it’s so exciting, and I think our team feels more engaged than ever. So go ahead.

Jason Jaggard (11:07):
That is so exciting to hear. And one of my favorite phrases is, A good coach helps you get what you want. A great coach helps you expand what you want. And so when we talk with marketing people and trying to help us get our word out and everything, they’re like, what’s the pain point? What’s the thing that you’re trying to alleviate? And I always get frustrated like people don’t come to us so they suffer less people come to us. We’re going to help them suffer more and suffer. Well, the word passion means to suffer what you’re passionate about when you know what you’re willing to suffer for,

(11:36):
We sit down with clients and we say, Hey, we want to explain to you who the boss is first. We say, just so we’re clear, I’m not the boss like the coach. I’m not the boss. And they usually like that. They’re happy to hear that. And then we say, and you are not the boss either. And they’re okay, I get it. We’re like, seriously? Who’s the boss? And then we usually say, your potential, your potential is a boss. Your potential is what’s going to hire or fire me. We are going to submit to your potential when we’re talking about what we’re going to talk about, your potential is a thing. Now the question is, is who knows the most about your potential? Because by definition, it’s invisible. Like with Andy Stanley, how much more do you got in the tank? Nobody knows. Nobody knows except for one person. And we like to say, or at least we believe, that that’s God. God knows what your potential is and mine. And so not to get too spiritual too early, but there’s this idea of what is the intersection of divinity and unleashing your potential and how can you interact with God in a way to where you partner with God to get whatever he’s put inside of you out? And that’s where the question, what are we capable of came from? Now, we don’t talk explicitly in religious terms in the book, nor with most of our clients,

Andy Stanley (12:44):
But people understand enough of a sense of transcendence.

Jason Jaggard (12:48):
That’s right.

Andy Stanley (12:49):
If you just kept it in the realm of, okay, there’s okay. Beyond what I see, beyond what I’ve experienced, when I dream, when I imagine what could be and should be, we go there. Everybody has gone there in their minds about their futures. I mean, we daydreamed as kids of being the quarterback. We daydreamed these kids. We know how to do what you’re talking about regardless of what we name or how we brand, that sense of transcendence, of what if, what could be and should be. So absolutely, keep going.

Jason Jaggard (13:19):
Everybody. If you’re listening to this, I know one thing about you for sure is everybody has a sense that there’s another gear regardless of how old they are, regardless of how successful they are, regardless of their past, you have this sense that there’s something in you, there’s something valuable, meaningful, there’s more inside of you, and we’re just a little nervous about how we’re going to get it out. And so what are we capable of or what am I capable of? That’s not a question you answer. That’s a question you answer to. That question becomes like an authority in your life.

Andy Stanley (13:44):
No, that’s why I said it’s irritating.

Jason Jaggard (13:45):
Yeah,

Andy Stanley (13:46):
Nobody wants to be told what to do. No, and that question, I mean, you’re exactly right. It sort of becomes the boss of me. It’s a question I know better than to avoid. It’s a question I want to avoid, just not avoid. But I mean, I feel like I’m doing fine.

Jason Jaggard (14:03):
For sure.

Andy Stanley (14:05):
It is so powerful. And I tell you what, to our podcast listeners, if that kind of stirs you up, what am I capable of? You wait till you sit down with your executive team or your board and open up a conversation. Ladies and gentlemen, I know what we’re doing. I know the problems we’re about to solve. I know what we’ve done in the past. What are we capable of? Wow. It’s fuel. Anyway.

Jason Jaggard (14:27):
It changes the context in which you interpret everything. And I will say, because with you, Andy, it’s funny, in our firm sometimes we’re like, oh, can we have another question?

Andy Stanley (14:40):
Right? What’s for lunch? Let’s go with what’s for lunch question,

Jason Jaggard (14:43):
Right? That’s right. So there is a high performing way that you can mishandle this question to where you just turn it into another form of high performance. And so in the firm, we say always rest but never coast, right? So LeBron James reportedly sleeps like 12 hours a day. His recharge is really important, and I learned from you so that he can do what only he can do. And so whenever you’re talking about going beyond high performance, whenever you’re talking about tapping to the next gear, it usually isn’t going to look the way your high performing mind thinks it’s going to look. Why is that? Well, because one is, I think Einstein gets misquoted as saying you can’t solve your new problems with the same thinking that got you here, or something like that, or something like that. That’s part of it is when you’re thinking about when we do our two day trainings, we start by saying, Hey, look, we’re here to help you get twice as much done. And when we say that we’re here to help you get twice as much done, people get nervous

Andy Stanley (15:35):
And tired.

Jason Jaggard (15:36):
Because if you’ve got an algorithm, do you do most people have an algorithm, it’s a high performance algorithm that says, in order to get more done, I have to work more.

Andy Stanley (15:43):
Yeah, do more.

Jason Jaggard (15:44):
That’s right. That’s the algorithm. And I learned from reading your books, that’s actually not the way to think because the less you do, the more you accomplish. And that’s a meta performance mindset. A meta performing mindset is saying, okay, whatever it does look like for me to do more, it doesn’t look like what I’m doing now. It’s going to require a different kind of thinking, a different perspective, and your anxiety and my anxiety and stress around it. That’s the high performance mindset trying to sabotage you stepping into the next level of the video game. Because once you get to the next level of the video game, you look around and you’re like, this wasn’t nearly as difficult as I thought. And if you’re listening to this, everyone has been there. You’ve been there, I’ve been there where at first it’s terrifying and you’re working your way through and it’s clumsy and it’s hard and you don’t like it. And then suddenly you get a groove and you get a strive, and then all of a sudden you look around and it’s normalized and you’re like, oh,

Andy Stanley (16:31):
It’s expected.

Jason Jaggard (16:32):
That’s right, that’s right. And then you assume that’s your new top and it’s like, Nope, nope. There’s another gear. There’s always another gear. It’s crazy, Andy. People forget when we work with clients, they’ll accomplish things that they never thought that they would. And then we are near the end of the contract and they’re like, I think this is it. And it’s like, did you not remember?

Andy Stanley (16:52):
You thought it was it when we met?

Jason Jaggard (16:53):
That’s right. Right? That’s right. And it’s very difficult for human beings to hold two different mindsets at the same time. And that’s why you need pastors, mentors, coaches or people to walk alongside you to remind you like, Hey, this is how you felt six months ago. This is how you felt a year ago. Remember Andy, this is how you felt five years ago, 10 years ago. Now it’s time for something new.

Andy Stanley (17:12):
So you’ve answered the question I’m about to ask, but just to put punctuation on this because everything from this point on in our conversation is going to build on that. So the title of the book Beyond High Performance, in one sense, it doesn’t make any sense because it becomes a doom loop sort of. Right? You know what I mean? It’s like beyond high. Okay, now beyond, beyond, beyond and to infinity and beyond high performance. But why did you choose the title? Because it’s intriguing. And again, it goes back to the question. So maybe we’ve answered that. And let me add, because I didn’t spend much time on this. Jason really does deal with, and coach and his team coaches some of the highest performers in the marketplace and in the world of professional sports in the world, names, he’s not going to name, but their household names. When you intersect them, they are already high performer performers. They’re already either almost are at the top of their game. So without, I don’t want you to name names, but talk a little bit about beyond high performance.

Jason Jaggard (18:13):
Several years ago I was doing some informal consulting with a Fortune 10 company and we started with, what’s the problem? We’re doing reconnaissance. We’re getting to know you. And they said, we have a bunch of high performers. And I was like, okay, great. So what’s the problem? And they’re like, we have a bunch of high performers. I was like, ha, ha, ha. Seriously. But what’s the problem? And they got angry. They’re like, you’re not listening to us. We’re telling you the problem. We have a bunch of high performers. And my whole life I’d wanted to be a high performer. Well, I read books and all the things invested myself, got coaching all to be a high performer. I had always been taught that was the point. I’d never been taught that that was a problem. And what we discovered, what we now call the high performer problem is that whenever mental models really matter, and most people carry around a really basic performance model that says there’s low performance performers on high performers, and if that’s your model, which is fine, but if that’s your model, then as soon as you think that you’re a high performer, then you’re like a Thanksgiving Turkey, you’re done and then you’re tempted to coast and all these things

(19:07):
And it creates a series of problems which we can double click on later. What’s interesting though, in terms of why I picked the title is a little marketing stuff. One of our executives was buying the book for their whole company, and he was nervous about it. Like, Hey, Jason, and for obvious reasons, I’m not going to tell you who the name of the person is because of the story I’m about to tell, but he was like, we have people on our team that aren’t high performers. They’re not going to like your book. And I said, we named it beyond high performance on purpose, not because everyone is a high performer, but because everyone thinks they’re a high performer

Andy Stanley (19:38):
Because it’ll appeal to them regardless.

Jason Jaggard (19:40):
That’s right. And a year later we came back and we laughed. He’s like, yeah, the people that I was most surprised that would assume they would never read a book on high performance, devoured it. And we wanted to have a book. We wanted to have a book that you could read on an airplane and not be embarrassed by the title.

Andy Stanley (19:56):
Yeah.

Jason Jaggard (19:59):
My favorite books for… I’m Married, and we read, my wife and I would read marriage books of how to do that well, and we’re learning and we’re newlyweds and all the thing and the books for these oftentimes your books great.

Andy Stanley (20:08):
I know exactly what you’re going to say.

Jason Jaggard (20:10):
The book titles are embarrassing. I don’t want to be on a plane reading, getting the Love You need kind of a deal. I want something else. And so it was a marketing strategy for calling it Beyond high performance.

Andy Stanley (20:20):
No. Well, years and years ago, a ghost wrote a book for my dad on temptation. And this is way back, I’m trying to remember the original title was something like How to Handle Temptation or How to Deal With Temptation. Nope. Yeah, nobody wants to be Seen.

Jason Jaggard (20:36):
You’re at the bookstore.

Andy Stanley (20:37):
A couple additions in, they changed the title to something else. It’s like, yeah, you’re going to put that, that’s a Kindle read. That’s why we love Kindle. Nobody knows what we’re read, nobody knows. And then we don’t know. People say, what are you reading? It’s like, hold on, lemme go to the front. I don’t remember the title or the author, but it’s really good. Yeah, okay,

Jason Jaggard (20:52):
We could have called it, you’re Not Very Good, here’s How to get Better. But no one’s going to take that to the coffee

Andy Stanley (20:56):
Shop. So I think we’ve intrigued the audience enough to read the book. So drilling down a little bit, so there’s a list on my version about 44 pages into the book that I think should be maybe taped to every leader’s mirror or desk. You described the early signs of leadership, stagnation and plateauing. And again, for most of our listeners, we don’t think in those terms. We think in terms of plateauing, either organization’s plateaued or of, Hey, to your point, I’m a high performer. Why am I even listening to this dumb podcast? Let’s get back to something entertaining. I don’t need this. So you give the signs of leadership stagnation or plateauing, they’re subtle, but they’re so significant. So what if I just read the list and you comment, how about that?

Jason Jaggard (21:38):
Yeah, let’s do it.

Andy Stanley (21:40):
There’s five of these things. The first one you write is resistance to feedback. So are high performers generally resistant to feedback?

Jason Jaggard (21:48):
I think that’s one of the earliest indicators. There’s suffering from the high performer problem at least. I’ll say that’s one of my early indicators. I know

Andy Stanley (21:55):
Because athletes don’t resist feedback generally.

Jason Jaggard (21:59):
I would think you’re right. So I was talking to Dan Leffelaar, who’s now the co-president, but he started our sport division and Andrew Lad, who’s one of our coaches who used to be a, he is a two-time Stanley Cup hockey player.

Andy Stanley (22:09):
Oh wow.

Jason Jaggard (22:10):
The three of us were talking, and Andrew was teaching me that most professional athletes do not have a growth mindset. Most professional athletes suffer from the high performer problem. And that shocked me. I was like, what? You’re one of the best in the world and you have money so you can hire 10 sports psychologists and get the IV and all the things that I imagine. And he goes, there are athletes, the best ones do that, but a lot just they show up to, and I think he said, a lot of people show up their first day in professional sports like they’ve arrived. And that’s a huge problem. And the evidence that a person believes they’ve arrived is that they do not want coaching from their coach or from us or anybody. They don’t want from feedback. Who are you to tell me,

Andy Stanley (22:56):
Yeah, you can’t do this.

Jason Jaggard (22:57):
That’s right. That’s exactly right. You can’t do this. I’ve got my fan club over here that’s incentivized to tell me exactly what I want to hear. And then they struggle into some kind of area of professional sport mediocrity. And the downside of professional sport this way is being an average professional athlete is still pretty awesome. And so there has to be some kind of disruptive moment that kind of awakens them into saying, I don’t want to be just an average best. I actually want to explore what I’m capable of.

Andy Stanley (23:27):
Well, what am I capable of? So for the rest of us mere mortals who we don’t, we have to stretch before we walk. So number one, resistance to feedback. The second one was resent being asked to do more. This surprised me a little bit. So you’re kind of lagging or plateaued in your leadership if you resent being asked to do more.

Jason Jaggard (23:50):
Well, it makes sense, and I want to say this as empathetically as I can. When you see yourself at the top, you see yourself as, I can’t do more. I am full. And I think that gets to the next piece there and you can throw it out.

Andy Stanley (24:04):
And the third one is both overwhelmed and bored at the same time. When I read that, I thought I know exactly what that means. Overwhelmed and bored.

Jason Jaggard (24:12):
Yeah, because you’re overwhelmed. You perceive yourself to be at max capacity and you’re bored because you are not at max capacity. And it creates this really disorienting stuckness. That is one of the major symptoms.

Andy Stanley (24:23):
When I allow myself to get so busy with tasks, I get pushed out of leadership into management. I’m busy and bored because management bores me. But I’m just wall to wall with stuff to do. I don’t have the margin even ask the question, what am I capable of? I’m like, are you kidding? Unless I just never go home, I’m not capable of anymore.

Jason Jaggard (24:44):
And honestly, Andy, that was an insight that I did not have until you shared it on our podcast. That’s not in our book. What you just shared is not in our book. It’s a double click on it. It’s a deeper dive into it, and it makes total sense to me. If you’re listening to this, it might resonate with you too. Just to reiterate what Andy’s saying, which is you get so busy you don’t have time to do the things that you really love. And not to keep coming back to professional athletes, but like Dan Fl, I mentioned earlier, he was a national speed skater for the Canadian team before he became a coach and joined our firm. And he walked away from it because he’d lost his love of the game. And oftentimes when you’re working with athletes, they’re grinding, they’re getting well-paid, but they have detached from their love of the game. And you cannot go beyond high performance without reattaching to the love of the game or connecting to the mission or connecting to your why or whatever language you want to wrap around it.

Andy Stanley (25:32):
So both overwhelmed and bored. So if you’re listening and you’re overwhelmed and bored anyway, you got to read this about, okay, number four, jealous of those who surpass you. And I think there’s a competitive part of this, jealousy being competitive, but talk about jealous of those who surpass you. Again, an indicator that as a leader you’ve become stagnation is setting in a plateauing jealousy.

Jason Jaggard (26:01):
Yeah. This one is one that’s hard to admit both in myself and with others, but when you see yourself at the top of the peak, either at the top of an organization or you’re the head of your division or whatever, there’s really only two ways to keep your spot. Either you have to keep growing, which you’re not going to do because you’re overwhelmed and bored, or you have to stop other people from growing.

(26:19):
And this is subtle, of course there’s sociopaths who do it on purpose and delight in it or whatever, but most people do this I think on accident. And I’m hesitant to give examples, not because of NDAs or anything, but because I don’t want to resource people as to weaponize it to say so-and-so is doing this to me. But just as a self-reflection, how do you feel when other people on the team at your same level or one level beneath you when they get promoted or they’re successful? If you start to get anxious or you feel afraid, then that’s an indicator that there’s something there that you don’t want to keep just between your ears. You want to get that out into a safe environment with someone else who can walk with you through that. That will not only sabotage your growth, you’ll start unintentionally sabotaging the growth of others.

Andy Stanley (27:02):
And when I talk about jealousy within our frame of reference, I say, when you sense jealousy, you need to immediately publicly celebrate that person. You should just force yourself to celebrate them with a note them with a text, or next time you’re with them to say, Hey, real quick, have you heard? And it doesn’t matter if you feel it celebrate other people. That’s how you break the whole of jealousy. And when we find ourselves resistant to that, then we know we ought to look in the mirror again. And you talk about it within the context of an organization, but then many of us look at other similar organizations, and there’s that same sense of, oh no, I used to be the guy and I’m not the guy anymore. And when I’m healthy, those organizations inspire me to get better. When I’m unhealthy, I secretly rejoice when they hit a roadblock or they hit a bump, and then I see that nastiness inside of me. It just sickens me that that’s in me. And everybody knows that’s nasty and gross. But anyway, but just paying attention to that. Okay, last one. It kind of goes with resistant feedback. It’s no longer teachable.

Jason Jaggard (28:14):
Yeah, that’s right. And it is. I don’t have anything to learn from anybody. And by the way, this happens to, in our firm, we guard against this, I guess I’ll talk about myself. So a lot of what I do these days, Dan and Tricia run the show at the firm specifically, and then Joseph Barkley runs the show over at the institute as the president. So it’s the three presidents. And a lot of what I do is teaching and explaining and coaching into, they do most of the teaching and coaching, but then I get to kind of drive by coach and teach tactics and things and how to best practices and how to coach and those types of things. And sometimes leadership stuff. And I give ’em your stuff and other people that we are inspired by. And I think this particular one no longer teachable, is most susceptible to the people who spend most of their time teaching. And so I find

Andy Stanley (29:01):
Now why is that?

Jason Jaggard (29:02):
Well, because I think it’s what you mentioned earlier, you don’t create margin for learning. So I don’t think necessarily it’s ego. I don’t think necessarily it’s pride. Although when you disrupt it, you find out. And our top coaches, I have to keep reminding them as a reminder to myself, don’t forget to be a learner around here because people will become like you, not listen to you, which means they will say, oh, in order to be like so-and-so in the firm, I need to also not be teachable. And we don’t put words to it that way.

(29:35):
So like John Roberts is a senior partner firm, and one of the things I love about him is he wasn’t always this, he would tell you this, he loves working with high performers because he’s like a recovering high performer. And his recovery has been so beautiful to watch this handsome guy in finance, just everything he does wins. And it’s so annoying and inspiring. Inspiring. Sorry. Sorry. Scratch that. Inspiring. It’s so inspiring, so inspiring John. And he’s very talented, very, very, very smart. And in finance, at least, you get paid to be right a lot. And so when he came into the coaching space, that was his mo. And being in the firm was really challenging for him in the same way that’s challenging for me as we worked together because both of us have the same problem. And we really helped each other through conflict and through friendship, opening a space for him specifically to discover that there’s more power in learning than there is in knowing. And now it’s fascinating. Now when we’re trainings, Dan and John and other top coaches in the firm, they know it’s their job to model learning. And by the way, if I could just brag about you for a second when I spoke,

Andy Stanley (30:41):
You can take more than a second.

Jason Jaggard (30:42):
Excellent. Great. This is a perfect example of regardless of where you are in your success, still learning and still being hungry and those types of things. So when this is a little self flattering, but I don’t mean it to be this way. So when you brought me in speak at the leadership lab, which was such an honor by the way, my team was sitting behind you, just so people know, I get very nervous before I speak. And speaking in front of Andy Stanley for me was also a thrill. But I was like, come on, can you step out of the room for a little bit? Let me do my thing so I don’t have to speak in front of one of the people who’ve inspired me in my communication my whole life. So that was annoying. But they took a picture of you because you had your head down and you had your iPad out or something.

(31:22):
And I don’t know if you were drawing hangman or whatever, but they said that you were taking notes. And I’m like, here’s this guy who’s built this incredible organization with a team, of course. And he’s sitting in the front row and I’ve been reading his books my whole life, and he’s in the front row and he’s taking notes. And that is a perfect example of I want who I want to be. That’s a perfect example. And I’m not that way a lot. That’s a perfect example of who we want our top coaches. The more authority you have in the organization, the more important it is to model the teaching because that’s what people in the organization are going to pick up from you, not the tips and the tactics and all the things that you say.

Andy Stanley (31:54):
Now, this is such a big idea that to model learning, not teaching, because I view the teacher as the person who’s learned all they need to learn. If I could just learn what they learn, I would be where there’d be, which is, again, there’s a lid there immediately, but to model learning. And early on when we read, I guess it was the fifth discipline, he talked about being a learning organization. Yeah, it was that book.

Jason Jaggard (32:21):
That’s right.

Andy Stanley (32:21):
He talked about being a learning organization. This is almost 30 years ago. We read the book. I think it took about 20 years to get through the book, but we started it 30 years ago. It’s wonderful. And it’s like Fahrenheit. Nobody knows how to spell it, and nobody knows how to pronounce Peter’s last name. So if we just say, Peter, Peter, we love you, Peter, we love you. But he talked about being a learning organization. And I remember with that original six, we constantly read books together. But hearing you frame it the way you did a quote that I lean into constantly is Sam Harris said this on one of his podcasts. He said, we must pay attention to the frontiers of our ignorance.

Jason Jaggard (32:56):
Yes,

Andy Stanley (32:56):
Pay attention to the frontiers of our ignorance because it keeps us curious and it allows us to be happy when we realize we’re wrong because we’re not wrong anymore. So that’s not natural. But having those statements for me, because I mean, we know when our pride’s coming up, when jealousy, we know in that ugly stuff. And I don’t want to be that way, but you just gave me the handle to model learning, not being the Oh, Andy has all the answers because we know we don’t.

Jason Jaggard (33:24):
That’s right.

Andy Stanley (33:25):
That’s very powerful.

Jason Jaggard (33:27):
A few tips on that too. It’s interesting. Whenever we come into organizations, oftentimes the CEO is like, Hey, I want you, I want to hire you to coach those people over there and fix them.

Andy Stanley (33:37):
Try to get ’em to my level.

Jason Jaggard (33:38):
That’s right. And they don’t mean it that way, but in some ways it’s kind of selfless. I don’t want to use resources for me. I want to use resources for them. So I get it. And what I usually tell them is you don’t understand how powerful it is when you hire coaches for them to say, you don’t have to hire us. I don’t care. But to say, I’m working with a coach also. I’m loving it. I would love for you to have the same experience. You’ll get 10 x out of that deal. And also with Sam’s quote, say it again,

Andy Stanley (34:04):
We must pay attention to the frontiers of our ignorance.

Jason Jaggard (34:07):
So step one is believing that you have ignorance.

Andy Stanley (34:09):
Yes.

Jason Jaggard (34:10):
And that’s reminding yourself, that’s what marriage is for, isn’t it? I think so. Well, yeah. I like to call marriage a data rich environment. I thought,

Andy Stanley (34:22):
Wow. That’s better.

Jason Jaggard (34:22):
I’m learning a lot, learning a lot. But yeah, I thought I was right until I got married. And there’s kind of a funny person to be wrong sometimes. Joke about that. But can I riff a little bit on Pete Merovich?

Andy Stanley (34:36):
Oh yeah. I mean, I know who Pete Merovich is. I grew up in Atlanta, but

Jason Jaggard (34:39):
Yeah, so Pete, do you want to tell

Andy Stanley (34:42):
The other No, no, no, go ahead.

Jason Jaggard (34:43):
So Pete Merovich, he’s a basketball player, he still holds scoring records in the Guinness Book of World Records, which set before there was a three point line, which is crazy. Yes, crazy. And so like Isaiah Thomas, Shaquille O’Neal and others would say that they were influenced by his game. He passed away, but he would not say that he’s a goat by any means, but we would say that he inspired a lot of people who became goats. So he tells his story about his dad when his dad was a coach at Clemson College, and his dad was working with a bunch of 18-year-old knuckleheads. And he takes the basketball and he draws a circle and he says, this circle on this basketball represents everything I know about the game of basketball. And then he points to the whole basketball and he says, but this basketball, this whole basketball represents everything there is to know about the game of basketball that has never been discovered. And he’s like, if you can put aside the girls in the cars and all the nonsense and dedicate yourself to greatness in this sport, you’ll be amazed at what happens in your life, your career. And I think about that all the time. So statistically, I’m one of the best executive coaches in the world. Now there are other coaches in the firm who are better than me, so that’s fine. But statistically I’m in the top 1%. And when I think about Pete’s dad, I’m scratching the surface.

(35:54):
I’m a beginner at this thing. And there is a whole universe of executive coaching that we’re going to discover in the next 50, a hundred years of AI and all the types of stuff, like ways of helping people to become that I haven’t even thought of yet dreamt of yet discovered yet.

Andy Stanley (36:07):
You really believe that?

Jason Jaggard (36:08):
Yes, a thousand percent. Yeah. And I believe that about,

Andy Stanley (36:11):
I believe you do. I just thought I’d ask.

Jason Jaggard (36:12):
Yeah,

Andy Stanley (36:13):
Because it sounds like hype.

Jason Jaggard (36:14):
It’s romantic to me.

Andy Stanley (36:15):
But it’s true. In fact, every leader, anybody listening who’s accomplished anything of even marginal significance knows That’s true.

Jason Jaggard (36:24):
That’s right.

Andy Stanley (36:24):
Because all we have to do is look back even on our own journey and to realize what we didn’t know then that we know now. And of course, there’s that much times, however many much to know and learn. It has to be true there.

Jason Jaggard (36:38):
It’s shell Silverstein where the sidewalk ends. It’s Einstein saying that imagination is more important than knowledge. I was just listening this morning to a podcast with Nobel Prize winning scientists, and he said The difference between good scientists and great scientists, they all have the technical skill. The difference between good scientists and great scientists is great. Scientists are imaginative, and it’s your capacity. And this is North Point. This is North point 30 years ago saying, imagine a faith community that your religious people love to attend, but imagine, and then you did. And I find that romantic, and I’ll end up playing here. For me, in order to go beyond high performance, meta performance is not mechanistic. It’s not grinding it out. It is a love affair with the future. It is romantic. When I was in college, I got home after a long day, lots of classes, and I was exhausted and I was tired. And then she called suddenly, I’m 19 years old and all I want to do is stare at a wall or whatever. But she called and I got energy because love creates energy. I don’t even remember who she was. All I remember was her phone call at the time lit me up like the 4th of July. And I get home from work and I’m tired or whatever. My wife comes home energy.

(37:53):
Right. And love does that. Love creates energy. And most people forget to stay in love with their own future. And that’s what the conversation we’re having.

Andy Stanley (38:01):
Wow. Wow. So our producer, Suzy, who often is in here talking with me, hi Suzy. She’s right here behind the glass. And our brains are exploding. She’s working on a project that it’s impossible. We’re going to figure out if it is possible. This has been great. Great. Any last words? I have a question, but we may have covered it. I wrote down what’s the one belief leaders need to rethink if they want to go beyond high performance? Is that a good question? Sure. What’s the one?

Jason Jaggard (38:31):
Yeah, I’m going to butcher the quote. This is not what Augustine said, but I like this a little better. I don’t know the original quote.

Andy Stanley (38:37):
You can improve,

Jason Jaggard (38:37):
I’m going to improve on Augustine or Augustine or how do you say his name?

Andy Stanley (38:40):
Yes. I had a professor that would say, Dr. Geiser would say St. Augustine is in Florida and St. Augustine is in heaven. And that’s how I’ve remembered it ever since.

Jason Jaggard (38:51):
Very nice.

Andy Stanley (38:52):
Yes. Okay, go ahead.

Jason Jaggard (38:53):
So the butchered quote is, courage is the chief of all virtue because it’s through courage that all virtue flows. And the thing that stops us from going beyond high performance is simply courage. And was it Helen Keller who said, life is either a daring adventure or nothing, and I want it to be a daring adventure, and I want it to be a daring adventure for as much people as I want to say divinely possible. And that’s the game. And frankly, not to keep talking about your business, but that’s what church is. Church is inviting people into the grand adventure of God, and it’s daring and it requires sacrifice. And you win sometimes and you lose sometimes, and there’s grace and you get back up and there’s kind of a divine empowerment that happens and it’s romantic and it’s wonderful, and I just want as many people to experience it as possible.

Andy Stanley (39:42):
And in light of what I do that you just referenced, and in light of what you’re coaching people to do, in light of what this book does, at the end of the day, it forces us when or when a group decides, I’m going to ask the question, what am I capable of? Other people win. It forces me beyond what’s in it for me and what I’m comfortable with and my stagnation and I’ve done enough. And when people either individually or corporately, organizationally begin to ask, what are we capable of? On the other side of that question, other people benefit the world becomes a better place, right?

Jason Jaggard (40:22):
Yes. Yes. A thousand percent.

Andy Stanley (40:23):
Oh goodness. Thank you.

Jason Jaggard (40:25):
Thanks Andy.

Andy Stanley (40:26):
So much fun. We got to have you back. You don’t have to write another book to have you back. And for those of you who have not read the book or listened to the book, it’s Beyond High Performance by Jason Jaggard. You need to get the book. It’s available obviously, wherever books are sold. Thanks for listening. Before we leave, we do have one ask, and that is to subscribe because when you subscribe, you help us grow this audience, which allows us to keep improving and bringing you great guests like Jason, and more content to help you go further faster as a leader. And please be sure to visit Andy stanley.com at the website. You can download the leadership podcast application guide that includes a summary of this discussion, plus a few questions for reflection, either for you or for your group. And make sure you join us next week for our reverb episode where Suzy and I will talk behind Jason’s back about all the things that we just talked about and more. And again, thank you for joining us on the Andy Stanley Leadership Podcast.