Great Leaders Lead Themselves Well, Part 1 Transcript

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Andy Stanley (00:03):
Hey everybody. Welcome to the Andy Stanley Leadership Podcast, a conversation designed to help leaders go further faster. I'm Andy Stanley. And before we get into today's content, I want to share a special offer from our friends at Belay. In the early days of a business, it makes sense for the leader to stay close to the numbers, right? The finances. You know the story behind the numbers, so it makes sense that you would pay attention to the story behind the numbers. You know when it looks right and you know when it looks off, but over time, that level of involvement can create a problem as you scale. If every report needs your review, if every payroll needs your approval and every financial decision needs your sign off, what was once a process will eventually become a bottleneck and I have been there and that's where Belay can help.

(00:50):
Belay pairs busy leaders with US-based expert financial support. Their highly vetted professionals are hand matched to your specific needs from bookkeeping to full-fledged accounting and can help you create an infrastructure that lets you lead without everything resting on your shoulders. To help you get started, Belay is offering a free download of their guide, Five Signs You've Become the Financial Bottleneck. This resource will help you identify where your financial processes may be too dependent on you and how to build the system your organization needs. To claim this offer, text the word Andy to 55123, that's A - N-D-Y to 55123 to free up your leadership with Belay. And now back to today's episode. Hey everybody. Welcome to the Andy Stanley Leadership Podcast, a conversation designed to help leaders go further faster. I'm Andy and joining me for this special podcast series is Holly Goddard. Holly has been a part of our organization for 15 years in a variety of leadership roles.

(01:52):
Currently, she serves on the leadership team for our entire organization. She also serves as executive pastor at our largest campus in corporate terms, that's basically a chief of staff. So thank you for running point on this conversation. We've been looking forward to this.

Holly Goddard (02:07):
Yeah, so happy for the opportunity. And we're going to be unpacking your brand new book, What Great Leaders Do, subtitle Seven Essentials for Enduring Impact. I'm so excited about this book and this conversation and I've had a front row seat to see all this unfold. Like you said, I've been part of this organization for 15 years.

Andy Stanley (02:25):
So you'll keep me honest. That's one of the reasons I wanted you to be a part of this is this isn't theory.

Holly Goddard (02:30):
No, it's not theory. This is stuff you can put into practice Monday through Friday and it makes a difference. And I've seen it. I've seen the way teams have changed and how we stayed on mission. So just excited to have a seat on the bus and be part of this. And I don't know if I've ever told you this story, but you know I was a volunteer with our organization before I actually joined.

Andy Stanley (02:48):
Right. We hire our best volunteers. That's how we get our best staff.

Holly Goddard (02:51):
It was a good strategy. Yes. I worked in the sports marketing world before I came on board here. And so here's what I would do. I would come on Sundays, I would listen to things you would say from stage, take notes. The leaders that were leading me as a volunteer, I would watch how they would motivate and keep us accountable and vision cast and I would go back to my job and just try to contextualize whatever I saw that was happening and got a couple promotions.

Andy Stanley (03:16):
You're welcome.

Holly Goddard (03:17):
Thank you for that. I appreciate it. I'll give you all the credit. And the best part, my favorite story is one day a coworker came and knocked on my door and she said, "Hey, what do you know that I don't know? " And really I've just been watching in the windows of what this organization had been doing. And so I'm so glad that leaders now have access to this material and to your book so that they can put this stuff into practice.

Andy Stanley (03:39):
Well, it's going to be fun to talk about.

Holly Goddard (03:40):
Great. So let's jump in. Today you're in the hot seat. You're usually the interviewer and today I get to be the interviewer. So you always start with one question. You always ask, "Why did you write this book?" So Andy, why did you write What Great Leaders Do?

Andy Stanley (03:56):
Well, I don't know if this is interesting or relevant to the question or not, but I didn't want to write this book. The world needs more leaders. The world doesn't need more leadership books. And for those of us who love to read, we've read the management books, the leadership books. And so I really wasn't motivated. And all the credit goes, and I've said this before publicly, Suzy Gray, who is the co-founder of the Your Move Collective, our organization and is the executive producer of this podcast for 10 years, this is hard to believe, for 10 years she has been on me about writing this book for 10 years. I've actually had a book contract for 10 years and I said, "Suzy, I don't have time. I don't want to write a leadership book. The world doesn't need another leadership book." She sent me titles, potential titles.

(04:39):
She would send me potential table of contents like, "Here's all this stuff you've been teaching all these years. I've already organized it for you. " She even had someone write a couple of chapters just to say, "Did you start it? Would you please at least start the book?" And I kept saying, "No, no, no." And so the turning point, and I think this is relevant for the bok, the turning point was she met with me and she invited Matt Baher, who is one of the executive vice presidents at Harper Collins, and he oversees the leadership imprint. So the three of us were in my office and I was explaining to Matt what I've been telling Suzy for 10 years. The world doesn't need another leadership book. I don't have time to write a leadership book. And Matt said, and this was sort of the tipping point, he said, "Andy, well then don't write a leadership book.

(05:21):
Just write a book to leaders. Just write a book to leaders." And then he said, "You like talking to leaders?" I said, "I love being around talking to leaders." He said, "That's what you love to do, so just write a book to leaders." Now, I don't know the difference between a leadership book and a book to leaders, but somehow that conversation got me motivated to sit down and put this book together. So I'm grateful that I wrote the book. I love the book. It gave me an opportunity to tell stories I've never told before, to brag on people that I've had the opportunity to meet the people who've influenced me. And so I'm super grateful to Suzy and for bringing in Matt and that for some reason flipped the switch.

Holly Goddard (06:00):
Yeah, I'm so thankful for her persistence in that.

Andy Stanley (06:03):
10 years.

Holly Goddard (06:04):
I mean, she was determined. Well, it's such gold and it does feel like a conversation. That's the best part about it. It isn't like, hey, just hand off a bunch of insights. You can tell you've been on a journey and you picked up a lot of insights along the way. In an introduction, there's something that grabbed my attention right from the start. You say this, you say, "If leadership is in fact a gift, it is the most wonderful, dangerous gift." What do you mean by that?

Andy Stanley (06:31):
Well, I'm glad we're starting there. My original title once I finished with Matt and Suzy or once they finish with me is I decided the title of the book was going to be Leadership: The Wonderful, Dangerous Gift or The Wondrous, Dangerous Gift. The idea behind that, and I teased this out at the beginning of the book, and this is where I maybe part ways with some traditional thinking about leadership. Everybody can get better at pretty much anything. Anybody can become a better leader, but I think there are people who are born with a leadership gear. I can become a better snowboarder, but I'm not ever going to compete, right?

(07:06):
So everybody can improve at everything. But I do believe there are people with a leadership gear, and here's what I mean by that. They don't even try, but there's some sort of magnetism. There's some internal security. Sometimes there's charisma, but that's optional. Sometimes it's the hyper focus around an idea. There are people they cannot help but lead. They look behind them and people are following them. And so to our audience, if you have that gear, congratulations. But it is dangerous because people will follow people with a leadership gear, whether they are worth following or not. I mean, the international tragedies other than weather related, where a leader goes rogue, a dictator overplays his or her hand in every case, these are people with a leadership gear that led in a dangerous direction. And the more responsibility, the more influence they have, the more dangerous they become.

(07:59):
So to anyone who with a leadership gear, whether you read the book or not, it is the most wonderful gift because everything that happens happens as a result of somebody leading or initiating not just an idea, but acting on it. And it's dangerous because if you're not mature enough, if you're not a leader worth following, it's a dangerous gift. So it really is the most wonderful, dangerous gift. In my notes I wrote, and this is from the book, that your giftedness has the potential to take you farther than your character and your maturity can sustain you.

Holly Goddard (08:32):
So that's a really big idea because I don't know if I've ever heard that before working in this organization. I mean, that's huge because if you don't get that confidence and character thing in alignment, that's where a wake of destruction can happen.

Andy Stanley (08:46):
And people will follow you regardless because it's inherent. Again, leaders turn around and people are following. Other people, and I can't explain this, they say the same things, they attempt the same things, they turn around, nobody's following. And the leadership gear or gift, if we call it a gift, is not evenly distributed. People with every advantage in the world never gain a following. People with no advantages in the world turn out to be some of the most extraordinary leaders and the most extraordinarily gifted leaders. So I do think it's unique. I think it's a gear. I think if you have it, you have it. And if you don't, you can become better at anything. But I just think it's a gear. And the solution, because it's a dangerous gift, if I could read something from my notes real quick, the solution because it's a dangerous gift is not to demonize or minimize the importance of leadership.

(09:37):
The gift is never the problem. It's how it's used. And the world needs more leaders. As I said earlier, not more leadership books. I mean, schools need leaders, industry needs leaders, the church needs leaders, but what we need are leaders who are worth following. And that's the character piece. And that's one of the reasons I wrote this book.

Holly Goddard (09:56):
That's such an important conversation. I love thinking about the gear as a gift because if you have the gear, you know it. If you're listening to this podcast, you got the gear. If you're going to pick up books like this, you've got the gear.

Andy Stanley (10:07):
Or you work for someone that you enjoy or there was a magnetism, there was something about them beyond the industry, beyond the specifics of the job, you find yourself wanting to follow that person. And so there's a lot of debate around that, but that's my observation.

Holly Goddard (10:24):
Well, so if we have the gear, the most important thing about us is how we leverage it. And so I've noticed that you've organized this book into seven things, seven essentials is what you call them, to have enduring impact. So without giving it all away, what's the common thread through the seven?

Andy Stanley (10:39):
The common thread is that great leaders do things. So that's the title, What Great Leaders Do. Doing, as we say around our organization all the time, doing is what makes the difference. Believing doesn't make a difference. Ideas don't make difference. It's what we do that makes the difference. And great leaders do specific things. I wrote in my notes, great leaders organizationally, to the subtitle of the book, do I think these seven things. There may be more than seven, there may be fewer. But as I think about organizational leaders specifically, organizational leaders, they do specific things that allow them to accomplish whatever it is they set out to accomplish, but it really is about doing. So if there's one takeaway from the book, it would be for everyone who reads the book or anyone just listening to this conversation that at every critical juncture in their life, whether it's at home or at work, they would pause and ask the question, what would a great leader do?

(11:35):
Because, and I think this is especially true for people with a leadership gear. We know somewhat intuitively what great looks like in terms of character, in terms of others' firstness, in terms of sacrifice. Again, we admire and we acknowledge that kind of leader as a great leader, not just what they accomplished in the world or through their organization, but as a person. So if we can pause and ask at every critical juncture as leaders specifically, okay, I know the options in front of me. I know what everybody else would do. I know what everybody expects me to do. I know what everybody who came before me did. But what would a truly great leader do? That's what I hope to leave people with this book because that becomes a true north kind of question, especially for leaders. And I just want to double down on this.

(12:24):
I mean, that's a great question for anybody to ask, but if you have a leadership gear and people are going to follow you regardless of your maturity or your character, it is so important that you stop and ask the question because you're going to lead. You can't help but lead and people are going to follow. So there's a higher level of both accountability and responsibility because we've been given this gift of leadership. So that's the through line. A long answer to your question.

Holly Goddard (12:51):
Well, that's a really big important question. We have it painted all over our walls here.

Andy Stanley (12:56):
Right.

Holly Goddard (12:56):
Big letters. If you're wondering what you should be asking yourself, there's a good self-coaching question.

Andy Stanley (13:00):
It's on the walls in the halls. Exactly. Yeah, because I really want anybody who comes to work here. I mean, we do leadership training and all the normal stuff and coaching, but at the end of the day, it's like, okay, beyond that, if I'm really committed to being a leader worth following, then what do I do?

Holly Goddard (13:19):
Well, I'll tell you, I ran into this yesterday. I was in a meeting and it was with a bunch of leaders who had been promoted within the last year.

Andy Stanley (13:25):
In our organization.

Holly Goddard (13:26):
In our organization and we were talking about, "Hey, what have you learned? What's different about your leadership?" Alex, a girl who's so sharp, young leader around here, she'd been promoted from leading a team of one to 12. So big jump, right? Young leader. And she talked about this question and she said every time she gets up against a wall, she sits there and says, "Okay, what would a great leader do? " And then she says, "Oh crap. I know exactly what I'm supposed to do right now."

Andy Stanley (13:54):
I got to comment on that. It's a very clarifying question for anybody, but especially for people with a leadership gear. It's so intuitive in some ways, but we get busy. It's crunch time. We got to get things done. I need to fill that position. I need to move on. I'm not even interested in that. Everybody's making a big deal. And so we don't ask the question. And so we become efficient. And in our efficiency, we all love efficiency. In our efficiency, we become less effective and we miss the opportunities to do great. And great is as great does. Great is as great does. Great leaders do great things.

Holly Goddard (14:30):
Well, one thing I've noticed about all these essentials is they're very behavior driven, but they're specific. These are learnable behaviors. We can actually mimic these before our mindset catches up so we can act like great leaders as we're on our way to becoming...

Andy Stanley (14:44):
Yeah. And one of the points throughout the book is if you do what, and this is why the question is so important. If you do what a great leader would do, you in effect become a great leader because how do we recognize greatness in a leader? It's not what they think, it's what they do. So this is an invitation, it's an opportunity, and it's a reminder that we have a stewardship and a responsibility and we have the potential to do great things and be from the inside out great leaders, everybody.

Holly Goddard (15:17):
So beyond just being on our walls around here, another thing that we have is we have this wooden cube that sits on our desk. And we have six staff behaviors that we've said, "Hey, if you're going to be here, operate, be on the team, this is how we act. This is how we behave." So these wooden cubes, they sit on our desk, they remind us of the behaviors that we're committed to. And I think that's important because we all like to think we're pretty well-behaved and we're pretty mature, but it's just not always the case. In fact, first line, chapter one, you say this, it's one of my favorites. You say your greatest challenge confronts you every morning in the mirror. You are and you will always be difficult for you to lead. So why do you start there?

Andy Stanley (15:59):
Well, first of all, it's true. The most difficult person for me to lead is me. I'd like to think it's somebody else that I have myself under control. But let's just be honest, self-control, there's no autopilot. Self-control is every hour of every day, right?

Holly Goddard (16:16):
Yes.

Andy Stanley (16:16):
And as much as I would love to leverage my leadership skills to control everybody else in the organization, responsibility number one is the person in the mirror and I am the most... I'm actually, think of it this way, and I tease this out a litle bit. I'm the only person I can control. I can influence other people. I can try to influence other people. Nobody wants to be controlled. And so what I wrote in my notes is this, that leading ourselves well is where exceptional leadership begins. Leading ourselves well is where exceptional leadership begins and acknowledging that we're difficult to lead is where self-leadership takes its next extraordinary important steps. So we have to acknowledge that we're responsible for leading ourselves well and acknowledging that is really where exceptional self-leadership kind of finds traction. And what I've learned when I can keep this front and center, it minimizes my tendency to try to control other people because here's what every leader listening knows.

(17:21):
You don't have to think back too far to where you found yourself responding to an internal deficit by trying to change the behavior of other people. And when I can take full responsibility for my part and whatever problem is created or whatever crisis I'm trying to deal with or whatever emergency or even small decisions, if I can take responsibility first for my part, then the temperature comes down and how I communicate with everybody else. But I would guess everybody listening, and this may bring an illustration to mind, hopefully not in our organization, Holly, where you were in front of your leader or you were in front of a boss or a manager and there was all this emotion. They were so angry or upset and there was a tirade. And as you listened, you realize, I think you're part of the problem and you've yet to own your part of the problem.

(18:15):
So I'm receiving what you should have dealt with before you walked into the room. Well, this is self-leadership. So it's beginning, this is why we begin here. Leading ourselves well and taking responsibility for leading ourselves well is where exceptional self-leadership begins. And then I'll stop. We all want to work with and for people who take responsibility for themselves. And if they don't, then we end up, because as we say all the time, my irresponsibility will always become someone else's responsibility. Mirresponsibility, somebody's got to pick up the ball and figure out what to do with it. So if I'm irresponsible personally, my personal irresponsibility becomes somebody else's responsibility and in organizational life because I'm the boss and everything trickles down.

Holly Goddard (19:06):
Right, downhill.

Andy Stanley (19:07):
There's no pushback, there's no comeback. It's just leave the room and figure out, huh, what do we do now? So this is where it all begins. And so that's what we explore in chapter one.

Holly Goddard (19:15):
Well, that's so important because all pressure, all control, it all rolls downhill and onto our people and it makes a very dysfunctional environment if you don't get this right.

Andy Stanley (19:25):
Right.

Holly Goddard (19:25):
You introduce this idea of a gap. There's knowing better and doing better. And we're on a spectrum and usually there's a little bit of gap.

Andy Stanley (19:32):
Yeah. I wrote that the gap between knowing and doing is where most leadership failure lives. That when you think about the leader who burned out or had to be taken out, it was in that gap. It's not that they didn't know better, they just didn't do better.

Holly Goddard (19:45):
So they just didn't manage the gap.

Andy Stanley (19:47):
Yeah. And here's the self-deception, and we talk a lot about self-deception later on. The self-deception is because I know better, then that's all I need to know. I know, I know. In fact, with your kids, with my kids, you've corrected your kids.

Holly Goddard (20:01):
Oh, how many times?

Andy Stanley (20:02):
And what did they say?

Holly Goddard (20:02):
Oh, I know.

Andy Stanley (20:03):
I Know, I know, I know. And you're like -

Holly Goddard (20:05):
You're still on the couch.

Andy Stanley (20:06):
Yeah. Yeah. There's something in this that's like, if I know what I need to do or should have done, then we're done, aren't we? It's like, no, it's doing. And so internally, I know, I know, I know, but if I don't do with what I know, nothing.

Holly Goddard (20:19):
Nothing changes.

Andy Stanley (20:20):
Because it's what we do that makes the difference. It's what doing is what makes the difference. So yeah, that gap manifests itself in lots of environments. In fact, in every relationship.

Holly Goddard (20:31):
And we're all prone to it. So we got to watch that gap.

Andy Stanley (20:33):
And again, I know I've said this, because we have a leadership gear for the average person who mismanages that gap, "Oh, well, you'll pay for it personally or maybe privately." But in organizational life, everybody who, again, downstream from us will eventually pay for that. And depending on the responsibility a leader carries, the entire organization can suffer for a lack of dealing with the gap between knowing and doing. So it's a big deal and the more responsibility we have, the bigger deal it becomes.

Holly Goddard (21:05):
Well, after you introduce us to the gap, you introduce us to another surprising claim. You write this. Exceptional self-leadership is not essential to organizational success. I put down the book for a second when I read that because I was not expecting to hear that from you. Just because most leadership books, they don't say that.

Andy Stanley (21:25):
What's the contrast? What did you expect when you read that?

Holly Goddard (21:28):
I thought they have to be inextricably linked.

Andy Stanley (21:30):
Oh, gotcha.

Holly Goddard (21:32):
You have to be exceptional for your organization to be exceptional, but you say not at all. Those two opposites can be happening at one time.

Andy Stanley (21:40):
You can accomplish extraordinary things in the marketplace and not lead yourself well. We see this all the time. I mean, people who are in the C-suite of Fortune 500, Fortune 100 organizations get taken out for personal reasons, not always corporate and stock share and those kinds of things for personal behavior. And so they've led well, they've accomplished great things, but they didn't lead themselves well. I mean, not to pick on anybody because this is the world that we live in, but when a corporate leader has to take a break to go to rehab, what they admit, what they acknowledge, I'm not throwing stones. They acknowledge, you know what? I have not led myself well in this area. So I have to go take care of me, which kudos to them. I think it's extraordinary when somebody goes public that way and it's an example and gives other people permission.

(22:32):
But it's just the extreme example of somebody who hasn't taken care of themselves well, and yet they've been able to accomplish extraordinary things oftentimes in the marketplace. Why this is important and why I write about it is, and this is what I write, it's tempting to equate poor self-leadership with extraordinary outcomes. Let me say that again. It's tempting, especially for young leaders, and I wrestled with this. It's tempting to equate poor self-leadership. In other words, when we are confronted with or read about somebody who is a, I don't know what language to use since we're sitting in church environment, they're a whatever. A jerk. A jerk. Yeah, a jerk plus, plus, plus. And we hear personally that's how they lead and their language and the way they treat people is terrible. But at the same time, they have extraordinary results. The temptation, especially for young leaders, is to equate those two things and to think the only way to have that kind of marketplace success is to be that kind of person.

(23:30):
And that is absolutely not true. But because those are the stories we oftentimes hear, it's easy to believe that, hey, good guys finish last. Good guys finish last. That character is not only secondary, it might actually be a hindrance to great marketplace success. And I'm convinced that's absolutely not the case. I write that those leaders were successful in spite of their poor self-leadership, not because of it. And for young leaders, this is a very important lesson to learn early on.

Holly Goddard (24:01):
Yeah, because if you though, hey, this is the price of what it costs to be successful, to drop your whole character so that you can be confident, you lose at the end.

Andy Stanley (24:10):
Absolutely.

Holly Goddard (24:10):
And people don't want to follow those kind of people.

Andy Stanley (24:12):
Exactly.

Holly Goddard (24:13):
They don't admire that kind of thing. They may want the outcome.

Andy Stanley (24:15):
We like the way they live, but we don't like them. We like the way they live and the way they travel, but we don't really like them and we don't want to be like them. Yeah. And the good news is you don't have to be. And this is maybe off-topic a little bit. One of the challenges too is the big stories that we hear are generally in that category. You don't hear much about the extraordinary leader. The leader who has extraordinary character and their priorities are in order because what you hear about is the success of the company. And you may never even know the personalities behind that success because there's no story to tell. I mean, bad news -

Holly Goddard (24:58):
Doesn't go as viral.

Andy Stanley (24:59):
No, nobody wants to read good news. But most organizational success due to men and women who get this right and they never become famous. And part of it is they're constantly pushing other people out in the spotlight and they're more about the success of the organization rather than their own success. So again, it leaves a lopsided picture of leadership.

Holly Goddard (25:23):
Well, that's really important because we want to finish. We want to be successful professionally, but personally we want to be leaders worth following. And you're saying we can have both.

Andy Stanley (25:33):
You can have both. Can I just say one more thing about that? At the end of the book, I tell the story, I don't want to go into the details since we're at the beginning of the book, not the end. But as a pastor, and every pastor listening to this has had this experience, this isn't unique. When you find yourself, and it's usually men, you're sitting across the table from a successful man who's alienated his kids, marriage is in trouble, and he's like, "What do I do? What do I do? " And I've listened to so many of those stories and I'm gracious and I'm like, "Hey, let's see what we can do. " But here's my takeaway after 40 years of those stories that these oftentimes very, very successful men in organizational life, whether they're founders or come in later and turn a company around, and I've said this to them, would have been as successful or 90% as successful if they had managed themselves well.

(26:31):
They may have made a few less dollars. They may have sold - But insignificant. Right. The significance of their success would not have been impacted greatly if they had gotten this right. But in the game and in the grind of it, it just feels like, no, this is all necessary. So one of the things I hope, especially young leaders, take away from this book is, you said it, is you can have both. You can be successful in your personal life and corporate life. You don't have to trade one for the other. And anybody who tells you you have to, they're telling you their story. They're not necessarily telling you the truth.

Holly Goddard (27:06):
That's a great vision of being able to finish with character and competence. And to be able to do that, we probably are going to have to have some discipline along the way. You introduce us to a concept, it made me laugh, just because I resonated with it deeply. You call it the internal sales associate.

Andy Stanley (27:22):
Yeah.

Holly Goddard (27:23):
I've got one of those.

Andy Stanley (27:24):
Yeah.

Holly Goddard (27:25):
She's bossy. Sometimes looks for loopholes.

Andy Stanley (27:28):
And her voice sounds a lot like yours.

Holly Goddard (27:29):
It does. It does. So it resonated. So explain that one for us a little bit.

Andy Stanley (27:33):
Yeah. And we've talked about this on the podcast before. This isn't a new idea, but this is my first opportunity to write about it. Yeah, an internal salesperson is the person who's able to talk me into things that no person in a retail outlet could ever talk me into. If you take the self-talk that we use to talk ourselves into bad ideas, and if you were to put those same words in the mouth of another person, you would look at that person and say, "Do you think I'm a fool?" But somehow when it's me telling me, I'm like, "Oh yeah, this is a great idea." So the takeaway here is whenever we catch ourselves selling ourselves, we should hit pause. When you catch yourself, you're driving in selling yourself, you're driving home selling yourself, or you're sitting in the office or you're at the gym and you're just selling yourself, convincing yourself, that's when you hit pause because we rarely have to sell ourselves on a good idea.

Holly Goddard (28:29):
That's huge.

Andy Stanley (28:30):
Yeah. And it's true, right? We know something intuitively is a good idea. It's like, yeah. What we end up doing is selling ourselves away from what we know intuitively is the right thing to do or the best thing to do for the organization or even for us personally. But this is part of self-leadership. It's realizing the person in the mirror cannot always be trusted. The person in the mirror is ruled oftentimes by their appetites. And for men, I'll let you comment as a woman and a female leader, but for men, our ego is one of our pastors, Billy Phoenix says, "Your ego is not your amigo." I mean, that should be on our walls as well, right?

Holly Goddard (29:05):
It should be. Absolutely.

Andy Stanley (29:06):
Because my ego is you deserve it, you ought to, you've worked hard. They don't understand. They don't care. They'll get over it. They'll just have to deal with it. Ego, ego, ego. Again, this is all in the category of am I willing to deal with the person in the mirror first before I walk into a professional environment, organizational environment and try to lead other people? And the hypocrisy in all of this is, I'll just make it personal. I expect you to lead yourself well. And if you don't lead yourself well and I see it trickle down into the organization, we're going to have a conversation, right?

Holly Goddard (29:43):
Yeah, we are.

Andy Stanley (29:43):
Well, if that's my expectation of you, I am a hypocrite if I'm not leading myself or at least attempting to and acknowledging that I can't always be trusted, that I have a tendency to sell myself on what I want now versus what we need ultimately. So it's a big idea.

Holly Goddard (29:59):
Well, that's how It's helpful because self-deception, it's just part of being human. It's just part of what we're going to deal with. And this helps us guard against ourselves. I can't tell you how many times that you rarely have to sell yourself on a good idea thing has stopped me from doing bad things or making dumb decisions with hiring.

Andy Stanley (30:19):
Oh, especially hiring.

Holly Goddard (30:20):
Oh, big time.

Andy Stanley (30:21):
Why? I know.

Holly Goddard (30:22):
I mean, you're married to the person once you bring them into the organization. You got to live with them. You got to deal with this. And when you start talking yourself into it at the beginning because you're tired of carrying all the work, you want that immediate relief.

Andy Stanley (30:37):
We need somebody in that slot.

Holly Goddard (30:38):
Just immediately. I'd rather be done with this than wait for the right person. Anytime I've done that, it's been a bad idea. Well, and this is so pervasive in our organization that we will call each other out on that. I've had two of my direct reports come to my office before when they've seen me just going around and round about a hire and say, "Hey, are you trusting your gut? Are you selling yourself on this? "

Andy Stanley (31:02):
Wow.

Holly Goddard (31:03):
Oh yeah. Immediately.

Andy Stanley (31:05):
That's a great differentiation. In fact, there's a whole chapter here we'll get to later about the leader's intuition. And when we ignore our intuition, we make mistakes. Because just as there's a leadership gear, there is a leadership intuition and the longer you're in leadership, the stronger that intuition is. And when we talk ourselves out of or talk ourselves or reason ourselves around our own intuition, that's usually a problem. But again, we're good at it. That internal salesperson is really good.

Holly Goddard (31:34):
Okay. So she's a red flag. He's a red flag, the salesperson. So if we're going to combat that sneaky salesperson of ours, you introduce us to three self-leadership commitments. And these are really foundational for the rest of the book. We're going to talk about the first one and then next time we're going to talk about commitment two and commitment three. But commitment one says this, "I will not lie to myself even when the truth makes me feel bad about myself." That seems simple, but it's not so easy.

Andy Stanley (32:02):
No. We were taught in school, depending on when somebody went to school, not so much me because I'm older, maybe your generation, you were taught you should never feel bad about yourself. Oh, you're good. Everything you're good. Self-esteem movement. A self-esteem movement. Yeah. Everybody gets a trophy. Nobody fails. All this stuff. But there is something worse than feeling bad about yourself. And that is if there's something bad about yourself that you don't feel bad about, that's bad. The worst thing is to not feel bad about something that's bad because if I don't feel bad about it, I don't change. Pain is a catalyst for change. Pain is a catalyst for change. And at some point I need to acknowledge what's wrong so that I deal with it and just sugarcoating everything so I don't hurt my own feelings. Great leaders, they are willing to hurt their own feelings.

Holly Goddard (32:48):
Back to the ego not being your amigo.

Andy Stanley (32:50):
Your amigo. Oh, exactly. Because my ego don't want to... Andy, you're the best, you're the greatest. People don't understand blah, blah, blah. I wrote, truth that hurts ultimately helps. And as a parent, you got three kids, you know that. And sometimes you have to have that hard conversation with your daughters or your son and it's hard for you. It hurts, but you're like, you know what? I'm a bad parent if I don't point out what's bad in my child. And self-leadership's the same thing. I got to talk to that person in the mirror and point it out. So at times we have to hurt our own feelings and great leaders tell themselves the truth about themselves. And thus this first commitment, I will not lie to myself even when the truth makes me feel bad about myself. And in the book, and we've talked about this before on the podcast in the past, the best way I think to activate this commitment, because commitment is static.

(33:40):
It's like a value. Organization values, they're static. We put them on the walls, then go about our business. But here's how you activate this commitment. It's by asking this awful question. Why am I doing this? And then why am I doing this? And you know the next word.

Holly Goddard (33:55):
Yeah, really.

Andy Stanley (33:56):
Really, right? Because we talk about this all the time in our organization. Why am I doing this? Why am I hiring him? Really? Why am I avoiding her? Really? Why am I late? Really? Why?

Holly Goddard (34:11):
So confronting.

Andy Stanley (34:12):
Yeah, it is. Because you know what? I've made this commitment. I don't want the people who report to me to lie to me. Why would I put up with me lying to me? When you realize that you have an employee that's a liar, you fire the liar. You have to, you fire the liar. You can't lead a liar, you fire the liar. Well, every once in a while we need to look in the mirror and fire the liar in the mirror and tell ourselves the painful truth. And here's what I push hard on. Even if a person isn't willing to follow through on what acknowledging the truth points them toward, even if you're not willing to follow through on what telling yourself the truth points you toward, you should at least admit it to yourself and say, "You know what? The real reason I'm doing this is blank and I'm just going to do it anyway." That's better than never acknowledging the why.

(35:01):
Why is that? Well, because once I face the real reason, I'm more inclined to make a better decision. And this is why we argue with our kids. When we argue with our kids, we're trying to get them to see something they at first can't see. And then as the argument proceeds, we realize they won't see it, right? With your children, you got teenagers with my three kids. It's like, okay, I know you see what I see now, but you won't admit it. And the reason they won't admit it, if I admit it, I got to do something with it. Well, the same is true for me in the mirror. If I'm willing to admit the real reason I'm doing this, the personal accountability and acknowledging that oftentimes is the catalyst for moving in a different direction. But this is all self-leadership and it's not complicated because we create the same dynamic with people outside of the mirror all the time.

(35:54):
So we just got to bring it in, start there before we start doing all this other stuff.

Holly Goddard (35:57):
Not complicated, just hard work.

Andy Stanley (35:59):
Yeah. It's a discipline. And like any discipline on the backside, we feel better than ever. I finished that exercise routine. I said no to dessert. I stuck with my diet. On the backside, it's liberating and that's the better way to live.

Holly Goddard (36:15):
So I love that. Well, we don't lie to ourselves because we're inherently, our character's so bad. It's part of being human.

Andy Stanley (36:21):
It's part of being human. So that's okay. I don't want to feel bad about me.

Holly Goddard (36:24):
Yeah. And we're all going to do it to avoid discomfort. But the first step towards growing is being honest. So let me end with this question. If somebody reads what great leaders do and they only take one thing away, what do you hope that is?

Andy Stanley (36:39):
I guess this will be the takeaway that your accomplishments may make your name known. And again, I'm really answering the question to this first part of the book, I guess. Maybe I'm not answering the question as you ask it, but as far as this conversation goes, that your accomplishments may make your name known, may make your name known. How you lead yourself will determine what people ultimately associate with your name, that we are remembered for our final moments, not necessarily our finest moments. And self-leadership is a through line from beginning to end. And again, we may be known in some context for something we've done, but what is going to be most associated with our name is really goes back to how we lead ourselves. And most leaders spend their careers focused on the first part of that equation, making their name known and give very little attention, unfortunately, to what will be associated with their name in the end.

(37:33):
And that's important. That's legacy, that's family. That's what happens in the next generation in the organizations we started or that we love.

Holly Goddard (37:41):
Well, when we see this in the business we're in, we see this weekly because we deal with a lot of life and death. I mean, we host a funeral probably every week. And what you've accomplished, what's said at funerals, that's usually about two sentences, but people go on and on. You've heard the resume side of you and the eulogy side of you. People go on and on about who you were, how you made them feel, how you impacted their lives. So this is all really what this whole -

Andy Stanley (38:06):
I hadn't thought about that before, but because in fact, this past week we were part of just a tragic funeral, 45-year-old father and husband. And because this is almost, it's not weekly, but every other week we're engaged. It really does something I think for us that most people don't have an opportunity. I say opportunity, it's tragic. But we do have a built-in reminder because of the occupation we have to remember what's important. And how many times have we sat through, because we don't even call them funerals, we call it a celebration of life. We have people tell stories. It's a celebration of life. How many times have we sat through those? And at the end, even if we didn't know the person going in, we felt like we knew the person on the back end. And what we felt like we knew was not what they accomplished, but who they were.

(38:55):
Yes, they were. And at the end, as you said, that's what celebrated. And that's why getting this right is so important. And I just want to say to everybody listening, getting this right will not hinder your success in life. It will facilitate your success in life. You'll enjoy your life more. And ultimately, hopefully, you'll enjoy going home as much as you enjoy going to work. And there is a way to win in both spheres, but it starts in the mirror.

Holly Goddard (39:24):
That's so good, Andy. Hey, I can't wait to jump into commitment two and three next time, but your podcast audience doesn't have to wait. They can go ahead and grab their copy of what great leaders do wherever books are sold. And you read the Audible version, right?

Andy Stanley (39:39):
Yeah. I kind of preach the Audible version. I have a bad habit when I read my books for Audible. I stand up and I find myself kind of preaching.

Holly Goddard (39:48):
It's going to be inspiring.

Andy Stanley (39:49):
It hopefully will be inspiring. And there will be some additional things. It's the Unabridge Plus version of the book. As you said, that's a wrap for this episode. But before you go, if you would take a minute and subscribe wherever you access this content by subscribing, you help us grow the audience, which allows us to keep bringing you great content to help you go further faster as a leader. And be sure to visit theanystanley.com website where you can download a leadership podcast application guide that includes a summary of our discussion in this episode. Plus there will be some questions for reflection either for you as an individual or for group discussion. And we will see you back here next time on the Andy Stanley Leadership Podcast.