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Suzy Gray (00:02):
Welcome to the Andy Stanley Leadership Podcast reverb, a conversation designed to help leaders go even further faster by digging deeper into this month's episode. I'm your host, Suzy Gray. Last week we did something a little different. We shared an episode from Jason Jagger's podcast Beyond High Performance, a show that helps leaders go beyond high performance and explore what they're capable of. It was an episode where Andy and Jason had a great conversation about key leadership principles, and today we want to go a layer deeper. We're going to revisit a few of those key ideas with the lens of what do they mean, and more importantly, why do they matter? So Andy, let's start with a principle. A lot of our longtime listeners will recognize, only do what only you can do. You said in that conversation, it's an incredibly important goal because leadership naturally drifts toward management and away from margin. So let's unpack that a bit. What does only do what only you can do mean for leaders day to day? And why is it so critical to protect that space?
Andy Stanley (01:02):
Well, I want to clarify one thing about the statement. In the past, I've referred to that as a goal, and that's not really crazy. It's not really a goal. It's more like a north star, an ancient times, an ancient times, a navar rarely, or an ancient Mariner rarely ventured out at night for multiple reasons. They were superstitious to begin with, but primarily because there was no visibility and there was nothing to navigate by with one exception, which of course was the North Star, or actually the star's named Polaris. It's also called the Pole Star because it's located nearly directly above the Earth's North Pole. Consequently, the North Star appears almost stationary at night, which of course serves as a reliable guide for finding north and determining latitude. So consequently, they navigated at night when they ventured out, which was very rare to sail or to row at night.
(01:52):
But when they did, the North Star was a point of navigation. And again, for clarification, although our audience knows this, the North Star was not a destination point, obviously, but it was a reference point. So in the same way, this statement only do what only you can do is a reference point for leaders, and we should navigate by it specifically. We should prioritize and calendar by it. So that's the idea that we should aim toward or work toward doing as few things as possible. The things that fall into our sweet spot and only do it, only we can do, but it's a navigation point and you can't get it perfect. Again, navigating you're a little bit too far one way or too far the other way, but keeping that front and center is so important, and that was a fun conversation to have with Jason around that.
Suzy Gray (02:41):
So Andy, why do you think it's so important for leaders to protect that space?
Andy Stanley (02:46):
Well, my fully exploited strengths, and we say this all the time, our fully exploited strengths are always going to be a greater value add than our marginally improved weaknesses. And so only do what only you can do is a reminder that I need to make sure that I'm giving my best time and my best energy to the things that make the biggest difference in the organization. And the tendency is to just fill our schedules up with whatever comes along. People have requests. I mean, there's so much going on, and before I know it, I mean, we're always busy. Nobody's sitting around looking for something to do, to do.
Suzy Gray (03:20):
Yeah.
Andy Stanley (03:21):
So consequently, if we're not careful, we will be very busy, but we won't be focused and we won't be bringing our best energy and our best time to the thing that makes the biggest difference. And there are only a few things a leader does that makes that big difference. So again, the North Star is to only do what only you can do, and if there's somebody else that can do it, and especially if there's somebody else that can do it better, let them do it and focus on the things that add the most value to the organization. And of course, that means a leader has to discover what those things are. Then a leader has to discipline themselves to schedule so that that's where they're spending the majority of their time. And oftentimes, maybe we'll talk about this in a minute. I know for me we need help doing that because it's just too easy to say yes to whatever comes along.
Suzy Gray (04:08):
And Andy, you've talked about before about how day-to-day tasks can eat leadership alive that without intentional margin vision disappears. So for the leader who feels like they're juggling everything, where can they even begin to apply this principle of only doing what only they can do?
Andy Stanley (04:25):
Well, I can tell you how I did it, Susie, and you can tell me if this is applicable to everybody else. I think it is. Of course, I had to ask for help. I had to invite somebody into the process. And this is where Diane Grant, who Oh,
Suzy Gray (04:37):
Amazing.
Andy Stanley (04:38):
Yeah, it has worked for me for almost 30 years as my admin assistant. When I gave, and this was years ago when I gave Diane control of the calendar, which she kept asking for, and I kept saying, no, I want to control the calendar. When she finally convinced me, Andy, if you'll give me the calendar, let me control the calendar, it will help me do a better job. I'm like, okay, now I'm being selfish. She finally found the button to push, when I gave her control of the calendar, she became a helpful advocate and a buffer. Now, there was someone to discuss things with before they went on the calendar, rather than me putting things on the calendar that she had to attempt to take off the calendar, which often meant awkward phone calls because I didn't take the big picture into consideration. But more importantly, it's not just a matter of there wasn't time to do the things I wanted to put on the calendar by putting things on the calendar that shouldn't be there. It ate up my margin, the time I needed to spend focusing on the things that only I could do. Because as we've talked about briefly, I know in the past if we're not careful without margin, you cannot lead. When a leader doesn't have margin, they're forced to simply manage because there's no time to vision cast.
(05:47):
There's no time to think about the future. There's no time to explore. There's no time to be creative. There's no time to imagine. So giving her the calendar, that was one of several decisions I made early on that helped me focus on doing what only I can do, because her having the calendar forced a conversation, multiple conversations, that always went back to not simply, do you have anything on Thursday, but rather, what's most important for you? Is there somebody else that can do that? Is that something I can handle for you? Hey, before we put your name there, what if I get so-and-so to call them? And then let's just see if they can handle it instead, handle that instead. So at forced conversations we weren't having before, and that was a huge help because she knows what my priorities are
(06:34):
And she knows my value add to the organization. And now I had a partner, and that made a tremendous difference. And I've talked to other leaders through the years who handing off that calendar. It's not just a control thing, but part of it is why would I have somebody else do that? Why? I mean, I can make phone calls and I've got friends. So anyway, no, I think that's helpful. And the other thing too is every time our organization embraced a new growth opportunity or we were about to go from one thing to the next thing and do something big every time that happened, and it looked like my responsibility was going to shift a little bit, and it usually meant taking on more responsibility as we grew. Diane would ask this question every single time. She'd say, okay, now that we're going to do this, what are you going to stop doing?
(07:25):
She would just literally say, okay, so what are you going to stop doing? And I would never ask myself that question because it sounds lazy and I'm the leader. I need to take one for the team. I need to be the busiest person, last person to leave all that nonsense. But I would never ask myself that question. But having somebody say, okay, what are you going to stop doing? Forced healthy conversation because you got to give up to go up. You got to do less to accomplish more. And if the organization is going to get bigger, which means more complex and more complicated, I need more margin to lead.
(07:58):
So having a partner in this for me, was critical changer and a game changer. Changer. And it doesn't have to be an individual person. It could be a leadership team. It can be more than one person, but I think we all need somebody to bring us back to reality, especially if you're a hard worker and you have a strong work ethic, you're just going to take on more. But at some point, you take on so much, you're not leading anymore. You're just managing and going from one thing to the next. And you're not only doing what only you can do and you're doing things other people could do, in some cases, what other people could do better because we don't all have the same strengths.
Suzy Gray (08:32):
Well, and that idea connects directly to something else that you talked to Jason about, which is the less you do, the more you accomplish. And it feels so counterintuitive, especially to a new or high capacity leader who thinks the key to success is doing more, not less. So why is that such an important mindset shift?
Andy Stanley (08:50):
Well, it overlaps on this other one. The whole idea is by doing less, you can spend more time on the things that make the biggest impact in the organization. And in most cases, there are just two or three things that make all the difference. And if those things go right, you can fix everything else. If those things go wrong, it doesn't matter what their other ones are. And we talk about on the podcast all the time, there's that critical exchange, there's that critical event. Every organization has one or two or maybe three critical events. And if those events, and I don't mean like a Thursday event, I mean in sales, it's what happens at the front of the store or marketing, it happened. It's what happens between the person who's selling your marketing service with a customer. There's just critical events. When those go right, the rest can be fixed. So as the point leader or a manager of a division, being able to focus our time and attention and creativity on those critical events is critical, which means you have to have margin. And the better I am, and the more time I have there, or the less other things I'm doing, the more effective I am and the more effective the people are around me. I always go back to this illustration, MLB pitchers are generally not known for their batting averages. And nobody cares.
Suzy Gray (10:06):
Yeah, Exactly!
Andy Stanley (10:07):
Nobody Cares.
Suzy Gray (10:08):
They're pitching.
Andy Stanley (10:08):
They're pitching. I don't care. In the area of sports, all these principles we talk about, they make perfect sense. When there's a scoreboard, there's a time limit, and everybody has a position that they're hired to do that position. Well, organizational life is no different. It's just that the game goes on and on and on. And
Suzy Gray (10:27):
It's not as obvious when winning.
Andy Stanley (10:28):
It's not as obvious. There's no crowd. And the scoreboards are difficult to create, and they are difficult to manage in an organizational life. It's difficult to remember to even look at the right scoreboard sometimes because of the whirlwind of organizational life. But the principles are the same, and the dynamic to some degree is the same as well.
Suzy Gray (10:48):
So how do you know, because it's not as obvious, how does a leader know if they're doing too much or if they've slipped from leading into managing? How do they tell?
Andy Stanley (10:56):
Well, the short answer I think is they're busy and bored. You can be busy and bored at the same time. And whenever I say that in a group or with leaders, eyes light up. No, I don't have to explain it because any leader who's been there, it's like I didn't have words for it, but I remember I was so busy and I was not excited. And I used to be excited about this, and I used to be motivated, and I am bored, and I may have shared this on the podcast before, but years ago, you remember Don Hurley?
Suzy Gray (11:29):
Yeah,
Andy Stanley (11:30):
She was Diane's assistant at the time in the office. And we had all these campuses. We had campus pastors, and I was in charge of the whole thing, but I wasn't in a role where I was leading a campus. I was just leading the whole organization. And one day she looked at me, she said, you're bored. I'm like, what? Oh, Don, how dare you speak to me? Iove don.
Suzy Gray (11:53):
Oh, we all do. Yeah.
Andy Stanley (11:54):
I'm like, what do you mean? I'm bored, Andy, you're bored. And I said, I think you're right. And here's why. Because the action in our organization is at the campus level.
(12:06):
This is where you grow. This is where you grow things. It's critical to plan things. It's the critical, it is the critical event. And I had moved or allowed myself to be elevated out of the tension of the critical event. So I didn't feel like I was leading. I was managing a whole lot of organizations that had critical events, and I was too far away. And the moment there was a break, we had a lead pastor who left. I immediately hired myself, jumped back down, hired myself. And I remember Sandra saying, I remember I was sitting on the couch at home when I decided, okay, I need to jump back into that role along with everything else I'm doing. And she said, wait a minute. You already have a full-time job. I'm like, this is what I need to do for me. And ever since then, I have worn both of those hats.
(12:56):
But I'm not bored. I'm not bored, and I am busy. But again, I think that's when a leader knows, okay, you don't have not positioned to lead. You're managing. And if you're wired for management, and again, management is extremely necessary, but you manage the sameness, you manage the systems, but you lead beyond sameness and you lead beyond systems. You break the systems. So it just depends on how a person is wired. But for the leaders out there, things are going pretty well. And you're busy, but you're bored. Bored. Yeah. You need to do fewer things so that you have the margin to think about what's next.
Suzy Gray (13:34):
There's your sign.
Andy Stanley (13:35):
Yeah, there's your sign.
Suzy Gray (13:38):
Another moment from that conversation with Jason last week that stood out was your definition of leadership. You said Leadership is getting other people to do what you believe needs to be done. And then you added this great line. You can rent people's hands, but you can't rent their hearts. That's a really powerful distinction. Can you unpack why that distinction's important and why it matters for leaders?
Andy Stanley (14:00):
Yes. And I would like to make a comment about the definition of leadership, because later on I realized it's a little different. The way I normally say it is this, that leadership is about inspiring people to want to do what you're convinced needs to be done.
Suzy Gray (14:15):
Okay?
Andy Stanley (14:15):
Real good leadership is you're inspiring people to want to do what you're convinced needs to be done. In other words, we can hire people to do, but you have to inspire people to want to do,
(14:26):
There has to be a vision piece. And again, it goes back to this disconnect between two weeks later they get paid for something versus they get to work and want to do something because they believe what they're doing is so important. And that goes to the second part of your question where you said, I said, you can rent people's hands, but you can't rent their hearts and you can pay people to do things. But great leadership goes beyond that. You want people who from time to time would say, you know what? I would do this for free or I would pay to do this. And we've all probably maybe at some point in our life said that. But when you hear people around, you say that, and in our case, because we're a volunteer organization, I mean, people do extraordinary work, extraordinary, complicated, in some cases, technical work for nothing. And when I thank them, going back to the gratitude conversation, when I thank them, they're like, oh, I would pay to do this. So when you've combined people's energy, emotion, and passion with a task, and that's leadership.
Suzy Gray (15:26):
Well, Andy, that was a great unpacking of those ideas from last week. Thank you for taking the time. And for our listeners, thanks for listening to this episode of Reverb. If you found it helpful, be sure to leave a review or pass along to another leader. And as always, subscribe wherever you listen. And check out Andy stanley.com/podcast for more resources to help you go even further faster.