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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. Andy, in last week's conversation, you talk with Jim Collins about his new book, What To Make of a Life.
Andy Stanley (00:20):
And it was What To Make of a Great Conversation, wasn't it?
Suzy Gray (00:23):
It was amazing.
Andy Stanley (00:24):
Yeah, he gave us so much time, but then again, you have been inviting him to be on the podcast for how many years?
Suzy Gray (00:29):
Couple of years
Andy Stanley (00:30):
Now. Couple of years. And you were relentless in a good way and they said, "Just wait, just wait, just wait." And so they came through and wow, what a great conversation because it was a great book. Yeah. And I had time to read the whole book and digest it. And as I said on the podcast, Andrew's reading it and it was a great conversation.
Suzy Gray (00:46):
It was a great conversation and a great book. Well, the book we talked about is Jim's new book, What to Make of a Life. And in it, you guys covered a lot of ground in your conversation about the book and one of the ideas that stood out from your conversation was the idea of cliffs and fog. And I love the fact that he kind of dispelled, know only certain people are going to have cliffs unlike. He's like, "No, cliffs are a regular part of life." And then talks about, and often after a cliff comes the fog. And so let's just start there. When Jim talks about cliffs and fog, what stood out to you in that conversation?
Andy Stanley (01:22):
Well, I think anybody that reads the book immediately thinks about their own cliffs.
Suzy Gray (01:25):
That's right.
Andy Stanley (01:26):
And you don't have to live that long to have cliffs, whether it was the girl who broke up with you in high school or the parents divorcing and suddenly you're ping pong and back and forth between parents. The first job that doesn't go well. I was on academic probation and then first academic warning, then academic probation at Georgia State. And my mom said to me famously, "Andy, college isn't for everyone." That was a cliff. I'm like, "Oh, if your mom doesn't even believe you can finish college-
Suzy Gray (01:57):
So Encouraging.
Andy Stanley (01:58):
Things aren't going well." Anyway, so I think we all think about cliffs and the idea that after a cliff after an unexpected ending or tragic ending or even something good happens, but now it's over and now what? There is the fog of what's next. So I think it's something everybody can relate to. And what was great is he normalized it. He's like, "Welcome to life." That's right. You can't avoid them. Again, remember he said they tried in profiling these people, they decided, "Well, let's study the people who didn't have cliffs."
Suzy Gray (02:29):
The cliff free life people.
Andy Stanley (02:30):
And there were none.
Suzy Gray (02:31):
Yeah, none at all.
Andy Stanley (02:32):
So we get to expect it when it happens, it's not the end of the world. Every parent has had that conversation because our kids, something happens and we think, "Oh, it's the end. My life will never be the same." And we chuckle on the inside and try to look heartbroken on the outside because we know better. Well, it's true for those of us who are adults as well. There's cliffs and there's fog, but his insight about how to come out of the fog and what not to do in the midst of the fog is so helpful. So that's sort of what came to mind now. As it relates to leadership, gosh, as leaders, we lead in the fog so many times. If something bad happens or something happened organizationally or you think about COVID, the whole world went into a fog. And so the whole idea of simplex stepping, the phrase he uses to talk about how to respond in the midst of a fog, that you don't make big life changing decisions.
(03:26):
But again, asking the question, "What's next? What can I do? What can I do? " And for leaders, what we have to do is we have to give people something to do because the point he makes, taking a step creates energy. Energy creates clarity. So you got to do something. You got to take a baby step that creates energy. Now you're moving in a direction. So all of that was so helpful and so applicable for leaders, again, whose companies or organizations are in a bit of a season of fog and they're responsible for leading the organization through the fog. Yeah.
Suzy Gray (03:59):
Yeah. He said, "And movement creates energy and that fuels more movement." And a feeling of momentum, even if you don't know where that momentum is taking you becomes a reality. And I loved that idea of that is the momentum that eventually gets you out of it. And actually reminded me of your idea of gaining and sustaining momentum. There is something about getting the flywheel of momentum spinning that keeps momentum happening.
Andy Stanley (04:27):
And when people look back or when we look back on other people's stories, it's so obvious and we forget that the people who had breakthrough ideas or done amazing things in the world, they did not know their story. They didn't have a story yet. Their story was in process. And again, we get the highlight reels most of the time. We don't get the fog story. And so for those of us in leadership, or if you're in leadership right now and you're not sure how things are going to work out, hey, there's something you can do even when you're not sure what to do. And there's a direction you can move in, even though to his point, you don't know what the ultimate destination is. And I think that's another powerful idea. You don't have to know the destination in order to take a step in a direction because direction ultimately is what opens the door or leads to a destination.
(05:15):
So anyway, all of that's super appropriate for leadership, even though we didn't lean into it. But at the end of the book, Suzy, I'm kind of jumping ahead, he circles back around at the end of the book and talks about leadership. We didn't get into that part of the book and the discussion, but he applies some of that to his renewed understanding of leadership.
Suzy Gray (05:32):
Yeah. I mean, what do you think of the dangers are for leadership or that you've experienced of outrunning fog instead of navigating it well?
Andy Stanley (05:41):
Well, there's two things. First, as a leader, I live with, and I know better, but I still live with the pressure that I should know. I should know what to do. I should know what's next. I should know the direct. I should know. If I was a good leader, I would know. And Jim gives us permission not to know. And when you're in the fog, you cannot see.
Suzy Gray (05:58):
Cannot see.
Andy Stanley (05:58):
Yeah. So there's nothing wrong with you. You haven't done anything wrong.You're just in the fog. So to give ourselves permission to acknowledge we don't know and this is and leadership so important with teams is to be able to acknowledge current reality and point in a direction and give people something to do to say, "I'm not sure how this is going to work out, but we've been in situations like this before. So in the meantime, here's what we're going to do. I'm not sure where this is ultimately going to lead, but in the meantime, this is what we're going to do. " So to come up with short-term plans, again, because movement creates energy, which creates clarity and our responsibility is to get things moving without a clear picture of the destination and not to get locked into a, "Hey, we shouldn't do anything until-"
Suzy Gray (06:43):
Until we figure this all out.
Andy Stanley (06:44):
"Until we know what the destination is. That's almost always a mistake. So again, there are definitely takeaways as it relates to organizational leadership or just personal leadership.
Suzy Gray (06:52):
Personal leadership. And I do think it's interesting because those small steps in the fog, the momentum is felt because it feels like, " Oh, I had a little win. I don't exactly know where we're going, but that felt like a win. And small wins compounded over time makes you feel like you're winning and I think that's what creates that moment.
Andy Stanley (07:12):
And it also generates creativity and a step in a direction creates more options and it's a great reminder not to get stuck. When I finished graduate school, I was going to go to Baylor University to get a PhD and I didn't get accepted into the program and I know everyone's shocked. My GRE scores weren't great and it was a small program and other people said, Oh, it was political. Your dad was president of the Southern Baptist Convention, but it was my score. I know what it ... I'm not confused as to why I didn't get into the PhD program at Baylor. Anyway, but it was a cliff. It was like, wait, I was dating a girl. She was at Baylor. I was going to go to Baylor. I was going to get a job at a church, get my PhD, maybe we'd get married, and then boom.
Suzy Gray (07:55):
All that changes.
Andy Stanley (07:55):
And I go to the office and I'm looking for my acceptance notification and they went to the other file and handed me that other letter. Now my future goes dark. I'm graduating the next week from DTS and I literally have nothing to do. But you take steps. I went home, said, "What can I do? " And took a job with my dad's church and did that for 10 years and you just can't get stuck in the fog. And
Suzy Gray (08:23):
I think that example is a good example of why Jim said there's a fog of youth because when you finish college or when you are working toward grad school or whatever, there's these moments of like, "Oh, now what? "
Andy Stanley (08:39):
Yeah.
Suzy Gray (08:39):
And that's why you said you were even going to do this as a family.
Andy Stanley (08:42):
You read the book as a family. Well, we're going to try to. That's six adults I've got to convince to read a book all at the same time and they all have babies. So we'll see. We'll see. But I do want them to read or at least even listen to the audio version of the book because the book creates language and sometimes it's hard to talk about intangible concepts without language, without common language. And the book is full of common language. So helpful. I mean, even the idea of a cliff or a fog, "Hey, you guys just hit a cliff as a couple. Hey, you're in the fog right now. Guess what? Fogs don't last forever. Here's some things you can do. " So again, just having common language organizationally or even as a family, huge.
Suzy Gray (09:22):
So helpful.
Andy Stanley (09:22):
Yeah, he's given us so much.
Suzy Gray (09:24):
So helpful Andy, another thing I loved that I don't think you and Jim got to in your conversation, but it's in the book when he's talking about this idea of constellation of encoding. He says, "Keep in mind encoding lies within waiting to be discovered rather than being taught from without." I thought that was such a powerful reminder that so much of what we think is, oh, I need to be taught that versus I need to look within and discover what I'm uniquely built and wired.
Andy Stanley (09:54):
So when you think about your own journey, can you think about a moment or a season where you've kind of had this aha moment where you thought, "Oh, this is what I was made for. This is what I love to do, or this is the thing." And it wasn't necessarily a job, but maybe it was something about a job because he gives the illustration of, I think he was working for Hewlett Packard and he was not in his stream or his encoding and they asked him to do a research project kind of as a side thing. And when he started doing that, he realized, oh, he had to be asked to do it to discover that it meshed with his natural encoding. So did you ever have an experience like that professionally where it's like, oh, this is my thing or ...
Suzy Gray (10:36):
I think I really wanted to understand early on in my career I kept ending up in jobs that were never the core of the business. It was always the fringe. I was in photonic switching at a company that made foam gear and then I went to Bell South and I wasn't in, this was back when there was landlines and cellular was just coming into focus and I wanted to do things that were at the edge of what was the core of the business. And I've always kind of ended up in these fringe jobs. The last job I had was an improvement.
Andy Stanley (11:10):
Was that good?
Suzy Gray (11:12):
Well, it was a proof of concept job, but I couldn't figure out like, why do I always gravitate?
Andy Stanley (11:16):
Oh, you gravitated to it. I gravitated to it, but I couldn't. So it was related to your encoding somehow.
Suzy Gray (11:20):
But I couldn't name it. I just kept realizing I keep ending up in these jobs and Cheryl Bachelder actually, back when she was CEO of Popeye's, she had told me about a standout assessment. I was talking to her about this and she said, "You should take the standout." And I took it and I came out as a pioneer influencer and I read the description and I was like, "That's why. That's why I keep ending up on all these do something different, do something fringe, do something that's kind of pushing the edge of whatever organization I'm in.
Andy Stanley (11:54):
" So you gravitated toward those environments. Wow.
Suzy Gray (11:56):
I gravitated toward it, but I couldn't name it. And then once I named it, I was like, "Oh, I will never be good in a run rate job. I just won't be.
Andy Stanley (12:04):
" Yeah. Well, what you're doing now with your move is definitely that.
Suzy Gray (12:08):
Yeah. Oh, it's definitely that. But I think that's why I love it.
Andy Stanley (12:11):
Yeah, that makes sense.
Suzy Gray (12:12):
But knowing that in coding for me, I know I can't be in a, this is how we do it until further notice environment because I want to look at like, but what's just over that edge?
Andy Stanley (12:22):
So when he was talking about encoding, I had a memory. I remember just a little bit different. I worked at a traditional Southern Baptist church, worked for my dad for 10 years and about year eight they bought this property out on the edge of town with a bunch of warehouses and Avon packing plant and the deacon said, "Andy, would you go out there and start a second site, a second campus, and then we're going to sell the downtown property and everybody's going to move out there." And they said, "But unfortunately it's very raw. It's a warehouse we're not going to be able to provide." And they named all the traditional things we wouldn't be able to do out there, which were things I didn't want to do anyway. And I tried to act sad like, "Oh, I don't know how we're going to get by without a choir and all this stuff.
(13:06):
Anyway-
Suzy Gray (13:06):
We'll do our best.
Andy Stanley (13:07):
We'll do our best." So I took these people I loved working with and this is the moment. So we had our first service in the warehouse, very raw and Sandra and I walked out the door and we were walking to the construction trailer, which was our sort of office on Sunday morning and I turned to her and I said, "That's what I want to do the rest of my life."
Suzy Gray (13:31):
Wow.
Andy Stanley (13:32):
There was something about communicating in that environment on a Sunday morning that was raw and casual and informal and it couldn't be the traditional. It was like, I thought this, whatever that was, I've been teaching for years, I've been preaching for years. I mean, none of that was new, but the combination of things was like, "Okay, I can't go back. This is what I want to do. "
Suzy Gray (13:56):
That's your lightning bolt.
Andy Stanley (13:57):
Yeah. So again, but it's opportunity, at least opportunity, and then somewhere along the way, if you're looking for it, you catch sight of it and something lights up. And the advantage of reading this book is it just reminds us to be looking for those things to help our kids look for those things. I feel like it's fun watching my young adult married kids discover and figure things out, but sometimes you just have to try a lot of things. But to be able to say to them, "Hey, you need to look for your encoding and focus your time and energy. And the more time and energy you can give to your encoding, the happier you will be, the more content you will be, the more motivated you will be and probably the more successful you'll be. But even if you're not successful in the traditional ways we think of success, you're going to be happy and content because you're going to be in sync with what you were created, not necessarily what you were created to do, but the kind of thing you were created to do.
Suzy Gray (14:53):
Yeah. Well, Andy, that was a great conversation about your conversation with Jim because I just enjoy this content so much. I don't think I can get enough of it. So Andy, as always, thanks for diving deeper on this month's topic. And to our listeners, thanks for listening to Reverb. If you found this helpful, please share it with another leader. And as always, subscribe wherever you listen and visit andystanley.com/podcast for more resources to help you go even further faster.