Great Leaders Play to Their Strengths, Part 1

2:08 So to clarify, it doesn't mean doing less work or working less hours. The idea is the scope of the work. So the idea behind this whole idea is that great leaders narrow the scope of their work, the scope of what they do. They don't do less. They do less things. They don't work less hours necessarily. So this is about leaning into our strengths, finding our sweet spot, staying there, scheduling there, and, again, leaning into our strengths. When we lean into our strengths and we delegate our weaknesses or the things that we're not as good at because most of us are only good at one or two things. And when I say compared to our other strengths and weaknesses, not compared to other people, but when a person evaluates their personal strengths and weaknesses, there's usually just a couple of things that we're exceptional at compared to everything else we have the potential to do. So leaders identify that as early as possible. It took me way too long to figure this out or to identify that.

3:01 And then once they do, they lean into the strengths. We delegate everything else. And the reason everything gets better is because if I delegate the things I'm not that good at, then I'm going to be better at what I'm good at. And there are other people around me and around you and around our listeners who are good at the things that we're not good at. And when people are doing what they're best at, good things happen. But as long as I'm hanging on to and involving myself in things that I'm just pretty good at. And since I'm the boss or since you're the boss or you're the manager or the owner. You feel all the freedom to do that. Yeah, nobody's going to take it away from you. But when we ignore this principle, we become a lid to the organization, even though we may be enjoying everything that we're doing. And because, again, you know, if most of the people in the organization report to you, they're just going to smile and laugh at your jokes and cheer you on as you do things that you're not necessarily really that good at. So this isn't about fewer hours.

3:58 This is about fewer things. And again, reducing the scope of what we do so that we're in our zone and therefore making the best contribution to the organization. Yeah, that's so good. So if we find our focus, then we don't put a lid on the organization. And you say at some point in your leadership, you had this realization that you were just doing too much or too many things. You write this, I was working hard and slowing things down simultaneously. Okay, that's fascinating. So looking back, how did you realize you were becoming the bottleneck? Well, there were a couple of things, but I think the most helpful thing or most transferable, first of all, there were things that just weren't going well that I was responsible for. But the real, you know, the defining moment was my assistant, Diane Grant, who I talk a lot about in this book. She's worked with me for 30 years. Diane kept trying to take things away from me. And other people did, too.

4:54 In fact, early on, people would. And I thought they were just being nice, like, oh, Andy, we want to help you. And I'm like, oh, no, no, no, I don't need help. I've got this. And I realize now they were thinking, that's the problem. You've got this. And as long as you've got it, it ain't going to be great. So I finally realized, because Diane was very overt, Andy, I'm not just trying to help you. I'm trying to take something away from you because somebody else can do this better. And she would never go so far as to say, you're not good at this, because I was probably good at it. Right. But two things were happening. I wasn't great at it, and the time I was spending doing some of these things was time that was taken away from my primary value add to the organization. So, this was a learning thing. And, in fact, in our, you know, the second part of this discussion next time, in the next episode, I'm going to talk about the reasons leaders don't apply this. And there are five reasons, and two of those were so true.

5:50 But fortunately for me, I had somebody who came along who loved our organization so much that they didn't mind potentially offending me to say, let us take that. You do you. You do your thing. Let us do the rest. But that begins with some humility, some self-awareness, and figuring out what we're good at. And this is what I say to young leaders. I said, look, when you first start off in leadership, you have to do a little bit of everything to discover your passion, what you enjoy, and then ultimately what you're wired for. And that takes some experimentation. But you need to figure that out as soon as possible and try to work your way into a job or get a reply for a job that leverages that strength. So early on, I think we all have to experiment. Early on, we all get this wrong, perhaps, because, you know, especially if you're starting an organization, you really have to do everything because it's necessary. There's nobody else to do it.

6:49 And I think this was part of my struggle. I felt like part of my responsibility when we launched our organization was I was trying to set a standard of excellence in some areas that in our particular industry, sometimes there wasn't excellence. So all of that was well-meaning. But I went too long. I stayed in some of those roles too long. And fortunately, I had some people that were like, we're not trying to help you. We're trying to help the organization by taking this away from you. So anyway. Well, I love you created the kind of environment where you could have those kind of conversations because it is so easy to swerve out of your lane as a leader. And we create a lot of chaos when we do that. You say part of the problem was that you bought into a myth. and this myth that good leaders should be good at everything. Yeah, the well-rounded leader myth. Yeah.

7:40 In the book, I give some examples of this because I was fortunate to be introduced to, primarily through my dab, some extraordinary leaders, some people who accomplish great things. And you are often less, especially when you're young, you're left with the impression, you know, these people are great at everything. They're great public speakers. So I was left with the impression in order to be a great leader, I needed to shore up my weaknesses so that I could be like them, you know, great at everything. To do it all. Yeah. But behind the scenes, the reason that they were so accomplished and in some cases so well-known is they had discovered this principle. And they had leaned into their strengths, developed those strengths. They were not well-rounded leaders, but several of them certainly led well-rounded organizations. So, and that's kind of the, I don't know, the paradox in all of this. The less I focus on what I'm not good at, the organization gets better at what I'm not good at.

8:37 And that's true for any organization. So, when I lean into my strengths, delegate my weaknesses, everything gets done better because I'm not doing it or you're not doing it. So, it's a bit of a paradox. Well, you say, this is such an important statement that you make. You say your fully exploited strengths will always add more value than your marginally improved weaknesses. Yes. Okay, that's a really big thought. Yes. And so the key to this is fully exploiting our strengths rather than trying to shore up our weaknesses. Because, again, this isn't compared to other people. This is just internally. My weaknesses will always be weaknesses compared to my strengths. Yeah. Same for you. Same for you. Right. That's just the reality. So if we're going to devote our time to something, we should devote our time to as much as we can perfecting our strengths or developing our strengths, which then become the primary value add to the organization. And if that is a value that we both model, that we model and teach in our organizations, and as you know, this is something I've been teaching for years.

9:44 And I've tried my best to create a culture where – and you're actually great at this, Holly. You're, in fact, at a personnel level, management level, you're way better at this than I am. To recognize people's strengths, to position them, to use Jim Collins' language, to make sure they're not just on the bus but in the right seat on the bus. And when you get that right, they thrive. We narrow their focus, their scope. More gets done. More gets done better. But again, it begins with leaders recognizing that about themselves, giving other people on the team permission to experiment and positioning them correctly. And at the end of the day, everybody does perhaps fewer things, but more gets accomplished, and it gets accomplished better. And people enjoy their jobs because— Yeah, they're in their sweet spot. Right. Right. When you're working in your flow, I think that's a Daniel Pink phrase. When you're working in your flow, you're energized rather than depleted.

10:41 And I, you know, in the early days when I was trying to do everything, I would just come home exhausted. And again, your passion starts to wane, your energy wanes. So this is a big deal. It takes some time to figure out. And it takes some humility to hand things off. Yeah, I love the permission to go hard into your strengths. I remember the first time I ever did a 360 assessment and some of my weaknesses came back, I thought, how do they know? Like, I thought I was covering it better. But the truth is, all you got to do is ask some people. They know the things you should hand off. Exactly. No, that's a great point. And that's one of the advantages of a 360. And since you brought that up, this is really important because the temptation, my first 360 many years ago, when I saw some of the areas I needed to work on, they were things I knew that I was never going to be. I felt defeated because I thought I'm doing the best I can.

11:39 And I was doing the best I could, but I was never going to be the best at that. So, you know, going into a 360 with that in mind, and also for those of us that have employees that we ask them to do 360s, when that feedback comes back, differentiating between character issues, which we all are responsible for that, versus skill level issues. And when somebody consistently is kind of flagging, it's like, okay, before we decide this isn't the right person for the team, maybe they just aren't in the right seat with the team. Yeah, such a big deal. And when you have a well-rounded team, a lot of great things happen. In fact, we just experienced this this past week on our team, something that we kind of thought, I don't know if we could pull this off when we lended the authority to somebody else that happened. Yeah, so you want me to tell that story? Yeah, tell it, yeah.

12:32 So, you know, we work at a large multi-site church, and we had a backlog of adults who wanted to be baptized. And we normally just baptize a couple people per service, you know, on Sunday morning. So our service programming director came to me and Holly and said, okay, we wanted—she said, I want us to do a Sunday morning where all we do is baptize people, and I think we can baptize 80 people. Right. So it would just be music and baptism. And we're like, okay, that sounds like a lot, 40 per service. You know, okay. You know, and then she came back. Yeah, well, she came back and she was like, I think we can double it. And I just wanted to just turn my head the other way and not look because I couldn't even figure out how you get all those moving parts going. Right.

13:23 But we were like, if you think you can do it, let's try it. And then she just said, all I need you to do is this. You know, she gave us each an assignment. She figured out the day. We stayed in our strengths. And she stayed in hers. Yes. And it was unbelievable. It was amazing. And the other kind of takeaway, and this applies, you know, in every organization. You know your strengths. I know my strengths. And when she created this event or the potential for the event, we said to her, how can we help? In fact, what can I do to help is one of the best questions a leader can ask constantly. because people who report to us, they're always asking us that. Very few employees hear from their boss, what can I, how can I help? But that's what we said to her. How can we help? She said, Andy, you do this. Holly, you do this. We're like, yes, ma'am. And we loaned her our strengths. And in loaning her our strengths and in her being in the position she was, it was an incredible event.

14:21 But so the point is lean into your strengths, stay in your lane, position and resource people to do the same. And the organization becomes a well-rounded organization. One more thing on this. And you know this. Our organization is an events organization, so to speak. And we are known for amazing events. And neither one of us are event planners. And logistics is not our thing. But again, we're not well-rounded leaders. Well-rounded leadership is a myth, but a well-rounded organization is a goal. And when people have the opportunity to play primarily, not exclusively, but play primarily to their strengths, the organization is strengthened. So this is a really big deal. Yeah, they begin to thrive and then so does the organization. Which one of the ideas that jumped off the page for me is you say it this way, only do what only you can do. All right, that's one of those statements, really clear, really hard to be consistent with.

15:23 So why do you think that is? Why is that hard to live that out? Well, let me define it a little bit. And this is something, again, I've taught for years, talked about on the podcast multiple times. Only do what only you can do is not a destination. I think it's more of a navigation point. In ancient times, mariners navigated according to the North Star because visually it doesn't move. So that's what this statement is, only do what only you can do. There may be people in this world who are in some sort of corporate life or organizational life who literally only do what only they can do. I think that's rare. I don't know. I've never met a person whose job description or responsibility is limited to that. But it is something to navigate by. So only do what only you can do is to do all that you can to be positioned in such a way in the organization that the majority of your time, and this is important, the majority of your most productive time is dedicated to the area where you make the most value add to the organization. So it's not just limiting scope.

16:29 It also has to do with schedule. And again, when I know my primary value add and I'm able to devote my most productive time to that, then that's probably as close to only do what only you can do as somebody like me could get or most people. So it's something to keep – because when I would teach this or say this to people, you know, there's kind of an eye roll like, yeah, right, that would be great. But wait a minute. Before you discount it, it's something to navigate toward over time. and as influence grows, organizations grow and job descriptions become more and more segmented and they're more specialist, this is more possible than people think. But for the leader of a team or an organization, it needs to be a North Star. Otherwise, to your point earlier, we drift. And the areas we drift into are areas we enjoy, whether we're good at it or not.

17:22 And we should all enjoy what we do, right? But we've all met people who don't want to give something up because they enjoy it so much. And it's like, yeah, you enjoy it, but you're not great at it. So we're going to need to, you know, you're going to need to find some joy somewhere else. Yeah. And when you're doing something where you're creating the most value for the organization, there's definitely joy there. So it's a point of navigation. Well, I like that the practice is really orienting your schedule and your calendar so that your strengths and your priorities can show up big time in your work life. Yeah, because our schedule, I mean, this is a bit of an exaggeration. Our schedule is our future, right? When you get up and you look at what's going to happen in the week or I look at what's going to happen in the week, there's my future. So I can look at the calendar and go, is this week, this future, is my best time given to my greatest value added to the organization? I know that ahead of time.

18:19 And I determine, you determine, you determine what gets on the calendar. So these things go hand in hand. I learned this one the hard way. I had a direct report come into me, and I'm responsible for leading our all-staff meetings at this campus. So I'm leading a bunch of staff, and I was just not putting time on my calendar to prepare for this. And he literally called me out on that in a one-on-one and said, hey, this is one of the most important things you do. It kind of seems like you're winging it, like you're not spending time during the week. And he was right. And I realized I'm actually the only one standing up there thinking about this, leading this through the week. So I've got to change my calendar. So my life reflects it. Okay, speaking of calendar, since you brought this up, at the end of the book, there's a great interview with you and Diane. Diane's your executive assistant of 30 years. She's amazing. But you talk about how reluctant you were to give her control of your calendar when y'all first started working together, which that conversation is worth buying the book. Especially if you're an executive and you've got an admin assistant.

19:17 Like the way y'all navigated this and how honest you were with each other is so, so helpful. And honestly, it seems like it has changed your leadership and the way that you construct your weeks. Yes, it did. And Diane led you there. She did because she would, once she knew, once we agreed upon or we had the conversation around, what's my value add? Which she knew that. In fact, like you said earlier on, most people know this about us and the people they work with, whether the person recognizes it about themselves or not. So she knew that. She knew what my values were and what my priorities were and where I needed to spend most of my time. So she took responsibility for making sure my most productive hours were given to what makes the organization most productive. But for that to happen, I had to give her control of the calendar. So in the book at the end, I talk a little bit about, and she does too because it's an interview, but we're both way in on this, that kind of tug of war because I wanted to control it.

20:18 But the problem was I kept putting things on there that distracted from my primary value add to the organization. So it's my fault. The calendar is my future. I'm my own problem. And finally, I said, okay, you control the calendar. You and Sandra, my wife, you've got that. That was a game changer. Good decision you made. And then what happened is my priorities, my strengths, and my time were in sync. And that was huge. And so just real quick, to those of you listening to this conversation, you're going, I wish.

20:53 This is, again, this isn't just a principle that you think about, oh, that's an interesting principle. The application really has as much to do with your schedule and your calendar as it does with just agreeing with, oh, I'm going to lean into my strengths. because, again, the calendar is the future. Well, I love thinking about your calendar. It's your future. It's not your to-do list. Exactly. Right. Thank you. And so if you treat it that way, you can stay in your sweet spot. Yeah, yeah. All right. So we need to prioritize our calendars. And to do that, you got to delegate. And we know that as leaders. We know, okay, delegate. But knowing is really not the problem. Letting go is the problem. And I've heard you say this before. You've got to let go to grow. Okay, that's hard. But what's at stake if we get this wrong? Well, first of all, to give credit where credit is due, I'm pretty sure that's a John Maxwell quote. But again, memorable, it's portable, and it rhymes. And it's true.

21:45 You got to let go to grow. Because when we do too many different things and many of those different things aren't in our sweet spot, what happens is the calendar gets full because that's kind of the goal. Oh, you got an hour on Thursday. Oh, what are you doing Friday afternoon? So you fill up the calendar, which means there's no margin. And here's, this is a big deal, and I've been there and done that and don't want to go back there. When the calendar's full and there's no margin, we stop leading and we simply start managing. Because leadership requires margin. Management is what needs to get done. Leadership is what do we need to think about in the future that's not on anybody's calendar because nobody's thinking about it yet. One's reactive, one's so proactive. Yeah, one is almost all reactive. all reactive. It's problem solving, problem solving. And what happens is when the calendar's full, we become problem solvers and we become managers. You've got to have margin, which means the calendar, you know, is a tool. It's not just a response to request. And so what happens is we get reduced to managing. And I've been there. The way I would say it is I was busy, very busy, but at the same time I was bored. And my passion for what we were doing began to wane and I'll tell you how I sort of the wake-up call was Diane, who we've talked about.

23:10 She had an assistant back then named Dawn. Dawn was a few years older than me and Dawn did not need to work. She didn't need a job. She loved me but wasn't overly impressed. And so she was not afraid to say what was on her mind. And literally, I remember where I was standing. I'm standing in Diane's office in front of her desk and Dawn walks by and she says, Andy, she's very, you know, motherly sometimes. Andy, do you know what your problem is? I'm like, what, Dawn? You know, she's like, she said this. She said, you're bored. Terrible. And there sits Diane with the calendar, you know, got all this stuff going on. You get all this stuff on your camera. But she knew me. We'd known each other for a year. She sensed, okay, you're busy, yeah, yeah, yeah. But there's something missing, and you're bored. And, you know, I respected her enough to think, okay, I don't know. Bored, I have so much to do, but she knew there was something.

24:06 And so that's when I stepped back and realized, no, it's not that I'm bored because I'm bored with what I'm doing. But I'm problem solving. I'm not leading because there's no margin on the calendar. So you find yourself in that spot. You got to hit eject. That's not going to work itself out. You got to take some agency here. Yeah, you got to do something kind of drastic. Busy and bored sounds terrible, but you mentioned passionless. Yeah. Okay, that sounds like a really red flag. Yeah. And going back to leaders playing to their strengths, when we don't stay in our strengths, not only are we in the doom loop, but there seems to be a lot of implications in the organization. Is that fair to say? Yes, absolutely. Neglect this principle, and there are implications for the organization. And the primary one is this. ultimately, and we've seen this, it makes it difficult to keep talented people. And the best way to explain this, we mentioned John Maxwell just a minute ago. And for all of the John Maxwell fans out there, of which I am one, you may be familiar with his 21 Immutable Laws of Leadership.

25:11 And one of those laws, he calls it the law of respect. And so here's the law of respect. Leaders are attracted to leaders. They perceive to be better, more capable leaders than the themselves. And I learned this a long time ago. Great. Nobody, very few leaders feel like they have to be number one, but they want to work for somebody they respect and they want to be in the circle that influences their future in the organization. So I don't need to be number one, but I want to be in the conversation that influences where I'm going to be in the organization. And I want to work for somebody who I respect as a leader. So the law of respect, leaders are attracted to leaders they perceive to be better or more capable leaders than themselves. So, to attract the best leaders you can possibly attract, you must be the best leader you can possibly be. So, to attract the best leaders, in other words, if people perceive me to be a leader worth following, then I'm going to be the best leader I can possibly be to attract the best leaders, you know, for the organization. So, maximizing our leadership potential, this is where these two come together. Maximizing our personal leadership potential is essential to maximizing the quality of the leaders on our team. Because I think John is right. Leaders want to work for people or report to people they respect as leaders and to some extent feel like they might be better leaders than me. So again, if I'm not in my sweet spot, my leadership, not my leadership ability, but my leadership potential isn't maximized, which could potentially impact who would even want to work for me or with me or in our organization, if that makes sense.

26:49 Yeah, it does. No, there's lots of ripple effects from not getting this right. You actually write it this way, that high-capacity leaders want to work with leaders they perceive to be better than themselves. And I read that and I thought, okay, that's intimidating, but it's true. I know that because that's what I want. I'm attracted to a seat or an opportunity. if I perceive that the people leading me in the circles I'm in are better and I'm going to grow. And then John gives us this interesting. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, again, if you're a John Maxwell fan, he talks about this all the time. And I'll be honest, and I even say this in the book. The first time I was introduced to this idea that he talks about, I didn't like it. I pushed back on it. And over time, I'm like, no, he's right. You know, as offensive as this sounds. So here's the way he describes it. You've probably heard this before. I'll just read part of my notes. He says it this way. On a scale of 1 to 10, an 8 leader will not follow a 6 leader.

27:45 So on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the greatest leader ever, you know. So if you're an 8, you're going to have a hard time following a 6. You're not going to follow them long anyway because it creates too much tension. And I compare it to a rear-end collision. Everybody's moving in the same direction. But, you know, the 8 is to the 6, like, come on, come on, come on. Again, it's not a vision. her direction issue, it's a quality of the leader issue. So the moment, and this is the takeaway, the moment a leader steps away from his or her core competencies, their strengths, their effectiveness, their real-world capacity diminishes. Nines become eights, eights become sevens, not because their potential has changed, but because they're not playing to their strengths. Stepping away from our core competencies does not diminish our potential as a leader, but it does diminish our real-world day-to-day effectiveness. So, to put all that together, if I want to attract and keep the best leaders possible, I have to be the best version of the leader that I can possibly be.

28:52 And when I get bored and passionless, when there's so much on the calendar that there's no margin for leadership, when I drop down into management rather than leadership, it impacts the people that I work with or the people that are going to want to work with me. So this isn't just be the best you can be. This has real-world implications for the whole organization. Well, that's the big thing, the real-world implications. So I've experienced this. You know, when I step outside of my sweet spot, I've been told, someone on my team always says, you make things a little wonky. They say that to you? Yeah, that's just a slang for get back in your lane. Like things are getting off. So not only is it bad for me, but here's the thing that really I don't like. It frustrates the ringers on the team. And you know me. You know I like to have a roster full of ringers. And I want them to be in their sweet spot doing their best work. So if we don't get this right, we eventually will run off the really good people on our teams. You say it this way.

29:46 We maintain our potential while undermining the potential of the organizations we lead, in part because we make it difficult to recruit and keep high-capacity people. That is a scary thought. It's true. And I do tell the story in the book about my daughter-in-law who came to work for us. Oh, she's so high-capacity. She's so high-capacity. And the way we got her when she graduated from college, she went to work for a company that everybody watching or listening has heard of. and the department she was working in, they kept telling her to slow down. You just slow down. Well, you know, Danielle, you don't tell Danielle. There's no, that gear is not there. No, and she was like out of there. And I just thought, you just lost a ringer. She is, I mean, she's amazing. But, you know, so I said, come work for us. We will never tell you to slow down. That's so true.

30:39 Okay, so for the leader listening, they've heard all this, they know, my plate is too full. What should they do this week? Okay. So, two suggestions. One might be to have, if you have an admin assistant, executive assistant, to have them listen to this conversation. And to sort of create a paradigm or a context for your calendar, your schedule, what you're feeling and sensing. And it may give him or her permission, maybe they've not had before, to address some of this with you. And they're like, oh, good. I've been waiting for you to ask the question. I wasn't sure that, you know, we could put this on the table. So that's one thing. And again, the conversation between Diane and me at the end of the book, that might be a great place to start. Because again, going back to what we said last time in the other episode, you can't lead yourself by yourself. And the people closest to you are the people that can probably help the most with this.

31:34 The second thing is to, and this goes to what you just said, Holly, is to monitor your passion, your energy. One of my mentors years ago said the best, the most important thing a leader brings to his team or her team is their energy. And our energy, day-to-day energy, is tied to our passion for what we're doing. So if your passion is waning, that is a really, really big deal. That's not just a personal thing. That is an organizational thing. And so to acknowledge that and to address that. And if you were to say to me, Andy, well, how do I fix that? Here's what I would say. You're a leader. You know how to fix things. Admit the problem, acknowledge it, and you'll figure it out. That's how you got to where you are. So, but again, reframing, recontextualizing what you're experiencing, which is what we just did. Your calendar's too full. It's too full of things that you really don't need to be doing.

32:28 I mean, every one of them individually feels like it's critical, but, you know, the sum total, you know, it's killing you. Address that. Invite somebody to help you and go from there. That's so good.