Great Leaders Play to Their Strengths, Part 2

3:36 Yeah. So going back to the broader context, this is one of the things that pulls leaders out of their sweet spot or out of their lane. As leaders, we have – generally, leaders have a high sense of responsibility. We just feel responsible. and if you're over division or department, you feel responsible for everything that happens in that division, everything that happens in that department or as a founder, I feel responsible for everything that happens in the entire organization. For employees I've never met and places I haven't even visited. So you feel that weight of responsibility. So consequently, there is a tendency, if we're not careful, to be drawn out of our lane, out of our strengths in order to delve into and to get involved in things that we're responsible for, but we don't have any competency in. So, what I wrote in my notes, and this is from the book, that leaders who assume that responsibility for necessitates involvement in eventually get in their way. So, leaders who assume that since I'm responsible for it, I need to be involved in it, they eventually get in their own way. So, for example, as you know, there are things that I'm not good at, but I'm responsible for. So, for example, I have no proficiency in, I have no education in, I have no training in capturing a live event. But every week in multiple locations, we are capturing live events. So, on the weekend or the weekday that I walk into the studio and start giving instructions to the team in there about capturing a live event with all the camera switching and all the things going on.

5:13 Things will not get better. They'll get worse. But, and here's the takeaway. Because I'm the boss, because I carry authority, because my words weigh so much, they may feel pressure to do what I ask them to do, even though it's not going to create a better product. So at the same time, if the capture is a disaster, I take responsibility for it. But to ensure that it's not a disaster, I stay out of it. So leaders who have a hard time differentiating between their responsibility and their proficiency, what they're educated for, trained for, what they have experience in, what they have intuition in, which we'll talk about later, this is a really big deal. And the smaller the organization, the more inclined leaders are to dip into those areas. And so there's a double whammy. First of all, we interfere with the people who know what they're doing. And secondly, we're spending our time on something we're not trained to do, not proficient in, and that time is being stolen from what we should be giving it to.

6:16 So this is just one of the reasons leaders kind of miss the, I don't know, what's obvious about, I mean, what's brilliant about, hey, you should play to your strengths. I don't think anybody argues with that. But we get drawn away, and this is one of the ways. Yeah, it's so true. Well, when you feel responsible, it's so tempting to get your hands in all the things. Right. So what does it look like? What does the discipline of actually staying out of the way look like? So here's what I wrote in answer to that question because this is so important. And honestly, as I was putting these answers together, once again, as we talked about earlier, it's like, am I doing that? Am I doing that? It's good accountability. Are the people here in the studio with us going, he talks a good talk and he needs to do that? So here's what I wrote down. We need to leverage our authority as little as possible. And I talk a lot about that in the book. leverage our authority as little as possible. Just because we're responsible for, just because we have the authority to leverage it as little as possible, because that ensures that I stay out of the areas that I'm not trained in and I'm not proficient. And second, and this is a broader topic maybe for another day, I just think leaders should make as few decisions as possible.

7:27 And early on in leadership, when you're put in charge of something, you feel like, okay, hey, this is my department. This is my division. This is my team. I need to make the decisions because I'm the leader. Great leaders don't make more decisions. Great leaders make fewer decisions because they've hired well, and they're trusting the people who have better intuition and more expertise to make those decisions. So one of the greatest gifts we can give people who report to us is this. You decide. You decide. You decide. You're more proficient. You have more expertise. You have more intuition. I'll take responsibility if it's a disaster. But in the meantime, you decide. You're actually really good at that. And at first, it's really intimidating because you're like, oh, I got to decide. Yeah, what if I mess up? What if I mess up? Yeah. But even the fact that you say, okay, I'll take responsibility. You're not in it alone, but I trust you to make that decision. Okay, that's so good.

8:20 And here's my kind of example of how I've lived this. when I stepped into this role, all the people that do the live programming, the Sunday morning event where thousands of people are in a room and we've got tech directors and lighting directors and audio directors. I didn't know. A green room full of musicians. Oh my God. Contractors, yeah. I've never sang the first note. I know nothing about any of that. Well, you did once at a Christmas production. I did and you did ask me not to do that again. That's true. Which I won't. That's not my sweet spot. I am not a singer. We should probably play that. No, that does not make any of these cuts. Yes. So when I did step into this role, it was intimidating because all of a sudden I'm the boss and they're asking me questions of things I don't really know that much about. But what I appreciate that exists in our organizations is that we have this system to orchestrate, evaluate, orchestrate, evaluate. So even when you don't know how to do the technical things, you kind of know when something's off.

9:18 Yeah. And that's really all you do is speak up in that orchestration evaluation process. So I found that to be a really helpful thing that we added in so that you can just keep your authority over without getting your hands in. So let me comment on that because there is a process that undergirds that. So one way to think of it is this. When I'm responsible for something I know very little about, the best approach is to evaluate, and you just said it, is to wait and evaluate outcomes rather than get involved in processes. Wait and evaluate outcomes instead of getting involved in processes. Where leaders get in the way is when they step into a process, something that's going on, and they use their weighty words because they're the boss, they're the director, they're the manager. And when they mess with processes, they're spending time in something they shouldn't. And, again, they're slowing people down. Just wait.

10:10 If you have a built-in evaluation mechanism, which we do in our culture, orchestrate, evaluate, as you said, you know there's going to be a time for evaluation. And unless you think it's just going to be an unmitigated disaster, which is, you know, rarely, you just wait, evaluate on the back end, trust your people in the meantime, but don't get involved in processes. Because generally speaking, again, the people who are involved with the processes are better at those particular processes. That is so good because we accidentally become big mess makers when we get in the middle of the process. We're in the way. And because we have authority, nobody's going to tell us, hey, unless you have, I should say nobody. There are people who work with me that would say, Andy, there's the door. Just let us handle that. And in fact, maybe we'll tell a story later about Diane saying, in fact, we talked about it last time. She said, give me your calendar.

11:04 Your involvement in your calendar is a process you don't need to be involved in. Trust me with the calendar. So anyway, we talked about that. That's so true. Okay, another reason leaders don't play to their strengths is that they never really even discovered them. So there's this whole lack of awareness thing that all of us have. None of us see ourselves completely as we are. And sometimes we actually enjoy doing the work that we're really not that good at. And people are hesitant to tell us that. So it's our job to become more aware. How can we as leaders, how can we recognize when that's happening and then become willing to shift? Well, again, I think we've mentioned this before. With all the tools that are available, there's really not an excuse for leaders not to know what their strengths are. So this is actually – this isn't an add-on. This is a responsibility. And when leaders don't know their strengths, again, because our words are so weighty, because we carry so much authority, this is, again, sort of a second reason why we venture away from this only do what only you can do because we aren't really aware of the things that we're best at.

12:09 So here's what I wrote in my notes. In fact, in the book, at the end of this chapter, I actually give some questions for readers to ask themselves to help them begin the process of figuring out what is my lane, what is my lane? And this is industry specific. It's job description specific. So while there's an inherent or talent or gifting that everybody has, matching that up or getting that in sync with the specific role a person's in is so important, but it makes them better at what they do. So here are a couple of questions I wrote in the book at the end of this chapter. What do you do that is almost effortless from your perspective, but seems like a daunting task to other people? That's one of the most important questions you can ask. Because when something is simple for me and you watch other people struggle with it and you're thinking, that's not all. Yeah, excuse me, let me do that.

13:04 Well, that means you have some intuition, which, of course, we're going to talk about. It also means you have some experience and some expertise and some giftedness. So what do you do that seems almost effortless from your perspective, but seems like a daunting task to others? And then the other question to ask, and this is why the job-specific, industry-specific part of this is so important, is what facets of your job energize you and what do you wish you could stop doing? Again, and because we're high-responsibility people, it's difficult for us sometimes to admit, you know what, I just don't want to do that anymore. I'm responsible for it, but I don't look forward to it. I hate it when I see that on my calendar. I need to give that away. Well, or I'd like to give that away. Well, chances are you should give it away because somebody else is going to be better anyway. And again, it diminishes our energy. So I think you've noticed this.

13:58 On my desk or my conference room table where I meet with staff, I have a little laminated card, and it has five questions. And these five questions are questions I don't go through all five questions every time I have a one-on-one. But every once in a while in a one-on-one, I'll just pick a question and say, hey, let's get off the agenda for a second. I want to know what's going on inside. And one of the questions is this. What do you wish you could spend more time on? What do you wish you could spend more time on? So when I surprise an employee or in a one-on-one to say, hey, we finished all that, just in general, what do you wish you could spend more time on? That's a cue as to what a person's wiring is or their encoding is, to quote Jim Collins. And again, discovering those things as soon as possible, again, gives us permission to say no, to have a not-to-do-anymore list, and to focus on our strengths. But the main thing is, if we don't know what they are, we won't focus on them.

14:58 We'll get outside of our encoding, outside of our strengths. And again, we interfere, and we're not working as efficiently as we could. And then that goes back to what we talked about last time. Yeah, I love that question. I feel like you've asked me that in a one-on-one before. And what is helpful is the pop quiz nature of it. It makes you just answer what comes to your head, which means that's what you really want to be doing. That's where you find energy and joy and chances are add value to the organization. And if I want the folks who report to me to be in their zone, that I need to know that, whether I can change their job description instantly or not, but find out that somebody's interested. Funny story about that. Years ago, I'm meeting with five of our campus pastors in the Atlanta area. And these guys are, you know, maybe 20 years younger than me. And I'm just asking them random questions. And I said, so I said, here's a question.

15:51 If you could do anything, you know, it's just, you know, the pop quiz. If you could do anything, what would you do? And immediately to my left, and you know this gentleman, he immediately said, I think before he thought, he said, I want your job. I knew you were going to say somebody said that. Yeah, I want your job. I'm like, and that wasn't threatening. Now I know what he wants to do. So, again, the nature of those questions allows things to surface that maybe we don't feel like we have permission for them to surface. but it's important personally. And again, it's important for the people who report to us. Yeah, and it's important because it is our job to discover our strengths, and then we have to redeploy ourselves. We have to have the discipline to kind of put us back in our area of strength. So in the book, I love this story. You tell a story, and you say, you enjoy interviewing, but somebody kindly let you know that you're not really that good at it. Which was, yeah, well, it seemed like it.

16:45 It's a kind person. I know her. Yeah. So you want to tell us? Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, this is a good example. So this is way back when we first started. We were just putting together a team. I forget, we may have had 20 employees at the time. Currently, we have like all over 500. So my assistant, administrative assistant, Diane Grant, who shows up in this book all over the place appropriately. So she her background was interviewing. She worked for a medical sales company and part of her job was to interview. So she she knew how to interview people. So she would sit in with me when I was interviewing folks to come work for us. And after I don't know how many of these torture sessions I put her through because I have I have no expertise, no training. So finally one day she said, can I talk to you about this? I'm like, yeah, yeah. Because I thought I was doing a great job. She said, you're not interviewing these folks.

17:45 You're really doing more recruiting than interviewing. And I'm like, what's the difference? She's like, well, recruiting is you're trying to get people. They already want to work here. By the time they have an interview with you, they've already been there. And I knew they'd already been through several interviews. She says, you're recruiting, not interviewing. And I'm like, I never thought about that. And then she began to talk about all these questions you're supposed to ask. I mean, she had this amazing metric for interviewing. And finally, I said, okay, I have an idea. You do it. You enjoy it. I'm terrible. Now, I could spend a lot of time trying to get better and everybody can get better at anything, but I'm like, I'm sitting here with an expert, why would I not hand that off? So from that day forward, I meet the people we are about to hire. I don't recruit and I don't interview. I basically just get to know them, sort of the final sign off. But again, fortunately, I had somebody working with me that said, Andy, as you said politely, you're not good at this. I am good at this. You could get better at this, but maybe you should just let me do this. That's a win.

18:50 That's a game changer. Well, she's so good at it. I don't hire anybody without them going through dieting because she's just so good. Okay, here's a third obstacle that leaders have when they're trying to play to their strengths, and it's their failure to develop other leaders. And they don't prioritize it, maybe because it's just never urgent. I've been in this organization 15 years, and so I've talked about this before. We have this – I always do a hand motion towards the cube. There's a cube that sits on my desk, a wooden cube, and it has six staff behaviors engraved in the side. And all those behaviors, they've really been embedded in the DNA of our organization. And there's one of them that really stands out for this conversation. It's replace yourself. Replace yourself. And I've heard you say this. Replace yourself and you will always have a place. So in other words, our job is to work ourselves out of a job, which that can sound scary to somebody because you probably like your job, but your job is to make room for the next people and to replace yourself. So why is that so necessary to becoming great? Yeah. So a little context in a growing organization, if you replace yourself, you'll always have a place because how many, I mean, it's sort of like in a sales organization, how many great salespeople can you afford?

20:10 All of them, right? I mean, if somebody's going to multiply sales, can you really have too many? So when you think about a leader who is committed to replacing themselves within the organization, if it's a growing organization, I mean, that's like a triple win. So this is one of our staff behaviors. Replace yourself. Look over your shoulder. Who has the potential to take your place and develop them? We're not asking you to develop 10 people or eight people or four people, but there ought to be somebody in your realm of influence that you think has the potential to ultimately step in and take your place. What I wrote in my notes is, and here's kind of the pushback to this, and for founders in particular, when you start an organization, it's both natural and, I guess, necessary to do everything. It's necessary because there's nobody else to do it. And it's natural because you're trying to set the standards, set the pace, set the culture, culture being this is how we do it here.

21:05 But if you stay in that role too long, you become the lid to the growth of the organization. So while it's natural and necessary in the early years, it's absolutely essential that as soon as possible, leaders begin handing off more and more responsibility. And that is leadership development. And you can comment on this, Holly, but I think sometimes when leaders hear about leadership development, they think, oh, I got to have a class and I got to lecture. and I have to have an outline and we have to have homework assignments. And it's like, I do not have. Okay, that's not really how leaders are developed. Leaders are, it's simpler than that. It's giving somebody responsibility for something, hands off, let them do it, check back in, evaluate, let them do it again. It really goes back to orchestrate and evaluate as it relates to leadership development.

22:00 And to the degree that we're willing, and it goes back to staying in our lane, is to the degree that we're willing to let go, give people actual responsibility and not just, you know, abandon them and hope it works out, but essentially actually delegate, which means you check in. That's really what leadership development is. And everybody in just about any organization has the potential to invest in at least one other person with the hopes that maybe they have the potential to either take your place in this organization or one day leave and do something in another organization. And one of the things that I'm, because we've been doing this for 31 years, one of the things that I love, and we just saw an example of this at the Global Leadership Summit, I am thrilled by the fact that so many people that have come into this, you know what I'm going to say? So many people come into this organization, develop some skills, found their lane in terms of especially production, video editing, all kinds of things. Then, essentially, in many cases, left our organization and went on to do other things in other organizations that we continue to work with.

23:06 So there's a sense in which it is okay to work to replace yourself within the organization. But if they don't stay in the organization to celebrate that, because for the rest of their career, you've had, you know, you've had input. And that goes back to one of our other things on the Cube, six staff behaviors, is to remain open-handed, remain open-handed. But bottom line is leaders will be dragged out of their lane if they're not developing other leaders and multiplying themselves. And every leader has the potential to do that. if they're secure enough not to worry that somebody's going to be better than them, and if they're really committed to the health of the organization. Well, this is such an important moment. First, it does take security because you're always going to wobble at first when you give some responsibility away of what if they do it better or what if I'm not needed. But you create multipliers, which is what leadership is all about. And I remember when you handed me this role, it was like, okay, you lead all the staff, which means you do all the staff meetings, like, get up there and figure it out.

24:09 And I did. But there's only one way to grow, really. It's all the way just pushing yourself through it when you're not really quite ready. Well, and being open to evaluation and asking questions. And we had conversations along the way. So one of the things I wrote, and you just touched on, is that great leaders multiply their efforts by multiplying leaders, which multiplies results. And in a growing organization or to have a growing organization, you have to have that. And again, leadership development is not a class. It's not a lecture. It's not a curriculum. I mean, those things are great. It's a go and do. It's a go and do. And come back and tell me how it went, or I'll tell you how it went. Exactly. I'll give you some feedback. Yeah. Okay. So we're distinguishing between a couple of things. We're going to distinguish between our authority and competence. Yeah. We're going to hone in our self-awareness, and we're going to develop other leaders. And then you say, if you start operating like this, that there's an unintended outcome, and it's a really good one.

25:07 It's that we're going to have less unhealthy stress, which yay for less stress. We all want that. So unpack that for us a little bit. Yeah. So, again, this is the common sense part. This isn't the, oh, what an amazing insight. But it's what we forget, and it reiterates why this whole conversation is so important. When we're working in our zone, when we're working in the area where it just flows, the time flies by, you want more to do of it than less to do. If somebody were to say, hey, what do you wish you could spend more time on? You would say this. This is what I want to spend more time on. When we're in that zone, we experience far less stress. In fact, when you're doing what you were born or created to do, it energizes rather than depletes your energy. And imagine an organization where the majority of employees are able to give 70 or 80 percent of their energy or time to that. Well, they're in a better mood.

26:06 They're more energized. When they go home, there's energy as opposed to, oh, no, tomorrow's Thursday, just one more day. Yeah, almost made it. Yeah, yeah. But so, again, to go the distance as a leader, especially staying in that place creates more energy, creates more passion. And as one of my mentors told me years ago, and this was helpful to me because I wasn't applying it at the time, he said, the best thing you can bring to your team is your energy. And the only way to stay energized is to be in the zone that brings me energy. So I'm responsible for finding that place for me, but I'm also responsible for finding that place for the other folks in our organization. And then you've got everybody rowing in the same direction with the same amount of energy. And, you know, regardless of what kind of company you're in or industry you're in, that's just a good thing. Yeah, because that's what we want.

26:59 That's what the people that work for us want. They want to be in their zone. That was one of my favorite things that you said because the work actually becomes the reward. Yeah, right. Which that's so – everybody wants that to be their day job. Yeah. Okay, I laughed when I read this. You say, my counseling skills compete for last place with my interviewing skills. For similar reasons, I was a good advisor. I was a terrible counselor. Yes, when I would see counseling on my schedule. I can't even imagine you doing that now that I've known you. Well, I was terrible at it. But again, this goes back, when you first start off, it's natural and necessary to do everything. And in those days, it was necessary for me to do premarital counseling, all kinds of counseling, because I'm the pastor and that's what pastors do. Literally, if it's two days later, you know, I look at my calendar and it's Monday. And on Wednesday, I'm like, I'm already sad because it would deplete my energy even before I got to it.

27:59 And it's not that it's not important. It's extraordinarily important. And fortunately, we have a network of people who can't wait to sit down and just listen. To the same things over and over because counselors are great listeners. They are. I was an advisor. I didn't want to listen. You know, 10 minutes in, it's like, okay, got it, got it. Because there's only three problems. I've identified which one is yours. Then I start talking, right? So I was terrible. So it depleted my energy and I was no good at it. And again, it's a good example of finally handing off something that, again, put me back where I needed to be. And I, you know, I lost something that sapped my energy. Again, for a while, those things are necessary, but you can't live there or you just start hating life. Yeah. Well, that's so important because we want to have a sustainable pace. Right. Like part of finishing well, part of being great is being able to sustain your pace and stay in your lane. And just like you didn't do counseling, we now have this huge department that does counseling.

28:58 A network of counselors. It services so many people, which the organization scaled because you stayed in your lane. So a sustainable pace and scaling the organization, that's just winning right there. Yeah, and again, it goes back to the organization is well-balanced, but I'm not. I just have my two or three things, like most leaders do. Okay, there's an important exception to all of this. Right. You say that sometimes people need to step outside of their zone or outside of their strength, and you call it symbolic leadership. Yeah. So how is that different from just getting back in the way? Okay, and this does seem like a contradiction in terms. But I went deep on this. I tell a wonderful story about my dad I won't go into today that he modeled this so well. And here's the idea of symbolic leadership. Symbolic leadership is I'm going to intentionally move out of what I know my lane is in order to support someone else in the organization who needs some either extra help or as a way of saying what you are doing is so important. I want to come help you or I want to come work for you.

30:03 And when you step out of the zone to work with another department or another division in an area where they know this isn't your thing, you know this isn't your thing, so you're the boss. You tell me what you need me to do. And what that says is it just reminds teams what you're doing is so important it is worth my time to help you. But here's the key, and this is important. It's temporary and it's strategic. It's temporary and it's strategic. You don't stay there or, again, you work against the very thing we've talked about, but it's strategic. You look for those opportunities in a crunch time, the busy times. When somebody's out for a while, you say, you know, look, let me step in and help with it. Oh, no, no, no, no. I want to do that because what you're doing is important. What your department's doing is important. I'm not going to be great at it, but just tell me what to do. Let me do. But it's temporary and it's strategic.

30:55 And it goes back to really what sort of a life mantra for me is do for one what you wish you could do for everyone. Do for one what you wish you could do for everyone. Can't do it for every department. Can't do it for everybody. But I can do it for you. It's a strategic time to do it. And then I'm going to get out of your way because you know what you're doing. So when leaders look for those opportunities, and again, go deep on this in the book. I'll tell this lunch lady illustration I won't bore you with today. But what we have to resist as leaders is this idea that if I do it for one, I have to do it for everyone. That is absolutely not true. In fact, doing it for one, when people in your organization know you can't do it for everyone, that is symbolic leadership. So we need to look for those opportunities, take those opportunities, but spend the majority of our time doing what only we can do. Oh, I love the temporary and strategic because you give yourself permission.

31:53 I'm not staying here long. I'm just doing this for a moment. In fact, in a meeting last week, I saw you tell somebody who's just taken a major arm of our organization over to keep this idea of do for one what you wish you could do for everyone front and center in his leadership. And what struck me as you were sharing that advice, Tim, is it is for that person, but it's just as much for us because we stay connected and in tune and human. Yeah. With what people are really going through. And so I think that's, I wish every organization had that because that just makes it a better place to work when we can relate to people. And those stories, and you don't do it for this reason, but when a leader steps out of their place to do these kinds of things, this is why the story about my dad is so powerful. Eventually, many people, maybe everyone in the organization hears about it because people tell those stories. It's like, oh, she came down here.

32:49 Oh, I saw her. It's like, really? It's like, yeah. Oh, again, it's not about, you know, self-importance. It's about, no, it's showing value for what everybody in the organization does. Because when you've hired well, there are no non-essential personnel. There are no non-essential personnel. So every single person in the organization, and we're going to talk about this in a few weeks, is essential. Consequently, anything I can do to help somebody who's essential, it's essential to the organization. But it's temporary and strategic. That's so good. So as we wrap up essential number two, playing to our strengths, you give some questions. You talk about them during the book. Your listeners should pick up a copy for that. But for everybody listening or watching right now, I want you to give them a homework assignment this week. What charge would you give to our listeners? Good question. So because your fully exploited strengths are of far greater value to your organization than your marginally improved weaknesses, because as we've talked about, a weakness is always going to be a weakness.

33:49 Because of that, you should do whatever it takes to discover your strengths. And while there are tools to help you do that, you can actually fast track the process this week by processing this content with some of the people in your organization, the people you work most closely with, because they know what your strengths are. And hopefully you've created a culture where they feel free to let you know. So here's my suggestion. Here's your homework. Begin with these two questions. First question, say to them as a group or maybe to an individual, if you controlled my calendar, if you controlled my calendar, what would you schedule more time for me to do? In other words, what do they wish you would give more of your focus to as it relates to the organization? Second question, and you can't bristle, okay? Ask them this, where do I get in the way? Where do I get in, or maybe ask it this way, where do I get in?

34:44 your way. Again, they know, and hopefully they will tell you. For those of us in leadership, especially organizational leadership, what we don't know can hurt us, and ultimately, it can hurt our entire...