Well, in leadership, we all make assumptions about what makes a great leader. After years of studying leadership, I've noticed that so many of our natural assumptions sound good, but they're often wrong and counterproductive. So today, we're going to talk about some counterintuitive mindsets that will empower you to do more, grow faster, and change more lives. The title of today's episode is Three Unexpected Mindsets for Growth.
Today, what I want to do is I want to talk to you about some counterintuitive mindsets in your leadership. What do we know about your leadership is we know that your mindsets matter more than you can imagine, and I'll state the obvious, but how you think shapes how you lead. The framework from which you start with in your mind, it develops the systems and application for how you specifically lead. And in the last episode, we introduced some of the most commonly embraced leadership myths.
misconceptions. We'll review those, and then we're going to look at the counterintuitive mindsets. Let's talk about what we covered last episode. Many of us wrongly believe in your leadership three things.
We tend to believe that to grow bigger, you must do more. To lead better, you must get closer. To lead bigger, you have to know more.
And admittedly, there is some truth in these ideas. Like early on in your leadership, to grow bigger, you do have to work harder than most. To go farther, to impact more, there are times you have to be hands-on. To get things moving, you have to know about a broad range of things.
But what I want to do is I want to introduce some counterintuitive ways of thinking, and these mindsets will empower you to do more, grow faster, and change more lives. The three counterintuitive leadership mindsets I want to talk about will be these. Number one, to go up, you must let go.
To go up, you must let go. Number two, to lead broader, you need to think higher. And number three, to reach more, you'll need to know less and empower more. Let's talk about them again. To go up, you must let go.
To lead broader, you need to think higher. To reach more, you need to know less and empower more. Let's talk about the first one. To go up, you must let go. In other words, to grow bigger, You actually must do less.
This is counterintuitive. Now, what do I mean by letting go? To help you visualize this, imagine you want to climb a rope. So maybe you're in your CrossFit class with everybody else, the music's turned up loud, and you're going to be the first one to climb the rope, or you're going to triumph for America, Ninja Warrior, whatever, okay? To climb a rope, what do you do?
If you're watching online or you can visualize this, to climb a rope, you got two hands on the rope. To go up, what do you have to do? You actually have to let go of one hand. to go up, to reach higher.
You have to let go to reach higher. To go up, you must let go. The same is true in leadership.
To go up, you must let go and empower others. So you may say, okay, Craig, in my leadership, what should I let go of first? And the answer is, I'm not sure, okay?
Because I don't know your situation. Well, what I wanna do is help you identify what you need to let go of. And you wanna ask yourself the question, what can only you do? If you can determine what only you can do, then you can determine what you can let go of.
What can only you do? And I want to push you to work to answer this question. And your answer should be way shorter than what you probably think.
Like the rest of us, you want to believe that you're more important than you really are. That's the way we all are. That's the way I am.
So I'm going to ask you, what are the things that only you can do? If you had asked me early on in the years of Life.Church, I would have said, well, I'm the only one that can manage the building. I'm the only one that can unlock it and the only one you can trust to lock it up. And that's true. I did it because I thought I was the only one.
I was the only one who could hire and develop the staff because I was the best at it. I was the only one really capable of making the financial decisions. And that felt really true to me. I'm the only one able to do the counseling and the weddings and the funerals and the baptisms. And I was the only one who could teach the new members class.
And I was the only one certainly. who could preach sermons on the weekend, and all those things felt true to me, but they weren't. And if they were even kind of true, because we didn't have the right people at the time, they shouldn't stay true. Why? Because I would be the limiting force.
So before long, I discovered someone that could manage the building way better than I could do. Early on, I was the best at recognizing and training talent. Now there are others that specialize this, and I learned from them. For a season, I was the best at understanding finances and cash flow and projections. Now we have teams of dozens of specialists that create spreadsheets and negotiate and buy in bulk and oversee the systems that create extraordinary financial efficiency.
Early on, I was the only one who could do funerals and weddings. Now we have teams of people capable of every aspect of pastoral care and can devote much more time to really loving and caring for people. Early on, I was the only preacher. Now we have lots of people who preach very effectively. What can only I do?
Well, in my personal case, I'm accountable to God for the church. And that doesn't make me more important. It makes me more responsible.
And I tremble with that responsibility. But I'm the only one who can set the tone and the direction and the vision of the church. That's what only I can do.
That's the only thing that only I can do. Everything else. And I mean everything else.
Everything else. Millions of things someone else can do. And eventually they can do better. So what can only you do?
Let's talk about the application. What I want you to do, when you can think about what only you can do, you're going to find that you're doing a lot of things that someone else can do. And so I want to ask you just specifically, what have you been holding on to you that you need to let go? What have you been holding on to that you need to let go? I want you to think about it.
I want you to name something, and then I want you to let it go. And I would encourage you to take time to wrestle with this question and suggest you do a regular audit. of what you do and what you can delegate. At the very least, do it annually.
More specifically, you may want to do it quarterly. If you're in a fast-growing organization, you'll probably want to do it monthly and sit there and ask yourself, what can I give to somebody else? And I'll tell you, for probably the first 15 years of Life.Church, I would sit down with my core leaders, and every year I would say, what three things am I going to take off my list and never do again? And this is not easy. It's scary.
It takes a lot of faith to empower people. Things don't always go well at first, but this is one of the best leadership rhythms you can develop, which is to consistently look at what it is that you can do to empower other people. And so I ask you the question again, what have you been holding on to you that you need to let go? If you can't name something right now, your future impact is currently being capped. You are the ceiling to it.
Counterintuitive mindsets. To go up, number one, you must let go. Number two, this is so important, to lead broader, you need to think higher. I'm going to recommend a book. If you haven't read it yet, please read it.
The E-Myth Revisited, E as in egg, but actually entrepreneur, the E-Myth Revisited by Gerber. I'll paraphrase one of his bigger quotes. He says this, he says, you don't just work in your business, you should work on your business.
You could say it this way. You don't just work in your nonprofit or in your church. You should work on your church.
And here's the problem. Too often, because we care so much, we just work in our business. We just work in our ministry.
And we don't set aside the time to actually work on our ministry or our business. And to do so, I would say it's important to disrupt your normal flow. You just get sucked into whatever is urgent and often don't work on what is important. And so occasionally you're going to want to work from a different place.
And it could be like a different office. Sometimes I'll just go to a different part of the building. It could be a coffee shop. You might sit outside. Occasionally you might travel to a different city.
Even just getting up in an airplane gets you off the ground. You start to think differently. You sit in a different city.
It clears up your mind. And the reason this is important is because some of the problems you're trying to solve, you cannot solve up close. You actually have to create distance. You need to get above the problems.
And when I talk about being too close to a problem, I'm not just talking close in proximity, but I'm talking about being too close emotionally. And this is a massive problem for leaders. If we go back to the last episode about managing the distance, where you have to create distance, sometimes or often, you actually have to work for what I call emotional distance.
Because you care so much, and because people are involved, and because you love people, you often lose. objectivity about what is the right thing to do. And if everyone else knows what the right thing to do is, and you don't do the right thing because you're too emotionally connected, eventually you lose credibility with the people and the problem is no longer the problem, you're actually the problem. So how do we create that emotional distance?
How do you think higher about a problem? First, and this sounds basic, but you have to be really clear, you have to answer the question, what problem am I trying to solve? Like, duh, Craig, that's so dumb.
No, it's not dumb. It's actually important. You have to be very clear and you have to name the problem and you have to make sure you're actually solving the problem, not trying to solve the symptom of the problem.
So often we're looking at the symptom and we're not getting down to the root issue of the problem. You have to be really, really clear. What is the root problem that I'm trying to solve?
Like, for example, people show up late for meetings. And so you think, well, I hired the wrong people. Maybe. Or maybe you haven't been clear on expectations. Or maybe your meetings suck.
You run bad meetings and no one wants to come to them, right? You know, what's the root cause of the problem? You may say, well, so-and-so has a bad attitude.
And so maybe that's a bad apple that you don't need on your team. Or the real problem is maybe her husband's cheating on her right now and she just can't barely function. Or maybe she's got a child with cancer and you don't know about it. Or maybe she didn't have the resources she needs to do her job. Or maybe her boss is being a jerk.
and you'd have a bad attitude if you were working for a boss as well. You wanna make sure you're not just addressing the symptom, but you get to the root of the problem. Maybe one department always turns their assignments in late and you're like going, they're all lazy.
Maybe they are. Or maybe you didn't clearly communicate the expectations. Maybe that department is understaffed. Maybe the leader lacks urgency and that's the problem.
You have to get to the root of the problem. So to think higher, ask. Questions that increase your emotional altitude. I'll give you three questions that I ask myself sometimes, one version of these, to increase the emotional altitude to create emotional distance.
I'll ask this. I got a problem. I don't know what to do about it.
This is hard. I'm stuck, okay? I'll ask, if a great leader replaced me, what would my successor do? What does that do? That creates emotional distance.
Now I'm looking more objectively. I'll ask this question. This is so good.
If no one's feelings got hurt, What would I do? I'm creating emotional objectivity. I'll ask this.
If I were advising someone else in the same situation, what would I tell them to do? It's crazy how I can be in the middle of a situation and don't know what to do, but if I'm advising myself, all of a sudden I'm creating emotional distance and I'm developing objectivity. Why does this matter? To lead better, you have to think higher.
I'll give you a personal example that was an embarrassing season of my leadership. Life.Church now is in 45 different locations in 12 different states. We didn't get there easily, and we made a lot of mistakes early on.
The first time we went out of my home state, Oklahoma, we actually attempted to start two churches in Phoenix. And we made, I made so many mistakes, it was ridiculous. One time I counted them all up, and I dialogued like 33 learning principles from what we did wrong, from what I did wrong.
And the two churches were both struggling, so we combined them to one, and we tried everything possible and made all sorts of mistakes. And it seemed like maybe the right thing to do was to actually shut it down, but man, we didn't want to. Our metaphors were like, you wouldn't kill your baby, you wouldn't kill a kid. And so, we fought and fought and fought for a long, long time trying to keep it open. And emotionally, I just couldn't let the people down.
I was struggling. I was so close. I couldn't see that.
This project could actually rob us from the potential from reaching a lot more people. And so I asked myself, what would my successor do if a great leader followed me? Like they would, they would call it quits. If no one's feelings got hurt, what would I do?
Well, we'd shut it down. If I were advising myself, what would I tell me? I'd say, I would say, Craig, you need to apologize, admit to the mistakes you made, and you needed to transition out.
And I hated it. and I regretted it, and I still feel bad to this day for my mistakes, but the right thing to do was to close those doors. And I want to just tell you, please listen to me.
If you are too close to any situation, you are losing effectiveness. And the odds are high right now that there is some situation that is close to you that you are not addressing because you care, and maybe you care too much. You've got to create some emotional distance.
You've got to force yourself to be objective. You have to think higher. To go up, you must let go. To lead broader, You need to think higher. Number three, to reach more, this is counterintuitive, to reach more, you'll need to know less and empower more.
You'll need to know less. And again, this is super counterintuitive because as a young leader, I mistakenly thought that the bigger we grow, the more I need to know. I need to know more. I need to know more.
But I learned the bigger we got, the more I need to empower. I don't need to know more. I need to empower better.
In fact, one time I attended a small event with some great leaders that I admired. I was just like honored to be in the room. And there was this one guy, the head guy, he was sitting by one of his teammates. And every time someone asked head guy, important guy a question, head guy, important guy would defer to his team member.
And I thought, man, head guy, important guy doesn't know much. And I realized this is why they're great because he doesn't have to know it all. He's empowering the right people who are- they're better than he is, and he's empowering other leaders. And that's one of the keys to his success. I'd say it this way.
Your importance isn't determined by what you know, but by who you empower. Let me say it again. Your importance is not determined by what you know, or your impact isn't determined by what you know, but by who you empower. You do not need to know everything.
In fact, if you want to do more, you need to know less and empower. more people to do and know what they're called to do. And not only do you not need to know, but you don't need to be there and oversee it when it's going down.
I talked to you earlier in the last session about being strategically present. Like sometimes no one can be there but you. You have to be present.
You have to show love. You have to be in the room. But more often than not, I want you to think about being strategically absent. I'll say it this way.
Your leadership impact isn't a reflection of what happens in your presence, but by what happens in your absence. Your potential, if it's limited by you being in the room, is always limited. But if you can empower others, then you have unlimited potential. I say it this way.
What you do and don't do when you are somewhere matters more than you can imagine. For example, any time that Amy and I visit a Life.Church location, we never, get up on the stage or the platform and speak. We don't get up and say, hey, we're here.
We don't give an announcement. It's like, we don't brag on the people there. We just come into the lobby and we just love on people.
And the reason is because if I stood up on the stage, for example, we just went to a building launch at Life Church Austin, Texas. If I stood up on the stage, essentially what I'd be saying with my presence is, move over, junior leader, to the local pastor, move over, junior pastor, the main guy is here. And the reason why I don't draw attention to myself is because it's not about me. I'm not going to be there the following week.
The local pastor will be there. And so my job is not to build my credibility or to get people looking at me, but to build his credibility and to help him have the equity to lead the people there. When you do empower others, here's the thing.
Often they're going to do well, and they're going to do things better than you, but they're also going to do them different from you. In fact, I want to just tell you right now. You may not like what they do.
And if it's different from you, you'll be tempted to stop it. And this is really important. To truly have a massive impact, you'll have to tolerate many things outside of your preferences. I see this all the time.
I don't. really like the way they're doing it. And you're like, I'm the leader. I need to tell them how they do it.
And truthfully, in some ways, in some things, you will. In some ways, sometimes, some things, you will demand full conformity, meaning this is the way we do it here. But in many things, you have to embrace flexibility. This is so important because there are so many things, like in our organization, I didn't choose.
I don't prefer. I wouldn't do. And some of them, I don't even like.
But other people do like them. Other people love them. And I've discovered that some of the best things about our church and our ministry and our leadership, some of the best things are the things that I wouldn't have chosen. And they're the things I don't prefer. So to truly have a massive impact, you have to realize your way is not the best way.
It's not the only way. Maybe it's time to let go. In the last session, we talked about the cost of not letting go.
If you want to keep what you have, hold on tight. But if you want something more, you have to let go. Now, why is it so difficult to let go?
And the reason is because you care. You want things done right. It's scary and it's difficult. I mean, I get afraid to empower people sometimes for the first time because they don't always do it the way you want them to do it.
And I want to tell you right now that you as a... leader. I want you to hear me. You have more in you than you know. There are leadership gears within you that have been untapped.
They're undeveloped. God created you and gave you extraordinary gifts, and you are not fixed. Your mind is not fixed. You have a growth mindset. You have more potential in you.
You can get more done. You can empower more people. You can impact more people. You have more in you than you know.
And The people around you have more in them than they know or you may embrace as well. And one of your top roles is to help. them succeed, to bring more out of the people around you.
That's love. You're loving them, and you're serving them. And if you believe in them, oftentimes before they believe in themselves, you can help pull out what God put in them. And when you do, this is when it gets so fun and so meaningful and emotional.
When you see them succeed and you see them win, you're crazy proud and you're thankful. And everything around you starts getting better. You become like a coach and a mentor or like a proud dad or a proud mom or a ridiculously thankful friend that you're helping pull something special out of the people around you. And so that's why I want you to know, it's like, I believe in you and I want you to believe in the people around you.
And I wanna work really, really hard to bring you content that's gonna help you grow in your leadership. And I wanna just say, thank you for trusting me. You can do more. You can do more.
There's so much more in you. And when you believe that, the world's not going to change overnight. So what are you going to do? You're going to do what I do.
You're going to listen to podcasts. You're going to attend conferences. You're going to read books. You're going to seek out mentors.
You're going to study great leaders. You're going to pray. You're going to get close to God.
You're going to believe that the Holy Spirit's working through you. And you can make a real difference in this world. A mentor told me, very emotional, before Amy and I started Life.Church, a mentor told me, I said, Craig, you're going to likely be disappointed by what you're able to do.
to do in the short run. And it was so true. Like in the early years, like I thought we're going to reach, you know, hundreds and we were reaching dozens. I was so disappointed.
And he said, you'll likely be very disappointed at what you can produce in the short run. He said, but you will vastly underestimate what God can do through a lifetime of faithfulness. And the fact that you're listening right now, I never dreamed that would be possible, that we could have a podcast that impacts hundreds of people. hundreds of thousands of leaders around the world.
And it didn't happen overnight. It happened with one day of faithfulness followed by another day of faithfulness followed by another day of faithfulness. And what I want you to hear is that's what you've done today.
You've been faithful. Like you've invested in your leadership and you're stretching yourself and you're growing and you're getting around better people and you're getting a little bit better. I want to help you continue to get better. We're talking about mindsets. I wrote a book.
It's actually a best-selling book of 20 books I've written. It's called Winning the War in Your Mind. Change your thinking. can change your life. I want to give some of these away.
If you want to go to YouTube, you can just type in the comment section, I want to win the war in my mind. I want to win the war in my mind. And we will choose five winners and give these books to help you win the war in your mind. And think differently. Don't conform to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
And then you'll be able to do what you're called to do. And you've done that today. You've gotten a little bit better today.
So I congratulate you. I celebrate with you. I love you.
love you because you're getting a little bit better. And we know that everyone wins when the leader gets better.