EntreLeadership - #240: Clay Scroggins—How to Build Your Influence

Episode Date: January 1, 2018

One of the most common misconceptions we all have about leadership is that it’s the same thing as authority, according to lead pastor of North Point Community Church, Clay Scroggins. During his 10-year tenure at the Alpharetta, GA-based megachurch, Clay has learned that nothing could be further from the truth. Instead, he has come to the conclusion that the real currency of leadership has nothing at all to do with being in charge but rather with influence. And that’s really great news, because every single one of us has the ability to be influential. The key is first figuring out who you are. Join us to find out where to go from there so you can start leading today. entreleadership.com/podcast How To Lead When You're Not In Charge The Four Behaviors Cheat Sheet 2018 Small Business Marketing Trends Report Want expert help with your business question? Call 844-944-1070 and leave a message for Ken with the details. You could be featured on a future podcast episode! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

helping business leaders grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is Andre Leadership. Now, here's your host, Ken Coleman. Coming to you from the Music City, this is the broadcast of leaders, by leaders, four leaders. Thank you so much for joining the conversation. Oh my gosh, 2018 is here. I'm still not over you, 2017. I'm still not over you.

It was a great year. Where did you go? Well, we're excited. It's going to be a great year in 2018. Welcome back. Hope you had a wonderful holiday. And you are refreshed and ready to go to have a great 2018. Our feature conversation is with Clay Scrogg. He's the author of a new book entitled How to Lead When You're Not in Charge, leveraging influence when you lack authority. This is a great topic. We've never taken a deep dive on this. this kind of topic on Entree leadership. I'll tell you a little bit more about that in just moments. Also, Clay sat down with our Entree leadership team at lunch with our senior vice president, Daniel Tarty, and took some questions from the team. So we've got the audio for that little extra content that is really, really good. And of course, we're going to give you free resources, one from Ontario Leadership and one

from our friends at InfusionSoft. So Clay Scroggins, just a little bit of a background. We're going to dive right in. Clay is the lead pastor of North Point Community Church, a mega church in Alpharetta, Georgia. If you don't know who Andy Stanley is, who's a bestselling author, and the founding pastor of North Point Community Church, still preaching, still leading. But he has brought Clay along, and thus the relevance to this book. Clay started out early on. We're going to go over that.

You'll hear his story, and you'll hear how big the church is, and you'll hear his journey, which makes this book so very. relevant. This is absolute must listen for your team, whether they're in leadership, middle leadership, not in a leadership title. How do they cultivate influence? This is so good. I cannot wait. Here is my conversation with Clay Scroggen. Well, folks, this is exciting. Clay Scroggins joins me here in our Entree Leadership Studios. The book is how to lead when you're not in charge, leveraging influence when you lack authority. Clay, great to have you. I think this is is a very important message. Appreciate you being with us. And I got to tell you, before we dive into this thing, Daniel's Hardy, who leads Entree leadership, has been going bananas about this book

well before it came out. Clay spoke to our team a little bit earlier today. I think this is fantastic because there's so many leaders right now that have just leaned in and they're going, okay, this is absolutely huge. You got me. I'm not in charge. Give me the goods, right? But before we dive into some of the great content of the book, I want people to get to know you. So I'm going to set up a little bit and lead you and you just take it away. So, Several years ago, you get the opportunity to intern at a mega church. Now, people get that term. But Andy Stanley, probably one of the most respected evangelical pastors in America,

large church. You're talking thousands upon thousands upon thousands coming every week. And the organization as the church is just going bananas. And you come in as an intern. I love this story because we can't talk about the book until people get that you really do understand what you're writing about. So how did you get the opportunity to come? in Georgia Tech student, an engineering degree, and you go to be an intern at a church? What's going on? So I actually wanted to be a high school intern, but I called and said, hey, is that available?

This is like 1999. And North Point was a couple years old. And it had already, they had one high school intern. It had already been filled. And so they said, hey, we got a spot on our facilities team. Would you like to work on our facilities team? And I was like, well, I know how to work a broom and I can stack chairs. And so I did it. And so that was my summer. You can imagine, summer of 99, you can imagine how proud my parents were. Yeah, you call.

When I called them and say, I'm a facilities intern at a church. Were you already at Georgia Tech at this point? Yeah, I had just finished my freshman year at Georgia Tech and was studying industrial engineering and got this internship at North Point. I had fallen in love with North Point. North Point is a great organization. Andy's an excellent communicator. but he's a fantastic leader. I had a faith.

I came to college with a faith, but my faith just began to explode when I started to serve and get involved at North Point. You start as an intern. That's how you get in. That's right. That was my foot in the door.

There you go. And this is a summer experience. Take us to the moment where you actually become some type of full-time staff or what role was it? Yeah. Yeah, so I graduated from Georgia Tech.

I like to say this legitimately happened. I'm sitting in the registrar's office. I was struggling to graduate. I tell this lady the registrar, I say, ma'am, if you will give me this degree, I will swear to you that I will never use it. And so she did. So they let me out with an engineering degree, but I was going to do ministry. I already knew, hey, I'm going to go to seminary. So I moved to Dallas, Texas, went to seminary, and then 06 moved back to Atlanta as a high school pastor.

And then I've bounced around. I was a high school pastor at one of our campuses, moved to North Point. And he's got three kids and all three of his kids were in the high school ministry that I led at North Point. Okay. So that was the greatest amount of job pressure I have ever had. Yeah, right. That was a moment where I was like, I cannot screw this up. Exactly.

But they have incredible kids and our incredible parents and everything worked out. Okay. And then became a campus pastor. We call a campus pastor's lead pastors of that location and moved back to Brownsbridge, one of our other campuses. And then, let's see, 2015, because about three years ago, I became the, lead pastor of North Point Community Church in Alpharetta. So how long? You just gave us a fast...

That was 10 years. A 10 year career. So that's a 10 year process. Yeah. Unbelievable. Now, I'm going to dive in here in just moments, but I want people to understand how big the church is, kind of an annual budget. I just want some of these business people to understand this is like, this isn't

just your daddy's church. I would say, you know, we probably have 600 total employees, total budget. This year, we're going to come close to $100 million. Yeah. In giving on an average weekend. There's, I mean, what's crazy is we're trying to figure out this digital explosion that's happened in the world because we'll have 30,000 people in attendance, but we will have this in 2017.

We'll hit probably 70, maybe 75 million views. Yeah, it's extraordinary. Yeah, it's extraordinary. On message stream apps, podcasts, that kind of stuff. So, a large reach for a church. Yeah, absolutely. So it's a big, big, big organization. And so you get this opportunity and you're in this role or you're leading this campus.

Of course, Andy has seen you grow and he continue to trust and give you more opportunity. I want to read just a smidge of the forward, which Andy writes in the book. Again, I got to interrupt you. I've had so many people say the forward alone is worth the book. That doesn't say a lot about the book, but it when I read the forward, I was like, what an incredible couple of pages. It really is. It really is. It really well done. It really is good. And it's where I start the interview. So I concur. Several years ago,

this is Andy writing, okay, about Clay. And it's the very last page, page 13 of the forward. He says several years ago, I asked him Clay at the last minute to do the teaching at our bi-monthly all-staffinging. How many people in that room? Five, 600. Five, 600 people. He chose to talk about what he had learned about leading beyond his title, position, and authority. It was amazing. I remember thinking I could never talk about this with any moral authority because I'm in charge. My wife Sandra turned to me and said, this needs to be a book. I agreed, but didn't mention it to Clay. That's true. Sometime later, he asked me if I thought this would be a good book topic. I said absolutely. Now, I start with that for a couple reasons. It's a great endorsement, number one. Number two, I love that you had been thinking about this

years ago, and you go, all right, last minute, he comes to you last minute, and you go, this is what I'm going with. Why? Yeah, I mean, part of it. Was it that. fresh. Yeah, it was super fresh. It was about a month old. I mean, I don't know if you do this very often. I don't. But fortunately, I had just recently sat down at an open notepad and I thought, what am I learning right now? Oh, yeah. It's a great exercise. It really is to say, hey, I'm going to look back on the season I just went through and try to try to synthesize or encapsulate what I'm learning right now. And so I had done that and that phrase had hit me. And I, And I do feel like, I don't know that I would have bumped into this book had I not been in a multi-site organization.

I feel like being in a kind of franchise type organization where we have multiple locations and one big central team that passes out, hey, here's the direction and it's your role to execute. I feel like that's what really helped me bump into a lot of these difficult lessons. But that phrase had popped into my head, gosh, I'm trying to figure out how do I lead? Yeah. And I'm not in charge. That's a tricky dance because most leadership content's written to the person correctly in charge. That's exactly right. And as a result of that, you cover this a lot in the book.

So we'll just go there. Let's go. Because you brought up a great point. If all these leadership books that exploded on the scene, call it 25, 30 years ago, and there's no shortage of leadership books coming out every week. Yeah, they're not. And so they're written for the person who's leading. So what happens is, just by nature, the psychology of that is, well, I'm not leading right?

So this is a good book to read. That's right. And I should probably digest it, but not do it because, well, you know, this is for when I am leading. Is that what happens? It's a bit of a trap, isn't it? I think so. I think it's a myth. That's what I discovered.

Unfortunately, I discovered it through every promotion that I got, I had more authority. And so I thought, oh, here we go. Like, I've got more, I've got more ability now to be able to make decisions and make the call and execute what we're going to do. and I started realizing more and more, oh, wow, I still don't have enough. I still don't have enough authority. And I bumped into this lie that we believe that says, I got to be in charge in order to lead. And the flip side of that is until I'm in charge, I'm not going to lead.

I'm just going to sit back and wait. Which that's what I was doing, which is so frustrating to look back on now because I think, what was I waiting on? What was I waiting? I was waiting on somebody saying, okay, here's more authority, here's more opportunity. we were giving you the keys. And it turns out I had them all along, but I didn't know that because I thought leadership was authority. And I'm trying to learn that leadership is not authority leadership. As John Maxwell has said many times, leadership is influence.

That's what leadership is. It really is. Yeah, I do believe it's a trap. It's something that we all have the temptation to believe. Yeah. All right. So I'm going to dive in here, folks, because so much in this book, we're going to jump to page 52. And this is in the chapter titled Identity Crisis.

And I love this. I love that you take this on identity because it's huge. And we've just begun to touch on the outer edge of this. I'm going to tee up here. Page 52, you write, the clearer you are about who you are, the more consistent you will be with others. So let's stop there. There's a few more. But I'm just going to kind of, we're going to go through one at a time because this is a great, great section of the book.

In fact, if you tear this page out as a young leader, this is a one. this is 101 stuff. Yeah, I agree. I applaud you for this because this is really, really good. So what does that mean? The clear I am about who I am, the more consistent I'll be with others. What does that mean? What's that look like?

So I had these behaviors that I knew had helped me, and they were things I was trying to apply. But I started thinking through the process of, well, if I'm going to try to help somebody, if I'm helping myself lead without authority, what do I need? And more than anything, I think identity is so crucial. because leading with authority right or wrong, it gives you at least a sense of power or a sense of authority. Now, great leaders don't leverage that, but it at least does.

And so I think learning to lead without it, you have to be even more secure in who you are because if you're going to have the wherewithal, the intestinal fortitude is my high school baseball coach used to say. Yeah, I love that. got to do. If you're going to have the courage to go and challenge your boss or to lead your peers, even though, you know, we've all sat in meetings where you don't have the authority in the room, but you're hoping to sway the room, you know, if you're having to struggle through,

do these people like me, do they respect me, do they think that I have anything worth bringing to the table? If you're wrestling through all that stuff, Ken, you know it, it's just going to, you're going to end up doing you'll cave to the situation. You will. Thus the challenge to be consistent. That's right. You will not be consistent with the people around you. So the more secure you can be in who you are, I believe the better you can lead whether you have authority or not. That's right.

I do think it's central to, it's central to all leadership, but it's particularly central leading without authority. That's right. Okay. So the next one, and again, folks, just rolling to these. The clearer you are about who you are, the more confident you'll be about what you do. Yeah. So the consistency is about how we act with others. But then there's that true just good old fashioned confidence.

Like, okay, I feel good about this. That's right. I know who I am. I know what I think about it. I know what I'm weak in. I know what my blind spots are. And I can be confident about, hey, I believe that I have been put on this earth for this moment and I can at least step up to the plate. Yeah.

I want to dive in on this one too. The clear we are about who we are, this idea of confidence comes from. I know why I think what I think. That's right. So when you're leading up, many times you're in a situation where you have to make your case. Yes. And confidence comes not from attitude and looking in the mirror every morning going, I'm special, right? It comes from I know why I believe what I believe.

I've done the homework on the situation or whatever it is. There's where confidence comes from because then the leader is looking at you and they may hit you 80 different ways and you've got to defend it. That's right. But you defend it from a place of confidence. Which is hard to do because usually, the leader feels smarter, feels more powerful, has been doing this longer. That's right. So the ability to stand there and go, you know what, I think this direction is worth trying

and I feel enough sense of confidence to be able to make my case. The clearer you are about who you are, the less concerned you'll be with the opinions of others. How big of a deal is the opinions of others when you're not the top guy or top girl? Yeah, I can't speak to the way this works in the business world, but in church world, everybody's got an opinion about what's going on on Sunday. That's right. And to your point earlier about caving,

how many times have we all caved to, I think I sense the direction we need to go, but I'm afraid that people might not like it or they might not follow me. And so I'm going to, I end up waffling. And that's why I began with identity, because I just think identity is so. I mean, you could honestly, Ken,

you know, you could begin any conversation with, well, we've got to talk about identity because it's so crucial to life. Absolutely. It's so much more important than trying to give people tips and tricks on how to lead. That's right. I mean, you can't just read a leadership book and apply it without knowing, having a clear sense of who you are. So I just think it is so crucial.

Last point here, and this is my favorite, the clearer you are about who you are, the less confused you will be by your emotions. Yeah. The really super great leaders, Clay, have such a great grasp on their emotions. They don't have total control. No. They have grasp. Yeah. That's a great point.

You know, our emotions, they should be a part of our lives, but too often our emotion, we let our emotions sit in the driver's seat. Yeah. And I think having a clear sense of identity gives me the decisiveness to take that emotion and move it to the passenger seat and say, hey, I'm feeling insecure right now, but I'm not going to let that drive me. I'm going to move it to the passenger seat. I'm going to pay attention to it.

I'm going to deal with it. but I'm not going to be dealt with by that emotion. Thanks for underlining that. Listen, I love that. It's a really great exercise. Again, page 52, it's great. You ought to put it on your mirror young leaders for sure. Not just young leaders.

I mean, if you're not in the lead position as a leader, it's a really great exercise to look at every morning. Okay, jumping ahead, reclaim cabosh. This is really good. I have ADHD, so I'm looking through doing research on the book, and I go, well, this jumped out at me. So I immediately went to this chapter, like, what in the world is you talking about? I want you to set it up. And then I've got a follow-up question. So what do you mean when you say reclaim kabash?

Am I saying that right? Yeah, you are. I've heard it different ways. Yeah, that's why I'm asking. The place that I've wrote about that when I thought about this word, I thought about there's a Seinfeld episode where the guy's name is Crazy Joe Devola. And he leaves this voicemail on Jerry's machine. And he says, hey, Jerry, I heard you put the kibosh on my deal with NBC.

Well, I just want to let you know, Jerry. that I'm going to put the kibosh on you. I have kibosh before and I will kibosh again. And it's like the sinister moment that Joe DeVola has. So I don't know if it's kibosh or kibosh. I don't know. I've always heard it kibosh. Okay.

Joe Duvola definitely says I put the kibosh. But I started thinking through, okay, what am I supposed to do with this ambition that's in me? Because I want to lead more. But I don't want to be subversive to the spot that God has put me in. I am under a leader. I'm clearly under a leader. I tell the story all this.

Tom Ken, recently this lady was at our church and she's standing in line asking if she can get her picture made with me. And I was like, this is unbelievable. No one, I mean, like ladies in high school used to line up to get their picture made with me. Right. Right. Absolutely. Well, no, actually, no. Me either. Not true either. So I couldn't believe it. And turns out she thought I was Andy Stanley. Oh, that's hilarious. And when I tell her that I'm not, she puts her phone back in her pocket and walks off. Yeah, of course. So I know what it's like to work for someone. That's what I'm doing. but I have a sense of ambition. I feel like it's in me to lead more.

Ever since I was a kid, I've wanted to lead more. And I don't know what to do with that. So I was wrestling through with this, and I thought about the way we were created, the creation story in Genesis 1, there's two mandates that God gives us. He says, number one, go fill the earth. That's fun and terrific.

Number two, he says, go subdue the earth. Go bring the earth under your, bring the plants and the birds and the beasts and put it on bring it under your control not to snuff it out and to just make it do what you want it to do but to let it thrive to make something good with it which i think is what great leadership is it's making order out of things so that they flourish and that hebrew word there is the verb cabash and i thought now that's really fascinating that god has put the mandate of cabash on us but yet we've perverted it somehow.

Because when Joe DeVole is talking to Jerry Seinfeld, he's not saying, Jerry, I'm going to help you flourish. No. He's saying, Jerry, I'm going to squash your idea. Yeah, I'm going to shut it down. I'm going to shut it down, which is authoritative leadership. That's what we have made leadership is we've made it, this authoritative. I got to be in charge and now shut up and sit down because I'm in charge and you better

listen to me. And so the chapter is really about reclaiming that healthy sense of ambition. I think it's okay to every leader that's listening. I think it's not just okay. I think it is the fingerprint of God that you want to lead more. I think that's normal. I think that's healthy. But now you've got to figure out what does that mean.

And then Jesus and Mark 10 said, hey, do not be like those leaders that lured their authority over others. But watch the way I did it. Watch the way I'm doing it. And he said, follow me. I became the least of these. I became the servant. So I think he's giving us a model on how to reclaim kibash or kibosh. The follow-up is we've established that the ambition to lead, the ambition to succeed, to be all that you are created to be.

Yes. We believe that. That's the theology. Yeah. That's the Ken Coleman show right there. Well, it is. It absolutely is. Thank you very much.

We appreciate that little plug. But let's talk about it. What does it look like? Because we have people leaning in right now. And they're going, okay. So, Clay, you just told me it's okay for me to want more. But when does ambition begin to go from healthy to unhealthy? Curious how you would define it.

Draw a picture. What's that line? Because I'm telling you, this is something I struggled with mightily. Yeah. And through maturity, my faith growing. And then obviously being with a strong leader like Dave, learning how to figure that out and still wrestle with it on some level, not as much as it did. I don't know that it ever goes away. What does it look like? What's unhealthy ambition?

I mean, the way I see it, I see it as a spectrum. And I see on one side, you've got the, hey, get out of my way because I'm going to lead no matter what. And it's the leader that maybe is thinking today, I got to leave the organization I'm in so that I can go. And the great thing is God uses that. I mean, a lot of great things have started because of people that said, hey, get out of my way. I got an idea and they're not going to let me do it here. So I'm going to go find my own frontier where I don't have to work for anybody and I don't have to be under authority. The truth, though, is that, All leadership works best under authority. So you're never going to find a frontier where you can just lead without any restraint at all. We know that that's not the healthiest. It's just, hey, I can only work alone. I can only work by myself and I can't work for anyone else. That doesn't really work. But on the flip side, it can't be this passive O until I'm in charge.

I'm just waiting. So I'm going to sit back and I'm just going to be a yes man. I'm just going to do exactly what you want me to do. But then once I get in charge, I'm going to pull my gun of authority out and I'm going to wave it around and say, hey, there's no sheriff in town. It can't be that either. Yeah. So there's somewhere in the middle.

And I think the key really is, who am I doing this for? You know, this is what's difficult for me. I've done a lot of speaking with secular businesses and organizations. And they asked me real specifically, hey, please don't talk about God. And I can talk about how to lead when you're not in charge without talking about God. But I do think faith has such a huge part of this because you've got to ask the question, who am I doing this for? Like is the point of leadership to get me more power, to make me more popular, to get people to do what I want them to do? Is leadership other people doing things to make my career better?

Or has God given us the gift of leadership to steward for the good of others to his glory? That's perfect. That's the tension is to go, hey, can Ken Coleman have ambition? Sure. If he wants to help other people and make their lives better. He better. He better. And he probably already does.

This is great, folks. This is so good. All right, we got to park here for a second because I'm learning. I'm sitting here and I'm taking notes and I'm learning. I love the analogy you just gave, the guy with the gun, right? He wants to be the leader and then he gets the, but that's so true. If you only focus on authority, then when you get authority, you're so obsessed with authority that you are literally looking for somebody to arrest just so you can feed this crazy appetite for authority.

What I just heard from you, and this was the lesson for me, folks, this is what I'm learning. You do what you want to do with this, folks. If I am focused on influence and gaining and wielding influence for the good, so it's influence versus authority. Yes. Right? Yes. So it keeps us healthy, keeps ambition healthy.

Yes. You're checking ambition on influence versus authority, yes? That's right. And so when I get in charge, this is the great flip of this book to me. Right. Absolutely. That if I can learn how to lead through influence when I have no authority, Yes. When I get it, ding, ding, ding. I'm still going to use influence because that's what great leaders do.

That's right. Dave Ramsey motivates you, not with the gun, but through influence. When I was 21 years old, I was sitting, I was an intern at the state capital and I had my desk sat right next to the policy conference room in the governor's office. And I'll never forget, it was a meeting on education and tension was high. I had already taken some copies of some stuff in there. and then I walk back out to my desk, you know. And I remember overhearing the voices get louder. And then I heard a banging on the table. And this voice bellowed over all the other ones. And this person said, I am the governor of the state of Georgia.

Listen to me. And I had never read a leadership book. I'd never been to a leadership conference. But I remember thinking, uh-oh, something's broken. Right. That's not how leadership works. Didn't even sound right to you. No.

He was waving the gun of authority. He was saying, hey, I'm in charge, do what I say to do. Now, the question is, does that work? Well, yes, I bet in that meeting they went, yes, sir, what do you want us to do? We'll do it. But I also bet they updated their LinkedIn resume if that wasn't such a thing back then. Yeah, probably wasn't. Yeah, they would have.

Because they'd have been like, I don't want to work for somebody who's putting a gun in my back, making me do what they want me to do. So to me, that's why this is so important is because if you can figure out, now, how do I start cultivating influence? Where I am, if you're an intern today, figure out, how do I start cultivating influence? If you're middle level manager, even if you're a new business owner, figure out how to cultivate influence so you don't have to use authority. I know the answer. Give it to us. It's chapter four. The masterful interviewer. No, I'm just saying, you let us right to the door. I mean, this could be a book in of itself. You could have written a book entitled Lead Yourself.

So here we are. This is the dovetail. That's what we were just talking about. Okay, so now if you really want influence. And you just said, what do I do? Come on, Clay. You've got to lead yourself. That's where I'm trying to start. Here's why I can, because my tendency is to blame. My tendency is to go, okay, I don't feel like I'm being led well right now.

Whose fault is it? It's my boss's fault. Of course. And I'm so tired of doing that. I mean, I work in a great organization and I've had great bosses, but I've had bad bosses too. and I've had bosses that I felt like weren't leading me well. And I believe that every person listening or watching today has so much value that you deserve to be led well. You have that much worth that you should be led well.

And so instead of waiting on someone else to lead you well, which you should be under authority. Right. But start by leading yourself well. Yeah. Start by going, I'm going to lead me well. So I'm going to pull out some stuff. You've got some great stuff here with three self-leadership principles. We've got to cover these.

I'm going to tee you up, let you teach on them. But you mentioned John Maxwell earlier. He's been a friend and mentor to me for years. I know he's got a lot of influence over you and Andy Stanley. And one of his 21 laws of leadership, people have to buy into you before they'll buy into your authority. Yes. If you want to lead others, you're leading yourself so that you're a person that people buy into. Yes.

Tom Watson, former CEO of IBM, he said, nothing so conclusively proves your ability to lead other people as what you do on a day-to-day basis to lead yourself. That's exactly right. If you want to show that you have the capacity or the ability to lead other people, start by leading yourself well today, which is not easy to do. No, it's hard to lead yourself well. When everything in my world tells me that I need to change, I would rather tell everyone else they're wrong. That's right. And the key to leading yourself well is to go, okay, I know where I want to be, but where am I right now? And how can I get to where I want to be without knowing where I am?

Well, you can't. You've got to know exactly where you are right now. So part of leading yourself well is modeling followership is being under the authority of someone else. That's self-leadership principle number one, page 96. There it is. I do this for people. That's amazing. They got to do book. They got to get there. All right. So okay, how do we model followership? I don't even know if followership's a word. I don't know that it is, but it's great. By the way, Antre leadership is not a word. There you go. And they've made it up. It's working. So we're fine with that here. So followership is just the idea that every great, leader is following something or someone. It's the way leadership works. And so today, I believe it is

worth you and me asking the question, can I follow the leader that I'm working for? And if I can't, I got to figure that out because the conversation is cultivating influence. And you can't cultivate influence if you're not willing to follow someone. And then you got to model it. You got to show it off. You got to put it on and you got to wear it out. If you can't do that today, then maybe you need to leave. Maybe you need to pray about it. Maybe you need to figure it out. But you got a model followership. Self-leadership principle number two, monitor your heart and behavior. Yeah, I believe that the primary role of leading yourself well is figuring out where you are, is knowing what am I good at, what am I not good at, where are my blind spots? That's what

monitoring your heart and your behavior is all about. What are my behaviors doing to other people? Great friend of ours named Jeff Henderson, he taught this to our whole organization. He said, hey, if you want to lead yourself well, you've got to be willing to ask a few other people the question, what is it like to be on the other side of me? I mean, if you tried that question for, ask that to a couple people the next time you're having lunch, I mean, it is a, it's a powerful question. Hey, what kind of vibe am I putting out? What kind of mood am I setting?

What's the climate like that I'm bringing into a room? That is my responsibility in leading myself well. And then the great news is once you do that, the plan puts itself together. the plan puts itself together when you know exactly where you are. You can't get to where you want to go if you don't know where you're at. No, you've got to start where am I right now. Yeah. It's hard to know where you are unless you ask other people.

So if you can ask, hey, a friend, a coworker, your boss, and you can tee them up, then I think it will help you get to where you want to be. All right. So the last question here is when someone reads this book, what do you want them to feel? Yeah. And then what do you want them to do? The reason why I wrote this is because I really believe that if this is true, that God could drop me into any organization at any level,

and I would be able to have an impact. I would be able to help shape the organization. So if you drop me into any organization as an intern, middle level manager, C-suite executive, the position is irrelevant that if you can learn how to influence, I want to feel like one of those like Navy SEAL leaders that drop me into any situation. And if I can learn how to cultivate influence, then I can have influence in any organization. That's really what I want is that you would feel like, okay, now I know, I know how to lead no matter what position I have, no matter how much authority I have or don't have.

And what do you want them to do? I think what I mean, that's a great. And that fun? We got to have the emotion. What do you want them to feel, which you nailed it. Yeah. Now, what do they do? What I want them to do more than anything is I want them to own your own life.

Oh. And do not be a victim to the organization that you work in, to the boss that you work for, to the company that you work for. You got to decide, hey, the only thing standing between me and where I want to be is me. And I've got a friend who says it this way. He says, hey, you got the keys to the Ferrari. I want everybody in our company to feel that way. They got the keys to the Ferrari that if you want to lead well, start today. You can do it.

You can lead yourself well today. And by doing that, you're going to cultivate influence. So that's what I want people to do is. I want them to own their own life. Well, that's really good stuff. I love it. Clay, this is a great book. I'm really excited about it.

How to lead when you're not in charge. Leveraging influence when you lack authority. I think it's Leadership 101 stuff. and even if you are in a lead leadership role, meaning you're the top dog or dog at, the buck stops with you. The buck stops with you. And you need to read this for your own leadership and for those that you're leading so that you can empower them. I think it's a gift.

I think leaders ought to hand this to the leaders in the organization and say, hey, I want you to start leading this way right now because I'm going to be better, you're going to be better, and the organization is going to be better. All right, as I said, I want you to share this conversation. share the book with your team members. And folks, we're going to help you with this. We've got a cheat sheet that really goes well with this conversation that you just heard with Clay. It's entitled The Four Behaviors, and it is a perfect summary of what you just heard. Now, here's what we want you to do. We want you to print this out for yourself and your team, pass it out. You're going to see.

There's some great questions that are going to come out of this. Things like, how can I buy in on a decision that I didn't get to weigh in on. How can I influence my leader in so many different areas? How do I lead up? That's a big question that we hear a lot from young leaders. So give it to your team. As I said, it's free. All you've got to do is text behaviors, the word behaviors, to 33444. That's 33444. All right, folks, this is exciting. We are going to tee up the opportunity for some of you to get the program by calling in and asking me a question. Really excited about this. The number, by the way, if you would like to come on the program and ask your question, 844-944-1070. That's 844-9-4-1070. Really excited. This goes in perfectly with the conversation that you heard from Clay. So let's go to it. Allison is on the line.

Hi, Ken. I have a question about how do I effectively? lead an environment where there are minimal expectations and no clear benchmarks of success, you know, how can I create those expectations for my team and hold them accountable? Okay, so let me get a little bit more information. You are in a leadership position or you are not? I am, but, you know, middle leadership, so I have someone else to report to. Right, but you're leading a team? Correct. All right. Well, the first thing is you can set some expectations. I understand what's happening. You've got weak leadership above you. They're not setting any goals. They're not setting any expectations for you and your team. Is that correct?

Correct. Yep. Well, but that doesn't mean you can't set them for your team. Unless they are saying to you, Allison, we don't need to set any standards. We don't need to set any expectations. If they're saying that to you, then you need to be polishing your resume and looking for a new place to go anyway. You don't have an adversarial relationship with your leader, correct? They're not shutting you down from leading, are they? No. I think that they just have different priorities in different areas of our work. And so I'm just kind of said, been told, just do your thing there.

And without direction, I'm not really sure where to go. Well, wait a second. We can figure that out. But here's some good news. You have a weak leader who said, Allison, just do your thing. Right? Yes. All right.

So now let's figure out what? it is you need to do. So tell me a little bit. Let's get some next steps on what you can do. I'm super excited about this because you now have carte blanche to just lead. So what role are you in? Is it a sales function? Tell me a little bit about your team and what you're doing so that I can figure out what your real challenges are. Sure. So this is sort of interesting because I don't work in the business sector. I work in public higher education. Oh, okay. And so my output isn't necessarily tied to sales numbers. Okay. But it's to people. And, you know, when your output is that, but it's students in a way where it's not like in the classroom where you can measure them

with tests and, you know, their paper they wrote and things like that. We work on the other side of the house where we're providing student experiences and leadership. I almost don't have a lot of outcomes to begin with. Okay. All right. Wait a second. So this is good. You don't have to tell me and list them all out. But do you have a pretty good? But do you have a pretty a good idea about what a win looks like for you and the individual members of your team since you are serving students. You're in the service industry. Let's just call it that, right? You're an education, but you're serving people. Do you have an idea what a win looks like for you and your team? I do, but I struggle with sometimes the win is also a loss, like it's also

a failure. So when helping students be successful, it's obvious that we're helping them gain skills that are going to be helpful for them in addition to the degree they're obtaining that are going to make them successful in their careers. But sometimes that comes by them failing at something in what we do so, planning events, hosting different things. And so even though their event wasn't successful, we have to help them understand how they're still, they're still being successful by learning through the failure. Does that make sense? It makes sense. But Can I just free your mind? I think you're over-analyzing and overthinking all of this.

I love the way you just walk me through that. But let me just say this as gently as I can because I'm for you. You're not failing and then winning. Failure is a part of learning. You are in an educational environment. So you still know what the measurables are. So the measurables are in that situation. If a student has a project and they fail miserably at it,

then a measurable could be, all right, they actually had to lead something. They had to do something. And while there was some failure in the outcome, the ultimate measurable is we were able to teach this lesson and point them in this direction for the future. That's a measurable. So failure is just a part of learning. Failure is a part of progress. Failure is a part of success. So I just want you to change the way you're thinking about that.

So let's get back to some other measurables. You need to be thinking in your role of a development. advising these students, teaching these students, supporting these students, what are wins for us and our team? And I would actually have you, you make a list because you said, yes, Ken, I know what I think the wins look like. So I want you to make a list of those wins. Then I want you to get with your team. How many are on your team? Three. All right. Coffee, dinner, whatever. I'd love to see you get in a room where you can brainstorm, get a whiteboard, get those big giant post-it notes that you rip off of the thing and you stick them on the wall. And I want you to have that.

them make a list of what they think the wins are. And then you compare them to your list. And you guys work together and go, now, wait a second. We've never really tried to measure this before. Let's get as specific as we can to say, this is what a win looks like. This is another win. What do we think are our top priorities? So our three biggest wins, each semester, this is the process. And if you do that, Allison, you are going to begin to see your team move in cohesion. You're going to see, I think, greater impact, greater influence. And by the way, impact and influence, those are two of your measurables. But I think if that's what you do, and you're not looking up anymore, you're not looking above you for your leader's direction.

You know what should be happening as a result of your work and your team's work. So now, put it out there. This is what it looks like. And we're measuring ourselves against these desired goals and future. So I think that's all you've got to do. And you're going to see a lot of momentum. Great. Can I ask a follow-up question? Of course. So that takes care of, and great ideas there, I was jotting them down while you're talking. That takes care of creating some measurables for the work that we do. What about for expectations for our team? Like how we get there, how people contribute to that. Yeah. Well, I love that follow-up. Let's say you came up with three. And you said, these are the three things that we want to see come to pass as a result of our work.

And so then once you make those completely concrete and everybody's looking at them, then you start to break down, well, what has to be true? It's a great question to ask your team. What has to be true for this to happen? So you've got three people on your team. Is that three plus you or three including you? Three including me. Three including you. So you guys go, okay, what roles, what functions, what support has to happen?

What has to be true to see those wins come to pass. And so they say, well, we have to spend X amount of hours doing this. We're going to have to set up these meetings. You literally, just have some fun with this and list it out. Well, we're going to have to start operating this way. We're going to have to make some changes over here. Who's responsible for that? And so it's like going, here's Mount Everest.

Those are those desired futures, those three big goals. And then how are we going to climb Mount Everest? What has to happen? Well, we got to train. We got to get used to high altitude. So there's some physical training. We're going to have to work on some skills of climbing up that mountain. And so that's going to take a little bit of time. And these are the specific classes we're going to have to take to learn how to climb. And then we're going to have to learn this and this. It's the same idea. And so once you figure that out, then you start to take, okay, there's only three of us.

What of these have-toes are the most time sensitive? What order do they happen in? Who is best equipped on our team to do these, it's just as simple as laying it all out. And I love the idea of getting in a room and getting it out in front of everybody going, okay, I'm best at this, so I'm going to lead this initiative. And then I'm going to pass it off to Allison. And then Allison's going to pass it off. That's the exercise. I love that. It's much simpler than I think I was making it. It's extremely simple, but I love that you asked. And listen, it's all about clear communication and clear expectations. Write that down. You're the leader of your team, so you must communicate clearly. So it's about clear communications. And then it is about measured expectations. We don't just

throw an expectation out. We must measure against it. You do that. You're going to be a rock star leader. And your team's going to go, wow, where has this Allison been? And you're going to say, I was being stifled by a weak leader. Awesome. Okay. Thanks so much, Ken. Thanks, Allison. Appreciate you. Thanks for listening. Hey, excited. Infusionsoft's got a great tool to start 2018. It's entitled 2018 Small Business Marketing Trends Report. A lot of small business owners don't have the time or resources for marketing. That's not a surprise. And so Infusion Soft has partnered up with industry experts to see where small businesses are actually headed in 2018. Here's the deal, folks. The river is flowing. And if you don't know where it's flowing, you're going to be stuck up that creek without a paddle. I don't know what any of that means, but it makes a lot of sense, and it's why you should download this tool. In this guide, you're going to get some must-know social media insights for your strategy planning, how small businesses are planning to allocate digital marketing budgets and the top marketing trends for 2018.

Don't be stuck. Don't be left out in the cold. Get the report from Infusionsoft. Infusionsoft.com slash 2018 report. infusionsoft.com slash 2018 report. All right, folks, I told you at the top of the program that we were going to give you some bonus audio. Clay Scroggins, our feature conversation this episode, came in early, sat down with Daniel Tarty and the entire team. How many on the entree leadership team guys these days?

43. Wow, very nice. Jim Bab with the assist behind the glass. Thank you, Jim. So sat down with the whole team, and really was just a wonderful Q&A time. and so we recorded it and it was so good, we just wanted to share it with you. So again, just as we wanted you to share the conversation

that I had with Clay, this is good listening for your team as well. We use the language trust versus suspicion a lot. All great relationships work. There is a basis of trust that if it gets broken, it's hard to have a great relationship when there's not trust there. You know, if you all ever read leadership and self-deception, that's a fascinating little leadership book. But one of the things they talk about is that,

When you make a judgment call about someone, you then, the rest of the time you're dealing with them, you're trying to build up documentation and evidence to support the judgment call you've made. So when someone breaks your trust, the problem is that from then on out, you're looking for ways to validate why they are the kind of person that would break your trust. So if they're always late, if they're a second late, in your mind you're going, there it is again. They're late. Every time I knew it. I knew they were. So when that trust gets broken, that's such a dangerous, dangerous thing. So one of the ways we've tried to do that in relationships is to talk about trust versus suspicion because it's very easy to be suspicious of each other's motives.

But there is an expectation of you're going to be on time. You're going to do what you said. Those are normal functional expectations. And when those don't happen, trust is broken. And so you've got a choice in that moment. Am I going to be suspicious or am I going to go to the person? And that's, I mean, we learned from you guys. I mean, when Dave came and spoke at our church, we had an event for our volunteers.

And I could not wait to ask him about the fire policy that you guys have around gossip because I didn't believe it. I mean, like, could you really fire someone? I know you can. But do you really fire someone over gossip? I just think that's beautiful because that's our tendency is to go around instead of two. So I don't know if that's exactly what you mean in relationship. But we just tried to teach our team over and over again, hey, when you feel suspicious, when you feel like trust. is broken. Don't just wallow in your frustration. Go to them and say, hey, I thought we had an

agreement that we were going to finish that by the end of the month and it's two weeks later and we still don't have it. How did it go? What happened? And personally, what I'm trying to do is to not accuse in that moment. I'm real good at going, well, why didn't you do that? You should have as opposed to going, I'm sure there was a legitimate reason. Help me understand. Help me understand what happened or what you were going through. But yeah, I mean, I think First Corinthians 13, I love that phrase that love always believes that I think love does assume the best, which means I have an expectation that you're going to do it. And I'm sure if you didn't, there was a legitimate reason why.

And when that trust is broken and I feel like, uh-oh, my expectation wasn't met there, I'm going to go to you. I mean, in marriage couple, when we do a lot of marriage training, we do talk about trying to suspend the expectations because a lot of times when, you know, if I expect that my wife's going to do all the flower beds, that's like a point of contention in our relationship. You know, who does the beds, you know? Whose responsibility is that?

If that's an expectation that I have of her or if that's an expectation she has of me, whoever does it, you don't actually get credit for it because they were like, well, I expected you met the expectation. And so that's the danger of expectations in relationships is that I can't be grateful that you did something that I expected you to do because I expected you. you to do it. So trying to suspend those and go, hey, when you picked everybody's plate up from the table and threw it away, I can feel grateful. I can say thank you because I don't expect you to do that. That's not the expectation. But of course, there's a basis of expectation that you're

going to be a decent person and not going to break my trust and stab anyone in the back. But I think I think too much expectation can sour a relationship for sure. Mike Hayek gave me the line. You guys have heard me used it a lot. And when you look somebody that I say, hey, I'm counting on you to whatever the thing is. We all want to be counted on. If I say, I expect you. It feels so much more like a legalistic thing versus like, I'm counting on you.

What it says is we're on the same team. I need you. I need your help. We need to be in this together. And just the tone on that is a little different. I was there one other thing. I think the thing that all of us could learn is in the key relationship that we have, learning, what is the other person expecting?

I mean, that's something I can do today. I mean, as you're saying that, I'm going like, I wonder what my boss expects of me. I wonder what he's going, oh, I just expect that you're going to do. Well, I should be curious about that. I should learn about that. I shouldn't make him have to be explicit to tell me that. So maybe one of the takeaways would be, hey, what are you doing to be curious about what your boss, your supervisor and your coworkers?

What do they expect of you? And that would be a great takeaway for all of us. Wow, unbelievable. I can't believe we're wrapping up our first program of 2018. Folks, let's make the most of this year. It will go fast. Now, listen, if you want to call in on the show and ask me a question, I'm here to help you. Call 844-944-1070. 844-9-4-1070. You're going to get a voicemail.

I'll tell you exactly what I need, but here's a hint. Be specific. What is your challenge? And if we can make that happen, we'll get you on the program. On behalf of Eric the producer, engineers Will Rudder and Jim Bab and the entire Entree leadership team. Thank you folks so much for listening. We'll talk with you again very soon. Hey folks, I want to make you aware that we have other great podcasts from Ramsey Solutions.

Here's a sample of Chris Brown's Life, Money, and Hope podcast. Some days we have victories and triumphs. And other days, we have failures and setbacks. On each episode of Life, Money, and Hope, we dive in. to the depths of real life. I answer questions and provide biblical wisdom and practical advice about money, about work, about relationships. We cover stories of everyday people.

We celebrate in their successes and we provide encouragement during their time of need. It's time to be intentional about the plan that God has for your life. If you'd like to hear full episodes, just search life, money, hope, and iTunes or go to stewardship.com.