EntreLeadership - #402: 5 Questions for Better Decision-Making with Andy Stanley

Episode Date: November 23, 2020

The decisions you make determine the direction and quality of your business. But being the one calling the shots isn’t always easy. It can actually feel really scary—after all, you’re the one who has to live with the choices you make. But decision-making doesn’t have to stop you in your tracks. In this episode, communicator, author and pastor Andy Stanley offers five critical questions that will help you make better decisions and figure out the best move to make—even when the stakes are high and the pressure is on.   entreleadership.com/podcast Andy Stanley's website Better Decisions, Fewer Regrets by Andy Stanley Ask It by Andy Stanley When Work and Family Collide by Andy Stanley Andy Stanley Leadership Podcast Decision Making Checklist Review this episode for a chance to win a $25 Amazon gift card   Want expert help with your business question? Call 844-944-1070 and leave a message or send an email to [e-mail]. You could be featured on a future podcast episode! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, I'm not sure what your story is, but I know you've seen this story somewhere in business. A small business owner gets the thing started, gets it to a certain level of success, and then they make one bad decision, and they lose everything. God, so depressing. Why does that happen? Talk about pressure. That's really heavy. You know, you got a team, you got something that everybody loves and cares about, and it's a tragedy.

Why does that happen? because as leaders, we don't spend enough time talking about making great decisions. From the Ramsey Network, this is the Entree Leadership Podcast, where we help business leaders grow themselves, their teams, and their profits. I'm your host, Daniel Tarty. My guest today is pastor, best-selling author, and just an incredible mind on the topic of leadership, Andy Stanley. Now you may go, hey, I'm a business owner.

I don't need hear from a pastor. Guys, he happens to be a pastor, but I'm telling you, he's one of America's four most voices on leadership. And the combination of leadership and life working together in a way that's winning and sustainable for the long haul. He's got an incredible new book called Better Decisions and Fewer Regrets, the Five Questions, to help you determine your next move. Becoming a better leader, guys, you know this.

It's not just about having all the answers, doing the right things. It's about all the little decisions you make day to day that lead to the great decisions which build great organizations. And it all starts with asking really good questions. Not every decision we make is life or death. In fact, most decisions we make are not all that important in the grand scheme of things. But the way we make decisions is generally pretty consistent. And so having the right decision-making filter in place for all of our decisions sets us up to make the right decisions when our decisions really count. And so it's really the habit of it in the patterns, how well we listen, who we listen to. And specifically, what we're going to

talk about a little bit is the questions that we ask. Because in the sort of random decisions we make, the super important decisions we make, wherever they fall on the spectrum, we are subconsciously and sometimes consciously asking ourselves questions that ultimately help us make our decisions. And one of the things that's so important for everybody, but maybe leaders in particular, is there is an extraordinarily important connection or correlation between the questions we ask and the decisions that we make. And in business, we've all heard this before. Perhaps some folks in your audience have actually said this before.

On the back end of a bad decision, bad investment, maybe employee, you hired somebody and, you know, a month in, three months in, you're thinking, goodness, what happened? And we sometimes even say, I should have asked more. questions or I should have asked better questions because our decisions are really no better than the questions that we ask. So this connection between decisions and question asking is super important. So again, I love to help people think through the questions they're asking or the questions they should ask because sometimes we even ask ourselves questions that lead to not so good decisions. So this is an important relationship. Yeah, I love it. And I've heard it said

that the quality of our life is in direct proportion to the quality of questions we're asking. So what are these questions we should be asking ourselves as leaders, especially when it comes to decision-making? Yeah, well, in my book, Better Decisions, Fewer Regrets. I suggest five questions. And again, I try to help readers understand the importance of this correlation between, as I just said, the questions we ask and the decisions we make. We all have a decision-making filter. We all do. And I think for many of us, we don't even know what it is. We ask ourselves. you know, will this hurt me? Will this make me happy? Then we ask, will anyone find out? You know, is this habit forming? So there's some questions that really aren't all that helpful.

But I suggest five questions that everybody should ask every time they make a decision. These are questions, in some cases I learned from my dad, and I talk about that in the book. These are questions he began asking me very young. And then these are questions that I've discovered along the way that have been helpful for me personally and that I've taught my kids to ask. And the first question, I call it the integrity question. And the integrity question is, why am I doing this? Why am I doing this? And then for this one to really have some bite, you have to ask the word, really.

And I suggest people stand in front of the mirror and say, okay, why am I doing this really? I mean, I've explained it to everybody else. I've justified it to everybody else. I've justified it to myself. But why am I doing this really? And I call it the integrity question because this is the self-leadership question. For those of you who have employees, you know that it's very difficult to lead a liar. In fact, eventually you have to fire the liar, but all of us have a habit of lying to ourselves.

And that's why at some point, it's hard to lead ourselves well as long as we're lying to ourselves. So we have to fire the internal liar. And one way to help overcome lying to ourselves is to be honest with ourselves, the integrity question, why am I doing this really? Why am I buying this really? Why am I leasing this, really? Why am I calling her, really?

Why am I wearing this, really? So that's the self-leadership question. Second question, I call it the legacy question because it has to do with our future. The legacy question is this, what story do I want to tell? What story do I want to tell? And this is so important. This is one that I drill down with my kids all the time. My kids are all in their 20s, two of them are married.

But I've tried to say them, as hard as it is for you to believe, this season next, you're in, one day is going to be nothing more than a story that you tell. And that the easiest illustration is, you know, when somebody in our world asks us where we went to college or tell us about high school, isn't it amazing? We reduce high school and college to a sentence. Yes. Or two sentences. It's like in the moment, it's our whole world. Later on, we look back and it was just a chapter in our life. So what story do I want to tell? When you're describing this particular season of life, what story would you like to tell? When you talk, when you talk, When you talk about going through this divorce, when you talk about starting this company,

when you talk about the early days of trying to find capital to get a project going, when this is nothing more than a story that you tell, what story do you want to tell? So when we're in the midst of making a decision and it's as large as our whole life, it's easy to forget that we're writing a story, and this is just one chapter in the story of our life. So when I'm telling this story, what story do I want to tell the legacy question? The third question, and I call it the conscience question. The conscience question is this. Is there attention?

Is there attention that deserves my attention? And this for leaders, this is another question that's so important for leaders, because leaders have a leadership intuition. You know, some people say you can develop it, that anybody can become a leader. I'm not so sure. I, in my experience, there are people who just have a natural, internal leadership intuition. And so this is an important question for leaders. Is there a tension that deserves my attention?

Here's what I mean by that. We're in the middle of making a decision. Everything looks good on paper. Everybody's all for it. Everybody's bought in. This is what everybody in our industry is doing. This is what all my friends are doing, you know, whatever it might be. But there's just something on the inside that's like a red flag.

It's something that causes us to pause. And we don't know what it is. And it doesn't make any sense. and here's the hard thing, and there's no information to, you know, make this make any sense. There's just an internal tension. So one of the most important questions we can ask when we're making a big decision, especially a decision that involves other people, is there a tension? Is there something inside of me that's like, you know what?

I know what you're saying. I know what it looks like. I know that this is industry standard. I know. But there's just something inside of me that's causing me to pause. And so in the book, I talk, I say, look, don't brush by that, don't rush by that, and don't ignore it. Let it get as big as it can possibly get. Is there a tension that deserves my attention? I'm curious about the tension, because we hear from leaders all the time who are making decisions, and they feel that flag, that spidey sense.

And it's often this challenge of deciphering whether that's fear or wisdom. When there's attention, it could be either of those things. When you say let it get big and slow down and pay attention to that, I imagine we're trying to spend some time there to figure out, is this fear, is it wisdom? Because you may end up going with it after you've slept on it or prayed over it, right? But how do you know? How do you pull that apart? Well, generally, what I tell people is when you're feeling pressured from the outside to rush a decision, then you just need to hit pause. Because generally speaking, most decisions we're feeling pressure to make, there's not as much of a rush as other people, you know, want us to feel. So if you don't have to make the decision, just wait.

Just as long as, if you're not 100% on the inside, because here's the thing about leadership. You know, if you're the point person in an organization and everybody in the organization is for the decision, but you're the point person. You're the one that not only has to make it. You're the one that has to market it and defend it. And if it goes bad, it's your reputation, not theirs. I mean, they can all go work for somebody else. It's your name on the line. So if I'm not willing to stand up in 100% percent.

sell something or move the organization in a direction or represent the organization in a direction. If there's an internal tension, I've got to wrestle that to the ground. Maybe not everybody else in the organization, but I have to. And you're exactly right, Daniel. Sometimes it is fear. Sometimes it's something else. So the point of the question is, is to be honest, is there a tension that deserves my attention? In the book, I give several illustrations, but for those of you as in leadership, this one is not in the book. This may be relevant. when we built our first building, our first church building, we had the meeting with the architects and the designers and the contractor where everybody, you know, there's this plans, these giant, you know, they don't call them blueprints anymore, but all these CAD drawings. And we had to go through an initial, the corner of every single page on those big, thick plans, because we're saying to the architect and to the contractor, we have, we're signing off on this plan. This is what we want to build, right?

So this is common practice. So we sat there and went through the whole thing. We all initial everything. We're finished. We're about to build our first building. And there was a guy on our leadership team, actually one of our elders. He was not on staff, just a business guy who was part of our team. And I talk about in the book that sometimes the tension is, the hesitation is so small that we're not even aware of it until somebody else ask a question.

and suddenly it flares up big. And that's what happened in this case. So we're about to end the meeting. And we had a phase one and a phase two, and we just signed off on phase one. At the end of the meeting, we put our initials on everything. Reggie Campbell, who has since gone to be with the Lord,

Reggie said, before we leave, Andy, can I ask you a question? I'm like, sure. He said, I want you to imagine that we've just had our first worship service in our brand new building. This was our first building. We had hardly any money. This is our first building. He said, we've just finished our first service in this building.

When you're leaving the building and walking out to your car, what do you think you're going to feel? Now, what an irrelevant question based on the meeting that we've just had? And here's the first thing that came to my mind. I said, I think I'm going to wish we had built the second phase. Oh, wow. and we brought out the second phase after about 45 minutes of discussion, and we all initialed those plans as well, and we built both. All of that, this was a huge decision, and it was the right decision. But I was, you know, to your point, Daniel, there was a little bit of fear. We talked about

doing both, but, you know, it's a lot of money, and are we sure? We're a brand new church. But somebody asking that question sort of fueled that sense of, I wonder if we should just just, you know, bite off more than we're biting off right now. And it was the right decision, but it took somebody to bring it up. And again, it just kind of fueled that. So in leadership, it's so important to listen. We talk about that all the time. Leaders who refuse to listen will eventually be surrounded by people who have nothing helpful to say. So this is a multifaceted thing. But the bottom line is, is there a tension that deserves my attention? Is it a tension I've been living with or is it a tension that someone else's question raised in me? But the worst thing we can do is

just ignore that tension. Moving on. The fourth question is a question my dad asked 10,000 times growing up. It's actually a question I have written an entire book about, and the question is, what is the wise thing to do? And I call this the maturity question because it takes a lot of maturity to live our lives within the guardrails of wisdom, what's the wise thing to do, rather than within the guardrails of what's the legal thing to do, what's the ethical thing to do, what's the right thing to do? What's the moral thing to do? And our tendency, of course, is to live right on the line of immoral, unethical, unhealthy. We all have a tendency to do that. But mature people don't do that. They ask the better question, what is the wise thing to do? And I tease this out in three

dimensions. In light of my past experience, what is the wise thing to do? In light of my current circumstances, my current state of mind, what is the wise thing to do? And this is the big one, in light of my future hopes and dreams, what is the wise thing to do? And as a pastor, perhaps nothing breaks my heart more than watching people undermine their own future. And people undermine their own future, their own relationship with their kids, their own marriage, their own companies, their own professional lives. They undermine it not by making bad decisions initially.

They undermine it by making a series of unwise decisions. Because our greatest regrets, whether it was. an event or a season of life, our greatest regrets are always, always preceded by a series of unwise decisions. That one decision we wish we could go back and unmake, that one weekend we wish we could go back and relive, I promise you, it was preceded not by a series of immoral, you know, unethical, you know, illegal decisions. It's always preceded by a series of unwise decision. So the maturity question is, what is the wise thing for me to do? And then the last question, the last question is different. The fifth one, this is the relational question.

And unlike the other four, there's a return on investment with the other four. If you write a story you love to tell, there's a return on investment. If you do the wise thing, there's a return on investment. If you pay attention to that attention, there's a return on investment. But on this question, this is the question that will cost you something. It's the relationship question. And the relationship question is, what does love require of me? What does love require of me? When two people are two parties are both willing to ask that question, there's almost nothing relationally you can't overcome.

What does love require of me? And this isn't the, you know, soft, mushy, what do I get out of it, kind of love. As a Christian, this is the love demonstrated when God sent his son to do something that required a great deal of him. And Christian love and, you know, actual love always requires something of us. And so this is the relationship question for the sake of the person on the other side of me, for the person I'm in relationship with, for the group of people I'm in relationship with, what does love require of me?

So these five questions, I say better decisions, fewer regrets, because if you stop and are willing to ask these five questions, you will make better decisions. And consequently, you will live with, fewer regrets. That's so good. I want to come back to this idea of wisdom. I remember the first time I heard you talking about the context of in light of my past circumstances, my current reality, my future hopes and dreams. It was like this light bulb of like, oh, wisdom's not just universal answer for every, like there's a contextual component to this of based on you, based on your business,

based on your past experience. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I want to hear more about when you're a business owner when you're thinking about my business, my family, our plan, our team, you look around at best practices, we're sometimes drawn into becoming something that we're not supposed to do that maybe is wise for them, but it's not wise for us. How do we reconcile that tension we can feel around that? I'm so glad you brought this up because it's not just what is the wise thing to do. It is, in light of, to your point, in light of my past experience, in light of the fact that I've struggled with this in the past, in light of the fact that our, you know, our family has just come through this in light of the fact that my family history sets me up for whatever it might be,

in light of my past experience, in light of my current circumstances, what's going on right now emotionally, what's going right now financially, and then in light of my future hopes and dreams. And you're right, this way of thinking translates into organizational life in light of what we've just been through organizationally. A great example, we're in the middle of it right now, as small companies begin to emerge from the culture of COVID and all the things we can't do and all the things we're going to have to do different, this question is, I think every good leader is asking some form of this question, you know, subconsciously, if not consciously, but we need to ask it out loud so that we could process it with our teams in light of what

we've just come through, in light of what is going on right now, and then in light of our hopes and dreams for this company or this organization, you know, what is the wise thing for us to do? And we're all kind of blazing our own trails in a brand new, in a brand new way because of what we've just come through with the pandemic. So this question is maybe more relevant than ever, and it's more specific to our current circumstances and our specific organizational context than ever before, because we're all trying to figure this out. And again, we're all learners, leaders or learners. So we're going to watch what everybody else is doing. But because this is such a unique season, we're all going to be trailblazers in some capacity. And it really does come down

to wisdom. It's not ethical. It's not moral. It's not legal. I mean, we're hopefully going to run our organizations within the context of what's legal, moral, and ethical. But wisdom, what is the wise thing to do? There's certainly organizational application. Well, I love the example in the season that we're in. I was just with Dave, our CEO and founder this morning, and we're planning next week our executive committee will be doing our annual strategy session, and I'll be facilitating. So I usually get with Dave and what are we going to work on? And the theme that bubbled up, and Dave said it, we got to figure out what did we learn this year that we never want to forget. In light of what we've been through and what we've navigated, we saw some things that we're

really proud of organizationally. We also saw some things that were like, oh, there are some cracks in the foundation we were kind of ignoring. We've got a short of those. But in light of what we went through, how do we make sure that our mission carries forward and we don't ever forget these lessons? Because whoever gets higher next year wasn't here for this year. And they're not going to know. And so we'll have to tell that story. Yeah, the way we're asking that question in our organization is how can we be better for it? How can we be better for it? What do we leave behind? What do we carry forward? What have we learned that will inform us and make us better? But how can we be better for this personally? How can we better for this organizationally? Every leader is asking that question

at some level because we know better than, hey, let's just wait till things get back to normal. Leaders don't think that way. Neither do leaders think, well, as soon as we start back, now, no, we're not going to start back. This is the opportunity for many of us to start over, or at least to approach this next season as if we are starting over. It's that whole first day mindset. You know, what did we do on the first day? How do we maintain that first day mindset? And this is an opportunity for many organizations to do that, especially the organizations that had to, in some capacity, shut down or reduce headcount or basically go to survival mode as they, you know, kind of come back out into the daylight and are able to operate again. It would be a shame just to go right back to what we were doing before and not take the lessons of this season forward with us. So I think a lot of people were asking that question.

Yeah, couldn't agree more. I love these five questions. And as you go through them, I think they're just incredible filters for decision making. Clearly, you will make better decisions if you're asking yourself these questions. And I think at a certain level, a lot of leaders are familiar with these concepts and we know them intellectually, yet we still sabotage. We still make bad decisions. What's going on there? Well, this is so relevant to what you do and what your organization does in terms of coaching and in terms of intersecting with small business owners and medium-sized business owners and large companies as well. We all have an internal salesman or salesperson, right? You may not feel like you can sell anything to anybody else, but you've spent your entire life selling yourself on things, right? And I spent my entire life selling myself on things. and the internal salesperson in all of us is so strong that we sell ourselves on bad ideas. In fact, in the book I talk about this, I say, when you catch yourself selling yourself, you should hit pause because you rarely have to sell yourself on a good idea.

You rarely have to sell yourself on the right thing to do. As soon as you, again, it's that whole first question, the integrity question of, why am I doing this really? Have I sold myself? And in the book, I take the reader through this interesting exercise. I say, imagine going into a retail store and the salesperson, whatever kind of story you're and the salesperson says to you out loud the kinds of things you say to yourself when you're trying to talk yourself into a bad idea.

And when you hear, if you heard someone actually say to you and try to use that same sales pitch, you would be insulted. Like, you know, you're looking at an item and the salesperson says to, you know what, if you get home and don't like it, you can always just donate it. It's like, but we say things like, or how about this one? The salesperson says, I see that you already have one of these. And this other one, the reason you should purchase it is because it's newer. It's like, that's not a reason, but it's the kind of thing we can ourselves.

It sounds absurd when you say it out loud like that. Yes, if somebody said these things to you, and I give other. illustrations of the book, it would be absurd. But it's that internal salesperson. So leaders in particular, leaders in particular, we can be so persuasive. And that's a good thing. But when we start persuading ourselves and we fall for the irrational, you know, illogical, harmful ways of thinking that we're all prone to, this is why, I mean, we've seen it a thousand times, smart, smart leaders, men and women, usually men, just get themselves into the craziest situations, the biggest trouble, and we think, how can you be so smart? Here's why, because he or she has that

internal salesperson, and they sold themselves. And then, because they're so good, they went around and sold everybody else as well, at least for a while. So again, that's why these questions are so important, because if you, if anyone will ask themselves these five questions, whether it's in the business context, marriage, family, whatever it might be, they slow us down. and hopefully wrestle us to the ground to be honest with ourselves. Because, you know, you know this, Daniel. We all do. The most difficult person in the world to lead is the person in the mirror.

So if we can't get that right, eventually that poor leadership is going to show up in our organization as well. Yeah. That was a long answer to your question. I mean, this is, it's so key for leaders. I'm imagining business owners right now who we work with. Many of them are extremely busy. it's frantic. There's so many things going on. They're putting out fires. They're listening to this, probably on their commute, coming into a staff meeting where everything's going to go sideways and

they've got to fix it and their week is just, boom, they're off to the races. And so I'm imagining you can know these five questions and have good intentions to be asking these questions, but how do I make sure that I'm actually weaving them in and creating space to reflect? Because you can ask the question and then move past it real quick. But it seems like the magic is that time after you ask the question of really having the space to pause, to listen, maybe let it, you know, go for a night, sleep on it. It's more about these habits and environments that we're working on to get these questions to actually be front of mind all the time. In some ways, it's another category, but it certainly interfaces with what we're talking about. Creating the space, as a Christian, I would call it my quiet time or my devotional life.

But a lot of people who aren't religious have created space, thinking space. You know, contemplatives do this naturally. Many of us who are in leadership, it has to be a discipline or we'll never do it. Because the moment I wake up in the morning, I mean, there are so many things to do there. I mean, the work is, when you're carrying the responsibility of an organization, you don't ever clock out mentally or any other way. You're never caught up. So are you? No.

And to the point you just made in this season, for me personally, and this isn't true for everybody. but this is true for most of the organizational leaders I talk to, I am busier than I have ever been. And my personal time, my thought time, my time to just think, it just gets squeezed. But it's in that time, that disciplined time. For me, it's early in the morning. For most leaders, it's early in the morning. That's when you ask these questions. Okay, I know what's coming to your point.

I'm about to walk into a meeting. And in my world, in the world of so many leaders, the pressure I face when I'm facing a group of people that I trust and love, and I know what they want from me, and I know what they think we should do, and I'm not 100% yet, if I don't have that personal margin to ask these kinds of questions, not sitting in the office, but sitting at home or sitting outside or sitting in that place, I think we all need a place that when we sit there, It's like, this is my place, this is my space, this is my time to get my mind and my heart right. I call it a re-centering to remind myself of who I am and who I'm not to remind myself of my importance. It's not very great, but it's not too small. It's somewhere in the middle. It's in that personal time that these questions take root because you can't rush the question, why am I doing this really?

And you can't rush the question, what is the wise thing for me to do, especially when I'm feeling pressure from other people to make a quick decision. So, yeah, if we don't create space, there's not going to be any space. If we don't create time, there's not going to be any time. And Daniel, you know this because you study leadership. In every case where a corporate leader or a spiritual leader has had a moral meltdown or a financial meltdown, and every time we hear the backstory, we hear the same themes. And the same themes were I basically just finally kind of met myself coming and I met myself going.

The pace was so frantic that I had to find an outlet. The pace was so frantic. There was no time and there was no space for me. There was just no time to think. There was no time to meditate. There was no time to, you know, re-center myself. And so that's a discipline. And without that discipline, these kind of questions, there's just not time for them.

I teach leaders all the time that the most important meeting that can be scheduled on their calendar in the week is a meeting with themselves to block that time and say no to other meeting requests because you know what, you're already in a meeting. It feels weird to do if you haven't done that before. There's no way to over-emphasize that. And the more pressure we feel based on the season, the less time there is for that, but the need is great. greater than ever. I love this idea of thinking about our life as a story, a story arc. What do we want the story of our life to be? And we were talking earlier about thinking back on high school and college

and how it's just the soundbite of a story. But when you're in it, it's your whole world. I remember the pressure as a younger leader of feeling like I had to get there fast. I had to solve all these problems. I had to boil the ocean, Andy. There's this thing I have to prove that I have what it takes to lead. And as an older leader now, you and I can look back and go, I wish I could have gone back and done that different.

I wish I could have slowed down when I was firing that person. I wish I could have that one back with that vendor or whatever. You know, we can imagine all these scenarios. How do we at a younger age grasp the weight of what we will feel later when we haven't felt it yet? How do we bring that forward into our decision making so that we can actually give ourselves the grace and the time to slow down and do it the right way the first time? Well, it's a great question again. there's two things. First, regardless of what season of life a leader is in, if they're in their late 20s, if they're early 30s, their middle management, they're wondering how long am I going to stay here, whatever season we're in, we've lived long enough to be able to look back and do exactly what you just did. To think back to that time when this seemed like the end of the world, five years later, it's like, I can barely even remember the details. But in the moment, it was just, and then to remind ourselves, this season I'm in right now, right now, is going to be that small and is going to be nothing more than a story

that I tell. I am writing the story of my life. And here's the key. I'm writing the story of my life one decision at a time or one response at a time. But even then my responses to what other people say and do that infect me, my responses are still my decisions. So I'm writing the story of my life, one decision at a time, when I tell the story of this particular season, what story do I want to tell? I'll give you a quick illustration. Again, this is not in the book, but it's so corporate. We recently hired a guy that I'd wanted to hire for a long time. And when I approached him, I called him.

I said, I want to have lunch. And I said, I would love for you. And I told him about we have two opportunities. And I'm not sure which one fits, but would you? And he said, I would love to come work for you all. He said, but here's the challenge. The company I work for, their history is when they catch wind that anyone is considering, even considering leaving the organization, they have such a high loyalty culture. They interpret that as disloyalty.

And he said, I know two people who were let go when they even brought up the fact that they were thinking about doing something else. In both cases, they had nowhere to go. They hadn't taken a job. They just spoke out loud. So he said, he said, hey, can we, I just need to keep this kind of on the down low. So I said, okay, so then I called him back later. I said, okay, here's situation. And he's a young leader.

He's 20 something years younger than me. I said, let me take off my, I want to hire you hat for a minute. And let me put on my leadership coach hat for just a minute. At some point in the future, this transition from what you're doing now to hopefully what we want you to do is going to be a story that you tell. That's all it's going to be. Now, right now, it's your salary. It's what's going to happen. What if we lose one and don't get the other? I get that. But eventually, you're going to be fine. Okay, you're going to land on your feet. But eventually, this is just going to, this transition will be a story that you tell. What story do you want to tell? And let me make a suggestion. I think you would rather tell the story of, I was honest with my current employer, and I gave them the freedom to decide how they would respond to the fact that I told them that I'm thinking about another opportunity. I said, that's a better story than I kept it on the down low.

It was hush, hush. I didn't tell anybody. They didn't tell anybody. And then at the last minute, and I told him, and I said, this is going to be just a story that you tell. What story do you want to tell? And he said, you're right. And so the next day he went in. He said, you know what? They've called me, da-da-da-da, I'm thinking about, and kind of held his breath. And they didn't let him go immediately, it was tense. It was tense for a couple of weeks, and we eventually hired him. It all worked out. But now that he's on the other side, he has a better story. And honestly, he has a better relationship with his former employer because, again, he did the right thing and he has a better story. So the point is, if we can stop midstream, because the pressure, the financial

pressure, you know, the mortgage pressure, all the pressure, if we can stop and say, okay, when this is nothing more than a story I tell. What story do I want to tell? We will make better decisions. We will have fewer regrets. And as I tell folks all the time, you want to live a life and you want to create a story where you don't have to skip any chapters when you tell the story of your life. And you don't want chapters that you hope your kids don't find out about or your grandkids or your future spouse. So never make a decision that makes you a liar for life, write a story that you're proud to tell. It's really good.

You talked earlier about the value of having people around you to help you make decisions. I know that as leaders, we've had this experience where you've got an incredible team, you've got a sounding board, and yet you can still feel

all alone in the middle of a crowd. And the second guessing of are the people that I'm asking for feedback telling me this because they really think it's the right move? Is it because they know that I already like it and they're biased towards telling the boss what they

want to hear. You have these biases of all swimming in the same fish tank. And you mentioned earlier the value of Reggie Campbell asking you that question and pulling that thread. That's a really healthy example of when it works. But sometimes you can get this dysfunction where people aren't being fully transparent. And they don't feel safe to share what we call around here the last 10% of truth and really get it all out there because it may cost them something. It may cost them their job, may cost them their reputation. As leaders, how can we create environments and put the team and places where they feel like it's safe and it's expected to tell us what they really need to say to help us make good decisions, even if it's uncomfortable. It's so important. Again, there's so

much on this topic. Because you're talking about creating a culture that's safe, a culture where you can have emotionally charged, honest conversations where you can raise your voice and yet go have lunch afterwards and it doesn't jeopardize the relationship. It's a culture. And the leader shapes the culture, right, and the leader sets the tone. So my transparency is important. But here's the other thing that's important. There's a sense in which symbolic leadership is another topic for another day. But symbolic leadership is when you do that thing one time for one person and you hope everybody else finds out about it, not so you get credit, but so they realize, oh, so that's what Andy does when that happens. Oh, so that's how Andy responds when that happens. So we have to realize that every

every single response we have, whether it's a look on our face, the tone of our voice, it communicates whether or not this is a safe place. So hopefully, over time, leaders have created a pattern or a consistency. So even for the insecure person who's not so sure or the person who's new to the organization, when they hear the story of the organization, the history of the organization, there's just going to be a sense of greater freedom. And the other thing a leader can do, A leader can talk about this. And so for me, I have to apologize a good bit because I know I can respond quickly. I'm very opinionated about certain things, but I try to be so quick to apologize

because when I apologize, I guarantee you when I apologize to a staff member, they tell another staff member, Andy apologized. So this is symbolic leadership. It's kind of due for one, what you wish you could do for everyone. And it's due for one, what you wish everyone in the organization. would do for everyone. So there's a humility factor, there's a transparency factor, there's a follow-up factor. And then, again, I think putting words around what we're talking about, which is we don't just want this to be a safe place. This is a safe place. Every once in a while,

a staff member will do something that's kind of a real screw-up. It's always an accident. It's not on purpose. And they'll make the comment, they'll say, I just hope I still have a job. And they're kind of kidding, and it bugs me, and it bugs me because I think, okay, has there ever, is there even one example in this organization of somebody who made a mistake and lost their job over a mistake? And to my knowledge, there's not any examples of that. You don't fire people for making mistakes, or none of us would have a job. So, again, it's talking about it, it's modeling it, and it's being honest, and it's listening. And it's when your administrative assistant says, Andy, can I talk to you about something for a minute? And you know, immediately, this is not going to be good.

You know, she's not going to tell me what a great sermon I preach, you know, or when a staff member says, I need to talk. And you're thinking, here it comes. And you think, okay, do not be defensive. Do not cross your arms. Do the Bob Goff thing where you open your hands under the table. I'm not going to be defensive. I'm going to listen. Because as a leader, for me, I want to have a great organization.

And the only way to have a great organization is to have, you know, information is currency, trust is currency, and there needs to be a free flow of information that's only going to happen if we have the currency of trust. And so I have to set that tone. And nobody, I'm always the elephant in the room in terms of, you know, what does Andy think? And many of your viewers and listeners, they play that role in their organization. So we have to lead the way. And we have to be extra graceful if we want to create a culture of grace.

Obviously, decision-making is so important for leaders everywhere. And it's not something that you can delegate decisions on certain things. Some things as the leader, you've got to make the call. And I've seen this where in growing organizations, a leader will get to a point where there's a key decision that needs to be made, and they don't feel like they have the technical competency, yet they still have the leadership responsibility. And you have to rely on the expertise of other people. And I mean, my goal is to be the dumbest guy in the room, right?

But it can feel awkward for a season where you're going, how do I still make great decisions? And it's my name on the line. Yet I don't have all the details. They have the details. And I'm trusting them that they've covered off on all the details. And that tension that leaders feel about a growing organization when they still have to make decisions, but they're no longer the best person or the expert. How do you deal with that? The goal in leadership is not to make all the decisions.

it's just to make sure all the decisions are the best decisions that can be made, and it's to own them. And ultimately, in a great culture, a leader makes as few decisions as possible. I mean, you could ask people who report to me, they commonly get a response that says, it's a two-word response, you decide, you decide, you decide. It's like, Andy, da-da-da-da, you know what? And it's to your point, Daniel, like, okay, this is your area of expertise. It's not make or break.

The organization isn't going to go down over whether we get this right. But it'd be like asking me a plumbing question. I don't know. You know, this is just not my area. So you decide. So make as few decisions as possible. And when a leader makes as few decisions as possible, guess what the leader learns. They learn who the good decision makes are in their organization.

If you make all the decisions, you don't learn anything about the decision-making IQ or, you know, EQ of the people that report to you, but you just shove the decisions back down the chain. And again, it's a do-for-one. It's a modeling thing. I want everybody in an organization to make as few decisions as they have to make and let the people who are actually, to your point, experts in that area make the decisions. At the same time, when the decision is made, I own it. I take responsibility for it because ultimately, as the point leader, I'm responsible. So there's, it's a, you know, it's kind of a double-edged sword in a way. Push their decision down to the people, not down, but over to the people who have expertise,

but then you back them up. And if there's a problem, you stand up and you take responsibility for the decision. So, again, it's a habit. And again, for the leader who feels like, oh, because I'm the leader, part of the responsibility of the leaders to make all the decisions, that is incorrect. In fact, that is bad leadership. You become, to use the John Maxwell term, you become the lid in the organization, because To your point, Daniel, you feel like you have to be the smartest person in the room. And I love that Jim Collins quote. I heard him, he's written it. But the way I heard him say it in a lecture when time is aspire to be the dumbest person in the room. Aspire to be the dumbest person in the room. It's so good and it's so true. And you're going to, you know, better decisions are going to be nice. I'm proud to say I'm getting dumber every day. So that's progress. I want to land the plane with this idea.

of love and what we really value. And I want you to speak to one of the things that is one of the biggest tragedies we see in leadership and business, especially small business. And that is when a business owner gets so all consumed with the business in the organization that they, by degrees, again, by degrees, make decisions that end up costing them what they care about the most, which is the ones they love, their family. They didn't mean to get there. They actually started the business in most cases because they love their family, but by degrees, they didn't have the boundaries, and over time they looked up and they were married to the business and not married to their spouse. What are the guardrails that people can put in place? What are those checks and balances

that keep you making the right small decisions out of wisdom that don't let this become all consuming in a way that's, well, that's devastating. Well, I wrote a whole book about this. It's another little book. It's called When Work and Family Collide, and I'm not trying to sell books, but I'm telling you. They're all so good. I'd love to. It's a little bit. It's a little bit. It's I love everybody to read them because they're great. When work and family collide, the whole book is about that tension. But I'll just say this. Here's my observation.

And this would be a great question to ask Dave sometime because he's been around lots of leaders. I'm convinced the people who do extraordinary things and accomplish extraordinary things in business or in the for-profit or nonprofit, honestly, they would accomplish great things if they'd took 30% of the time they spent on those great things and did something else with the time. They almost can't fail in terms of accomplishing great things. They are so wired. But what happens is they get so caught up in the game and they love the game and they love the sales and they love to win. I mean, they're just wired for that. But they tell themselves and it's a lie. It's the salesman inside of us. They tell themselves, if I don't travel, if I don't go, if I don't stay late. If I don't get early, it's not going to happen. That's just not true. They're so

good. I mean, think about Dave Ramsey. Seriously. I mean, he's brilliant. He's got a great work ethic. He works hard. Dave Ramsey was going to accomplish something great. And fortunately, he prioritized correctly. But he's one of those guys that could have not. He could have gotten so caught up in the game and so caught up in what he loves that he neglected what was most important. And he would have done it by telling himself what every accomplished leader tells themselves, oh, there's no way I could have accomplished what I had, have accomplished if I hadn't neglected my family, if I hadn't neglected my health. I'm just convinced it's not true because the people who do great things, I just think, you know, they're going to do great things. And it doesn't depend on that extra 10% or 15%

that they stole from their kids, that they stole from their marriage, that they stole from their their health that they stole from their diet. I've just seen enough leaders and been around enough leaders to think, you know what, you could have done it. It may have taken a little bit longer. It may not have been quite as big, but you could have done this without neglecting what is ultimately, to your point, what you considered at some point in your life most important. And it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, you know, and let's talk about men specifically. When a man gets into the cycle where he enjoys being at work more than he enjoys being at home, then he is going to spend more time at work than he is at home. And as soon as a man or woman begins to feel that, you know what,

I am not looking forward to going home. That is, that's that look in the mirror and say, why am I doing this really? Why am I taking this trip really? Why am I taking advantage of this opportunity, really? Why don't I say no, really? And, you know, again, start asking the right questions. You're going to make better decisions. And we've all seen men in women, men specifically, who have sacrificed what they would have years earlier said, oh, no, no, no, I'll never sacrifice family or my health or my spiritual life for the sake of, you know, the golden ring. And then, you know, at the end of the day, they could have had both if they had simply prioritized correctly. Yeah, you're totally right.

And the alternative is not sustainable. I mean, you're going to implode and lose everything that you're, you're going to implode and lose everything that you're. you cared about on that side of it too at some point. So, you know, Andy, incredible conversation, so many great nuggets of wisdom for leaders out there trying to make better decisions. This has been one of the most challenging years that many leaders have ever faced. Business owners are having to lay people off. Unemployments up and down. It's all over the place. The market's been disrupted. I know that's true. In your world, I've heard about how you guys have been adapting and pivoting. You've made some huge decisions that have massive implications with how you're running things at North Point.

It's a tough year. It's a tough year to be a leader. It's a tough year to be a human on the planet. But as leaders are feeling the pressure to get all this right and to try to put Humpty Dumpty back together, as we wrap up, do you have any words of encouragement, final thoughts that would speak to their hearts as we try to go forward together? This is why you're a leader. If we're just running a ride at six flags, that requires a little bit of skill and some management. Uncertainty, uncertainty is what gives us not just credibility, but uncertainty is why the world needs leaders. This is why you were born. This is what you were born for. This is when your intuition is more important than ever. And we're going to see that, right?

We're going to see that corporately with the organizations that survive this and thrive, both nonprofit and for profit. So congratulations. It is the optimal, it is the optimal leadership environment. because management doesn't work, because all the rules have changed, the schedules have changed, everything is upside down. There is so much uncertainty. There's so much uncertainty, the only thing that counts. This is really important. During this much uncertainty, the only thing that counts is clarity. And as a leader, that's your number one responsibility in a time like this. And people will follow the people, people will follow the men and women that present or that offer clarity in the midst of this uncertainty. and that is in some ways the essence of leadership.

So this is your moment and you feel like you're spinning in the wind like everybody else. That's okay. This is your moment. Step up. Be clear in the midst of this uncertainty and you're going to survive. Ultimately, you're going to thrive. You're going to figure this out. And you will be better for it.

All right, folks, he is Andy Stanley. The book is Better Decisions, Fewer Regrets. Five questions to help you determine your next move. And you want your next move to be a good one. if you're a leader. And you guys have to check out his podcast. It's one of my personal favorites. Andy, thank you for your time today. Thank you for all your wisdom. Thanks for what you guys are doing. To help leaders grow. We're just so grateful for you spend a little bit of time with our listeners today. Thanks, Daniel. Oh, what a good conversation and convicting and sobering. And a good reminder for me and all of us,

man, we've got to make really good decisions. We're not always going to get it right. It's not always about perfect decision making, but at least on the big decisions, the ones that are high stakes, the ones that affect the team, that affect our families, that affect our health, that affect the sustainability of the mission over time. We've got to slow down and make sure we get this stuff right. We talk a lot about this when we're coaching business owners, we're talking with leaders. It's very common for a leader to run wide open from their gut and feel their way through a lot of the decisions and not slow down and think about them. I'm wired that way. I get it. I like moving fast. I tend to shoot from the hip. Ready, fire, aim. Oh, wait, I got that out of order. Have you

ever done that? You know, it's normal. If you're an entrepreneur, you're wired like that. But the way we mature as leaders and the way that we scale an organization is we shift away from just making decisions in our gut and intuition. And we bring that intuition into a better process for making decisions. And what an incredible framework Andy's given us today through this conversation. Also, this is fun. Our coaching team knows how hard it is to make really good decisions all the time. We coach business owners on better decision making. It's part of what we do.

And they've taken the best of what we know and what we've seen about business owners who do this really well over time. And we've put together a great free guide on decision making. Something that you can go through with your team and talk about the quality of the decisions you're making. Look at the fruit, the outcome of the decisions that you've made and assess that stuff and get a little better every day. on making better decisions. To get the free guide,

all you got to do is text the word decision to 33444. Again, text decision to 33444. Or you can just click on the link in the show notes. Well, I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Entree Leadership podcast. Hey, do you know somebody that would enjoy this episode?

Send them the link. People are telling us all the time, hey, my friend told me about this and, well, we love that. That's how this thing grows and it helps more people. So thank you. Also, you can follow us on social media

at Entree Leadership. You can follow me on Instagram at Daniel Tarty. And for a chance to win a $25 Amazon gift card, you can review this episode by clicking the link in the show notes. This episode was produced by Tim Hull. It was edited and mixed by Will Rutter. I'm your host, Daniel Tarty,

and on behalf of the entire Entry leadership team, thanks for listening. Until next time, keep learning and keep leading. If you enjoy this podcast, you should check out other great podcasts from the Ramsey Network, like Ramsey Call of the Day. Check out our new Ramsey Call of the Day. podcast. It'll give you a quick hit of advice about life and money in under 10 minutes.

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