Andy Stanley - Goal Setting in the Life of a Leader Who Before What From the Vault

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome to the Andy Stanley Leadership Podcast, a conversation designed
to help leaders go further faster.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
On today's podcast.

Speaker 1 (00:13):
We'll explore the importance of goal setting in the life
of a leader.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Andy, A lot of.

Speaker 1 (00:17):
Us are repeating our annual attempt to make and keep
New Year's resolutions. Yep, having known you for quite a while,
I know you're not really into those.

Speaker 3 (00:26):
Well, I'm not a big goal setter. I have four
or five goals that hang on a little court board
in my closet at home, and I basically update those
every year.

Speaker 4 (00:36):
But that's pretty much it.

Speaker 3 (00:37):
I don't have a sophisticated system, and I have friends
that have these very sophisticated systems. In some cases, they
pay lots of money to take classes on how to
set sophisticated goals. In fact, I actually went to an
orientation one time where there was a company trying to
sell this sort of package. It was all about this
way of setting goals. I was so exhausted by the

(00:57):
end of the orientation, and it was so funny, Lane,
because I had friends that were with me. Several of
us went and they could not wait to sign up.
And I told him, I said, you don't need this.

Speaker 4 (01:06):
You already do this. You're so wired this way.

Speaker 3 (01:08):
Anyway, why would you pay someone to help you do
what you naturally do? Anyway, I'm the one that needs
the help, but I didn't sign up for the class.
So goals are very, very important. I think everybody in
our listening audience has set a goal for you know,
at some point along the way. I just think some
people are more oriented that way than others.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
So then does that mean you don't want to talk.

Speaker 2 (01:28):
About goal setting?

Speaker 4 (01:29):
Not really?

Speaker 2 (01:31):
Okay?

Speaker 3 (01:32):
Actually I have a funny story about goal setting, and
I don't think I've shared this with our podcast listeners.
But when I was in high school, stop me if
I've told you this before. When I was in high school,
my dad, who is like a huge goal setter. I mean,
there's goals all over his office and he you know,
I grew up in that culture, which was wonderful, and
so he was so frustrated with me because I didn't
have any goals. So he gave me a little book

(01:53):
on goal setting and put me in his office, his
home office, with a yellow ledger pad and a pen,
and he said, I want you to read this chapter
in this book and then set some goals and I'll
come back and check on you.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
How many weeks later is that?

Speaker 3 (02:06):
Yeah? You know how effective that was? And I just
remember I can still remember sitting there. I must have
been maybe a senior in high school, just locked up,
like I don't know what to write, you know, and
he's going to come check on me, it says, sure enough.

Speaker 4 (02:19):
You know.

Speaker 3 (02:19):
He comes back a little bit later and I read
the chapter and I had not written one single thing,
and I knew he thought to himself, Oh no, my
son's never going to amount to anything. So maybe that's
maybe that's why I have such an aversion of goals.

Speaker 1 (02:30):
I don't know, well, Andy, having watched you for years,
I know you set goals.

Speaker 2 (02:34):
They're just not I guess what would call traditional goals.

Speaker 4 (02:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:38):
One of the things that I teach leaders, especially college
leaders or college students, is that it's a mistake. It's
always a mistake to decide what you're going to do
before you've determined who or what you want to be.
When I say what you want to be, I don't
mean professionally, I mean what you want to be or
what kind of person you want to be. It's always
a mistake to determine what you're going to do before
you decide what you're going to be, because as we
all know, and those of us who are adults, we

(02:59):
know who we are and who we've become on the
inside finds its way into all the things that we do.
You know, I can set all kinds of goals as
a father, but if there are things on the inside
of me that aren't right, they're going to be manifested
in the way that I parent, the same way in
my leadership with my friends, with my health, with everything else.
So before we focus on to do goals, I am

(03:20):
a firm believer we have to focus on to be
goals or what we want to be. So today in
our podcast, I thought it would be fun because I
know everybody listening is a leader and they already have
goals set, so I assume we probably are, you know,
all pretty good at that. But fundamentally, it's a mistake
to decide what we're going to do before we've determine
who or what we want to be. So I thought
it'd be fun to talk about that.

Speaker 1 (03:41):
Well, Andy, you know what you're saying. The implications for
leaders are obvious. I mean, if an average person gets
that out of order, they decide what they're going to
do before they decide what they want to be, they
can they can damage themselves, maybe their family. But if
a leader gets that wrong, it can hurt a lot
of people.

Speaker 3 (03:58):
You're exactly right, Lane, Our decisions impact the people around us,
and the more influence we have and the more resources
we have, and the more people who are depending on
us for their personal resources, the more people we potentially
hurt when we don't get this right. And in fact,
it's so interesting to say that because this idea or
the impetus behind this idea of setting some or creating
some b goals, not just some do goals, happened at

(04:21):
a time when I sat I remember sitting on my
couch watching two very high profile religious leaders fall apart publicly,
you know, nationally, really internationally. Two guys that were at
the top of their game, plenty of resources, lots of
people around them, two international ministries, and on one guy
in trouble morally, and the other one got in trouble financially.
And when I say in trouble financially, they misused funds.

(04:42):
One of these guys went to jail, perhaps the other
guys should have gone to jail. And I remember sitting
there thinking, Wow, that could happen to me. I mean,
they know everything. They don't lack insight, they don't like resource,
they don't lack education.

Speaker 4 (04:54):
I mean, they don't.

Speaker 3 (04:56):
Lack leadership skills. They had all of that. That's why
they were so well known. But something on the inside,
something went wrong. And I remember sitting there, really literally
thinking what can I do as a young leader to
keep that from happening to me? Because I would be
naive to think that I'm going to be so careful
and so slick and you know, so educated that somehow

(05:17):
I would be immune to that.

Speaker 1 (05:18):
All Right, So you're sitting there as a young leader
and you're seeing this and the fallout from it.

Speaker 2 (05:23):
What did you decide to do?

Speaker 4 (05:25):
Well?

Speaker 3 (05:25):
Again, you look back and piece things together. As it
turned out, I had just begun, or I think I
had just begun reading Stephen Covey's book Seven Habits of
Highly Effective People, a book that hopefully all of our
listeners have read. And generally, when I read a book,
and I bet a lot of our listeners this way,
you know, I read kind of quick.

Speaker 4 (05:43):
I tend to speed read.

Speaker 3 (05:44):
I read with a marker that slows me down. But
when I get to a section of a book where
the reader wants me to stop reading and like think
about something or work through an exercise, I just plow
on through because you know, the goal is to finish
the book. You know, learn what you can, but you
got to finish this book, move on to the next book. Well,
I think you know the perfect storm. I'm watching this
stuff unfold and again, our leadership, our podcast listeners, they

(06:10):
don't have to look very far to see the same
kind of thing that happens in business all the time.
Smart educated people make terrible personal decisions and people are impacted.
So it's certainly not unique to ministry. So I'm reading
the book, I'm watching this happen, and I get to
the section in the book where Stephen Covey recommends that
everyone do a personal profile by thinking through what they

(06:31):
would want the different important people in their lives to
say about them at their funeral. So he says, imagine
it's your funeral and your spouse is going to speak,
your coach is going to speak, a teacher, your best friend,
someone you work with, someone you work for, a childhood friend.
He gives several categories, and he tells the readers to
actually write down what you would want each of those

(06:54):
people to.

Speaker 4 (06:54):
Say at your funeral.

Speaker 3 (06:57):
And I actually stopped and did that, which I don't
normally do.

Speaker 2 (07:02):
And you didn't have a spouse at the time, Yeah,
that's true.

Speaker 4 (07:04):
I don't think I was.

Speaker 2 (07:05):
No I was.

Speaker 3 (07:06):
I don't think I was married yet, but I actually
and again he said, you know, what would you want
your kids to say? So I remember getting I got
out a notebook and I thought, okay, I'm going to
do this. This seems like a very profound exercise. I
had no idea just how profound it was going to be.
So I actually wrote.

Speaker 4 (07:25):
A paragraph or two.

Speaker 3 (07:26):
Once I got into this, I sort of became the
speech writer what would I want to be said about
me at my funeral? And the staggering realization or the
staggering insight for me, which I think is true for
anybody he's gone through this exercise, is that it had
I didn't have anyone saying anything about anything I did.

Speaker 4 (07:47):
There was one person I imagined going.

Speaker 3 (07:48):
He was such a good speaker, he built such a
big ministry. I mean, at that point, I'd say in
my life. But exactly, I guess you know, at that
point after my life, none of those things were important.
And then later in that same section, he goes on
to say that what you discover in that exercise is

(08:11):
your personal definition of success.

Speaker 4 (08:14):
And I just remember thinking, that's exactly right.

Speaker 3 (08:17):
I have just discovered what success really is to me
because I've just thought through what I want to have
said about me when all is said and done, and
when I've done all the doing I'm going to do.
I don't even care if anybody talks about that. So
that drove me then to begin to think through, Okay,
then if that's what I want to have said, if

(08:39):
that really is my personal definition of success, I've got
to capture this in a way that I can carry
it with me. It would be a mistake to say, hey,
that was a great exercise. I'm going to move on
finish the book.

Speaker 4 (08:49):
And so that's what drove me to create these b
goals that I talk about.

Speaker 1 (08:54):
So Annie, what did these end up looking like? Were
they statements? Were they was it a mission statement?

Speaker 2 (08:59):
What does this look like.

Speaker 4 (09:00):
When you make an egal question? For me?

Speaker 3 (09:03):
Again, I I had this had to be portable, this
had to be something that was going to stick with me,
and so I came up with twelve words.

Speaker 4 (09:11):
I don't know why they were twelve.

Speaker 3 (09:13):
Twelve was too many, so I tried to get it
down to seven because I'm a Christian and that's the
perfect number. I thought maybe three. Anyway, this isn't very
romantic or cool. But I ended up with nine words,
and I just they weren't sentences, they weren't statements, just
nine words that I felt like, these are the things

(09:33):
that I want to describe me now. It was interesting
because I went ahead and finished the book, and I
had all this stuff I was working on, and then
somebody handed me another book. It was and it wasn't
even a good book. I wouldn't even say the title
because I don't want it wasn't that great of a book.

Speaker 4 (09:48):
But there was. But you know how that is.

Speaker 3 (09:49):
But there was one great takeaway from this book, and
the author said that when you set a goal, you
should answer the question why, why is this important?

Speaker 4 (09:59):
What's it? In other words, here's a goal I want
to accomplish. What's at stake? What happens if I don't
accomplish this?

Speaker 3 (10:04):
What's at stake? If I do what hangs in the balance.
And I thought that's a great question. So then I
went back to my nine words, and I asked the question, why,
why should I do this? What's at stake if I don't?
So I had my nine words and I had my
nine answers to the question why. And I'm telling you,
laying this early on in my leadership created really a

(10:25):
perimeter around my behavior. And I want to talk in
a minute about why that's so important, But this was
very time consuming.

Speaker 4 (10:33):
And again I'm not normally one.

Speaker 3 (10:34):
To stop and you know, do that sort of stuff,
but I'm telling you it really really marked me. And
from that point on that had really has been the
foundation not only of my leadership, but of all the
other goals that I might set that.

Speaker 4 (10:46):
Would be more oriented toward things I do.

Speaker 2 (10:48):
Well, can you give us an example of maybe a
word or the question they're going to ask that?

Speaker 3 (10:53):
Yeah, you know, in the early days, I used to
give people all nine of my words, and you know
what they would do as I would listing my words,
what do you think they did?

Speaker 2 (11:02):
Well? What I would do is I would go this
sound good to me, I'll use your words.

Speaker 3 (11:05):
I would see people pull out their pens, and they
would write my words downs right, and I because I
used to teach this, and I would say, wait.

Speaker 4 (11:12):
I would think, wait a minute, those are my words. Yeah,
you got to get your own words. So I'm going.

Speaker 3 (11:20):
To I want to give you a couple of examples,
just to get us thinking about this.

Speaker 4 (11:26):
One of my words was honest. I mean, how original.

Speaker 3 (11:28):
In fact, if I gave you all nine of these,
none of these are unusual. He would say, well, Andy,
aren't those things everybody's supposed to be I'd say, yeah,
but these are.

Speaker 4 (11:35):
Things that emerge.

Speaker 3 (11:36):
They literally emerged from these many you know, conversations or
things I wanted people to say about me. So one
of the words was honest. So I asked the question,
why is that important? I mean, I know it's I'm
a Christian, it's a Bible thing. You know, we teach
our children to be honest. But think about this, Why
what is at stake if I choose to be dishonest?

(11:57):
That's a really important question. So so again, you could
write a book on the answer to that question. So
I thought and thought and thought and for me, and
you may not love my answer. For me, the answer
was that dishonesty erodes relationships. You know, I like to
make things short and memorable, and that was it. Dishonesty
erode relationships, and that trust is the currency of relationships.

Speaker 4 (12:17):
We all know that.

Speaker 3 (12:18):
So being honest, you know, that's kind of a nice thing.
We should all be honest. But I when I'm tempted
to lie or not tell the whole truth, or to
try to look better than I really am by you know, posing,
or again just being dishonest, I'm struck with the fact Andy,
if you choose to be dishonest, you are going to
erode this relationship. Do you really want to erode your

(12:40):
relationship with Lane? Do you really want to erode your
relationship with Sandra? Do you want to erode your relationship
with Garrett, your son or your.

Speaker 4 (12:46):
Andrew or you know.

Speaker 3 (12:47):
So it's not just a matter of being Sunday School honest.
All of a sudden, I know what's at stake. Dishonesty
erodes relationship. So of course some of you've heard me
tell this story, Like you know, when I was my kids,
I used to tell them, the worst thing you can
do is tell Hellhi, the worst thing you can do
is tell lie?

Speaker 4 (13:04):
Why?

Speaker 3 (13:04):
Because dishonesty dishonesty erodes a relationship. Well that came directly
from this sort of wake up call, you know, years
and years ago. So again, nine words, nine statements. I
guess you want me to give you another one.

Speaker 4 (13:18):
I'm gonna look at my head. Oh gosh. Dependable.

Speaker 3 (13:25):
One of my words was dependable that if I told
somebody I was going to do something, they didn't have
to worry about it. They didn't have to calm me,
they didn't have to remind me. That if I said
I was going to do something, then I would be dependable.
So I asked the question, because I in my little
funeral deal, I you know, somebody stood up and said
Andy was dependable. If he said he was going to
do it, you could always depend on Andy. I would
love for somebody to say that, well, why what's at stake?

(13:49):
Well again, you think, and you think, and you know
it's important. But why is it important? I realized, Well,
it's important because my willingness to be dependable really determines
my reputation more than my promises, more than my words.
That my consistency when I say I'm going to do
something and I do it, or say I won't and
I won't that really ultimately determines what you think about

(14:11):
me when you think about me, and that was important
to me. So again it being dependable. It's not just
the nice well, we should all be dependable. Suddenly there
was something at stake. So for each of these nine words,
I went through and forced myself to ask the question why, why, why,
what's at stake?

Speaker 4 (14:25):
Why is this important?

Speaker 3 (14:26):
And again every time I answered that question again, it's
like a little bit higher fence went up around my behavior.
And whenever I was or continued to be tempted to
move outside that you know, perimeter of these nine words,
it really strikes hard at my conscience again because years
ago I decided this isn't an issue of just being

(14:47):
a nice guy. This is success or failure for me
as a person.

Speaker 1 (14:52):
When you talk about that, I kind of think about
it in the context of you know, our friendship and
then you as my boss, and I see how that's
all played out. But one of the things that struck me,
and I think a lot of our listeners could could
really identify with this, is you as a communicator. This
whole idea of being committed to honesty. You know that
dishonesty erodes relationships. The authenticity with which you speak and

(15:16):
you present yourself, I think has created a relationship between
you and people who who have never met you, who
don't know you. But it's because you've been authentic. It's
because you've been honest and you haven't, as you said,
posed or put something.

Speaker 2 (15:31):
Else up there.

Speaker 1 (15:32):
I you know, and you've experienced countless times that people
have that relationship.

Speaker 2 (15:36):
And I think that's a huge win for a communicator.

Speaker 4 (15:39):
Well, it's funny you say this.

Speaker 3 (15:40):
And I don't know if I guess our podcast listeners
think that we script all of this stuff, and sometimes
we do and sometimes we don't.

Speaker 4 (15:46):
And today isn't very scripted.

Speaker 3 (15:48):
But I'll share one more because one of my other
nine words is the word transparent. And I have always
tried to be very transparent with my friends, maybe sometimes
too much, and transparent my communication. And and and again
I asked the question, why is that important? Why is
it important?

Speaker 4 (16:05):
And it's because bad things grow in the dark. They
just do.

Speaker 3 (16:09):
We know that secrets are not good things. And we
have all seen people who have carried things in the
darkness of their soul and their heart, and eventually they surface,
and they always surface at dangerous and difficult times, where
they surface in dangerous times and they create difficult circumstances.
So early on I just decided, I, you know, I
want to be as transparent as is.

Speaker 4 (16:30):
Comfortable for other people.

Speaker 3 (16:31):
I remember when Sandra and I first got married, and
I would be speaking and I would be like, really transparent,
and I realized, okay, once you get married, you can't
be quite so trump. I mean, I would make her
uncomfortable with my transparency.

Speaker 4 (16:43):
So I learned, you know, you have.

Speaker 2 (16:43):
Some guys haven't learned that last no, but they're really.

Speaker 4 (16:46):
Interesting to listen to.

Speaker 3 (16:48):
I have this picture of their wife sitting there on
the front road going, oh, really, I don't think I
can go to your church anymore, honey. So so again
that that was that was one of those things, And
I'm glad. Do you feel like that has been transparent
in communication?

Speaker 1 (17:04):
And you want to go back to something you mentioned
just a few minutes ago that as you were going
through this process, that these words, these questions became more
than a list of Sunday School thou shalt, thou shalt
not ste They took on a bigger meaning.

Speaker 3 (17:18):
Yeah, and I did allude to this but let me
see if I can say it better again. Because this
exercise helped helped me, and I think it would help
anybody discover their personal definition of success. Then whenever I
would wander outside the perimeter that these words set up
for my behavior, it was more than simply doing a
bad thing, or you know, I can use religious terms.

(17:38):
It was more than just a sin.

Speaker 4 (17:40):
It was bigger than that. It was failure.

Speaker 3 (17:42):
If this, If success for me is honesty, then dishonesty
is failure.

Speaker 4 (17:48):
If success for.

Speaker 3 (17:49):
Me is purity, remaining morally pure, then impurity is its failure.
And so again, when when when these terms and these
ideas were couched in that way, I'm telling you what.
I found it so much easier to say no to opportunity,
no to money, no to shortcuts, no to relationship, no
to a whole lot of things I needed to say

(18:10):
no to because it wasn't just a matter of good
and bad, right and wrong.

Speaker 4 (18:14):
It was success or failure.

Speaker 3 (18:16):
Because I had discovered at the end of my life,
if that's what was most important to me, then this
was a really big deal.

Speaker 4 (18:23):
And and I have tried to lead.

Speaker 3 (18:24):
I've led several small groups of young men specifically through
this exercise. And even though I tell them my story,
when they discovered it for themselves there it almost takes
your breath away when you realize, Wow, as much as
I may think money is what's most important to me,
as much as I may think certain pleasures are most
important to me, at the end of the day, I

(18:45):
don't care if anybody talks about that stuff or not.
So again, I think it creates the foundation for all
the do goals, once we determine what are who we
want to be.

Speaker 1 (18:55):
Andy, as we've been talking about this, it reminds me
actually of something you talked about that really our definition
of success comes down to the story we want to tell.

Speaker 3 (19:04):
Yeah, exactly, we talked about this important question of what
story do I want to tell? And that's what this is, right,
And because when you go through that exercise or similar exercise,
I'm sure there are other exercises people have read about
that accomplished the same thing. But when you go through
an exercise like this, you discover in very vivid detail

(19:25):
the story you want told about you, which is the
story that ultimately you would like to tell. And I
think the clearer that is for us, and the more
clarity we have around that, in the clarity around the
discovery that it's not so much about what I do,
because again, after we leave home, nobody, there is nobody

(19:45):
in our lives for the most part, that are going
to push us to become better people. We're just going
to be pushed to do bigger and better things. But
when we live every day with the reality of, you
know what, as much as I want to accomplish and
as big as I want to grow my company, as
much money as I want to make, or because I
want to grow my ministry, at the end of the day,
I've already predetermined that that really is a success for me.

Speaker 4 (20:07):
That's fine.

Speaker 3 (20:08):
We love to grow things, we love progress, but I
would never, never, never, want to sacrifice what I have
already determined is success for me for the sake of
material success or the rewards that come along with success.
So it's a really powerful observation and it's a powerful discovery,
and I think the earlier a leader discovers that, the better.

Speaker 1 (20:29):
All right, let me go back and ask the question
that you've taught us to ask just a few minutes ago.

Speaker 2 (20:34):
What's at stake if we don't do this?

Speaker 4 (20:36):
You know that's such a great question. And here's what's
at stake.

Speaker 3 (20:39):
A man or a woman can get through their most
productive years in terms of business or ministry or building
a company or a law practice or whatever it might be.
You can get to the end of all that and
be an absolute failure on the inside, and every man
or woman knows they failed. In fact, come on, we're
a ministry. We talked to many women all the time
who are in late forties fifties who would love to

(21:01):
go back and redo their thirties and forties. And they
never want to go back and redo their business thirties
and forties. They never want to go back and do
their medical practice thirties and forties. They never want to
go back and do their professional thirties and forties. They
want to go back and do their relationship thirties and forties.
They want to go back and do their character thirties
and forties. Those are the deepest regrets. So at the

(21:22):
end of the day, I think we all kind of
intuitively know this is true. But if you don't predecide,
and I think if you don't write it down, and
if you don't write it down in a way that
makes it memorable and portable life pushes us outside the
parameters of what we know we ought to be and
who we ought to be. And once you're outside those parameters,

(21:43):
no matter what kind of success you have, you'll always
know on the inside, I have failed myself. I have
failed myself. No one else may know, but I know
I have failed myself. And that's a tough regret to
live with.

Speaker 2 (21:57):
Andy.

Speaker 1 (21:57):
As we wrap up our time today, any final thoughts.

Speaker 3 (22:00):
Yeah, this may sound simplistic, but I want to say
something directly to our podcast listeners. Ladies and gentlemen, you're
gonna be something. In fact, your husband or wife's already
told you, Hey, you're something. Why not decide what you're
going to be. I mean, it's not like there's no neutral.
I mean we all end up somewhere in life. We
just some of us get to choose where we want

(22:22):
to be. So why not choose who you want to be?
And why not take some time and think this through
and write a few things down, And again, the sooner
you do it, the better. Now, let me reframe our
entire conversation, maybe in a way that brings some clarity
some of you listening today, your life would be a
You would be in a much better place in life

(22:44):
if your father had worked through an exercise like this
in his late twenties, or your mother had worked through
an exercise like this and asked the question.

Speaker 4 (22:52):
Who do I want to be?

Speaker 3 (22:53):
If they're doing had been driven more by who they
had decided to be ahead of time, you know what
you experienced at home would be so different. Perhaps your
parents would still be together, Perhaps you would have grown
up with a father in the home if they had
just decided, if someone had decided that being precedes doing,
and being is more important than doing. On the flip side,
your father may be your hero, your mother may be

(23:15):
your hero. And if that's the case, then that I
would guess that somewhere along the way they discovered this idea.
They discovered that it's always a mistake to decide what
you're going to do before you decide who you're going
to be. And you have benefited greatly from their decision,
and now you have the opportunity to do the same
thing for your family, for your kids, for your marriage,
and for their next generation.