Latest / Church Staff Book Club / Success Can Actually Hurt Your Future
Transcript
- Jonathan Malm: I am a success is just as dangerous as the phrase, I am a failure. Hey, welcome back to the Church Staff Book Club. My name is Jonathan Maum. My name's Jason Young. We are now talking about chapter two of the book, How to Get a Return on Failure by John Maxwell. ⁓ this is our third book in this podcast. If you if this is your first time tuning in with us, what we do is we pick a book for the season, and then each episode of the podcast is a chapter of the book. Our hope is that we can really break it down, contextualize it for you working at a church. It's kind of like what you do whenever you go through a book together as a staff. ⁓ you read, you you know, apply it to what you're working on, you maybe ask questions, you maybe push back a little bit, you maybe interpret it through your lens. And hopefully we can all grow better ⁓ when we do that, when we learn together. That's the goal of this podcast. That's what we're trying to do today. So, Jason, this book, or this chapter rather, chapter two. ⁓ What was it about? I didn't read maybe no, I'm joking. Yeah, me me neither. We're just very truthful. That's really what it's like at a church staff book club where it's like half the people didn't actually read it or they're like they they they they they did it right before the meeting, right? Hundred percent. I've been there so many hundred percent. ⁓ yeah. And you know, they're like, hey, what'd you think? It's like, hey, I thought it was great. I echo what he said. I I I echo that. I love it. I love it. I think ⁓ maybe saying, and and this is you know, really in the chapter that if we think about success and if it goes to our head and then a failure goes to our heart, it's in those moments that leadership can get unstable really fast. And so when we when we think about marrying success and failure, which we don't do, usually we keep them in isolation. So it's how do we celebrate success without arrogance? And how do we experience failure and not collapse? So when we put together, can they hang out in the same world? And that's what this chapter talks about. Yeah, that was the idea is hold success and hold failure together, right? ⁓ I'll I'll be honest, this felt like a kind of a vague, a more vague chapter. I agreed with everything, but I'm like, what are we really talking about here? And I think that's maybe our our problem with this book that we really, if we're really gonna like get the meat out of this book, if we're gonna like. take all the wing bone, the wing meat off the bone, right? Like that's the goal. If we're really gonna like get all the the meat off of it, we gotta, we gotta really figure out what we're talking about, like what sort of failures we're talking about, what sort of successes we're talking about. I mean, honestly, as I was reading this, this is one of my this is one of my theories about writing in general, is that sometimes the people with the greatest success in life are not the ones who should write the book. Because A lot of times when you have a ton of success, and this is kind of what he talked about, you don't evaluate why something worked. So, you know, this person, the person who launched this revolutionary small groups approach at his church, right? Like it just, it blew up the church overnight, right? It was incredibly successful. And so he'll tell you what he did, but he won't necessarily explain well why it worked or why. It might need to be different at your church. Hey, just follow this, the follow this approach and it's gonna work for you. And and I think so often in our churches, we read a book and you're like, dude, this person had incredible results. And so we assume if we just follow the game plan A, B, C, D, E, we'll get those same results. But if we don't understand the why, we won't be able to do that. And that's what in this chapter, John is saying is that like when we truly fail, we have to evaluate why. You know, there was a there was a study done where, you know, people were given task A, half failed at it, half succeeded at it. And then task B was intricately more difficult. And the people who failed at task A actually succeeded at task B because they had to like reevaluate, whereas the people who succeeded at task A failed at task B. So that's the idea is like, how can we truly understand why something didn't work, why something could have worked, and then apply that to the next thing? That's kind of the I feel like was probably the biggest value of what I got from this chapter. Yeah. I I I don't know for people watching, listening right now, if this is ever you. I hear people say this and sometimes I feel like I should say this more, but I struggle to say this. I'm just gonna confess this. I I hear people say, Well, I I I really want to fail more because I can, you know, I can learn more. And I'm like Nobody actually wants to fail more. When I hear that, I'm like, For real? Yeah. You know, and there's a little bit of like, I I'm So let me just say this today. Yes, absolutely, unequivocally, there are so many lessons that can be extrapolated in a failure. However, I can't honestly say that I get up in the morning and go, ooh, I hope I failed today, you know, in this eagerness, and that might be a bit dramatic. But one of the things I I think I've learned is I put, I often don't put, and this chapter was a reminder, I don't often put success and failure like kind of on the same page. I keep them Isolated, right? Yeah. And when I isolate them, I think what John is talking about is if we're not careful, and I've done this, so confession. Success can deceive you. And in isolation, failure can discourage you. And so if we put them, you know, juxtaposed or adjacent to one another, is it possible? That because of the proximity, we don't get this arrogant or this, ⁓ my gosh, these headlines. Kind of we're deceived by the success. And when failure hits, we're not insanely discouraged or in the tank because what's happening is we're using those as identity markers, and we just keep coming back to them. But there's the playing field is much, much larger. And so I think what this chapter reminded me to do. Is not to keep them isolated, not to buy into the deception of that success can bring, but also not to buy into the discouragement that failure brings. And so it's like, what does that look like in the church world? And here's where it gets a little confusing. There's this spiritual layer that gets put on top of us. A little over spiritualized sometimes. It it can. And then if we're not careful, We could put things on God the way that He views us based on either success or failure. And that's how we believe He sees us. Therefore, that's how we show up for Him and we think, ⁓ well, that's what people expect of us. Right. And so we tend to tuck away the failures or we're harsh leaders because we don't want anybody to fail because we want to look a certain way, but because success looks and feels better. Yeah. So all of a sudden we create this hot mess. And again, I think that this chapter reminded me ⁓ of is this success can inflate our ego, but failure attacks it. And so how how do you hang inside of both of those worlds? Yeah. I w one thing that I got, and this wasn't explicitly said, but ⁓ the idea of I am a success. Is just as dangerous as the phrase, I am a failure. Boom, brother. That's it. I love that. So often so often we ⁓ you know, when we have a string of failures, we think I'm a failure. And and that will keep us from learning because it becomes, well, that's just that's just my identity. That's just what that's that's the way the the cards are stacked against me or whatever, right? Like I don't know if that's I don't know if that's a mysticism type of phrase, but like if we're talking about poker, then that's fine, right? But or then or then success. So I think about like ⁓ my pastor, you know, my pastor's very successful. He has he's built a church. There's attendance is solid, like it's growing, it feels exciting. You know, every Sunday you're speaking to eight hundred people, you know, it feels healthy. And then he starts a ⁓ like an entrepreneurs group. And the first one is good and the second one starts dwindling. Every week it starts dwindling a little bit more and it feels like a failure that ⁓ this thing that you launched that you were so excited about didn't work the way that you thought it would be. I feel like that's one of those kind of common failures. We have an event, we have a we have a you know ministry that just kind of kind of feels like that's just like, ⁓ it's not really hitting its stride, right? ⁓ and so what do you what do you do with that, right? Like you can either just say like, okay, the over spiritualized way to say it would be like, ⁓ You know, entrepreneurs just don't want to be, you know, you can either blame people, you can blame like entrepreneurs just don't want this, they don't value this, they don't understand it. You can really over spiritualize it and say that the enemy's working against you, right? Or you can just say, you know, ⁓ this is just not something that's needed. It is needed. But so what can we learn from failure that will help us to maybe relaunch it or to redo something you like, right? Like I think that's the hard part. And so I think one of the things that I approach life with one of the ways that I approach life is I say, okay, that didn't work. First of all, how oft how long should I keep trying this the way that it is? Like sometimes there's like a matter of like just it takes like this podcast is an example. Like it takes time to build momentum, right? Like we're we're, you know, some episodes get like a few views, not a few. We do pretty well, right? Like we both have an audience, right? But like it's maybe not where I would want it to be. Some episodes do really well, but it just I know that it takes time to build stride, to build a stride for for growth, right? So like Trying to figure out how long do we try to keep doing something that feels like a failure? Or do we quickly pivot and then see, okay, now I'm risking something else. Is that going to work? I think that's a tough tension. I think that a lot of people in ministry feel is like, how often, how quickly do I change? I don't know. Do you have any do you have any opinion on that? Like that's that's what I would probably more than like failure. Okay, I believe that failure, I can learn, I can try something different, but like how long do I keep keep at this? Is this too vague? Like I feel like it's a it's a complex question and I don't know there's an easy answer, but I think that's something that people deal with a lot. Yeah. I I don't know that I have an answer. I don't know that I'm smart enough or I have enough insight. I think I have done things on church staff that I just will let me just a little bit more, a little bit longer. Yeah. And then when and there's some moments I'm like, ooh, yep, that was a good decision. And then there were other moments where a little bit more, a little bit longer, and I'm like, ooh, too long. you know, and it negatively affected people, or it hurt my reputation, or maybe nobody said anything, but I felt some sort of, you know, way about it. ⁓ I think I think you said something earlier that's really, really important. That and John, John writes about this, that he analyzes successes a lot. And there's this default. That well, we need to understand our failures because we need to not repeat them. And there's like, okay, there's value there, right? Yeah. But I try to think, I was trying to think when I read this chapter, I was trying to think what the teams that I have both been on and the teams that I have led. How many times did we evaluate successes? I mean, because we all, man, we will die. Deep often in failures. Not all teams do that. I think the assumption, I think the assumption is success a little bit, right? So you don't evaluate it because you're like, yeah, we planned it already. We planned that it should have succeeded. But maybe we should evaluate success a little bit better. Well, and what happens is, and and John hints at this, I don't know if he says this phrase exactly, but in in success, there's this little whisper, and it's a little misleading, but the whisper is. You did it great. You don't need to change. Yeah. And so we don't evaluate it. We let it be. And then guess what? We just keep doing it. And so we're a bit blinded by the fact that it worked one time or two times or maybe even three times. Right. So we kind of get in this like groove and we buy into this whisper. The the failure, the failure side of things, I think there's value in asking why. So Here's some, here's some here's two practical tools. They're related to each other, not in the book, but you could Google these things. There's a tool called the Five Wys. and it's a really helpful tool. You just, you know, you ask a question, why? Ask a question. Usually by the fifth why. That's why they're called five whys. Usually by the fifth why, you get down to the nitty-gritty of why it works. Or why it didn't work. And right. So this is literally just talking to a four-year-old, then is what you're saying. Cause that's what four year olds agree at and asking why. Yeah. It's like, why? Somebody responds, why? And so it you just kind of get to these like subterranean levels and you're like, ⁓ all right, now we've got something, right? Another ⁓ another example that's been around for a for a long time, ⁓ it's a Japanese phrase that the idea is how do we do better every day with everyone everywhere? So if you think about your church. Think about your volunteers, think about your staff, think about your community, et cetera. ⁓ use this this ⁓ for continuous improvement, but this kaizen, right? And it's how do we get better? And it's a tool. So these are tools. Five wives, kaizen. Again, you can Google these, how to use them. But these are ways that you can both reflect on things and look ahead to things. So the five whys tend to be better on the reflection side. Kaizen can be a way to both reflect but also look ahead. to boost, you know, efficiency, be better in eliminating time or use time, whatever. I mean, there there's some advantages there. But these are like practical tools. Google them and and try them because what it does is it's what Jonathan's what you said and what John talks about. If we can kind of do this autopsy of the success and an autopsy of the failure, we can begin to unearth the why because the the gold, and this is what you said, John, the gold is if we can understand the why, that is portable, right? That is transferable. But a lot of times we move too fast in the name of doing spiritually good things when what we don't realize is that moving too fast doesn't get you any better reward. Yeah. And so if we can take the time to like to slow down and do an autopsy on both of these, you know, then Then we might could actually make better, better decisions. And honestly, there's been times in my own life making decisions on church staff that internally I would never say this to anybody. And maybe somebody's gonna judge me when I say this. But I would sit in my office or I would be standing in front of a group of people, and I felt so Overwhelmed with gratefulness that we were doing a great job. And then there is this other the dark side that I felt really good about myself because man, I'm an amazing leader. I make great decisions. Look at me, look at the size of our ministry, look at the books I'm writing, look at the keynotes I'm delivering, look at all of this stuff. And I'd have these moments, one grounded in humility. One grounded in pride and and really an inflated ego. And it's amazing that the Bible is true after all. ⁓ that there is a I know who would have thought that that there is what happens when you're in either of those camps, especially in the prideful camp. And so it's just this reminder. But let me add one more thing. But then I've also been on the failure side. So those are two examples of success. But I've also been on the failure side that, and this is this is again, this is what I've struggled with for many years of my life. I I do what you said. If there's a failure, I'm horribly embarrassed. I feel like I am. So I go to identity. Not that was a failure, but I am a failure. But even worse, I will say, God, I'm sorry that I'm a failure to you. Or I'm sorry that I am a failure to people and I'm embarrassed. To be seen because what are they thinking? So I had this talk track in my head that I have associated failure with identity. Yeah. So maybe you're listening and watching right now and you're like, dude, yes, that is me. And if that's you, you're you're not alone. It's actually pretty common. And I I, I don't know for you, Jonathan, I see this more so in the church world than I do in the business world because I work in both spaces. And I think oftentimes there is this. spiritual layer that gets added on that exacerbates this all the more. So I don't I don't know if that makes any sense. Yeah. I think the complicating factor with working in the church world is that our our our why, sorry, I mean, or our our goal, what our what is our actual goal for success can feel a little bit more vague. With business, it's make money, right? Super easy. It your your goal should not be to make money at church, right? Like the Tithing, giving is a reflection of things going well, right? But that is not the goal. So the goal gets a little bit difficult. And one of the things that I feel like working at a church, one of the gifts that failure gave to me is it helped me, if I responded correctly, it helped me to realign my why. What was the actual goal for success? Because I do think we talked about this in Don't Burn Out, Burn Bright. The idea that repeated success can cause us to misalign our values. You know, the example we gave was ⁓ you know, someone whose passion at church, you know, that you started this church to rebuild marriages, right? Like that was your goal. And so you rebuild marriages. You have, you're really successful in your church at like building strong marriages. So then you're like, I'm gonna make a podcast. Now this podcast becomes really popular. And that so now the podcast almost starts taking away a little bit of your vision for you that you had for the church. And it becomes about the podcast. So now your measure of success is not necessarily ⁓ restored marriages. Your measure of success is podcast viewers. And then because those podcast view viewers are are growing, then you start getting speaking engagements. And you you start slowly getting off from the trajectory of what really success should be. And the thing is, if you're if you're if you're if you're failing, okay, that failed. Now wait, was I did I really fail, or did I just have a wrong measurement for success? I think about again the example of my pastor. Starting entrepreneurs group. Your tendency as a pastor is to say a bunch of people in the church is a is a win, right? Like that's it because again, our our target shifts, right? It's hard to know what our target is. Obviously, successful entrepreneurs or, you know, people who feel a passion, a drive from God to do entrepreneurship in a godly way, right? Like that's a that's our thing, right? But it's so easy to look at attendance as the measure of a success instead of like, have we really invested in 10 entrepreneurs that are like, suddenly changing the way they're doing their business, right? So so failure should say, okay, was I looking for the wrong metric? Was I looking for the wrong thing to indicate success? And so often the times, I mean the most drastic things I think of whenever I think of failing at my church in ministry was I was just, I was just trying to do the wrong thing. I remember one series we, we, you know, my dad wanted to do my dad was my pastor and I was working for him. He wanted to do ⁓ a a biblical survey. So we would talk about the Old Testament, In two parts in the New Testament, kind of just talk about the periods of the Bible to kind of as you, you know, as you see it from from a you know from a bird's eye view, you help you can understand it a little bit better. Like, what am I reading? What's the context here? That was the idea. I was like, that's boring. Nobody wants to go to that. We're not gonna do that on a Sunday morning. So instead, what I did is I'm like, let's make it this really entertaining, like skit based thing, and you'll wear a tuxedo, we'll have spotlights. Like we it was, it was out of left field, super creative. ⁓ it failed in the sense that nobody remembered a single thing that my dad taught that morning. They remembered the skits. They remembered that like so it was a failure. But what it did is it reminded me like, ⁓ my gosh, what am I trying to turn Sunday morning into? Like that's not the purpose of church. So it snapped. I mean, the fact that my dad went along with this, I'm shocked, right? Like, but it snapped all of our perspectives, like, okay, we need to remember why we're actually meeting together on Sunday mornings. That failure helped realign our why. So that was a that was a real gift. And I'm really proud that we I think a lot of the stuff we write today, a lot of the stuff that I I do in my projects are results of those failures that help me remember like, what are you doing? Like what's the purpose? You can think a little bit more clearly whenever you really react to failures. Well, I mean, I don't know. That's what to kind of continue what you were saying, that's what that's what I was getting from that. Yeah. And and reading this chapter, you know, r reminded me, because I love how he quotes J.I. Packer. You know, right? So author and theologian, many of you are familiar with that name. And, you know, he he he quotes others and the idea that what would it look like? What would it look like for us to stay, not to focus on the success and failure, but what if we s maintain a posture of curiosity and teachability through both? Right. So we don't, we don't stay in the world of success. We're grateful for it. We celebrate it. Our teams need us to celebrate it. And then, ⁓ and by the way, let me just plug this in. I don't know if any leader has ever done this. We feel the pressure, especially in church world. It is a collective success. Our team, da-da-da-da. And while you're doing this the whole time, inside you're like, but I did this. And where we have to be careful is, but there are elements that the team contributed and there's a danger. So that's that false right celebration. And so you have to like look inside of you and really ask, you know, gosh, am I, do I really think that I am the, you know, the be all to source of of success? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so it's again kind of the self reflection moment to really when I do celebrate with the team, I really do deep down inside believe it is, you know. The team and we unearth why, how did it win, and vice versa. But I'm modeling for our team a posture of curiosity and teachability. And what if, and this goes back to a prior book that we did on being an emotionally healthy leader, right? So this is an example of how does an emotionally mature, emotionally healthy leader not have to ride the roller coaster of every outcome? A success. It's like you're going to the top of the roller coaster and failure, you're like, man, you you're it's just like straight to the bottom. ⁓ yeah, we're we're back up again. And and if you don't, if you're not careful, the team is doing this. So what if by reframing, and that's what this this chapter in this book does reframing success and failure, what if that allowed you to model for the team because you're staying curious and teachable? That You don't have to ride this roller coaster of every outcome that it could be a little bit more stable because you have the tools to do it. So you're gonna use the five wives, you're gonna use Kaizen, you're whatever tool that you want to use, that you celebrate the wins, but you still do an autopsy of them. I think part of the autopsy, and I mean, this is what I'm thinking is is, you know, whenever you play a a basketball game, you have the benefit of the scoreboard. You see the progress progression of like, so you know, the other team scores, but it doesn't matter. You're still ahead, right? You're still the the points are still going up. And I think that's if we were able to do that in church, that would help us so much. So I wonder if instead of autopsy a particular failure, maybe you should every quarter journal, how is my team doing? Like, where are we at? And then that next failure, you can review that journal and say, like, ⁓ Overall, we're we're in a better place than last time. We had a failure, but the team is growing. The score is advancing. We're still winning the game, even though we sacrificed a point, right? Like I think that would be huge. And I think that's something we don't do very often. So, John, everybody's gonna hear this live, including yourself. If anybody knows me, Jonathan knows it. I'm a verbal processor, so I have an idea, but I'm committing to this idea. And Jonathan's like, dude, what are you about to say? I'm so worried. I know, I know. I'm worried too. here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna create a tool for you that you can use individually that helps you debrief what we're talking about. And we're gonna create a similar tool that will allow me. I'm gonna I'm including Jason is going to create. I'm including you this by proxy. ⁓ yeah. So we're gonna create a tool. Jonathan makes all the back end happen. I'm not, I'm not that smart as kid, but we're gonna create a tool that's gonna allow you to do what we're talking about and for yourself as a leader, and that you can there will be a team version. So you could step into your team with confidence and competence that you can guide the team to evaluate said thing, right? And so That will be a tool for you because we both know, and Jonathan brought this up even before we we jumped on here. Okay, these things are fine and theory and abstract, and I could get them, you know, but like we need practicality. So we're gonna build these tools, we're gonna post them on the website, churchstaffbookclub.com, so you can download them and use them both for you individually as a leader and for your for your team. One thing I wanna say, Jonathan, I don't know if you've ever felt this way. If you're listening, if you're watching right now, you may say, Jason, have you like, have you really ever felt like something has failed in the context of books? We've talked about church world, but some of you do things outside the church. Some of you write, some of you speak, some of you coach, consult, et cetera. And if you don't, that's okay. But I want to use that as an example, you know, because what gets glorified is wow. You you and Jonathan have written all these books, must be nice. And you know, you're on your yacht in the Mediterranean, and which is absolutely the truth. Just kidding. Not true. You might be sued because you got a sweet deal, but a sweet job. Bro, ⁓ I'm unemployed. I'm on a dinghy out in a lake with an oar, right? So that no no yacht in the Mediterranean. But I will say this: there have been moments in our in and book writing that I could have sworn that book would. crush like would just be And it doesn't. And man, like I fall into this failure. And some of it's humorous. Some of it, you know, I would never get on air and share with anybody. But I felt like, okay, the writing stunk. I'm just making this up per se. Or some of it's not even related to the actual, it's just like in my head, like I'm a I'm a failure. Like this is embarrassing. People are gonna know this. And ⁓ you disappointed Jonathan, or you disappointed the publisher, or you know, even if there were circumstances that got in the way that contributed to it, like I oftentimes don't even credit those. I just kind of get in this talk track. And so I'm reminded of this. And I think the Lord is reminded, just reading story after story and being reminded that the more I am attached to Jesus. And not obsessed and focused on the actions for him, but attached to him. That a bad day doesn't make me a bad leader. Yeah. And so again, it's this cautionary approach from an identity that I'm not going to build identity on applause. I'm also not going to build identity on criticism, right? Because it could be easily, Jonathan, I don't know if you remember this, but somebody wrote ⁓ an Amazon review on one of our books. This makes me laugh. But I kind of had a a moment with it. It was like three stars and it was like nothing new here. I remember that. Yeah, vivid. I remember reading it. There's a little bit of an LOL, you can laugh. But then there's this other part like this talk track. Well, if that person feels that way, I bet there are other people that feel that way. You know. And you begin to get the 120 other reviews that are five-star that are like glowy. 100%. 100%. But it's just this thing. I'm sure if you're watching, listening right now, like you're like, yeah, I do that too. And so I think there's this caution that we have to take, especially in the church world, that success and failure, they don't get the final word. Yeah. But I think our posture of curiosity. Teachability, humility allows us to continue to show up in a way that is helpful and honoring both to God, our team, our churches, our ministries, whatever you lead, and just being reminded: look, good leaders, they celebrate wins. Great leaders, they learn from wins. Great, great leaders or good leaders also do the same for failures, but it's not an identity thing. Yeah. Especially in the eyes of God. And that is, I have done this many, many times. And I'm embarrassed to say that, but I'm just being being real with you that it's a thing, but it doesn't have to stay a thing. And that's why we hope the tools that we're gonna create ⁓ empower you to not be there, but to look at failure and success in an adjacent manner together and how both are important. It just depends on how you look at them and what you do with them. Yeah, that was great. So Hey, this is the end of our time. We hope you got something from this podcast episode. But we'll be talking about chapter three next week. Whether you're reading along with us, whether you're just tuning into the podcast, you'll get something good from it. But make sure and subscribe if you haven't already. Find us on social media. We'd love to talk to you. But we will see you next week.