Craig Groeschel - 3 Ways to Change How You Think
Hey, welcome to another episode of the Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast where we're incredibly passionate about building your leadership in around 20 minutes or so each month. Now, normally, we release a new podcast teaching on the first Thursday of each month, but guess what, we've got some cray bonus content coming your way. A big thank you to all of you that pre-ordered a copy of my book, "Winning The War In Your Mind: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life". For those of you that pre-ordered, you got early access to the master class "How The Best Leaders Think". And what excites me more than I could possibly describe is the feedback that we're getting from you, our Leadership Podcast community, on how the book is impacting your leadership.
In fact, I've got a couple of reviews from Amazon. John said this. John said, "'Winning The War In Your Mind' will help you improve your life no matter where you are. If you're in the pits of depression, it'll help you begin to shift out of there. If you're at the pinnacle of success in your field, it will take you to the next level". That's my hope that whatever you're leading, the teaching in this book will help take your leadership to the next level. We also have L.P who reviewed the book and said, "Even though Amazon's top rating is five stars, I'm giving this book a 10". Thank you, L.P. He said, "I can't put it down, it's bringing me so much joy and freedom from my inner critic. Buy one for everyone in your sphere of influence". And I would just say that to some of you. You might consider grabbing a copy for someone that can't afford it, or there's really helpful content and assignments at the end of each section. You may wanna go through that with your leadership team to help create a systematic way of thinking, the right culture, because how we think will determine how we lead.
Now, what I wanna do is I wanna give you some bonus content about how the best leaders think. On the next few Thursdays, we'll be releasing bonus episodes. The upcoming topics, I wanna tell you what we're gonna talk about. We're gonna talk about thinking empowerment, not control. We're gonna think investment, not spending. We're gonna think possibilities, not problems. We're gonna think inspiration, not motivation. It's how the best leaders think. If you are new with us, I would really encourage you to go to life.church/leadershippodcast, and hit subscribe. You can also let us know and get the leader guide, where we've got detailed questions and exercises for the master class, so you can go through this content with your team. Now, if you didn't know, all of our podcast episodes are also available on videos to watch at YouTube, and for this message series, we're gonna release the teaching on YouTube a day early, so for those of you who really wanna dig in, look for them a day early on YouTube, subscribe to the podcast wherever you consume the content, at YouTube, hit subscribe, tap the bell icon, and you'll be notified when the new episode releases. Are you ready?
Here's some bonus content. Let's go to part one of "How The Best Leaders Think". You may not see yourself as a leader, and I wanna try to convince you that you are a leader. What is leadership? Well, leadership at its core is influence, and the good news is you have influence. If you have friends, you have influence. If you work with people, you have influence. If you lead a small group, you have influence. If you have teenagers, you have influence. Maybe a little less today than you did in the past, but I promise you, hang in there, you will have more influence with your kids again in the future. Now, what I'd like to do is I wanna cover five sessions about "How The Best Leaders Think". This will compliment and expand on my book, "Winning The War In Your Mind". What do we know about your thoughts, your mindset, the way you think? We know that your life is always moving in the direction of your strongest thoughts. In other words, what you think will determine what you become. Applied to your leadership, we could say it this way. Your leadership is always moving in the direction of your strongest thoughts.
How you think will determine how you lead. The problem is that what you believe about leadership may be wrong. In fact, it was Mark Twain who said this, "What gets us in trouble isn't what we know. It's what we know for sure that just ain't so". Now, what's funny to me about this quote attributed to Mark Twain is that Mark Twain probably didn't say that quote. Most people wanna know, when it comes to leadership, what do other leaders do? Hey, what do you do, how do you spend your time, what should I be doing like something that you're doing? It's not a bad place to start, but a better place to start in studying other leaders is not what they do, but instead, how they think. The reason is because we can't always do what other leaders do. We don't have their gifts, or their abilities, or their talents. But what we can do is we can learn how they think. Not just what do you do, but how do you think? So what I wanna do is I wanna give you three suggestions to change the way you think as a leader.
How do the best leaders think? Well, let's apply these three thoughts. Number one, I would encourage you to grow in your leadership, to change the way you think, is to find a leader several steps ahead of you. Not just one or two in organizational development, or in mindset of leadership, but find someone several steps ahead of you, because if they're just one or two steps ahead of you, you'll see tweaks in how they think, but if they're five, or 10, or 20 steps ahead of you, you'll see leaps of difference in their thinking. What I'm doing is I'm looking for what I call the gift of disorientation. When I'm around someone who has 10 times the number of employees, or 10 times the number of locations, or 10 times the income, or 10 times the impact, so often, my mind is blown, and they're introducing ideas or concepts that I haven't thought of before, and I feel completely disoriented, I don't even know what questions to ask. Sometimes, I'm having a difficult time absorbing all their wisdom. I call it the gift of disorientation. They're so far ahead of you, they're dropping mind-blowing ideas that shift you, not tweak your thinking, but shift your thinking to a new level. Sometimes you look around at your leaders in your organization, and you're wondering, why don't you care about the things that I care about? What you wanna do is you wanna find a leader several steps ahead of you who will change your thinking, stretch your capacity, and enable you to think in a totally different way.
The second thought. Number one, find a leader several steps ahead of you. Number two, I wanna encourage you to watch for where you push back the most. As we cover several different sessions in this teaching, there may be times when you say, "Oh, I disagree. That doesn't apply to me". Whenever I find myself disagreeing, or arguing with someone, or saying, "That's not true for me," that's often a cue that I need to pay very careful attention. Watch for wherever you push back. It's at whatever point that you disagree the strongest that often indicates where you have the most to learn. Whenever I say, "Oh no, that's just not true, no, you're completely wrong," it often indicates I don't have the context to know what someone else is talking about. Where you disagree the strongest, it often indicates where you have the most to learn. So as we're studying, what we're gonna do is we're gonna train our minds. Be a student, not a critic. Be a student, not a critic. How do we change the way we think?
Well number one, find a leader several steps ahead of you. Number two, watch for wherever you push back. That's an indication I may need to really grow, or learn, or be stretched here. Number three, I wanna encourage you, be willing to be wrong. Be willing to be wrong. In fact, as I survey the history of my leadership growth, the biggest areas of growth in my leadership didn't come from getting better at where I was already right. The biggest areas of growth came from recognizing places I was wrong. I'll give you some examples where I've been wrong and changed my thinking. For example, I used to think that you needed a title or a position to be a leader. But what I've come to realize is this that leadership is never about title or position, leadership is always about trust and influence.
I used to think the best leaders do more, they're always busy, they're engaged in everything, they know details about all sorts of things, but I've learned that's not true. I've discovered that as a leader, your importance isn't based on how much you do, but on how much what you do matters. You don't have to do more work, but the work that you do has to matter more. I used to think the best leaders knew about everything going on, they were involved in all the details, they were very hands-on, very controlling, demanding the best, but I've learned the best leaders trust other leaders to know what's going on. I've discovered those places where I was wrong by adjusting my thinking that's increased my leadership capacity. Over time, I've learned this about controlling leaders. Controlling leaders can become the lead, and I've discovered a better indicator of good leadership isn't the one who knows it all, but is a leader who trusts the right people to know it all.
Now, what are we gonna cover in the upcoming sessions? What we're gonna do is we're gonna try to adjust our thinking. Remember, how we think determines how we lead. What we know is this. The best leaders think differently from the rest. How are we going to think? We're gonna think in some different ways. First, we're gonna think empowerment, not control. When many leaders are controlling, we're not gonna be that way. We're gonna think empowering others, not controlling. We're gonna think also, invest, not spend. The third shift in our thinking is we're going to think possibilities, not problems. And then finally, we're gonna think inspire, not motivate.
So remember this. As a leader, you're moving in the direction of your strongest thoughts. I want you to think about what you think about, because your life, your leadership, is always moving in the direction of your strongest thoughts. If you don't like where you're going, what are we gonna do? We're gonna change the way we're thinking. Well, what do we know about the power of our thoughts? We know that our life is always moving in the direction of our strongest thoughts. The same is true with our leadership. How we think will determine how we lead. Our organization will always reflect the strongest thoughts that we think.
My question for you is do you like your thoughts? Do you like the direction your thoughts are taking you? If you do not, I wanna encourage you to pick up a copy of my book, "Winning The War In Your Mind: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life". And over the next four weeks, we're gonna be diving in specifically to how the best leaders think. I wanna remind you to pick up a copy of the Leader Guide. Go to life.church/leadershippodcast. If you want next week's teaching a day early, you can find it on YouTube. And I wanna say a big thank you to those of you who have written a review, or rated the content. If you haven't, and you wouldn't mind doing that, that would mean a lot to me. Also, thank you for inviting others to be a part of our community online.
If this content's helpful to you, tell others about it. If you tag me, and someone from our team sees it, we might repost your post. And again, thank you for being apart of our leadership community. What do we know? There's so much pressure that we feel as leaders, but we're gonna show up, we're gonna think healthy thoughts, we're gonna think God-honoring thoughts, and we're gonna be ourselves, why? We say it all the time, because people would rather a follow a leader who is always real than one who is always right.