Craig Groeschel
Appearances
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
I want to talk to you about one of the most powerful leadership tools that is strategic, impactful, deeply relational. Getting it right can transform your leadership. Getting it wrong is guaranteed to limit your leadership. Today, we're talking about one of the most underrated leadership skills.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
And since he was so confident, I thought, obviously, he knows something I don't know. So I'm like, well, great, man. Tell me why we shouldn't do it. And the next thing you know, he flipped his whole thing. He said, oh, actually, I think we should do it. Which one is it? You just told me no with confidence. Now you're telling me yes. And the problem is, and it's not his fault,
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
but he wanted to please me. And your team, they're gonna wanna please you, and they're gonna want you to like them. And so you have to work really, really hard to say, hey, tell me the truth. Like, what do you really, really think? And you've gotta create a climate where they feel safe, where they feel confident, where they can speak freely. So,
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
To get good and helpful information, you want to ask good and helpful questions. And remember, I'm going to say it again, the quality of the questions you ask will determine the quality of the information that you get. Warning, and please hear me on this. You gotta be super careful when you're asking questions that you do not fish for what you want to hear. I do this, you're likely to do this.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
It's so easy to ask leading questions. And so what you wanna do is you don't ask questions to confirm your biases. You ask questions to determine what's true and helpful. Don't ask leading questions. And we do this all the time. You come in like going, hey, why do you think this event wasn't very good? You set the tone and you're helping tell them you don't like the event.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
Or you'll say something like, you don't think she's doing a very good job, do you? what's your employee going to say? They're going to agree with you. Or you'll say like, our pitch was amazing, wasn't it? This is a dumb question. And so I want to say it again. When you're asking questions, you're not searching for information to confirm your biases. You're asking open-ended questions.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
You're absorbing information. You have to walk in and assume you know nothing. And anytime I walk in with a pretty strong opinion, I kind of have this posture like, prove it wrong. Like, if you can prove it wrong, I want you to prove it wrong. I think I may know, but I could definitely be wrong, so I'm really, really open to it. So, let's get practical. How do you ask open-ended questions?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
Most leaders are obsessed with having the right answers, right? But we have to acknowledge that you'll never get the right answers without asking the right questions. What's interesting is that I'm really honored to have done leadership Q&As at different places around the world. And every time we do a Q&A, people ask some version of about the same 12 or 15 questions.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
And this is super important. Watch... how you ask questions, and see what word you're using to lead your question. I'm going to tell you right now, start with what or how instead of did or do. Anytime you're asking a question, look at where you start. Start with what or how instead of did or do. So you're not going to go up to someone and say, do you like this plan? What are their choices?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
Yes or no, conversation over. Instead, you say something like, what? Hey, what do you think about this plan? Or, what can we do to improve? You're not going to open any question. You give them plenty of room to give you honest feedback. Or you're not going to say, did you understand the instructions? That's yes or no. Instead, you could say like, hey, how clear were the instructions?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
Or what questions do you have about the instructions? And you're getting their detailed thoughts, their opinions, not one word answers. And then once they answer, stay curious. This is ridiculously important. They start talking. They're not done yet. But you tend to think you've heard everything. Often the most valuable thing, they're holding back.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
And so you say these three things over and over again. Tell me more. Why? What else? You ask a question, hey, tell me more about that. Oh, okay, great, help me understand why you believe that. Or, hey, what else are you not telling me? Tell me more, why, what else? Say those things over and over and over again.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
Train yourself, when they speak one time, you think you've got everything, and just remind yourself, they got way more in them, they haven't told you yet. They're often holding back, they're kind of seeing, is it safe? They might have an idea they haven't told you, so, hey, tell me more about this, why, what else? Because the best and most helpful information is rarely ever on the surface, right?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
You drill for oil, you dig for gold, and so with people you gotta do the same thing, you gotta dig for wisdom. And so when you're doing this, you wanna listen really carefully, you wanna listen to what you hear, You also want to listen for what you don't hear. Super important. You want to listen to what they say. You also want to listen to what they don't say.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
You want to watch for what you see, and you also want to watch for what you don't see. And this is important because sometimes what you don't hear, what they don't say, and what you don't see is equally or more important than what you do hear, what they do say, and what you do see. I'll give you some examples. We have 45 different live church locations.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
And so on Sundays, often I'll visit a campus and just meet people in the lobby. That's all we do. We just talk to people who are serving and attending. And I'll always say something like, hey, tell me your spiritual story. Tell me how you became a part of the church. And then I'll listen for what I hear and what I don't hear. And I listen for language.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
Sometimes people will say like, oh, I love your church. And when I hear that, that's not exactly what I want to hear. Your is a distancing word. What I want to hear is, oh, I love our church. And that sounds like I'm being nitpicky, and I am. But the difference between someone who loves my church or someone who loves our church is massive in telling me just how bought in they are to the mission.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
Sometimes I'll visit with maybe 200 people, and I'll hear a lot about the local campus pastor. You know, oh, my pastor baptized me and helped me find a life group, and the pastor did my marriage, and oh, he changed my life, whatever. Other times, like I can literally go all Sunday morning, talk to a couple hundred people, and no one mentions the campus pastor.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
And that doesn't happen often, but when it does, it's not a good sign. So we're looking for what we hear. Also, we're watching for what we don't hear. And when you're in a conversation, like trust your instincts. Because so often you're going to be in a conversation and you're going to think, I sense there's something more. I sense there's something you're not telling me. And so just go with it.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
I mean, over and over and over and over again, they're gonna ask, tell me about your schedule. How do you delegate? How do you stay mentally healthy? How do you develop a great culture? How do you increase the vision? How do you appropriately allocate resources? How do you stay motivated, scale up? How do you handle criticism? How do you deal with conflict?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
If you feel that, say, hey, it feels like you want to tell me more. And then just be quiet and listen. And you would be surprised what all you can find out when you take the time not just to listen to the first thing, but to dig a little bit deeper. Now, I want to shift gears and tell you this. And this is, again, I know I keep saying it. These are game-changing principles, I promise you this.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
Not only do you learn by asking questions, but you also learn by observing what kind of questions other people ask you. I'll give you several examples. You're doing a job interview. At the end of the interview, you're usually going to say, do you have any questions for us? Don't say that. That's a dumb question for you to ask. What I always say, I don't ever say, do you have any questions for us?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
I always say, hey, I'm sure you got a lot of questions. Fire away. Why do I do that? Because the questions they ask really determine a lot about how I feel about them as a candidate. What you want to do is you want to hear their questions, not just, do you have any questions? That's like, yes or no, or they ask you one question. Like, hey, I know you got a lot of questions to ask away.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
I'm trying to set the tone where like, I want to hear five, six, seven, eight questions from you. And the reason why I want to hear their questions, because what people ask about determines what people value. What they ask about is a reflection of what's important to them. If they ask, well, how many hours do you expect me to work around here? Or tell me all about the benefits.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
Or when can I be promoted? Those aren't the worst questions, but they're kind of close, right? And if that's all they ask about, that might be an indication this is not the best candidate. I'll give you another example. Whenever I visit Life.Church locations, if you can imagine with 45 of them and doing this for almost 30 years, I've done hundreds of visits. three decades.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
And so when I walk into a place, because I've done it so many times, there are patterns that just shout at me. It's like when I see it, I see it. When I don't see it, it should be there. When they say it, it's like my head's about to explode with information based on the patterns that I've seen. And so a lot of times we'll do dinner with the staff, and I let them ask questions.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
And there are questions I wanna hear, and there are questions that aren't the best ones, because questions reveal priorities and values. People ask about what they care about. And so whenever staff says something like, okay, so you spent Sunday here, what's one thing we can do to improve? Or what did you notice that we might miss?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
Okay, those are growth questions, and those are telling me the staff's postured to learn. Sometimes they'll say like, how did we compare to other campuses? Or did you notice anything wrong? Again, it's not a huge thing, but they're focused on comparison and validation rather than transformation. It doesn't matter how you compare. And you're not looking for something wrong.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
You're looking for something that's right and to grow. And so I'll sometimes coach people on how to ask questions. And gently but firmly, I do a quarterly new staff member meeting where all of our new staff members come in. And a younger 23-year-old asked, hey, what do we need to do to keep from burning out? And I didn't like her question. I didn't tell her that, but I tried to coach her.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
How do you not grow crazy leading for years and years? And we get a version of those over and over and over again. In all my years of doing Q&As, I don't remember anyone ever asking, How do you ask better leadership questions? How do you ask questions to get really the deep and the best answers? And people should ask that because it's so, so, so important.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
And I said, hey, I'm really glad you asked that because I want you to be healthy. I want you to be strong. But what you did is you started with a negative assumption, like that we're going to burn out. And so that actually frames your expectations, and you're afraid of burning out.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
So a better way to ask it would be like, hey, what habits or spiritual disciplines helps you stay energized and focused? That's a question that brings about the right answers for health rather than a defensive posture. Or I said, you could have asked like, hey, Craig, what fuels your spiritual passion that's kept you driven for three decades?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
And so those questions actually get the information that you're looking for instead of being defensive. And again, I know these are nitpicky things, but it's the small tweaks that often bring about the big results because the quality of your questions will impact the quality of the answers that you get. I've gone long today, longer than I normally do. So I hope you have a longer workout.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
I'm going to wrap this up in just a moment, but I want to tell you about what we're going to cover in the next episode because we have a lot of important stuff to cover. In part two, we're going to dive into the specific questions that separate the best leaders from the rest of the leaders.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
And I promise you, we're gonna get stupid practical and I'm gonna show you very specifically what to ask and how to ask to get the best information to care about your team because they matter and to drive the best results. Also, last month I just released a new book, The Benefit of Doubt. How Confronting Your Deepest Questions Can Lead to a Richer Faith.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
This is a Christ-centered book that deals with spiritual doubts. And we want to give away some of those books. We couldn't figure out what to have you type in the comment section. Like, I want Craig's book. Give me your book. And so we asked Grayson, the audio engineer. Shout out, Grayson. Loud shout. Loud, loud, loud. He is the intern.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
audio engineer, and he said, have him type in, I like free books. So, if you'd like to win one of five free books, type in the comments section at YouTube or Spotify, wherever you can, I like free books, and we will see if you win a free book. So, what's your assignment now? Your assignment is this. Be curious. Be engaged, be open, be prayerful.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
When you ask questions, you start to get information. I like to sit on it, and I like to start to connect the dots. I heard this, and I heard this. And then I like to pray, I like to listen to God. And I tell you right now, trust your gut, because you're learning, you're absorbing, you're internalizing, and you're processing. And you know how if you ever use AI, AI is learning you?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
Well, here's what's really cool is you're not AI. You don't have artificial intelligence, but you have God-given wisdom, and that's a great thing. And so what do you do? You're asking questions, you're absorbing, you're processing, and you're listening beyond the noise. And you're thinking beyond the obvious and you're praying beyond the possible. And when you ask better questions, guess what?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
You get better insights. And then you move beyond the surface level conversations and you uncover what truly matters to people and what they're seeing. And you stop settling for quick answers and you're pursuing deeper wisdom. And you're not asking questions to use the people that serve with you, but you're asking questions to know them and to love them and to value them. And you don't just react.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
to what's seen or what you hear, but you discern what's unseen or unspoken because, and again, you know I'm a pastor, so I gotta say it, we serve a God who can do exceedingly and abundantly more than all you can ask, think, or imagine according to his power that is at work within you. So there's more in you, and I wanna encourage you.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
As a leader, if you're starting out, if you're a seasoned leader, wherever you are, ask great questions. Ask the right questions. Why? Because the right questions at the right time will change everything. Thanks for investing half an hour with me today. And I believe you're getting better. I'm getting better. We're all getting better. And that's good news.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
We're going to talk about how to ask better questions because the right question at the right time can change everything. Hey, welcome back to another episode of the Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast, where our mission is to help you become a leader that people love to follow. If you're new to our leadership community, I want to welcome you.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
And if you wonder, like, why should we focus on leadership questions, I'll tell you why. Because your leadership potential will never exceed the quality of the questions that you ask. If you want stronger relationships, better outcomes, and to make a bigger impact, ask better questions. The quality of the questions that you ask determine the quality of the information that you get.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
In many ways, the potential impact of your leadership is based on the quality of the questions that you ask. So what we're going to do is we're going to get very, very practical. We're going to talk about the why, the how, and the what. In other words, like why. Why do you want to ask more questions? Like why do you want to shut your face and listen more than you talk?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
Because you need to do that instead of why. And then we're going to talk about how do you do it? Like how do you ask questions to get the most honest, helpful answers because different types of questions are going to create different types of answers. And then what specifically do you want to know?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
If you want to make a bigger difference and to grow in your leadership, what type of information do you want to know from your team to help you grow in your impact? So let's talk with the why. And this is relatively obvious, but why do you wanna ask questions? And we're gonna talk about three reasons. One is very, very obvious. Two, not as obvious to some leaders. Three reasons.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
You wanna ask questions, number one, to gain knowledge and understanding. That's pretty obvious. We wanna know more. Number two, you wanna ask questions to develop deeper and stronger relationships. Number three, you wanna ask questions to help others grow and gain insight. Let's talk about them. The first one is relatively obvious. You're gonna ask questions because you need to know information.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
You want to figure out what's going on. Now, you've probably heard it said, You don't know what you don't know. People say that all the time. I'm gonna add a little bit to it and tell you this. You don't know way more than you know you don't know.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
I'm not even sure I said that right, but there's so much more about leadership and about people and about what's going on in your organization that you don't even know that you don't even know. And this idea is closely related to the Dunning-Kruger effect. If you've never studied the Dunning-Kruger effect, please do. We've created a short summary in the leader guide.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
And so if you get the leader guide, we'll put some information in there. But essentially, it's a cognitive bias. And you see it on two extremes. People with low competence tend to overestimate their ability. In other words, you've got someone that's not really good at something. You say, how good are you? And they say, like, I'm a nine at this. They think they're really good.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
Yeah, you're a nine, but the scale goes from one to 100 because they really don't know what they don't know. And then on the other side, there's people that are highly competent, and they underestimate their expertise. They're so good at things that it's just intuitive to them, and they really have no idea how special their gifts are.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
I want to focus on the first end, and that is this, that you don't know what you don't know. And as a leader, I promise you that you're going to have to work really, really hard and then harder, and then even harder to discover what you don't know. And in most cases, whenever you're really confident, the more confident that you are that you're right, the more you're vulnerable to being wrong.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
And this was really like in the first season of my leadership. I just remember in my 20s and early 30s thinking I knew a lot, and I was pretty sure I was right. And I had no idea what I didn't know. And I had to work really, really hard to learn where I was blind, what was going on that I didn't understand.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
And really, there were like levels of leadership understanding that I'd yet to even... I hadn't even entered the room yet. And so... If you're like most of us, and if you're like me, when you don't know something, you're often hesitant to ask. Because I'll tell you me, I don't want to look dumb. I'm kind of insecure, so I don't want to appear weak.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
We drop a new episode on the first Thursday of every month. And so if you have not subscribed, let me encourage you to hit subscribe wherever you consume this content. And please, please, please, Make sure you're getting the leader guide. The leader guide is packed with valuable information, summaries, questions, information to help you grow in your leadership, to help you go over with your team.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
And if you're anything like that, when you don't know something, you may not ask. So I want to remind you, this is really, really important. Asking questions isn't a sign of weakness. It's a sign of wisdom. Asking questions doesn't mean you're dumb. It means you're smart. And not only when you ask questions, not only will you grow, but you actually model humility and teachability to your team.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
So if you're the boss and you're in there asking questions, you're like, well, if she can ask questions, then I can as well. And forgive me for the simplicity about what I'm about to say, but this is so, so, so important. And mark this down. Your ability to grow reflects your willingness to learn. What you don't ask, you won't know. And what you don't know, you can't grow. Let me say it again.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
Your ability to grow reflects your willingness to learn. When you don't ask, you won't know. And what you don't know, you can't grow. So why do you ask questions? Well, number one, to gain knowledge and understanding. Pretty obvious. Number two, some people don't think about this, but you ask questions to develop deeper and stronger relationships.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
In other words, if you want to connect deeply with the people that you serve with, you want to ask intentional questions, not just organizational questions, but also personal questions. Why? Because whenever people feel heard, they feel valued, and you want to show that you care about them.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
And chances are, almost every one of you listening or watching right now, you've probably worked for someone that didn't seem to care about you, right? And why is it that you didn't think that they cared? Well, likely they didn't ask anything. And if they did, they probably didn't seem to listen. They didn't seem to care.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
And you know it's really hard to give your best to someone that doesn't care about you. And so if you don't ask your team members questions, and if you don't listen to what they say, essentially what you're doing is you're communicating to your team that their insights, their ideas, their opinions don't really matter to you.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
And what you're doing unintentionally is you're training them not to tell you the truth. And instead, what you're doing is you're training them to tell you what they think you wanna hear. And the moment you do that, that is the beginning of the end. You can't go anywhere with people that won't be honest with you and tell you the truth and tell you the things that you need to hear.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
I like what Andy Stanley says. He says, leaders who don't listen will eventually be surrounded by people who have nothing to say. boom, drop the mic on that, right? You wanna ask questions to show that you care and to learn about people. So number one, you ask questions to gain knowledge and understanding. Two, you ask questions to develop deeper and more meaningful relationships.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
The third thing, a lot of leaders don't think about this, but you also ask questions to help others grow and gain insight, to help others grow and to get better. And this is an underutilized tool. There are times when you're asking questions not just to find out information, but you're asking questions to help others discover information or get answers for themselves.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
You're asking to help them see something new and to help them learn and grow. If you've ever been to a good counselor, counselors specialize in this technique. A good counselor knows that if he or she tells you a truth, it doesn't change much. What a good counselor wants to do is they want to guide you to discover the truth yourself. And my counselor would do this, and it would drive me crazy.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
Go to life.church slash leadership podcast, life.church slash leadership podcast. We'll send you the free leader guide with the release of every single episode. And hey, I love hearing from you. Those of you on YouTube or Spotify, wherever you can comment, comment anytime. If you have questions, ask them. And I would love to know where you're listening from or where you're watching from.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
I'd be like, just cut to the chase. Just tell me. Like, no, I need you to discover it. And so you don't want to tell them how to change their thinking. You don't want to tell them how to change their approach. What you want to do is you want to ask questions and help them see, oh, OK, this is a better way to think or this is a better way to approach that.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
Now, when you're using questions to coach someone, you're guiding them with questions. Remember, the best leaders don't just ask questions to get answers. They ask questions to get people thinking. You're not just using it to say, hey, I want information from you, but you're also asking to get people thinking and to discover information for themselves.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
Now, as a side note, I want to talk to you parents. This is a great tool in parenting. And one of the things I learned raising six kids that are now grown is it's not always wise to ask your kids like, hey, what are you struggling with? What problems are you facing? When a parent asks a kid that, the kid often gets defensive.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
What I found is a better question is to say, hey, tell me how your friends are doing. What are your friends going through? And I've noticed this. It's like our kids don't mind talking about their friends. They just don't want to talk about themselves. And so they'll often talk about their friends' struggles.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
And when they do, mom or dad, they say, oh, you know, my buddy's dealing with porn, or he's dealing drugs, or he's depressed, or he's suicidal, whatever. Don't freak out. Don't lecture your kid. Don't say you're not allowed to hang out with that person anymore. Listen with no judgment and also with compassion. And you say back to your kid, like, you know, that's gotta be difficult.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
That's gotta be painful. You wanna keep your kid talking. You wanna keep the lines of communication open. And then once they tell you something, a really good question to ask is, well, what would you suggest that your friend does? what would you suggest they do?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
And what you're doing is you're helping train your child to both be honest and to think critically about a situation they may face one day and they may be facing now. So you're just asking open-ended questions, you're getting the conversation going, and then you're teaching your child to think. That was a parenting side note. Back to your team. This is really valuable to do with your team members.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
Whenever you're asking questions, one of the things you want to recognize you're doing is you're shifting the focus. You as a leader, so many things are about you. Like you walk in the room, you're the most important person in the room, you're gonna do the talking. When you ask a question, you shift the focus from you to them, and this matters so much.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
Then the next level is the right questions eventually shifts the focus from you to them, and then it shifts the focus from them to us.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
What you're doing is you're asking questions to bring everybody on the same side of the table, and then together you're going like, okay, we're solving problems together, we're seizing opportunities together, and so you're asking questions that bring this unifying force of agreed vision and strategy, and this can be a game changer organizationally.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
A word of caution, and I promise you this is a risk. The higher you rise in leadership, in other words, you get promoted or you do it longer or you're the goat, you're the one everybody listens to, whatever, the higher you rise in leadership, the harder you have to work to ask sincere, others-focused questions.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
You have to work at it because people are going to defer to you and you're going to start thinking you know more and you don't. And first of all, if you're more important than everybody thinks you are, you start to think you know more than you do. And it's stupid, but you don't know. You're always a student.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
Secondly, if you're not careful, your questions, you'll be asking questions, and the people you're asking to, they'll actually feel like you're attacking them. Or you're giving orders. These are two risks. You're asking questions to your team members, and they feel like, oh, I'm on the defense. Why is she asking me these questions? Or you come in asking questions, and it feels like orders.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
I'll give you a kind of example. What you want to do is, if you're going to be asking a lot of questions, you want to work to create a climate of trust and safety. What I'll do if I've got a lot of questions for somebody, I'll typically say something like this, like, hey, I'm going to ask you some questions, and the reason is because you're really smart.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
Just type that in the comment sections. And then anytime you post on social media, it means the world to me. Tag me and my team may repost you. We want to work hard to invite others to be in our community. Let's dive into new content. Today, this is part one of a two-part leadership teaching, and we're talking about how to ask better questions. What do we know about most leaders?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
I'm going to ask you questions because I truly value your insight, and I love the way you think. A lot of people just see problems, but you don't just see problems, you see solutions. And so if it's OK with you, would you spend a few minutes and help teach me what you see that I'm not seeing?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
So what I did there in something like that is I actually mean it, I'm trying to value the person, but I'm creating a climate where you're like going, oh yeah, he's not in here to catch me, he's in here because he values me. And if you don't do this, and you come in firing questions, a lot of people, they just are gonna feel defensive. Like, he's asking me all these questions, I must be in trouble.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
Or, this is another category, you'll ask a sincere question, and you know what they're gonna hear? They don't hear a question. They hear a command. And this is really, really common. True story. Bobby Grunewald is a close friend of mine, worked with me for 25 years. He's the creator of the YouVersion Bible app.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
There was a time when he was over new construction, so all the buildings that we'd be building. He walked into a new auditorium, and they were painting it, and he came and he said, hey, why are you guys using this color? I thought we were going to try a different color. And he was just curious. He wasn't even sure. He's like, I think we were going to try a different one. I wasn't sure.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
And so he was just asking a question. You know what happened? The team repainted the whole auditorium with a different color just because he asked a question. And so you have to be really, really careful and just understand how other people feel on the other side of your questions. And on another level, you're gonna have to work hard just to create a climate where people feel
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
safe to tell you the truth. For example, this is a true story. I asked a team member one time, do you think we should do this? And he said, no, definitely not. And he was so confident that it surprised me because I thought, I'm not sure it's really clear. you know, maybe we shouldn't do it, but it's just not clear to me.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
As a leader, you know your leadership potential will never outperform your daily habits. Healthy habits will propel you forward. Unhealthy habits will hold you back. Today, we're talking about part two of the six habits great leaders avoid. Hey, welcome back to another episode of the Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast, where my goal is to help you become a leader that other people love to follow.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
If you can't make a decision, it's all right there. You said you wanted it, it's the same city, bigger rate, and you're decisive and you can't make a decision, what's the problem? Was the boss overreacting? Possibly, but probably not. Why? Because indecision is the enemy of progress. Indecision is the enemy of progress.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
The best leaders that I've worked around, they don't always get it right, but they always keep it moving forward. They're making decisions. So if you find yourself like, I am hesitant, I'm insecure, I don't know how to make decisions, how do we overcome our hesitation? Let me give you three thoughts. Number one, avoid overthinking.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
What we'll often do is we'll like, we'll overthink a situation, we'll patiently analyze and study everything, and this often feels smart and wise, and it is, but if we're not careful, it can be just a mask to cover your fear and your lack of confidence. What looks like diligence and careful planning is often an excuse to stall or to do nothing.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
You have to remind yourself, you're almost never gonna have all the information. It's almost impossible to get all the facts. And if you wait for all the facts, you're likely going to be too late. So on most decisions, literally for me, if I'm like 70% sure that it's a good decision, I'm moving forward with it. I can't stall. I don't want to be the bottleneck in the organization.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
So we're going to avoid overthinking. The second thing is embrace imperfection. You have to recognize as a leader that no one's ever going to be perfect in decision making. We're all going to make mistakes. And whenever we're taking action, taking action is generally better than inaction. I'll give you a slightly edited version of Sheryl Sandberg's quote. I edit it to say this.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
I'll tell you what they are, then we'll dive into each one of them. Number four, if you have this habit, you're gonna quit the habit of micromanaging. Number five, you're gonna quit the habit of hiding in leadership. And number six, you're gonna quit the habit of hesitation. The habit of micromanaging, the habit of hiding, and the habit of hesitation.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
Done now is better than perfect later. Getting it done now is better than waiting until it's perfect a month from now. You have to remember, when you're making a decision, the great news is that most decisions are not permanent decisions. Like you can almost always adjust along the way. And it's easier to turn a moving vehicle Then a stalled one. So we're not gonna look for perfection.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
We're gonna work to keep the organization moving forward. We're gonna try to be decisive. I tell myself this, you don't have to be perfect to make progress. You just have to start. You just have to keep it moving. So avoid overthinking, embrace imperfections, and then number three, if you wanna overcome the habit of hesitation, set decision deadlines. set decision deadlines.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
This is one of my favorite things to do because I tend to procrastinate decisions. So what I do is I'll set a deadline and it doesn't have to be like a real drop deadline, it's what I call an artificial deadline. And so I'll tell someone on my team, I'll tell my assistant, hey, I will have this to you by next Thursday at noon.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
The decision may not be due until two weeks from now, but instead I'm putting an artificial deadline on it. And what I'm doing is I'm giving myself a timeline so I can actually think and work on it, but I also have some accountability. And if you give yourself a timeline to make decisions, you can balance kind of thoughtful consideration with timely action.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
If you find yourself not making a decision, you have to tell yourself, no decision is a decision. Hesitation isn't just a delay, It's a decision to stand still. Some of you right now, this is one of the biggest weaknesses in your leadership. You got a team of people that are ready to run and they can't run because you won't point.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
You gotta say we're going this way and you can't get it right every single time. But the best leaders make confident, informed decisions, trusting that even if the decisions aren't perfect, we're continuing to move the mission forward. Work on this. be confident, take a step of faith and watch what happens.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
I wanna come back and summarize and wrap it up in a minute, but I do wanna tell you, I'm really excited about the new book I have coming out. It is a Christian book called The Benefit of Doubt. And I wanna give away some copies early before the book releases. It releases February the 18th.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
But if you'd like an early copy before anybody else gets one, if you hop on over to YouTube, you can type in the comment section, type in there, I want Craig's book early. And we will pick, draw five winners and then send it to you. If you wanna pre-order the book, so you will get it the first day it comes out. You may have someone that you know that has faith questions.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
Maybe they're going through doubts about the reality of God or the goodness of God, the faithfulness of God. This is a book I promise we'll speak to them. You can pre-order anywhere books are sold. And I wanna kind of wrap up this two-part series and just talk to you. And I wanna remind you that, You are a leader in progress. A lot of times we think, you know, I'm not ready. I'm not good enough.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
Now, the good news is, if you have bad leadership habits, Breaking free from these habits is not just possible, but it is game changing. So we're going to stop doing what's holding you back, and we're going to create the right habits to propel you forward. So let's start, first of all, with one of the most common bad habits.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
And the reality is no matter how long you do it, you're always going to feel a little bit of that. I still do to this day. And I just want to remind you from a spiritual perspective that God is not done with you yet. There is so much more in you. There are leadership gears in you that you've yet to develop. There's the ability to pull more out of other people that you have yet to see possible.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
There's more vision that you can fulfill, more people that you can help, more profit that you can make, a bigger legacy that you can build. Now, how are you gonna do it? You're going to do it by building the right habits today. The habits you have today determines who you become tomorrow.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
And so we're going to build the right habits, strategic habits that help you become the leader that you want to be tomorrow. Be intentional about it. Be prayerful about it. Ask God to help you and get a little bit better today. Every single day, a little bit better. Learn, study, read, be faithful in this podcast, listen to other podcasts, grow spiritually, surround yourself with great people.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
And guess what? Little by little, day by day, you get a little bit better. You never arrive because you're a leader in progress. God is working in you. He's not through with you yet. I believe in you. And if you find yourself growing and want to tell me about it, just to say transparently, it would bless me more than you can imagine just to hear about your leadership journey.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
Write it in a paragraph or two or three and tell me about it. And I will read it and I'll celebrate it. And I'll thank God for it because I thank God for you. And I thank God that you're getting better because we know that everyone wins when the leader gets better.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
You see it in leaders across the board, and that is the bad habit of micromanaging. If you've never worked for a micromanager, you should just thank God in heaven right now. If you've never worked under an overly controlling leader, you're very fortunate because this is a very, very common bad habit in leaders. What happens?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
The overly controlling leader eventually becomes the greatest limiting force to organizational progress. Because over time, a micromanager really does three things. You're going to see a micromanager destroy trust, limit leadership development, and increase turnover. Every single time you see a micromanager, those three things happen. They destroy trust.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
They limit leadership development and they increase turnover. Let's start with the first problem. Micromanagers, unfortunately, tragically destroy trust. And you probably know it because if you've worked for an overly controlling leader, how'd you feel? If the leader was always breathing down your neck, you felt devalued, demoralized, and disempowered. And here's the problem.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
If you don't feel trusted, you'll never consistently bring your best. And that's what happens to our team members when we don't trust, believe in them, and empower them. Because an overly controlling leader also limits leadership development. Since the boss is always hovering, the team members are often hesitant to take risks.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
They might have an idea, but they're like afraid, if I share this idea, I might get criticized. They wanna take initiative, but they don't take initiative because they don't wanna fail. They wanna be looked down on. And that's why the micromanager will also eventually increase employee turnover. If you will not let good leaders lead, good leaders won't stay. Let me say it again.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
You need to hear this, believe it, take it to the bank. If you won't let good leaders lead, good leaders won't stay. Micromanaging is a massive problem. Why do we tend to do it? Why as a leader do we know it's a problem, but we often are too controlling? Well, fundamentally, we tend to overestimate our own abilities and our own importance. It's a problem.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
If you're new to our leadership community, we drop a brand new episode on the first Thursday of every month. I also want to encourage you to get the leader guide. I promise you there's going to be valuable information helpful for you and good content to go over with your team. If you're not receiving it, go to life.church slash leadership podcast.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
We think that we're better than we are, and we think that we're more important than we are. And I want to say it respectfully, but I kind of want to say it, kind of get in your face a little bit and tell you this right now. You're not as good as you think you are. And the reason I know this is because I discovered years ago, I'm not nearly as good as I thought I was.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
And we tend to think like, hey, no one can do it as well as I can do it. And that's actually a very limited way of thinking. It shows that you're inexperienced or you haven't trusted people around you. And believing that lie is deceivingly comforting. You think, hey, I'm the best at doing this. And it makes you overly controlling in leadership.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
And it's kind of like, maybe like eating two donuts, you know, you eat two donuts and it gives you this temporary sense of comfort, but the crash is coming. And that's what happens when you're overly controlling and you micromanage people. You have to remember, that your unhealthy need to control is potentially the greatest limiting force to organizational progress. You become the bottleneck.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
I've said it a million times, but I want to say it again. In leadership, you can have control or you can have growth, but you can't have both. Now, I wish we had more time to talk about this, but I'm gonna make it as simple as possible. Whenever you're tempted to micromanage, what do you do? I would suggest this. Focus on the what, not the how. This is so important. Focus on the what.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
What do you want your team to accomplish? Not how do you want them to accomplish it? And you may say, it doesn't sound like there's that much difference. There's a massive difference. As a leader, more than anything else, you wanna care about the outcome. You wanna care about the what. And you have to understand that there are different ways to create the desired outcome.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
Your way is one way, and there are other ways to do it. And so if you focus on what outcomes, you focus on this is what I wanna see, and trust your leaders with the how, Your leaders are gonna bring their best, and they'll often bring better ideas than you had. And so how do we do that? It's similar to creating culture. There's three things we're gonna do, and that is this.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
We're gonna be clear on what we expect, we're gonna reward it when we see it, and we're gonna correct it when we don't. Let me say it again. If you want to really trust people with the how, then be clear on the what. Tell them, here's what we'd like to see happen. You're very clear on what the desired outcome is that organizationally you expect.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
Be clear on what you expect, then reward it when you see it. Like, great job, that's amazing. And then correct it when you don't. And what's gonna happen is before long, Really capable leaders are gonna get better. They're gonna become experts, and they're gonna be exceptionally better in the area than maybe you were over time because they're specializing in something.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
So fundamentally, here's what you have to realize, and this sounds a little harsh, but it's true. If you don't trust someone, you've got a team leader that you don't think they're capable. If you don't trust someone, you've either hired the wrong person or you're leading them the wrong way. And either way, it's your problem to solve.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
Either you've got the wrong person in the seat or you haven't empowered that leader in the right way. And either way, it's your problem to solve. So to be a great leader. You have to passionately, righteously avoid the bad habit of micromanaging. That's the first one. Some of you, you can just stop listening right now. That's what you got to work on.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
You'll get a detailed summary designed to help you, your team, additional content. I promise you it's helpful. I'm also very excited that I've got a new book coming. releasing on February the 18th. It is called The Benefit of Doubt, How Confronting Your Deepest Questions Can Lead to a Richer Faith.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
That's yours and that's your assignment for the year. Others of you, let's keep going. The second habit you want to avoid is this, the habit of hiding. the habit of hiding. We know as leaders, sometimes it's difficult for us to feel like we can be ourselves. And so we kind of withdraw a little bit because we don't want people to judge us or lose respect for us or dislike us.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
And so sometimes we don't bring our real selves because we're afraid of what people think if we do. And so instead of being transparent, we like falsely project confidence when we might truthfully feel insecure. Or rather than addressing conflict, we avoid it because we don't want to hurt anybody's feelings or we don't want people to not like us.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
Or instead of taking risks, we play it safe because we don't want to fail or we don't want to disappoint people. And we tend to think, wrongly so, but we think by hiding our insecurities, we're actually creating better dynamics. And we have no idea that whatever we're hiding, we're actually losing opportunities to build genuine trust and deep connection.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
This is so important because great leadership always starts with trust and connection. We have to truly care about people, be engaged, and connect. So if you're hiding, you feel like you can't bring the real you, what's the downside of the habit of hiding? We'll talk about three things, and these are so important. Number one, when you stop being real, you stop being relatable.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
Massive problem in leadership. So many leaders don't want to be themselves. They hide, they withdraw. When you stop being real, you stop being relatable. For example, I was doing a message on the weekend for our church recently. And when I tell you I got lost, I just got lost. I couldn't remember what came next. I was like a long way from my notes and I just stopped and I froze.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
I was so embarrassed. I was like, um... I forgot where I was going. And it was just like, I never do that. I'm always prepared and I was prepared and I got lost and I was so embarrassed. And after that, I thought everybody's gonna make fun of me. You know what people said? They're like, oh my gosh, my favorite part was when you got lost. You should do that more often. That was amazing.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
Like you're human. I felt so connected to you. I'm like going... I don't even understand you right now. They loved it. They loved the fact that I was just transparent, was just completely real. And I have to remind myself, it's like trying to project this image of perfection. It's silly, it's shallow, it's stupid. And I say it, but I didn't always believe it.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
And that is this, that people would rather follow a leader who's always real than one who's always right. You don't have to be perfect, just be real. People wanna connect with you as a person, not just like the image of this great flawless leader, but they really wanna connect with you as a person, so bring your real self. Second problem is this, transparency builds trust,
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
If you'd like to get a copy of this early, I'm actually gonna tell you how you could potentially get one at the end of this episode, but I wanna honor your time, so let's get to work on new content. What do we know? To succeed in your leadership, You don't want to just develop the right habits. You also need to eliminate the wrong habits, right?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
Pretense breaks it, right? Transparency, even if you're like going, yeah, I don't feel very confident, whatever. Transparency builds trust, but pretense breaks trust. And we have to remember that to do anything meaningful, anything significant, anything lasting, if we're gonna do it with other leaders, we have to have trust. And you cannot have trust without connection.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
You cannot have connection without vulnerability. Let me say it again. To do anything significant with other leaders, we have to trust one another. But you can't have trust without connection. and you can't have connection without vulnerability. So without vulnerability, having like a real sincere, meaningful connection, it's impossible.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
And again, we think that people are impressed by like how smart we are, how talented we are, how capable we are, how strong we are. And we have to remember this. We may impress people with our strengths, but we connect with them through our weaknesses. So be yourself.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
Don't be afraid to say, I don't know at all, and I'm not quite sure, and sometimes I feel hesitant, and sometimes I'm a little bit afraid. And you don't wanna overshare, but you do want to be genuine, sincere, and authentic. So there's three big downsides of the bad habit of hiding. Number one, when you stop being real, you stop being relatable.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
Number two, transparency builds trust, pretense breaks it. Number three, hiding your struggles doesn't protect you, it isolates you. So true, hiding your struggles doesn't protect you, it isolates you. What happens is whenever you hide, whenever you pull back as a leader, you actually lose perspective. You lose connection with what's going on.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
And without genuine connection, your leadership is limited. And I mean, like to be real honest, like your emotional health is at risk. When you think about it, if you're going to succeed in leadership, it's no fun to win alone. I mean, it's way more fun to celebrate with people around you. And not only is it no fun to win alone, but it's not easy to lose alone. And sometimes we lose.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
And that's why I tell myself all the time that anything worth doing is worth sharing. Anything worth doing is worth doing with people that I love. And so if you find yourself kind of walled up, I would just encourage you to let people in. And you say, but they might hurt me. Will they hurt you? Like sometimes. Will they disappoint you? Like often they will.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
But I promise, I tell myself, I would rather experience true connections than lead in isolation. And I'd rather lead with an open heart than lead alone. I'll tell you like transparently, when I started the Leadership Podcast, first I thought maybe no one's gonna listen. I'm not gonna have enough content. I'm gonna run out of content.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
I'm starting another year and even right now I'm going like, I hope this matters. I'm gonna work really hard. I'm gonna stare at a camera. I'm gonna do the best I can. And then sometimes I feel like insecure. Is it really gonna connect with people? And so if I feel it, it's okay for you to feel it.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
And if there's any kind of real connection just between us month to month, it matters to me that I don't have to try to act perfect and act like I know it all and have it all together. I still make mistakes all the time. And it's really meaningful to do significant things with other people being transparent and being open. So What are you going to do? You're going to fight the bad habits.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
And the next bad habit I want to talk about is the big one. And it's one that chances are you might struggle with because most leaders do. And that is you've got to fight against the habit of hesitation. You have to fight against it. Why? It's very, very important. The best leaders are always decisive leaders. You say like, yeah, it's a big statement. It's true.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
We're talking about the six habits that great leaders avoid. In the last month's episode, we talked about the first three. We are going to avoid and stop the habit of number one, doing too much. Number two, the habit of avoiding conflict. Number three, we're going to avoid the habit of doing what you've always done. Today, we're gonna talk about four, five, and six.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
The best leaders are always decisive leaders. Doesn't even mean that they always make the perfect decisions, but they do make decisions. And we might like intuitively know it's true, like I have to be decisive, but what do we do? We're all insecure, so we often hesitate.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
And it might be a result of like a fear, like I'm not good enough, or I don't have all the information, or I feel uncertain, or I wanna get things perfect. we have to remember that hesitation drains momentum and destroys morale. Hesitation drains momentum and destroys morale. Hesitation, if you're hesitating, it's really hard to keep things moving.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
And it destroys morale because people are discouraged because we want to win, we wanna move forward, but we can't. So what happens? A lot of times like we're waiting and we're stalling and we don't recognize that because we're not moving, we miss opportunities. or we're diminishing trust amongst our team members, and our organization grows flat because we don't have the courage to make a decision.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
In fact, it's kind of almost a funny story, kind of sad, kind of funny, but I read about a leader that was trying to hire a guy for a key role in his organization, and the role required a leader that was confident and bold and decisive.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
And so there was a candidate that came in and the candidate had a really solid resume, the candidate had a great interview, all the references checked out, and he promised the potential boss, he said, yeah, I'm confident, I'm bold, and I'm decisive. And so the boss said, okay, great interview, do you have any questions? And the candidate said, nope, I've got everything I need.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
6 Habits Great Leaders Avoid, Part 2
And so the boss offered him the job right on the spot. Same city, the guy didn't have to move. There was a significant financial raise. It was a big promotion of leadership responsibility. And the boss said, hey, would you like the job? And the candidate said, ah, can I have a week to think about it? And the boss looked on and said, in your hesitation, I received your answer.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
As a leader, people expect you to have the answers. You start the meetings, you lead the discussion, you give the assignments, and you end up doing most of the talking, which is a problem because the one who talks the most learns the least. We're talking about asking better questions. And if you want to ask better questions, first, you have to be a better listener.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
And you have to remember when you're asking them questions, like literally a team member, they might feel defensive. And so I said it before, but I wanna talk more about it. You wanna create a climate of like safety and trust and intimacy. And so sometimes you're gonna have a developmental conversation with someone.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
They're not doing a great job, there's room for improvement, and you're gonna have a difficult developmental conversation. And so what I'll do in that is I'm gonna come in, I'm gonna ask them questions. I'm not gonna try to tell them, here's what you're doing wrong, but I'm trying to ask them questions to help them discover their own growth areas. And so here's what's gonna happen.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
You have a conversation like that, And they're going to feel some heat. And so in the meeting, you want to lower the temperature. So I'll start sometimes and say, hey, what I want you to know right now is you're not in trouble. No one's losing their job today. We're here because I value you. I believe in you. I believe there's more in you.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
So I'm going to ask you some questions to help you get better. What we're doing is we're creating like, oh, okay. Then they can kind of breathe and they can hear it. Or If you're not having a hard conversation, you're just having a conversation, you still need to work to help them feel at ease. And because, like, think about this. Maybe you have a boss now, or think about your last boss.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
Do you remember how nervous you often felt around a boss? they feel the same way around you. I mean, you think you're nice and likable, but they see they're nervous around you. And so you might set up the conversation and say something like this, like, hey, I mean, you have such valuable insight. Could you help me today by teaching me what you see and how you think?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
Comment, tell me where you're leading, not just like where you're from, but what are you leading? Are you a principal? Are you leading at a bank? Are you leading at a church? Tell me where you're leading and what you're leading. That would mean a lot to me just to kind of get to know you. And let's get into new content. Are you ready? What do we know? We're talking about questions.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
And what you're doing is like you're creating trust and you're giving them permission to speak freely. So before you ask the questions, you're kind of setting up an environment that helps them speak more truthfully. If you're new in a leadership role, and some of you are, you're going to get promoted or you're going to start something, you're going to go to a new company.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
I want to encourage you to go on what's been called a listening tour. It's not my language, someone else said it. Sint Marshall, brilliant. She's the CEO of the Dallas Mavericks. She talked about this in episode 136, if you want to listen to it, and we'll link to that in the leader guide. But what you want to do is you want to meet everyone on your team in a kind of a relaxed time
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
and you are not talking about yourself, do not do that. Most leaders come in there, let me tell you about me, and here's my goal, and here's what we're gonna do, do not do that. Your goal is solely to get to know the people on your team, and not just professionally, but also personally. And Sint would say, I don't wanna just know about your job, tell me about your life.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
Do you have dreams, do you have hopes? What's your childhood like? And when you do that, it does two things. It helps the people around you. It helps you get to know the people around you. And then secondly, it helps them to know that you care. And this matters so much. You generally need to know them and they need to know that you care. Why?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
Because before people trust your words, they need to trust your heart. And so go on a listening tour and ask questions. And the reason this matters is because you can't lead someone well if you don't care about them. And you can't care about them unless you know them. And you can't know them unless you listen to them. I'm going to pause and tell you, again, my thoughts behind the podcast.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
What I try to do is I try to give you episodes in 20 to 30 minutes because I value your time. That means we're going to start in, we're going to get to the point. There's no fluff. One of my secret goals is to give you the highest content value per minute of any podcast you listen to. I know that's a big goal. I know I may not do it, but I'm going to work to keep focused. I want the words to count.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
So I've got more to say about this subject. So what I've done is I've actually created an exclusive episode. It is free. And the title is The Five Questions Every Leader Should Ask. If I included this content in this episode, it'd be way too long and I'd go beyond my goal. So there are categories of questions that a lot of leaders don't even know exist.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
And so we're gonna talk about the types of questions and then we're gonna get very specific in those questions. So if you're wanting to take an extra step in your leadership, Sign up for this exclusive content. It's the five types of questions every leader should ask. Go to life.church slash five questions. Now you're wondering, do I type in F-I-V-E or the number five? And guess what?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
They both work. How cool is that? It's amazing. Life.Church slash five questions. And we'll give you the list and a whole additional episode on the questions you're going to want to ask for self-reflection, for personal development, to cover with your team. And I literally think that you can change the trajectory of your organization with the right questions.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
Better questions lead to better thinking. Better thinking leads to better leadership. And better leadership leads to better impact. So let's talk about how do we get better answers from the questions that we're asking. To get better answers, ask better questions. Now, this is relatively obvious. And this is the easiest part, just to ask the question.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
One of the most strategic things we do over and over and over again here is lead with questions. So let's wrap up today's content. To ask better questions, what do better questions do? Better questions lead to better thinking. Better thinking leads to better leadership. Better leadership leads to greater impact. But asking better questions isn't enough.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
What you have to do is you have to become a better listener. And so what do you want to do? You want to listen to what's being said and what's not being said. You want to listen to what's being implied. You want to listen to what's being avoided. You want to listen beyond the words. And you're not just hearing, but you're absorbing. And you're not just reacting, you're processing.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
And you're not just listening to respond, you're listening to understand. Because the best leaders don't just ask questions, but you create space for life-changing truth to surface. And you don't just collect answers and information, but you're digging for wisdom and insight. And you're looking for untapped potential in the people around you.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
What I promise you is that you've got greatness right around you if you'll take time to see what other people overlook. And remember, you won't get level three learning with level one questions. So ask the first question, ask the second question, ask the third question, dig deeper, stay hungry, stay whole.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
humble, keep asking questions because the right question at the right time with full contact, immersive listening. You're totally engaged. You care about the person. You're bringing out the best. You're reading between the lines. You're having faith for wisdom from God. The right question at the right time can change everything.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
It is with true and deep sincerity I would tell you thank you for being a part of our community. And I want you to know I work really, really hard to bring content that's going to help you grow in your leadership because I believe there is so much more in you. Don't let any lie stop you from believing that God put greatness in you to make a difference in the lives of people.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
You're not an accident. You have more in you than you realize. And you can make a difference when you lead with integrity, when you lead with sincerity, when you lead with passion, when you ask wise questions, when you seek the heart of God to give you wisdom from heaven to make a difference in this world. You can glorify him. You can change lives and you can make a big difference.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
I believe in you and you're getting better. We know everyone wins when the leader gets to win.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
But I want to tell you about the harder part, and this is super important. Your goal isn't just asking great questions. But your goal, are you ready for this? Because I made up a phrase. Your goal is to practice what I call full contact immersive listening. full-contact immersive listening. What is that? I'll define it this way.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
It's next-level engagement where you don't just hear, you absorb, and you connect mentally, emotionally, and physically. You're not just listening to what's being said, but you are fully immersed in the conversation, listening at the deepest level, connecting physically,
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
uh with your speaker to hear what's being said not being said and you're literally like feeling the vibe of the conversation i like the phrase full contact because like i like sports um and you're not observing but you're in the game you're fully present you're actively involved listening in the moment and what are you listening for this is important i'm gonna talk say a bunch you're listening for tone
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
You're listening for pauses. You're observing body language. You're listening for unspoken emotions. You're noticing what's being said. You're noticing what's being implied. You're even noticing what's being avoided. And you don't hear just facts, but you sense the heart behind the words that they're saying. And you're asking direct questions. You're asking clear questions.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
So today, we're going to dive deeper into how to listen beyond the obvious and uncover the insights most leaders miss. Hey, welcome to another episode of the Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast, where I am indescribably passionate about helping you become a leader that people love to follow. If you're new to our community, I'll kind of tell you our content flow.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
You're asking lots of follow-up questions. And then you're reflecting back. You'll say things like, well, what I hear you saying is this, or it seems like you're saying this, and then you're gonna use body language, you're gonna lean in, you're gonna mirror what they're doing, not to be manipulative, but to genuinely connect with people on the deepest level, and you're gonna listen with empathy.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
and you're gonna acknowledge and validate their feelings. Like that must have been difficult or that must have been very meaningful to you. And then you're listening patiently and you're not rushing the conversation. You're not trying to fix something that's wrong. You're not trying to correct them.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
You're not trying to give them advice, but you're digesting fully everything in the moment, absorbing the depth and the heart of what's being communicated. And you're not just listening for information, but you're listening for understanding. I know I just said a lot, but that is full contact immersive listening.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
And if you learn to do that, it's going to completely change the impact of your leadership because the best wisdom doesn't just come from the questions you ask, but how will you listen and how deeply you process what you hear. The challenge is this, that the longer you lead, the less natural this becomes, right?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
And you'll know this intuitively, that you're the leader, and so people wanna know what you think. And because you're the leader, you feel pressure, right? They wanna know what you know, so you're less likely to ask.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
And you feel pressure to be good at leading, so you start the meeting, and you lead the meeting, and you conclude the meeting, and most of the time, you end up doing a lot of the talking. And that's a problem, because the one who talks the most learns the least. And so you have to like intentionally work against what I call the natural rush of leadership.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
We tend to work faster, process faster, move faster. And in conversations, I have to work to slow it down and to listen with intentionality. And you'll probably have to do the same because you lead with an intensity and because your time is valuable and because you're leading with urgency and because your mind is racing, you're often processing faster than other people. And so
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
It's not uncommon for really good leaders to actually interrupt the person that's speaking. It's not a good quality, but it tends to be common. You have to watch out for that. I do this all the time and I do it less today because I watch for it. And when I catch myself, I always apologize and I'll always say, I'm so sorry I interrupted you, please continue.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
Because I respect the person and I genuinely want to hear from them and I don't want to do that. Whenever you catch yourself doing it, stop. Tell them to go on, be quiet and listen. And then when you do, this is important, don't listen to respond. Listen to understand. Someone's going to be talking and you're like going, what am I going to say next? Don't listen to respond.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
Listen to understand them. And you've experienced this. You're sitting in a meeting and someone starts talking. And so you got something to say, right? So instead of truly listening to what they're going to say, you're working on your response already. Don't do that. You're not listening to respond. You're listening to understand. And what I found is Please listen carefully.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
You don't find the gold until the third question. You don't find the gold until the third question. Like, what are you talking about, Craig? Okay. Many leaders, we ask one question. Sometimes two, rarely three. And let me tell you a story to illustrate this, and then I'm going somewhere. Years ago, I asked one of our leaders, question number one, why do you think the presentation wasn't a big win?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
It was obvious to all of us. And so why? Give me the why. And she said, she was a world-class leader. She said, well, we weren't really prepared and we weren't really clear in the meeting. I said, okay, question number two is, what do you think we could have done differently? And she said, well, we could have created better graphics and the, the set of the room was bad.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
And like, if you're doing meetings, um, how you set up a room really matters in how you get people to interact. And so she was right. We said we could, we could have done been clearer, better graphics and better interaction. So third question I ask her is, um, if you'd been solely in charge, what would you have done? And here's what she said.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
We drop a new episode on the first Thursday of every month, and I want you to get it and not miss it. So hit subscribe wherever you consume the content, and I promise you, you want the Leader Guide. If you're not getting the Leader Guide, go to life.church slash leadership podcast, and we'll send it to you.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
She said, I wouldn't have done a presentation because I didn't really love the plan. I was like, Oh, okay. She had my attention. Uh, um, I didn't hear the heart of the problem until the third question. And so I just, you know, then said what I would kind of talked about, go on, tell me more. Why didn't you love the plan?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
And she listed several things that when I heard her say, I'm like, it made a lot of sense to me. And so I'm like, why didn't you tell us? And what do you think she said? Well, she said, you know, I tried to tell you, but you know, you all already had your minds made up. So what she was doing is she was too respectful to say it, but essentially what she was saying is you weren't listening.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
Okay, that's a horrible problem, and it's actually a common problem in a lot of organizations. I made a very, very important discovery, but you're not likely to discover that level of truth when you're just asking one or two questions. And so let's just kind of analyze this story and talk about what we learned and the different levels of lesson. Level one lesson, we learned this.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
We weren't really prepared and we didn't have a great presentation. We learned that with one question. Level two learning was the presentation wasn't a problem, the plan was a problem. That's a big learning. Level three learning was that those of us at the top were not listening to the people on the front lines. That's a level three learning that's so important to the future of the organization.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
And I wanna say this, and I hope you'll listen to it, I hope you'll memorize it, I hope that this will become a part of your leadership. You won't get level three learnings with level one questions. Let me say it again. You won't get level three learnings with level one questions. Most of us, we ask a question, we hear an answer, we move on. Ask the second question, ask the third question.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
Keep digging deeper. I've learned to do this in social conversations and like interpersonally with people. And in the early years of our church, I personally recruited a lot of the staff members. We had seven people on the staff and I'd recruit the eighth and I'd recruit the 11th or whatever.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
And I didn't go out and recruit seminary students because a lot of times in seminary, you're just taught to think. I actually recruited what I call spiritually grounded business leaders that were getting it done and had a real heart for God and the church. And so where did I find them?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
Well, every weekend, I'd be out in the lobby talking to church members that are business leaders and that love the church because they understand the culture. And if you can raise people up from within, that's a great thing. So here's how I would dig for potential staff members. And I would do it real intentionally.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
Yes, I'm trying to love the person, but I'm actually, in every conversation, I've got a couple of priorities. Minister the person, find out more, help them get involved. Could they be a staff member? And so instead of asking the obvious question, which most people do, like, so tell me what you do for a living. I would always ask something like this.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
I'd say like, hey, what are you working on right now that has you fired up? I like that better. That gives them permission to talk about their job or their parenting, but you're getting at the heart. And so they tell you something they're excited about. And then question two, I'd say like, man, tell me the story behind why that matters to you. And the words are important, story and matters to you.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
And you're definitely gonna want it today because we're actually offering an exclusive episode that's only available to those of you that go to life.church slash five questions. I'll tell you more about that in a minute, but go to life.church slash five questions, and we'll share the link with you in the Leader Guide podcast.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
And what happens is now we're moving beyond facts and they're telling a story. And it's not just any story, but it's their story. And I mean, they are their own favorite subjects. They're talking about something that they love and they're talking about something that is very meaningful to them. And so I'm listening to the story, trying to get totally immersed in it.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
And then I ask a deeper question. And it's usually about some emotion. So, you know, I might say like, man, like growing up like that must have been really painful because they're telling about something they went through as a child or like Gosh, overcoming that challenge must have made you so proud. So I'm going to validate an emotion and then ask some version of this.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
And I've asked, you know, 50 versions of this question over and over again. Like, how did that shape you to become the person that you are today? And that type of question communicates deep care. And here's what I promise you. They've probably never been asked that before. is you're going deeper into people to find, it's what I call the story before the story.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
Meaning like, you're going to see in people greatness. What's the story that created the greatness? And what I'm looking for, and you do not see it in everybody, but I'm looking for like these special, this special combination of qualities that create, When you see them, they start to shout at you. I like calling them pre-success qualities.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
Like in every success story, you're going to see some version of these qualities before you see the success. You're going to see like, for me, I'm looking for this like unshakable spiritual strength. this deep resolve, this resounding resilience, this relentless drive they're going to get things done, this like obsessive work ethic, this unwavering heart for God or the unbreakable will to win.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
And then when I see a few of those things, like I kind of get excited, like going, there's something special here. And a lot of times no one's seen it yet because it hasn't been developed. And so at that point, if I see these qualities, I'll ask some version of this question, like, hey, Have you ever thought about giving your life to an even higher calling? And I pause, and I just watch God work.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
And getting to that place, and I've done it many, many times, is it takes time. It takes intentionality. It takes a pure heart. It takes a love for people. It takes curiosity. And I promise you, you're never going to find the best of what God put in people on the surface. And that's why you have to dig deeper.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
Deeper and you have to ask questions level one level two level three you're driving deeper because questions are the keys that unlock untapped potential There's so much more and the people around you that sometimes they don't even know that's in them and you want to try to bring that out and I'll give you a little bit behind the scenes the way I think about doing podcast interviews when I have a guest on and
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
I started doing this, what, eight years ago, and I'd interview people, and I didn't know how to do it. So I'd start with like 15 questions I'd write out, it'd be very, very scripted, and I'd ask question one, and then I'd ask question two, then I'd ask question three, that was so dumb. The guests were polite.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
But the conversations weren't as engaging because the reality is I was asking them questions they've been asked before and they were saying things they said before. And I just got to thinking like, I know there's more in these people. Like they're totally brilliant. How can I pull out of them something that is different, something is new, something that's unique?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
for some exclusive content that's in addition to what we're talking about on this subject. So for those of you that post on social media, thank you for inviting others to be a part of our community. My commitment is to work hard to help you grow, and it means a lot to me when you invite others. If you're watching or listening where you can,
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
And it dawned on me to have them say what they've never said. I need to ask them questions they've never been asked. You just say that again, to have them say something new, something different, something they'd never said before, I need to ask them questions that they've never been asked.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
And so one of my kind of, it's actually a real goal is at the end of an interview, anytime one of my guests says like, oh my gosh, do you ask me a question I've never been asked before? I consider that a real win. And that happens more often than not. And because it's actually a goal. And here's the thing, I can't plan those questions. I can't just sit there.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
I'm going to ask them some random dumb, some questions they've never been asked. What I have to do is I have to listen with full contact aversion. And so when I go into an interview now, I have about five questions down. And that's their fallback questions. Like if I hit a wall and sometimes you do, it's like, okay, and then I've got something to go to.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
But I want to be totally engaged in the conversation. And again, I'm going to tell you a little bit of strategy. I usually ask, The first question is like, tell me when you first saw yourself as a leader. What I'm doing is I'm getting them to tell a story because even the best are nervous. And so that kind of helps them feel more comfortable. And they like to tell a story and stories are engaging.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
And then anytime I get to something that's interesting, like a lot of times they'll talk for two minutes, three minutes, four minutes, and there'll be like a sentence that's pure gold. And I'll hear it, and they don't even know how brilliant it is because it's just intuitive to them. I write that thing down. And then I'll say, when they're thrilled, I'll repeat it back. Hey, you said this thing.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
The One Leadership Skill That Changes Everything
I want to, and I'll draw attention to it. I may actually even summarize it. And I help. the listener to know how brilliant it is what they said. And then I'll just say like, hey, tell me more about that. And that's how I can bring people, bring the best out of them. And you can do this with a team member. You're talking to somebody and you're listening at a deeper level.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
Yeah, I may not succeed, but I'm going to try. I'll start with a relatively easy one before I throw you some curveballs. But you're sincerely one of the top voices on leadership alive today, which is amazing. But you didn't probably start out confident in your leadership. Was there a time, Simon, like somewhere early on in your life, maybe as a kid or a young adult,
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
So you wrote in that zone in Leaders Eat Last. There was another book you may have read. I think it was Rabbi Daniel Lappin. His book is called Thou Shalt Prosper. In it, he says, and this is a loose translation. He says, basically, your business is serving people.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
Like if you meet someone's need and you help one person, you provide value to their life so much so that they're willing to give you their hard-earned money. You've done something that's loving and serving to them. If you serve five people, you've just made five times the money, but you did it by serving people. If you serve a hundred, you have to hire someone else.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
And therefore you have someone sitting next to you. Now you're employing them and helping their family. And so it really starts with service. It is a problem. We see it everywhere. How do you even start to make a change? Because from where I sit, it seems like the food in America is still going to be unhealthy and the companies are still not going to care that much about people. What do you do?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
What's your message?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
that you recognize perhaps you had some leadership gifts?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
Yeah, so Simon, could you get personal with me and I'll give it to you.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
Well, we're 20 minutes in and you're spitting fire. So that's a good sign. And I'd like – if you could get personal, it would mean a lot to me because you're like – you're a smaller version of corporate America. You've got your team that you work with. And I'll give our community an example that they would not see.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
At the beginning of most podcasts, I'm going to ask our guests, what can I help promote for you? And I ask you that. And you're like, nothing. I'm here to serve you, you know, whatever serves you. And so you – that's a genuine other-centered approach. So I see that in you. I applaud that in you.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
I'd love to know in your team and your sphere of influence, the people that you work with, what are other examples of how you are putting them first? Just in the team that you work with, just to give me some ideas, maybe so I could do it better. What's something maybe this year you've done that's different or something that your team would say, I love it when our leader cares for us in this way.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
So you're gonna care for them, not just by giving them benefits, but you're gonna care by addressing problems, being transparent, be willing to push through conflict.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
I'd love to know about the soft skills that you see that are necessary for today in leadership. And something that seems a little bit unique with you is you're almost prophetic in your kind of public keynotes and – Very, very clear, very, very strong.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
And then when you interview someone on your podcast, you're in this whole different gear that you are so present in the moment, maybe more present than almost any interviewer that I've heard, that it's almost like you have no plan in the podcast except for to be with the person and then follow wherever it goes, which is risky unless you can really do that.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
Tell me how you think about personal interactions because you seem to approach them with a little bit different finesse than most people.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
Hey, great to have you back for another episode of the Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast. This is a bonus episode. We just dropped the first episode of the year, The Six Habits Great Leaders Avoid. We covered three in the last episode. On the first Thursday of next month, we're gonna look at the next three. Today, I have a guest for you that is going to inspire you and perhaps push you.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
I'm writing this down. So you're purposely unprepared. Can you talk to me more about... I'm not unprepared. I'm underprepared. Purposely underprepared. Tell me where else besides an interview would I want to be purposely underprepared?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
And I kind of like that. Yeah. I would recommend like when, when people, um, So I try to listen or read or study people on two levels. One is the content. And then two is I try to get in the mindset behind it. And so I would recommend people listen to your podcast. It's a little bit of... What's the optimism? The name of it is... A bit of optimism. A bit of optimism.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
I came intentionally underprepared that I had to look up the name of your podcast. I listened to probably seven episodes. And... I would encourage them to listen to how you ask questions because I think in kind of interpersonal relationships from leadership to everything today, one of the most missing soft skills is just the ability to be present and ask questions.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
And you're really, really good at it. And so I like listening on that level. The same would be true in leadership. leadership presentations, I'd like to know the mindset behind it. I'm assuming that on those cases, you're mostly prepared or would I be wrong when you're doing a keynote? And let me ask it in a different way.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
You're one of the most top requested speakers at the Global Leadership Summit, the biggest, arguably biggest leadership event in the world. And I'd love it if you'd answer the question, not humbly, but truthfully, why? What do you do that's unique and intriguing and why does everybody wanna hear Simon Sinek? So this is true.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
They don't know they crave it. I think it comes through. There's a level of authenticity that is genuine care rather than self-promotion. And you kind of got to get on your soapbox about kind of corporate America. For me, where I sit – A lot of people want to be speakers and influencers, and they'll do a talk, and I'll ask them how it went, and they'll say, well, I liked it. I felt good about it.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
I go, who really gives a rip what you felt about it? Because, you know, it's not about you. And so much of the kind of influential type of leadership is the commercialization of content, self-promotion, and it's really, it's sickening, it's saddening, it's heartbreaking. that you can't watch something without an ad, without a promotion, without a follow me.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
And I think it might have a little bit of benefit in the short run because you get some quick wins, but you lose in the long run because you lose trust and authenticity and that's,
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
So if I pushed back and said, but it's easy for you to say because you are famous, but what would you say then?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
Please don't pursue fame, pursue impact.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
So what is more worth it to you now? If there's maybe a little bit of not feeling like you're making new impact, maybe it's some of the same people hearing you over again. What are you thinking about now that's different that is more worth the sacrifice?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
So I think that's a great place to be. I think you're probably a little bit, or maybe even a little bit more than a little bit younger than I am. And I think a lot of people here in our community would be hitting some level of success, maybe more than they expected in their 30s, 40s. And when you kind of get there, if you do have any kind of level of success, you start to analyze,
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
What's the best use of my time? Economically, impact, balancing with other priorities. And then you start to, because you have options to do more, you start to be more selective. I think it'd be amazing if people could do it before the big success. Meaning when you're 28, you start to prioritize where you put your time.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
And the part that you're talking about friendship is I have to pick your brain on this because- I am fascinated with the idea. If you said, if I picked a hundred subjects, Simon's going to write about this, I wouldn't have friendship in my top 100. And then I would say to you, why in the world that when there's been so much written on it, you have to have something that's new or different.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
Yes, you are a leader. It's interesting you brought that up because one of the many things I like about you, you're very, very direct, no nonsense. I heard on one of your podcasts, you talked about something about like, you know, you hate when people, and this is my words, not yours, so forgive me if I say it wrong, but you said like,
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
So tell me the story behind the passion on friendship.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
It's fascinating to me because five minutes ago, I thought that would be an unusual subject for you to write on. And then when you start talking about it, I actually think it is maybe way more obvious than I thought about because— every part of our life that matters has a friend with it.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
And the common statements, and they're common, but they're so true, like you're the average of your five closest friends. I mean, everyone says that. It is ridiculously true how you think, how you eat, how you dress, where you go, what you read, what you listen to, who you're becoming. is friendship. And now we've got kind of great leaders.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
people overstate friendship, like we're friends, like actually we don't, we're not friends. And so I just kind of wanted to say, we're not friends. We've never, I think our only conversation, you may not even remember, but at the Global Leadership Summit, we shook hands, talked for maybe two minutes. And so that's the extent of our relationship besides I've studied your stuff for a long time.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
Marcus Buckingham, you can't get him on a stage without talking about love. For years, it's organizational leadership, and now he's talking about how you have to love people. And I think it's fascinating. In the workplace, what's your recommendation on friendship? Can we be friends and work together? Should we be friends?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
I agree. I'm looking at a bunch of people I'm friends with right now and they're laughing because we have wonderfully complex relationships and mostly wonderfully and somewhat complex. A couple of questions. There's another word for complex, which is depth. Yeah.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
You would appreciate this more than most. There's someone who's sitting in here. I won't say her name, but we've worked together for years and they had a loss in the family. And I called the other day and I didn't realize it, but she called back, left me a voice text and said, when I lost a child, you're the first to call. When I lost another family member, you're the first to call.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
When I lost this family, you're the first to call. And just said, that means the world to me. And so in some ways, like I think, you know, I look at you as just this, you know, brilliant organizational mindset with a conscience. And I think that's something you would like. That's the way we treat people. I wanted to ask you a couple of questions. And...
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
then I want you to tell us more about when the book's coming out, because I think it's interesting. Is there something that we're not asking you that we should be asking? Are there questions we're not asking, issues we're not addressing that are obvious to you? When I work with other church leaders, they often ask the wrong questions. And I say, you're not asking the right questions.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
As I look at you and observe, it seems to me, and I could be wrong, but it seems to me that you really not only enjoy, but you're great at taking a counterintuitive, approach or mindset to a lot of things. Is that intentional? Am I right? Do you try to look at things from a different perspective or am I reading that wrong?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
Is there anything that we're not asking that you think is more important that we should be paying attention to?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
Yeah, so we're being, because of algorithms and what we're being fed in social media, YouTube, the news even, I think we're being taught to hate. And I would say as a human being and in leadership, like in leadership, you can have a real targeted, you know, we hate them type of thing and, you know, have a little corner of the world and whatever.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
If you want to really truly make a big difference and you want to have a broad team,
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
I think one of the most important things you have to do is understand how someone born, maybe with a different color of skin, maybe in a different part of the world, with different parents, with different education, different values, different problems, different opportunities, if you can't understand how they could get to a different place and even vote different than you,
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
you can never really have a true big impact. You can still disagree, but you have to be able to listen long enough to understand, oh, I can see how somebody would get there. And that's one of my... I'm very opinionated. I have some pretty big extreme views like you do, but...
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
find that without empathy, a heart to listen, and a willingness to learn, we're going to limit our impact every single time.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
You can disagree with them and you can avoid them. But you can't hurt them. Do you want to make a difference? You might make a point. Most people are trying to make a point. Yep.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
Yeah, that's very true. And if someone can get there after that starting point, then we should be able to make progress ourselves. Right. So, I mean, I'd love to ask you and invite you to be as personal as you're comfortable with,
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
Is there something in your life that maybe most people wouldn't know about recently, a fear that you've overcome, an insecurity that you've made progress on, something that you've done that's really special and meaningful to you that you don't talk about a lot, but you say, I'm really proud of this? I mean, the simple answer is yes.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
That's a gift. It's interesting because that's really intimate for you to share that. And it feels like it takes a little bit of courage to say, I push people back and I'm letting the walls down. What's interesting is I think almost everybody has their own version of that. I know I do. We feel safe when we control the distance.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
And so the fact that you would just talk about that, maybe there's someone else out there that would give them the courage to let their own version of that person in their life and do the same thing. And so I just want to express gratitude to you. You've inspired me. You've frustrated me at times. I've argued with you when you've said things emphatically. I have grown to appreciate what you said.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
I'm a student. What was one of the things that pissed you off? I would say there were times when you would And I actually think you don't do this as much. You would tell leaders what to do. And I would say, are you sure you're sitting in the seat of the guy you're criticizing? Different times where I said, don't make the leader look bad and the people cheer. And I don't think you do that as much.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
But there were a couple of times years ago, I'm like, come on, Simon. And I'd push back. But also what I thought is if I knew you-
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
Yeah, I think if we had a long lunch together and let the walls down, I think we'd probably have a blast pushing back and forth with each other because I would respect your principles and I would enjoy pushing you and having you push back even harder and seeing where it ends up. I think it'd be fun. I welcome it. I welcome it. Yeah, the book, is there a release date or is there a title? No.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
Okay, so there'll be a book on friendship coming out sometime. Yeah. Yeah, probably 2026 if I get my act together. Yeah, yeah. I'll look forward to that. I want to tell our audience about other books of yours. Start With Why is unbelievable. Leaders Eat Last is incredible. The Infinite Game is a must read. I Have Not Read Together is better.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
So I'm strategically underprepared by not reading all of them. That one you could have read it in the commercial break. Yeah, I don't even know anything about the book. It's a sweet little book. I love that little book. Excellent. The book we want to give away today is Leaders Eat Last.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
And so if you want to win one of five copies, hop over to YouTube and just type in, let's type in, I want Simon's book. Just type that in the comment section. And I know you don't like to self-promote, but I want to give people a chance to find out more about you. Where do they go if they want to absorb more content?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
And I do, I do want them to go to the podcast too. Oh yeah. The podcast. Yeah. A hundred percent. I, you know, as one who does a podcast, I appreciate that you're putting, you're putting the listener first more than promoting commercializing. It's just, you can feel it. And, and I appreciate that. So Simon, thanks for your generosity, your time.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
Appreciate you being here and you helped us get better. And I would say at the end of the podcast, we know everyone wins when the leader gets better. So thanks for helping us win, even though we're not always going to try to win. We're also going to try to serve and we might eat last because that's what leaders do. So thanks so much, Simon.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
Now, for the record, Simon Sinek hates when people go through his resume, so I'm not gonna do that. If I did, I'd tell you he's New York Times bestselling author, and I'd tell you which books he wrote, but I'm not gonna tell you the books. And I'd tell you about his viral interviews and such.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
Yes. Yeah, that is consistent with what it seems like you would try to approach everything with the mindset of a student. And even, critic might be too harsh of a word, but it seems like you just don't accept what is. You want to ask why, you want to understand how you can make it better.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
And it seems like you take what's common, sometimes commonly held leadership values, and you pick at them in a helpful way to try to make them better. That's what it seems like to me. That's true. Is there something you're picking at now that you see culturally?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
And it's just from where I sit, I have some different strategies and mindsets today than I did five years ago because the world is very different. Is there something you're seeing now that maybe a question leaders aren't asking they should be or something that you see in this current environment? We need to be thinking different about the way we're approaching leadership.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
But I will tell you just personally, I have heard him speak many times at the Global Leadership Summit, and he is a speaker that's very principled, and it's pushed me. Sometimes I push back, but every time I'm challenged by him. And this is an interview that is going to push you as well. So let's dive in today. It's valuable content. This is Simon Sinek.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
So can you tell me, like, why are you so passionate about being a You're a principle-centered leader. You're value-centered. Is there a reason? Was there something you saw early in your life? You seem to be fighting for what's right, fighting for what's true, and have almost like an intolerance for hypocrisy, profit without purpose. Why?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
What's that in you that you're speaking out when others don't?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
Simon, hey, man, it is a great honor to have you on the podcast. Nice to be here. Thanks for having me. I've been learning from you for years. And so my goal is to ask you at least two or three questions no one's ever asked you before and try to draw some untapped brilliance out of you as we go. I look forward to it. I mean, I've heard a lot of questions over the years.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Simon Sinek Unfiltered: The Trap Leaders Must Avoid
No, no, no. That's what I want. I get rid of it. I'm going to drop down. That's what I want you to do. And then if business, the purpose isn't profit alone. How would you define what's the purpose if you're teaching now and we want to be people-centered, human being driven, what is the purpose of business?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
I don't think you would describe this the way I would, but when I observe you and admire this about you, my observation, and it would be incomplete, but it seems like you have an unbelievable understanding Focus on genuinely caring for the people in front of you.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
And yet, there also seems to be like a little bit of a chess strategy to it, meaning like you want to care for them for no other reason than care for them, but you've always got like long-term focus.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
motives that are for good outside of yourself, that it might be that I might just be kind to this person and never see him again, or I might be kind to this person and 12 years from now wish to do something significant together. Is there any kind of like a long-term... Plan, heart, it seems like it, but I'm kind of curious, is it just natural? Can you put skin on that for me?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
What's interesting is, and it's hard to describe, But there are gift givers that feel manipulative. And you kind of know like, hey, they're giving you something because they kind of want something. There are gift givers that feel genuine. And you have a real unique ability to give what I would call very personal and genuine gifts that you put a lot of thought into. Can you tell me about that?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
What's really meaningful is that you brought things to me and some of the most meaningful gifts didn't really cost a lot of money, but they were very, very thoughtful. And all the way down to, and again, this is so second nature to you, but there are how many... anniversaries of something do you think that you would remember about me if you were just kind of following in your normal routine?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
Well, maybe I've given you advice before you ask, and that's one of my weaknesses. But I'm really glad to have you on, and I want to hear a lot of your story. But one of the things I like to ask early on, because it's interesting to hear from our guests –
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
Yeah, quite a few of them. Quite a few, right?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
Yeah, quite a few.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
And I don't have anybody else that would do that. And there's nothing manipulative about it because I really don't have anything to give you. All we have is the opportunity to do things together. And when you started... treating me well. We had no strategy together. There was no... There were just two people in the same town that kind of had a common faith, but nothing else.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
And so, that to me is what I'm trying to bring out. And I feel like I'm way undervaluing what you do, but you... You meet with people. You find out what they care about. You find out what's going on in their life. You document it. And the next time you're there, you will ask them about it. You might bring them a book about it. You might have a gift that has something about it. And it's consistent.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
It's pure in motive. It's rare. And it's meaningful. And I'm going to ask you a question that may not be an answer to this, but is there a story behind it? Is there a something in life that just created that in you that it's not everybody else?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
And I would say that's true, too. Like, so long before I knew your family, you know, I was 22, maybe 23, graduated from college. I was a new follower of Jesus and kind of felt called to ministry, but nobody was calling. Right. So I took a job with Honeywell selling security systems.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
Was there a time in your life, maybe early on, before you had any of the success that you see that you recognize, oh, wait a minute, maybe I have some leadership gifts or the ability to make a difference in people's life? Do you remember the first time you recognized that?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
And what's crazy is I went to your family's house and had no reason to remember them whatsoever besides I remembered them. It wasn't like, hey, these are the Mardell Hobby Lobby people. They were just... really kind people. And the culture in their house was so distinct that I remembered it.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
And years later, when they became more well-known for both their business success and ministry success, then I was like, that was the family, whatever. And so culturally, that family, their home, the values, the way they treated me stood out when I was nothing but basically a door-to-door sales guy. And so I think some of that is just who you are, and it really is special.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
There's no way to describe what all you're involved in. One of the things I learned from you is how do you have multifaceted impact in many different areas. So you founded and built a retail chain. You work with a family that founded and built another and bigger retail chain. You've been involved with a ministry, every tribe, every nation. You produced movies.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
You assisted your brother and helped. He spearheaded launching the Museum of the Bible, and you're in that orbit now. Um, you're working today on the runaway hit series.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
Somehow now you're in the middle of the chosen and helping direct, not direct, but wrong word, but lead that you partner with illuminations and, and you version, your, uh, strategic, um, friend and generous partner of the version Bible app. Uh,
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
Possibly, probably, you and Bobby Grunewald would be the two biggest advocates that I know, and arguably two of the biggest in the world for getting God's word out. You continue to lead efforts of generosity across the world. You help people nonstop. How in the world do you do all that? Yeah.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
So interesting. You're praying for the right people.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
I probably should do that. I feel like I'm actually blessed with the right people in the right places. I'm always praying for wisdom. And so it might be a question I might add to this. Like, what are you always praying for? So you're always praying for the right people.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
I've never thought of this, but you actually were also involved in some what I call like rescue projects of big visible institutions. And you did work yourself out of that. Are you, in most cases, when you start, do you think this is a project I might have long-term oversight on, but I want to be in and out? I want to, I want to... make a difference and work myself out?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
Is that, do you have that mindset going into most things?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
So explain that to me in more detail.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
So this is a crazy question, but I'm starting to get clarity. It's interesting. We've had, I've asked you a million questions before, and now at this moment, I'm getting clarity. You're a transformative unifier, which is, that's true. You always have... some kind of exterior motive. I mean, it's like, it's never for you, which is so odd.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
Like it's always moving something else, usually a ministry or a mission forward. And you're always doing it with connecting people. You're always in the middle of, have you met this person? Have you met that person? And the interesting part is there are others who do it, but it's usually about building something I care about or building something for me. And yours seems to be others focused.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
Is that something you can do early or do you have to be like, do you have to have handed off the stores to do it? Talk to me about someone else who wants to create that type of impact.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
Okay, so tell me about the people you're looking for. What are the qualities that are going to make a good trusted team member or even trusted friend?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
So crazy question. Did you pick those qualities and then realize they happen to be the opposite of the temptations? Or did you back in? How did you come up with those?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
What's interesting is when I feel you helping me, so we're having a conversation and maybe I've got a personal issue I'm asking about, or I'm wrestling with, you know, I'm trying to grow to the next stage. I actually feel you leading me in those areas. And it kind of asked me questions toward those.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
And what's interesting is I would think I would pick humility and I would pick integrity and like bringing a team member on. Generosity, I actually love the value of generosity. I would not have
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
put that in my top list but now that you say it it really makes a lot of sense that that would be a quality that is going to be um there's no way to be mission-minded if you are selfish there's no way to be helping others if you are selfish and so i appreciate that you mentioned um the lust of the eyes and and that wouldn't just mean like lusting after um someone as a you know after a person and
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
I think you're even referring to it as like the, um, lusting after the things of this world. And so when you, it was interesting is when you're, when you treat people well, when you surround yourself with good people, when you have good ideas, you tend to create value and often you end up making money. Uh, and is that good thing? Bad thing? What's, talk to me about what do you do?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
What do you do with wealth?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
So based on what I read and studies, it seems that sometimes when people make more money, the percentage of what they give doesn't always go up. In fact, it often goes down. What would you say to somebody that is in that place that they are blessed maybe more than they expected? To talk about responsibility or do they have them? You got G-H-I.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
I think you also have another E-R-O-I, which is a little different. You might speak into that if it works.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
So being successful well is challenging. Having a lot of wealth and managing it well is really, really hard to do. It's... One of the reasons I would not want to be you, because a lot of people come to you with a lot of ideas, invest in this, give toward this, invest in this, put your time toward this.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
How do you determine if someone or some idea is worthy of any type of investment, be it time, finances? What do you look for before you give your most valuable resource, your time, or you invest in it both to help them grow or just invest in it, be generous? What are you looking for?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
So we've had a lot of meals together, spent a lot of time together. I did not realize you were 19.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
Yeah. And again, I want to highlight these because this is good. Your heart really does matter. What what do you care about and where your heart goes, where your treasure goes, your heart follows. And then your head really matters a lot too. Cause I know a lot of people have big heart and no head. Use your head.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
You know, if this organization is in trouble seven years in a row and you're always bailing them out, they're probably getting in trouble eight years in a row. So like, like use your head. And then the prompting of the spirit, those are really good guidelines for, for making a difference. And so you could invest, you could invest money. You also invest your time.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
And I'm just kind of curious if you had, a totally empty day on your calendar, which would be probably non-existent. But if you did, and you could go invest your time doing anything,
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
See, I am so fascinated and so nerdy that I'm always listening to actually hear and I'm listening to study. So the whole time I'm going, okay, I can use this, my head, my heart, and the Holy Spirit, I can use that. G-H-I, generosity, humility, integrity. I can use all that.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
So tell me the story of starting. What did that look like?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
And then I'm going, I see a common theme, which is like filters or structures of intentionality, meaning you're almost not coming into hardly any situations where you don't have some framework. framework of decision making that kind of shapes what you do. It's deep values that you know what you stand for. And then it's a clear direction that this is what we're going to try to accomplish.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
And then there's a strategy that can be vibrant and flexible along the way. But most people don't have those things. Does that come naturally to you? Do you have to work on it? Why do you seem to have clarity when so many people don't?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
Well, I am obviously a pastor, and so my whole mission is driven to make a difference in people's lives. And then there's this podcast, which is kind of what I call a complimentary lane, meaning that I just devour, love good leadership. And I feel like not only does it help empower what we do missionally, but I love leadership, period.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
And so the purpose of this podcast is actually not to push my faith, our faith on people. And I hope people believe me when I say that. At the same time, there's no way to have you on here without you. You can't not talk about your faith. And I would never want to rob you from that because that is who you are, and I share your faith passionately.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
The book, Learning to be Loved, The Everyday Believer's Guide to a Rich Relationship with God, There are so many people that think, okay, Mark Green, you've built like ministry, empires, business, whatever. Aren't you going to write about that? And yet you're not. Tell me the story behind the book.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
I want to do one of those books where I write 20%.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
So is there a story that you wrote about that kind of stands out as something that's super meaningful to you?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
What's interesting is I see that in you, meaning you are a fixer. But to this day, you do seem to leave a safe space for people to express emotions. So I think you've grown in it.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
You have great frame gluing skills.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
So we could spend hours talking about that in marriage because that's a real important issue, but there are other podcasts that do that. So I'm going to bring it back to organizational leadership. One of the biggest problems is the more successful you become, the harder it is to have a realistic view of how you come across, right? You lose self-awareness.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
Talk to me about how you've grown in that way. When people see you now, you're just so well-respected, revered, almost like a legend. And so people, when they walk in, they might be really nervous. How do you do to emotionally connect when people might be even hesitant to be themselves?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
So typically when you start a business, you have to understand a little bit about cash flow, recruiting people, creating systems, creating a culture. What were some of the first things that you learned that you didn't know when you were starting out?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
It's interesting because I think most leaders, if you ask them, they would probably say you do poorly. set the tone, you go first. And there are definitely times you do that. But I think you're right, especially the more you want to empower people and the more collaborative you want to be, the more you have to intentionally work to not speak first. And then let me ask you about this too.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
One thing I've noticed is the bigger our organization gets, the more I have to accept things outside of my preferences. Because if I try to control everything, I'm going to limit some things. Do you find that true? Do you agree? Do you disagree?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
That's right. I'd love to hear just a little bit more behind the scenes. Because when I look at you, the disciplines are insane. Meaning you will, you know, seven years from now, if we ask you what happened on this day, you'll be able to pull out details and talk to me about it. And I won't remember much of what happened today. You have your scripture reading done. When's your anniversary date?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
February 8th, 1998 was the start. And how many years? 27 years. 27 years. And so I learned from you the importance of remembering those things, so I actually have that in my calendars. And I wouldn't have done that without you, but you've done that for me, so I recognize that in there. What are some of the...
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
daily disciplines or even just rhythms that you have in your life that people might not know or they might undervalue that help shape you to become the person that you are.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
And before the three verses, some of the gateways of intimacy, what are some of the gateways?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
It's interesting how taking care of your body also seems to take care of other things as well, doesn't it? For sure. Yeah. So the book is Learning to be Loved. It's by David Bowden and Mark Green, the subtitle of The Everyday Believer's Guide to a Richer Relationship with God. I like the theme learning to be loved because I think there are a lot of us, me included, who grew up in more of a
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
I'm going to perform my way to be accepted and I'm going to work my way in. And so I think I do have to learn to be loved. I want to tell you just like thank you sincerely for being a true friend. And by that meaning someone I've trusted with really intimate details of my life. You've given me a lot of good advice in life.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
pivotal times and it's really fun to be aligned together um it was i mean pretty cool so the virgin bible app you know was started bobby greenwald here in oklahoma city you happen to be in oklahoma city with a really similar heart and you know together we've been able to now we'll see it on a billion devices by later on this year which is unbelievable as you look forward um
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
Tell me about what lights your fire. What makes you jump out of bed every day and say, let's attack?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
We're going to celebrate a little bit.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
Well, I think that's worthy of being in a lot of different languages. And I like the fact that many of the things you do are multilingual, meaning you're trying to reach the world. And that's a pretty special place. And it all started with a 19-year-old that was looking for a 6,000-square-foot store and thought it was too big. So talk to someone now who isn't in the season of the harvest yet.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
They're still planting the seeds. Talk to them and give them a little bit of encouragement about what's possible if they... are generous, if they are humble, if they do have integrity, if they are others focused and work hard and keep the right motives, to give them a little bit of encouragement.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
Talk to me about that because we've got a lot of younger people in our community. How do you do it? If you're 19, 20, 21, 22, and you're recruiting someone that's older or leading someone that's older, how do you do that well?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
Hey, it's great to have you back for another episode of the Leadership Podcast. And today, I have a guest that is going to encourage you, equip you, and inspire you in a massive way. I want to tell you about my very good friend, Mark Green, who is the founder of Bardell Christian and Education Supply with over 40 locations and over 800 employees.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
And once again, you just mentioned you have six adventure partners. And just tell me briefly about them.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
So I love the way you've made time for the things that matter most. A lot of times we get just sucked into whatever's yelling the loudest and you make time for your friends. You make time to keep the mission and ministry first. And, um, I just, I thank you for your friendship. I thank you for your, your partnership and mission together. And, um,
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
Look forward to doing it with you for years and years to come. So it's been an honor to have you on. And I want to say just to our community, man, I hope that you can see what's special about this interview is what you've got here is you've got someone that's very, very centered, very, very grounded. very, very humble and really with the purity of focus.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
And I've worked with a lot of people and I can be self-focused at times. Like, how is this going to benefit me? And when I work with Mart and people like him, there is a motive to help and serve other people. And it's all, he would tell you for the glory of God and it is. And so if you posture yourself that way, if you learn from him and say, I want to be generous, I want to be humble, I want to be
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
I want to be a person of integrity. And then you assemble great people around you. It's unimaginable what you can accomplish and the difference that you can make. And so I just want to say thank you for taking the time to listen. I'm going to work really, really hard to bring content that helps you get better. And what you heard today, give yourself permission to be a little bit weird.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
You're not going to do the same weird things that Mark does, but press into whatever those unique disciplines are, those passions that make you uniquely you. And then let those things come out and just know that you have more in you. 19-year-old kid could have never believed all this was possible and what you're doing now. is significant and you're just getting started.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
And so thank you for rolling with us, getting better because we know that everyone wins when the leader gets better.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
So early mistakes. All of us, you learn from what you do wrong. What's one or two that stands out to you? And then I want to ask you, what did you do right? And maybe you didn't even know that was so right. First of all, what did you learn from those early mistakes?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
So, agree or disagree, a lot of times when anyone's starting out a business or a ministry, it's really hard to be 100% perfect on early hires. And if you don't make relatively quick corrections, it can be difficult to... Yeah, absolutely.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
So I want to just slow it down because I want people to hear what you just said, that if you've got someone that's not the right fit, then letting them go is you set a favor to them as well as yourself. And that's actually really, really true. And like, we're both people of faith.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
And so, we might even say if the person isn't where God would want them to be, and we leave them there, then that's really not being fair to them, not being obedient. And so, I think I'm just, I want to highlight that because what I know right now, there's a lot of people that are listening that would have someone. And
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
They're tolerating what is maybe underperformance or a bad attitude, a bad mindset. And not only does it hurt the organization, but it's going to hurt the other people that see you tolerating it. And ultimately, it actually does hurt the person that you're not being fair to. And so... You said it quickly, but I just wanted to highlight it because it took me a while to learn that.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
Early on, you had to do some things right, maybe intuitively, maybe accidentally. What were some of the things that in the early years of building what's now so many stores across the country, what were the big pieces that you got right that helped create a foundation to build on?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
Mart is the Ministry Investment Officer of Hobby Lobby, a business started by his family with over 1,000 stores across the United States. He is one of the most successful business leaders truly that I know anywhere in the world and one of the biggest forces for good, making a difference in the world. Mart has a new book out called Learning to be Loved. I'll show you the book if you're watching.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
Talk to me about the learning part. Um, Where do you go? What helps you to continue to grow? Even years later, to this day, we can't meet. If we met once a week, every week you'd come in with a new theory, with a new something you're working on. Tell me about what goes into your personal growth strategy.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
And what about today? When you are... you're at the top of your game in many fields. And we're going to talk about some of the different fields because you started in retail and you scaled that up and went through different seasons from starting to whitewater through sustaining, recreating, keeping it fresh. And then you branched out from there.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
But in the meantime, now today, all these years later, at the top of many different fields, what is your growth strategy to look like to keep sharpening yourself?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
So you're saying what's true, but it's incomplete because there's so much more to it. When you read a book, tell me your process because I know it. And you're just saying you learn from books. There's more to it. Tell me what you do when you read a book.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
Okay, so here's what I want to highlight about that. Because you have, Mart, what I would consider – I could probably list – if I worked on it, probably 15 things that are like oddly unique about you that are brilliant, kind of weird, like literally kind of weird, right? I wouldn't want to copy those because I'm not you.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
And so I don't want to try to bring out of you those weird things and tell our community, like, you all need to go be like Mark. But what I do want to do is I want to highlight them so they can say, what are those weird things that I need to do that help me grow or become better or become sharper? And so let's just look back what you do. You read a book. You highlight it.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
It's a great book, the everyday believer's guide to a rich relationship with God. Outside of all these business and ministry accomplishments, this is one of the most humble men that I know, one of the most generous men alive today. and full of integrity. It's an honor to have you on.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
You go back through, pick out your favorite. And I've looked at your favorite quotes, and it's not just like four quotes. It's like 20% of the book sometimes. Sometimes. Sometimes it can be 20% of the book. And then you document it, and you said you gave over 1,000 basically book summaries or book highlights. Yes. To your kids and you have those accessible.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
And so if I ask you and I have before, I'm going to take a week off. Hey, what do you recommend I read? And you can, then what do you have for me? Besides recommendations, you've got summaries.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
And you've also read over a thousand books that you thought were noteworthy. So that says a lot.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
And then you'll probably revisit those at times. And I also like what you said. You're an introvert, and so you learn better that way. And so what I try to get our community to do is see how you're wired and designed, and then go – create a plan that works best for you in that way. I'd like to hear about some of the other things that are unusual that help make you into the leader that you are.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
One of the things is if we had a special moment together at some point or had a conversation or whatever, you would be able to bring that back up and would over and over again. Tell me about... how you document why you do it, what that means to you, how you would use it relationally. What's the process look like that in your life?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
And the why would be obvious to some people but not to everyone. Why would you do that when most people don't?
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
Okay, so, and again, you just, you say it and it's so natural to you, but I want to highlight it. Trusted friendship is one of the greatest gifts that God can give us. And there is no doubt that, let's call it success, let's call it God-honoring activities, whatever it is, the impact you have in life is 100% a direct result of the relationships that you have over and over and over again.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
Absolutely. Absolutely. And so you value them and not just the people that can give you something, but you value people. And I'd like to hear a little bit of the heart behind it because I've learned from you watching you and you've made me better. Kind of help me understand why it matters so much to treat people the way that you feel like they're worthy of being treated.
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
Mart, on one hand, I've got five trusted voices that I call when I need good advice, and you are on that hand as one of the five top most trusted voices. And so I'm really excited to introduce you to our leadership community. Welcome aboard.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
Because you can doubt your way away from God, or you can doubt your way closer to God. I would say define why do you doubt? Some people would say, it's like I come across something in the Bible that I don't understand it. And so it's a theological question. Some people would say, well, I can't reconcile what I see with who God says He is.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
Hey, thank you, Ange and Ari. I'm really, really excited to be with you guys. Your passion for Jesus shows in every single thing that you do.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
You might see someone with a brain tumor, and you're saying, God, I'm praying and believing, standing on your word that you're going to heal, and you haven't. So where are you? Some people, it's because they've been hurt by Christians, and then they'll often blame God for it or something. Someone in the church was mean to me or unkind. And so all Christians suck.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
I'm mad at all Christians and God's not real, whatever it is. And so I found that if you just, if you really talk about what it is, I'm hurting, I'm disappointed, I'm mad at God. He didn't come through for me. I don't understand. They said one thing, they did something else. My pastor does. Now he lied about something or whatever. If you name it, you can take it to God.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
It's easier for God to heal something when you know it needs healing. And so don't be afraid to get specific about it and to take it to God. And I think sometimes the more specific we can be about, this is what I don't like. This is what I don't understand. When you read Habakkuk, this is what the guy did, the prophet. He's like, God, I don't understand. Why do you tolerate wrongdoing?
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
And what's powerful about his name is super cool if you read him. His name Habakkuk in Hebrew, it means to wrestle and it means to embrace. And that's what you do. It's like you're wrestling with God going, I don't like it. I don't understand. Where are you? And I'm not letting go. I'm trying to trust you and I'm not sure I trust you and I'm holding on.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
And I'm convinced God would rather have you come and yell at him than to walk away.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
It's faith that you're questioning because you want to believe. It's not a lack of faith.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
Don't you get Thomas? Yeah. Thomas probably, he went through some stuff.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
He had some people let him down. Yeah. Or he didn't, he was the guy that had prove it to me. And Jesus did, right? Jesus gave Thomas what he needed. Thomas said, I need to touch, I need to see. And Jesus said, here, touch and see. And that's encouraging to me. Jesus gave Thomas what he needed. Oh, I love that. He didn't get mad and say, why are you doubting? He said, okay, let me show you.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
But he ended up with more faith I mean, he's the guy tradition tells us that he was preaching in India for years, and he wouldn't deny Jesus, and they ran a spear through him. So he's the one who said, I need to see the spear mark in the side, and then he died because he wouldn't deny his faith in Jesus. So he gets a bad rap.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
It's a relationship, right? So like Amy, and thank you for speaking highly of her. She is... a gift beyond measure. And she's the one who taught me, if we get in a kind of disagreement, I'll withdraw. And she's like, no, you won't. If you love me, we're going to work this thing out.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
And I kind of think I had to learn that with God too, that if I am in a relationship with God and I don't understand, I might pull back. And I don't think He wants to pull back. You have to push in. And so that's one of the 50 million things I learned from Amy. Yeah.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
She is as beautiful inside, I promise you, as she is on the outside.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
Thank you. That was Bobby Grunewald who came to me years ago, and he said he was really kind of upset at the lack of Bible engagement. And a lot of it was, like he said, honestly, he said of himself. And so his kind of driving question was, what can we do to make God's Word more accessible? And so that was kind of the beginning of the questions we asked that led to something.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
Well, it's a real... People ask questions all the time. So, you know, you said, I'll look at things differently. I think... I came to the Bible without Bible history knowledge. So I looked at it. I tried to look objectively. And so people will say, why do bad things happen to good people? We see it all the time.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
And when you take a step back, let's just ask some questions like, what does the Bible say our heart is? Without Jesus, what is our heart? It's deceitful, right? And is anyone righteous? No one's righteous. And so we've all sinned. So technically speaking, we're not. good people. And so bad things don't really happen to good people. Bad things happen to bad, sinful people, right?
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
So the only time something bad happened to someone good was when Jesus paid the price for us. So if we look another way at it, I actually deserve the penalty of my sins. And so when I don't get that, that's the most amazing display of grace ever, is that I actually deserve the wrath of God, and He doesn't give it to me. He gives me grace. And so that changes... the narrative.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
And so the evidence of God's goodness isn't just if I get a raise or have a job with benefits or have good friends or get to go on nice vacations. The evidence of God's goodness is His character and His grace for me. And it doesn't mean I don't get disappointed if one of my daughters is sick and she is and still is and hasn't been healed. Yes, I'm disappointed. Yes, I don't understand.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
And what's really kind of hard to believe, but this year we're going to celebrate the Bible app being on a billion devices. So that'll happen sometime around October or November of this year. It's an unbelievable honor to get to give that away. And it's a lot of donors and a lot of hardworking people here make it possible.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
Yes, I'm frustrated. Yes, I get angry. And yes, God is still drawing us closer and she's closer to him than ever before. And we see his faithfulness and goodness. And so it's both. The evidence of God's goodness is not the quality of my life. The evidence of God's goodness is his character and his nature.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
Yeah. And good thing our faith isn't in Christians, right? Right, right.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
Well, church hurt is real. Yeah. But what's interesting too, and I really, I don't ever want to pick at it because, you know, I've been around a long time. I've seen a lot of things that are really heartbreaking to God, the way Christians can act. But it is interesting. People get hurt in college and they don't have college hurt. Right?
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
People go to a restaurant and have bad service and they don't say, you know... Olive Garden. I hate their breadsticks. I'm never going back to restaurant. They don't do that. So I think that to, you know, you don't hear about church hurt. You know, I don't have, you know, I don't have, um, Job hurt, I'm never going to work a job again.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
So I think there's this little bit of a spiritual attack that our enemy wants to separate people from the support that God intended them to have. So when you look at it objectively like that, I don't want to ever belittle the fact that people are devastated by Christians. And this horrible one is always wrong.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
But just because one Christian or five Christians are ungodly doesn't mean that God's body isn't still important. And so I want to try to separate what someone does from who God is. And that can be a little bit difficult. But the other thing is, think about this. If we do get hurt by Christians, what are we called to do? Love them. And forgive, right?
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
And so to be a part of a church, we probably are going to have to endure some hurt.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
100%. Yeah. And Jesus kind of promises us that, right? Yeah. In this world, you're going to have trouble. If you follow me, you will be persecuted. There is going to be spiritual opposition, and the opposition can come from within the church or without the church. So I would just say pastorally to someone, you know, my— My brother-in-law was sexually abused by a pastoral figure in the church.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
That's wrong. It's horrific. It's a nightmare. It's always wrong. It's demonic. It's horrible. And the church is still the bride of Christ. And Jesus is coming back for his church, and the church is still important. And so, yes, we have to name it and call it what it is, demonic, horrific, wrong, a nightmare, tragic, and still see that the Holy Spirit works through people in the church.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
And it's all... God is still good and he's good. And then I could tell you all the stories about what happened to David through, he went in a bad place and then he rediscovered Jesus because of the church. And so you still see the hand of God in the pain because God is sovereign and he is working in all things, even the things that we hate.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
And so it's hopefully it'll serve you all well because you're kind of the Bible girls, right?
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
So, great question. And so, deconstruction, depending on who you ask, there's a lot of opinions about it. So, some of my peers as pastors would say, deconstruction is always bad. And the reason they would say that is because they have a limited view of what they've heard about it of people that might be
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
really hurting, genuinely hurting, and get with a group of people that basically says, forget all churches. I hate God. All Christians are bad. And they flip off God in the church and walk away. And so that does happen. But I would say that deconstruction done well it can actually be a form of discipleship.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
Meaning that when you look at what Jesus did when he came, and see, five different times, he said, in the Sermon on the Mount, he said, you have heard it said, but I say to you. Your whole life, you've been taught this. But I'm going to tell you that's either incomplete or it's not true. And let me tell you what is true. So in a sense, what was he doing? He was kind of deconstructing.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
And so here's the thing. The problem is, we all read the Bible with a bias. As much as we want to read it purely, we come to it with our own hurts, our own family backgrounds, from what country we're from, what type of church we're raised in. I could preach the same text. Another preacher could preach the very same text, and we preach it with a different tone.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
I'm preaching on the love of God in the text. He's preaching on the judgment of God. And God is loving, and he's judged. He's both. And so there's different emphasis. So sometimes I tell people that everything you believe about God may not be true.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
And you have to start there, that you might have grown up in a church that was too legalistic, or a church that was too full of grace, or a church that only talked about the judgment of God, or a church that only talked about the grace of God. And so what we have to do is, I would say, in a community, Look at what we believe.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
If there's something that's untrue, something that's hurtful, we unbelieve it. We say, that's actually not consistent with God's word. And we deconstruct that. Then we reconstruct it with what is true. How do we do that? I always tell people, start with the Gospels. Start with Jesus. Read everything through Jesus. I have four daughters. I have six kids total, four daughters.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
And the four of them were raised in two rooms that had really bad mold. And I was so dumb, like, what's that black stuff? Like, dumb. And so it was not good for them. So when we found out we didn't tear down our whole house, we tore down, we took the mold out.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
And that's what deconstruction is, is that we're identifying what's not consistent with God's word, what is not true, what doesn't reflect Jesus. And we say, okay, that's not true. We deconstruct it, but we don't burn the whole house down. We take that away. And then we rebuild it with what is true.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
And again, if you want to start with truth, there's no better place to start with Jesus and interpret everything through the lens of what did Jesus say about this?
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
So Peter kind of thought Jesus was going to be like a reigning king, a conquering with the sword. Peter wanted... He brought the sword fight to the garden. He wanted to fight. And Jesus said, I'm going to lead with love. And so whenever... Peter argued against the way Jesus was going to save the world. Jesus called him Satan. He said, get behind me, Satan. Like, that's not true.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
And deconstructed those beliefs and then reconstructed them. The same thing when Peter denied Jesus three times. What did Jesus do in John 21? He kind of reconstructed. He said, hey, do you still love me? Then feed my sheep. So here's what I want you to do. He's rebuilding his faith. And then, I mean, when you think about it, Did Peter deny Jesus three times?
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
Like literally you could say he deconstructed and walked away from Jesus, kind of. I mean, we could make that argument. Who did God choose to be the guest speaker on the day of Pentecost? Peter, the guy who didn't believe, the guy that doubted and fell in the water, the guy that denied him because doubt isn't always the enemy of faith. Sometimes it's an invitation to a deeper faith.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
Just go. Just do your stuff. Just do your stuff.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
There's some crazy stuff in the Old Testament.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
So, good question. I believe Jonah was swallowed by a whale and... Vomited back out. Yeah. Do I technically have to believe that? The Bible doesn't say, believe in your heart that Jonah was swallowed by a whale and was vomited back out. So the Bible says you have to believe that Jesus is the Son of God and was saved. So I'm going to start with what we really, really have to believe.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
And the gospel... that my righteousness is not enough, that Jesus was the Lamb of God who was slain for my sins. He didn't just die for me. He died instead of me. And by believing in his perfect death, I'm forgiven. So that's where I'm going to start. Then we can debate everything else. I personally believe that the word of God is inspired.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
I also believe there's some, not just weird like miracles, but there's just like, you get in Leviticus and there's like some weird stuff in there. And so we have to say, what is the New Testament? The New Testament is a fulfillment of the fullness of who God is. And so that, yes, our foundation is built on the Old Testament and God is the God of the Old Testament.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
And the fullness of who God is, is manifest through Jesus. Jesus came to fulfill the law. And so I'm always going to go to Jesus. But then let's talk about everything back there. If God could create us, the guy could live in the belly of a whale for three days, three nights.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
So if you want to get hung up there, I'm not going to sit there and debate that for days, as much as I'm going to point to Jesus. But I'm also going to say that we serve a God with whom all things are possible. And so I would rather err on the side of believing all of what God's Word says than me saying I'm smart enough to pick it apart.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
And in the end, if I'm wrong, I'm going to be wrong on the side of trying to have faith rather than trying to be smarter. That's putting above my pay grade.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
You were in Oklahoma when there was almost a tornado. Yes. And you didn't even know. That's how California you are.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
That is 100% bad, just so you'll know.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
I don't want a tornado. So, camera guy over here was one of the most famous storm chasers, like for real.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
Like Emmys and stuff, like Emmy Awards. Emmy Awards. Storm chaser, yes. What? Yeah, so you're in the room with a guy that doesn't want a tornado coming your way.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
I would love to talk about prayer for days. Yes. And the reason is because I always felt like I was not a good prayer.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
So Amy is like... She wants to pray for a long time and loves it. And it even takes her a long time to get started. She's like, let's pray. And then she'll be breathing. I'm like, let's just, God's waiting, I'm waiting, let's go. And then she starts and she just genuinely will tell God how good he is for a long time and then pray about everything. And my mind's wandering.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
I'm like a pastor and I suck at prayer. So I had to learn a lot about prayer. What I've discovered is we all have different personalities, right? And so I got six kids and I relate to them differently. My oldest one, she likes to write. And if we're writing, we can connect. My second one is face-to-face talk. My third one, I'm going through three. My third one is during activities.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
My fourth one is on the phone. My fifth one is only if we're playing catch. We gotta be doing something. And my sixth one is she's an extrovert, anything and everything all the time, whatever. So six different kids, six different ways of relating. You're gonna relate to God in prayer different than somebody else.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
Some people are going to want to talk to him for an hour. For me, what I've discovered is that I never pray for a long time, but I never go a long time without praying. And so when you talk about praying without ceasing, to me, it's prayer as much not just talking to God, but it's an awareness that he's with us always. So all through the day, I'm like, give me wisdom, God.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
Okay, God, am I supposed to encourage that person? God, am I supposed to pray for that person? Am I supposed to give something? And so it's like ongoing awareness of God. And then one of the big questions in the doubt book is like, why didn't God answer my prayer? Right? And his word said this, and I prayed for this. And so...
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
There are actually a lot of reasons in the Bible why he doesn't always answer prayer. Sometimes, literally, there's a verse that says, if you're disrespectful to your wife, your prayers are hindered. Isn't that... That's in there.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
You watched the movies with him in it. That was him.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
Well, okay. So if I am to love the Lord God with all my heart, mind, soul, and strength, and if I'm to love my bride as Christ loved the church, and if I'm being a jerk to her, imagine I've got two kids and they're fighting and hitting each other and say, "'Dad, will you take us to get donuts?' Like, no, you're being a jerk to each other. You gotta be nice to your brother."
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
Okay, so if I am a stronger physical being and I am using my power, my influence to be unkind to my bride, God says that hinders your prayers.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
That's in the Bible, right? There are other reasons. If you're praying for something that's not God's will, like literally a lot of times I'm praying for my will. If you're praying with the wrong motives, like when I was a new Christian, there was a really pretty girl that was really far from God. And I was like praying that she gets saved. I didn't care about her salvation.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
I just wanted to date her. And that's not praying with the right motives. And a lot of times we pray with the wrong motives. And so there's a lot, like we may have, the Bible says this, that the prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. And that means if I am unrighteous, meaning maybe I've got unconfessed sin, or I'm just, maybe I'm living with
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
an ongoing problem and saying, well, that's okay, God, just deal with it, then that may be actually hindrance to my prayer. The Bible says God honors your faith. So if I have no faith at all, then that may hinder my prayer. So all that to say, those are just some little things to look at when we're praying, and there's more.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
And yet, the beautiful thing is God says that if you have faith like a mustard seed, like just a little bit of faith, that He'll hear your prayer. And so... Through a lot of praying, a lot of searching scripture, a lot of miracles where God has answered prayers like unbelievably miraculous. And other times, devastatingly, He didn't. And I knew He would.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
I have discovered that, kind of what you just said, that prayer does not exist for God to do what I want Him to do. Prayer exists to conform my heart to His heart so that I'm actually doing His will. And so now, more than just coming to Him with my wish list, I often go to him with a blank page and says, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. So your will be done in my life.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
God, help me know your heart and your will.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
And it doesn't mean that I don't get frustrated when he doesn't do it. It doesn't mean that I'm not asking him to do it. There's so many times I don't understand. And his ways are higher than my ways. And I only see in part in one day. We'll see in full when we're with him.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
Frustrating mysteries, meaning like, I am frustrated with God now, at this moment, as we're speaking. And I love him and I trust him and I don't understand him all at the same time. I mean, I got sick daughters and I'm like going, you know, I mean, it just sounds pitiful. It is like, God, do you know what I'm doing for you? Can't you do this for me? You know? Where are you, God?
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
And I talked about it transparently in a message. Like, I literally don't want to pray for sick people to be healed because I'd rather Amy do it because, like, she just prays with—she believes God will do it. I believe He can. I know he can, but I haven't seen him in a while. And so that frustrates me. And not only does she believe he can, she believes he will when she prays.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
And so I'm always like, you pray. And she's like, no, no, you gotta work through it. So it's like, I'm just blabbing, but it's just, it's just, it's, it's just, it's, The father whose boy was demon-possessed said, Jesus, I believe you can, but help me overcome my unbelief. That's a real good prayer. I believe you can. I know you're real.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
And there's part of me that's still very human and broken and needs more help. Help me where I doubt. Help me where I have questions. Help me where I'm frustrated. That's a good prayer. It's an honest prayer.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
Yeah, I want to talk to your family first because I just feel the angst. I feel your pain and your emotions. And for me, that was my dad for a long time. And so I would say a couple things. One is sometimes you're a prophet without honor. So you're the one too close to them. And so they don't listen to you. And it is not your job to save them. It's your job to reflect the love of Jesus.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
And you do that, you pray, and God cares about their salvation even more than you do. And he's patient. And so he's, sometimes when they get worse and worse, sometimes they actually have to get so low that they have nowhere else to look but to call on him.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
And then what I've found, and just doing this for a long time, is that there are other people that God may be setting up to cross paths with those people that you love. And He is so good. And you guys are younger and have been walking with God five years, two years-ish. And it seems like forever, and God is a patient God. I've seen those miracles sometimes after 25 years, 30 years.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
And when you feel like there's no hope, sometimes a person that seems the farthest from God is actually closer than you think. So don't lose faith. When you were saved, the people around you never would have thought you'd be doing that. And so as big of a miracle as you were, I believe that you'll see that for many of the people in your life.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
Well, first of all, I would say that, you know, let's just start and recognize we live in a really big world with a lot of different traditions, faith backgrounds, families. And so for someone else to say, hey, I've been exposed to a different belief system, that's just really, really normal, right? So we don't want to judge that. We don't want to be arrogant.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
But what we have to do is we have to investigate every kind of faith belief and say, okay, who's the main player here? What does he say about himself or what his witnesses say about him? And so for Christianity, we're gonna start with Jesus and say, let's consider who Jesus is. And so he claimed he's the son of God. He claimed he is the way, the truth, and the life.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
He claimed that he would die and be raised from the dead. And so when you look at the resurrection, you're gonna find there's like really strong historic evidence That the disciples died for him. Would they have died for a lie? That there were people that were converted that were skeptics that saw him at the tomb. And there's ongoing evidence that the resurrection is real.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
If Jesus claimed to be that, then what is he? It was C.S. Lewis who said, if he claimed to be the son of God, then he's either full-blown crazy, like he's a lunatic, or he's a liar, or he's Lord. And so we have to acknowledge, which one is he?
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
He might be crazy, could be, maybe he just made it all up and then his disciples were willing to die for it. Maybe he was a liar or maybe he was Lord. And so just really look at what the disciples said, look at the transformed lives, look at what God's word says, talk to him, ask him, if you're real, prove it to me.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
And so I would just say, pursue Jesus, read Jesus, look at Jesus and base your decision on what you can discover about Jesus. And then look at others if you want to. But I think if you look objectively and honestly, you're going to see that who makes up a God that becomes flesh? Born of a virgin... And then is born in poverty and serves and loves the sinners and the broken.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
And you can't make up something that beautiful, that powerful, that life transformative. And look at your testimony. Look at you. You're dead and you're alive. You're lost and you're found. You're in bondage and you're free.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
So it's pretty cool. My story mirrors yours in some way. I was in college. I was an athlete, fraternity guy, and fell into all the traditional stuff that is rough and sinful. And so my fraternity got in big trouble. We had four guys commit grand larceny, and we were in trouble at the school.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
And you see the 700 prophecies, 700 prophecies. He'd been born of a virgin. He would suffer. You look at the Passover in the Old Testament, the temporary, you take a lamb and you shed its blood and you put some on the top of a doorpost and some blood on the sides and then death passes over you. You look at that, what happens when you put blood on the top of a door? It falls to the bottom.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
You look in, I think it's Exodus 12, and what do you see? You see on the door, you see the cross in the Old Testament. You see it right there in the Old Testament. foreshadowing Jesus. You see Jesus all over the Old Testament and everything points toward him. The gospel is the good news. It's the best news. It changes lives. And then you doubt sometimes and you don't understand.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
And so you go back to that. You go to Jesus and you hang on to him, who he is. And that's the thing I go to all the time is the moment when I knelt down alone in a softball field and called on his name. It was one person when I knelt down, and I was a new person when I stood up. And that I hold on to when I don't understand.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
The Catholic girl that gets saved in the Word is mentored by Africans. If you're in profits, it gets freed from alcohol.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
So there's so much I want to say to it because I've been there. Like my honeymoon stage as a new Christian, I mean, I was... out of control, witnessing, crying out to God, praying for everybody, sensing His presence, feeling it. I got saved out of what was like kind of the church I went to was like a no expression into a very charismatic, vibrant, God's everywhere.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
And it's a little bit like with Amy, you know, we were madly in love. We didn't have a fight for three years when we were married until we had our first kid, and then we made up for lost time because I was dumb. But then now we're 33, almost 34 years into it, and...
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
And so I was a president at the time and decided to, as partly like a PR move, but partly because I was just really spiritually curious, I said, we're going to start a Bible study. So you can imagine no Christians there. I mean, nobody. And I said, hey guys, we're gonna start a Bible study. And they were like, they said cuss words like, to bleep we are. I didn't know any better.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
the like the new um goosebumps thing isn't there all the time but the depth of intimacy is a thousand times what it was before like legitimately anyone who says a godly marriage isn't possible um talk to amy well it is it is very very possible and the same is true with god that i think and it's just a theory and there's doesn't say this in the word but i think god gives you a little extra when you're a new christian kind of like a baby needs a little more care
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
You need to burp. Someone needs to change your diaper. You know, goo-goo-ga-ga. I think when you're a baby Christian, I think God gives you a little bit extra sometimes and just shows himself to you in other ways. And then after a while... Without faith, it's impossible to please God. Sometimes you have to pursue Him without feelings and just faith. Like, literally, faith pleases God.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
And so, why don't I always feel the presence of God? Again, the Bible gives us some clues. Sometimes I think we're over-sensationalizing it. Jesus said, hey, everybody's looking for a sign. Everybody wants a feeling. And so— I don't want a sign. I want what the sign points to, and the sign points to Jesus. So we're not looking for a sign. We're actually looking for the sign pointing to Jesus.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
So we want to keep our eye on Jesus. Another thing, too, would be this, that we know that sin does separate us from God, right? So if you were in Oklahoma a month ago and it was really, really cold, negative two degrees one day, If you put on a lot of clothes, the clothes will separate you from the cold. It won't feel as cold. You'll be separated.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
If you sin a lot, ongoing sin, it doesn't mean like, you know, you did something wrong, so God doesn't love you. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying, you're cheating on your wife and you're not repenting. You're living in pornography and you don't care. You're doing drugs on the side and you're keeping it a secret. You're living in ongoing sin.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
That might block some of your intimacy with God.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
If I am not being truthful to Amy or hiding something from her, I'm not going to be as intimate with her because sin separates. And so it could be that it's not that God has moved away, but you've put up some kind of a barrier. It could be that sometimes God just wants you to draw close.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
Maybe he's not, you know, I don't feel him because he wants me to draw closer to him and spend more time with him and be intimate. And so what I do want to do is I want to enjoy the presence of God in this very, very real. And I think, I mean, you can, I think there are people in this room that are working behind the scenes that would say, I feel the presence of God in this place right now.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
And then there might be one person in the room, but I don't. And that doesn't mean he's not here. And it doesn't mean necessarily you've done something wrong. Enjoy him when he does and pursue him always, always.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
I've had a few supernatural experiences where if I told you two or three, people would probably stop listening because I go, that guy's weird.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
So I said, well, to bleep we are. We're gonna do a Bible study. And so I announced that on Tuesday, we're gonna have a Bible study. I didn't have a Bible. And so I was walking into a business class and I just thought, I don't have a Bible. Well, how amazing is this? I walked down and there was a guy from the Gideon's organization standing out there. And he said, would you like a free Bible? you
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
Well, I mean, genuinely. So at my salvation point, yeah. And it does sound super weird. I physically couldn't get up for a while. I couldn't get up. And it felt like I had to surrender. My prayer was not what I call like a real technical salvation prayer because I didn't know how to. But I was like, okay, God, if this is you and this is real, then I give it all to you. I surrender.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
And then the weight removed, and I was able to get up. So physically, I felt like I was under the presence of God in a way that I just couldn't. I had another time where his presence was so real, I stayed in a place praying. And again, I don't pray for a long time. until well into the night. It got really dark, and I was out in the woods.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
Then I got scared because I had to walk back through the woods, and I was really scared of animals. But his presence was so, so real, and I forgot where I was going with it. Oh, but then I'm preparing to preach, and I'm faithfully studying the Word, and I'm getting up there going, I don't feel anything right now. And that's happened too. So it's not a formula. It's like a relationship with anybody.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
There are times when you— You feel more, and there are times when you have to pursue more. And all those times are meaningful. It's a part of a relationship.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
So I just want to compliment you and tell your community, I think one of the reasons why God's bringing a favor to you is just because you're pointing people to the Word. You could talk about anything. You could be about, hey, let's talk about relationships. Let's talk all about mental health. Let's talk about how to be your best you. Let's talk about fitness.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
But when you point people to the Word, the Word is living, it's active. The word directs, it guides, it corrects us. And so I just applaud what you're doing. Thank you. It's the most important thing you could do.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
And so he gave me a Bible. So I had my little New Testament Bible and started reading it with seven other non-Christian guys. And we would read the Bible and then we'd pray. And it's embarrassing. We didn't know how to pray. We would pray like, God, protect us as we party tonight. Watch over us as we drink and drive. God, we pray for Mitch's girlfriend. Pray she's not pregnant, God.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
It's renewed your mind. It's made your mind new.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
You have a talk on- What that means is that I've been doing this a long time. Someone said the other day, he goes, you're really seasoned. I'm like, okay, call it what it is.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
It's interesting that there just seems to be a real spiritual attack on mental health today. And you can kind of, like all the reasons why are super interesting to study. And there are a lot of theories and such. But I would say like that, where do you go? Turn to Jesus, turn to his word right now. And anxiety, cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. What a beautiful thing to do.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
And unfortunately, I had to walk through some of that 29 years in the ministry. Didn't expect it, didn't see it coming, but kind of hit a wall. And so I've got a lot more compassion for people going through that as well. And did some work in counseling. And I want to say that asking for help is not a sign of weakness. It's a sign of wisdom.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
The Holy Spirit's a counselor, right? Yes. And so you can go to God and then God can speak through people and can be so helpful.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
So I want to ask you guys this just for the heck of it before we wrap it up, because I want your community here too. How can we pray for you?
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
Yeah, and I would say to your community, please do that, because people look on and go, wow, God's hands on you, and you're traveling, and you're talking about Jesus, and you're on airplanes, and it's so much fun, and it's just hard, hard, and the opposition is real. And as you are being really bold for Jesus, that just invites spiritual attack. Yeah.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
I will get your tour list and your dates and I'll get that to Amy. And I would just ask your communities to take that seriously because that's really important.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
We didn't know that we'd pray. And we started reading. I read Matthew, Mark. I got so excited. I read ahead. Mm-hmm. And it was in Ephesians chapter 2 that I read about the grace of Jesus, that you could be saved by grace. And so when you say you were saved by reading the Word, I was saved by reading the Word. It wasn't a sermon. It wasn't a song. It wasn't somebody witnessing to me.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
Can we get a little? Don't offer that because we'll take you up on it.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
We'll let Mad Dog take you on a storm chasing trip if you come here.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
It was reading the Word. And so fast forward to this day, the fact that God would allow us to give away the Word in the form of the Eversion Bible, how crazy is that? The kid that was saved by a free Bible now has the opportunity and the responsibility to steward that well, you talk about humbling. And it was like your story, Ari, you were saying you were saved right out of alcohol.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
No, that was your story. No, you were saved out of, miraculously delivered. That was my story as well. My dad was an alcoholic and I couldn't stop. And then met Jesus and survived. And overnight went from being party guy to being very, unfortunately, probably obnoxious about my faith. Maybe not always in the wisest ways, but certainly with a pure heart, trying to be bold for Jesus.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
And I felt like I was called to ministry the very first day I was saved. And I think because, probably because we all are, right?
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
It is a miracle. And it doesn't happen that way for everybody, but it did for me. And I'm thankful for... There are so many miracles and still see them all the time.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
Yes, yeah. Well, I think what you're saying is so true and so sad that so often in the church, we almost shame people out of being honest, right? And we think if we have doubts, then we must be a bad Christian. Well, if you have doubts, it doesn't make you a bad Christian. It makes you human. And if you look at the way Jesus handled people that doubted, He didn't shame them.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
He didn't push them away. He had grace for them. And if Jesus had grace, I mean, Martha doubted whenever Lazarus died and Jesus said, I'm the resurrection of life. And he healed. A guy questioned, could Jesus heal his son? And Jesus built his faith and healed his son. Peter walked on water and and sank in the water. And Jesus said, why'd you doubt?
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
What's funny is I always thought that was like an accusation. Like, why'd you doubt, you dumb guy? You have little faith. But when you think about it, Jesus was, he reached down, he pulled the guy out of the water. I think Jesus was saying like, why are you doubting me? I'm here, I'm helping you. You're walking on water, I love you. I'm pulling you out of water.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
That he had grace for people to doubt it. So if he did, shouldn't we? And I've found, it's crazy, but as a pastor, I've had seasons I could tell you about, very distinct seasons of doubt. And by talking about them, I found that other Christians are both relieved and then learn that doubt isn't the enemy of faith. In many ways, kind of like what you're doing, it's an invitation to a deeper faith.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
Yes. You don't doubt because you don't love God. You doubt because you do love God and you don't understand. Mm-hmm. And God is big enough to handle your questions. I think He wants them. He embraces them. And you see all through the Bible, people going to God going, why? I don't understand. Where are you? Why do the wicked prosper and the righteous suffer? And it's all over the word.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
So if other people of God can go to God with questions, I think you can go to God with questions. And I think He welcomes it and will not push you away, but help you grow through it.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
So imagine this, and a lot of people miss this. Jesus has risen from the dead. He's about to ascend to heaven. He's up on a mountaintop. He's with the disciples. And Matthew says right before Jesus gives a great commission, right before it says, and they worshiped him. And some doubted. That's what the Bible says. They worshiped him and some doubted.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
And Jesus said, go into all the world and preach the gospel. So he said, go into the world and do my work, doubts and all. Like literally right there, they're looking at the risen Christ. And they worshiped and some doubted. That's me. Like one day I'm worshiping and then sometimes I'm going, is this really true? And he still sent them out to go and do the Great Commission. That makes me feel...
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
seen, valued, loved, understood, inspired, that it's okay to still go do ministry when I don't understand it all.
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
Yeah. And so, when you did that, when you went to God and said, I don't understand, and talked to Him, what happens?
Girls Gone Bible
Doubting God w/ Craig Groeschel | Girls Gone Bible
Yeah. So what's interesting is you'll learn in counseling if you have a fear or anxiety or whatever, and you talk about it in counseling. kind of put skin on it that in some ways diffuses it. And the same thing is true with doubt. So I try to get people, and again, I'm not like a doubt evangelist. I'm not saying, hey, you should go doubt ever. I'm saying that if you do, here's how to do it well.