The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast
CNLP 072 – Matt Keller on the Key to Everything That Too Many Leaders Lack
(upbeat music) - Welcome to the Carrie Newhoff Leadership Podcast, a podcast all about leadership, change, and personal growth. The goal? To help you lead like never before, in your church or in your business. And now your host, Carrie Newhoff. (upbeat music) - Well, hey everybody, and welcome to episode 72 of the podcast. My name is Carrie Newhoff, and I hope our time together today helps you lead like never before. Today, we are gonna talk about the key to everything. Is there actually a key to everything in leadership? My guest, Matt Keller, thinks there is. And I kind of agree with him, and what would that be? I mean, could there be a key to everything? I think there could be, and in fact, I think you might have it because you're listening. Okay, that's enough of a tease, but anyway, I'm so glad you joined us for today. And I just wanna say thank you so much, man. We just crossed a milestone. You know, we are well on our way to a million downloads of this podcast, which is unbelievable. We're not like even legit 18 months old. And we just passed the 3/4 million mark, and every week it seems to be growing. And you know why that's happening? Because you're letting other leaders know about this. And I just wanna say thank you so, so much for that. Thank you for sharing this on social media. Thank you for emailing this to your friends. Thanks for leaving reviews and ratings on iTunes. Thank you so much for all the encouragement and the positive feedback you've given. So many of you recently have left new reviews on iTunes. Thank you for that. iTunes uses that to get this in front of other leaders, and then hopefully they benefit from it. So you're kind of paying it forward, sharing the love that way. And I read every one of them, and I'm so, so grateful for all of you. And thank you for the constant feedback in the encouragement. And I really hope it's not that long until we reach a million leaders. Wouldn't that be incredible? Just crazy. Hey, couple of things I wanna let you know about before we go any further. First is if you have not yet subscribed to the podcast, I'd love for you to do that. Because it's free and that way it shows up automatically on your devices every Tuesday or when we release bonus podcasts. And I've been releasing some bonus podcasts recently and there'll be more to come. But here's some people who are coming up on the podcast. Next week we've got Jarrett Stevens. And Jarrett and I have this fascinating conversation about how to say no, it's gonna be great. Guy, you may never have met named Brian Wangler. Like you and me, he's a pastor. Pastor's a local church. And I'm calling the episode Raising the Dead. Why? Because so many people say, you know, hey, existing churches, there's just no hope. You know, you can't transition a stuck or plateaued church. Brian would disagree. And he has now led four churches to significant renewal and growth. One of them was actually five people when he got there in a village of 400. That church grew to a hundred under his leadership. He's led other churches to over a thousand in attendance. And I mean, churches that people thought were stuck or dead or never coming back. And Brian and I have this fascinating conversation about how that happened and man, I'll tell you, I am so excited about that episode. So another one that's coming up. John Burke has written a book that I have not been able to put down. It's fascinating. It's called Imagine Heaven. And what it does is it looks at hundreds, thousands probably, of near-death experiences and compares and contrasts near-death experiences to the biblical account of heaven. He's going to talk to us about that. I am so stoked for this. I have loved his book. And you ever wonder what does heaven really like? I mean, that's not so ethereal. And so he sits down and looks at all these near-death experiences and talks about it. I'm just so excited. Perry Noble is coming back to the podcast. Perry's got a brand new book out in March. I'm so pumped for that. Andy Stanley is back. I'm going to sit down with Andy this spring and have another conversation. We'll be bringing that to you. Ditto with Ravi Zacharias. Ravi's freed up some time to come back and talk to you directly. It's going to be amazing. So I'll be collecting questions for that. We've got other people like, what George is going to be on? I'm super excited that I'm even going to sit down with some of our staff and have a conversation this year. So lots to cover. It's going to be an incredible year. And thank you to everybody who subscribed and everybody who shared the love on that. So that's just a little preview of some of the things that are ahead. Finally, before we jump in in the interview, if you have not yet registered for a brand new conference called Rethink Leadership, I would love for you to stop this right now and go to rethinkleadership.com. I'm involved in this. I am so excited because we're bringing to you an experience that usually you would get in front of thousands of people. We're going to do for just a few hundred. Andy Stanley, John Acuff, Reggie Joyner, Jeff Henderson, Brad Lominek, Pete Wilson, Jimmy Otto and myself. We're all going to be there. And we are going to work with you, not quite one-on-one, but like in the hundreds, not in the thousands. It's a limited experience leadership event that is unlike anything I think you've ever been to. It'll be TED style talks with world class leaders and I would love for you to go there. The early bird rates are on. It's April 27th through 29th and it's in Atlanta. And we would love for you to be our guest. So what you can do is go and register right now, go to rethinkleadership.com and you can register before it's too late. We'd love to have you. Well, now let's get to my conversation with Matt Keller. Here we go. Well, really excited to have Matt Keller on the podcast today. Matt, welcome, so glad you're here. - Thank you so much, Kerry. It's just an honor to be here. - Yeah, well, this is going to be fun. We've just kind of met and I'd read your book and thought, oh, you'd make a great guest and I've heard about next level church over the years. So we're new friends, right? There you go. - Absolutely. - A lot in common, actually. So you've had quite a journey at next level church. So tell us a little bit about that. And there's two next level churches, right? - There are. - But there's one up in New England and this is the podcast, no Josh Gagnon there. You were the other, but maybe the original next level church. So let's talk about that. - Well, maybe there's actually a number of them. I think I've found eight or 10 of them now across the country in Canada as well. But yeah, so we are next level church in Fort Myers, Florida. Josh Gagnon is a friend of mine. He is a mutual friend that you and I both share in common. And they're in New England doing just a phenomenal work. I actually knew Josh way back when. - And so-- - You knew Josh before he was Josh, really? - I did, actually. No Josh before he was Josh. And I'm so proud of that guy and just love how God's using him. So our story, next level church, my wife and I were originally born and raised in Indiana in the Midwest. And when I was 26 and she was 24, we tell church planners all the time now. We were too young to know how young we were. We loaded up our rider truck with $9,200 and no clue what we were doing. And two college guys who got the vision of doing church in a spring breakdown. And we moved 1,300 miles away from the only home we had ever known in Indiana with nothing but a big vision and no clue. And God has been gracious over 13 and a half, almost 14 years now. - That's crazy. So you started at church, didn't know what you were doing. Why did you pick Florida, other than the weather? You're from Indiana. - Yeah, right. - I'm from Toronto. - You're from Canada, so I'm not sure you need to ask why I started in the Sunshine State. But-- - It was a call. - Honestly, well what's crazy, let me back up even further. When we were teenagers, I was 17, my wife, girlfriend, then was 15. My parents took us on a spring break vacation of Fort Myers, Florida. And when the plane landed, I literally looked at Sarah, my girlfriend, and said, "Let's start a church here someday." - No way. - Yeah, so honestly, we felt like God planted the seed in our heart. And nine years later, we relocated January of 2002, relocated and started with four of us. We had four of us in a coffee shop. First two weeks, nobody showed up. And then we launched in a movie theater on Mother's Day, May the 12th, 2002, we had 35 people. And then we went down from there to 19. And so it was like, "Oh, only half come back." That had been nice to know. But you know what, we didn't know what we didn't know. And we just started loving on the people we had. And God was faithful. So we spent four years in the movie theater, grew the church to just under 300 people in average attendance. And I know numbers only tell a story, they don't tell the whole story, but just for reference sake. - No numbers of people. - Yeah, that's right, exactly. So after four years, we moved to a high school, a brand new $40 million state-of-the-art high school that the state of Florida built us. And all we had to do was let them have school in their Monday to Friday, pay them a little money and set up some equipment. I said, "This is a great idea." So we spent the next five years in the high school, grew to about a thousand people. And then four and a half years ago, Easter 2011, purchased an old church, gutted it, renovated it, added some square footage to it. And we now have two campuses. Average attendance is about a little over 3,000 in a week in attendance, so to speak. And it's just been an incredible journey. We love pouring into leaders. That's why I love you. I love this podcast. Love what you're doing to help leaders, both inside and outside of the local church. I love it. - No, thanks. That's a great story too. And it sounds like you've constantly had to reinvent yourself over the years too, right? Because pastoring a church of 19 is different than pastoring two locations and 3,000 people on the whole deal. - It really is. And honestly, Carrie, when we moved, we were so clueless in what we were doing. We just said, we are going to vow to take good notes. I remember sitting on the edge of our little 800 square foot apartment, our bed, and just so lonely, so confused, so broke, so clueless, so alone, and crying. And I looked at my wife all the way back then, and I said, Sarah, if God lets us live through this, and of course at the time, that was in question. I said, we're gonna spend the rest of our life making sure no leader has to feel the way we feel right now. And that's why I write books. That's why I do what I do. That's why we coach pastors. That's why we coach business leaders because we just wanna make sure no leader has to go through what we went through. And so our heart and passion from the beginning has been, let's take good notes. Let's learn the lessons we can from ourselves, from those we're interacting with, so that we can help another leader be more efficient and more effective at what God has called them to do. - You know, I know there's a lot of church planners who listen to this podcast, and I'm sure there are some who are exactly at that point right now. Tell us just in a snapshot, 'cause I wanna talk about teachability today, but tell us in a snapshot. What was one of the darkest moments that you thought, whoa, there's no way out of this? - Well, I think about we're four years in, growing the church to about 300 people, which was great. You know, viable, definitely momentum. And so we made the decision to leave the movie theater. And in our town, we were known as the church in the movie theater. Like it was an identity for us. Everybody knew next level church, church in the movie theater. Like it was such an identity. - And you never have to direct anyone to your church, because you're just like, oh, in our case, we're at the Galaxy Cinemas. There's not a single living breathing person in Central Ontario who doesn't know where those theaters are. - Right, and we were, and we didn't even know. We were at the Bell Tower 20, and it's like, oh, Bell Tower, like that's the center of Southwest Florida. We didn't even know God put us there. So when we made the decision to leave the Bell Tower theaters and moved 2.2 miles, which is nothing in our town, to South Fort Myers High School, I remember we thought, man, this is it. We're gonna double, we're gonna skyrocket. And we moved in and honestly, about 60 days in, the thing bottomed out. And we had about 60 different fate people, you know, a dozen or so 15 families who just said, yeah, it's not the same. It's, you know, what, I mean, yeah, you've heard it. The church grows stuff, right? And I remember, so we were about 300 in the theater. I remember, one Sunday, we had like 190. And that's kids, everybody, kids, dogs, cats. - Wow, yep. - Like we counted the trash bags, you count them, like their count. And so I remember literally laying in bed with my wife that night. And I remember Sarah saying to me, I wonder if the movie theater would take us back. Like, man, we thought we had killed our church. And so now, again, 10 years, whatever, later, that's a story we tell church planners and pastors all the time, that it was just that it's that, it's that dip, you know, of you've got to go through those seasons where everyone's not going to take the journey with you. It's not going to be easy. It is going to feel dark and lonely and confusing, but that is how you make the jump to get to your next level. And what got you here cannot, will not, and should not get you there where you're going. And that's what we love helping churches and businesses do. - Yeah, I agree. You know, sometimes when you make change as a leader, you're the only one applauding for the first little bit. And that's so true. And of course, if you went back to the movie theater, 'cause, you know, when you're free, the slaves always want to go back to Egypt. So you want to go back to Egypt. You'd probably be a church of four, five hundred meeting and movie theater. - Yep, absolutely. - And I want to miss the story. All right, so teachability had to be a really big part of your journey. And hence, the book you released called the key to everything. And if I'm not mistaken, that is what? That is teachability, right? - Exactly. Well, yeah, when you write a book called the key to everything, the first thing everybody wants to know in interviews or whatever is, all right, hot shot, what is it? - Yeah. - And so the answer is, as you just said, it's teachability. And for me, teachability's always been a life theme for me. So I've always, I've just always been a learner. As a, you know, a strengths finder, it's one of my strengths as I'm a learner. But I think, I think when you look at it, when you look at success, more than hard work, more than work ethic, more than connections who you know, education, family, lineage, any of the, before all of those things, the thing that matters most, the thing that matters first is teachability. Give me someone who's teachable, we can change the world. Give me someone who already knows it all, and we're dead in the water. - Yeah, it doesn't matter. And that's not an age thing, is it? It really isn't. - Absolutely not. - No, because I've met 85 year old men, my wife's grandfather being a great illustration of that. I talk about him in the book, who is the most teachable guy I know. And I've met 35 year old people who are stuck in their ways. And so teachability doesn't have anything to do with age, teachability is a mindset. And what I argue in the book is teachability's a lifestyle. - Hmm, so why, I think, I've seen a lot of leaders who struggle with teachability, right? And is there an inherent tension between like being a leader or being an expert and being teachable, Matt? - Yeah, I think that there is, Carrie. I think, I think that that's one of the constant tensions, as Andy Stanley, you know, says it's not a problem to be solved, it's a tension to be managed. I think one of the constant tensions of leadership is the more successful you become, the more your teachability is threatened. But the more teachable you are, the more successful you become. And I actually talk about that in chapter seven on success in the book. I talk about, be careful because the more successful you become, the more your teachability, you're gonna turn around and go, "Well, look at me, "I'm doing all right, I'm awesome." Like, and that's the tension I think a lot of leaders face. And that's why I wrote the book, to really help leaders begin to understand what keeps us from a lifestyle of teachability, what is teachability, and how we develop a lifestyle of teachability. - Okay, so let's start there. What keeps us from being teachable? What are the factors that make a leader or a person, frankly, not teachable? - Sure, well, first, let me define what teachability is. In the book, I talk about, it's two things, desire to learn multiplied by willingness to change. So it really is desire and willingness. Show me someone who has a desire to learn, but no willingness to change, they're gonna struggle. Show me someone who has no desire, but high willingness, they're gonna struggle. So it takes both, so teachability is desire to learn, multiplied by willingness to change. And so, of course, go ahead, I'm sorry. - No, no, no, this is really good, this is really good. So I'm just trying to get the distinction in my head, because yeah, if you think about it, they have conference junkies. I've run into a lot of conference junkies, they just go to everything, or they're on every webinar, and they've got brand new books, and they blow their whole budget. But nothing ever gets applied because they don't want to change. On the other hand, there are people who love change. I'm just trying to figure out exactly what you're saying. There are people who love change, but there's not much of a desire to learn. And as a result, sometimes you make really stupid decisions. Is that the tension? - Yeah, sure, let me illustrate it this way. If it were a math equation, you and I are public speakers, and I'm sure a lot of the people who listen, pastors and others are public speakers. We do this for a living, I hear right. - I try. - Okay, so if I'm a public speaker, which I am, and my desire to learn is a six, but my willingness to change and get better is only a two, then on a 100 scale, my teachability factor is 12, six times two. But if my desire to learn goes up to a nine, and my willingness to change goes up to a nine, now all of a sudden that 12 has become an 81. And so show me someone in the area of their life who whatever their number is. So if you want to be a better husband, what's your desire, one to 10, what's your willingness, one to 10? Multiply those numbers together, and that's how you determine how teachable you are in any area of your life. Does that make sense? - Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. And you know, from that perspective, Matt, I know a lot of people, it's like you get the insight, somebody, you know, you even hire a consultant though. Consultant comes in and says, well, you know, here are my three recommendations. You know, change this, change that. And then almost immediately from a lot of leaders, you get pushback, oh, we've already decided we're not gonna do that, right? That is not the kind of church we are. Or that's not the kind of leader I am. Now, sometimes you need to say that, you know, no is important, but yeah, that's a lack of a willingness to change. - Absolutely, so let me answer your original question, which is what keeps us then from teachability in our life and in our leadership journey. In the book, I outline five things. I talk about the five roadblocks to teachability. And oftentimes, especially for successful leaders, the roadblocks to teachability can be invisible to us. They can be hard to identify and see. And so in the book, I talk about pride as a roadblock fear, insecurity, pain, and pace. - Okay. - An unhealthy or unsustainable pace. So we can break those down as far. - Yeah, let's do that, let's walk through each of them because I'm a guy, like even in my teaching, I love to focus on the problem because I think a lot of the time, if you don't define the problem well and you don't really understand, that goes to self-awareness, right? Like as a leader, I'm like, I'm not proud. Well, is that a proud statement? I don't really know, you should talk about that. So let's start with them. So start with, you want to start with pride? Let's look at that, what do you mean by pride? - The first roadblock to teachability in our life, this pride is honestly, one of the biggest things about pride is a prideful approach, a prideful attitude. And throughout the first section of the book, I use the Old Testament Saul as a biblical anecdote and illustration of a guy who embodied all five of these roadblocks and couldn't yet pass them. And so the thing about pride is pride always leads to presumption. And presumption is a killer of teachability in our life. And if it's true, which it is, that teachability is how we reach our full potential as a leader and as a follower of Jesus, you and I would say, then we have to be aware of those prideful moments where we go, you know what, the rules don't apply to me. You know what, I get that that's for everybody else, but that's not me. Like it's the guy who walks into the restaurant demanding a table and the poor little teenage hostess girl, you know, standing there going, "Sir, there's no tables, "you have to wait in line." And he's going, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, "but you don't understand who I am." Like it is that kind of presumption that will cause us as leaders to do an end run around God's prescription, around the preferred blessed path, if you will, and say, "You know what, I can go around the rules." And that's what Saul did in the Old Testament. He said, "You know what, I've waited a week "for the prophet Samuel to show up, forget it. "I'm the king, I'm just gonna go straight to God." Like the rules that I'm good. And it will cause us to, instead of going after God's best and waiting on God's best, pride and presumption will always cause us to settle for good instead of waiting on God's best. - Yeah, I can totally see that. And do you think, Matt, I've noticed the longer you lead, the more you're tempted in that area, because you think, "Man, I've worked so hard "and I've worked so long at this." And it's almost an entitlement mindset that I don't have to play by those rules anymore. I paid my dues. - Right, exactly. And again, so that's where the longer we go in the leadership journey, and certainly for those of us who are reaching some low to come up success, that's where we've got to keep our eyes open and say, "Man, I gotta be aware of this roadblock of pride." - What are some antidotes to pride? Mary Well, my wife doesn't let me get away with it, which is great. Neither does my staff, my team doesn't, so that's good. - Well, I mean, there you go, there's the first two, which is, yeah, honestly, it's your wife. Often the Holy Spirit speaks loudly in my life, and he sounds a lot like my wife, don't it. As a matter of fact, I've never heard that before. - It's like, "I am just not impressed with you." - You know, so, yeah, that's good. - It seemed to me my worst. So, yeah, I mean, honestly, some of that is surrounding ourself with people who can be honest. It's inviting it. - Right. - You have to be willing to invite it. Here's how I've often said this about roadblocks in blind spots in our life is, you know, I teach leaders, I'll say, you know, the best people to help us with our blind spots in our life are not people in the car next to us. It's not people standing on the side of the road. It's not people a mile ahead of us, or even a mile behind us. The best people to see our blind spots are the people sitting in the car with us. And as you said, our team, the problem is most leaders are not secure enough to be able to say to their team, "You gotta help me." That if any of these pride, fear, insecurity, "Hey, if you see this rising up in me, "you gotta help me and love what we're doing enough "to be able to graciously and lovingly grab me and go, "Hey, you know that tweet you sent out last week? "Man, I feel like it might be heard as prideful, "like man, I feel like there might be, "you might be showing a little more insecurity there "than you think you are." Okay, that's a team that loves you, and that's a team that loves your mission. - Yeah, that loves you too much to let you get away with that. - That's right, that's right. - That's interesting, you know, Matt, I'm sort of looking ahead at the next 10 years, and just literally this week, while we're recording this, put together personal advisory boards, something I've never had before, but just three people who know me well who are very successful leaders in their own right, and who have standing permission to call me on the carpet and go, "Hey, Newhof, you're an idiot, "you know, and in love, of course." But, you know, you need that in your life, because, and I said to each of them, I don't trust myself enough to lead well, and I feel that creep, I feel that creep, you know, you want the next status, the airline you fly with regularly or you want, you know, you feel you're entitled to this, and it's like, no, you're not, so that's good. Okay, so pride, and it's not just walking around with like this stereotypical big ego, it just seeps in very insidiously, yeah. - It does, and what it does is it attacks our teachability. So the second roadblock is fear, and, you know, fear really can raise its ugly head in a lot of ways, but a lot of times fear can tell us, you know, a fear of losing control, you know, as we grow, as our organizations grow, for us as leaders, it is, man, in order for us to get there, I'm going to have to give up control, I'm going to have to turn my back on some things and let really empower other people, you know, in the organization. So there are a lot of fears, you know, that can really grip a leader's heart that can be a roadblock or something. - Let me ask you about that, because you obviously have had to deal with that at next level church, like when you have 19 people, you can be in charge of everything, 'cause I remember having 19 people, and basically as a leader, you're in charge of everything. You've got 3,000 people now, we have just over 1,000 people now attending our church. I'm not in control of very much anymore, and that's a very difficult journey to make. In fact, you know, the way I look at my last five years, it's been as much about not leading as it is about leading, learning when to stand back rather than to move forward. How have you navigated that personally, Matt, and what have been the fears for you in surrendering control so your church can grow? - Yeah, sure. Well, in the book, I mentioned a few of them, and honestly, they're all things that I've dealt with in my life in the past as our church has grown, and as we go from one growth face to the next, you know, things like fear of rejection, fear of criticism, you know, that honestly, so the longest time while your church is smaller, like criticism, I mean, it comes every once in a while in the form of a bad email, but no news coverage is gonna be like, "Dude, your church sucks," like, and all of a sudden, like, I think I even talk about this in the book, like, there's this crazy moment in time when we moved into our first permanent location, we went from 950 people to 2,000 people in about nine months, and it was like that fear thing in me of, oh my gosh, like fear of not wanting to make a mistake, fear of being criticized, like criticism hit me from a whole different level when our church suddenly became the thing in our city, and it was like, "Well, what do I do now?" So I think a lot of those fears can really creep into leaders because here's the thing, what I've discovered is, every time your organization grows from one growth face to the next, and we talk a lot about this in our coaching that we do at pastors, we have to face four different things. We have to, there's a different skill set, temptations, priorities, and disciplines that are necessary for us as leaders to lead effectively at the next level, and we've got to be able to dig into those skill sets, those disciplines, different priorities up here. Things change in temptations. Things change as our organizations get bigger. - Sure, so let's talk about criticism because I think that's a universal thing we all struggle with. I mean, if you have 19 people, if you have 19,000 people, nobody loves getting that email, nobody loves hearing, nobody loves a story that's critical about you in the press or media, or even online, or some blogger for you from his basement just decides to take you on. - How, what's helped you get through those hurdles, the fear of criticism? What's been good for you personally? - That's a good question. I think the first thing I would say is, build in layers systematically as your organization grows so that 'cause not all criticism even needs to be read by you. And so I have a great filter with my staff, my assistant Sherry is phenomenal, and other pastors who work at a level just beneath being the organization. If when a critical email or whatever comes in, they are always the first ones, and obviously anything anonymous gets kicked out immediately. If you're not gonna sign it, we're not gonna read it. But then secondly, they're always the filter. And so, is this life-giving, does this, is there a kernel of truth in the criticism? And so my team always filters that for me. Here's why, because the last thing we need is Matt going to the stage, or to the platform this weekend, with some random guy in a basement in his head. - Yeah. - Well, that's not, my responsibility is to serve the 3,000 people who are in my church this weekend. My responsibility is not to combat basement guy in nowhere, Idaho, who wants to take on Matt Keller at Next Level Church in Fort Myers. Does that make sense? - Yeah. - And so my team goes, you know what, no, no, no, there's nothing to this. And then if there's something that needs to be addressed, they can deal with 80% of that. And then they become the ones who say, I think this actually warrants Matt's eyes and attention. And then we sit down and we talk about it, and we deflect anything that we go, you know what, that's not us. Okay, but these two things they said in there, that's absolutely true. Let's figure it out, let's grow, let's get better. And so I think that's a great way. So now, because see, criticism's such a weird thing, because when we try and handle criticism alone, it weakens us. But when you put criticism inside of a team context like that, suddenly there's a sober mindedness to it that is healthy, that allows us to go, okay, that's ridiculous, that's dumb, get rid of that, don't pay attention to that. Matt, don't let that get in your soul. - Yeah. - But these two things together, we decide, we can learn and grow from those. - Okay, that's good. - So put criticism into a team context. It'll help you be sober minded about it, leader, and not over-emote on it. - Yeah, you know, I've never heard anyone say that. That's actually smart, because, you know, I'll still read stuff that comes to me. And often you're a little bit even afraid to share it with someone, because there's like a shame stigma attached to it. And I often will, I'll show it to my wife or I'll show it to my assistant or, you know, the leaders around me. And you learn a lot in the process, but they often, because I don't find I'm a very good judge of like, okay, what part should stick and what part should be gone? - That's a good insight, okay. - And so I just let my team do all the filtering for me. You guys know me, and you know my heart, like you know I wanna get better, like I'm teachable. I wrote the book on teachability for crying out loud. You guys know I wanna be teachable in this, but if there's nothing in here that's gonna help me or help us, then don't bother me. You guys just take it, but if it does help us, then they can be the, so let them be the first line of offense on that. - Anything else on fear, 'cause that's a big one. - It is, you know, I mean, I just think, I think leaders have more fears living inside of their heart, big and small, then they wanna give merit to one of the things that I do, and this is a Wayne Cordiero thing from his book, Leading on Empty. He talks about taking a quarterly reflection day. And so for me, there are five questions I always ask, and I just do long hands. So I sit down at a coffee shop for 90 minutes or 120 minutes, and one of the questions I ask in my leadership to reflect is I say, what am I afraid of right now? Hey, Kerry, I will sit down with a legal pad and just start writing, and the last time I did it, and listeners are not even gonna believe this, the last time I did it, I had 22 fears. - Wow. - But, and here's the thing we need to understand about fear. Fear motivates our decision-making on a daily basis, on a moment-by-moment basis. And most leaders have no idea the fears that they are driving their decision-making on a daily basis, and when you sit down long-hand and just go, you know what? I'm afraid of losing control at our second campus. You know what, I'm afraid that our worship is getting a little off track. You know what, I'm afraid that my house isn't gonna sell in 90 days, when my house was on the market. I'm like, you gotta know which I'm afraid I'm gonna screw up my kids, like, because fears, they always do it. I love this stuff. I'm so passionate because leaders gotta know what those fear drivers are in their life, and once you see it in black and white, once you bring it out of darkness, end of light, it loses its power over you. - It does, you know, I've again never heard that. That's a really good idea, is to actually just write down what you're afraid of in the moment, and if it's five pages, hey, you know, darkness loses its power when you bring it to the light, as you say, brilliant. Okay, so we've got pride, we've got fear, what's next? What else keeps us from being teachable? - Sure, third roadblock is insecurity, insecurity. - It's huge. - And this is a big one again. This is why I wrote a leadership book because I'm so passionate about this, but, you know, for me, there are a lot of different kinds of insecurity, and Old Testament Saul gives us a great picture of these roadblocks, you know, things like I feel inferior, things like I feel like I don't belong here, I feel like I'm faking it, and these were things that I dealt with in my leadership. Matter of fact, the introduction to that chapter, the opening story, I talk about how I'm a member of the ARC, the Association of Related Churches, which is planting churches phenomenally, and I kind of got into the ARC right as when it was small and the door was closing, and so my first ARC meeting, there are about 50 of us, and these guys, the main leaders of the ARC, the lead team of the ARC, who are some of the most predominant names in Christianity today, are, became good friends of mine. And for years, they would say, "Hey Matt, here's my cell phone, call me, "hey, call me anytime, hey Matt, let's hang out, "hey Matt, I wanna know how it's going, "hey Matt, I wanna be in your world." And I would take their phone number and I would never do anything with it, and the reason why is because I thought I wasn't good enough. And I thought, you know what, these guys are successful, they're busy, they don't have time for me, they don't need me, they were just putting it on, being nice, and every time I get around 'em, they go, "Dude, why haven't you called? "Man, why are you at, bro, let's hang out?" And after eight years, my friend Randy Bazzette, who passes Bayside Community Church in Sarasota, about 90 minutes north of me, you're having breakfast at Cracker Barrel in our three times a year meeting, and I was telling a man, I just feeling so good, whatever, and he looked at me and said, "Matt, how long? "How long are you gonna miss this amazing God opportunity "to learn from these leaders that you desperately need "to learn and grow from?" But you're letting your own insecurity keep you from learning from guys who have openly given you access to them, it is not them, Matt, it's you. If you could see what we see, because when they look at Matt Keller, they see a secure, confident, growing young pastor and leader who is capable of changing the world, what you see is an insecure, not good enough, not capable enough guy, and you're seeing it wrong. And he just said, "Matt, how long? "How long are you gonna let that insecurity "keep you from the God opportunity before you?" - That is a great word, and I know so many leaders who can just identify with that. I had a similar experience, and I won't name names, but I had somebody who said, "Hey, you wanna talk?" And he actually offered to review my messages, and this was one of the top communicators on the planet, and I was too insecure to send them to him, and you look at that, and I said to a couple of people over the last number of years, I just feel like the little kid at the Big Kids table, and somebody finally looked at me like your friend Randy did, I think it was Randy, who said, he just said, "You actually belong "around this table, and everything inside me is like, "No, I don't." And again, it's not about whether you belong at the table or not, but you miss opportunities because of it. - That's it. - And we mentioned our mutual friend, Josh Gagnon. If you're really struggling with insecurity, and you wanna hear just a super raw, unedited conversation about a successful, insecure leader, Josh and I actually sat down together in person, and that's episode 61 of this podcast, so you can just scroll back a little bit, and Josh and I talk for almost an hour just about what it's like to lead when you're not 100% secure. - Let me put my stamp on that episode, because Carrie, I listened to that recently, and one of the best conversations that needs to be had in the body of Christ and truthfully, in or outside of the church, in the leadership community today. So leaders, stop this podcast you're listening to. Go back to that one, because it was that powerful. You guys worked, it was brilliant, man. Such a great job. - Well, but you know that, I appreciate that, but that's why I wanna do this podcast. Those are the kind of conversations we always have offline that nobody ever hears, and Josh and I just decided to stick a microphone in the room one day, and have the conversation, and so we're all alike. The insecurity never fully goes away. Well, I think it does, it goes away in heaven, but in the meantime, it's blocking an awful lot of stuff, and you can overcome this, right? This is, so insecurity keeps you from teachability, pride and fear. - Let's talk about what's another one. - And number four is pain, the roadblock of pain, and again, we talked about fears that leaders don't identify, but pain is the same way. And one of the things that I talk about in the book is pain, when painful things happen to us in our past, it's like they're laying bricks in front of us, and I give the illustration in the book about, if we don't knock down the bricks while the cement is wet, eventually those bricks start to get high, and when it's only a foot or two high, as a leader, when something happens, we can step over that. But eventually, if we don't do the hard work of knocking down the pain bricks in our life, eventually that wall gets so high that now, we can no longer step over it. And in fact, once it gets to a certain level, we start to paint a new reality on the inside of it, and we become completely disconnected from reality. And that's a scary place to be. And here's what I teach so often is, whenever God wants to take us up a level in our influence or impact in our life, we always have to go down another level and dig into those pockets of pain, those pockets of unhealth in our life that have the potential foundationally to keep us from rising to a new level in our influence. - Yeah, that's a good word. So that pain, that can be like childhood stuff, that can be what, like unresolved loss. Where else does that, I mean, pain just accumulates with life. - I think it's all of it. And honestly, I think this is where leaders so often, we get so busy moving so fast toward the direction of our dreams that we fail to miss those moments in time that happen. It is the family that leaves the church. And you go, "Yeah, I will forget them, "and let's keep moving, Kate." One level, yes, on another level, something got planted in your heart, a seed of pain got planted in your heart, and only you and Jesus can know what that is, and if that's true. And so those are the things. So again, I do think it's childhood stuff. I do think it's past. I do think it's mistakes, regrets, things that are said and done to us. I think it's all of those things, but it's also the stuff that happens in real time, day in and day out, as leaders. It's leadership is just a painful business. And if we as leaders aren't being diligent to guard our heart, as Proverb says, the wall will start to build up, and before you know it, you won't be dealing in reality anymore. - Yeah, that's a good point. And I know, I know, I recommend counseling all the time, good Christian counseling, but that can really tear things down. Okay, take us to the last one. - Yeah, sure. The fifth roadblock is pace. And this is the one that whenever I teach this content to leaders and business leaders or church leaders alike, this is the one that there's a collective grown in the room. And people like the first ones, you know, pride, fear, raw, those are thick and deep and raw. And then you get to pace and every leader goes, "Oh, like I can't think of a timecare "where I ever taught this." And the grown did not happen. Like everyone always groans because there is an unhealthy, unsustainable pace epidemic in leadership today where we are going, 'cause here's what I've learned. I've learned that when my pace goes up, my teachability goes down. It's like driving in a rainstorm. So I listen to a lot of leadership podcasts like this, you know, often, well in Florida, it rains every afternoon through the summer. Like it's just three to five, it's gonna rain. It's a rainy season. And so one day I had to go out and run some errands since I was listening to a podcast, you know, and I got in my car and it was pouring down rain. And I noticed something. The more focused I became on clutching the wheel, driving in the rainstorm, the more unfocused I became on what I was listening to. In other words, it's impossible to learn and grow when you're so focused, clutching the wheel, driving the thing forward. And I think so many leaders get so focused on go, go, go. The next hill, the next mountain, the next goal, the next event, the next thing, the next Sunday that when pace goes up, our teachability always goes down. - Yeah, I can see that. I mean, you're not even breathing. You're not really processing. And there's no deep learning that can happen when you're running at a really fast pace. - That's one of the reasons I love to write books is, you know, I'm fairly new at it. But, you know, there's long form thinking. Sometimes, you know, an idea actually needs 10,000 words to unpack it properly. - Yeah, I'm a big proponent of journaling. I know some people are like, ah, I don't journal. Well, okay, call it whatever you want. Because of what you just said, Kerry, I think we've got to slow down. And we've got to create a space in our call it quiet time, call it journaling, call it meditation, whatever. And we've got to create space where we can process what's happening in our life and in our heart and our spirit in real time. Otherwise, the pace of our culture and our world just will, it'll eat us alive. - Yeah, so that's good. So those are five things that keep us from being teachable. When you look at teachable leaders that you've met, what are some of the characteristics or the qualities that you go, ah, that's teachability? - Yeah, well, in researching for the book, I started to look at leaders throughout history and obviously biblical leaders, but I also looked at world leaders and said, who are some of the people that you and I would look on and go, man, that's one of the most successful and also one of the most teachable people on the planet? And what I discovered is there are about five characteristics that highly teachable people all possess in common. And so for us as leaders, if we're going to increase our level of teachability in over the next year or whatever, then we've got to pay attention to what the most teachable people in the world are. And the first thing is they have an insatiable desire to learn, plain and simple, teachable. The most teachable people you know are hungry to learn. And by virtue of the fact that you listener are listening to this podcast right now, I can almost guarantee that's in you. Something's in you, unless someone forced you and said, "Hey, you got to listen to this." - And then you're not really listening and you miss this anyway. - Exactly, they're not teaching. So, and take it in. But because by virtue of the fact that we're listening, we want to learn. And so teachable people have an insatiable desire to learn. Secondly, highly teachable people know how to handle success successfully. And we talked about this a few minutes ago that man's success is a catch 22 to our teachability. Now the other side of that is true as well, which is failure. Highly teachable people know how to handle failure when it comes in their life as well. - So how do they handle that? How do you handle success when you're highly teachable and how do you handle failure when you're highly teachable? - Well, I think from a success level, one of the biggest keys is understanding that none of us are successful alone. I think that's a big deal is recognizing 'cause I think so often the world would want to tell us, "Man, you're successful, man, it's all you." And check out how great you are and the trophy belongs to you and it's your name on it. And it's like nobody arrives at the top by themselves. And so being willing to share the credit, I think helps us in recognizing that success is only ever temporary. There's a reason why the news is called the news. N-E-W-S because it's what's new. And no matter how great and amazing and wonderful you are, eventually we're all gonna be back page news, which is not news at all. And our success is only temporary. And so I think being able, that's a few of the keys there from a failure side of things. One of the biggest things that I've noticed is highly teachable people, don't let their failure define them. - It's a good word. People who get stuck and lose their teachability let a failure moment or a failure season or some whatever that happened, they suddenly go, "You know what? Then I guess I'm not as good as I thought. I guess I'm never gonna be good." And they let that define them. - Yeah, it becomes so personal, right? You need to take failure seriously, but not necessarily personally. And it goes to the heart, which I can see. And I totally relate to success. It can create a real fear, can't it? And I think the greatest enemy of your future success is your current success. More successful you are, the more conservative you become. I don't wanna mess this up. I don't wanna blow this, which is good, but it can get, you know, it can kill innovation. So that's helpful. Okay, walk us through the other characteristics of highly teachable people. - Yeah, sure. The other two, one is an openness to feedback, which is a really big deal. Again, but here's the caveat of feedback. The people who can most help you in your life give you feedback, have the least to gain from giving it. - Oh, that's good. Say more on that. - So your wife, your team, the people who work for you, you have the most to gain from their feedback. They have the most to lose from their feedback. So in other words, if your employees tell you something about your leadership, they could lose their job. They could fall out of favor with the boss. If your spouse tells you the truth, feedback-wise. - It could be a messy house for a day or two. - It could be a messy house for a while, right? So that's the caveat of feedback. And so here's the whole point. Then we, if we're going to be as teachable as we can possibly be, then we have to make it easy for people to give us feedback. - That's good. - Or else we'll give it once. - No, that's very true, because if it's just your fan club, you can always find someone to go, "Oh, Matt, you're the best ever." But that's not really meaningful. And often it's the people who know you the least well, who will give you that kind of feedback. When in reality, your spouse, your kids. So how do you cultivate a safe environment? Because we've all been in that situation where we have to lead up. And your throat is in your mouth. When you walk into the office and you're like, I could get fired. This could kill the friendship. This could kill the relationship. But I gotta give this feedback. So how do you, as a leader, who needs that feedback, cultivate the kind of environment where people feel safe? - Well, I think there are a number of things to that. But let me give one that I think, Kerry, is most important than any of all of the others. And it's very simply this, keep asking for it. The further we go in leadership and the more successful we become, the more powerful we are, the higher we climb, the more unlikely the people around us. Even those who love us and are closest to us, the harder it becomes for them to give us feedback because of who we are and the bigness of our blah, blah, blah. - More of success or whatever. - That's it. And so honestly, keep asking for it. Pastors, when you walk off the stage this weekend, who are your two or three people that you can say to them? Maybe it's not till Monday morning or Wednesday morning. It doesn't matter, but watch and say to them, hey, you heard my message this weekend. Give me two or three things. Then you think I could tweak to make my communications sound better. They have them, they know what they are. They can help you. - Yeah, you need to ask. - And you need to be the one to ask because nobody feels permission. I know there are days where I'll just say to my assistant, hey, thanks for putting up with me today. And that's kind of a way of giving, like I know I was stressed out about something or whatever. And it's cultivated a very open dialogue or I'll be in a meeting. And you're always oblivious to your performance in a meeting, but I'll say to my colleagues around me, hey, did I say too much in that meeting? Did I not say enough? Was I overbearing? Did I shut down debate? Is it that kind of thing that really cultivates feedback? - That's it, right. And that is all on us as leadership. You're the leader of the team, if you're the leader of the organization, whatever, that's all on you, like we leaders have got to take the ownership of you, you said the word, and I love this, of giving our team permission. And here's what happens. As we do that over an extended period of time, we start to create a culture in our organization where feedback is not just permissible. It's actually expected and wanted. So what I've discovered is the more I ask for feedback, the more I create a culture among my team and my church, of people who are constantly going, hey, tell me how to get better. Tell me how to get better. Up and down in sideways across the organization. - Okay, that's really good. So feedback, there's one more, right? - There is a flexible approach to life being flexible. The most highly teachable people in the world are flexible. And so even when things don't go our way, even when that promotion isn't a promotion, it's a lateral move or a demotion. We've got to teach, highly teachable people embrace flexibility and recognize the long game here, not just the immediacy of the short game. - Hmm, that's good to know. And so do you find that with success or well, I would think with age, I mean, we use expressions, I don't know, they have this in Florida, we do in Canada, but older people get set in their ways. There's only a certain way to do things. I think that's probably inevitable with age. I know at my stage of life, I know what I like and I know what I don't like. Probably a lot more than I did 20 years ago. It's not always good, that's not always good. - And then so I think the same is true of organizations. You need to remain flexible and agile. So is it just that that, is that like an inevitable creep? As you get bigger, older and more successful, you just become less flexible? - I think it is and you and I could look across the church world and see churches and entire denominations who have lost relevance. And this is not an indictment as much as it is an examination for us to say, and why is that? Because they became inflexible and they put the model ahead of the message and they lost their flexibility and they lost eventually their relevance to the culture. - Okay, that's a great picture. Because I think on the individual level, you kinda wonder, okay, how does that work? But we get all point to organizations, corporate or church, hold the nominations that are like, "Oh yeah, it's your inflexibility." And that feeds into some things we were talking about. We don't do it this way, close to change, naughty girl to grow, naughty girl to learn. That's really good. - So we've gotta be flexible. So highly teachable people are flexible people. - Okay, so we're coming into the homestretch here, Matt. Tell us, what are a couple of practical steps? Somebody, you've rung some bells here and there's a few leaders who are like, "Uh oh, you know, the alarm bells are going off." And you write an awful lot about it in your book. But if they're like, "Okay, you know, buy tomorrow." What can I do? What's a good place to start? 'Cause I can't fix the whole thing overnight. But like, if there was just one or two or three things I could do to become more teachable, where would you start? - Well, let me point to perhaps my favorite chapter in the whole book, which is chapter 12, which is on the art of learning how to ask the great questions that about 10 years ago, I realized the book of Proverbs says that the heart of a man is a deep well. Why is this the person who knows how to mine it out? And the way we mine out the wisdom in others is through great questions. And so I have been on a 10 year quest to learn the art of asking great questions because, and again, you and Josh talked about this in episode 61, I think, on that insecure leader deal. Like leaders do not know how to ask good questions. And so chapter 12 is the best. And so if I can say, where do you start? Learn how to ask great questions because questions unlock the wisdom that is hidden inside of the heart of everyone you come in contact with. - That's been a journey for me too, because honestly, Matt, like, you know, you're just used to being the answer person. And you know, I've learned how to ask questions. And it's tough because, you know, especially if you're a leader type and A type, you know, I happen to have an opinion on everything. Not always a good opinion, but I happen to have an opinion. And so I have to learn how to ask better questions. And that's such a good word. Well, I appreciate that. Matt, this has been fantastic. Obviously we talked a lot about the book. It's called "The Key to Everything" by Matt Keller. And if people want to get in touch with you, what's the easiest way for them to do it? - Yeah, the best place to do that. We not only have the book available, but resources for churches. We love helping churches. And so there's all of the graphics, video bumpers, message notes for people to do a Key to Everything series in their churches they want to. All of that is available for free. And if you just go to mattkelleronline.com. There's links to the Key to Everything book site and everything else. So mattkelleronline.com is the place, kind of the one-stop shop for everything we do in terms of our coaching, our church, as well as the Key to Everything book. - And every leader heard free. We are so grateful for that, Matt. Thank you so much for blessing the church back. And that's Keller K-E-L-L-E-R. We'll link to everything in the show notes, Matt. So that's sort of the gateway. If they want to contact you, we're being touched with you. And I just want to thank you so much for helping us. And I'm going to learn to ask even better questions next time. - Well, you do a great job. It's been my pleasure. Thank you. - Okay. Thanks so much, Matt. Well, there you go. Teachability. It's the Key to Everything, isn't it? I think Matt's on to something there. And my guess is you're very teachable. Why? Because you're listening to this podcast. That's why. And you're the kind of leader who, like me, wants to grow and get stretched and get challenged. But what a great, great thing to be able to share with your team too. And a great character to look for when you hire people. Super excited. And next week we've got Jarrett Stevens on as a guest. And I share the whole lineup or the parts of the lineup, actually. That's not the whole lineup. So subscribe. Make sure you do that. And if you haven't visited rethinkleadership.com yet, you do not want to miss this premier world-class conference in Atlanta. Limited enrollment would love to have you as a part of it. So go before it's too late to rethinkleadership.com and join us in Atlanta, April 27th through 29th. It's going to be an exceptional gathering unlike any. I think you've ever been at before. And that'll be happening in tandem with the Orange Conference. So you can send some of your team there. And then you as a senior leader can come to rethinkleadership. We are going to have a blast. I want to thank you so much for listening today. We're back next week. So just subscribe. And we'll be in your inbox next Tuesday. Thanks so much. And I hope this has helped you lead like never before. You've been listening to the Carey Newhof Leadership Podcast. Join us next time for more insights on leadership, change, and personal growth to help you lead like never before. (upbeat music) (gentle music)