Welcome to the Andy Stanley Leadership Podcast Reverb, a conversation that digs deeper into this month's podcast topic, all designed to help leaders go even further faster.

Andy, last week you had such an insightful conversation with Michael Hyatt about the power of the stories we tell ourselves and how those stories shape our leadership.

And today, I want to take that even further. Specifically, I want to talk about how excuses or the

stories we create to justify an action don't just hold us back as leaders personally, but can ripple

out to affect our teams and our organizations. So, Andy, I've actually heard you

talk about excuses as paper walls. Elaborate on that. Yeah, I say that because I think we've all

live long enough to know that we all have a tendency to make excuses. Oftentimes we grow past

those excuses. And if you've ever moved beyond an excuse and you look back at the excuse,

you realized, oh, that wasn't even real.

I was telling myself a lie,

or I created a narrative like Michael and I talked about

that just wasn't true.

And where this is clearest,

and Michael and I talked a little bit about this,

where this is clearest is when you listen to your children

make excuses and you realize, first you're not telling me the truth. I talked a little bit about this. Where this is clearest is when you listen to your children make

excuses and you realize, first, you're not telling me the truth. If you tell me that untruth long enough,

you're going to start to believe it. You're going to believe it. You're going to believe it. And it kind of

freaks us out as parents like, no, no, no, no, I don't believe a lie. But that's the nature of an excuse. It becomes a reason

not to do something. And so one of the most important things a leader can do is recognize an

excuse for what it is, realize it's just a paper wall. And I need to get behind that and punch through

that and accept what's really true and then create a narrative that's helpful.

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