Clay Scroggins: How to Lead When You're Not in Charge

Clay Scroggins spent 20 years leading inside a multi-site church organization, technically in charge of a local team but constantly hitting resistance from a central office he didn't control. That tension became the foundation for his book How to Lead When You're Not in Charge, which has sold over half a million copies. In this episode, Clay and Justin talk through why real estate agents are in the exact same position as Clay once was, since clients make the final call and agents have to lead from influence rather than authority. Clay breaks down the four behaviors he believes build real influence: leading yourself, choosing positivity, thinking critically, and rejecting passivity, with practical, specific ways to apply each one to a real estate business.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

I want to figure out how to lead, even though I'm not in charge. I know I've got to cultivate more influence to do that. If I cultivate more influence, I'll have more opportunities to lead, and I'll have more opportunities to move people to do what they might not want to do to accomplish what they want, what I know they want to accomplish. So, what do I need to do to cultivate influence?

SPEAKER_00 0:28

Welcome to the Justin Landis show, your real estate podcast about having conversations, building relationships, and creating freedom. I'm your host, Justin Landis, and today I'm here with Clay Scrogans, author, speaker for a fellow Georgia Tech alum. Clay, thanks for being here today.

SPEAKER_01 0:44

Glad to be here. Justin, I want to double-click on all three of those things you said, but particularly that finding freedom. Yeah. How how? How so? How do we help people on this show find freedom?

SPEAKER_00 0:55

And I believe that when real estate agents have a relationship-based business where people would know them, like them, trust them, and they're their go-to real estate agent, that that gives you freedom in this business because you know you have a group of people that you're advising. It makes your business more predictable, makes your business more sustainable, versus a lot of agents are always chasing, chasing, chasing, chasing, and that does not produce freedom. That's a tough call for a lot of people.

SPEAKER_01 1:20

I get that. Probably feels like bondage in a way when you're always chasing. It's tough to chase.

SPEAKER_00 1:25

Tough to chase. It's much better to be in the advisor role, better for both sides. Did you chase early on? Oh, you know it. You know it. Are you interviewing me or am I interviewing you? I mean, come on, Clay. Don't try to flip the script here. But you you know it's true. All right. I do want to get to because today you one of your books, How to Lead When You're Not in Charge, has sold over a half a million copies. I have personally, I bet I have bought and given close to a hundred of those. I'm not exaggerating. I've read it with people, I've given it because I think it's just such a valuable and unique perspective on most people are not in charge. And today we're going to talk a lot about real estate agents who we're not in charge. Our clients are making the ultimate decisions. And you know, but we want to be able to lead from there. So to kind of tee us up, you had a lot of years in your role where you were trying to lead but weren't in charge that kind of led to this. Give us a little backstory on it.

SPEAKER_01 2:24

Sure. Well, you and I went to Georgia Tech together. That was one thing we have in common. One thing we don't have in common is our GPAs. I think yours was, I think it was pretty close to a 4.0. You did make a B, though, didn't you?

SPEAKER_00 2:39

I made some Bs.

SPEAKER_01 2:40

Okay. I did not. Mine was a little, it was south of the 3.0 line, but I I knew it. I I quickly knew I do not need to be, I was studying engineering. I did not need to be an engineer. I did the thing. I did the thing. You tried, you tried it though. So I went to graduate school, studied theology. I had gotten real involved in this church while I was in college and kind of just had a hunch. This is what I would like to do with my life. So for about 20 years, I worked in for people not familiar with the church world. This is it became a trend about 15 years ago where churches would do multi-site. So you it would a little bit like a franchise model where you would have kind of a one central organization, but then you would have multiple sites. And so ours were primarily around the city of Atlanta. So yeah, that whatever I meet, like a company I do a lot of work with, they own retirement communities. The executive director of the local community in the town that reports to the central organization, I relate so deeply to that person's job. Because when you walk around on a Tuesday and you're throwing shooters to the residents of the retirement community or to your people that work on your team, you have a sense in which you feel like I'm the boss. But you when you're trying to maybe push a vision forward, start a new project, create a new program. You oftentimes you get this pushback from HQ or from the central org or from the support center, as you know, organizations like Chick-fil-A would call it. And it's in those moments that you realize, oh, I do not, I might have some authority, but I do not have all of the authority that I think I need to be able to get the job done. And what I found myself doing is I would throw my hands up in the air and go, oh, well, then I can't lead. I can't be who I feel like I'm supposed to be. I can't do the things I'm supposed to do because I don't have all the power that I think I need. And that's just a it's a myth. Uh, but it's very, very common. It's uh far more common than I even realized because I was when I wrote this book, I was a pastor and I was really writing two pastors, but I have found that it is I call it industry. Some of these principles are industry agnostic. They do not care what industry you're in.

SPEAKER_00 4:57

You speak at all sorts of, I mean, sports teams and colleges and companies and big and small, and it's the same people who are facing the same challenge.

SPEAKER_01 5:07

Yes, they are.

SPEAKER_00 5:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:09

Yeah, they're trying to figure out how do I get somebody to do the thing that I think I need them to do or the thing that I think they should do. And and of course, you know, when I ask them, well, what what what's in your way? And they'll go, Oh, well, they're not in my department, they're not on my team. I don't have, they don't report to me. And you just hear it so often. You hear that that excuse of I can't get people to do what I want them to do because I don't have the power, I don't have the title over them. So what what I have made up my life mission to do is to try to help people cultivate influence uh no matter where they are in the organization. And if you can, I'm really convinced that if you can learn how to do that, it will set you up. It you you will be able to it it will help you find freedom, but it will also create so many opportunities for you that you would never even see coming because you're not limited by an organizational structure. You really have so so many more opportunities to be able to make a difference in the lives of people around you. So that's yeah, that's what I do. Big, big, small technology, banking, all kinds of industries.

SPEAKER_00 6:11

You said, I think this is the first time you've said it in our conversation, but you found out it was about influence, not authority. Teeze that out, talk a little bit about that, what that difference is between influence and authority and how that impacts leadership.

SPEAKER_01 6:26

Yeah, I like to use this little illustration. I think you'll relate to this, but your kids are your girls are too old for this now. But you remember when they were younger and you'd go to the grocery store and they would want to sit in those carts that are shaped like cars, you know? And I'm sure you, like me, would try to be the fun dad. And so, you know, you you you play along and the kids turn in the little wheel of the cart. And so you'll turn the cart and they'll be like, oh my goodness, it's working, you know. But then eventually you have to get the shopping done. And so you'll start heading over to the produce, they'll see the candy aisle, they'll start frantically turning the wheel to the left, but the cart will keep going straight. And there was this day for me where my, you know, one of our toddlers looked up at me with this look like you lied to me. You told me the wheel worked, but it doesn't. I was having one of those days at work that day where I was feeling constrained. I was feeling stuck in the middle, I was feeling like I had more bosses than I knew what to do with. I had hopes, dreams, thoughts, beliefs, ideas, opinions about the way things should go, but I couldn't get things to move the way I wanted them to move. And I was blaming the steering wheel. I was saying, I was looking at my boss going, you lied to me. You told me that this wheel worked. And I've just become more and more a big believer that the wheel, if we're to if we're waiting on the wheel to work through power, title, influence, or authority, we're just gonna continue to wait. Or you're gonna hope you're get your boss's job, right? That was some of the biggest letdown for me is I experienced a few promotions where I went from, you know, an associate director to the associate to the director to the director to the manager.

SPEAKER_00 7:55

Because you started as an intern. So you had you had a way, you had a there was a I had a ways to go.

SPEAKER_01 8:00

Right. And every time I got, you know, I when I when I was in them, you know, in the with in the uh inferior, quote unquote inferior seat, I would or the subordinate seat, I would look at the boss's job and go, oh, if I could get there, then I could do what I want to do. And the the big the biggest letdowns were in those moments where I got the job and still couldn't. And that's when I just really began to look in the mirror and go, listen, there are surely this is a me problem. There are people who have changed the world that didn't have the title to do it. And if that's true for them, could it be true for me? Is it possible that there's something that actually moves the steering wheel that's not authority? And uh, it's a very simple concept to bump into the concept of influence, but it is such a powerful concept.

SPEAKER_00 8:45

Then you came up with, if I'm correct, four things that lead to influence that gives us a framework for all right, we know someone could change the world, but how could I change the world? And you came up with four. The first one, leading yourself, right? It starts with leading yourself. How does someone do that well regardless of where they are on the leadership ladder?

SPEAKER_01 9:08

Well, let me just say too, that these are the ones that I came up with, but I would encourage anybody listening, come up with your own. Figure out for yourself, ask that simple question. I mean, this is what this is where this is really what led me to this is going, okay, I want to figure out how to lead, even though I'm not in charge. I know I've got to cultivate more influence to do that. If I cultivate more influence, I'll have more opportunities to lead, and I'll have more opportunities to move people to do what they might not want to do to accomplish what they want, what I know they want to accomplish. So what do I need to do to cultivate influence? And you might, you might come up, I'm certain you will, you'll come up with a different list for yourself. But yeah, these four are the ones that I I knew for me, this is what I got to do. And the and the first one was I gotta lead myself. I gotta start with leading myself. I I've got to most people, and and you, and I would have given this excuse as well. Well, why can't you, why can't you lead more than you currently are leading? And I would have gone, oh, well, because my boss this, or because the central organization this, or because that department this. And the truth is, if you're gonna blame someone else, a blame is the best way we smuggle our own problems into the future. The truth is, if I could take all that energy and frustration and negative emotion and redirect it to actually leading myself better, it it leads to influence. It cultivates influence, right? That if you show people that you are willing to do what it takes to lead the very, you know, the most what you're most primarily responsible for, which is yourself, it it becomes evidence. I like the quote Um, nothing so conclusively proves your ability to lead others as what you do on a day-to-day basis to lead yourself. That if you want to show that you have what it takes to lead others, the best training ground, the best laboratory is to show that you know how to lead yourself because that's where it all starts. So for me, it was yeah, looking in the mirror, going, all right, I gotta get this person, I gotta start with this little organization.

SPEAKER_00 11:00

I bet there are real estate agents listening who hear this, completely agree with it, but the reality of their situation is one, they deal with rejection a lot. I mean, this is a it's a high no business. And two, a lot of times a lot of people are working by themselves, they're individual agents, and so they're a bit of an island. So, you know, they've got to lead themselves, they've got to have the motivation, the self-discipline, the schedule to do it without someone imposing that or holding them accountable to it. So, what advice would you give to someone in that situation to lead themselves well as they keep having the rejection? They don't have someone else pulling them along to so that they can do that well.

SPEAKER_01 11:41

I will, I'm gonna give them advice that you gave me about five years ago. I I quit my job in 2021 and decided to give speaking a go, just trying to become a corporate speaker, which uh has been a wild ride and a fun ride and a very fulfilling ride. And uh it was probably I was probably a year in and I was trying to deal with the I was dealing probably not well. I was trying to figure out how do I deal with the negative emotions of not getting booked. And what I would find is I would I would have a day where I would get booked and I would feel like, oh my gosh, everything's great. And then I would have, you know, a week, a month would go by where I'd have no bookings and I would be like, oh my gosh, I've got to quit. This is the worst. I've got to. And you told me, you said, you said, hey, this is what real estate agents face all the time. And what we really challenged them with is, what do you control? Right? What let's think process and not think outcome. Let's try to tie your emotional fulfillment to did I do the things that I know I could do? It's a little bit like, you know, when we're in strategic planning, we have lead measurements and lag measurements, lead goals and lag goals. The speaking, the booked speaking engagement is a lag goal. The listing selling is a lag goal. But the did you make the 10 calls today? Did you reach out to 10 places you spoke before? Did you create a new white paper on a topic that you could send out to 20 people that you know that might benefit from that? Did you do those things? And if I am trying to, after you know, you told me that probably four years ago. I'm still most people graduate from college in four years. I did not. Did you did you graduate in four years? No, neither do you. All right, that's another thing we have in common. I'm I'm still trying to learn that because it's it's a constant battle, right? Everything in us wants to live or die, wants to become emotionally connected to the outcome. And it's just it's not a great way to live. A better way to lead yourself is to go, I'm gonna tie my emotions to the thing that I can control most. Did I do the things that I can do?

SPEAKER_00 13:40

Well, that actually goes perfectly with the second thing that you came up for yourself to choose positivity, reject passivity.

SPEAKER_01 13:49

Correct. That's the reject passivity is the fourth one. But yes, choosing possibility, choosing positivity is the second one. Yes. I mean, which thinking critically is the first one.

SPEAKER_00 13:56

It's easier to do those things each day if you're choosing to be positive about it.

SPEAKER_01 14:02

Correct. But I specifically chose the word choosing because it is a choice, right? I mean, you you have to decide. I am going to believe that it is possible. There is something so powerful about a person that believes that's forward thinking, anything's possible, can do, and and and hope filled. When when I a friend of mine, when I sent that, I I had written the chapter on choosing positivity, and I emailed it to him and said, Hey, would you just give me your feedback? And he responded, I'll never forget, he responded and he said, It feels bubblegum. And I hated that term. I and and he was using it negative. He was saying it's it's too soft, it's too uh childlike, it's not it doesn't have enough guts, it doesn't have enough weight to it. And he was right because you know, you hear choosing positivity, and you're like, is that I don't know, it sounds it sounds like an infomercial, or it sounds like somebody's selling you something. But at the same time, you the thing that I've learned is traveling, when you travel the world and you see people in parts of the world that are uh they've got it worse than we've got it, or they've got it worse than you've got it, but yet they're choosing an attitude that's better than the one that we sometimes choose. You see, oh, it really is possible. I think about, I mean, it it's it's so common in the sports world when you see teams that are up against the wall or that things are not going well for them, and somebody in that locker room goes, it is not over. We might be down, but we're not out. Even though it might be, you know, the world might be against us, there's still hope. Those people are the ones that cultivate influence. And so we know it's true, we know it's possible. The question is, can you convince yourself that you can do it? Can you convince yourself I can wake up today and my attitude can actually affect more than just my mood, it can actually affect outcomes, it can affect the way things actually go. And I you know better than I would, but I real real estate agents have to do the same thing.

SPEAKER_00 16:00

Oh man, so true. Here's I don't know if I've ever told you this story. I definitely have not told this story on this podcast, or maybe even publicly, but I was not like just my this is a point on choosing positivity. I was not naturally positive, like I'm more like critical or maybe uh you know, kind of skeptical of things. And early on in my marriage, I was complaining a lot, and Ameris was like, I want you to lay on the floor, wallow in your self-pity, and you have five minutes to complain. And at the end of five minutes, you gotta stop. There's no more complaining.

SPEAKER_01 16:32

And I literally oh, she was like, Enough's enough.

SPEAKER_00 16:35

All these things that were negative. Five minutes is a long time to lay on the floor and complain. But it was really the trans the beginning of a transformation for me on a lot of what you're saying here, where I was like, This is not helpful, the being negative and thinking the worst and that sort of stuff, it's not helpful for me. Other people don't like it, people don't like to be around it. It's definitely not giving me influence with people. And I was like, I am gonna choose to be positive because you can look at the same situation that's saying the situation doesn't change, but you could be positive or negative about it, and I'm gonna go to choose positive. And I think a lot of people now, like you asked people on my team, is Justin positive? I think a lot of people would say one of the most positive people that I need.

SPEAKER_01 17:15

I would say that you're one of the most positive people I know. But that was Detroit.

SPEAKER_00 17:19

It came through choosing, you know, not through just not like born naturally with it.

SPEAKER_01 17:24

Here's a random example, Justin. But I've I was talking to a cousin of mine who he was trying to change his mindset in the same regard. And he lives in a town, he lives in a town where it's just hard to break in socially. It's one of those towns where you kind of got to be from there to make it there, you know? And he's not from there. And I asked him, I was like, does that ever get in your way? And he was like, Well, why would I think that way? I'm like, because I've just always heard that about this town. And he was like, Yeah, but that doesn't help me at all to go into every relationship and go, oh, they probably don't want to be friends with me because I'm not from here. He was like, I just decided I'm not gonna believe that. I'm not gonna let that into my mind. And so I just go into the relationship, assuming, yeah, why would they not? And if they somehow are closed off, and I'll just go, oh, well, there must be something going on in their mind, they're in their life or something in their world. It's and I thought, wow, that is it, right? It's not believing that, not taking the negative bait of, oh, well, this is a place. I mean, if you've walked around every day going, oh, this is the kind of place where you have to be from here to get in, you know, get in the social group.

SPEAKER_00 18:22

Well, I think you'll never make that right. Real estate agents, I I know that we do that to ourselves, of where we'll say, Oh, why would they work with me? They probably won't want to review, they probably know somebody else. They probably used an agent when they bought their house last time. And those things are not helpful and a lot of times not true either. Um, and that definitely doesn't help you have influence to come into the relationship like that.

SPEAKER_01 18:45

Now, I do say to people, because at this point, oftentimes the people that are analytical, critically minded, they go, This sounds a little bit like toxic positivity, right? Which is dangerous in a corporate workspace where people are demanding that you be, don't bring me anything negative, right? What do you do with the what do you how do you make sure that you don't become a rainbow puking unicorn, right? How do you make sure that you're not just, oh, well, I mean, everything's great all the time? Because it's not just positivity alone. And this is why this third big behavior, think learn, learning to think critically is so important. And and when you couple it with positivity, when you couple the ability to see what needs to change and pay attention to what could be different and how to change it to uh get the outcome that we're looking for, that skill set coupled with the posture of positivity. To me, that's a dynamic duo. Those two fit together. They they don't, you wouldn't naturally think they go together, but when they do, you create you you can really form a powerful synergistic leader.

SPEAKER_00 19:46

Talk a little bit about the difference between thinking critically and being critical.

unknown 19:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:52

Yeah, they're they're definitely related, right? I mean, they're like it's like to me, being critical is like that family member that shows up to Thanksgiving that you're like, oh gosh, here we go again, right? I mean, turkey's a little dry. That's right. Okay, thanks, Uncle Roy. You know, it's like we don't you nobody wants it, but it's so easy to slide into that. And and I I love having that conversation with emerging leaders to say, hey, so what's the real difference? And I'm almost always they'll say, uh, well, people that are thinking critically are trying to find solutions. People that are being critical are just trying to find problems, right? Which, of course, that is true. People that are thinking critically are really trying to form something, whereas people that are being critical are trying to deconstruct something, they're just trying to tear something down. Uh, there's a power trip that happens in a meeting that we got to pay attention to. When you throw out something critical, it it sometimes shuts the meeting down or slows the meeting down. When you identify, when you have the ability to identify an issue, it's sometimes it can feel addictive because you go, ooh, that felt good. I threw that out there. And everybody's like, wow, that's a good point. Yeah, we should probably should go another way, right? And issue identification alone, though, is not does not make a leader. But learning how to identify an issue and then move towards something that's helpful, that's what really creates a great leader. So to me, thinking critically, it is, it's it, it's certainly about finding solutions. It's about constructing something, building something. But this is a squishy one. It's it's really about, it's about caring for another person. It's about wanting the best for another person. Whenever somebody has brought me, I mean, I've got plenty of examples in my own life where someone has been overly critical and I did not accept it very well, versus someone who brought me some thinking that changed everything for me. And I was able to internalize it and accept it and actually change something. And usually the main difference is how that person felt about me or how I thought they felt about me. That when someone really cared about me, and oftentimes I was able to receive that critical thinking as something that was helpful and not something that was. Uh a turnoff. And so I do think there's something, uh, there's something inside of it that is about how we feel about people, how we feel about the situation. Do we really care? Do we really want what's best? Do we want, do we wish goodwill upon another human?

SPEAKER_00 22:16

It that reminds me of my longtime partner, Ashton earns to sell, I mean, more houses than almost anybody. And you might think she's like driven by sales or numbers or whatever, but she's driven to serve people. She really wants to serve a client. And I was talking with one of her assistants after she'd bit this person been working with Ashton for a while. And I was like, What surprised you the most about Ashton? And she was like, She said, the way that she solves problems for the client, it just shocked me like how much she is focused on solving things that I don't think hardly any other agents would solve. And that it's a combo of experience and that sort of thing, like allows her to get the solution. But the focus is to that point on serving the client and solving their problem. And you do have to be critical to do that. You get to be very critical to do that. But I thought just as you were talking about that, I was like, oh, that's a good example that I think real estate agents can take with them. Is that doesn't mean just like, oh, I'm not going to say anything to the client that they might not want to hear or they might not like, just gonna let it go, but then it doesn't work and we didn't solve the problem and they didn't sell the house or they didn't get what they wanted or they left money on the table. Like, yeah, let's solve the problem because it serves the client. Let's solve the client. I love that.

SPEAKER_01 23:31

I have a friend who has a property management business, and I was asking her the other day, how how did you build such a big business so quickly? And she said it was really one. I had one owner that trusted me. And little did I know that that owner was going to buy about 10 more pieces of property, and now I manage all the property for this one owner. And I said, I said, Well, well, how did that happen? How did you build that trust so quickly? And she said, I know this is crazy, but it was one instance. I was like, What was it? She said, She said, I'm managing her property. She had a tenant at the, she had somebody renting her place who had an important meeting, and there was a construction crew in the building doing some work on the place next door. And she said, the the tenant was very frustrated about it. And she said, Hey, have them call me, give it, give them my cell phone number, tell them to call me. So the person renting the place calls her and she said, Hey, would you do me a huge favor? Would you walk next door, put somebody on that crew on the phone? She goes, Cool, I'll do it. She walks over there, gives it to her. She tells the person, the foreman of the crew, you know, it's probably like four people, and she said, I will give every single one of you $50 right now if you will stop for the day. And they did.

SPEAKER_00 24:40

That's a story.

SPEAKER_01 24:41

I loved it because I was like, What made you think of that? And she was like, Everybody loves money. And I just knew if I offered them money, they would stop. And sure enough, they did. And she said, That person, when the owner found out that was the way I solved it, she said, I mean, I got her for life. I mean, she's my client for life, and now she's got 10 more properties, then I've been able to build this business. So it it, but it's that it's the ability to go, that took some creativity, but it also took care. I mean, it took like this matters. Like when you have an important meeting and there's like hammering next door, that's that is super annoying. And the empathy, the compassion to be able to care, and then the grit to be able to go, hey, we're not gonna stop till we figure this out. That that's it's powerful. I love it.

SPEAKER_00 25:24

All right, take us home with number four.

unknown 25:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:27

So the the first three leading yourself, choosing positivity, thinking critically, those are things you got to do if you want to cultivate influence. But this last one is something you've got to avoid because the most common thing that happens when you're not in charge is you feel out of control, right? And and this is one of the places where I think a realtor, uh realtors maybe feel differently than most people in middle management because realtors do have a sense of control. You can schedule the open house, at least in my mind, you can schedule it when you want to schedule it. You can hopefully you can find the right time to meet with the client and take them to go see houses. There's just more control that you might have if you have 150 bosses and you're stuck in the middle of an organization. However, if you want to cultivate influence, no matter where you are in the organization, you cannot get passive because passive people just do not create, they don't cultivate influence. It's people that recognize not rarely does anything good happen in life when I just back into it. Usually the things in life that happen that work out are the ones that you intentionally pursued, uh, not the ones that you just passively bump into. And so learning how to learning how to reject the passivity that wants to get in me when I'm not in charge is an such a crucial attribute, such a crucial behavior to cultivating influence. But speak on behalf of agents. How do agents become passive?

SPEAKER_00 26:50

Well, I think with real estate agents, very few agents are passive with their clients. I mean, there's it's interesting because like a lot of times I think people think real estate agents are like, oh, salesperson, whatever. But most people that I know they got, most people that I've worked with, they want to serve people and help the clients, and that's why they're doing it. They love to help the client. So very rarely do I see agents being passive with the client, but I can definitely see agents being passive with building new business, with growing their book of business, with building influence in their network or in a new network. And that comes back to haunt you further down the line because you end up not having clients to work with or serve or not as many of them as you want. And so when you do have great clients that you're working with, the challenge can be, oh, I'm going to be passive on my new business generation and building those relationships and following up with people and all that sort of stuff. And that's a definite challenge because it doesn't change the influence with your current clients, but it changes the total amount of influence that's the leadership you have in your database or sphere of influence or network or you know, community. And so I really, you know, if here have agents listening to this, that I would challenge them, don't get passive on that. That's a piece of influence you want to have as well. You want to have influence in your relationships, in your community, so that you're the trusted real estate advisor because that's gonna give you the opportunity to do all the other stuff as well.

SPEAKER_01 28:14

It's great. It's it's it's really make it a decision that your few that your tomorrow self is gonna be really grateful for, right? Yes, which is not always easy to do because sometimes my today self gets real lazy.

SPEAKER_00 28:26

I had a friend who was on that kick for a while. He was like, Hey, I'm trying to do things that future Dan is gonna be happy with. Yeah, I'm that's good. I think that's really awesome.

SPEAKER_01 28:38

Well, the the I I give people three questions usually to say, hey, ask these three questions. These are questions that if you'll answer them, it'll help you reject passivity. One of them is what is what is creating anxiety with your boss? What's keeping your boss up at night? Which might be might be worth asking that question of yourself. Like, where in your business do you have the most anxiety? And then would you be willing to apply some energy there? And then secondly, what's your team's most frequently frequently discussed problems? I was always baffled when I would be on a team and you know, this particular thing would happen, and maybe it was seasonal, and oh, here it comes again. It happened again, and then we'd have the team meeting, and everybody'd go, well, that was an issue again. Anybody know what we should do about it? And then we would just leave the meeting and we would not even solve it. We'd be like, Well, let's just hope that it never happens again. No, we all know hope is a terrible business model, right? It's a terrible plan for the future. But instead, next time that comes up, maybe go, hey, I've actually put some thought into this, I've brought a couple solutions. It's an area where you can reject passivity. And then the third one is the magic wand question. It's the if you could just wave a magic wand and this were just different, what is that? And usually that raises an issue or raises an opportunity for you to be able to work on something or put some intentionality into practice. I was talking to the University of Texas medical school faculty a couple of years ago about this. And I was talking about the magic wand question. And this guy came up to me afterwards and he goes, Oh, I hated that magic wand question. I was like, Tell me why you hated it. And he was like, Well, because it just makes me so frustrated with our administration. I was like, What do you mean? He said, They're so passive. And I was like, Oh, what? Sounds like you're being critical of them, but go ahead, tell me why they're passive. And he said, I've told them for years that we need a mentor program. Uh, we I've been doing this 30 years, nobody taught me how to do this. Somebody's gonna start working here. They don't know how to avoid the pitfalls and the you know problems that I've stepped into. Why don't we have a mentor? And they just won't do it. And it took me uh a little while, you know. I I was it's one of those conversations that I was kind of stewing on, maybe on the flight back, going, Man, why was that guy so frustrated by that? And what could he have done about it? And whenever I ask a crowd, hey, what could he have done about it? There is one fairly easy option that he could have gone and done. He could have gone and just mentored someone, right? I mean, he didn't need a mentor program to go mentor someone, right? So I that's one of those where if you would be willing to answer the question, what's the magic wand? What's the thing that you just wish were different? It might just create an opportunity for you to go, oh, that's something that I can really put some effort toward.

SPEAKER_00 31:13

I love that question. I actually ask that question a lot when I meet with real estate agents for the first time to try to figure out you know what their biggest challenge is. Because it does, it frames the it makes you stop and think. And then a lot of times once you verbalize that, like you said, you can kind of break down through that is is this a problem I could do something about? Or sometimes I'm asking, can I help this person with this problem? You know, is it something that I could help them with?

SPEAKER_01 31:40

Yeah, that's right. Man, I I remember the first time I went to Facebook, the first time I went to Facebook's headquarters in wherever it is in Silicon Valley. And I remember checking in at the desk or like tight security, whatever, but there was this sheet, there was this poster behind the wall of the person sitting there that said, nothing at Facebook is someone else's problem. And that that it's that concept, right? It's going, if it's an issue, it's a it's an issue for all of us. And if it's a problem for somebody, then it's a problem for all of us. And so just because it's not in my department, just because it's not under my jurisdiction, doesn't mean that I can't care about it, and doesn't mean that I can't maybe even bring some thinking or bring some solution to it. So it's I I think having that mindset, it creates influence. It allows you to have more influence in any organization.

SPEAKER_00 32:27

All right, Clay, to kind of kind of pull it all together here, for the real estate agent listening who wants to have more influence, but obviously doesn't have authority over their clients, what advice would you give them to take some practical next steps?

SPEAKER_01 32:39

Uh let me throw out a quick story to set it up. But when I was uh I was 21, I needed I needed to find an easy A at Georgia Tech. That was not that was not easy to do. But I found this intern, there was an intern program at the state capitol. I was also somewhat interested in the political world. And I I got this job with the working in the governor's office. If you if you just showed up, you got six hours of an A. It was unbelievable. So my desk sat right outside of the conference room where they made all their big decisions about budget, transportation, education, things like that. And I remember this one particular day, I I if I had appropriate the appropriate amount of copies or the appropriate amount of coffee, I could go into the room. But if not, I had to sit outside. But I could eavesdrop. And this one particular day, I mean, they're arguing, yelling back and forth, and and someone bang the table and goes, I am the governor of the state of Georgia, you will listen to me. And I I call this the weapon of authority. Basically, he couldn't get them to do what he wanted them to do. And so he waves the weapon of authority and says, I'm in charge, listen to me. Now, every anybody listening to this knows if I were to ask you, well, does that work? You would say, Well, it yes and no, right? I mean, it does work in the short term, but it doesn't work in the long term. It it no one wants to work for someone like that. And I just say all that to say uh if you're no matter how long you've been an agent, my guess is you're going to have more responsibility down the road. You're gonna have more clients, you're gonna be it a your brokerage is gonna be bigger than it is now. Chances are down the road, you might even have more authority than you have now. The question of how you're gonna leverage your role then has everything to do with how you're leveraging your role now. But if my, you know, unfortunately, with this particular governor, when I I didn't have the words to put around this then, but now that I look back on it, I think he had moments where he could have learned how to cultivate influence when he wasn't in charge and he must have missed it. He he thought, oh, I just need to get in the seat, and then once I get in the seat, then I'll have all the power and I can lead like that. But that's just not what people want, and it's really not what's best. And so the trick of the whole thing is if you can learn how to lead well when you're not in charge, you'll be that much better of a leader when you are in charge. And you won't be tempted to wave the weapon of authority and go, hey, I'm in charge, listen to me, do what I tell you to do, because it just doesn't really work anyway. But the only way that you can do that well is if you learn how to cultivate influence well now. So I just say all that to say the role you're in now is so important because you're learning a skill that you will leverage your entire career, and that's learning how to cultivate influence when you don't have all the power that you think you need.

SPEAKER_00 35:24

Man, I love that wisdom. Thanks for sharing that, Clay. I mean, that is so helpful. That is so helpful. How for anybody listening in, if they're like, hey, I might want to have Clay come speak at my company, I might want to buy and read this book. How can people do that and connect with you?

SPEAKER_01 35:38

Well, you could just email me at clay.scroggins at gmail.com. That would be the easiest thing. You could text me at 678-462-8805. That's my cell phone. When I was a pastor, Justin, I don't know why you you're always real careful about giving your phone away. You just didn't want somebody calling you on Saturday going like, hey, I got this situation. I don't know. That's terrible, but it's true. But now in the world that I'm in now, I'm like, I give myself, I don't get anybody can have my number. I don't care. And you know, no one texts me anyway. So or I I have a website, Clayscrogins.com. Um, I I I send out a newsletter once a week that hopefully is full of uh helpful leadership content. But in any of those options would be great. But yes, I'd love to connect on LinkedIn. Would love to stay connected. If anybody's listening, you want to get connected, or you just have a thought, a question, an opinion. I I really enjoy my favorite part of the work that I do is getting to connect with people. So um thank you for shining your light on me, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_00 36:30

Awesome, man. Thank you for being here today. I mean, it's that's so helpful. I know that we're going to have better agents leading themselves better, leading their clients better, having more influence, and that's gonna be good for us all around. So thanks.

SPEAKER_01 36:44

And it will help us find freedom.

SPEAKER_00 36:45

And it is, it's gonna help us find, it's gonna help us find that freedom back to the very beginning. We're bringing it full circle. So, all right. Well, thanks for listening today. Make sure to like and subscribe so you don't miss a single episode, and we will see you again next week.