Maxwell Leadership Podcast: Great Leaders Are Great Teachers (Part 1)

Mark Cole:

Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Maxwell Leadership Podcast. This is the podcast that adds value to leaders that will multiply value to others. My name is Mark Cole, and today I’m excited for two big reasons. First, you, our listeners, are here with us. It’s such a joy. It’s our privilege really to spend time with you each and every week as we learn to add value to other people. Secondly, Chris Goede is in the studio with me today. And because of all the amazing things that are happening in our corporate solutions group, I’ll tell you more about that later in this episode, but Chris has been a busy guy, so he hasn’t been able to co-host in a while. And so, it’s good to have him back. In fact, I was looking back on my calendar and the last time that Chris was with me was on September the 21st. So welcome back, Chris. We’ll hear more from him later.

This week we’re talking about how great leaders are great teachers. John Maxwell is going to offer some tips on how leaders can improve their ability to teach and to be guides to those they lead. So if you’d like to download our bonus resource for this episode, please go to maxwellpodcast.com/teacher, and click on the Bonus Resource button. This is a free PDF worksheet that accompanies John’s lesson. Also, check us out on YouTube and leave a comment. Let us know how we’re doing or leave us a question. We may even share your comment or your question on an upcoming podcast. Okay, that’s it for now. Here is John Maxwell.

John Maxwell:

People that are effective in influencing others have the ability to communicate effectively and have the ability to teach effectively. George Bernard Shaw said, “He who can does, and he who cannot teaches.” I’ve used that many times, and I have come to the conclusion that you can be a good teacher and perhaps not a good leader. But if you’re a good leader, you will always be a good teacher. Good leaders have the ability to communicate and teach. And in your notes as we get into this lesson now, a person may be able to teach yet not lead, but a person that leads successfully also teaches successfully.

How else do you persuade everyone in an organization, whether that means 50 employees or 50,000, to move in the same direction? How do you refocus the staff around a scale-down strategy to survive an economic slump? How do you ensure that people at every level understand the priorities of the moment? How do you develop the leaders of tomorrow? Simple, you teach. The only way that it’s ever going to happen is having the ability to teach.

As I’ve watched leaders communicate, what I have found is that they really know how to teach effectively. Here are some tips that’ll help you to communicate to your people more effectively. Number one, it’s not about you, it’s about them. When you’re going to communicate, always understand that you’re not the star. It’s not about you. It’s about the people that you’re trying to communicate to. Notice the paragraph, some teachers see themselves as the designated expert whose role is to impact their knowledge to students who are empty vessels. “That’s the wrong metaphor,” says William Rando, who had been training college level teachers for about 15 years. The best instructors see themselves as guides. They share what they know, but they understand that they are not the focus, their students are.

Now, in my early years of leadership I did not understand this. In fact, a lot of things in my early years that I didn’t understand. I had in my early years a position of a leader, but that doesn’t mean you’re a leader. You do understand that, don’t you? Just because you had the position doesn’t mean you’re leader. That’s why I always teach leadership is influence, it’s not position, it’s not title. My favorite leadership proverb is he that thinketh then leadeth. And have to know one following him is only taking a walk. We all know people like that, isn’t that true? And so, I took a lot of walks early. I mean, take a lot of walks. I was the leader, just nobody understood that or nobody followed me in that whole process.

But in my earlier years, I thought that communicating as a leader was about me. I didn’t understand this principle. And so, I tried to come off as Mr. Answer Man. I tried to come off as a person that knew things that probably the people didn’t know. I did not realize that great communication is not top down, it’s colleague to colleague, it’s always sideways. When we begin to really communicate effectively with people, we have to always understand, we may be the leader, but it’s not about us. It’s about the person that we’re trying to communicate.

In your notes, leaders that are self-absorbed have difficulty focusing on others. Again, as a young leader, my turnaround was one day it hit me that although I was communicating and although I was sending memos and although I was “functioning as a leader”, one day it hit me that I wasn’t connecting with my people. I realized all of a sudden, there was not a connection there. That’s when I realized that information and communication is not the same thing.

Just because you had a meeting doesn’t mean that you really had a meeting. In fact, when somebody says, “Well, I met with them,” I always ask them, I say, “Well, did you meet with them or did you meet with them?” In other words, did you connect? Did you in your time together really make the connection, or did you just pass on information? In your notes, Kouzes and Posner, in the book Leadership Challenge, it’s a great book if you haven’t read it, say that leaders inspire a shared vision. And the vision changes from what? Me to we. In fact, Kouzes and Posner in this great book basically say you haven’t cast vision until the vision goes from me to we. In other words, it comes from whoever the communicator is, whoever the teacher is, whoever the leader is to the whole organization.

When I wrote my book, The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, one of the laws is the law of connection, it’s in your notes, and the law of connection says leaders touch a heart before they ask for a hand. It’s just a very simple law, but it’s a very effective law. Basically it says that if you’re going to teach effectively, if you’re going to communicate effectively, you cannot be self-absorbed, you’re not the star, and you’ve got to be able to understand that. By the way, this is something that is sensed by the person that you’re communicating to always. So, tip number one in teaching effectively and communicating: it’s not about you, it’s about them.

Tip number two: study your students. In fact, stay right with me now in the notes for a couple moments. Great teachers know their material and their students. To know your material and not your students means that you have something to give but no one to receive. I see it happen all the time. You have information to pass out, but nobody’s home. To not know your material but to know your students means you have nothing to give but someone to receive.

Now, you don’t want either one of those. You certainly don’t want to have something to give but nobody’s home or nobody’s ready to receive it, and you certainly don’t want to come and have people that you connect with but you have nothing to give. I have found that to be absolutely huge in understanding communication. The question’s very simple, how do you help a person reach their destination? How do you help a person grow? How do you help a person develop? Well, the answer is threefold. First of all, if they’re going to try to reach a destination, first thing you have to do is you have to know where they are. You have to know where they are right now. In other words, they’re somewhere on the journey, and I don’t know where they are, but you got to know where they are right now, and then you need to know where you want them to go. Obviously, as a leader, what do leaders do? Leaders lead, so you have to have a plan for their life. So you have to know where they are now, but you have to know where you want them to go. And thirdly, you have to help them know how to get there.

But none of these things can happen unless you know the student and you study their life. What I’m really saying to you is that the good leaders and the good teachers spend as much time knowing the student as they do sharing the agenda. Until the student, the agenda is not going to be effective. The reason why is because people are different, and so you lead people differently based upon their journey and where they are and what’s happening in their life. And so, one of the things leaders understand is you never treat everybody the same. Everybody has wonderful value, but you don’t treat everybody the same because people are differently motivated, differently nurtured, differently led. The only way that you and I can be effective as leaders is to know where people are.

Let me just say one more statement about that because we’ve talked about it’s not about you, it’s about them, we’ve talked about know your students. Let me just say one more thing. I think that needs to be probably processed here. When we think of leadership, too often, many times, we think of leaders up on a pedestal or a mountain, and basically they’re saying to the rest of the people, “Come on up. Come on up. Come on up.” That is not a picture of a true leader. A true leader does not ask his or her people to join them. A true leader goes and finds the people and joins them. True leaders, true leaders, they come off of the mountain and they find their people. It is always a leader’s responsibility to connect with the people they lead. It’s not the responsibility of the people they lead to connect with the leader. Always understand that.

Mark Cole:

Hey, before we jump into today’s content, let’s talk about time. I want you to think of tasks that steal your time, the things that keep you busy but they’re just not necessarily the best use of your time or the most productive for you. Maybe it’s your inbox. Maybe it’s the management of your inbox, the thought of your inbox, the management of your inbox. Maybe it’s managing your calendar or processing payroll.

Now, what if I told you that delegating those tasks, saying no to those tasks could help you reclaim an average of 15 hours every week so that you can say yes to the things you love, the things you’re gifted at, the things you need to be doing? Does this sound too good to be true? It’s not. All it takes is focusing on your strengths and delegating your weaknesses. That’s where our friends at BELAY can help. Our friends at BELAY have been helping busy people do just that with their US-based virtual assistant accounting, social media, and website staffing solutions for over a decade.

To help you get started, BELAY is offering our podcast listeners a free download of their resource, 9 Reasons to Rethink Your Approach to Staffing. That’s because reconsidering how you hire could quite literally prove to be the cost of your sanity and what defines your bottom line. To claim this exclusive offer, just text MAXWELL to 55123. That’s M-A-X-W-E-L-L to 55123. Get out of the administrative weeds and back to casting vision for your next big thing in partnership with BELAY.

Hey, welcome back, Chris. I’m so glad, as I said earlier, to be in the studio with you. I love this quote just to start us out today, I really don’t even know who to attribute it to, but it says, “The best teachers show you where to look without telling you what to see.”

Chris Goede:

That’s awesome.

Mark Cole:

Isn’t that true?

Chris Goede:

Yeah.

Mark Cole:

I mean, think about for you, think about somebody that was a teacher or a facilitator in our life. It was what they showed us as much as what they told us. I love this lesson from John, I love digging into it and getting ready to go with you.

Chris Goede:

First of all, thanks for having me back. I know in the intro you said it had been a little while. I hadn’t received an invite from Jake in some time, and so I wanted to talk to you about that.

Mark Cole:

You’re back on trial. You’re back on trial.

Chris Goede:

I’m back. Yeah, I’m back. I don’t know who didn’t show up today, but I’m here to help you out. What I love about that is a statement of teaching people is bringing the best out in them. In that quote right there, you’re driving curiosity in your people to get them to go look and to search versus telling them, and you’re facilitating that growth in them in order to bring the best out.

Mark Cole:

So quick story on that, again, it’s Ms. Richardson for my third grade teacher. She really served as a facilitator, but I remember her, and I don’t remember what she taught me, I think I learned my multiplication tables back then, maybe, I think it may have been third, fourth or fifth, but she taught me, I’m sure, how to read. But she taught me how to feel. She always told me, she says, “You remind me of my son. You remind me of somebody very dear to me.” What Ms. Richardson was really showing me was the best way to be a student in her class was to feel like a family member, and I learned so much that particular year. Again, think about the people in our life that has taught us or facilitated a lesson or a thought in our life, it all comes back to that point. They show us, they let us dig into it, and find it more than they teach us.

Chris Goede:

As leaders, one of the things we’re looking for is not only to drive our curiosity and engagement, but to drive the engagement of those that are under our leadership, under our influence, whatever that might look like in your world. And so, that’s such a big driving factor when you talk to leaders is, how do I get my team more engaged? What I love about where John is going with this is that we can be great leaders, but we need to be really, really, really great teachers in order to drive that engagement level.

And so, what I want to do is I want to just pick your brain for a minute, and I want you to share also a little bit about what you do in regards to the team. I was listening to John’s message and we were preparing ahead of time, the first thing that came to mind under number point number one where John talks about it’s not about you, it’s about them, is you meet with our leadership team, your direct reports, on a monthly basis. You meet with us more than that, but on a monthly basis to really just cast the vision for the organization and talk about what’s going on. But before we do any business, you spend 15, 20, depending if you’re on a roll, 30, 45 minutes, which is-

Mark Cole:

Keep going. Keep going.

Chris Goede:

But you spend time just teaching us. It’s not about what you’re learning or what you need to know, it’s about what you have learned over the last 30 days that you think would add value to us that would help us as we learn. And so, you spend time facilitating a conversation. It’s interactive at time. Sometimes you’re just teaching us. Talk about why you do that. As long as I’ve known you, you’ve been doing that. Talk about why you do it, where maybe you learned it from, and then how you go about that and how you decide what it is that you want to facilitate or teach us so that it adds value to us as your direct reports in the room.

Mark Cole:

Well, I think it comes back to a real appreciation for any nugget that I get. I teach a lesson, a discovery, an enlightenment as a gold nugget. Because I do believe that if you shine it off, if you put it in your pocket, if you put it into being, into your leadership and you begin to use it, that that consistency of use on that nugget is the thing that compounds influence in your life.

Chris Goede:

No doubt. That’s good.

Mark Cole:

Believe that with all of my heart. So it comes from a fundamental foundation that every podcast, and I’m looking right now to those of you that are tuning in to YouTube, every podcast, no matter how Southern, how don’t and doesn’t and my contradictions contradict one another, I’m going to tell you, in every podcast there is a nugget for you. It’s the belief, Chris, that every message on a Sunday morning or every moment with John or every chance I get with a mentor, a facilitator in my life, there is something that’s going to be deposited into me that with intentionality will give me great reward, great return. So number one, you start there. Every moment, every lesson, everything that you are given is worth something if you would begin to use it.

The second thing I would say, it really comes from hearing John teach about ACT all of our life. Everything should have an application, apply, A, everything should have something that you might can change or do something a little bit better, a little bit different in your life, and everything should be given to you so that you can train or teach others.

Chris Goede:

Love it.

Mark Cole:

When I have a lesson, I believe that the lesson is, number one, meant to be taught in some frame of reference. So I walk into every leadership meeting and I go, “What have I learned lately that I am responsible to give to my leadership team? What have I learned lately?” I’ve got some upcoming leadership meetings that’s coming up soon. I already know, I already know the thoughts that I’ve just picked up recently that are intended, yes, for my betterment, but are intended so that I can share with others and see them improve too. When you have those two fundamental philosophies in life, everything has something that is able to be mined, to be captured, to make better your life, and everything that you give is meant to be given to somebody else. And so, you’re right, I walk into every meeting-

Chris Goede:

Every meeting.

Mark Cole:

… and I am thinking, “What have I learned recently that should be transferred into this environment that I’m walking into?”

Chris Goede:

What you do with that is you process and you begin thinking about those nuggets, and then you transfer them into, what is it that they need? Where is the team now? How do I take what I’m learning and make it very practical and applicable to where the team is as a whole? And may be the entire team, or maybe certain team members you know, but you come in with that and you’re already thinking about it for our next meeting. It could be two weeks, three weeks, doesn’t matter, you’re already there and you’re beginning to do that. And here’s what that does for us as a receiver of that information, I read this statistic the other day that talked about when you teach, when you facilitate, when you develop your people, they are just organically going to be 17% more productive because you are doing that.

I think the beginning of those meetings, when you spend time doing that, that investment of time is showing up in a return on when we walk out of there we are more inspired, we’re more engaged, we want to enhance our productivity, we’re buying in. When John talks about this, I think this is just such a great point to make sure that we are teaching not just what we’re learning, but what we’re learning and how it applies to the leadership team.

Mark Cole:

Well, and I want to say one more thing. I absolutely give it just to enrich your life or to enrich the personalities, the people in each of the meetings. But on days that I am most effective with that I’m able to attach it to the rest of the meeting agenda so that we can have corporate application to it as well.

Chris Goede:

That’s good. That’s good.

Mark Cole:

So it is absolutely an intent. I’ve been enriched, I’m better, let me enrich and better others. But it also, on the days that I’m good, I’m better, I’m more successful is the days that I can give team or corporate application-

Chris Goede:

Sure.

Mark Cole:

… to that too. So in a lot of ways, I’m just a facilitator of that content to make it make sense for the individual, but then to make it productive for the team as a whole in the agenda-

Chris Goede:

Which benefits them.

Mark Cole:

That’s right.

Chris Goede:

Both of them-

Mark Cole:

That’s right.

Chris Goede:

… benefits them. And so, I am a receiver of that. And so, listeners, as you’re listening or if you’re watching us on YouTube, I want to encourage you to think about finding nuggets that you’re learning and then finding opportunities to teach or facilitate that content to those that you have the privilege of leading, of influencing. Because our favorite statement around here, everyone deserves to be led, this is the key to start with when it comes to leading to people.

John talks a lot about at level two influence in the five levels about connecting and building relationships with people. I think when you add value to people, when you teach them like you do to us, we immediately get connected to you. We get connected to you, we get connected to the people that are in the room. And so, the power of this lesson is so strong. Just this first point, and we got three more to go. But just this first point as a leader is something you need to be paying attention.

Mark Cole:

People listening to the podcast, don’t let anybody scare you. I didn’t say this in my opening notes, this is part one, so we won’t do three today.

Chris Goede:

Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, that’s right.

Mark Cole:

We’ll just do one. Some of you were looking at your clock saying, “My workout’s about over. What you got-

Chris Goede:

We just lost all of our listeners. We saw just a drastic drop at this mark. The next point I want to talk about is point two. You have sat with John, and I’ve been a privilege to learn from John and from you at this where it talks about studying your students. Talk about, as you’ve learned and been mentored from John as a leader, when you’re getting ready to go speak, when you’re getting ready to go teach, when you’re getting ready to go facilitate, what goes through your mind? How do you begin to understand and study the students so that what you’re delivering is very impactful to them and where they’re at?

Mark Cole:

I just talked about time, now give me a few minutes to build this out-

Chris Goede:

Okay.

Mark Cole:

… okay, Chris. I’m going to build it out on the personal level you just asked me, but I’m also going to build it out on my business model, and podcast listeners, I believe your business model. And so, first let me say on a personal level, I remember I was with John. John tells this story now publicly all around the world, I was with John when he was getting ready to speak to about 8,000 people. It was about 7,900 to be exact. A young kid came up to him, flashy, a really good guy that John and I actually were going to stay after, we had changed our plane, we changed our flight schedule, all of that stuff to stay and listen to this incredible up-and-coming, rising communicator.

He came up to John with full of zest and energy and he said, “John, can I just get in your head for a minute?” It was a little over the top emotions so I perked up. John said, “Sure, anything I can help with.” And he said, “What are you thinking about right now?” John was going on stage in two minutes, and John went, “I’m thinking about the people.” And he said, “The people?” He said, “You’re not thinking about your opening act, what you’re going to say, how you’re going to place your hands?” And John said, “No.” He said, “You’re not thinking about your content.” John said, “No.” John said, “I’m thinking about the people.” He said, “I’ve already thought about my content. In some cases I’ve been thinking about my content for 20, 30 years. I’m thinking about the people and where are they and what is their posture and how am I going to help them?” It struck me, and now John teaches that with great efficiency and great poignancy, when he goes, “When you walk on stage, you shouldn’t be thinking about content, you should be thinking about the people.”

Now, John illustrates that later on in this point. Please go back and listen if you got it, I’m not going to repeat John. But you should not be preparing your content right before you go on stage. That should have already been done.

Chris Goede:

That’s right.

Mark Cole:

You should be preparing your connectivity quotient. How and what is connection with this audience going to look like? Let me talk about our business plan. Several years ago, John… in fact it was 40 years ago, John was challenged by Les Parrott and said, “John, you need to write a book.” John, “I don’t want to write a book. I don’t want to be an author.” And he said, “You’ll be able to impact people with your written word that you never was able to if you don’t write a book.”

Well, that struck John’s fancy. John was not interested in writing books. And so, 40 years ago, John began writing a book so that he would be able to help people he would never meet. Well, 87 books later, 36 million pairs of hands have held a John Maxwell book, I think it was a good strategy. Just like that, Chris, we began realizing that if we really wanted to make an impact in companies, in teams, we were going to have to partner with people to make them empowered and effective to where they could impact people in places we would never go as a business strategy. And so, we started this initiative that really it’s all about facilitating. It’s empowering women and men in an environment where they like that environment, but they want to see that environment better and they want to see their influence in that environment grow. They want the environment better, they want their influence in that environment to grow, okay.

Already some of you are going, “Yeah, that’s me, that’s me. I need my environment better, and I want my influence to grow.” And so, John and I began… in fact, let me distance myself. John started before me realizing that there was a strategy that we should employ on how to empower people in a team, in a company that wanted to see the company, the people in the company better and wanted to see their influence increased. So we started programs to help facilitators, that’s what we call them. That’s an internal language, don’t let that scare you. We started a program that would allow people to be facilitators. We would train them, we would equip them, they would take that content and then they would better the people in that environment. Sounds a little bit like our opening line at the podcast, right? We add value to people… Let me say it differently. We add value to facilitators so that the facilitators will multiply value to others.

I just want to take a moment right here. This is off script so just give me a moment, Chris. I want to talk a little bit about this facilitation, because, number one, you work with facilitators in some of the best companies in the world, the most respected companies in their industry. You work with people in those companies that are facilitators. I want you to, one, go off script a little bit, although it’s right on script, and I want you to talk a little bit about the power of facilitation that you see in our corporate relationships, on corporate teams, in corporate environments.

Chris Goede:

Yeah, I totally agree with you. I get the privilege to ride shotgun with some of our excellent executive facilitators, but then also organizations that have facilitators that are on their learning and development teams. We just come alongside and help them. I think what’s so powerful about what John thought about a long time ago and then you’ve helped implement is, when you become a teacher, when you become a facilitator of content, it inspires trust within those people. We talked a little bit about how it connects you with people. But so many organizations right now are losing people out the back door, good team members, because it’s shifting a little bit about what’s important to them.

I was reading the other day, I think it was a Harvard Business Review article where just on US businesses, and I know we have an international audience, and that number’s unfortunately going to be bigger if we looked at it from international, but I was reading the other day and it talked about how there’s so much voluntarily leaving around not alignment and purpose, but more importantly not developing them, not teaching them, not facilitating content to them, that it’s costing US businesses over $650 billion annually.

That just breaks your heart, it breaks my heart, breaks John’s heart because we want to be able to add value to people, and if leaders would be able to do that, even from a facilitation standpoint, it would drastically change your organization, increase the productivity, it would enhance the culture inside the organization. We said, “Hey, we’ve got to figure this out.”

Mark Cole:

Sure.

Chris Goede:

And so, one of the things that we love doing is that we provide content through John’s principles, and we help create facilitation techniques and teaching techniques. Back to point number two, how do you learn about those that are going to be in your room, your students before they get in there? How do you go about that so that when you do teach them, you’re able to connect with them? And so, now we have the privilege of not only working with our facilitators and facilitators and organization, but with people that have a desire that are in organizations right now or their communities that want to facilitate content to improve the culture, improve their lives, to add value to them. We provide the content, we help them with facilitation and teaching techniques, what do you do before, what do you do during, what do you do after?

Mark Cole:

Awesome.

Chris Goede:

All of that.

Mark Cole:

Awesome. Let me put it out there in podcast land, because you think it’s been a long time since Chris Goede’s been here since the last time, it’s going to be a long time perhaps again, because my goal, the vision that I’ve put out in front of our team is I want 25,000 companies around the world to have a Maxwell facilitator in that company, somebody that knows how with tools, resources, with support, knows how to make the company better, make the people in the company better, and wants to grow their influence in that organization.

And so, here’s what I’d love to do, Chris, and we’ll put this in the show notes, I’ll mention it at the end of the show as well, go to maxwellpodcast.com/facilitator, maxwellpodcast.com/facilitator and you’ll be able to get a lot more information. Some of you are ready now, some of you want to gather the information, go back to your company, and see if they will sponsor you, be a part of this, if they’ll catch the vision. But we’re looking for champions.

Again, it goes back to this point that you’ve got to study your students. So many of us that are executives, Chris, you’re an executive, I’m an executive in a growing company, we lose touch with our people. And yet, facilitators seem to know where the people are and facilitate. That’s how John wraps the second point up, is you got to know where your people are rather than expecting your people to come to you. One of the ways to know your people is to get facilitators down into the lifeblood of the organization, which we’ll be closer to the pulse.

Chris Goede:

One of the things, as we wrap up today and you can hear our passion about this and adding value to people to be able to teach and facilitate others, when I think back about some of the greatest teachers that I’ve ever had, you mentioned your third grade teacher, they really facilitated our learning.

Mark Cole:

That’s right.

Chris Goede:

I think each one of you that are listening, maybe watching us today, you can think about if I ask you that question, “What teacher, what facilitator had the greatest impact on you?” there are probably multiple people that come to mind. Our desire is to help you get there for somebody someday to look at and go, “Hey man, Mark Cole, he was that teacher, he was that facilitator.”

As you wrap up, I know one of the things you do under point number two about studying your students is you spend time every week, which we sometimes challenge you on this as the CEO like, “Mark, every week?” But you really go and listen to our facilitators, to our people, and you hear from them, you learn what are the content pieces that we need to be developing in order to serve them well in the field and where they’re at and where they’re struggling. Talk a little bit about the power of that in regards to you as a leader inside our organization to be able to provide more information for them.

Mark Cole:

Well, it goes with this standout statement that I want to make sure that you get from this lesson, and it’s touch a heart before you ask for a hand. We’ve heard John say that. I’m no more than a facilitator every week. In this environment to where I reach out to our speakers, our trainers, our coaches, our facilitators, I’m no more than a facilitator at that point. Now, some people call me the CEO, some people call me the visionary, but in that environment, I’m just a facilitator. I’m just trying to understand. Here’s what happens as a facilitator, I love this reciprocal impact that happens. I come with a lesson, but by the time I’m done, not only from the lesson that I’ve studied where it’s helped me, but from the interaction I as the facilitator began to grow-

Chris Goede:

That’s right.

Mark Cole:

… and expand-

Chris Goede:

Love it.

Mark Cole:

… in that environment as well. John says that true leaders, he said this in the lesson today, true leaders go find the people, not expect the people to come find them. One of my greatest experiences was six years ago when I decided to become a facilitator in our own environment. Now, I’ve facilitated outside, I’ve worked with clients, I’ve done all that stuff, I grew up in the organization, remember, I’ve done it all. But that day that in my positional leadership, I was a positional leader at that time, I was a CEO, and six years ago I said, “You know what? I’m going to dedicate every Tuesday to facilitation. I’m going to be a facilitator every Tuesday.

Chris, three weeks into that commitment, three weeks in was the most liberating thing that I’ve ever had as a leader. See, I thought, this is such a lone ranger statement, I thought I was the only one that had passion for John’s legacy and our future because I’d been here for, at that point, 18 years. I’m fired up and I’m all in and I’ve had these spiritual experiences that I’ve shared on this podcast of I knew I was called to availability and proximity to John. I get on this call and I get into the lifeblood of the organization through facilitation, and I find out the greatest discovery. There were people throughout the entire organization that had just as much passion for our vision, our legacy, and our sustainability than I had.

Now, that was a hard pill for me to take at first because I wore my badge with pride. And then I realized, it was no badge, I was just a part of a huge community. I went to where the people were and where the people were was exactly where I wanted them to be, and I kept thinking I had to get them through inspiration and motivation and instruction. And yet, really all I needed to do is to get in proximity. Which is what facilitation does, you get into proximity and you find out where your people are. For me, I’ve done it recently. I shared in the last few weeks about some recent family rooms that I did. That was all an intent to go to where the people are.

If there’s one great takeaway from our lesson today that John’s teaching us, and we’ll be back next week for part two if I can get Chris to show up again, little jury’s out on that, but great leaders are great teachers. What John’s really saying is positional leaders are best when they come in and get connected at the same level with the people that they’re trying to lead.

Chris Goede:

That’s good.

Mark Cole:

I love that. Hey, I want to again remind you, touch a heart before you ask for a hand. I want to go back to, because I told you that I would, and I want to remind you, I want you to go to maxwellpodcast.com/facilitator if you want to be more impacting in your team, in your organization. We’re going to give you some tools, some resources. We’re going to invite you into a community, a tribe of facilitators. We’re going to give you some guides, some people that’ll help make you better. And then you’re going to go in turn and make people in the organization better.

Let me close today with a listener comment. I love closing like this. You guys do this for us. Whether it’s YouTube viewers or whether it’s podcast listeners, when you give us a quote or a question or a comment, it’s fuel for us around here.

Chris Goede:

Yes. Yes.

Mark Cole:

So please keep doing that. Wherever you listen to podcast, give us a five-star rating or tell us why you can’t give us a five-star rating. Let us work hard at earning your trust in your leadership journey. Today’s comment comes from Benedict. Benedict listened to the podcast episode, Transferring the Vision to the Heart and the Head. What a great one, Benedict, because we talked about touch a heart before you ask for a hand. And so, Benedict said, “Thank you so much for this powerful topic designed for leaders on how to transfer vision to their team emotionally and logically. I’m very grateful for this podcast and for its life-changing and valuable lessons.” Benedict, you are why we do what we do. To the rest of you, you’re why we do what we do too. We do it in hopes to empower you to bring powerful, positive change, because everyone deserves to be led well.