All’s Well That Begins Well

Mark Cole:
Are you needing a break this summer but just not sure how you’re going to find the time? If that to do list feels never ending, you may be holding on to tasks you should be delegating. You wouldn’t pay somebody your hourly rate to do administrative tasks, right? When you’re tackling too many of these for your business, you’re overpaying. Belay gets it. Every dollar counts and a full time hire might not make sense right now. That’s why Belay offers fractional support that provides full time quality help for a part time price. I love this because your time is too valuable to waste on managing your inbox or scheduling meetings. A US based Belay Executive assistant can take it all off of your hands. To learn more about the power of delegation, download Belay’s free delegation worksheet and guide.

Mark Cole:
Inside this guide you’ll find three simple exercises to discover what you can delegate today so you can enjoy summer tomorrow. Just text the word Maxwell to 55123 for your free copy today. That’s MAXWEL-L to 55123 to have your best summer ever with Belay. Welcome to the Maxwell Leadership Podcast. This is the podcast that adds value to leaders who who multiply value to others. I’m Mark Cole and today John Maxwell will be giving us a lesson on how you can help your team begin well and get on the right track. In fact, we say this all’s well that begins well. John will make a statement today that I believe will grip you and grab you while he’s teaching.

Mark Cole:
He says this all players have a place where they add the most value. Don’t you want to be a teammate that you add the most value in a place that is right for you? Hey leader, don’t you want to get people in the right place where they can add the most value to the team around them? John’s going to teach us how to do that. And when John’s done, I’ll be back and I will give us some practical advice on how you can apply what we’ve learned in both your life and your leadership. If you would like to download the free bonus resource for this episode or even watch this episode on YouTube, go to MaxwellPodcast.com/BeginsWell. Here is John Maxwell.

Mark Cole:
What your job to do with your team as a leader is is to get them on the right track because the quicker you can position them correctly, the better the takeoff is going to be and more successful the journey is going to become. So what leaders do is leaders say I have to position the team well on the front end, you’ve got to give 100% to it. In other words, total effort on beginning with your team. And there are five things. Five essentials to start a project. Well, okay, Five essentials to start a project. Well, let me give them to you. Number one is vision.

Mark Cole:
We got vision. We understand what that is, but it’s so essential. And when you communicate the vision to your people, because that’s one of the first things you do when you start well, your vision, that’s what I call the head of the project. It’s the head. It’s how I see things. Okay? That’s the vision. That’s the head part. Then there’s the mission.

Mark Cole:
That’s the heart part. And the mission is what I feel. It’s my passion. It could be even as strong as. That’s my calling. But when I’m talking about my mission, I’m talking about my heart, which gives gravitas to the vision. Okay? And then the third area are values, which is the soul of the project. And so when you’re casting vision, you not only want people to see it, which is the head, you want them to feel it, which is the heart.

Mark Cole:
And you want them to align your values with the vision so you can have a good values match. Okay, so that’s where we start to start. Well, you got to put out that vision. And I just gave you how to have a vision that carries weight and maturity to it. Now, after you share that vision. This is still in the vision part. Before I get to the second component, you have to put the people in the vision. And one of the big mistakes I think a lot of leaders do is they show the team where they’re going, but they really haven’t shown the team how the people on that team are going to help them get there.

Mark Cole:
All players have a place where they add the most value, and that’s just so key. All players have a place. In other words, if you were my team, what I need to do when I cast the vision is I need to put all of you now in the vision. And how do I do that? I call you out individually, and I begin to talk to you, and I begin to say, okay, John, let me tell you where your place is on the team. Let me tell you what you bring to the table that’s going to help us get to that vision. Amanda, let me tell you what your place is on the team. Let me tell you how I’m going to help you get to get to where we Want to go with the vision, you got to put people in the vision. If you don’t put people in the vision, it lacks ownership and it lacks gravitas.

Mark Cole:
The second thing you do is to begin well is give direction. And what direction does is it focuses people’s attention to the target. In other words, what really needs to be accomplished. This keeps people from losing focus and kind of becoming distracted. So you cast vision, you put the people in it, you give direction. The third part component of starting well is creativity. And what I want you to know about creativity is this imagination and creativity is more important than knowledge. When people want to start something, they want information.

Mark Cole:
And information, by the way, is important. But what I want more than information for them is I want them to have imagination and creation. Because at the beginning of the project, you could take that project and. And you can be so much more creative than after it gets going after a while. Number four, we’re talking about all’s well that begins well. Number four is empowerment. Okay? People love the word empowerment because it means, oh, I got released to go out and make it happen. With release comes responsibility.

Mark Cole:
So never empower people without them being accountable. One notable distinction between wrong people and right people on the team is the way they see themselves. Wrong people have jobs and right people have responsibilities. Every person in the key seat should be able to respond to the question, what do you do? Not with a job title, but with a statement of personal responsibility. I love that, and that is very true. Why am I at the table? Why are we starting this project and what am I responsible for? Your potential and what you can become is going to be determined on two things. You accept responsibility and you become accountable for your actions. And this is the big miss in empowerment.

Mark Cole:
We give them all the positives in their life. And we don’t say, let me explain something to you. If you don’t accept responsibility and you’re not accountable for your actions, you never can reach your potential. That’s a choice. We complement too much the gifts of our people and not enough their choices. It’s their choices that help them reach their potential. That’s huge. Okay? Number five is resources.

Mark Cole:
Now you provide resources for them, tools that will help them be successful. So as you look at the project, what tools now do I need to put in their hands that will allow them to be successful? 14,000 people they surveyed on why they didn’t reach their goals, why didn’t they reach their goals? And this is very interesting. 16%, lack of focus. That’s vision. 36% lack of action, that’s direction. 10% fear. That’s creativity. 19%.

Mark Cole:
Lack of confidence and belief. That’s empowerment. 10%. Lack of tools, that’s resources. When you look at that, almost everybody fails to end well because they didn’t begin well because they lacked vision, direction, creativity, empowerment, and resources. I have given you five things that if you’ll sit down with your team and make sure that those five ingredients are in the beginning, you’re going to start off really good.

Mark Cole:
Welcome back, everyone. I’m reminded of a quote Mark Twain said. He said the secret of getting ahead, getting started. The secret of winning is getting started. The secret of success. The secret of being fulfilled, Mark Twain says, is getting started. When John finished up his teaching today, I hope you noted this, but he said, have these five things in the beginning and when you do have them, you will get started on, off. Well, what John’s really saying, he taught us about vision.

Mark Cole:
He taught us about give direction. He taught about creativity, empowerment, resources. How many of us have started with one or less of those on a new project? Any leaders out there, they just found an idea and they didn’t think about vision, they didn’t think about direction, creativity. They just got started and then wondered why before they ever got good and started, they were missing 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 of these things that John gave us. I really want to challenge us leaders that how we begin more than we realize is directly connected with how we end. And what John has given us today is a secret recipe, if you will, a checklist with intentionality on how to begin well so you can end well. I want to take in my time with you today. I want to take three points, we call them around here standout points of what John shared today.

Mark Cole:
The first point that John made that I want to share with you is he said your job with your team as a leader is to get them on the right track. That’s what we’ve got to do. So how do we get them on the right track? And I’m going to give you five questions that you need to ask your teammate. When you’ve given them direction, when you set them on the course, when you have challenged them with responsibility. These are the five questions you need to ask and why you need to ask them. So we’ve got a new idea, we’ve got a new direction. We’ve set the course for the next year, for the next six months, for the next two weeks. What is our responsibility? To make sure that we’re beginning well so that we end well.

Mark Cole:
The question that I ask often is the number one question that I think every leader should ask after they’ve given direction. And here’s the question, are you ready? Grab your pen. I promise you this will make you a more effective leader. Question number one, what did you just hear? Ask your teammate. After you give direction, after you give what you think is clarity, why don’t you check yourself and see if it was one real clarity. Why don’t you ask them this question, what did you just hear? As the direction we’re going, as the project we’re tackling, as the responsibility we are accepting. See, this first question of what did you hear? Speaks to the clarity and the level of clarity you just gave. The second question I always ask my team and I feel it’s my responsibility as a leader to my team to make sure that we’re on the track.

Mark Cole:
The second question is, what will you do? So what did you hear? That’s clarity. What will you do is ownership. I never leave a meeting without looking at the people around the table at the meeting and asking the question, what will you do after sitting through the last 30 minutes, the last 60 minutes, the last 90 minutes, what, what are you taking out of here? It’s an ownership question. And if people walk out of a meeting with nothing to do, you had a bad meeting, you’re not on the right track. If you walk out of a meeting leader and you’re the only one with responsibilities and everybody else just had a great 30 minute break, a 60 minute break, you’re going to have a great meeting, you’re not on the right track. Every meeting needs to be finished, completed. Every project needs to begin with ownership. What’s clear, what did you hear? What will you do? That’s ownership.

Mark Cole:
The third question that I ask is why will you finish? What’s the purpose behind this project? The why, the context? It’s Simon Sinek that says you must begin with the why. I believe every project, I believe every initiative needs to begin with a clearly articulated why we are doing this, why this project, why this product is important. If your team cannot answer the why, why, we are going to get to the finish line. Oftentimes they will never get to the finish line because they didn’t start with a why. They didn’t start with this sense of purpose. While the first question, what did you hear? Is about clarity, While the second question, what will you do? Is about ownership. Why will we finish? Is about purpose. And too many times leaders give direction with no purpose.

Mark Cole:
Leaders start a project with no purpose. Leaders set a course and not link it to purpose and wonder why the team fizzles out halfway through every project. Your job as a leader is to give a why to that project, a why to that initiative. The fourth question I want you to ask of your team to make sure you get started on the right track is what is next? What is next? What is next speaks to responsibility. It speaks to what is the next step. Oftentimes we walk out of a meeting, don’t we? And we don’t know what is next. And we scratch our head and say, why didn’t anything happen from that meeting? And it’s because we didn’t give a very next practical step. A good friend of mine, Andy Stanley, incredible communicator, great podcaster, by the way.

Mark Cole:
Andy says that oftentimes leaders get so caught up in the end game that they don’t start with the next step. They don’t clarify the next step. I think Andy is absolutely correct in knowing that every leader’s responsibility is to at least communicate the next step, even if they can’t communicate the next lap are the finish line. That’s because responsibility and ownership and clarity brings results. The fifth question I would challenge you as a leader to make sure your team is on the right track is to ask this question, when will you be done? When will you be done? Is all about accountability. It’s about giving a sense of accountability to win. It is is important to complete. When we set a project in place and don’t give a completion date, an expectation of when results will be delivered, we delay impact and delay productivity in our team.

Mark Cole:
So what did you hear? What will you do? Why will you finish? What is next? When will you be done? If you will answer those questions, you will have a team that starts on the right track. The second standout statement that John made is all players have a place where they add value. All players have a place where they can add the most value. I teased you in our opening segment of this podcast and I went, hey, imagine if you were at a place to where you were adding maximum value, the sense of fulfillment, the sense of accomplishment, the sense of productivity. That would happen. Now imagine an entire team. I love when John Maxwell quotes John Wooden that looked at one of his players that says, coach, you know I’m the best player on the team. And then Coach Wooden looked at this player and said, yeah, you’re the best player on the team, but the team is not best when you’re on the team.

Mark Cole:
Imagine a team to where everyone is in a place where they add the greatest value. It’s Jim Collins saying, the right person on the right bus in the right seat at the right time, it’s that perfect scenario when it is magic. It’s just working. So how do we get people at a place where they add the greatest value? I think it comes back to giving them purpose to their place on the team. I think it comes with helping them see their picture in the flag. How many of you remember. In fact, if you’re watching on YouTube, do me a favor during this segment and just put a comment out that says, yeah, I remember. How many of you remember Charles Schulz and the Peanuts cartoon? Now I’m dating myself.

Mark Cole:
All of you people, there used to be this thing called a newspaper. And in the newspaper, there was this comic section. And in this comic section, for 50 years, from 1950 to the year 2000, we had peanuts. We had the cartoon with Snoopy and Charlie Brown. Good old Charlie Brown. And I remember one of the comic strips that totally impacted me. I was working for an organization. I didn’t feel a part of the organization.

Mark Cole:
I was struggling with the organization. The organization felt all about the leader, not about the team, not about the agenda. Does it kind of sound like politics right now? Does it kind of sound like some of the churches or some of the companies on Wall street right now? It’s all about the leader and what the leader can win. Well, I was in this kind of a setting, and I read this article. I read this comic strip. You can tell I was bored. I was reading a comic strip. And Charles totally spoke to me in this deal because it was.

Mark Cole:
Charlie Brown was casting a vision. He said, we’re going to rally everybody and we’re to fight for the cause. And we’ve got a banner, we’ve got a flag that’s going to motivate everybody to do good things. And so Woodstock, the little bird was sitting there, and he wrote these little exclamation points, which you only kind of could guess what Woodstock was saying. But Woodstock basically was saying, okay, well, let us see the flag. What’s going to motivate us? What’s going to inspire us? And Charlie Brown said, here it is. Here’s the flag that’s going to motivate us. And it was a picture of Charlie Brown.

Mark Cole:
Charlie Brown, the leader, was showing them a banner of his picture, and he said, this is going to motivate us. And then all these exclamation points. Woodstock and his buddies are just not happy. And you could see their hair standing on Edge. And they went off for two little squares in the comic and they came back and they had a bunch of exclamation points. And Charlie Brown says, so you have what’s going to motivate us? And Woodstock unfurled the flag. And you know what was on the flag? It was Woodstock’s picture. Woodstock said, your flag doesn’t motivate me.

Mark Cole:
My flag with my image motivates me. And yet most of us leaders try to motivate people and get them to a place where they add the most value by trying to get them excited about the leaders agenda rather than the people’s agenda. What John is teaching us here today is to get people in a place where they add the most value. You’ve got to help them see their picture in the flag. So how do we do that? Number one, I think we tell them where they add the most value. In other words, we celebrate them. John said it like this. Tell them, celebrate them on the choices they make, not the gifts they have.

Mark Cole:
So when I celebrate people, I tell them where they add the greatest amount of value. I watch people just kind of step up to the challenge because they truly and authentically feel seen on my team. Isn’t it true the greatest human need is to feel seen by another human being? The greatest relational need of every human being is to be seen by somebody on the team. They need to feel like they truly matter, like they truly bring something. So I tell them, but I don’t just tell them, you add great value. I tell them specifically where they add the great value. The second thing that I do to make sure that people are finding a place where they feel like they’re adding value is I tell the team where they add value. I get up.

Mark Cole:
I mean, today when I get done with this recording, I’ll look at Jake Decker, our podcast producer, and I’ll say, jake, you just made it possible for us to communicate and add value to hundreds of thousands of people because of this podcast. You know why I do that? Well, because Jake’s very good. Jake’s really the reason that you’re hearing me today, because if it was left up to me, I might have a lesson, I might have something to pull from John. But if I didn’t have somebody that understood the technology behind it, the editorial process that’s needed and the ability to get it posted on a platform and it would be a non productive time that I spent this 30 minutes. But because of somebody that has a gifting, a knack, an ability to take a piece of content package it so that it can be heard by many. You will receive value from this podcast today. I want you to know today that I’ll tell Jake when the camera’s off that he added value and how he added value. But I’m going to tell you today, right now, sitting in this studio, if I was the only one in the studio, we would not be connecting.

Mark Cole:
I need Jake. I need what he brings to the table. I need his ability to get me started and to tell me when to stop, which is often what he has to do in here, because I just love to talk. Here’s my point. People on your team don’t need you just telling them that they add value. They need to know specifically how they add value. But you know what else? They need others on the team to hear how they specifically add value. The third thing that I want to challenge you to do to help people see their picture in the flag is to ask them how they feel they are adding value.

Mark Cole:
I love slowing down with people and go, hey, what do you think you did today to add value to others and just slow down and let them talk to me about the pride in their work. I tell the story often. I’ve told it on this podcast of a trash collector named Hyward in Beaufort, Georgia. Howard motivated me and inspired me for weeks before I stopped him and asked him why he did what he did. Now when I stopped and I said, howard, you got to tell me why you do trash collecting with flair. You got to tell me why you are so excited every day. Well, at least he was excited every day, because every Tuesday was the day I got behind him and ultimately ended up late dropping Macy off for school because he was with flair and he was throwing trash cans and he was making it look so good. And when I sat down with Howard one day and I said, I gotta take you to dinner because I gotta find out why you do this with so much excellence.

Mark Cole:
And he said, I found that I could take a trash can, put it on back of a truck, dump it in the truck, take it back. People’s mad, people struggling, people’s late because I can’t get it right. And somebody brought three bags of trash rather than the two. And I found out that if I would act with enthusiasm, it would lift the spirit of the people that I was inconveniencing. And I went, wow, Howard’s onto something. And I want you to be on to something. The only way you’re going to be onto something in showing your players how they have a place where they add Value is to slow down and ask them their perception of the their contribution to adding value on your team. Ask the question, how are you adding value? I love this story of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

Mark Cole:
Henry Kissinger was the Secretary of State for Richard Nixon. He was the speech writer. And when he would work with the speech writers for Richard Nixon or his own, he would always ask them this question, is this your best work? Have you done your best? When you delivered me this manuscript, what Henry Kissinger was really doing is he was asking them, hey, how do you add value? Have you added value? The third standout statement that John gave us is never empower people without them being accountable. Never empower people without giving them a chance to give account for what they have done. I’ve often found that we as leaders, we hold people accountable. I’ve also saw people leaders that don’t hold themselves or their teams accountable. But then I’ve watched leaders that master accountability by letting people sense and seize accountability. When John’s talking about all’s well that begins well.

Mark Cole:
When you delegate a responsibility and call it empowerment, you’re not setting it up for success on the front end. Too many leaders delegate and call it empowerment when your team knows the difference. And for me, the difference is when somebody gives me a task that they don’t care about, they don’t want, and they don’t really have an expectation of how it turns out. They’re just delegating. They’re delegating something that’s not important to them. But I’ve watched people like John Maxwell empower me with something that he really believes he can do 100% and I can do about 80%. But he trusts me with it. But he believes that it will be a learning opportunity for me.

Mark Cole:
And he also believes that if I will stick with it, I’ll be able to do it better. Better than he ever could do it. That’s what I feel and what I want to communicate. When empowerment is given, John doesn’t just give me the task and then forget about it. He comes back two days later, five days later, and says, hey, how are you doing on that? Is there anything I can do to serve you as you own this responsibility? Leaders practice empowerment and get away from delegation. If you start with delegation, giving something you don’t really care about or don’t want to do, the results is your responsibility, not the person you delegated to. But if you want to end well in what you are giving, the task that you’re giving the project that you’re starting Empower. Come back and check on it.

Mark Cole:
Let them know that they are going to grow because of this thing that you’ve given them to do because of this project they’re working on. Give them a path toward progress and they will be productive. Let me say that again. Give your team a path toward progress and they’ll give you productivity. So how do we empower? By giving accountability. This standout statement that John is saying, hey, never empower people without them being accountable. Here’s how we do it. Number one, we assess their ability to take accountability.

Mark Cole:
Take an assessment of their accountability quotient. Let me tell you how I do that. Number one. I ask the question, do they take advice or do they give advice better? Do they take advice better or do they give advice? I’ve watched leaders, I’ve watched leaders come into our organization and they are much better at giving advice than they are at taking advice. And I’ve watched that play out in their ability to be accountable. Number two, ask the question, do they take responsibility or give excuses better? Are they better at saying, man, I see an area where I could have done that better? Are they going, hey, I couldn’t do that better because that happened. And when somebody that you are wanting to empower is better at giving excuses than accountability, you’re going to have a problem with accountability. A third question I ask is, is the person you’re empowering, are they better at bringing people with them or pushing people away from them? Are they a good team player? Let me tell you this.

Mark Cole:
I have found in my organization, and I’m sure you found it too, teamwork really does make the dream work. If my organization is dependent on one individual on the team being successful, rather than a group of people on the team making the teammate successful, we’re not tackling something big enough. Our world, John Maxwell’s world, gang, has always been about challenges that are bigger than the individuals taking on the challenge. Therefore, when I’m empowering somebody, I ask the question, do they have a tendency to bring people with them or do they have a tendency to push people away? Their ability to take on accountability to empowerment is absolutely directly connected with their ability to congregate, aggregate, collect people to a common objective, a common cause. The fourth question I ask myself to really determine the accountability quotient of a teammate I’m going to empower is this right here. Do they have high emotional bandwidth or do they have low emotional capacity? People that come to the table with low emotional capacity can never be accountable to empowerment. They will excuse it. They’ll fizzle out on it, they’ll come up short and they’ll blame you for it.

Mark Cole:
So as we begin to empower, as we begin to challenge our team to begin well so that we end well, my challenge to you is to go back to the great cartoonist Charles Schulz. When Woodstock says, hey, you’re going to show me your picture or you’re going to show me my picture, are you going to make me a part of the process and include me in and take me with you, or are you going to challenge me to go where you’re going and kind of shrug your shoulder whether I want to go or not? As I’ve watched John Maxwell through the years, 25 of them to be exact, one of the things that I have learned is you don’t just become a world class leader, you work to become a world class leader. We did a podcast recently, in fact, I want to put this in the show notes because I think you’ll love it. We did a podcast called Become a World Class Class Leader and it is an excellent, excellent podcast about how you can take an opportunity and you can begin well so that you will finish well like we’ve talked about today. So put that in there. There’s another podcast that we did called the Art of Leading Complicated People with Ryan Leake, by the way, this was not too long ago and I’m just going to tell you, you want to go back and listen. It’s one of my favorite podcasts I’ve done in some time with Ryan Le, and it’s called the Art of Leading Complicated People, by the way, including yourself. And I want to put that in the show notes too, because my good friend Quesi gave me a great quote on this.

Mark Cole:
This is our podcast listener said, such an incredible episode. One of the best lines. This is what Ryan said. I want to give you the other side of you, but I also want to make room for your side of the story. That’s what our goal is here. That’s why we talked about today. All’s well that begins well. A team empower is a team that will stand up to the test of time and deliver results day after day, week after week, year after year.

Mark Cole:
And that’s what we want because everyone deserves to be led well.