Cultivating Humility for Lasting Influence

Mark Cole:
Welcome to the Maxwell Leadership Podcast. We’re real committed today and really in every episode to add value to you for an exchange. That exchange is, is we want you to go multiply value to others. Today, I think we’ll be able to really dig into something that’s helpful for leaders, and that is how to cultivate humility. For lasting influence. I’ve watched a lot of leaders, Chris, and Chris Goede’s with me today. I’ve watched a lot of leaders that lead with a lot of certainty, a lot of confidence, all desirable traits, but there’s also these leaders that know how to employ and use humility. And so we’re going to talk about that.

Mark Cole:
I can’t wait for John to share with us about cultivating humility. I can’t wait to come back and break it down with you, but What is a leader that’s been in your life that really demonstrated humility, and what was it about that leader that was demonstrating humility so well?

Chris Goede:
Yeah, I love the question. I actually think about a leader that I know from a distance and I’ve watched. And it’s interesting that when you step back and you watch somebody when they don’t know you’re watching them and they still live out that humility, I think they got it. And this leader has access to any resource, doesn’t have to meet with people that have just joined the team, whatnot. But I watch them walk in the back of the offices and start connecting with, shaking hands, looking, pacing themselves through the people that have just joined the team that maybe are an hourly employee and really make it about them. Than about him. And so that’s the leader when you ask me that question that comes to mind and an action that he lives out that I can tell he’s bathed true in humility as a leader.

Mark Cole:
Yeah. When I thought about that question, I thought John exhibits a lot of humility. Can’t believe at the success he’s had or the people that’s been impacted by his life’s work. But probably the leader that has exhibited humility more for me than anyone else my dad. My dad was an elected official in his denomination. He had reached the apex of some things. Man, there was always this quietness and this humility that I would watch my dad in very tense situations. I would watch my dad just handle it with an incredible amount of humility.

Mark Cole:
And I’ll be honest with you, many of our podcast listeners, viewers may not know this, but my grandparents, my dad’s parents, could not speak or hear. So my dad never had the privilege that you and I have of having a conversation with his mom and dad. Never. And my dad never got really good with the dactylogy, which is language with your fingers or with your hands. So he relied on his sister most of the time for his interaction with his parents. A lot of it.

Chris Goede:
I don’t think I knew that.

Mark Cole:
And I always thought that my dad’s quietness, his slow to give a decision, was because of that. But the further I get away from his lifespan and the more that I want to model the leadership that my dad gave, the more I don’t think it was necessarily that, but it was a quiet humility that he picked up from his parents and not being able to hear everything going on in a room, not being able to respond like most of us could, but still having a presence, a force, and a leadership that made a difference in my dad’s life.

Chris Goede:
Right?

Mark Cole:
And so John’s going to talk today about cultivating humility, about having a lasting influence. And probably in this leader that you mentioned, and certainly in my dad, 88 years, and the people that came out to his memorial service were all about his humility was the impact. And so I want to have lasting impact like that. We all do. That’s why we’re listening to the podcast. I want to have it. And I believe John’s going to give us a key and you and I are going to get to break down that key afterwards. And that key to lasting impact is humility.

Mark Cole:
So here’s John. Enjoy. Grab some notes. By the way, if you want to download our bonus resource, if you would like to watch this on YouTube, if you would like to take advantage of some of the things we’ll talk about throughout our show today, you can go to MaxwellPodcast.com/Cultivate and you’ll be up to speed with all of the resources. All right, here we go. Here’s John Maxwell.

John Maxwell:
The most important ingredient in a leader’s life, the most important quality is humility. When you are a person of humility, when you’re marked, when you’re marked by anything, you become marked in a meaningful way. And I don’t want you to miss those two words, meaningful way. We’re all marked when difficulties hit us. When adversity comes, we’re all marked, we’re all changed, we’re all out of our comfort zone. So the question is not, are you gonna be marked? Are you gonna be marked in a meaningful way? Meaningful means useful. Are we gonna be marked in a useful, a good way? Meaningful way. If you have humility, you’ll get the best out of the markings.

John Maxwell:
It’ll be something that will be purposeful to you. It’ll be something that’ll be helpful to you. It is something that will grow you. If you have humility, you’ll be marked in a meaningful way. Humility, you’ll be marked, but it won’t be purposeful. It reminded me of the statement that when adversity comes to us, some people get better and some people get bitter. Same adversity, same issue, just a total different reaction. Humility gives us the opportunity to respond in a useful way.

John Maxwell:
What does that mean? I think of Jim Collins when he wrote the book “Good to Great.” Remember he talked about that level 5 executive? And he began to talk about greatness and we all know this, but he said greatness, says there’s a paradoxical blend about level 5 leaders and they have a personal humility in their life and then they have a professional will. And he was basically saying that all of the great leaders, they have a professional will to build a great company and be people of excellence and do the thing that they are purposefully trying to accomplish to help people. He said, they’re very professional in their will, but they’re very humble in their personal life. And he was saying, it’s the perfect blend. It’s what I call, I like this, the balance blend. It just keeps us on course. Humility allows us to be teachable. Humility allows us to have a spirit of wanting to learn, wanting to grow, willing to change.

John Maxwell:
I read a marriage therapist and what she wrote was very interesting. She said the most important quality when you look for a potential mate, she said the most important quality is to find somebody that has a desire to keep learning and growing Throughout the relationship. Well, when I saw that, I thought that’s not only good marriage counseling, that’s good business counseling, that’s good friendship counseling. I mean, you wanna have a relationship with someone that they’re continually learning, they’re continually growing, they’re expanding. We want people on our team to be talented, gotta have talent. And so when you think of talent, I mean, if you’re a track coach and you need a high jumper, you don’t need 7 people who can jump 1 foot, you need 1 person who can jump 7 feet. So talent, we gotta have it. Humility is comfortable with correction.

John Maxwell:
Humility is willing to reconsider. Humility seeks learning as much as it wants to lead. Humility values the pause to make adjustments and pivot. That’s a word we’ve heard a lot about. During the pause, I’m gonna live my values. During the pause, I’m going to learn and apply what I’m learning. During the pause, I’m gonna lead people with hope. Okay, during the pause, I’m a leader, I’m gonna look for opportunity because almost every crisis has major ridiculous opportunities within it.

John Maxwell:
And during the pause, I’m gonna take better care of myself. I not only say humility allows us to be teachable and that humility allows us to reflect and adjust during the pause, I just say to you, humility allows us to serve others. Now, I don’t have much more time left with you today, But I’m gonna read you one thing, just one quick thing. Alan Ross says, humility means knowing and using your strength for the benefit of others on behalf of a higher purpose. The humble leader is not weak but strong, is not preoccupied with self but with how best to use his or her strengths for the good of others. A humble leader does not think less of himself but chooses to consider the needs of others in fulfilling a worthy cause. I love to be in the presence of a humble leader because they bring out the very best in me. Their focus is on my purpose, my contribution, my ability to accomplish all that I’ve ever set out to accomplish.

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Mark Cole:
What a great lesson, Chris. I look at your leadership, to be honest with you, and you’ve got a quiet sense of humility that I really respect. So I’m really excited about breaking this on down with you today. C.S. Lewis said, “Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it’s thinking of yourself less.” I love that quote on humility. I think it’s 100% right. Most people think humility is not thinking very much of yourself, this introvert and quiet and self-defacing kind of leader. That’s not it at all.

Mark Cole:
There’s a strength to humility, and John certainly gives us that perspective.

Chris Goede:
Yeah. This quality, this characteristic that John’s talking about, it doesn’t make the flashy headlines. But what I loved about what you said in the opening, going back to that, is, but it has great longevity.

Mark Cole:
It does, man.

Chris Goede:
And if we’re thinking about growing our influence over time and we’re thinking about being able to compound that, that’s where that comes from. I think the leaders that you’ve seen do that, I think, have had that humility that allow them to kind of last through all things. We can all think about or imagine a leader that blew up in the media, blew up in the organization, maybe got— but that arrogance and that that defensiveness, that’s the quickest way for a leader to kind of fall apart and not have long-term influence. And that’s what we’re talking about. I think at the root of what John’s trying to get here is how do we have long-term influence and that longevity of it? And so I want to talk about this word and unpack it a little bit from a leadership perspective. And I want to just right out of the chute say to you, how has this this attribute shaped your leadership and all that you’re responsible for? And you watch over time, long time you’ve been with John and running these companies, increase your influence year after year after year. You know, it’s bathed in that. In your own words, this is not a very great question to pull out humility in yourself because I’m asking you to talk about yourself, but how has it shaped your leadership?

Mark Cole:
Well, so I go back to, I’ve really had two environments that gave me enough latitude to grow into the leader I wanted to become. It’s been two. It’s been working alongside my dad that I mentioned in our pre-comments today and working with John Maxwell, two of the greatest leaders in my life. I got to serve alongside them as the second man. I learned a lot from that first time about humility. One, my dad was humble. I wasn’t. Man, I had the ball in my hands.

Mark Cole:
I had the bull by the horns. I had the rein. I had the horses ready to go. And I was charging in my little world. I always say I was a big fish in a small pond. I was charging success and getting accomplishment that my dad never got. And he was an elected official for over 50 years of his life. Man, I was on a fast track, faster than him, raised more money.

Mark Cole:
I was on a track and I knew it. And I let that become my identity. I let my success become my determining factor. I allowed the opportunity that was given me because I was born on third base. I was born a Cole. And in our world, that was a big— that was a thing. And I allowed being born on third base dictate to me a level of confidence that my wife, when Stephanie and I got married, she went, man, I always thought you were confident. I just realized you were egocentric.

Mark Cole:
That’s good. You were cocky. You were not confident. And I exhibited confidence, but it wasn’t. I believe that when someone couples certainty/confidence with humility, there’s an approachability there. But when you do not couple egotism, which you can’t, with humility, that’s exactly what it comes across as narcissistic. It comes across as dictatorial. It becomes across as this untouchable thing that will crash and burn.

Mark Cole:
So back to your question, I really think I said this at the beginning. I think the further distance I’ve gotten from my dad’s lifespan, he’s been gone now for 8 years. I think the further I get from him, I realized that his longevity was because of his humility. I love this about John Maxwell. We will get calls from uber, uber successful people, and John gets off the phone and I’m in the car with him in some city in some rental car doing something, and he goes, “Can you believe that person just wanted to talk to me?” And I go, “Yeah, I can believe it. You’re the freaking,” excuse my language, “You’re the freaking leadership guru. Of course they want to talk to you.” He goes, I just cannot believe they’ve read my book. There is a humility, and John does not come across as necessarily humble about his passions and his accomplishment.

Mark Cole:
There is a quiet humility in John, in my dad, Chris, I will say in you, that gives you a surefire— John says this, the most important quality in a leader’s life is humility. That’s the first statement in your show notes if you downloaded them. The most— this is the leadership guru of the world giving us an insight right here. It’s all in humility.

Chris Goede:
Let me just stop you because he lives this out so much. So you and I yesterday were in a meeting and our team brought some ideas to you and how we want to honor him in certain meetings. You’re like, hold on a minute. If all 4 of us that are in this meeting want to be fired the next day, we’re not doing that.

Mark Cole:
Can’t be the John Maxwell Show.

Chris Goede:
And that’s what it was. And just that example just popped in my head going, Yeah, at the core, because you know him better than most, that the humility is there. And that would put him in a position that would feel so uncomfortable because it was about him. And no wonder why he says this is the most important part. And he lives that out.

Mark Cole:
He does. And I want to live it out. And you ask a very penetrating question to me of where did I learn the humility that— thank you for saying you recognize a little bit of humility. It came from a life of no humility for the first 10 years of my leadership in the other environment. Accomplished great things, accomplished some of the—

Chris Goede:
I wrote down, this is what I wrote down in that journey you were telling us about. You were going after success 100%. You were going after this and Mark Cole Show, and that’s what I wrote down. And now that shift has more, it’s moved into the influence and the long-term influence and the impact. With other people, not success.

Mark Cole:
But let’s talk about the word longevity, man. I crashed and burned in an epic New York minute Armageddon perspective and just hurt a lot of people, crumbled. And the longevity wasn’t there. The success trajectory was there. The accomplishment, more than even my father had accomplished in his lifespan at the same ages that I had accomplished, was not there. But guess what also wasn’t there with my dad? No crashing and burning. The longevity of his influence is remarkable. Same thing with John.

Mark Cole:
Boy, consistency compounds. Humility establishes longevity.

Chris Goede:
That’s great. I love that. I think, based on this, John mentioned a little bit, you talked just briefly about it a few minutes ago. I remember you coming to our team, our leadership team. I think it was probably as soon as last year., and you said, there’s two things that John and I are talking a lot about right now, and we think it’s one of the areas that leaders need to improve in. And this is at the root of this is humility. And you guys were talking about we need leaders to be coachable and responsible. And how does that play into that humility? Right? Because that’s almost an indicator.

Chris Goede:
If they’re not, that they lack humility in my mind, just processing with you and those that are our viewers that are listening. But you got to have those two things, as he talks about even in here, to be able to show humility is to be coachable, to step up and take responsibility and to understand by doing that you will increase your influence. That’s not the reason. That’s not the motive. But it’s not about success in that moment. It’s about that influence level. So just talk to me a little bit about why you and John so often were talking about those two words last year.

Mark Cole:
Yeah. So coachable really comes in when you’re marked. You become marked in a meaningful way. John talks about that. The idea of coachable means that I take a second chair perspective. I take a student perspective. I take a posture that somebody has something to teach me. So that one really— links very naturally to humility.

Mark Cole:
What doesn’t is responsibility. So if you’ll allow me, I’ll let John’s teaching talk a lot about being coachable being an attribute of humility, because you’re 100% right. Those two do tie to humility. The one on responsibility is harder because when I take too responsibility, we talk a lot around here about own it. Own it, Chris, it’s yours. CSG, by the way, if you don’t listen to Chris’s podcast, the Maxwell Leadership Executive Podcast, You got to listen to it. It will absolutely enlighten you on executive leadership, how to be an executive in an environment where the team’s looking to you for your leadership. The idea of responsibility means that I own it.

Mark Cole:
It means that it’s mine. If it’s meant to be, it’s up to me. If it’s going to happen, I’m going to make it happen. If nobody else does it, excuses don’t matter. There’s a swagger that comes with responsibility naturally. That when it works, it’s hard to be humble. It doesn’t fit naturally for people that are responsible to also couple responsibility with humility. It’s an astute question of yours to go, well, then how does that happen? I think at 100%, when it goes wrong, it’s me.

Mark Cole:
When it goes right, it’s y’all. That’s it. It’s got to be coupled with that because if you’re not careful, Responsibility brings self-credit and self— in good times. And then you get it. But here’s what I found. People that are not humble, when something goes wrong, it’s everybody else’s fault. And when it goes right, it’s mine. That’s right.

Mark Cole:
And so there is a direct connection to it. But you have to fight responsibility with no excuses, humility. It’s on me. I’m not going to give you 3 reasons why it’s on me. It’s just on me. And then when it works, It’s on y’all.

Chris Goede:
It’s all yours, podcast family. Listen, as a self-reflection question, how coachable are you? Yeah. How responsible are you? Because what Mark just unpacked for us, both from his leadership perspective and then even John mentioned it here, is an indicator of how you’re showing up with humility or not. And then if you’re brave enough, maybe ask somebody, on your team or somebody around you to be able to speak into that. Because I think that will lead to a great conversation about your humility. Because we all want lasting influence. That’s what we want. And sometimes abruptly we have to be shown that it’s not about success and we got to recalibrate.

Chris Goede:
Or sometimes it’s just gradually, but we need to have those people in our lives. One of the things I just mentioned about it being abruptly, adversity is one of the things that changed your trajectory when it came to this characteristic trait of a leader of humility. And so John talks about adversity here in here, and he talks about we can either be bitter or we can be better. Walk us through some adversity in your life as a leader to where you were headed down the bitter route. And you had to make a choice and you had to choose to become better through that. And how did you do that and where did you keep the focus and what was the North Star? Walk us through that for us.

Mark Cole:
I had a season in my life to where I really needed the support of those closest to me. I was lost. I couldn’t figure life out. I wish I could, with my words, articulate the despair the discouragement, the adversity, maybe depression. I don’t know. The adversity that I felt during that season. And I think about that often, Chris, in thinking about how I responded to it. I get phone calls often from people that has known me for many years.

Mark Cole:
Often, I would say once every couple of weeks now with the little bit of connection that I have with John, the little bit of connection with this podcast. And they’re going, man, how did you go through a season in your life to where you were all alone and you didn’t become bitter? And number one, it’s got to be good teaching from my parents. There’s got to be something because I look back and I go, wow, man, I’ve seen a lot of people get bitter with those circumstances coming. And I didn’t. I just did not feel that bitterness. I didn’t feel that tug of bitterness. So some of that John always talks about, he says, man, I won the parent lottery because of unconditional love and some of that. I think in the idea of becoming bitter, I watched my parents get mischaracterized, misspoken about.

Mark Cole:
They were in a public eye and I watched them not let that become bitter. And so one is I got the parent lottery. In not choosing the bitter route, but choosing the better. Yeah. I think the other thing though, Chris, is I did go for some time not wanting to feel favorable for some people in my life. I chose to just not think of them. I chose to not pray for them. I didn’t curse them, but I didn’t pray for their blessing either.

Mark Cole:
And I went through it. And John arrested me one day when he said, man, I had something in my heart towards somebody for years. And when I discovered it, every day for a year, I prayed that that person would get multiplied blessing. And he said, sure enough, about September, October, that person started getting super blessed. And here’s how I knew I had beat it. I got really excited for him. I felt it. No one ever knew that, Mark.

Mark Cole:
He started me— that was in 2013. 2014, I can remember this to this day, a daily prayer I had for somebody in my life that I had had something against. I didn’t have bitterness, but I certainly didn’t want it to be better. Prayed it, prayed it, prayed it, prayed it. And it was a difference maker for me. But let me tell you this right here, final point on this. I never allow myself to go unchecked in blind spots in my life. And here’s what I mean.

Mark Cole:
Stephanie, my wife, and I were on a trip recently, and we had some people that we were acquainted with on that trip. And a subject came up that demonstrated unbelievable emotion from these people that we kind of knew. We knew them, but we didn’t know them great. But when this opened up, it was visceral. It was tough. And it surprised us. Now, it didn’t surprise us because we were best of best of best of friends. We know the people, but we had a public idea of these people that was not right under the COVID something so visceral, something so angry.

Mark Cole:
And I can remember when we left that environment, my question to my wife was not, “Wow, can you believe that about this person?” Here was my first question, Chris. “Stephanie, is there any area in my life that when that is touched, an anger and a bitterness comes out to me like we just observed?” Interesting. Great question. It wasn’t condemnation to them. It was this. And you know what Stephanie said? She said, “Mark,” my wife is like your wife. Very critical when given the opportunity of me getting better? She says, I don’t know of one. She says, I can’t think of one.

Mark Cole:
And would you believe that while she was saying I can’t have one, it came to my attention that there was someone in my life that I didn’t have bitterness toward, but I certainly did not want them to have the best. In other words, here’s how I characterized it to Stephanie. I said, Stephanie, There is an environment in my life that I still can’t go back to that environment and say, I am better because of that environment. I don’t have a lesson from that environment. This is 3 or 4 or 5 years old. I went, I don’t have a lesson from that environment. And that concerns me because you can’t have gratitude until you find something to be grateful for in a situation. And I am literally emotionally dead to that.

Mark Cole:
I’m not bitter. Oh, happy day. I’m not better either. And that concerned me because if you can’t find a place to be better and have gratitude for being better, I think you’re open for bitterness. And so I’m working on it right now. As you ask that question, I have an environment, I have a situation in my life that I can’t look back and go, I’m grateful for that because I picked up that. And that concerns me.

Chris Goede:
So let’s unpack this for just a minute. The tie to the humility part of this, is not necessarily thinking less of yourself, right? But focusing that situation, that adversity, that learning, that— I love the question to your wife, right? Do I— does something trigger me and I get that bitter about it? Is— does the humility come in in a situation like that because you can put the other person, the other situation above where you’re at. How do you tie the humility part to that?

Mark Cole:
Love this question. Love this question because I’m learning it right now and there’s an area I can’t do it and it scares me. Here’s what it is. There has got to be a spirit of gratitude in you that no matter how difficult it was, no matter how wrong you felt, there’s something you picked up that you can be grateful for. And there is not— I can’t think of but one area in my life that I don’t have gratitude of having gone through that. One. Now there may be 100, but right now I’m experiencing one and it scares me because I believe the antidote to bitterness, now I told Stephanie this, is gratitude. And if I can find a reason to be grateful, no matter how you misused me, if I can find a spot, a reason, a speck, so you’re saying I have a chance.

Mark Cole:
If I can find a speck to be grateful for, I have an antidote for any bitterness that I’m unaware of.

Chris Goede:
This answers the very first question that I asked you. How has this character trait shaped your leadership? That’s it right there. The situations that we all go through and the adversity is looking for that gratefulness to be able then to lead to the humility of why we’re there. Open hands in all situations. That’s really good. I appreciate you just being vulnerable enough to share that with us. So I want to move us towards the back end. And as we kind of wrap up, I don’t want us to leave without talking about this pause that John reemphasized.

Chris Goede:
And both of you, both you and I are action-oriented. We’re like, we ain’t pausing for nothing. Like, what do you mean pause? And you made a couple of comments that I thought was really interesting. I want you to share with our viewers and our listeners about the pause and where humility plays in that and how we go about doing that. Because for those of us that want to have longevity in our influence and we want to make a difference, we want to go to that significant place that we talk about. How do you do that? How do you manage that?

Mark Cole:
Yeah. Welcome to the Intervention of Mark Cole Podcast. Glad you joined us today.

Chris Goede:
Mark, if you’re not watching, Mark is on a couch.

Mark Cole:
Yes, I’m on a couch.

Chris Goede:
And he’s going to write me a check after we’re done. Is what’s going to happen here in just a minute.

Mark Cole:
Goaty absolutely has me on full display for all of you right here. So I’m not good with pausing. You just said that. I would reiterate that you and I and other leaders, we just have this propensity to action. I think you’re much better at it than I am, by the way. I think that pausing demonstrates openness for others to have a better perspective. To have an openness. I know way too many leaders that if they would just practice the pause, they would cultivate the greatness in the people around them.

Mark Cole:
But because they don’t pause, then they don’t realize the greatness around them and they end up being a lid on the organization. That reality probably helps me more than anything. I don’t know if my pausing is as much humility as it is fear of missing something.

Chris Goede:
Yeah. But wouldn’t you say, though, that, okay, so yes, it’s a fear, but in those pauses, and I would say watching you from the outside, I would say the answer is yes. But I want you to unpack this for me, is that in those pauses, you become more teachable. You become open to reconsidering a perspective. You become open to maybe serving a certain individual versus just completely blowing past the pause and act or move or change or I can fix this. Right. But when you do the pause and you’re open to that, that shows humility in your leadership. And back to even what we were talking about when we were kicking off about the arrogance and the defensiveness, that’s the surefire way for a leader to blow up.

Chris Goede:
And not last long. It’s going to be a lot of failures. But in that pause, I think how you are in that pause, what you’re open to and what you’re receiving tells a lot about your humility.

Mark Cole:
It does. We talked a couple of episodes ago, you and I talked about not only the propensity to move, but the passion to have answers and to get things done. Going back to that, I think in the pause, there’s a sense of expectation, self-critique. That’s what we were talking a lot about was criticizing ourselves. There’s a bit of self-critique that I’ve got to have the answers and I’ve got to see more than before. And if I pause, I’m not exhibiting more than before behaviors. I’m not exhibiting that I know the answers. Therefore, I’m exhibiting weakness.

Mark Cole:
Right? Somebody that’s doing a pause with a humility, go back to what John said, during the pause X, during the pause X, go back and listen to that. A leader that is self-confident and is exhibiting humility is not hearing all that self-talk. They’re leaning in to really get the answer. Often when I’m pausing, I’m pausing for effect, not for information. I’m pausing to show humility rather than to be humble. And I’m just telling you, when John was saying that while ago, I went, oh shoot, I now have the Paul. It’s the same thing with good leaders ask great questions. John says, Mark, you got to slow down and ask more questions.

Mark Cole:
You got to ask more questions. And so I do it, but you know what? I do it most of the time for a checklist, not for information, not from learning. I do it because I’m supposed to, not doing it because I get to. And though that dynamic is a spirit of humility that I’m convicted with, if you can’t tell from this lesson. And so I’m sitting here going, Mark, if you want longevity, longevity in this thing called leadership, you better find and cultivate and aggregate humility.

Chris Goede:
So I’m going to let you wrap up in just a minute before I begin to lay on the couch and you counsel me. Convicting is what that last 5 minutes is from Mark Cole. And I hope a lot of you are doing the same thing and taking time to reflect on what he just said. And here’s where I want you to be reflecting. What is the motive behind what you’re doing? Good stuff. Because this is the key. If we’re talking about longevity for influence, one of the things that we hang our hat on here, and John has, he preaches this all the time, is there’s a fine line between influence and manipulation. And what Mark just so vulnerably shared with all of us is that he’s doing it maybe at times, and I think all of us would say, well, we probably do it as well, is to manipulate a situation.

Chris Goede:
Makes me look like I’m thinking, makes me look like I’m whatever it is. And so John says there’s a fine line between the two, and it’s your motive. So as you’re in the pause and you’re thinking about being teachable and reconsider, what’s your motive for being in the pause? Is it for the outward effect, or is it, hey, I don’t really care what my image is. That’s not why I’m doing this. I’m doing this because I want to grow 100%. And that’s what Mark is saying. He’s checking himself right now in certain situations going, why am I doing this? Is it because of the posture of owner and CEO of Max Leadership, or is it because I’m in growth mode? And when you can answer it’s in growth mode, you’re living out humility.

Mark Cole:
Mic drop. Marvin, you got to save it for us. Marvin’s one of our podcast family. He’s a viewer listener, and he listened to the podcast Acknowledge Your Humanness. By the way, we’ll put that in the show notes at MaxwellPodcast.com/Cultivate. MaxwellPodcast.com/Cultivate, because that goes right along with the humility that we’re talking about. Here’s what Marvin said about that episode. I loved this point, quote, “Leaders are not as good as they appear,” end quote, because people have the tendency to put their leaders in pedestals like they’re superheroes sometimes.

Mark Cole:
When we stop only to listen to ourselves, we begin to understand we’re not very different from one another. The only difference is who we are leading. Marvin, thank you for that compliment of a great podcast. Boy, you captured it well with that. Go check that out. Hey, see you again next week. Until then, lead well because everyone deserves to be led well.

Maxwell Leadership Certified Team:
Do you feel like you’re meant for more, but you’re not sure what next step to take? Whether you’re leading a team, building your business, or just trying to lead yourself well, you don’t need more noise. You need wisdom. Real, proven, practical wisdom. That’s why we created the Maxwell Leadership App. Inside, you’ll get daily bite-sized videos from John C. Maxwell and other world-class thinkers designed to help you grow every day. You’ll unlock curated playlists on personal growth, leadership, mindset, communication, confidence, and much more, all for just $9.99 a month. And here’s the best part: it’s growth on your terms, at your pace, in your pocket.

Maxwell Leadership Certified Team:
Ready to go further and grow faster? Download the Maxwell Leadership App today. Go to MaxwellPodcast.com/App or click the link in the show notes. Try it free for 7 days with the code PODCAST7. That’s PODCAST7.

Transcript created by Castmagic.