Executive Podcast #270: From Leader-Follower to Leader-Leader

Chris Goede:

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Perry Holley:

Welcome to the Maxwell Leadership Executive Podcast, where our goal is to help you increase your reputation as a leader, increase your ability to influence others, and increase your ability to fully engage your team to deliver remarkable results. Hi, I’m Perry Holley, a Maxwell leadership facilitator and coach.

Chris Goede:

And I’m Chris Goede, executive vice president. Maxwell Leadership. Welcome and thank you for joining. As we get started today, I want to encourage you to go to Maxwellleadership.com/podcast. There you can see all the podcasts that we’ve done. This is what, 200 and 7270, man. So there’s all kinds of topics for you to choose from. There something you might be dealing with leading through.

Chris Goede:

I would encourage you to go there, and you can see all of those. Also there you’ll see our other podcasts as well, and you can tap into that.

Perry Holley:

And if they go to episode one, they’ll find out why I’m here.

Chris Goede:

100% little background, a little teaser. Go listen to one. You’ll be like, thank God, Perry’s. Now, on the podcast, I showed up at two. He did show up at two, and it didn’t take much coaching. But there you can click on this podcast, fill out a form, and if you have any questions or thoughts or if we can serve your team in any way, we would love to be able to do that. Well, today’s topic is titled from Leader Follower to Leader Leader, and I’m really intrigued by today’s topic. I know that this idea has come from Captain David Marquette in his book Turn the Ship Around.

Chris Goede:

And in that book, he was the captain of the USS. Santa Fe, which was a nuclear submarine in the Navy. And I’ve heard you teach on this before. I love how you teach and facilitate teams and sessions with stories and analogies that kind of really bring the principles home. So I look forward to diving into this today.

Perry Holley:

Yeah, Captain Marquez has got a couple of really good pieces out about communicating in leadership and how communication matters, but this one was the idea that he took over the Santa Fe and couldn’t get any rest. Everybody had to ask him questions. He realized they were really good, even at night, have the knock on his door to get responses from him about turning the ship or whatever. And he just was big on the fact that we’re really good at leader follow. I think this is true for most of us.

Chris Goede:

So true.

Perry Holley:

Matter of fact, when I’m coaching, I’ll ask a group, a leader. I said if I went behind you, left you here right now, and went and asked the people on your team, are you a leader? Who’s a leader? Are you leaders? They would say, oh, no, the boss, he or she, that’s the leader. And they were thinking about it from a title. And that at a position is how they view that. Well, we teach that leadership is influence. And if you truly buy into the fact that leadership is influence, then you don’t need a title. Everybody on your team should be thinking like a leader. Thus, when Captain Marquez said he really thinks we’re really good at leader follower, but would you be better served if you operate in a leader leader environment where you may be the leader with the title, but everybody’s a leader with influence on the team? And should they be doing that? What’s your thought about it? Would your whole team, if they thought of themselves as leader, would that be better for you or worse?

Chris Goede:

100%, it’d be better. And I want people on my team that think with like an ownership mindset, like, take this baby, run with it. It’s your responsibility. Here’s what your KPIs are, here’s what you’re going to be looked at and what the organization needs from you and to lead it. I also think right now and I’m going to pose a question to you as we jump into more and more of the content here, but right now I’ve had people say, hey, what are you learning? Like, what are you really trying to work on right now in your leadership? And for me, it’s interesting because my initial response is leading leaders. And then I go, so then we’ve talked about how I often think of the opposite of that. I go, So does that mean I just been leading followers? So it’s a mindset that I think we have to have at all times as looking at everybody on our team and how would we lead leaders or how would we lead our team, which, oh, by the way, because we believe that influence is leadership. They are leaders.

Chris Goede:

And so as you begin thinking about this from a leader, I think it’s an incredible kind of like, paradigm shift that you have to go through and think about.

Perry Holley:

Well, Captain Marquette said in the book that a top down leader follower is okay if you’re measuring performance over the short run, that he even noticed that in the command of the Santa Fe that leaders were rewarded for being indispensable and that they were being missed after they departed. He said it was in the navy that if performance goes down, think about that. A captain, he’s indispensable or she’s indispensable on the ship. And they’re needed for everything very much leader, follower. And they leave and performance crashes because people don’t have anybody bossing them telling them what to do. That that was taken as a sign that they were a good leader, is that they must have been really needed, not that they were effective in training the people properly. So Marquez said he really had to get into this shifting the mindset of people, that you need to be thinking on your own. You need to be acting like a leader, not like a follower.

Perry Holley:

And so he needed to treat them like a leader. One of the things he put in that was interesting was to find out how people think. He would say, instead of asking me, captain, what should we do next? I want you to state what you think we should do next. So he introduced the captain, I intend to. So if they said, I like that, that’s good. The seamen should know that where we are right now, that they’re paying attention to their role, their job, they’re the navigator or whatever, that we need to move the submarine four degrees to the starboard. They would say, captain, I intend to direct the ship four degrees to the starboard. And Marquee would know that that’s the right thing.

Perry Holley:

He would just say, carry on. If they said, captain, I intend to launch a nuclear weapon to see if the weapon systems work. He would say, tell me more, because that’s not the right thing to do right now. So he could hear their thinking, but then he would not like that. He would say, tell me more. Then he would hear their thinking. Then he could coach their thinking. He said once you know how somebody he thinks you know where they’re coming from, that he could actually get them thinking more like a leader.

Perry Holley:

What would a leader do now? What should you be doing? Your role? So I love this captain. I intend to instead of me telling you what to do, you tell me what you think you should do, and I’ll either confirm or deny it.

Chris Goede:

That little segment right there is worth your entire 20 minutes of listening to this podcast. Because as we’re leading teams and as we’re leading groups and individuals, you want to help them think differently. But you got to first understand how do they think. And by that illustration right there, that allowed him and as leaders, we need to do a better job of that. And when you get into this leader model, it’s really about things we’ve talked about around the five levels of leadership, being able to develop people and empower people at all levels so that they take ownership of it, where you’re taking the opportunity to coach and to mentor. I love the tell me more. Why are you thinking that? So then you can dive in and coach them versus just giving them a directive. When you do that, there’s no doubt you and I know this.

Chris Goede:

We’ve sensed it and felt it in teams and organizations that we worked with. When this is happening, there is a culture of trust, of collaboration, of energy that gets raised up. And so I agree with all of that. So now the question becomes to those that are listening and those leaders and even us, how do we go about that then? How do we go about moving from the leader follower to the leader leader?

Perry Holley:

Well, I have a point of view on that.

Chris Goede:

I know you do. Tell me more about that, Perry.

Perry Holley:

Tell me more. Yeah, well, I think first you start with developing a culture of leadership and that you got to start teaching leadership is influence. I was thinking as you’re talking to now, that we talk about the five levels being a common language of leadership. And when you start having this common language that you’re teaching people how to increase influence. And by the way, influence 360 is not just influence down to your follower team, it’s influence across to your peer group, influence up to your leader. So are you in this culture of leadership? Are you infusing leadership into your team’s thinking? We have a whole podcast on infusing leadership into your team’s thinking things, little small things you could do and does every person on the team own their own personal development so you can direct it in the direction of we need to be thinking more like leaders, how do we grow as leaders? And maybe you could even hit on Law of the Lid. I think you hit that a couple of podcasts ago, but I think, as you say, that so well about being a lid lifter. But that’s to me is having this culture of leadership.

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Chris Goede:

As a leader, you have to get to the point where you are continuing to develop yourself in a way that you’re leading people and encouraging them to lead themselves to be able to lift that lid, right? And when you do that, you’re all of a sudden going to see a room of leaders. You’re going to see people that now are thinking a little bit differently. You’re going to understand how they’re thinking, you’re going to be able to lift a lid on how they’re thinking. And all of that will just come hand in hand with that. The second point you have here for us is stop being the genius and become a genius maker. Obviously this refers to Liz Wiseman in her book The Multiplier, which is a great book, one of John’s favorite books of hers. And so, man, don’t keep providing all the answers. Don’t rescue people out of something that they need to learn.

Chris Goede:

One of the things know, we’re doing right now in our leadership team and our CEO, Mark Hole will often ask and he’ll be like, all right, so Chris and she’s got to be paying attention because you never know. So I haven’t been sleeping in any of our meetings. What did you just hear? And then how does that impact your thinking on the Enterprise as a whole? And you’re beginning to hmm. So then around the table, hopefully the individual geniuses are coming out at a higher level and you’re beginning to create genius makers by going through and asking questions like that instead of saying Mark would go, okay, well, here’s what I heard, here’s what we’re going to do. No, he’s trying to pull out the answers from around the room so it looks a little bit differently.

Perry Holley:

That’s really good. We talked podcasts ago or so we thought about having a point of view. And I thought when he does that, he’s asking you to be prepared with a point of view. And that is a leader leader. I didn’t have that in my thing here, but I think it really is a leader leader concept that everybody comes prepare with a point of view. I have one and I’m going to share it, but just because I’m the head person, I want to hear what you think. I don’t know everything. What do you think from your seat, Chris? What does it look like for the enterprise? And you may say something that Mark might just be blown away by.

Perry Holley:

I hadn’t thought about that. But if you hadn’t been prepared with the point of view, then you’re just a follower waiting for him to tell you the point of view. Here’s our point of view.

Chris Goede:

Yeah, let me give you an example. We put an event on as we’re recording now. It was just last week called Exchange. And by the way, it’s the longest lasting thing that we do here at Max Leadership. 22 years John’s been doing this every year. It’s about two and a half days, three days of leadership, conversations, content, but also experiences. And it’s incredible if you want to grow. And so if you’re interested just go to the website, fill out the form.

Chris Goede:

But we were having a conversation. Now I have the privilege of leading a team that put this on. And so for eleven months we planned this thing. We’re at dinner, so the event starts on a Wednesday. We’re at dinner on Monday night with one of the content pieces and speakers that we were with. And we were going to not only have that individual speak, but then we were going to experience something that evening. And so we’re going through and we’re talking about how we’re going to engage the team and what does this look like and how should we do this? And we then at our level had already our mind made up, right? But at that dinner that night, there were a couple of people on the team that were just part of the team. That what I would just say are kind of the implementers for us on some of the ideas.

Chris Goede:

And it’s interesting because the speaker sat back and he said, hey, so and so one of the implementers, how would you do it? What are we missing here? So this is Monday and we’re started on Wednesday. And all of a sudden that individual is like, well, you know, what we should do is we should do this. And I’ve seen that and I’ve seen that, and all of a sudden we all leaned in and we go, man, you have a point of view, right? We’re pulling out your genius because you do these type of events and you’re an implementer. And so that got pulled out and they had a voice. Her genius maker came out. You could tell she had developed herself in this area and all of a sudden, within 48 hours, we’re now implementing something that she said as an idea because we were going around the table and being able to say, oh, you know what, just because she’s an implementer doesn’t mean she’s not a leader. She is leading. And we may have missed that at that point in time.

Chris Goede:

So just a quick small example that came to my mind as you were thinking about it, that I go, man. Now, not only that, but then she was a little upset at us because then she had 48 hours to go buy some products and change everything for 150 people. But she pulled it off. And here’s what I’ll tell you. We do some incredible experiences and at the end of the day, the two things that we added on that Monday night, people talked about that more than some of the other stuff that we did.

Perry Holley:

Well, that leads perfectly into a .3 which says increase the share of voice. This is a phrase, can you increase the share of voice on your team? And what you gave is a perfect example of the person who was obviously considered the leader. In a leader follower model, the implementers would be the followers, the star of the show is going to be the leader. But this leader vectored into the leader leader model by saying, hey, what do you think?

Chris Goede:

100%?

Perry Holley:

And so this is the Captain Marquette phrase, by the way. Captain Marquette said that it was all his voice when he goes into a meeting, when he’s talking. And when I teach this, I use the picture of there’s like a box in the middle of the room. And when you walk in, people expect you to step up and they step back. And I love this because I want to be the center of attention, my ego or whatever. It’s all my voice. And so I started calculating what was the share of voice in most of my meetings. 95%, Perry 5%, somebody else.

Perry Holley:

Then it becomes a challenge to say how can I have the box in the room where I step back and the team steps up? And to me this was how do I increase the share of voice on the team? How do I make you have a point of view, insist that you come with a point of view, ask more questions, listen, be curious, get others talking about how should we solve this? You gave a perfect example, hey, we got this thing, how would you do it? Increased share of voice goes across there right away. We teach on the generational leading different generations offering that we have now. And one of the things I picked up from there about especially with younger generation, if you want to increase the share of voice, one thing we teach there is the describe don’t prescribe. And I love this. I tend to as a leader, I think most of us do is we come in and say here’s the prescription, do this and this and this. And what we’re learning with the younger generation is that don’t prescribe it. Describe what you’re thinking about what’s the outcome and then ask them to come up with the prescription. So here’s what I’m trying to accomplish.

Perry Holley:

What do you think?

Chris Goede:

That’s right.

Perry Holley:

How would you do that? And just what your talent did the other night, instead of telling you here’s how we’re going to do it, they said, well, that’s what we’re trying to accomplish. How would you do it? So I described, he described or she had anything to say who it was. But they described they didn’t prescribe how to do it. And I thought they came up with a better outcome.

Chris Goede:

I just had another thought that is a little bit of a paradigm shift. I was thinking about we’re doing a lot of work right now with sales teams. We have a content piece, influential, selling and oftentimes and you have a lot of experience in sales. And I’ve led sales teams for a while. We go, hey, don’t go in right away and give a prescription before you diagnose with the problem. Interesting thought maybe is to this as we teach it is it’d be interesting if you maybe even test it out and say what if you describe what you do and then allow them to prescribe how that would help them. It’s another way to go about the discovery. So that didn’t cost you any extra on this podcast.

Chris Goede:

Just a thought. You can tell where my mind goes. I really was not listening to Perry. I was thinking, but I could hear him. All right. The fourth is empower your people. Empower is a big, big word and people just say it. They throw it around.

Chris Goede:

Again, I believe if you’re throwing it around, it’s probably more about delegating because empowering is a lot of work and you have to really be intentional about it and you have to go about developing those people. And so this can include making sure they’re in the right role. It can make sure that you are modeling the way and showing them what to do. We talk about this from a development standpoint, right? We say, hey, make sure you know what you’re doing. Make sure they’re with you. Then you’re with them while they’re doing it, then they’re doing it by themselves. You may be given some feedback on the back end and oh, by the way, then we want them to have somebody with them as they’re doing it. So you have this loop of being able to empower and develop people and that they have the right skills.

Chris Goede:

Make sure we’re equipping them to do that. And then most importantly to us is make sure that they have a development plan, right? Because you can empower somebody and that if they don’t continue to grow, it’s not going to be effective long time. And so that’s just a way to think about when it comes to you got to make sure you’re empowering your people if you want them to be leaders of leaders.

Perry Holley:

And then you do need to move the delegation piece of that about moving decision making away from you out to the people that are empowered to do that, then you’re empowering them to be leaders and followers. Just do what the leader says. Leader leader model says that I’m empowering you to lead of your own. You may not have the title, I may have the title, but you are acting as a leader. Finally, number five I just added here was encourage innovation and creativity and the leader leader model. The team should be bringing ideas for change. We have a new course piece that I just rolled out last week for the first time on leading through change. And one of the things I say that who’s responsible for seeing the change.

Perry Holley:

And if you’re in a leader follower model, it’s you the leader. But if you’re in a leader leader model, everyone on the team should be looking for opportunities to grow and improve. What is the continuous improvement? What is the next thing we need to be doing? How do we get better at that? What are the changes that are needed? So if you’re the only change agent on the team, you’re probably leading a leader follower model and not the leader leader.

Chris Goede:

Well, this is incredible stuff for all of us to be listening to. And as I kind of wrap up my thoughts, I started off by saying, this is relevant to me because people say, what are you trying to grow and develop in right now? And I am thinking about how do I lead leaders? But it’s convicting as well, because that means that maybe I haven’t done a good enough job of leading my followers to become leaders, right? And so it is a little bit of a mindset shift. And so if you’re listening to us and you go, man, I got an incredible team, you got to begin thinking about, are they leaders? Am I leading them like they’re leaders? Or am I leading them and expecting them just to be followers? And so Perry kind of walks us through five things right here that will allow you to kind of change that mindset shift. And when you do that, then you’ll get to the point to where maybe you don’t ever get to the point where I go, how do I lead leaders versus leading followers? You shouldn’t have to ask that question. And so I appreciate the content as we wrap up today because it was convicting to me. But if we lead from the right standpoint, from the get go, you may never even have to ask that question that I’ve been leading for over 20 years, and now I’m asking myself that question.

Perry Holley:

Fantastic. And by the way, highly recommend Captain Marquette’s Books, spelled Marquet, and he’s got a couple, and I think you’d benefit from those greatly. I know I did. We love hearing from you. If you want to go get the learner guide for this, learn about our offerings, see the other in the family of our podcast. You can do all that at maxwellleadership.com/podcast. We love hearing from you. Very grateful you’d be with us today.

Perry Holley:

That’s all to today from the Maxwell Leadership executive podcast.