Executive Podcast #284: Answering Your Leadership Questions

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 Holly, a Maxwell leadership facilitator and coach.

Chris Goede:
And I’m Chris Goede, executive vice president with Maxwell Leadership. Welcome and thank you for joining. As we get started, I just want to remind you, we’d love for you to visit maxwellleadership.com slash podcast and leave us a note. Leave us a question. And that’s why I’m super excited to give that to you before we start today, because today’s come from three. Three different listeners.

Perry Holley:
Our viewers could have been. Our viewers could have been on YouTube.

Chris Goede:
That’s right. Unfortunately, some of you people painstakingly watch Perry Holly on YouTube.

Perry Holley:
A lot of people don’t know how good looking we are. It came up a lot in Orlando. We were there. People say you look a lot taller in person.

Chris Goede:
That’s exactly right. And speaking of that, I do just want to say thank you to all of our listeners, Perry and I, as we’re recording this, we’re about ten days post, our international Maxwell conference down in Orlando, Florida. And so many of you that listen came up and just talked about the impact of what we share here, which is just stories of what we’re learning in the field, how they’ve impacted you. And so thank you for doing that.

Perry Holley:
And how tall we look and how.

Chris Goede:
Much older Perry looks than me. He just didn’t want to talk.

Perry Holley:
I wasn’t wearing makeup there that I am now.

Chris Goede:
Jake’s got them all ready to go.

Perry Holley:
No makeup.

Chris Goede:
So when you go to maxwellleadership.com/podcast, go to this episode, click on it. You’ll see a form there down at the bottom. And again, what are you going through? What can we help you with? And we’ll talk about that on a future session. Well, this is something that we just talked about a minute ago. We’ve had three people that reached out and said, this is what I’m struggling with. Could you guys talk a little bit about that? And so Perry put together a lesson for us that we’re going to dive into. So why don’t you get us started?

Perry Holley:
Yeah, I appreciate the questions coming in, and they’re always good, but this is from Jack. Jack, thanks for taking the time to write and talked about being a first line manager in one company, moved out of that company, took a job in another company, but as an individual contributor. And he know, how would we advise him to use the leadership principles that he had as what he considered as a manager, as a leader. How would he use that to influence others while he’s no longer in a leadership position? I thought this was just sweet. It fits right into our definition of leadership.

Chris Goede:
Well, and we could probably do an entire book on this, right? Everything that we teach and we talk about, you’re going to hear us talk about today of the five levels of leadership and 300 and 6360 degree leader is tied to exactly what he’s asking. And how do we go about doing that? Jack, we got good news for you.

Perry Holley:
That’s right.

Chris Goede:
As you know, around here, we define leadership as influence. Man. It’s not about the title. It’s not about being an individual contributor versus being a line manager or being at a company for ten years versus you just getting to start. My initial response to you, we’re going to get into some principles about how to do this for you. But, man, just in this new opportunity of being an individual contributor, I just want to encourage you to be curious about everything that’s going on. Be curious about the company, be curious about the role. We’ll dive into a little bit about that later, but just learn as much as you possibly can to continue to set yourself up going forward.

Perry Holley:
Yeah, just like being a leader. If you have somebody new, join your team, think about the five levels of leadership. Level one, they see you as the leader. You’re level one here, you’re coming in new, you’re level one to that leader that. That you have. You’re level one to your peers that are there. So you start thinking, well, how do I get to level two? Level two is about relationships. As Chris saying, get to know people.

Perry Holley:
Be curious. Start to understand what’s going on. You think, how do I get to level three? Well, I got to deliver results. You, as an individual contributor, deliver results. But how do you help your boss deliver results? How do you help your peers deliver results? So you start increasing your levels of influence with those above you and those beside you. And then, of course, level four, how can you help make them better? How do you add value to what they’re doing? How do you come alongside them? How do you share your expertise? Heck, you’ve been in a leadership position in a role. You may have a lot of insights that could be very helpful to your peers, maybe even to your boss.

Chris Goede:
That’s good. That’s the five level side. Let me share just a little bit about the 360 degree leader and how this plays into what you’re doing. No matter if you’re an individual contributor or a line leader, when you set this question in, I began thinking about, what would I do if I was you, in essence. And what does that look like? And so from the 360 degree leader, a couple of things I wrote down is, number one, we talk about this as, hey, this is about leading, self leading, influencing your peers, your boss, and maybe those that report to you. Well, you don’t have any direct reports, but guess what? You do have yourself. You do have your peers, and you do have your leader. And so make sure that you lead yourself well first and make sure you continue to grow.

Chris Goede:
One of the things I would encourage you to do is, as you figure out this role, no matter what your KPIs are, as an individual contributor, share what is working right. Like, if Perry and I are two individual contributors, and I go, man, Perry, I did this the other day, all of a sudden, Perry’s going to be like, what? He’s just sharing what’s working, right. That’s going to increase my influence with you. And you’re helping the team win. So share what’s working. Ask questions. We talked about this. Be curious.

Chris Goede:
Ask questions of what is working from others. Now, they may not share it with you, especially if you’re new. And they’ll be like, who’s this? He might not be around here very long. Jack’s not going to be here, but we might not share it with you. But it doesn’t hurt to ask those questions. And then I wrote this down. Connect with everyone that is impacted by what you’re doing to contribute to the organization. Now, that’s a broad statement, but I was thinking about it, like, let’s say your job was to sell a certain product.

Chris Goede:
Okay. Well, there are a lot of people that fulfill that. There are a lot of people that invoice for that. And so just begin connecting with them at level two, as Perry talked about, because all of them are part of what you’re doing. And, oh, by the way, what you’re doing is increasing your influence with them. So think about it from the five levels, like Perry shared with you, but then also begin to think about it from a 360 degree leader approach.

Perry Holley:
Yeah, you’re really addressing his abundance mindset versus scarcity mindset. Why would you share what you know that’s working for you? I’m an abundant thinker. There’s plenty to go around. And one thing I had to learn was my colleagues being successful doesn’t mean I’m not. Doesn’t take anything away from me. So you want to be that person on the team that adds value. And I have no doubt you continue to do what you’re doing in the previous job, and here you’ll be in that leadership titled position later. But you’re already a leader where you are ready for the next question.

Perry Holley:
So this comes from Julia, who asked an interesting question, said, what if you find yourself under a bad leader at work? Do I stay or do like, should I stay with this? Do I have a choice? Should I hang in? Should I do that? And got some experience working for a bad leader myself. Not saying anything.

Chris Goede:
Is it me?

Perry Holley:
No, it’s not you. But I like that pause. It made you think, didn’t it?

Chris Goede:
I was like, I turned around and.

Perry Holley:
Looked Jake, nobody else. So that’s an interesting question because I do have a story that I found myself there, but as another 360 leader moment, because we teach this a lot that I’m thinking, but where does your mind go with that?

Chris Goede:
Yeah. Let me first start by saying this. It depends on what makes that leader bad. You made a comment that I think is appropriate for us just to throw out here, that I want to make sure if you feel like that leader is exhibiting inappropriate behavior, it’s making them bad, then you need to have a conversation with HR. Do that if it is different than that. Listen, we’ve all been there, so we totally understand. And a couple of things that I thought about was you ask if you should leave as one of your options in your question. And history tells us, and we teach this, that people leave organizations because of bad leadership, and you may have to make that decision.

Chris Goede:
So we’re not saying, hey, you should dig in, stay there or whatever. You don’t feel like you’re fulfilled in what you’re doing. So that may be an option that you leave. But a couple of things I was thinking about is if you do stay and you do have a bad leader, that I would encourage you to do. My first thing I wrote down here was just own it, meaning, I want you to focus on controlling what you can control. Don’t add to the problems that that leader may have, and then go around and we talk about this. When it comes to change empathizers, we talk about individuals that create water cooler talk and talk negatively about the leader. Don’t be part of that.

Chris Goede:
Continue to stay in control of what you can control, and don’t be part of putting fuel on the fire for that bad leader, although you may be justified and all of it will be true. Don’t have those conversations because then you’re just adding to the problem. The other thing is that we tend to see problems outside ourselves, and we often don’t think that we could be part of those solutions. Right? Like, we see the problem, he is or she’s a bad leader, and we just go, that’s the problem. We don’t think how we potentially could be part of the solution. So I want to encourage you to do this. I want to encourage you to go and ask for feedback from that leader. Now, if they’re a bad leader, you’re probably not going to like what they.

Perry Holley:
Have to tell you if they tell you anything, right?

Chris Goede:
If they tell you anything. And you may go. This sounds so counterintuitive. I’m turning the podcast on because why, if I have a bad leader, would I want to go get feedback from a bad leader? But hear me out. What I want you to do is I want you to go in there and reach out, set this meeting up and ask for feedback. And don’t get defensive with whatever comes out. That’s not what I’m asking do. But I want you to model a behavior that may come back and it may not.

Chris Goede:
But by doing that and asking for feedback and asking questions around that, you may begin to build a bridge and you may be something that’s a catalytic moment or meeting that begins to build awareness and may end up shaping or changing the way that leads. Now, again, it may not work, but as I was thinking about this, I just want to say, no, you need to leave because people quit people. We understand that. But there may be some things that you could work at, and I just wanted to give those to you as we were unpacking this.

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Perry Holley:
I suffered with this in one season of my journey and people even telling us, you got to get away from this guy because I was trying to climb the ladder as well. They said, this guy’s really going to hurt you. It’s going to hurt your reputation by being associated with him. But then I ran into this topic. Under the 360 leader is a book from John Maxwell, and we teach it a lot. And in the book, John covers seven challenges that leading from the middle so influences 360 above you, below you, beside you, and that your influence with others. Being a leader in the middle of the organization, which we all are, if you’re not the CEO, you’re somewhere in the middle. You can have one of the challenges called the frustration challenge.

Perry Holley:
And I recall it succinctly. When I was struggling with my leader, I actually went to this class as a pilot to go see if I liked it, did I want to offer it and teach it? And the very first thing out the out of the door about the frustration challenge is it said, it’s not your job to fix the leader. It’s your job to add value to the leader. And I thought, well, I don’t want to. I’m listening to other people tell me, get away. But here’s what some of the actions that John talks about under the frustration challenge, and Chris just hit a few of them, which was, do you have a good relationship with the leader? So that’s kind of level two on the five levels. Are you building a relationship? Are you a student of your boss? Do you know what their strengths and weaknesses are? Can you identify what their strengths are? My leader had an incredible ability to get budget and to fund projects that we were on. We had the most fun doing things that other groups couldn’t do because he somehow knew how to work the system.

Perry Holley:
It was a real strength he had working with people, not so much working with budgets outstanding. So I started playing into his strengths, commit to adding value to his strengths. Where is it that I can add value to what he’s doing? How can I help him with those budgets? To put those to use, to help execute on those, get permission to develop a game plan to complement that leader’s weaknesses. So I sat back. What is he really weak at? He’s really bad at communicating. He makes it all about himself, and he’s really bad at bringing people together and community and said, you know what? I’m pretty good at both of those. I started offering to do, can I lead the team meetings? I think I did it under. I could free you up.

Perry Holley:
I’ll lead the team meetings. I’m pretty good at communicating. And he fought it at first, but he said, hey, could you handle this one. Then? Once I did, I kind of took it over from him. And the next one said was, expose your leader to good leadership resources. I thought I told my colleagues, there were four of us on the team. I said, I’m going to propose that our boss join our leadership book club. And one of them goes, we don’t have a leadership book club.

Perry Holley:
I know, but if he says yes, we’re having one, and I need you to back me up because I thought we’ll just do 21 laws or something easy. And if he says yes, we said, hey, come join the team. He goes, I failed on this one. He said, no, I’m pretty good. I don’t need all that stuff.

Chris Goede:
All right. That’s a creative idea. I like that.

Perry Holley:
And then publicly affirming your leader is that it’s very tempting, and it was in this environment to talk behind his back, to listen to other people talk behind his back, to talk about how bad he was. I just removed myself from all of that, publicly affirmed him, and tried to find ways to support his strength. I found a way to be his number two, to be his go to guy and all those. And at the end of the day, I got promoted out. It didn’t hurt me. He did well. And to this day, it’s been 15, 12, 15 years. He still calls me.

Perry Holley:
We still have a good relationship. So I just want to encourage you, even though you have a weak leader, as Chris said, if it’s something HR or ethical or something, then get yourself away from it. But if it’s just they’re not a good leader, I encourage you, look into the 360 leader, because it’s got some great. It saved me from making a bad decision around somebody that just needed help, and I was trying to find a way to add value to them.

Chris Goede:
That’s brilliant. I love that. The only thing I’ll add to that, before we move on to the last listener’s question comment, just make sure that you’re doing all of those things authentically because you have to remember you’re doing this for a purpose.

Perry Holley:
Motive matters, but motive matters.

Chris Goede:
Why are you doing that? And by the way, I think the leader will be able to see right through that, but your peers will as well. And what we want to be careful of is that your credibility, like Perry talked about, even some of his peers were saying, oh, well, you’re going to be tied to this individual. Well, just as you go through that and all of those suggestions, we would highly recommend, just do it authentically for the right purpose, to add value to and help that leader in that situation, and then it’ll protect the credibility that you have inside that organization.

Perry Holley:
Super. Last question. I think we have time for one more came from a YouTube viewer, and Rebecca asked, and I really want to hear what you think about this. I could go both ways on this one. It’s such an interesting question. But she said that she runs a sales organization and they’re struggling and she’s going to bring in a new sales leader from outside the organization. And that’s not unusual, right? Because you can either promote from inside or hire from the outside.

Chris Goede:
No big deal.

Perry Holley:
But she said, should I inform the team in advance of the person coming on or wait until the meeting when. Surprise. Here’s the new leader. I’m announcing a new position. You now all report to this new person.

Chris Goede:
I have lots of questions. I have lots of questions. Thank you so much, Rebecca, for that question and listening. I hope we get to you before you make this decision and it adds value to what you’re thinking about doing. But I do have lots of questions. This is a personal leadership preference, and to Perry’s point, it could go a couple of different ways. Here’s how I respond to that. I would have absolutely preferred that they were already in the know currently of the change that was about to be made, even to a point, maybe even part of the process, addressing the need for the change way ahead of time and then going and finding the change and make them part of the process.

Chris Goede:
Ideally, that’s how I would like to do it. Have I always done it that way? No. Have I had time to always do it today? No. So I understand that I got lots of questions and there may be reasons behind that, but for my leadership preference, I would have preferred that. Now that getting to where you’re at right now, I absolutely think that team needs to be aware before it’s announced. I was thinking about my team and I was like, hey, if there’s something going on in my team and a company email goes out before I’ve talked to my team about it, even if it’s an hour before, even if it’s 30 minutes, they need to hear it from you first and they need to hear your words. They need to see you interact with them before it goes out into a company email. And so I would absolutely tell your team before the announcement is made.

Chris Goede:
One other piece of advice, and I’ll throw it back to you, that I’d give you here, is there may be some fallout. There’s going to be some fallout. Are there a couple of key influencers on your team that you can sit down with and have one on ones before you meet with the team, before the organizational email goes out. So let’s say on my team, Perry’s my influencer and I know that this is not going to sit well, but I know Perry’s on board with it. I’m going to come and be like, hey, Perry, here’s what’s going on. What do you think about this? How do you think the team’s going to receive it? We’re going to talk about it. I’m going to be like, hey, I need you to be in my corner when all of a sudden the water cooler starts talking. So maybe there’s even an option to where you can meet with some people one on one that they can help you manage this post announcement that may not drive more turnover than what you think is going to happen with the change in leader.

Perry Holley:
Fantastic. We just did, I don’t know, nine or ten weeks on leading change. So this is a change and you just hit a very good one, which was influence the influencers. I was trying to think, is there any scenario in my mind where I think that surprise here’s the new leader is the best play and the only one I can come up with is you really don’t care about the fallout if a bunch of people get mad and quit? That’s okay. They’re not good enough to make the promotion to this role anyway. Maybe there’s some other dynamics going on, but I think in almost every other scenario, I want to show respect of the team, to say things aren’t where they need to be, but I’m bringing in a new leader. Let them. What we would say about change is, do you have enough Runway to share the change? Let people have a voice about the change, even disagree and dissent about the change, and to hear your heart and mind about why you’re making the change.

Perry Holley:
And then they can still make their decisions to stay or go, whatever they do. But I think if you have a good business reason and that you think this is the right thing to do, we’re not promoting from within. We don’t have the right talent. That’s another podcast. You need to be developing talent, no doubt. However, bringing in somebody outside sometimes shakes things up and it’s a great way to boost the culture and the direction. I’m okay with that, but I think surprising people is a little bit disrespectful. And I would want them to know that even though this is going to be hard to swallow.

Perry Holley:
I want you to know what’s going on here, and then you can be able to say anything you want to me about it.

Chris Goede:
I agree.

Perry Holley:
We can talk about it. So it is a dicey one. And I appreciate the question, because.

Chris Goede:
If you’re watching this on YouTube, Perry just smiled while he was asking that question. It was like, here you go, big boy. Go figure that out. Well, let me wrap up real quick. And I do want to just say thank you to Jack and Julia and Rebecca for sending those in. But as you look through each of those and as we just talked, very high level about some thoughts and how we would respond, you need to remember, we’re all in the people business. These are all different industries, different sized teams, different leaders. And yet the common theme through these questions or concerns is people.

Chris Goede:
And so we believe here at Maxwell leadership that everyone deserves to be led well through all situations. And so I just want to, again, thanks for sending those in. Thanks for letting us kind of react. What would we do? What have we seen? What works? What have we done wrong? And respond to that. But, man, make sure you keep people at the priority.

Perry Holley:
Good. Well, thank you, Chris. I appreciate the insights. And as a reminder, if you’d like to know more about the offerings, like 365 levels about our other podcast, family of offerings, you can do all that at maxwellleadership.com/Podcast. You can also leave us a question or a comment. You can tell we like to get those. We’re always glad to hear from you, and we’re always so grateful that you would spend this time with us.

Perry Holley:
That’s all today from the Maxwell Leadership executive podcast.