Executive Podcast #296: What Drives You: Character or Emotion?

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 with Maxwell Leadership. Welcome and thank you for joining us. As we get started, I want to encourage you to go to maxwellleadership.com/podcast. If you’ll click on this podcast there, you can fill out a form. And, man, we would love to spend some time with your team. If you don’t feel like the team dynamics are there, the culture is there, maybe there’s a little bit of a lull in the leadership. That’s what we love doing, Perry, an incredible team. We are on the road in organizations all the time.

Chris Goede:
So fill out that form and we’ll get in touch with you, and we’d love to be able to serve and help however we can. Well, today’s topic is what drives you, character or emotion? So what drives you? Is it. Is it driven by character? Are you driven by emotion immediately? Perry when I. When I read this title, I automatically have different people associated with different word of leaders that I’ve had or people that I are peers or I do life with. And so I think this is real, and I think we have natural bent and we have some learned behaviors, and we’re going to get into that in just a minute. John Maxwell says that successful people are willing to do things unsuccessful people will not do. They’re willing to do the things that unsuccessful people will not do. He also observes that one of those things that makes a difference is the issue of being character driven versus being driven by your emotions or the emotional side of things.

Chris Goede:
So this is, this is big. And we were just talking a minute ago before with live about things you’re learning and reading again. We’re always trying to consume and get out in front to share with you around emotional intelligence.

Perry Holley:
Yeah, it comes up a lot in coaching is, I’ll ask especially some young leaders I have. But it’s not just young leaders. You actually can be a senior level leader who has just given in to not managing their emotions well and demonstrate. We call it displaying versus delaying their emotions on people. And it really tears down your influence, causes people to withdraw. It hurts engagement levels, it hurts performance levels. People are not willing to put in the extra discretionary effort because they’re not too sure about how you’re going to show up. And I just find that having this character approach, if I can get myself to operate character based and not emotionally based, it’s an attraction feature to most people.

Perry Holley:
They’re attracted to high character and not. And they’re pushed away from a lot of display of emotion. I taught a lesson on a group coaching call once that really resonated. So old lesson I had learned, but I had to learn it the hard way. And it was called e plus r, equal o. And we probably have talked about it here before, but just real simply, it was the e is for an event. Things are going to happen during the day. People are going to say things, people are going to do things.

Perry Holley:
Customers are going to say and do things. They’re going to be events. You can’t control those. They happen. The r is either for react or respond. And that you have a choice, will I react? Which is very quick, respond, take a breath and think about how I’d like to respond. Usually react is steeped in emotion. Response is steeped in character.

Perry Holley:
And based on that r to that event, on your reaction or response to that event will give you an outcome. And most of us are living with either outcomes we love or we hate. If you’re not getting the outcomes you want from people, I ask people, you can’t control the ecosystem, but you can control the r. So let’s control what we can control. And I think this r is real. This emotional and character based responses come from. And John has a lot to say on this, so I thought we’d just bring it and say. And I think for listeners today, you’re going to have to just evaluate yourself personally, quietly, honestly, do I do this? My favorite word in leadership is consistency.

Perry Holley:
And people are attracted to a consistency in you, and can they trust you and your emotions and what you’re gonna do with that? And I think this says a lot to that.

Chris Goede:
Yeah. You know, it is easy to allow the emotions to roll into how we’re leading. I even think about some experiences I’ve had at different events, right, where I allowed my emotions to get out. I’m like, then you get away from it. And you’re like, well, that was stupid, you know, like, I can’t believe I like it. My emotions got the best of me in that certain situation. And as leaders, I think the things that why it’s so easy for emotions to take over at times is because the weight of the responsibility that you carry, you’re going to have to be dealing with conflict. You’re going to be dealing with crisis, you know, and you wear the weight of that.

Chris Goede:
You got to make tough decisions. And so all of those things and many, many other things create a fertile ground for your emotions to take over. And I think, you know, you’re bringing this to us saying, hey, it is going to happen. How do we become self aware about it? How do we, you know, how do we then kind of lead through that? And the way we lead through that is through the understanding, eq, continuing to learn and grow there, but also the self awareness side of things. I was mentioning, Perry and I were just talking a minute ago. I use my morning commutes for some of my personal growth time, and I was listening to a podcast, and they were talking about how they’ve seen leaders lead purely on feelings, and those businesses are no longer or those teams are no longer because of. And so it’s just a great concept that we’re going to unpack here based off of John Maxwell’s principles around this topic.

Perry Holley:
Well, he teaches, first off, that, you know, character driven people. So your character driven response would do the right thing and then feel good about it. The emotional driven response was, do what feels good, which might be blowing up or spraying your emotion on people, and then do the right thing. So you lead with your feelings, or do you lead with doing the right thing and then let the feelings follow the right thing? And when I saw this first one, I go, okay, this makes a lot of sense. Why do we struggle with that?

Chris Goede:
So, as a leader, it makes me think, too, of, do I posture myself as the fact that I want to do right or be right? And that’s two different postures similar to what you’re talking about here. Right. And one’s easier than the other. We want to. We want to. We want to be right. But I think when you say this to me, the first thing that the word came to my mind was, are we disciplined enough to understand that we do need to do right? And the word discipline came to mind around this was because, for example, let’s just take exercising as you giggle. Yeah, I have done that many times.

Chris Goede:
Right. I get home and. And I’m like, yeah, you know what? I really don’t feel like going out and getting some steps in or whatever it might be. And so I’ve got to act my way. I got to be disciplined enough to act my way into feeling. And I think as leaders, we got to remember that we have to do the right thing even though we don’t feel like it at times, because that’s the character side of being driven.

Perry Holley:
As a leader, I want you to go to the second one. But as you’re talking, I’m thinking we are, you know, leadership is influence, and if you apply, what do you think of the two of these? Is going to grow your influence with others more? And I recall I was a senior exec running a consulting group once, and we had an angry client, and they wanted to see the boss. So my consultant took me out to meet the senior team, and they were mad. And they, one person kept yelling and raising their voice and got a little belligerent toward me. And I took notes and said thank you, and then asked clarifying questions and kept, and I was being triggered. I could feel it happening, but I decided to do the right thing. Don’t do what I feel. And I didn’t know this then, but I was just, yeah, I was, but I was more mature.

Perry Holley:
In a younger day, I would open the can right there. But, but, but now I’m thinking, you know, what can I control? I can’t control this idiot. I can’t control what they’re doing. I can’t control, what can I control? Me. And so we’re walking back to the car, and the consultant says, hey, I’ll catch you a question. I go, sure. Do you ever get mad? And I thought about this great line from Tom Hanks movie, goes, would it help? If it had helped, I would have gone off, but it doesn’t help. And do you think I have more influence with that client today because I maintained my composure, I did the right thing.

Perry Holley:
I let the emotion that I could have demonstrated, I delayed it instead of displayed it. And I think it brought later down the road, it brought much more influence with this client that, hey, we made a mistake. I was willing to own it. I’m not going to argue or fight or blow up about it. I’m, I’m going to, I’m going to manage my. Do the right thing.

Chris Goede:
Yeah, do the right thing. It’s good. The next one John talks about for character driven people is, are you commitment driven versus an emotional side of that? Is, are you convenience driven? And again, it’s just building off of even the examples, both examples that we, we just talked about. Right. You know, things are not going to be convenient as a leader, by the way. Uh, your schedule, your meetings, your conversations, decisions, all that. It’s not going to be, but you got, it’s got to be committed. You got to be committed and, and commit to that in order to be on the character side of, of leading.

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Perry Holley:
I’ll go back to your exercise example. If you got home and you said, I really don’t feel like, but I’m committed, I made a commitment to do the exercise. It would be convenient to get a box of Cheez its and sit on the couch and watch the news. But no, it’s convenience is the easy way, and it’s not all necessarily the right way. And so if you are led by the commitments I’ve made, I’m going to keep those, no matter how easy something else might be. Another one John mentions is, do you make principle based decisions or popular based decisions? This one got me thinking, too, that as you’re in the midst of things, like you said, a lot of activity going on, pressures are high, lots being expected of you. Do you know the principles and the values that you execute from? And you say, this is how we do things. This is what we should do.

Perry Holley:
I often ask organizations when they’re battling with how to handle a situation. Sometimes it’s an HR situation. I said, what do your values dictate that you do? What do your values say? We had one organization, they had the four c’s on the wall. I said, what did the four c’s say we should do? And I could tell they hadn’t thought about it.

Chris Goede:
They said, what are the four c’s?

Perry Holley:
No, they didn’t say that. It was really a nice poster. What do our values say we should do? What are our core values dictate that we should be doing it? So it is a principle based versus not just doing what feels good or popular.

Chris Goede:
Yeah, I think you are spot on with that. And what Perry is saying is, man, we’ve got to have a decision making filter. You really do. Right? Like, and it is your value, and that is principles and your values to what Perry’s talking about right here, whether it’s your personal or the organizational, that has to be your decision making filter. Go ahead and do that, and then that’ll allow you to stay on that character side of leadership. The other one John teaches is that, hey, the character side of things is we let action control our attitude, versus an emotional side of things would be we let our attitude and how we respond control the action.

Perry Holley:
Yeah. What do you think about that? It’s so easy to say, and especially if I’m reacting, go back to e plus r equal. I’m going to react, not respond. I’m going to make a quick decision. My attitude and how it personally affecting me is going to determine the action that I take versus controlling that, choosing the positive aspect of that and making the right action for that.

Chris Goede:
I also think we talk a lot about curiosity here. I think as leaders and individual contributors, I think when things happen. So action when things happen. If we take a minute to your point before we respond versus reacting and we try to get as curious. Tell me more. Tell me about here. What was the da da da? And you really are seeking to understand. I think that can get you into a posture of saying, okay, here was the action.

Chris Goede:
I’m gonna be curious. And then now here’s my attitude towards whatever it might be versus. And we’re all guilty of this, right? Versus, like, bam, here we are. Here’s my attitude. Because of that action happened and I’m not happy about it or I’m excited about it, whatever. Whatever the emotion might be. And I love you said just a minute ago about consistency all throughout this lesson. I think really the underlying theme, what we’re talking about is the consistency of leaders.

Chris Goede:
And you and I have worked with a lot of organizations and seen a lot of different leaders, and there’s not very much consistency out there in their emotions.

Perry Holley:
Yeah. The other things are driving those behaviors. I’m thinking so much to be said about the difference between react and respond is that there’s a gap. And I always, I usually have a picture of it when I do a PowerPoint about this, that I’m in London and you’re taking the subway, the tube, and they’ve etched into the concrete right where the doors open and it says mind the gap. And because the train often doesn’t match up with the platform and there can be a gap and you can hurt yourself. So they’re trying to alert you to mind the gap. I took a picture of this and I had it on my wall for years. Really had it really framed nice.

Perry Holley:
But as a great reminder to say things are going to happen. Events are going to happen. And the difference between a react and a respond is the gap, the amount of time between what happened and your next words. And it is that breath, that pause, that mind, the gap. And so for me, I always think about, am I minding the gap to get the outcome I want? I need it to be a response, and I need to be character driven, not emotionally driven, for that. This one I highlighted for me was that John says, if you’re character driven person, you ask, what are my responsibilities? If you’re an emotionally driven person, you ask, what are my rights? We talk so much about this at level one, a level one leader. You have a title. You’re the boss.

Perry Holley:
You have rights. You have the right to tell me what to do. You have rights to boss people. You have the right to have your way, those types of things. But we’ve also agreed that that’s no way to lead. What are my responsibilities? People and motivating people, inspiring people, driving people toward a consistent goal together. There’s lots of things that responsibilities fall. But if I’m triggered, if I’m emotionally pulled into something, I tend to go back to my rights.

Chris Goede:
What makes me think about is all the work that you’ve done, and we’ve talked about here about servant leadership. Right? Is man. We’ve got to put others as a leader. That’s our responsibility. We got to put others above ourself. And personal rights should never, as a leader, overshadow the fundamental obligation that you have to that team, to that, that family, to that organization of what that looks like. And if you do that, if you model that, it’s going to set the right tone of the type of, of character, it’s going to build a culture of accountability and service inside your organization. Uh, the next one is character driven leaders or people.

Chris Goede:
They, they continue when the problems arise. Emotional driven people, man, they just, they’ll quit. They’ll quit when problems arise. There’s no resilience. Yeah, talk a little bit about this one. Your thoughts on it.

Perry Holley:
Well, status quo. If everything was fine, we don’t need you. Leaders, right. The team kids can handle it on your own. So your job as a leader is to create more leaders and lead change. And all change is going to cause conflict at some level, and there are going to be problems. The old adage that behind this mountain are more mountains, it’s just going to be always challenging. So a character driven leader just understands exactly what I just said.

Perry Holley:
Behind this mountain, more mountains. We’ve got to find a way we’re going to solve the problem. If you become overwhelmed and you’re emotionally overwhelmed with the mounting challenges of the job, you, you. I think emotional intelligence, EQ is the answer to this, is that, can I get to take control of the things I control, get people involved? We solve the problem. We have a team. It’s not all on me. Sometimes I think as leaders, we take, it’s all on me. It’s not if I’m a good leader.

Perry Holley:
I got the team. We’re all thinking, we’re all moving, we’re all acting. And so drawing people into this, we don’t quit when problems rise, that’s when we shine. That’s why you’re here, is to overcome the problems, take us to the next level.

Chris Goede:
I know some leaders that literally define leadership as solving problems. That’s it. I am here to solve problems, whether it’s for the team, for the organization, whatever it is. Like, I’m a problem.

Perry Holley:
Solve no problem, we’re fine. We, the team will handle it without you. We don’t need you. Just a couple more. But John, and they’re easy, but they, again, why are they on here? They’re hard to do. But character driven people are just steady at what they do. But emotionally driven people can be moody. I think it goes back to the attitude statement, how you show up and that you’re feeling the weight and you people do what people see.

Perry Holley:
They’re watching you. And John talks about the mirror principle and what they see. And I call it aiao, attitude in, attitude out. What you bring, you’re going to get out from others.

Chris Goede:
It reminds me of a story from one of our organizations that we work with, and I’ve shared this, but it’s probably been a while ago, where the most influential individual on the C suite floor is the executive assistant to one of the vice presidents because she has two different colored coffee molds. Right. This is true story. And so depending on the mood that that executive walks in with his team knows whether or not to go in and talk to him like that. Like, and so to your point, that is an emotional driven leader. The next one is character driven. People really, truly are leaders. That’s what we’re talking about here today, where emotional driven leaders, at the core of who they are, tend to be the followers.

Chris Goede:
Um, and I think we can all look back and, and see examples of what that looks like. And so Perry and I just went through this list and kind of quickly tried to, to give you some of these simple kind of one liners. That, that John has laid out for years and that we’ve seen, um, seen lived out on both sides. Both of us personally have experience both sides. We also coach and train and, and consult with people and, and see it on different sides. We probably have family members that are on both sides.

Perry Holley:
I wouldn’t go using any names.

Chris Goede:
No, yeah, we’re not using any names. But, uh, before I let you wrap up, let me give a closing couple, closing thoughts around this, um, character provides a moral compass and foundation for our decision making. We talked about, what is that decision making for filter for you. Perry talked a lot about what are the values, what are the principles that we’re going to. We’re going to do that, uh, where emotions can kind of lead on, um, unwise choices. Really rash, right? Like, we’ve, we have been a part of groups. We’re like, hey, let’s go here. Or all of a sudden we’re going here on a flight somewhere, and 3 hours before somebody’s like, I just bought us tickets, we’re going there.

Chris Goede:
We know people like that, right? And they just, they, emotions can lead to that. It’s not a bad thing. And at times you do need some of that. But, man, you got to have a decision making filter that you fall back as you’re leading organizations and emotions are extremely important. What I don’t want you to hear us say is that being an emotional leader is a bad thing. It’s not. It is not at all. But I think that when you really want to build a foundation, I think that you’ve got to have a lot of these character traits for the long haul, the sustainable part of leadership, because the emotions can, they can be unreliable due to what’s going on on critical decisions.

Chris Goede:
You have to make actions that are required of a leader. And so as you think about this list that we just shared with you and you download the learner guide, I’d encourage you just to kind of look, divide that paper right in half and begin to self assess and go through and say, where am I at on this? And then we haven’t challenged you in a long time to do this. If you’re up for it, go to some of your team and say, hey.

Perry Holley:
How am I doing?

Chris Goede:
Yeah, I tell you what, here’s a simple. If you’re watching on YouTube right here, if you’re not, I’m holding up a sheet of paper, draw that line down there and just be like, circle which side of the chart I’m on and under my leadership, what does it look like to be on the other side and then really have a good conversation around that.

Perry Holley:
I love it. Well, the bottom line to everything we talk about here is developing your influence as a leader. And I guarantee you if you’re leading from the emotional side, your influence could be lacking or struggling in some areas. And if you lead from, you’ll almost always be drawing people toward you and developing your influence at higher and higher levels, as Chris reminded you earlier. If you’d like to get that learner guide, learn more about our offerings. See the other of our podcast offerings. Do all that at maxwellleadership.com/podcast. You can also leave us a comment or a question there.

Perry Holley:
We love hearing from you. Very grateful you’d spend this time with us today. That’s all from the Maxwell Leadership executive podcast.

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