Executive Podcast #308: Be a Funnel, Not a Filter: Leading Up

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. I’m excited about today’s title, and I was just talking to Perry a minute ago, because when I saw it, I immediately thought of Tim Elmore, who is one of our thought leaders, been an incredible communicator and content writer, and has created a ton of habitudes, which are images, leadership images that really kind of drive our behaviors and our attitudes. And today’s title leans that way a little bit. So I asked Perry.

Perry Holley:
I was like, I might have my.

Chris Goede:
First attitude, might have a little attitude. Now, he didn’t draw anything to go with it, so we don’t have an image. But here’s what it reminded me of. One of the things that we do at Maxwell leadership is we go into teams and organizations, and whether it’s coaching, consulting, or training, really help them with some gaps that they have. What it made me think about is Tim is an expert on the next generation, and I always say the next generation because he’s always studying the up and coming generations. One of the training and coaching curriculum that is on fire for us right now comes based out of one of his latest books, the new kind of diversity. Our training is leading multi generational teams, and. And Perry has really dug into this.

Chris Goede:
He’s kind of our master certified trainer on that content piece, and it’s. It’s a. Going extremely well now that we have five generations in the workforce. So I don’t know if you’re listening to this by yourself or if you’re with your team debriefing. You can just look around the room. There’s plenty of different generations even in this room right here. And I’m not saying, but. Yeah, you are.

Chris Goede:
No, I am, but I’m not. Yeah. And we have way behind the studio. We have three generations. Yeah. He’s much older than Perry. Okay. But why I thought this was a habitude is because the title is brilliant, and I can’t wait to unpack it with you today.

Chris Goede:
We want to be a funnel, not a filter, when we’re leading up. Right. And John wrote some incredible content. We have some training around the 360 degree leader as well, and it just ties right into that. Right. Because as a leader, you need to be aware of how am I leading, influencing, by the way, is how we define leadership. How am I leading my peers? How am I leading my direct reports? How am I leading myself? And then how am I leading my leader? And so am I being a funnel or not a filter? And what I love about this is that there are times, especially the bigger your teams get, the organizations get as leaders, you can feel like there’s a disconnect between you and what’s maybe going on in the field or a couple levels down. And so this challenge becomes very real.

Chris Goede:
And then what ends up happening is you. You build this inner circle, or organically, an inner circle begins to come around you, whether you chose them or nothing. And then what ends up happening is you may not be getting the right perspective from that. And that’s what we’re going to dig into further today, because it really goes back to Perry’s title here, which is, are the people around you being a funnel or a filter? And it’s extremely key because you don’t want just, yes, people around you all the time, because you’re not going to get the right answers. And as leaders, you need to know the right answers. You need to know the temperature of what’s going down there. So talk to us a little about where this came from after that long, sorry setup, but I’m super excited to dive in this with you.

Perry Holley:
I would consider this a classic John Maxwell teaching from over the years. And I think you should listen to it from two perspectives. One, you leading up. So, as Chris was saying, you may be a leader in your own right in the organization, and you have a boss. Are you a funnel or a filter to that boss? You may be the boss and have people below you. Are they funneling or filtering to you? And, and how would you know? And how do you deal with that? Can you. This inner circles are fascinating. We probably should talk more about that.

Perry Holley:
But just to be clear, and we’ll define both of these. But if, you know, filter. If somebody below you is a filter, or if you’re filtering for someone above you, is that you’re just generally telling the leader what they want to hear you, that yes, person type of thing you mentioned, you may be promoting your own personal agenda, things that you’re trying to get done, maybe manipulating a bit. You think you’re protecting the leader when you’re really exposing the leader to risk because you’re not telling them everything. You’re telling them what you think they want to know. You’re protecting them from that. And you may be manipulating I just said that, leader, to get something for yourself. And so if you’re a leader looking down at someone speaking to you, are they, are they filtering it to, you have a manipulative type of a.

Perry Holley:
Back to that. Or if you’re leading up, are you just telling them what they want to hear?

Chris Goede:
I love the perspective of absorbing today’s content from both of those perspectives. We’re going to give it to you, obviously, from a corporate standpoint. As you were talking, I think this is so relevant personally as well. Right. And when we talk about a funnel, what we’re really talking about is, hey, are you. Are you communicating to your leader? Are you getting to a place where you’re informing them on things that they don’t know, but they do need to know? You don’t want them to be caught off, um, off guard in any type of situation. Matter of fact, I have not done this well at times before, and I’ve been in meetings with my leader, and something came out, and it was a very uncomfortable situation because you should. I should have had the meeting before the meeting, and I should have been more of a funnel than filtering it.

Chris Goede:
And so I’ve learned some hard lessons.

Perry Holley:
Like, I didn’t think you needed to know, or I’m afraid that.

Chris Goede:
Not afraid, just, I’ll handle that. You don’t need to. Whatever. I’ll get it taken care of before it even becomes a major issue. And then it comes up in a meeting and it’s like, what? When did that happen? And so I think it’s just this word picture you’ve given us of the two is so good, because they do need to know the facts. You need to know the facts looking at it. And we need to make sure that. That our leaders and us, if we’re leading, are not the last ones to find out.

Chris Goede:
A very important thing.

Perry Holley:
You got me thinking coming off a script for a minute, but that’s a very interesting dynamic, is something comes up. Should I have told them? But one thing that you do here, and I actually mark, the whole organization kind of runs on an empowerment theme, is that we, we are. I feel empowered to do my job and that I am. We’re going to talk about leading up, taking things off your plate. Do I. I don’t mean to be a filter of things, but I’m also thinking, should I handle, like you said? I should have had. I could have handled it, but I. I should have let them know.

Perry Holley:
Is there a fine line? I don’t want to burden. I’m thinking where I said, I don’t want to burden you with things you don’t need to worry about, but I also need to protect you from things you need to have known about.

Chris Goede:
Yeah, it’s a fine line. Right. And I think with the more. The more experience that you have, you’ll. You’ll understand. What I found coming out of that situation was I immediately reacted and changed the behavior of saying I would then maybe just email a weekly report. This is what’s going on. I’m aware of this.

Chris Goede:
Whatever. And it’s almost kind of like a things that you should probably respond to, things you need to review. Right. And then. And then the rest of it, maybe you don’t need to tell them, but it’ll come with experience in situations that you gain with time over time. So I think it’s a learned behavior that’s going to end up happening.

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Perry Holley:
Well, you’ve been leading teams as well as I have for years and years. But how do you. Can you tell? Filter er from a funneler.

Chris Goede:
Oh, I like that. Add er to that. Are those English? I don’t know, but we’re putting it in there. The executive leadership podcast.

Perry Holley:
I know the last two people they should ask about, that is me and you.

Chris Goede:
Yeah, that’s exactly right. That’s. I think you can. But I do want to say, but you can tell. But it’s going to take some time. Meaning, as a leader, you’re going to have to be continuously reflecting on things that you’re seeing, things that you’re hearing. What are you aware of that comes out? Who and why are you aware of that? Like, who told you that? And then the other thing I wrote down here was, well, then, how did it play out? And why that’s key is that’s why I say it’s gonna take a little time yes, you will know you gotta be in observation mode, but if you pay attention to how that played out, you’re gonna eventually be able to tie back how that played out to who and what made you aware of the situation, and what were you aware of, what were you not aware of? And then it’s gonna build its own little case with every individual in every situation. So it’s like you’re continuously doing this, and so there’s some trust involved.

Chris Goede:
All kinds of things. I think you can. Some. You can intuitively feel it right away. All right. But, but those that maybe not, I would say it’s just gonna take a little bit of time to figure it out, but you gotta always be paying attention.

Perry Holley:
Yeah, I totally agree with that. I can’t let it go. Something you said earlier about you referenced the inner circle. I think this is a leader’s best friend. I didn’t have it when I was a younger leader, and I probably got in more trouble than I should have. Bye. Thinking I had a little more ability to do things. I didn’t have people watching me.

Perry Holley:
I didn’t have anybody I could bounce things off of. I didn’t have a funnel to run things through. And I just wonder, can you, what’s the value of this inner circle idea?

Chris Goede:
Yeah. So I learned this, obviously, from John. And when I first had the opportunity to spend some time with John, early on, I learned about this inner circle. And really what I found was it was men and women around John that would protect his time. They would hold him accountable to the decisions that were being made, whether it was to execute on them, to hold him accountable to why the decisions were made, based off of his personal values. And so there’s this group of inner circle men and women that John has around him that are that guide for him. Right. To make sure that he’s that way.

Chris Goede:
But what’s interesting is, several years ago, John developed an outer circle. So we started digging in on this, and we were like, well, John, what’s, why do you need an outer circle? And he would say, you know, to us, he’d be like, I mean, well, you guys aren’t expanding my thinking enough. You’re not challenging my innovation. You’re not. And it’s really important to talk about this for just a minute, because when you think about those that are in your inner circle 100%, you got to make sure that they are funneling, not filtering, but there are some in there that are going to maybe filter, because, like I said a little bit earlier, right. I was like, oh, I’ll handle that before it ever gets that situation. Maybe that was right, maybe it wasn’t. But in the inner circle, you’re probably going to have people that will lean more towards filtering than funneling the outer circle, not only challenging John’s thinking, innovation, bringing new ideas, but, like, they’re just telling them how it is.

Chris Goede:
Like, you know, what the marketplace thinks about you, right? Like, or whatever it might be. And so he now has an inner and an outer circle of people around him that give him feedback and help them through things. So I know you also have some experience with inner circle, too.

Perry Holley:
It’s just having, it’s just one or two, three people that absolutely will tell you the unvarnished truth about how they, how you’re perceived by others, about your decisions, about how you use your time. Where are you? Who you with? What do you do? Doing all these types of things that they can run through. But as you were speaking, I hadn’t thought about it in terms of funeral filter, but they, they love me and they, they will protect me.

Chris Goede:
Yeah.

Perry Holley:
And that, in that protection, they may not tell me everything.

Chris Goede:
They may filter.

Perry Holley:
If you filter just out of, out of love and appreciation. They. And, but they won’t let me get in trouble, but they also may not let me. I really appreciate what you share. They may not let me go to innovation and to change into.

Chris Goede:
And that’s what John was saying. Like, I love you guys. Yeah, I love you guys. But. And you want what’s best for me, but, like, I’m ready to surf the waves a little bit. Right. And so I love it when I.

Perry Holley:
Write this whole thing, and then I come in here and learn something. Let’s, let’s switch gears. We’re talking a little bit about leaders leading, uh, down. So you’re thinking about people that are fun to you, but let’s talk about. I’m looking up to my leader, and we. This is all in. You mentioned earlier about the 360 influence is 360 degrees up, down and across. And so you either have influence with your boss or you don’t.

Perry Holley:
And if you’re not going to be funneling very well if they don’t listen to you. So keys to leading up. So you’re the kind of person they want to hear from is, I think number one, is how you lead yourself that. Leading yourself well. And I’ll just say that I always ask people, what does that mean? How can you tell if somebody leads themselves well, but the frames I put around that are, I can tell if you lead yourself well by how you manage your time. Are you out of control? You’re always late. You don’t have time to get things done. I’m not influenced by that.

Perry Holley:
I’m influenced by people who manage their time, managing your priorities. Do you know what’s important? Are you working on, are you majoring on minors or you’re majoring on majors? I’m influenced by people who know the important things. How do you manage your emotions? That’s a big one. Can you maintain a consistency of emotion even when things are a little chaotic? And that, I’m impressed by that. I’m influenced by people who can manage. They’re not too high or too low. They’re doing that. And maybe how you manage your energy and make them across in your attitudes, how you show up and if you come up and you’re woe is me, and you’re down and I’m not influenced by that.

Perry Holley:
But this whole idea about leading yourself well is one of the key ones, I think.

Chris Goede:
I totally agree with you. And you hit it on the head. There’s several things in there that you can pick up on right away, and, you know, whether or not someone’s leading themselves well, no matter what level in the organization they are. Right. Um, but to Perry’s point, you want to be doing that because your leadership, what we’ll call your leadership brand, starts with this statement right here. And by the way, your brand’s going to start showing up in meetings without you.

Perry Holley:
Right.

Chris Goede:
You could. We’ll do a whole another podcast on what that means. Right. And so you got it. It starts here. And. And so I think it’s extremely important to do that. The other thing is, is that if you want to have this influence again with, uh, your leader, so that your voice can be heard, so that you can have influence and make sure that you are funneling stuff up that needs to be heard, man.

Chris Goede:
Just, you have to do your job extremely well. You know, like those that, that are on a team that are hitting their KPI’s and are grinding and figuring it out, whatever that might be, cost savings, revenue generating, doesn’t matter. When you’re doing that, I promise you, your leader is going to allow you to increase your influence with them. They’re going to know that you’re in tune with the business. They’re going to know that you’re in tune with what their expectations are of you. And so the only thing that would. One of the things I should say, the only thing that would kill influence extremely fast is, man, if that leader is having to defend you for not producing, you know, week in and week out well.

Perry Holley:
So if you’re trying to lead up and be that funnel that they want to hear from, you are leading yourself well, doing your job exceptionally well. The third thing I would say would be looking for ways to make your leader’s job easier. We call that lightening your leader’s load. And I can just hear, I don’t know if you’re hearing it, all the leaders saying, what? My plate is so full, you expect me to take something off of their plate to do that. But I think if you are doing these other things, you’re doing your job exceptionally well. You already are lightening their load. I don’t have to follow around behind you and see if things getting done. You’re making my job easier to do that.

Perry Holley:
One thing I do when we teach this and people do, they do push back on this one a little bit. But I say, do you know the number one challenge your leader’s facing right now? And I’m a little bit stunned about the very few people that can tell me that. Have you thought about what is the number one thing your leader is struggling with right now? And the reason I want to know that is that I’m, I may just, by doing my job exceptionally well, by keeping my eyes and ears open, by being attentive to. I know that’s the challenge my boss is facing. There may be things I can do in my normal day of work that I could go the extra mile, perhaps, and lighten my leader’s load. Maybe it is funneling some information to them, it’s protecting them from things they don’t know, whatever they may be. And I’m trying to think about with you, about things that you’re dealing with, thinking how I can lighten, how can I make things easier for you. And so we, if we’re all thinking about that for our leader, it sets your leader up to one want to hear from you and to not have to be focused on down things they can be focused on ahead, things to do well.

Chris Goede:
And a perfect example of that is even just what we’re doing right here in the podcast. And we’ve talked about how this started before, but Perry’s already taken care of a ton of content for us. That is Perry sweet spot. He is what we say as the John Maxwell’s business pen for us. And all of the training that we do and podcasts, all, it comes directly from Perry. Well, it’s not my skillset, it’s not my strong suit to sit down and write. And so he said to me, hey, well, what if I just bring thoughts to our podcast, and then you just react off of it and we just have a dialogue? And now I don’t have to sit down and think, how am I going to come up with now? It’s your responsibility. Now we’re.

Chris Goede:
How many hundred and ten episodes later knows? I didn’t even. He knows how many titles and content he’s had to create. So thinking like that, to your point, right. It’s like, what are you gifted at? What are you already doing that you could just pull some stuff off those that you work with? Loads of. I love that. Here. Here’s another one that we just want to share with you as you think about this, so that you can be a funnel, so that you increase your influence with your leader, is just make sure that you know when to push and when. When, not when to back up a little bit.

Chris Goede:
Um. Some team members I’ve had in the past have just had a habit of just continually pushing back, continually arguing for the sake of arguing or trying to prove a point or you know what? I don’t think that budget’s going to hit because of this. We ought to relook at that. And it’s just that devil’s advocate in every meeting, and eventually that just gets tiring. So much so to the point of where you begin to lose influence and maybe even lose your position or opportunity. And so there’s a balance. You do need to challenge 100%. We don’t all need to believe and think the same thing on the team, but you just need to know when to push, when to back down, and because not only is that an issue in regards to your influence and maybe your job, but also then the leader is beginning to question, do I really trust this individual? What does that look like? Right? Is it.

Chris Goede:
Are they trying to push this for an alternative reason, or is it really for the betterment of the organization? And soon as those conversations start happening, you are losing influence with your leader.

Perry Holley:
Well, I want people to push. I want them to check me. I want them to dissent if they want to. We have that freedom, and I trust you with that. But if it starts to be about your own agenda and you’re filtering things to me, then you’re, uh, here, John. In my head, he said, they’re one of two things. You’re either motivating me or manipulating me, and I’m not impressed or influenced by a manipulator. And I always have this idea when I’m listening to people, motive matters.

Perry Holley:
Why are you doing what you. As you’re talking to your boss, why are you doing that? Is your motive to help them grow them, protect them, enhance their. Their growth, their success. Do it.

Chris Goede:
Yeah.

Perry Holley:
Even if you got to push back a little bit. But if. If the answer is no, the answer is no, and let’s move on. Now you’re trying to manipulate.

Chris Goede:
That’s right. That’s right. Well, as we wrap up, I love of this conversation and the importance of it, not only for, for those that are listening, the influence and your leaders, but then also those that are leading you member influence. So it come from anywhere. And so as, as we wrap up, I want to go back to this funnel versus filter word picture. And what I was thinking about while you were talking just a minute ago, I was like, okay, so, yeah, no doubt, right? The funnel, even though I get a ton of information at the top, I’m only still funneling at the right time things through that funnel that my leader needs to know. I could, I can’t shove everything through there at one time. And so it, it still is a pace, it’s still an art.

Chris Goede:
But yet you’re still telling that you’re still allowing it to go through the.

Perry Holley:
Funnel, but you’re not dumping.

Chris Goede:
Yeah, it’s not like we’re taking, and.

Perry Holley:
It’S just made this a habitat.

Chris Goede:
This is unbelievable. Like, Tim Elmore is going. He probably already has one. We just don’t know it. Right. That’s probably what’s happening. But it’s so important. So here’s what it does for the leader when we do this.

Chris Goede:
It helps that leader ensure that he’s getting accurate information and putting out accurate information, and it’s complete? Right. Like, have you ever been a situation where a leader comes up and says something, and then somebody’s like, ooh, that’s not right. But his team knows that’s not right. Well, why does he not know that’s not right? So it ensures accurate and complete information to the leader. It allows the leader to make better decisions. Again, I love Perry’s idea of perspective. Think about this going both ways. And then finally, it allows the leader, on behalf of the organization or the team, to respond swiftly to issues.

Chris Goede:
You know, in this training course, the 360 degree leader that we do for organizations, we go through an exercise of cards, of rules. What’s the leader’s rules? And one of mine is that my team knows is bring things to me quickly that you think I need to know. Now. I still am trusting them of what they think I need to know. But I also love the fact that if something shows up, they’re just going to let me know right away so that I have time to think about it, process it, or respond as quickly as possible. So love that this content is built off that 360 degree leader. I do want to encourage you, you know, Perry’s going to tell you where to go, fill out a form. But if we can help that your team in any way around some of these conversations, as a leader, we would love to do it.

Chris Goede:
As I close, here’s my last comment for you. I wrote this statement down as I was thinking about today and preparing for this. And it, if you do this, it builds a culture of what we communicate to each other. Meaning as, as a leader, I want to go first. And so what I communicate to you, then once that begins happening, I’m going to trust that I’m getting the same type of communication back to me versus, you know, is Perry, what, what is Perry filtering out and what he’s telling me right here? Or is he funneling the information that I need to know, even though I work directly for Perry? So as I was thinking about this, and maybe it’s a little bit of me being naive, but as I communicate one way to my leaders, then if that’s how and what I communicate the way I assume expect it’s going to come back the same way out of respect for me. And so I would just encourage that leaders go first. Model this man. Be, be a funnel, not a filter, both to your team and to your leader.

Perry Holley:
Yeah, maybe a coaching moment to help your folks be more funnels for you. Great conversation. As Chris mentioned, there’s a website where you can get more information about our offerings, including this 360 degree leader, as well as you can learn about our other podcast offerings. You can also leave us a comment or a question. We love hearing from you. You can do all [email protected] podcast and thank you for joining us today. That’s all from the Maxwell Leadership executive podcast.

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