Executive Podcast #311: Improving Your Level 3 Communication

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. As we get started, I want to remind you to visit maxwellleadership.com/podcast. Click on this podcast and there’ll be a form there that I’d love you to fill out. One of the greatest things that Perry and I, we get to do, we’d love to do we get to do it, is to work with organizations to develop a common language around the leadership inside their organization. It drives culture, and it’s a great way to start. And it’s around John’s five levels of leadership. Not only do we training consulting, we do coaching around that and really go deep there.

Chris Goede:
So if that’s something that’s interested or your team needs that, if you’ll fill out that form, let us know. We would love to serve you in any way as we get started. Today’s topic is developing intuition. Leaders are readers. Now, you need to understand, I. I need help in this area. Intuitiveness has been something that I’ve had to learn over time. Over time, right.

Chris Goede:
That’s not what my wife says. She’s extremely intuitive compared to mine. But I love that where we’re going. Yeah, I love where we’re going here in regards to the readers part of this. Right? Leaders are readers. So we’re going to dig into this a little bit today, and John likes to say that. John says leaders are readers and readers are leaders. We attribute that to reading books, and we make a lot of assumptions around that.

Chris Goede:
And I have to just be honest. I do, too. And I see that. I’m like, oh, yeah, I got to go read more books to be a better leader. But. But what John’s really talking about is how do we develop skills and intuition by reading other things? That’s what we’re going to talk about today.

Perry Holley:
Yeah, there are several things. I’m with you. This word, leader’s intuition, is, uh, can be a little slippery about what? What is it? How do I have it? And, um, you know that some people are born with more leadership ability, some natural tendencies of leaders. Others may not be, but we believe that it can all be learned and so based. Your intuition is either going to come from some of your natural gifting, or you can learn it and I think today I really wanted to speak into us another, I would consider this another classic John Maxwell teaching around about how do you develop your intuition as a leader, and what are your thoughts on that? Do you, can you tell when somebody has it or doesn’t have it?

Chris Goede:
Yeah, I think you can, John, when you talk about this being a classic John, so intuitive, and, and I’ve been around him for about 25 years and continues to, to be intuitive, um, I think it is important. I think it saves time, uh, with the team, it, you’re, you’re thinking out ahead of the team. But I do think that, um, if you’re not born naturally, or even if you are, have a little bit of intuitive spirit in you. I think the more experience, the more exposure that you get to things, the more intuitive you become about certain situations, even if it’s not an identical situation. But you have some type of intuition about something that has happened in the past. So I think you can see it in people. I think you can sometimes feel it in decisions that are being made. But what about, what about you, Kenny?

Perry Holley:
Well, we teach a lot about self awareness. And then I thought, well, I need to definitely need to be self aware, and then I need to be, from my own learning, was I need to be better, more others aware. So not just me self aware about me, but I need to be others, what’s going on with others. And then I need to be situationally aware. So I kind of expand his self awareness to be others awareness, to be situational awareness. Am I paying attention to what’s going on? What John would say is that leaders, you know, leaders are readers. So what the first thing was, leaders are readers of the situation. Are you reading what’s going on? Pick up on the details that others might miss.

Perry Holley:
Read the situation before you get all the facts of what’s going on. Does that resonate with you? Do you think it does? How that applies in the work world? Do you read situations?

Chris Goede:
I think that this is an interesting point. You know, when we think about the intuitive side of leaders, what you’re really going after is, am I able to see patterns? Like. So here goes my logical brain, right? Some other people like, no, I just feel it like, what are you talking about? Patterns, right. And I go a different way. I think it’s us being proactive to solving problems before they get really, really bad instead of reactive. And then also, you just develop this people insight, like on the people over time that I think you can develop that. And so as you think about their situations, you go hmm. Am I being like.

Chris Goede:
Am I observing everything that’s going on? Am I aware of what’s going on around me? Am I aware of how Perry’s treating so and so? Am I aware of how Perry’s facilitating that class? What does that look like? And then I also think, in regards to the situation, this, again, comes back to my personality. I think I can be more intuitive, which just may be a little bit of an oxymoron. But the more information that I gather allows me to maybe have some take that information, take my observation, and then can intuitively. Is that right, or is that too many facts there? I’m like, am I stretching this? But I think we’re in that mode, right, of receiving. And then what ends up happening is the more you do that, you’ll become more intuitive.

Perry Holley:
Down the road, I’m flashing back to, we homeschooled all the way through. And so when our kids were teenagers, I’m coming in from the office, I’m coming home, and I open the kitchen door. I’m walking in, and I notice my wife is kind of forcefully putting dishes in the dishwasher. And I look across, and my daughter’s got her back and her. Got her arms crossed, and she’s on the edge of the sofa. My son is looking like he’s trying to get away from. I go, okay, I’m reading the. Something going on here doesn’t feel right.

Perry Holley:
My intuition tells me that my first words ago, daddy’s home. I should be a little more careful about that. But, you know, you learn to read the situation and watching things. The second one, John would talk about, I really want to hear what you think about this. Leaders are readers of their resources, and that instead of trying to do everything on your own, you focus on mobilizing people and leveraging resources to reach the goal. I think this is huge when it comes to being the type of leader that sees things work without you instead of because of you. But how does it play into intuition? How does that. I’m making that leap.

Chris Goede:
Yeah. The resource part of this is interesting, and I think I’ve seen John live this out so many times, everything from whether it’s a project, a skill set, or whether it’s the people side of things, whatever it might be, as a resource, data. And it’s fascinating to watch. But what I have known is that, again, this goes back to knowing and having knowledge and understanding the resource. Right. And understanding that, also understanding that there’s so many resources. I think today, more than ever, we have so many resources at the tip of our fingers, you can get extremely distracted by those resources and miss the intuitive opportunity to make a decision, whatever it might be. And so it’s being able to prioritize those resources in really truly how to help you make that decision or to lead in that area.

Chris Goede:
So it is interesting, there’s so many resources out there. I think we can tap into all of them in order to help you become more intuitive.

Perry Holley:
It’s a really good point there about, we have a lot at our fingertips. Are we distracted by that?

Chris Goede:
Yes.

Perry Holley:
The intuition comes in there. Can you intuit the best use in every situation about how to leverage the team, the tools, the techniques, to get things to where it goes back to. I’ve heard you say this about, are you doing the things that only you can do? And so if you find yourself doing things that others could be doing, are you intuitively putting everything to work, leveraging those that are at your fingertips, to put a team to work, delegating if you need to delegate, taking things that only you can do, getting resources, funding.

Chris Goede:
Tools, don’t reinvent the wheel, whatever those.

Perry Holley:
Types of things, you got to be able to read that situation. Another intuition builder John would talk about is that as leaders or readers, leaders are readers of trends and that you can tell when conditions are changing, you can tell when there’s trouble coming or an opportunity coming. They seem to be able to look into the future a bit. I don’t think leaders do this enough, but I know you, you and I, we kind of challenge each other on keeping up with what’s going on in our market and around us. But it’s bigger than just knowing what’s going on in learning and development or what’s going on in leadership. There’s so many more things, but you have a pretty structured approach, a daily routine about reading and things. But do you get a lot of your intuiting about what the future may hold for us and others?

Chris Goede:
Yeah. The first thing I’d say about that, to your point, um, is you can get into a routine right back to the resources, but also even in trends, um, and stay very, very strict to your industry. And I would challenge you to even maybe go outside your industry. One of the greatest things I learned from a CFO we had here at Max leadership years ago was, um, what are you, what are you observing, watching in trends of other industries that potentially could affect ours? Maybe an arm’s length, but, or how are they reacting? And, and so again, just thinking a little bit differently there. This is a word we we’ve actually done some content on this before. I think you become more intuitive, the more curious you are, right? Like this is a word that you talk about a ton. And so that curiosity will drive you to learn more, to study more, to ask questions more. Which then leads to my last point around here of trends is you can only absorb so much information.

Chris Goede:
But when you begin to network and to connect with people in your industry or aware of your industry, you’d be fascinated. Be like, for example, you’re like, man, I read this book on culture the other day, and then somebody else was like, well, I read this book on, you know, leading a different generation, and all of a sudden we’re having a, well, what do you think? The next two years and you’re going into a conversation because you’re networking with other people that are in the same industry, somewhat like minded. That may help you with the trend. So that as you begin to then retreat back into what you’re leading and what you’re doing, you can begin to intuitively see or maybe observe what’s going on and then to make some decisions. So I think it starts with curiosity. I think you’ve got to do some of your homework, the market research, to just then take all that. That’s just remember, these are just tools that help you become more intuitive. Those are just tools.

Chris Goede:
What’s going to happen is you’re going to become more intuitive because of those tools, but you can’t rely just on those tools that make sense. So I think you can definitely learn it, but by doing a couple of these things that we’re sharing with you.

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Perry Holley:
I’m in the leadership space and I love it. And so I do a lot of reading around that. So my book reading is mostly around leadership, management, productivity, those types of things. But I know that there’s a bigger picture. So part of my morning routine was I just expanded to, I’m going to, every day before I wrap up my morning time, I click on LinkedIn and I just watching and I tried to follow people. They’re different and they’re not all in leadership, but what are people talking about? What are they writing about? And I’ve, I picked up a couple of really cool trendy things that I didn’t know were happening. I’m using Instagram or something like that, too. And I’ll also have people near me.

Perry Holley:
I don’t do a lot of TikTok, but I’ve got people that I know that do. And I said, if you see something and I’ll, somebody will flip me something. I go, that’s interesting. I think that’s how I learned about the great resignation or something like that. We talked about it here. I’ve also looked it at YouTube a little bit every day to say, what are people talking about? What are the little stories, like a minute type things? What are people? Much of it right now is political. I don’t really want to get into that, but I think you should pay attention to what’s going on politically. If governments are doing things, if laws are coming in, how is that going to affect, if a government has a new plan for something, the Green New Deal or whatever, if that goes in place, how’s that going to affect you? And so you don’t have to agree or disagree, but you need to know what’s going on.

Perry Holley:
I think over time, as you said, you were at the top of our recording, you said, I’m learning. And I think that is a great reminder right there. Is that you. But by doing small things daily with some consistency, over time, you can develop an amazing intuition about things people say. How do you, you seem so wise. How do you know these things? I just listen and read and study and pay attention to a lot of different things over time to do that.

Chris Goede:
It makes me think about even as a parent, right, where you may be in a situation where you’re coaching one of your children and you’re like, hey, listen, I feel like this is what’s going to happen. She’s going to say that this is going to happen. That ain’t ever going to happen. And then a couple days later, how’d you know that? How’d you know that? Right to your point, time learning experience is going to drive our intuition.

Perry Holley:
John also says that, and I love your thought of this one, that leaders are readers of people. This has got to be the biggest one. You can sense a level of buying and engagement of the individuals around you have. This could be at home, it could be at work. They tell when someone’s troubled or if someone’s doing well. When you see people, it’s reading people at home or work is you’re going to have difficult connecting and influencing people if you can’t read them. So how have you seen this one play out over the years?

Chris Goede:
For us, this is all about level two influence and John’s five levels of leadership. And there are so many assets out there for us right now to be able to better understand our people, whether it’s a free tool, whether it’s understanding their values. By the way, in one of our trainings, we do an incredible exercise where I was just with a group on Monday this week and took a team through a values cards exercise. And it’s amazing, and you know this, that people go, I’ve worked with you for 15 years. I had no idea that was one of your values. And so that whole being able to now understand, like, oh, now I know why, you know, Bob made that decision because that’s part of his values, which is a decision making filter. So I give you that as an example. There are all kinds of resources out there to assist you in being able to read people, to become more intuitive.

Chris Goede:
I also think that as you’re gaining influence and leading people, you need to be actively listening. You need to work on your EQ. You need to have regular check ins with them. The last one I’ll say, you have to understand how they’re motivated. Again, it goes back to intuitively being able to lead certain individuals because you know how they’re motivated. So you have some data behind it, and so you don’t really, you don’t lead necessarily. I heard a statement one time, I think it was Chris Fuller, one of our executive facilitators. He said, hey, we always want to lead from data, not with the data, you know, like, so you’re going to have some things that you have in your head, but then intuitively you’re going to have to make a decision.

Chris Goede:
How do I motivate Perry? But it’s based off of some of the work that I’ve done ahead of time. So. But I think this is huge. We’re in the people business. Everybody’s in the people business, but I think for us, this is probably the biggest one that John talks about here.

Perry Holley:
I know the biggest growth point for me on that one was to be able to read people. I had to get myself out of the way. I am so into me. I’m so knowing about me. I am so focused on me. I don’t really look at you. If I can get myself, and John talks about this and the laws of communication is that you’re not the star of the show. It’s others.

Perry Holley:
That’s why I said it. For me, I added self awareness, then I added others awareness and then situational awareness. And if I can get, if I can do those three pretty well, I can get myself out of the picture. Last one, it’s a big one, but it’s about, John says leaders are readers of themselves. This is all about self awareness. It’s all about knowing your strengths and your weaknesses, your blind spots. Being 100% about knowing that you, I need to know you and being honest with yourself that I have this strength, I have this weakness. I know in the past I’ve had these blind spots.

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. Super excited to get to bring to you today a lesson that we literally just talked about, just kind of. We were together at one of our partners events, and it was miserable. Well, the weather was miserable, and the partner was great. The partner was great, which he’s now probably smiling because he’s an avid listener, which he’s the other listener. We were wondering, right?

Perry Holley:
Yeah.

Chris Goede:
We found out that Bonnie, Sarah, and then our partner, we were talking about this, and we often talk about the five levels of leadership, and we talk about how, you know, you have level two, where you gotta be able to connect and. And build relationship with people to really gain influence. But then level three is, man, we gotta produce. And Perry brought up something he’s been working on a little bit, and he said, how do we go about connecting and communicating while at level three? Right? And so today’s topic is improving your level three communication, which I love this, because level three is about production, but in order to do that, you gotta be able to communicate. So, hey, listen, if you wanna download the, uh, the learner’s guide, or if you have a question, or again, as always, a topic for Perry to kind of dig in and. And figure out a lesson around, don’t hesitate to go to maxwellleadership.com/podcast there. If you’ll click on this podcasts, then you can fill out a form, and we would love to hear from you. So, listen again.

Chris Goede:
Let me go back and say this is something that is from the field, something that you’ve been coaching on recently. And all of us have to produce an organization sometimes with more pressure than not. And what I love about our conversation we’re going to pull out today is even with that pressure at level three and what we need to do to our KPI’s, we can’t forget. We say you can never leave a level when you move up to the next level. And communication is so big when it comes to level two connection. So unpack a little bit more context for our listeners on what drove you coming up with this content today.

Perry Holley:
Yeah, I started with a coaching client, and he was struggling, driving the results. People were disengaged, pulling back, giving half efforts. Frustration, some. Maybe some anger. Some things. And I just started pushing a little about what’s going on, because I find him to be someone who is exceptionally good relationally. He knows his people. He cares about his people.

Perry Holley:
He’s taking. I think he’s done the level two work, but he. He kind of changed gears when he got to level three. And really, he’s a driver. He’s really pushing, which many of us are, and that’s great. But, you know, kind of thinking, is your influence strong enough to carry you through level three? Is. Is kind of the question that jumped in my mind, and I began, you know, I like to teach about the. This greatest leap in all of leadership, and it really is that at level one, people follow you cause they have to.

Perry Holley:
Level two, they follow you cause they want to. I do think that is the greatest leap in all of leadership. What would make someone give you permission, which is the name of level two, permission to lead them, to influence them. And so when you start getting into level three, this is where your credibility as a leader is found. This is where all the hard stuff happens. John will say, you’re not a leader unless you produce results. And you won’t be a leader very long if you don’t produce results. So many of us, while we love level two, especially you and I, we love level two.

Perry Holley:
We’re specialists. We have to work hard at level three. But some of you are really specialists at level three. You really drive results great. You struggle with little level two. And so what got my heart and mind was, can you increase your communication, change your communication around how you interact at level three to bring that level two influence with you in doing that? And that’s where the whole thing came from, is that I can tell you more about how he. Where he was coming off the rails, but it really is just being a. A good results driven, productivity, production level driver, leader was not really working.

Chris Goede:
Yeah. And our conversation from that really got us into a place of, you have to be doing both all the time, you know, as a leader. And as we were driving around the golf course, getting sopping wet in a hurricane, with really good heart in a hurricane. We were just in this conversation, and we were just picking each other’s brain. Well, this is what this means. And this is what this means. It really was a little bit of an aha. Moment for us going, yeah, like, in order to do level three really well, you still need to be doing level two really well.

Perry Holley:
That’s where the title came from. You were saying something. I went, oh, it’s really about level. Write it down.

Chris Goede:
This is something that’s very applicable to all of us because, like Perry said, we do have to produce, but, man, we gotta connect with our people. And what you wanna do is continue to build trust upon trust with your people. And in order to do that, when times are tough and you’re pushing and you gotta have that communication there, and that will drive connection. And so speaking of connection, uh, John, obviously in the 21 laws of leadership, talks about the law of connection and where he says, man, you gotta. You gotta touch a heart, um, before you can even ask for a hand. So in this example, level two would be, how do I touch a heart? Some of you are like, it’s a little bit too soft for me. I get it. Remember, it’s about, how do I connect with them? Cause when you do that, it becomes real for them and you connect with them, then you can ask for a hand in order to help produce.

Chris Goede:
That’s level three. So the question is, putting it in terms like that, can you keep touching a heart while you’re asking for their hand and stay connected, stay productive? And more importantly for you and I, as we teach about this all around the world, is that they’ll stay engaged because we need team members to be engaged. Whether you’re at level two or level three in this situation.

Perry Holley:
Yeah. And it’s so easy to separate those. Well, I’m going to. We’re going to have the one on one in my office, and I’m going to connect with you and get to know you and ask how I can help you and what are the obstacles in your way. We kind of have this bonding, and I feel like we’re connect. I love the word connecting with you. And then we’re outside the office, in the midst of the project, in the midst of the client deliverable, and the.

Chris Goede:
Midst goes out the window.

Perry Holley:
And now we’re, you know, we’re not touching the heart, we’re asking for the hand. Give me more, give me more. Push it, push it, push it. Can we, can we do them at the same time? Can I change my communication or alter, enhance my communication to level three? So level three is where all the hard things of leadership, because it’s your credibility, is wrapped up in setting the goal and setting expectations and establishing a standard of performance and holding people accountable, setting priorities, these are all hard things often to get communicated out. But can we do that? So I ran across this term, it’s not my term, but I was just, I like to read and study, and I ran across this and the guy used the term humble inquiry, and you.

Chris Goede:
Shared that with me the other day. I did.

Perry Holley:
I’m really thinking about this. Yeah, I’m really thinking about this. And so this is developed by a guy named Edgar Schein, and he’s written a lot about it, but it’s really communication that helps you kind of do more asking instead of telling and maybe acting like you don’t already know all the answers and that your goal is building relationships. And I think about it, you know, we talked about engagement. You mentioned that term rowers, watchers, and sinkers in your boat. Are the people with you when you’re in the heart of the push really doing the work? Are people rowing with you, or are they sitting with the ore across their lap, watching the scenery go by, or worse yet, drilling holes in the bottom of your boat? Let’s just leave the sinkers out. That’s not coaching. That’s an intervention.

Perry Holley:
But can I move these. These watchers to be rowers so that everybody’s engaged? And I think, to me, I like this idea of humble inquiry as a communication style at level three. And I’m just. I’m still learning. So I thought, that’s what I really want to share today, is what this is and how it can work and how it cannot work to get people’s ideas on that.

Chris Goede:
I appreciate you not making this the title, because often, you guys know, he tries to put a title in here that I can’t pronounce very well. So humble inquiry a little bit, right? It’s hard to say.

Perry Holley:
Yeah. He said, I’ve seen it written both ways, so, yeah, let’s go. We can say inquiry, inquiry. We’re going to agree on that.

Chris Goede:
Yeah, let’s do that.

Perry Holley:
Humble. Inquiry.

Chris Goede:
Inquiry.

Perry Holley:
Oh, it’s one word. Inquiry.

Chris Goede:
Let me go back real quick before we move on to this humble thing we’re talking about here. When you were just talking about level three and level two and the heart and the hand, and we were talking about this, it made me think. Let me go back to when we were having this conversation, and I was not producing very well in this team event that we were a part of.

Perry Holley:
Very well or at all.

Chris Goede:
Okay? So I hesitated to bring this up, but now I knew I shouldn’t have brought it up, and I was horrible. Right? I hadn’t played it a while. I mean, horrible. I’m getting frustrated. I think my team’s getting frustrated. But you know what I realized, Perry?

Perry Holley:
What’s that?

Chris Goede:
Is that you and my buddy Brian, there was no touching a heart while I was not contributing at level three, there was no connection with me. You were making fun of me, and.

Perry Holley:
There was no humble inquiry.

Chris Goede:
There was no humble inquiry.

Perry Holley:
What is your problem?

Chris Goede:
So I just wanted to bring this to attention. I think this lesson really is a follow up on the fact that they weren’t nice to me. But it’s so true. It’s a very simple example, and I’m joking around a little bit about the example, but it’s real, right? Like, I mean, I wasn’t contributing, and we were having fun and a lot of laughs, but there was no level two connection there. But when you talked about this in the golf cart, we talked about this humble inquiry. Like, it’s so interesting in how you go about doing this. And part of connecting, remember, we’re talking about this at level three, and communication being the connecting part. Um, you’ve got to ask more open ended questions.

Chris Goede:
You got to be able to draw out the best in the other person. Uh, it goes back to, like Perry says, all the time, hey, I mean, I have a point of view, but tell me your point of view. And you open it up, because what you want is you want their thoughts, you want their perspective, and you don’t want to make, uh, assumptions about what’s going on or the issue at hand. And when you do that, you demonstrate that you’re being genuine and you’re really curious. We, man, this is a word. We talk about it.

Perry Holley:
Big word.

Chris Goede:
There’s a couple of things that are big for us right now. I don’t think leaders as a whole are consistent enough, and I don’t think they’re curious enough. And here we’re talking about, man, how do you become genuinely curious and interested in the other person’s view and experiences, not to defend yours against theirs, but to learn and to inquire from that. And so when you do that, man, the trust, the walls go down with your people. The trust goes up. They begin to feel psychologically safe, which we talk about, that inclusive leadership, and, of course, you designed for us, and you’re really just showing that you value the other person. And we talk a lot about, people want to be seen, valued, and heard. And I think if you go through this and you’re humble and you’re seeking out and you’re curious, you’re going to get that from them.

Perry Holley:
And when you’re doing this inquiry and asking more than telling, you need to really up your listening game. It cannot just be for show, asking questions. Then go do your own thing. You want to really hear from people and hear what they’re saying. You might also ratchet up your vulnerability. Another word we talk a bit about is that you don’t have all the answers. I need your help. I don’t know what to do now.

Perry Holley:
Of course you have an idea. Like you said, I have a point of view, but what do you think? And really inviting those ideas from other people and it really pushing on what they say to gain deeper understanding of what they’re saying. Now I can hear leaders everywhere saying, wait a minute, how long is this going to take? I’m like, I can just tell you what to do and push you to get it done. And I do my best, Doctor Phil, and say, how’s that working for you?

Chris Goede:
Right, right.

Perry Holley:
And so this idea of vulnerability, developing trust and saying, I need you help. But here’s the bottom line. It may take a couple extra minutes as you get into learning this humble inquiry, but over the long period or the long view on that, people will start to really adapt to your style. And we don’t have to spend so much time building trust, and we have it. And now people tell you what they think, and now people bring ideas and now they own the process. Now you don’t have to push so hard because they want to. This was the leap. Again, I don’t.

Perry Holley:
I have to follow. I have to do what you say. No, I want to be a part of this. You, you hear me? I have a voice. Let’s go. And it’s not in our notes here, but this is a really big deal for your younger generation workers. They are not big on you being the boss and telling them what to do. They want to know, why are we doing it? What’s the purpose in this? How do I fit into it? You can do all that through this inquiry process.

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Chris Goede:
Yeah, I love it. And remember, let me just bring us back to what Perry’s literally working with us on, communication. The purpose of this and doing this is to improve communication, especially when there’s a gap or there’s a level between yourself and the individual that you’re leading, or maybe it’s yourself and your leader. So remember, the purpose of this humble inquiry is to improve communication. Going back to what we talked about at level three, how do we stay so strong in communication that we do not lose connection with them? And I think it’s key not only peer to peer, but even more importantly, when there’s a different level in the hierarchy. If you have levels between yourself and those you lead or yourself and that leader, here’s the bottom line. If you use this humble inquiry appropriately, then your leadership approach is going to be significantly different than it has been in the past. And the team’s going to realize that.

Chris Goede:
It’s going to drive engagement, it’s going to drive enhancement. It’s going to create a collaborative work environment. Things that will raise the lid, right? It’ll raise the tide and all boats on the team will improve. If you think about going about this, throw away.

Perry Holley:
So let’s get practical for a moment. Cause I hate to ever. There’s a nice theory, right? How does it actually, what does it look like? So you mentioned asking open ended questions to understand team member perspectives. That’s fantastic. Some ideas around that would be, you know, what are your thoughts on this project you’re giving assigning work? Do they have a voice in that? How do you think we could improve this process, how we’re doing things? Because they’re closer it. Do you ask, how do you see it? How can you help? Let’s say you were trying to make decisions and could you seek their input on decisions? You might say, I’m considering option a or b. What are the pros or cons for each? What do you think about that? You do that really well. You’ll say, hey, we’re thinking about going in this direction.

Perry Holley:
And you’ll say, I need some input. What do you see? What factors do you think we should weigh in making the decision? What’s the most important things in making the decision? Or some ideas for that?

Chris Goede:
Again, these are all just practical ideas for you as, as we work through this. A couple other examples is ask feedback on your own performance. What now? I think Perry purposely put this in here for me to ask because he wants to share that with me. But, you know, Perry and I joke around a lot about using the statement, what does it look like to be on the other side of my leadership, man? I would encourage anybody out there that’s willing to ask that question of your team than to be able to listen to that feedback. Ask them, what can I be doing differently? How can I better lead you? What does that look like? How can I better support you? The other thing is, man, inquire about challenges that the team is facing. Um, I have the opportunity and the privilege to lead a couple of different teams. One of them is, uh, as a sales team. That is the number one question.

Chris Goede:
What. What can I remove in order to get you to do what you’re here and so skilled to do? What does that look like? What is difficult? We went through an exercise with our team just recently where we said, and it was interesting that one of our team members brought this up to me in one of our off sites. And so I posed the question. I tend to be a little bit positive all the time, what are the things that we do well we need to keep doing? We went through this great list. I was super proud of the team, and we narrowed it down and said, we’re gonna, in the next quarter, we’re gonna really focus on those two. And then I have one of my brilliant team members who’s been with me a long time. She raises her hand and she speaks the truth, whether I like it or not. And she goes, why don’t we ask the other side of that question? And so then now we’re working through what are the things that we’re doing that are challenges that are keeping us from having a great culture or a great production?

Perry Holley:
But that’s another humble inquiry. You could ask for ideas and suggestions. How would you think we should solve this problem? If you were in charge, how would you approach the situation or another one? You said about asking about needed resources or support. What resources would help you be more successful in this role? Is there any additional support you need from me or from the team? I just think there’s so many great examples of practically not telling, more asking, but really listening, caring, being vulnerable, putting yourself in the mix with them, and really building that relationship. But I’ll go back to something you said earlier. You said, if done appropriately, this humble inquiry can really work. If done appropriately, are there some ways a leader can mess this up? Absolutely.

Chris Goede:
Yeah. I love how you have taught me to always look at the other side, to be able to kind of explain an issue, which tends to be the negative side, but it’s real. And so, absolutely, we can mess this up. Here’s some of the common pitfalls we want to share with you that we really would encourage you to try to avoid. Don’t ask leading or biased questions. Now, let me just stop here for a minute. There is no doubt that you have felt and experienced leading questions, and someone’s steering the conversation in a particular direction.

Perry Holley:
Leading the witness, your honor, 100%.

Chris Goede:
And this happens all the time. Matter of fact, I think some of us do it without even being aware, like, we’re unconscious doing it because we have such a bias in a certain situation.

Perry Holley:
Wouldn’t you prefer to do it this other way?

Chris Goede:
Right, like, because you. That. Yeah, that it is the right way to do it. Not truly listening. This is one of the things that, man, I really want you to be. To have genuine curiosity and then listen really intently, actively listen and seek what they’re trying to communicate to you. And then finally, this is a big one with us, with influence, which is, man, make sure you have the right motive. Motive matters.

Chris Goede:
So make sure that you are sincerely interested in the answers of the questions that you’re seeking, because they’ll. They’ll feel that they’ll read right through that, and that will completely take away all of your influence.

Perry Holley:
Yeah, they can tell if you. Are you trying to manipulate me or motivate me, as John would say. And so, yeah, people can tell right away. I think you can also, you can hurt yourself on humble inquiry by not being prepared to act. Somebody tells you something, someone gives you something, you don’t have to do everything everybody says for sure. That’s not the game here. But are you asking that you have no intention of doing that will burn that bridge in a quick hurry, neglecting psychological safety. And I’ll put this together, ignoring the power dynamics.

Perry Holley:
If there’s a hierarchy in your organization, and most do, if you’re a supervisor or the boss and you’re having humble inquiry with people that report to you, just be aware that there are some power dynamics. They’re always in play. But are you? Is it okay to tell you the truth? Is it okay to tell you what I think, or would it be best if I just salute and stay mute and don’t say anything, because you can’t handle the truth type of a thing. So be creating that psychological safety where it’s okay to say what you think is a beautiful piece of that.

Chris Goede:
Well, as we wrap up, I have an action item for you, and I have a story for you. And so let me. Let me give you the action items first, and I’m gonna share stories as we close. And I’ll throw it back to Perry. These questions that we just went through, perry’s provided for us. I love this, right? It’s like, hey, let’s get practical. We talked about what we’re trying to do here. We want to make you not only a leader or remember, leadership is influence.

Chris Goede:
You don’t have to have a position or a title to be leading people. So we want to make sure that when you’re leading and influencing people, not only you connecting with them, but, man, you guys are getting something done, whatever that might be, and that while you’re producing, you don’t lose the connection with them. And so these are great practical things that I want you to go through these, and I want you to. We hear this a lot where people go, man, love the podcast. It’s very applicable. It’s short. I have my team listen to it. Then we get in our weekly meetings and we just say, hey, what was your number one takeaway? I want you to take this lesson and you can do that.

Chris Goede:
But I also want you to take one of these questions and begin to work through it as a team. Go around the table, share. What’s your, you know, what, what is your perspective? What does that look like? How would you answer that question and then make sure you’re not falling for any of these pitfalls, right? Because there are some. Here I go. Ooh. In that conversation today, like, I’m reflecting today a bunch of meetings. Did I truly listen? Like, I’ll ask the question, but I truly listen and hold each other accountable to that. It’s the only way that youre.

Chris Goede:
Your team is going to get better. Now, let me share this story with you. And I was reminded by it, by going through this lesson today. I happened to be on a trip last Thursday with John, and we went to Longview, Texas, and John spoke that night. And it was a lot of fun to be there. But the reason this comes to mind and why I gave you this application is because a young lady came up to me and she’s like, man, we absolutely love listening to your podcast. What we do is we take this and then I share it wherever I can share it, and we talk about it. And, man, it’s.

Chris Goede:
It’s so good. Well, what I want to tell you about the story is I said, hey, can you speak up a little bit about which podcast you’re listening to? Because we happen to be in the green room, and I was standing right next to John Maxwell. And while I have the privilege to, to be with Mark and John on their podcast periodically. This is the one that I, you know, I do with Perry, and I believe this is the one making a difference in the entire world. But she goes, oh, yeah, no, I mean, I listen to your podcast, and you know who you are. Cause you’re listening right now, and you’re gonna take this and you’re gonna take it to your team. And I was like, so are you talking about, like, John’s or the executive one with Perry and I. She goes, no, with you and Perry.

Chris Goede:
I don’t even know what the other one is. And I said, will you say that a little bit louder? Right? And John’s just sitting right there. And so I said, I’m taking a picture with you. Cause I gotta send this to Perry. And so I took a picture and I sent it to Perry, and I said, perry, I can’t wait to tell you the story. And I made them wait till we got together, and I shared the story. A lot of fun. But what.

Chris Goede:
I share that with you because I just want you to be encouraged. Take this content and apply it with your team, with your family, with your peer group, whatever it might be. That’s why we do what we do. And the greatest joy for Perry and I is that we know that around the world, wherever we go, people are coming up to us and saying, mandy, I listened to that. It added value to me, and I shared it with somebody else, and that’s why we do what we do. So, thank you for listening. Now, apply this content that Perry has put together for us and make your influence increase, but also do it in a way where the team produces together at a greater pace. And as you’re sometimes in heated conversations, you’re communicating in a way that you don’t lose that level two influence with each other.

Perry Holley:
Perfect. Well, great stuff, Chris, and thank you all. If you. As Chris mentioned earlier, if you’d like to get the learner guide for today’s episode, if you’d like to leave a question or comment, if you’d like to learn about our offerings or those other podcasts that might be out there, you can do all that at maxwell leadership.com podcast. We love hearing from you. Very grateful that you spend this time with us. That’s all today from the Maxwell Leadership executive podcast.

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