Executive Podcast #319: Developing a Leadership Pipeline

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 know something we talk about, I want to dive in right away to a statistic that bothers me, but I also am grateful for it because it gives us a lot of opportunity to add value to people. This is not anything that’ll be earth shattering, but we know that probably 65 to 70% of people get promoted to a leadership role and are not prepared properly. We talked last week on our episode. By the way, if you didn’t listen to last week, I want to encourage you, go back to listen to episode one with our special guest. And we really talked about, you know, the fundamentals of success and leading people. And we talked a little bit about individual contributors.

Chris Goede:
When you do a good job, and all of us have been in this situation, they’re like, man, you are the best. Now go lead a team. And like, well, what does that mean? Right? And then all of a sudden everything falls apart. But because of your performance, then all of a sudden you get promoted. And we don’t do the proper work to develop and train the people. And so today’s topic we’re going to talk about is developing a leadership pipeline. How are we doing that? So that when the opportunity is ready, the student is ready to step in. And that’s what Brian Porta from Hendrick Automotive Group, who leads their university here for Mr.

Chris Goede:
Hendrick, does on a daily basis, he and his team think about that. So we’re going to dive into some of that. And I just promise you want to listen to this entire lesson. Make sure you go back to the first one as well. Before we dive in, Remember, go visit maxwellleadership.com/podcast. You can download the Learner’s Guide if you have a question for us or maybe a topic that maybe spurred from today’s conversation that you want us to unpack a little bit for you. We’d love to do that. Click on this lesson and then you can fill out that form.

Chris Goede:
Well, we had a lot of fun last week as we got to be here at the headquarters of Hendrick Automotive.

Perry Holley:
You mean including the security check we got coming in the building?

Chris Goede:
Yeah, Brian loves to have a lot of fun. And so when Perry and I entered.

Perry Holley:
The building, we Are regular visitors.

Chris Goede:
Yeah. It’s not like it’s our first time here. We’re in the system. And he had the security team up front say, excuse me, step aside, you’ve been flagged. We have to have security. Right.

Perry Holley:
And they did it with, like, professionally straight faces and the buzz laser.

Chris Goede:
Yeah. But they did a great job.

Perry Holley:
Um, but why are you laughing at us?

Brian Porta:
That was great. It was great. How to set the tone.

Chris Goede:
We also realized we now found out who our second listener was.

Perry Holley:
Right.

Chris Goede:
We have. We have two. And Brian confessed to us in between episodes today, every Thursday, he listens. Every Thursday on the ride into work, that. That he listens. But Brian Porta is a guy that’s become a good friend of ours, does an incredible job leading a team. Carries the responsibility of training and developing which, to Perry’s point of the topic, developing this leadership pipeline. It’s his responsibility throughout 11,000 employees that they have here at Hendrick Automotive Group.

Chris Goede:
So, Brian, thank you for coming back. Why did you come back for a second episode? Is there. I mean, this is unlike you to stay committed to something like this for two straight episodes.

Brian Porta:
I understand.

Chris Goede:
That’s for the security check, by the way. I just had to throw something in there.

Brian Porta:
Darling, that was fair. That was fair. I just hope our attendance hasn’t dropped for this call.

Chris Goede:
No, no, not at all.

Brian Porta:
Ratings are plummeting already. I can tell.

Chris Goede:
Yeah.

Perry Holley:
They find out you held us up. That was really good. All right. I’m the one that came up with this topic, and I really am interested in this because this idea of developing a leadership pipeline. I happen to be, as a Maxwell coach for the Hendrick organization. I coach quite a number of dealerships with their GMs and their entire leadership team. One on one for the GMs and then group with the teams. And I know that every one of these senior leaders is constantly struggling with developing the next generation of leader.

Perry Holley:
You teach leadership here, but you also help them with developing those leaders, because you’re not always there. The university is not always there in the store, in the dealerships. Give me a feel for how do you see leadership development? How have you embrace this? And how do you help these senior leaders, these men and women that are so dependent on leadership in their stores to help them be better?

Brian Porta:
Well, the first thing I want to do is thank both you and Chris for all of the partnership that we’ve had for so many years. And to your point, one of the best things that Mr. Hendrick ever allowed us to do was to be able to Coach our senior leaders. So having every general manager, having a coach and having every general manager then having their team be able to be coached has done a tremendous job as far as having that person to give you insight that isn’t in your business daily. So third party perspective, 100%. And that’s the biggest value that we’ve seen over the last numerous years that we’ve been doing this coaching and our teammates. When we first started, it was. Everyone was reluctant, who is this person? Why am I talking to this person? But if I don’t need a coach, I don’t need a coach.

Brian Porta:
I know everything. I’m running the store. This is great. I have all the answers. Well, we know that’s not the case. And having been in that position for seven years, having another voice to be able to bounce ideas off of is tremendously valuable and our teammates love it. If we were to pull that now, there’d be mutiny in the streets. They would.

Brian Porta:
They have developed such a relationship with their coaches. That’s, that’s one of the biggest things that we’ve done and we were so appreciative that, that Mr. Hendrick got with Dr. Maxwell and the two of them hit it off. They’ve, they’ve talked about how, how two peas in the pod they really are and we’ve really reaped the benefit of that in, in our company.

Chris Goede:
Well, last week we talked about that. We were at your leadership summit.

Perry Holley:
Yes.

Chris Goede:
And it has become such a culture of developing people. I want to back up for just a minute because it was so awesome to see every meeting that they start they actually read from John’s Daily Reader. Right. It’s a very simple couple paragraphs. It’s about a topic. And so it started and Mr. Hendricks said, we’re going to start the meeting today. You guys have flown all of your leaders in from around the country.

Chris Goede:
Everybody’s in the room. 270 people are in the room. It’s an expensive day. They’re like, let’s get down to business. And Mr. Like, hold on. Like we’re going to talk about some leadership. And then there was even several references to the coaching and, and developing and pouring into and the value that you guys are adding to the people.

Chris Goede:
It’s about the people as a, like a holistic approach. Because I heard several comments about different benefits they receive all and coaching was one of them. Matter of fact, um, one of. I’m sure one of our coaches highlights yesterday was Jeff Gordon happened to. Who now leads your motorsport team happened to come over and was saying a few words and someone was getting onto him. And he said, listen, the only two people in here that keep me straight is Mr. Hendrick. And then he pointed to our Maxwell leadership coach, which was, was a just a testimony to allow us to be a, another voice because of our time with John and what we can do for organizations.

Chris Goede:
When you talk about the talent in the room, Perry and I had the opportunity. Perry has a good friend in the Atlanta market and we, we brought him in for a conversation around what’s the, what’s the business outlook in 2025? And it was so interesting for us to hear where he started. And he said, what you need to be aware of is you got to win the war on talent. And, and that comes to not only the hiring of talent, but then what are you doing to develop the talent? So I know with you and your role, a big part is seeing the talent, finding the talent, training and development. Is that something that, that you guys actively think about every single day? If so, how do you go about doing, finding that talent? I know a lot of our listeners would be interested in that. But then also when they join Hendrick, is there a process as you take them through initially, as you begin to train and develop them even before they get to a leadership role?

Brian Porta:
There is two answers. One, you mentioned the Daily Reader. That’s something that we do every single day in every one of our dealerships. Every one of our meetings, especially at the end of the month, we do three days of calls with Mr. Hendrick. Every single one of those days starts with a Maxwell Reader. And then we talk about the lesson. And when we implement that in our classrooms, we always have the students read for the Daily Reader.

Brian Porta:
And then we talk about what is the leadership lesson in that message.

Perry Holley:
People say, we don’t have time for this. This is not a 20 minute thing. This. Can you describe, like, what would a typical Maxwell Daily Reader moment be like? And I’ve been in the dealership. They start every day in the daily huddle with the Maxwell Daily Reader. Like Chris said, it’s a paragraph or two, but it’s not a big expansive time thing.

Brian Porta:
It isn’t. And typically in our debrief meetings in the morning with our general managers, they’ll have all of the key leadership in the meeting. You read the Daily Reader and then you literally go around the room and ask everybody who was moved by that reading, what was the message. And what happens is that team really starts sharing and by three or four minutes later you’ve had an amazing Discussion about whatever. And it’s so fitting. We say it all the time and I’m sure you all experience it. But it’s so fitting how whatever their reading is that particular day always seems to be on point for whatever is going on in your particular dealership that.

Perry Holley:
Day and the one your president read at the meeting with 270 people in the room was. Happened to be about attitude. And they use it as a theme for the day. It happens to be today. Happens to be about attitude. And it was like really a six minute exercise. It was not.

Brian Porta:
That’s exactly.

Perry Holley:
I’m sorry, go back and answer Chris’s question. I was. I just think that’s been such a cool culture thing that you’ve set up. But it’s not just a few. Everybody does this every day and it.

Chris Goede:
Doesn’T take a lot of time. It’s got to be intentional about it.

Brian Porta:
It doesn’t. And it shows. The authenticity of this team really is cultivated by that because people put their guard down, ego’s checked at the door. I’m weak in this area or I’m strong in this area. Chris, you’re really good at this. How can you help these three managers do what you’re doing? That’s what this topic is today. It just, it isn’t a long conversation. But when you do it every single day, that’s, that’s the difference.

Brian Porta:
I mean the whole how to eat an elephant one bite at a time, it’s the same concept. If you do leadership one day at a time. Leadership isn’t learned in a day, it’s learned daily. And it’s just that small period of time that you’re investing in your teammates. Every dealership does it. Every leadership meeting we over here we.

Chris Goede:
Start becomes part of your culture.

Brian Porta:
It’s just. It is the culture.

Chris Goede:
Let’s talk a little bit about that finding. And I know necessarily, not necessarily the university is responsible for that, but you’re aware of how the teams go about finding talent and then what’s the initial kind of developing training part of that talent look like? And is that a priority that the dealerships and then the university partner together on?

Brian Porta:
Very much so. We have a tremendous HR department and in HR department is our recruiting department. They work with the stores, they help retain, recruit the talent to come in. They even help with the interview process. We try and structure that as much as possible because we find going through the interview process, if you’re hard on the process, you can be easy on the people. That’s good and that’s One of the things that we really focus on so we get the right people into the. Into the dealerships, and then we train them. We partner with each one of our dealerships.

Brian Porta:
Each one of our dealerships has a regional trainer. We begin automatically onboarding. Talking about our culture class. Every single student goes through the culture class. Every single student goes through the MBS class. I know in our last episode we talked about that, but NBS is a partnership we’ve had for over 40 years. Every single one of our 11,000 teammates has an MBS badge. We’re in the car business.

Brian Porta:
This is your owner’s manual. This is how you need to be communicated with. If I need to get. Want to get the most out of you. I read your owner’s manual to know how to communicate with you. If I want to work with you, Perry, I see your owner’s manual. I know how to communicate with you. That’s the whole purpose of it.

Brian Porta:
And it’s a great conversation starter, too. When your clients are here, they’re asking questions, and it’s a great way to break the ice.

Chris Goede:
Let me. Let me go back to a comment you made. You just flew right by it. And for those of you that maybe are exercising, driving, whatever, pull over or write this down. Somehow Brian said, we are hard on the process, so we can be easy on the people. I don’t know about you, but I know even from my leadership experience, I’ve been hard on people because my processes weren’t very good.

Perry Holley:
Yes, that’s good.

Chris Goede:
And I’m sitting here going, that is so rich. That is so deep that I want to encourage every leader out there, even if it’s something as simple as a little process for your team of what your expectations are on how and when they show up for the office versus even how they show up for clients. If you have that process dialed in, then you’re hard on that process. You don’t have to be hard on the people. And I think that is that right. There is a captured moment that you need to write down and unpack for whatever that looks like in your business or in your leadership.

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Perry Holley:
Yeah, very good. Now, I want to go back to the dealership because I work with a lot of these GMs. Yes, they are. Chris mentioned this winning the war for talent. They are in the middle of that war. Do you do anything to help them? You talked about hiring and getting the HR involved in recruiting the prospect. Now I’ve got this team. They all have a team.

Perry Holley:
They’ve got the head of sales, the head of service, the head of finance, the head of parts. They’ve got this team. But how do you help them grow? Or do you have a role in helping them develop the talent? I hear about finding talent, but one thing we asked the expert said, you talk about finding talent, but who’s developing the talent we have into the next generation of leaders. That’s something you guys.

Chris Goede:
We do.

Brian Porta:
We partner with you with the Maxwell Group in the stores to help cultivate that leadership. We also work from the university’s perspective to help with the academies we mentioned on the last episode. We try and find ways to give them enough resources that when they’re trying to get their number two. Mr. Hendrick is always big about number two. Every departmental manager that you mentioned has to have a number two because you don’t get promoted in this company unless you have someone push you out. So you have to constantly be developing people. So our university, with our.

Brian Porta:
Our lms, with all the tools that we have available at the university, share that. Now, we don’t push rope. So if there are 10 stores out there and eight want to use it, in this particular. Whatever the example is, we focus on those eight. But we’re such a competitive culture that the other two get on board pretty quickly. But that’s what’s key in our company.

Perry Holley:
Yeah, Love that.

Chris Goede:
Yeah. When you start talking about the pushing the rope, as competitive as everybody is inside this organization, I’m sure you’re probably hanging on, on your end of the rope as they’re pulling, saying, come teach me, come develop me. Right. Like what. What is it that you guys are learning? I want to talk about you mentioned the word servant and kind of, how do we serve? Several times I’ve heard it come out of your mouth in regards to the people and why you do what you do. That is a trait that Mr. Hendrick wasn’t on your values a couple years ago. I remember this process and he said, you know, it’s about servant leadership.

Chris Goede:
At the end of the day, that’s what it’s about for me. And so we’re going to now put that on our company values and it’s going to be the number one value. That’s how important it is to Mr. Hendrick in this organization. Perry’s done a lot of work, a lot of studying on servant leadership. A lot of people think that that’s a soft way to leave. They don’t. It’s not a.

Chris Goede:
They think it’s subservient way. Right. Like it’s completely wrong. And you know that that’s not it because that’s not Mr. Hendrick. And he is an example of servant leadership. How does the university go about implementing that trait? That thought that how do they train around becoming more of a servant leader in the field and to their people so that that part of the culture that Mr. Hendricks so desires to permeate through ends up getting to the very, I guess, least tenure employee that just joined the team.

Brian Porta:
Excellent question. And again, like I mentioned in the last episode, we have a front row seat to a level five leader, servant leader every day, Mr. Hendrick. And all we try to do from the university is capture. So we try and take as many videos and as many segments where we have Mr. Hendrick talking and demonstrating that behavior. And to be a servant leader, all you’re trying to do is build your teammates up and the way that you’re able to pour into them. Dr.

Brian Porta:
Maxwell talks about, people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. You can’t ask for their hand until you have their heart. Mr. Hendrick demonstrates that. So we show the ways that he. That he does it. And to your earlier point, people think that’s a soft way of management. We typically hear that.

Brian Porta:
But how is someone that’s as incredibly competitive as Mr. Hendrick, and especially on the NASCAR side and on the automotive side, two different divisions that do an amazing job, you obviously are making people number one. And they want to. They want to run through walls for Mr. Hendrick and he doesn’t have to yell and scream and shout. That’s not the style. So therefore our culture is not that style. So we try and teach that.

Brian Porta:
We try and teach people that the more you give people, when we talk about leaders that come in, and especially if you’re a general manager and I know, you talk about it on coaching calls all the time when they park out back and they walk through the shop and they’re checking in with their technicians and the parts counter people and making sure that the reception and guest services have all been greeted and they know their people. That’s what this company’s about. And you get more out of your people because they want to do more for you when they know you have their back. And that’s what he teaches us and that’s what we university from our trainers and all of our courses. We try and show and illustrate what that leadership is about.

Perry Holley:
And I would be remiss if we didn’t if we ended this conversation without talking about. You mentioned about the culture and that came up in the meeting last week. It was so everybody talking about the specific culture. It starts at the top, Mr. Hendrick and a set of core values. We’ve seen it play out here in recent weeks with the devastating storms going through North Carolina, not that far from here. But listening to the response that the Hendrick organization had to that really over the top, really trying to serve people, as you’re mentioning. But this idea of culture is so tied up in core values.

Perry Holley:
And Chris mentioned the very top one is servant leadership. But there are a number of really strong core values here. But I know at the headquarters and being where you see Mr. Hendrick and you’re around him, that’s one thing, but getting that culture out into the field, out into all these dealerships who have a bunch of different people, but it seems to really trickle down. And you find the Hendrick culture out in the field. And I wonder what your role in that. I’ve been in some of the cloud. I know you guys do the Daily Reader.

Perry Holley:
I know you do some other things, but how would you say, what’s your responsibility from headquarters when you’re pushing it out to a distributed force?

Brian Porta:
Well, Mr. Hendrick is huge on communication, so much so that I think Dr. Maxwell’s Daily Reader December 6th is about communication. We all had that laminated and that’s definitely something that we all take to heart. But he’s very big on face to face communication. And if you can’t be face to face, then he’s very big on video communication. And every single Monday, our executive team sits and meets via video with every one of our general managers. At the end of the month, Mr.

Brian Porta:
Hendrick spends three days of his very, very busy schedule reviewing all of the results with each one of our general managers. And the more that you’re able to capture him and then have those leaders work through their market area vice presidents and the GMs to get that information into the stores. Then our training team can come around and marry with that message and spread that to the teammates that are in the stores, either in the classroom, because our trainers will either go into the classroom and conduct training, or we do what we call over the shoulder training, where they’re actually in the dealership and they’re working side by side. You might get with a general manager. Hey, Perry, you have anybody new? Well, I have three new salespeople. Okay, could you go work with them? Then our trainer will go and take those values and work side by side with those new hires at the direction of our general manager.

Chris Goede:
Well, as I wrap up for us today, when you say communication, thought about another comment that I’ve heard around the university here also in the meeting last week, which is, we are going to communicate in a way that you will never be surprised by anything that is going to come or is going to be said or where you stand, like the very transparent. Right. It’s like the best way for us to develop other leaders is for them to know the story, both good and bad. Right. Because even in the meeting, there are some things we’re like, we got to work on this. And they would, you know, just communicate to some people right there in the room. But they never, they never did it in a way that demeaned the people. Right.

Chris Goede:
It’s, it’s again, back to the people first. They’re heavy on the process, but that they’re easy on the people and they do it through a way of communication. And I think communication is, if Perry and I, every organization that we’ve had the opportunity to serve and work with in the top three, communication is always a challenge. I would even say at Maxwell leadership, the number one leadership expert in the world, we got, we have communication things that we have to continually work on. So I want to leave you with this. I want to leave you with just two thoughts that came out of Brian’s responses to us today. Number one is, as you think about developing this leadership pipeline, are you communicating that? What are you communicating? What are you sharing? How are you communicating? Another great little plug for understanding the owner’s manual. I love that.

Chris Goede:
The owner’s manual of how people are wired. They’re going to receive communication differently. You need to be aware of that. That’s how you stay connected to them. The other thing that he said is, and John says it to us in a way of work yourself out of a job. Brian said. Mr. Like, people are going to push you out.

Chris Goede:
And when they do, I’m going to have another spot for you. Both leaders, Mr. Maxwell and Mr. Hendrick, very similar in how they treat people, how they develop leaders. And, and so they both are saying, hey, we have another spot for you, but we need you to develop people to be able to do that. And so those are two simple takeaways for from today, which is just make sure you’re asking people that question. Who’s your number two? I like what you said. Who’s your number two? If you weren’t able to be in this meeting today, who’s showing up on your behalf? Because we need to know who that is.

Chris Goede:
And if you don’t have that, then you need to start talking to your people about it. Which then leads to the first one I just mentioned was man over, Communicate all things, because I see, I see this organization do it. I see you do it as a leader, Brian. And it takes away all types of, well, I wonder what he’s thinking. I wonder where my results are. I wonder who. I wonder. And then all of a sudden, human being, as a human being, our flesh takes over and we tell ourselves all kinds of crazy stories.

Chris Goede:
We fill in the blanks and then we start acting all crazy and all kinds of things. Oh, I’m just going to stop right there. I was going to share some examples, but I, but I’m getting real. And I was even thinking personally and professionally about you. Stop, Perry, take it away. But let me just close with Brian. Thank you. Not only for today.

Chris Goede:
Being a part of the meeting last week is always a privilege for us. But getting to do life, and I say do life with you, we connect every Friday in 30 minutes. We have a lot of fun. We talk a lot of business. We’re trying to help move the needle. But when you’re able to partner with people that have similar values and care about people the way this organization does, it makes that partnership a lot of fun. So thank you for entrusting Maxwell Leadership to partner with Hendrick Automotive Group and Hendrick University specifically. We’re grateful for you.

Chris Goede:
So I appreciate it.

Perry Holley:
I just think about the communication side, the transparency of it. I just think Mr. Hendrick, from the top, they see it, he leads that way. There are no secrets. There are. Here’s the numbers. I mean, he even showed last week in the meeting. Here are the numbers.

Perry Holley:
Here’s we got a problem. Here’s what we need to work on. Here’s we’re doing Great. But there should be. In the, even in the stores, there’s no, there’s transparency. Telling people what’s going on. There’s no secrets on your team. No secret.

Perry Holley:
We, we got to work on this. So I, I just think you were talking at that transparency, even from the.

Chris Goede:
Top of, in last week’s meeting, where we’re at in the year, sharing all the information, sharing all of it, down to the smallest detail of Mr. Hennig saying, you guys, you guys know I don’t like cell phones on during meetings. Turn your cell phone. He’s talking to a room of over 250, 70 liters. We all understand that you shouldn’t have your phone on, but he’s going to communicate it.

Perry Holley:
And he went and got one and.

Chris Goede:
Then he said, and I’ll take it. Right. So think about the span of a leader like Mr. Hendrick talking about the company financials and sharing them all the way down to, you better have your cell phone off or I’m coming to get it. Right. And in between. So you can’t not communicate enough about stuff.

Perry Holley:
All right. Fantastic conversation. Thank you both. Brian, thanks for having us in your beautiful studio. Look forward to many more opportunities to work with. As a reminder, if you want the notes from today’s session or learn more about our offerings or other podcasts that are available, you can do all that@maxwell leadership.com podcast. You can also leave us a comment or a question. We love hearing from you and very grateful you’d spend this time with us today. That’s all from the Maxwell Leadership Executive Podcast.

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