Executive Podcast #332: It’s Not Supposed to be Lonely at the Top
In this episode, Perry Holley and Chris Goede discuss the misconception that leadership is a lonely endeavor. They explore the importance of building strong relationships with team members, as this fosters trust and allows for more effective leadership. They also emphasize the need for leaders to embrace the people-centric nature of their role, as success ultimately depends on the collective efforts of the team. Additionally, they highlight the significance of involving others in the vision and mission of the organization, as this creates a sense of shared purpose and prevents feelings of isolation at the top.
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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 today, I want to encourage you to go to MaxwellLeadership.com/Podcast. Click on this podcast. There you can fill out a form and you want to learn more about 5 levels, which this is ultimately what this entire podcast is built off of. Some 332 as of today.
Perry Holley:
This is 332.
Chris Goede:
Yes. I. We were. I was with the a CEO and an executive team just recently, and they’re like, how many podcasts have you done? I said, you mean how many is Perry written? I was like, it’s over 300. So if you want just to leave us a note, a comment, a thought about leadership and how we can help serve you, whether it’s you and your team on site through training or coaching, we would love to be able to do that. You can find that form there.
Perry Holley:
If you have an idea for number 333, that would be helpful.
Chris Goede:
That would be very helpful for people, Perry, not Chris, but. So go ahead and do that. Well, today’s topic is titled it’s not Supposed to be Lonely at the Top. Do you feel lonely in this podcast after I’m just calling you out? Yeah. You’re lonely.
Perry Holley:
Yeah. No, I’m telling you, I was on a coaching call. It’s been a while since it happened. But. There was a but. It came up recently. It’s got me thinking about it again. But this first call with a CEO of a large company on the east coast, and I was getting to know him, we were talking and going back and forth, and I just was at the point, I said, tell me about your leadership.
Perry Holley:
He goes, oh, I wish I could. You could. You’re on YouTube. You can see me. But. Oh, Perry, it is lonely at the top. It is so lonely at the top. And I hear John Maxwell in my.
Perry Holley:
Oh, yeah, my ear. Because John said, if you’re lonely at the top, you’re not doing it right.
Chris Goede:
That’s right.
Perry Holley:
And so I. I took a pause and I just said, but I can’t say that it’s first call. I didn’t want to get fired right away. I like to get fired over time. But I said, well, I. On your website, I see you have seven senior Vice presidents. What about them? And he goes, yeah, I don’t really like them. I don’t trust them.
Perry Holley:
I thought, well, I. I know why. It’s lonely at the top, so.
Chris Goede:
And then you’re also going, hey, thanks, Chris, for connecting me with this CEO.
Perry Holley:
I thought, now I know where the next 12 months of calls are going to go. Yeah, we can talk about this. But what do you think about. Have you ever been lonely at the top? Do you feel this. Is this a common thing, or.
Chris Goede:
Well, I think it’s funny because just today, before we record this podcast, I made a comment about, at times, I will protect my team from certain pace, certain situations. And I. And as you’re sitting there explaining that, and I’m beginning to think about this, I’m going, when you do that, it does make you feel lonely at times when you’re doing that. But at the end of the day, I think that I don’t necessarily feel that way because I have a team that I. I trust. I trust the leadership team. I think that’s key in, in not feeling that. And what he said, right.
Chris Goede:
Which was, yeah, I don’t like him, and, and I don’t trust him. And so that’s why he feels that way.
Perry Holley:
Yeah.
Chris Goede:
Yeah.
Perry Holley:
Well, I, I did, you know, we. We did develop a pretty good relationship. And I asked him more about it and it. But he. He said that he was always taught coming up as a leader, and I wonder if this would be generational in nature because he’s. He’s closer to my age than yours, but he said, I was brought up to not build close relationships with the people that work for me. That. Because you might, you know, I don’t want to be close with them because I might have to fire them or I might have to do, you know, have to have a difficult conversation.
Perry Holley:
And I really don’t want to develop a friendship with you because I might. I have to be your boss. And that he said, if I do develop a relationship with them, if I have a close relationship, they’ll bring me their dirty laundry. And he was really nervous about people bringing their personal issues or their personal challenges to him. And I thought, well, this is really, kind of makes it kind of understandable, is that he’s keeping distance. I’ve heard John talk about that in his early career. He said he was actually taught the same thing, stay away. But then as you talk about what is leadership is influence.
Perry Holley:
You can’t really build influence at a distance. And influence is a little personal.
Chris Goede:
It is personal. And we were Talking a couple of weeks ago on one of our podcasts about filling your leadership pipeline, I would encourage you something that you’re working on as a leader or have a deficit and go back and listen to that and give you some thoughts and ideas around how to do that. But that is one of your main jobs as a leader, as we talked about there was to grow the leaders around you. And if you cannot grow more leaders or if you are not growing your leaders, then it may be lonely at the top, which may have been one of as you began to uncover where he may have very competent leadership team, but he was not developing them. And then he felt lonely at the top. All right, so the truth about the top.
Perry Holley:
Yeah, I’m not there. Tell me what it’s like.
Chris Goede:
I’m not there either. But as you talked about John and in your. That voice is in your head and him saying, you know, lonely at the top. Yeah. No one ever gets to the top alone. Right. It takes a team. We could give you a ton of analogies and stories about that.
Chris Goede:
Making it there is essential to taking others there. You have to work together as a team. You have to have people with you. And then finally taking people to the top is more fulfilling than arriving there alone. To be able just to celebrate together when you achieve something and. And you get on top is what makes it all worth it.
Perry Holley:
Yeah, I totally agree. And this leader that I’m speaking about, his loneliness was not a positional issue. It was a personality issue. And he and I worked on that mindset in our coaching over the next months. And he actually was very pleased. When he invited me, he goes, you know what? I’d like for you to work with my seven senior VPs. And so we started as a group and then a little some one on ones after that, but I got to work with those seven. And then it was interesting to hear their perception of him in a group call as they defined him as that level one leader.
Perry Holley:
He was not. He didn’t have a relationship with us. He didn’t. He didn’t reach out to us. He didn’t care about us. He just wanted us to do our jobs and that, that he, he didn’t value them as the people they were. And so a lot of the value that we did in this, in this coaching was he opened up and began to build relationship with them. They, of course, were not trusting of that.
Perry Holley:
They didn’t know where it was coming from. Then they got introduced to our coaching and that opened up, hey, we should all be more relational. And so seeing the bonds between the seven and then back to him started to tear down these wal. It doesn’t have to be lonely at the top. We can actually, if you just follow these five levels of influence, these five levels of leadership. You say, yeah, I have the title, I’m the CEO, but I need to have relationship with these people so that they’ll know the three questions that I’m trying to help them, I care about them and they can trust me. And now we can build this.
Ryan Leak:
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Ryan Leak:
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Chris Goede:
I, like you talked about positional leader. It goes right back to what we were talking about, the five levels of leadership. And so this, this is something that Perry and I talk about often and it breaks our heart, is that the organizations around the world that we actually travel to serve, so many leaders are stuck at level one. They just stay right there. They’re a positional leader. And so they probably do feel like it is lonely at the top. And so let’s look at it this way. Let’s say I do feel like I am lonely at the top.
Chris Goede:
What can I do? Well, the five levels leadership is a great place to start. We’ll just start. You need to understand that methodology, right? And at that is level one where we want to encourage you to avoid the positional thinking, avoid the command and control, avoid the hey, because I said so, right? Begin to understand what do you need to be doing with your team to be able to increase your influence. Not just because you’re not leading, just because the title on your chest. And I also want to encourage you about don’t just think about building a P and L or a team or an organization. I want you to think about building a culture of leadership. And you can build a team. But, man, if you build a culture of leadership, the members of those teams are going to change in and out.
Chris Goede:
Right. You think about some of the greatest coaches. We talk a lot about sports on this podcast, but NFL or even college football, and you look at it, and the culture lasts more than the team does. But when the team comes into the culture and it’s one of leadership, then it’s not very lonely in that side of that organization. No matter if you’re the newest player on the team or if you’re a coach that’s been there forever.
Perry Holley:
I think another thing you can do is just be real. There’s some. There’s some upsides and downsides of success and failure. And I thought, if you’re so enamored with your success, again, you’re thinking, like, I’m doing it on my own, that you can look down on others, and that could cause, you know, them to pull back and stop associating with you. There’s a. That can make some loneliness, but also, if you. If you have a failure, you’re not succeeding, you’re failing. That could be embarrassing, shameful.
Perry Holley:
You know, other emotions rise and you pull back from that. So both extremes can fuel this. An unhealthy separation from others. I want to, you know, have a balanced view of success and failure so that. That I. I know that our success is together. And so I want to connect with you and go that level two and level three.
Chris Goede:
Yep. Third, understand you’re in the people business. Okay, let’s just stop.
Perry Holley:
Wait a minute.
Chris Goede:
I’ll be traveling around, and people, you know, you’re on planes and airports. And for those of. Those of you that have been listening a long time, if you listen to us, you know, Perry likes to sit in airports or walk around airports and force people to smile at them. I at least try to have a conversation with them. And as we’re traveling, hey, what do you do? What do you do? And talk about leadership development. And what does that mean? And this. That. And I’m like, do you have people that work with you? Oh, yeah.
Chris Goede:
Okay. Well, you’re in the people business, and we can help you with your people. In essence, it doesn’t matter. Your industry, doesn’t matter what you’re doing. We are all in the people business. So with that being said, let’s just be honest here. We’ve got to like people. Yeah, we.
Chris Goede:
We have to like people. Otherwise, you’ll never add value to them. Now, you don’t need to love all people. But you gotta have a little bit of like. And as John said, there’s gotta be common ground somewhere. Even if it’s 1%, go figure out what that. And be able to. To connect with them.
Chris Goede:
And so now do this in the right way. We often talk about there’s a fine line between manipulation and influence. It’s the motive behind it. But make sure that you are in it to. For the motive of helping the people become better, bigger and more competent than they’ve ever been.
Perry Holley:
Well, I’ve heard John say if you, if you don’t like people, you’re going to have a very difficult time leading.
Chris Goede:
Yeah.
Perry Holley:
Because. And you do need to love them. And you say love them. I don’t even like them. But that’s talking about love as an action, not love as a. I can’t make you feel anything. But I, I can take actions like being kind, being patient, being, you know, selfless. Yeah.
Perry Holley:
Another one, number four, I think it is, would be. You got to buy into this law of significance. John says the law of significance is that one is too small a number to achieve greatness. So if you are trying to fulfill your vision for your group, your team, your organization on your own, then your vision is too small. If it’s something you can do by yourself, then it’s not worth doing. But make it big and involve others and realize that one is too small a number. B, the law of significance happens when you involve others in the vision.
Chris Goede:
Yeah. As I get ready to wrap up, this is something that has impacted me for a long time. I’ll never forget early on in my career with John, you know, we’d be different places and he’d introduce me and he would never say that I work for him. He says, I work with Chris. And it was a small way back then of letting people know like we’re a team. Like this is a culture of a team and that we’re working on this and this is what we’re trying to accomplish. And it’s never just about him. Now, he may be setting the vision, but when we are putting boots to the ground and we’re out there getting after it, it’s about the team.
Chris Goede:
And that just creates that team environment so that when we do accomplish whatever that vision is, that it’s. We’re all together at the top. As I finally just give you a couple thoughts and wrap up, I thought about this as I was thinking about the content today. I’ve accomplished some things personally and that’s been a lot of fun. But man, when I accomplish things with other people and a team. It just is 10x the excitement level. Then I got to thinking about from a sports analogy, I started thinking about individual sports and I started thinking about professional golfers. And now more than ever, when a professional golfer wins something and they start talking to the press or whatever, now you hear them talking about their trainers and the Wii and and so there is not even individual sports that should be lonely at the top because it’s a team environment.
Chris Goede:
So just be aware of that and some of the things that Perry and I talked about and make sure you understand that you do have to like people to be in the leadership space.
Perry Holley:
You want to carry your bag by yourself. You want to rake that trap on your own.
Chris Goede:
That’s right. You want to fly that plane, you want to make the hotel bed, whatever. Yeah, that’s right.
Perry Holley:
Great, great stuff, Chris. Well, thank you all. And it’s a reminder, if you would like the learner guide for this, learn about our offerings or learn about our other podcast offerings, you can do all that at MaxwellLeadership.com/Podcast. You can also leave us a question or a comment. And we love so much to hear from you and we’re grateful that you would join us today. That’s all from the Maxwell Leadership Executive Podcast.
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