Maxwell Leadership Podcast: Communicate Like a Leader: Live with Roddy Galbraith

Mark Cole:

Welcome to the Maxwell Leadership Podcast. This is the podcast that adds value to leaders who multiply value to others and to Roddy. I am in West Palm Beach, Florida. Somebody in West Palm Beach, Florida with me. If you’re listening and you’re from Houston, you want to redo. If you’re listening and you’re from Atlanta, you’re like, can we be last next year? Because Florida just showed you that they are determined to be the best site in the city tour. The great news today is we’ve got a live audience. The bad news is we’re not going to have any content. Hey, Maxwell. Leadership Podcast family. We do miss you. We are on our city tour. We’re in week three, city three of our city tour. And I’m so excited today because we’re going to be able to engage in a live environment. We’ve gotten great feedback and we’re excited to bring you a live audience today. Live teaching. I’m also excited because we’re going to continue the city tour format. And I’m joined today by none other than Roddy Galbraith. Now, let me explain Roddy Galbraith to you. He is a communicator extraordinaire. I have watched Roddy communicate on stage in front of thousands of people for the last ten plus years. And every time his ease, his ability to connect, every single time, I learned something. So today is going to be no exception, because you’re going to be a better communicator, one on one, one to a few and one to many because of today’s guest. Now, Roddy, I am super excited about this because I’ve watched you not only communicate well, but make a science and then an art out of communication of John Maxwell. So I’m glad that you’re here. I’m super excited because you’re going to give us some great stuff.

Roddy Galbraith:

Welcome. Thank you. It’s great to be here. Great to be in Florida as well. Just down the road.

Mark Cole:

Yeah, this is home.

Roddy Galbraith:

Yeah, this is home. Absolutely. And what a crowd. All three of them. It sounds like a lot more, doesn’t it? We got the best crowd. We do have the best crowd.

Mark Cole:

In fact, city number four is going to be Florida. I’m missing a flight in the morning and we’re going to just be right back here. Hey, Roddy does know a little bit about communication. Chris Room knows a little bit about communication. But what I would love to do is invite many of you that listen week in and week out to join us on YouTube for the visual version of the podcast. You can go to MaxwellPodcast.com/YouTube and you will be able to take it in and be able to enjoy it. Now, those of you that love to follow along and take notes, you can go to MaxwellPodcast.com/Communicate, and we’ll have a downloadable fill in the blank free gift for you. So go and take advantage of that. Roddy, I’ve heard John say often, leaders are readers. And I agree with that. I also think that leaders are speakers. Now, not all of you are tuning in because you will speak in front of 100, 200, 500,000 people in the next seven days. But trust me on this. Leaders that listen in week in and week out, you are communicating. By the way, you may not be very vocal, you may be an introvert. Trust me on this. Leaders, you are communicating. And Roddy, I’m going to prove to our podcast audience that you got the goods. Has anybody in our live audience? Your communication been impacted ten times, a ten X factor because of Roddy Galbraith.

Roddy Galbraith:

Fantastic.

Mark Cole:

And podcast listeners, I’ve been watching, and Roddy did not pay them to do that. This is true. Roddy is one of the best communicators that we’ve got and just an incredible artist in the area of communication. So. Roddy. Welcome, buddy.

Roddy Galbraith:

Thank you. It’s great to be here. Great to be here. I thought we’d kind of dig a little bit into John’s new book, the 16 Undeniable Laws of Communication. And if you don’t have a copy of this book, incidentally, how many of you have the book already? It’s a great book, and I say that not to sell the book, but I think not for what it will do for John and for you, but for what it will do for you. It’s a great book. It’s packed with great stuff. It really is. And can I just share a couple of thoughts on the week?

Mark Cole:

I’d love to begin.

Roddy Galbraith:

So I’ve been professional speaker and speaker trainer for the last 17 years, just over. And I’ve had the opportunity to work with some great speakers, John Maxwell, of course, but others as well, like Les Brown and Nick Vujicic, Seth Godin and many others. And I’ve had the opportunity to see how the world’s best communicators do what they do. But I’ve also had the opportunity to work one to one with well over 10,000 people and see of all of that stuff that the great communicators do. What can most people do most of the time? What works for most people most of the time? And this book, I think practically everything in here, anyone can take and start implementing. John talks about putting the cookies on the lower shelf. This book is packed with stuff that you can use right away. So I really encourage you, everyone, really, to get it and you alluded to this at the beginning, who should get this book? I think everyone should get it, because we are all communicators, whether we realize it or not. We’re all communicating all the time. We’re social beings, we interact with one another. We want to do great things in life. We want to achieve things of significance. And that is going to be with and through other people, isn’t it? And the thing about other people is we need to communicate with them. And so the better we get at communicating I think the better we get.

Mark Cole:

Alive, we start every podcast in the pre production and the prethinking of the podcast, we always have the standout statement and you kind of alluded to this, but I want to dig a little bit deeper. Our standout statement today is everyone has something to say. Everyone. So talk a little bit about that and what that means to you and kind of underscore that statement for me.

Roddy Galbraith:

Yeah, I think it’s true. Everyone has something to say. Everyone has something to say. So if you’re a leader I know this is a leadership podcast. If you’re a leader, you have a team of people, you have a company, of course you better have something to say, because how are you going to cast vision and how are you going to unite people behind that vision and how are you going to encourage them and motivate them and inspire them to move towards that? You have to have something to say if you’re a leader, but also if you’re a salesperson, if you’re selling something, then you have a product that you passionately believe can help people. It’s not going to sell itself. You need to do that. You need to communicate that to people so they can see the value that it brings. They don’t necessarily know that this product is a great solution to a problem that they have unless you articulate that to them. So if you’re a leader, you got to have something to say. If you’re a salesperson, you got to have something to say. If you’re a job seeker or a student, you got to have something to say, because then you’re selling yourself. And when you go for an interview and you try and get a job, it’s not the best candidate that gets the role, it’s the candidate that can best articulate the value that they can bring that gets the job. And so interviewing just isn’t a perfect science and so it’s more of a communication challenge than anything else. So I think if you’re a leader, if you’re selling something, if you’re a student or a job seeker, you got to have something to say. But yeah, if I can just you got to have something to say. You got to have something to say. But that’s not enough on its own. That’s not enough on its own. It’s more than just having something say, because if you have something to say and you say it, it comes out of your mouth, it leaves your lips. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that it lands with the other person. They may not hear you, they may not understand what you’re saying, they may not agree with what you’re saying, and they definitely may not accept it. And so we got to work hard to make our message land with the people that we’re speaking to.

Mark Cole:

Yeah, I would agree with you and we’ve just kind of established leaders should have something to say or we’re in trouble. So if you’re leading and you don’t have something to say, you may not be leading. Just kind of an observation for you. So we’ve got something to say. But isn’t it true that so many people, the greatest fear for most people is fear of public speaking or standing up or having eyes on you? So how would you encourage someone to overcome fear and unleash their voice?

Roddy Galbraith:

Yeah, I think this is a question that comes up all the time because they say it’s the number one fear, don’t they? Everyone’s scared of communicating. Well, let’s just check in the room here. How many of you would like to be more confident when you speak in front of other people? Can we see your hands? Yeah, practically every hand goes up anywhere around the world whenever I ask that. Everyone would like to be a little bit more confident when they speak. I think the thing is, first of all, to realize if that is you, you’re a little bit anxious of speaking in front of other people, that’s okay. That’s almost everyone. If you don’t feel anxious when you speak in front of other people, you’re probably in the minority. So it’s okay to feel a little bit anxious. And then it’s useful to think a little bit about the context of where the fear comes from and what it does for us. Because kind of years and years ago, in our past, danger and fear were very closely related. If you’re living and you’re walking out a long time ago and you’re fearful, it probably is a life or death situation. You may be about to die if something happens. And so what do you do in that situation? You want to run, you want to get out of there. But nowadays, the threats that we face, the link between fear and danger, is not quite the same. A lot of the things that we’re scared of now are not life or death situations, and actually running from them or avoiding those things is the worst thing we can do. It’s actually turning around and facing them and dealing with those things which is most beneficial to us. So it’s changed completely. We need to find a way to step forward into the fear, because if we allow it to kind of make us turn away and run away, we’ll be running from it for the rest of our lives. So we’ve got to find a way to step forward into the things that we’re afraid of, and then we see it for what it is. We see it’s not dangerous, and that’s the only way that we’re going to outgrow it. So we have to find a way to step into it.

Mark Cole:

You know, it’s so interesting. Our podcast, Family lets me use personal Family all the time. But about Roddy, about four weeks ago now, I had the most rewarding parental experience that I’ve had ever, and I’ve.

Roddy Galbraith:

Talked a little bit about it on.

Mark Cole:

The podcast, but I went on a father daughter week of focus with my now 17 year old. She’s had a birthday, and Macy was super impacted this week, and we were given an opportunity in about 400 in a crowd of 400 people to talk about the impact of the week. Right now, for those of you that have not met Macy or not heard about Macy on the podcast, sometimes I have to remind Macy that people can be pets, too, because she loves animals, and sometimes she could take or leave me and you okay. She’s got this kind of affinity toward animals and people. Again, sometimes I have to remind her that they can be friendly, too. And so, Macy, we were at this event, and I’m telling you, the first student, there was one other person that spoke. Macy got up in front of hundreds of people and shared for about a minute and a half the impact that the week had on her. Roddy, it blew me away. I’ve never heard her speak in public. I never even knew she knew that she was supposed to speak to people that she didn’t know. We made a lot of steps that day, and I asked Macy afterwards, I said, Why did you do that? And she said, Because I had to use my voice to help somebody else. This was a 16 year old, and it was my moment of real.

Roddy Galbraith:

Thank you, Macy.

Mark Cole:

Way to go. Way to go. It was the moment that I realized something, Roddy, that when you have passion, when you understand purpose, and when you have a pitch, you have something to say. When you have passion, you have purpose, and you have a pitch. What do I mean by pitch? Listen to John Maxwell or any great communicator. Listen to Roddy. They are always taking you toward something. No great communicator gets up to entertain. Now, I’ve met some great speakers, but a great communicator gets up to try to inspire others to do something. That’s the pitch. That’s getting people to do something with what they’ve got. And I’ve watched you. Every time you finish one of your talks, you are challenging people. And most of the time, it’s challenging them to do better at communicating themselves, because getting people to take action is a huge part of communication. Would you agree with that?

Roddy Galbraith:

Absolutely. I think that’s the key to overcoming fear is you have to take action into the fear. But just to pick up on what you were saying there, when there’s something that’s important to you, often, then either we’re shoved in front of an audience, maybe because our boss tells us we have to go and speak to the audience, or there’s something that we really want that’s worth failing for, that’s worth facing the fear. And what happens then is that we realize that we can do it. We can do it. And the fear doesn’t mean we can’t learn to do it. The fear is not a reflection of reality. It’s not a reflection of our potential. It’s just a program that we’ve picked up in the past. And if there’s something that’s important to us that makes us do it, we prove to ourselves actually we’re way more capable than we realize. We can outgrow fear, but we have to do it by stepping into the fear, not by running away from it. Beautiful.

Mark Cole:

You talked about a little bit earlier this book. I’m going to tell John Maxwell, he’ll be very proud of you for talking about his book and Endorsing, I love it. But this is the book and for those of you watching, I’m holding the book up. It’s 16 in undeniable laws of communication. We’ll put it in the show notes. We’ll give you a discount if you use the Passcode podcast. But in this book John says good work must be stored up before it shows up. In other words, what John is saying consistency compounds but so does credibility. So how does that relate to communication and leadership?

Roddy Galbraith:

Well, I think it relates in a number of different ways actually taking the kind of the building up towards credibility. John says that leadership is influence and I think it’s really useful when we’re learning about communication to think of influence as something that sits on top of a foundation. And if you get the foundation in place, then maybe the influence is going to happen. If you don’t get the foundation in place, then maybe it’s not going to happen. In fact, it’s almost certainly not going to happen. So there’s three kind of layers to that. The first one is connecting with the person or the people that you’re speaking to. So connecting with your audience. And in here John’s got a chapter on connecting. Chapter seven, page 125. I won’t read it all to you, but if you have the book, read the beginning of that chapter. He basically says that sometimes authors put great stuff in a book and leave you to find it for yourself. And then he says this is not one of these times. Let me be very clear. The law of connecting is by far the most important idea in this entire book. The law of connecting is by far the most important idea in this entire book. So connecting is the first kind of layer that you need to need to establish. So the audience needs to feel like they know, like and trust you. Basically. They need to get that in place. They know like and trust you. And if you think about it, the order there is important because they need to know you first so that they can like you, so that they can then trust you if they don’t know you. How can they trust you if they don’t know who you are? So they have to get to know you. And this is important because it means that we can’t pretend to be something else. We can’t pretend to be someone else. We can’t hold up a mask, we can’t hide behind something. We have to be ourselves. So being ourselves is important. And you’ve probably heard John say you should always be yourself. Unless you stink, in which case change. Don’t be yourself. So most of us probably, it’s important that we’re ourselves, we’re authentically us. And then we can connect with the audience. Then the next layer is credibility. And for credibility we need that authenticity. So we’re being ourselves. In order to be authentic, we need to be comfortable being a little vulnerable in front of the audience. And then we need to be honest about who we are. And so then they know who they’re connecting with, they get a good feeling about trusting us. The third layer, we won’t talk about it now because it doesn’t fit in with your question. But the third layer then on top of the connecting credibility is then it needs to be relevant to the audience. It needs to be what relevant. Relevant, sharing something relevant. Because if you think about it, you could be a very likable expert with a message that’s just not relevant to them. So of course you’re not going to get them to buy a car if they’re not in the market for a car. Even if you’re a great car salesman, you know a lot about cars. So connect credible and then something relevant. Now the credibility comes best. And John talks a lot about this, about sharing what you’ve lived out. Don’t learn stuff in the book and then repeat it. That doesn’t give you credibility. But talking on your experiences and what you’ve lived out gives you great credibility. So the mistakes you’ve made is gold there, the failures you’ve made things, that where it’s all gone wrong and you’ve made a fool of yourself. What you’ve learned from that is great to share with your audience because they can really relate to that. That’s probably where they are making mistakes and what you’ve learned from them can really help them. So sharing what you’ve lived out, what you’ve learned from that helps you connect with the audience and establishes your credibility in a very authentic way. But it know, you need to build towards know that consistency compounds.

Mark Cole:

Man, that’s good stuff. South Florida, you proud of this guy, right? Woo, that is know, communication is such a huge part of motivating others and that’s what leaders have to do. What would you say to a leader who is struggling to motivate her team through communication?

Roddy Galbraith:

So I think that builds actually perfectly on what we were just talking about. There’s a lot of research that shows that a line manager and an employee, the relationship between them is key to the performance of the company actually. But the trouble is in a lot of companies they don’t teach their leaders how to work on that relationship or they don’t teach them leadership skills or very often actually changed a little bit in the last 20 years, but not enough, I don’t think. People don’t see leadership as a separate skill set. So they’ll take the best technician and they’ll say, you clearly know the most, so you’re going to make the best leader for the accounts team, or whatever it is, and then not seeing leadership as a separate skill set. They just do what they were doing before, and they’re not leading the team. They’re probably hiding themselves away in their new office. They’re not spending enough time with the team, and it’s very demotivating. So they’ve lost a great technician, in this case an accountant, and then gained a crappy manager. That’s demotivating for everyone. So if you can work on that relationship another one of my favorite books, leadership Gold by John Maxwell. If you didn’t know, Mark, there’s a chapter in there called people Don’t Leave Companies, they Leave people. And so if you’ve got a bad manager, you think it’s a bad company and you want to leave. But if you’ve got a great manager, you think it’s a great company and you want to stay, and you’ll give everything to them. So working on that relationship, I think, buys you so much goodwill with the employees. And not working on that relationship is doomed, really. They’re just going to hide. And people become experts, of course, in big organizations of hiding and just doing the minimum to get by. But if they do know that you care, they feel the company is great, then they give so much more, so much more discretionary effort that they don’t otherwise.

Mark Cole:

So we’ve talked a lot about leadership and communication, and we’ve talked most of it about speaking or talking.

Roddy Galbraith:

Right.

Mark Cole:

So let’s transition to the other side of communication, one that I’ve worked for a lot of leaders. They don’t know. There’s two sides to communication. Let’s talk about listening. Why is listening so important for great communication?

Roddy Galbraith:

Listening is incredibly important. If you think about it, when we’re speaking, when it’s two of us, it’s obviously it’s a communication. But when you’re on stage and you’re speaking, even to a large audience, you’re still connecting with people one to one. You’re still communicating with people one to one. You may remember you might have been there, I don’t know, when John spoke at the Georgia Dome to 64,000 people. And he sat down on the edge of the stage and he’s looking out and talking to the audience. And they came up to him afterwards and said, I felt like you were talking just to me. I felt like you were talking just to me. 64,000 people thinking you’re talking just to me, because he’s connected with them and he’s sharing something relevant with them, and he’s obviously an expert. And so it’s very personal. So it’s not an audience. It’s a one to one connection. Even though you’re talking to an audience. So connecting with the audience is key. Going back to the leadership example, if you listen to your team, they know that you care, they know that you value their opinion. And so that’s a great way to connect. So listening is great to connect with your team. It’s also useful to find out about them because you’re not sharing a message that you want to share. Well, lots of communicators do that, but then you’re just answering questions that no one’s asking, which is obviously a problem. So we want to help the audience, so we need to listen to them to find out where they are. We need to listen to them to find out who they are and what they’re struggling with so that we can share something that’s relevant with them.

Mark Cole:

I’ve told this on the podcast before, but I love the story. It was an event, much like the event that you were just talking about where John spoke. 64,000 people. There’s about 15, 20,000 people, young communicator. First time on a stage that big. Came up to John and he said, hey, John, what are you thinking about right now? And John said, I’m thinking about the people. God said, you’re not thinking about your opening line, how you’re going to wow them in the first 5 seconds like Roddy teaches. John said, no. He said, you’re not thinking about how you’re going to close it down. The gripping story, and John, no, I don’t even know how I’m going to close it down yet. This freaked the guy out. I mean, I literally saw the guy’s knees starting to shake. Oh, Lord, I’ve been thinking of the wrong things on my first opportunity. I’m in trouble. But what John was really saying is even while on stage, he is listening to the audience. I got one more John Maxwell story for you, Roddy, that involves you. I’ll never forget as long as I live. When you sit down, this would have been ten years ago, probably, you sit down eight years, maybe you sit down and show John what you had extrapolated from how he connects with an audience.

Roddy Galbraith:

You remember this nine years ago?

Mark Cole:

Nine years ago, exactly. He remembers. What time was it that day?

Roddy Galbraith:

I’m just kidding. 232 32.

Mark Cole:

I’d never seen somebody come up and show John a gift of his with such clarity on why it was a gift. You remember that? That was not put on. In fact, for months after that, Roddy, John said, well, Roddy said, I’d do this right here. Well, Roddy, this right here, roddy told the master communicator why he did. Now, listen, this is why I say this. The best connection, the best content, and the best effect that a communicator can have is not determined by his eloquence or even his content. It’s about the receptivity of the person listening. Here’s. Why I love that about John. John’s a great communicator.

Roddy Galbraith:

You told him that multiple times.

Mark Cole:

In that conversation that day, but you told him why he was a good communicator and he was able to take that listen and go perfect that craft. And he was already speaking to hundreds of thousands of people. My question to you and I leader, how are you perfecting your communication? What are you doing? How are you ensuring that it’s better? And Roddy, this is not a shameless plug for you, but that’s what you do day in and day out. How many hours of video have you observed for people so you could give them a critique?

Roddy Galbraith:

Well, thousands and thousands of thousands. Well over 10,000 people.

Mark Cole:

10,000 people. Hours and hours Roddy spends breaking it down. What they did well, what they didn’t do well with connecting and getting their message across. And isn’t that science, the difference between great communicators that have one good stump speech and communicators that can sustain for many, many speeches, many, many different subjects?

Roddy Galbraith:

Yeah, absolutely. I think when people start that process, it’s all new because everyone thinks they’ve got a great story that everyone’s going to love. But when you dig into it, actually the reason you want to share it is because it’s all about you and you look good to the audience and gradually you learn what works for the audience and not from your perspective. And then when you learn, you can adapt it to other stories and different speeches and messages. So become self sustaining.

Mark Cole:

There’s very few meetings that I finish, leaders out there. And again, some of you are taking a lot down to be a better stage communicator, but I’m going to break it down. For those of us that have to run meetings day in and day out, the best feedback I get is afterwards when I ask a couple of people, somebody from my inner circle, somebody that I really wanted to get the message, hey, what did you hear me say? And podcast listeners, people here, the best feedback you will get is when you slow down and listen to the feedback rather than listen to the affirmation. It’s not much meat in the affirmation, people. It’s a lot more meat when you ask somebody, what did you hear me say? Hey, let’s go on. John has another quote here in the book. It says, your content will only be as good as your research. I know we live in a world where people speak before they think, or at least they have to, because some of the stuff they say, it has to have thoughts not included, batteries not included, thought was not included in what I just said. And so I want to ask you, how important is research and kind of talk a little bit about how you research and how leaders and communicators should research before speaking.

Roddy Galbraith:

Yeah, I think researching anything is important for me. I allow as much time as possible for that because I enjoy that process. Probably be the most. Out of the preparation phase. And so for me, it would be for this book, for example, I would get it on Audible, and I would just listen to it when I’m taking the kids to school, when I’m driving around walking the dogs, just listen to it and soak it up. Then I would dive into the book for the bits that resonate with me that I think would be useful for that particular audience, and then go through them in detail and collect them. And then as soon as possible, get to the first draft. First draft is where you’ve got something down and dirty that you can then start saying out of your mouth. Because I think the biggest mistake people make in preparation is they think as a speaker, preparing means to have a script, and that’s the preparation. And if I’ve got a script, then I’m going to be safe. But a script, it’s no use to you in front of an audience, really, is it? Unless you’re going to read it or you’re going to just post it to them or send it to them, it’s no use. So you need to start saying something as quickly as possible. And the quicker you get to a first draft, that you can then start experiment with different ways of saying, the quicker you’re going to make progress. So get to the first draft, then start practicing. People don’t like that word, practice. But if we did this ten times, which would be best, the first one or the 10th one? The 10th one significantly, maybe the 8th.

Mark Cole:

I kind of start reaching this apex and start coming down, as you said earlier. So maybe the 8th.

Roddy Galbraith:

Well, that’s do. You know, somebody asked John that, I think it was one of your team, said, I can’t do this presentation. I’m getting bored of it because I’m doing it over and over and over again. He said, but it’s not about you, it’s about the audience. They’ve never heard it before. And so you’ve got to make sure that you’re bringing your A game. Keep the magic of the first time for the audience, because that’s who you’re trying to serve.

Mark Cole:

You know what Roddy just did, podcast listeners, family, he just called me out, and y’all didn’t even know it. I was the one that said that. And he said, one of my teammates on a trip, Roddy and I just did, speaking in Romania, I said, Man, I gotta go do the same talk. I’m kind of getting bored. He just called me out. Thank you very much, podcast listeners. You may not hear that section in the podcast line. Hey, seriously, one of the things Roddy does and I have two more questions, and then I got a little hot seat question for you. One of the things that Roddy does day in and day out is he does for people what he did for John Maxwell that day. He spends time, takes time, reviewing talks, reviewing content, reviewing speeches, presentations, body ticks. I mean, you focus on all of it. And then he helps and coaches people get better. One more time. People here in Florida that’s been impacted by Roddy Galbraith making you a better communicator. Can I hear you one more time?

Roddy Galbraith:

Thank you.

Mark Cole:

And we have a lot of people in our podcast family that you have. It leave us a comment on YouTube or Spotify. Wherever you listen to this podcast, leave a comment. We’ll show them to Roddy as long as it doesn’t make his head grit too big. But if you’d like to join our team, if you’d like to be a better communicator, a better speaker, this is a Team Maxwell Leadership Certified Speaker. Certified Team is a place to where we want communicators, even people that are not on stage to become a better communicator. So you can go to MaxwellLeadership.com/JoinTheTeam, and we would love to have you be a part of our incredible community. All right, give me an example of a leader who has mastered the art of communication and how you have seen it impact their organization.

Roddy Galbraith:

A good example of that recently, actually, someone that I’ve been working with for a while, they joined the team about five years ago, I think, travis and Amanda La Fever, I think. Well, they went to paragraph with you, didn’t they, on the plane? Do you know much about their organization? I do. It’s extraordinary. And so Travis has been working on, like, a weekly address. He does two addresses to the team, and he sends me the videos of them. And he stands up in front of his team in this warehouse of, like, I think they got 90 employees or something, and they’re building it’s called Mission Mobile Medical. So they take old Winnebagos, I guess they’re called, or whatever, and they turn them into mobile medical units. It’s an amazing thing because it puts healthcare into the rural areas where people otherwise just don’t bother going because they don’t get the care they need. And so he’s got this team, they got a great culture, and he does like a little talk on Mondays and Wednesdays before the show. He calls it before the game and the halfway show. And he shares a little personal development tip or growth or a leadership lesson for them. And he’s been doing that, and he’s getting better and better at them, actually, and Amanda, too. And the growth over the last three years, unbelievable how much it’s grown. So I think that’s a great example of you’ve got a load of people in a warehouse all doing different things, getting them together a couple of times a week, they do a few other things, and then he shares an encouraging message with them, and they’re thinking, this is a great organization to be a part of. I love that.

Mark Cole:

I love that you call them out, too, because, truly, their business, the trajectory of their business and it all comes back to his ability to stand, or one of the big contributors is definitely stand.

Roddy Galbraith:

Yeah.

Mark Cole:

All right, so how does leaders we’re in a crazy time where everybody is getting offended about everything. How does a leader strike a balance between assertiveness and empathy in their communication?

Roddy Galbraith:

Well, that’s a good question. So I think in an organization we talked a little bit about this, you’ve got the opportunity to compound connecting with your team or people that you’re speaking to. And so you have that ability to build up goodwill with them, so that if you’re going to put your foot in it, which you can’t avoid some things, you can’t tiptoe around them because you’re worried about saying the wrong thing. And if you do that, you’re going to say the wrong thing. I’ll give you a simple example of this. It’s a silly example. It makes me laugh every time. Me and Susan went to Starbucks and we walked in and Susan’s standing there waiting to order the drinks and the person in front has been rude to the barista. And so she’s saying, that’s not my drink, and that’s cold, and I’m not drinking that, and pushes the coffee over all over the thing and then storms off. And Susan says to the barista, I’m so sorry about that. And she said, no, it’s fine. She said it’s not fine. You do such a great job, you provide a great service and you shouldn’t have to put up with idiots like that. And she said, no, it’s fine, it’s my mum. So we’re like, OK, see you tomorrow. Off we go. But my point is, I just couldn’t stop laughing and Susan was like, getting annoyed. My point is, she’s saying, I hate that when people are rude to people for no reason. And so my instinct is to comfort them and to empathize with them and to try and make them feel better. And I’m going to do that even if I do put my foot in it every now and again. And so I think with your team, if you can build that goodwill what did Kovi call it? The emotional bank account. If you can build goodwill with them and your intentions are good and they know you care, then they’re going to forgive you if you’re saying the wrong thing every now and again. Incredible.

Mark Cole:

Okay, one last question.

Roddy Galbraith:

Hot seat question.

Mark Cole:

Okay, I’ve just started asking this when guests come on, because this is a leadership podcast, it’s a personal growth podcast. So the leader, living or dead, who has impacted you the most and how?

Roddy Galbraith:

I wish I’d known you could ask me that because I’d really think about that. The leader, living or dead, who’s influenced me the most and how and how the first thing that comes to mind is probably not the best example, but my first job, which I’ve talked about, I lucked out with my boss he was into personal growth. He was a great leader. And it was my first job. I was 25. I won’t tell you the story, but I didn’t get my first job until I was 25. He really helped me. He got me into personal growth. He taught me a lot of great lessons. For me, it was normal to say, oh, I drove the car with a bigger engine and claim more miles on my expense thing. And he said, leaders don’t do that. You don’t do that when you’re expense. And he wasn’t angry or anything. He’s just saying, you got to realize, you got to treat the company’s money like it’s your own. And he just taught me so many little lessons like that. So for me, it had such a big impact because, you know, in the pub before that, every day, and now suddenly I had a job and I was a grown up and he made an enormous impact. In fact, if you’re listening, Alan, thank you.

Mark Cole:

Very awesome.

Roddy Galbraith:

That’s awesome.

Mark Cole:

Well, I love that question. I love the different people that walk into our life and that’s what happens on this podcast. We bring people in. John Maxwell so often has came into our life and helped us, but South Florida podcast listeners has Roddy Galbraith just dropped gold for us. I’m reminded as a leader, that what you say, how you say it and how you live it is so important. And what our goal today has been has been to help you leaders, help you people that are passionate about getting your message, your influence out there greater because we know that your audience, your team, your family needs to hear your message, but they need to see your message as much as they need to hear it. And so, podcast family, thank you for joining us today. We will be back next week. But I’m going to tell you this, it’s not going to be as good as this one because we’re in South Florida. At Maxwell leadership, we exist to bring powerful, positive change to the world because everyone deserves to be led well.

Roddy Galbraith:

It Roddy Galbraith. Thank you.