Maxwell Leadership Podcast: Effective Ways to Grow Your People

Mark Cole:
Welcome to the Maxwell Leadership podcast. I’m Mark Cole. And as you know, our goal, just like John’s legacy statement that he will make in the lesson today, is to add value to you so that you will then go and multiply value to others. In this week’s episode, John is talking about how you can intentionally grow the people on your team. Now, on John Maxwell’s podcast, you know, we talk about personal growth. Often today’s a little bit different because the purpose, the focal, the focal point of growth is so that you can grow with others around you. So in this lesson, my good friend and co host, Chris Goede and I will be talking about not only how we grow ourselves, but some practical ways that you can apply what John’s taught and all of grow the people around you as well. If you would like to download the bonus resource for this episode, you can go to maxwellpodcast.com/growyourpeople.

Mark Cole:
If you’re a longtime listener to the podcast and you would like to check us out on YouTube, we have the podcast available to you. And love our YouTube family as well. I’m so excited about today. I’m so excited about growing. I’m so excited about growing you so you can grow others. Here is John Maxwell.

John Maxwell:
Here’s the thesis of the lesson. The most effective way to grow an organization is to grow the people in it. That’s a fact. There are no limits to an organization if we put no limits on our people. So what are some growth practices of growing people? As I’ve studied growing people, there are some things that you can just say are true about those people that are developing. Number one, the first growth practice is to develop a game plan to grow others. In other words, growth is not an accident. So if you’re gonna grow, you’ve gotta have a game plan.

John Maxwell:
You have to be intentional. Growth is not an automatic process. It just doesn’t happen accidentally. Okay? The highest function of a leader is not just to lead others. The highest function of a leader is to produce leaders who can lead others. In other words, let’s just talk about logical choice for just a moment. It’s wonderful if we can train you and equip you to be a leader. But it’s even more wonderful when we can train, equip you to be a leader, to turn around and train someone else to be a leader.

John Maxwell:
You see, if it’s only stops with you, it’s only addition. But if it goes beyond you, it becomes multiplication. And so when we talk about growing organizations, how do we compound ourselves? How do we multiply ourselves? By training people to train others. It’s never enough just to know. We must be doers of what we know. Increase comes by action, not by knowledge. So mentoring requires being before doing. And we have no business practicing what we have not become.

John Maxwell:
This is why maturity must come before success. Character must precede our career. If maturity doesn’t come before success, guess what? How many times have we seen people who grabbed hold of success but didn’t have maturity, maturity, and, you know, they just basically sabotage themselves. So when we grow people, one of the practices, one of the principles of growing people is very simple. You have to have a game plan. It has to be intentional. Number two, you have to put yourself in the personal growth picture. In other words, very simple.

John Maxwell:
This isn’t for others, this is for you. Have you ever heard somebody teach and you listen to them teach and you thought, man, that is so good. I wish so and so was here to hear that. You know what I’m saying? I gotta write this down and I gotta tell them because they really need this. Now, I wanna make myself real clear. I’m not talking about the person to your left. I’m not talking about the person to your right. I’m talking about you.

John Maxwell:
It’s impossible to grow people in the organization if the growth is always for someone else. It always starts with me. And now that takes me to what I consider to be the number one motivational principle in the world. People do what people see. 89%. This is not in your notes. Stanford research will tell you, 89% of what you and I learn, we learn visually. And what is leadership? Leadership is visual.

John Maxwell:
Leadership is visually showing others the example. So if you’re going to grow people within the organization, it’s got to start with you as the leader. It starts with you. The key to equipping is modeling. Most of what we learn is observed, caught, not taught. Great leaders take the vision from me to we. But make no mistake, it starts with me. The third thing that we need to do to grow ourselves and have a growing organization, put your people in the personal growth picture.

John Maxwell:
After you put yourself in there and say, I’m responsible to grow me. Now put your people in the picture and say, I’m responsible to grow them. Malcolm Gladwell, in his book the Tipping Point, talks about. He calls it the law of the few. And he discusses the leverage a leader can have by investing in a few who can have great impact on others. There are certain people who can help you create change and forward progress because they will talk. It with and influence other people. In other words, the law of the few from Gladwell was just very simple.

John Maxwell:
You go find the few that are going to have the heavy producing, and you put your time, effort and energy in that. My legacy statement is, I want to add value to leaders who multiply value to others. So what do I spend my time with the leaders. Number four, create a growth culture in your organization. If you want to grow the people within your organization, you gotta change the culture of your organization and have a growth culture. A growth culture includes one behavior of leaders that show the value of personal growth. In other words, a growth culture. A logical choice is the fact that you see leaders that are growing and in their behavior.

John Maxwell:
So it just says, oh, my goodness, my leaders are growing. Number two, intentional practices that encourage personal growth. In other words, what are the intentional practices? That logical choice that you can use? What are the good choices you can make that will really show personal growth? What are the intentional practices we’re gonna have? Let me give you just four real quick examples. Personal development breaks where you give a person maybe a day to reflect on where they are and are they growing and are they developing. Remember, reflection turns experience into insight. That’s what reflection does. Number two is personal development training. In other words, do you have time set aside for training and learning? What specific thing are you doing here that would say, this is how we’re developing and growing leaders.

John Maxwell:
What is our plan? The third area is personal development discussion. Time for sharing. That’s where you get together and you talk about how you’re growing, how you’re learning. One of the things I learned early in developing people is the fact that the more you can get them to sit around the table and talk about how they’re growing and how they’re learning, the more contagious it becomes. And then finally, personal development projects. Time for experience. What are the projects? What projects are you now doing that would develop personal growth? Creating this culture of personal development essentially helps your employees to raise the bar a little higher for themselves, their families, and for each other. Jim Rohn, don’t just help people with their jobs, but help people with their lives, as your greater purpose would have you to do.

John Maxwell:
Touch people and teach people not just job skills, but life skills. Don’t just teach people how to work, but how to live, how to assimilate, how to accumulate far greater treasures than just a paycheck. Growth principle number five. In growing people and growing organizations. Number five, connect with them. If you’re going to grow your people, you’ve got to have that connection with them and connecting requires energy. So you got to give it a lot of effort. And connecting requires understanding.

John Maxwell:
You got to ask a lot of questions. So when people come to me and say, you know what? I want to develop and equip and trade people. I want to grow people in my organization, I ask them, are you willing to give the energy? And part of the energy that you give in connecting with people is, are you willing to listen? Because the great leaders, they listen, they learn, and then they. And that’s a cycle that never stops. They listen, they learn, and they lead. So, connecting goals. When you connect with people, there are some goals that you have. One is to strengthen relationships.

John Maxwell:
So when you connect with a person, the relationships become stronger. Number two, to earn trust, you cannot connect, and I cannot connect with anyone without earning trust. Thirdly, to position them properly goes back to, you know, Jim Collins, get the right people on the bus with me. Get them in the right seat in the bus. Four, to create clear expectations of what you want to get accomplished. Five, to determine capacity. What is their capacity? What is their potential? And six, to discover strengths. This is all part of connecting with people.

John Maxwell:
Okay? To grow people within your organization, let’s go to number six. Give them a challenging project now, a challenging project. Here’s what it’ll do. This will help them. This will help determine when you set the bar high for people. This helps determine the emotional, creative, and ability capacity of people. And these are different things. You want to see emotionally what their capacity is, because I know a lot of people, they have the ability, but they don’t have the emotional capacity.

John Maxwell:
So you wanna check, how are they emotionally, how are they creatively, and how are they ability wise? What is their ability capacity, creative capacity, and emotional capacity. You wanna begin to test that to find out what they are. In other words, here’s what a leader is always asking. A leader is always asking, how much can they do? How do I get maximum potential out of a person? Number seven, if you’re gonna grow people in the organization, you have to empower them. Got to empower them.

John Maxwell:
Wow.

John Maxwell:
If all you give your people are orders, all that you’ll ever get from them is order takers. And one of the things that is essential in growing people is empowerment. So let me talk to you about empowerment for just a moment. Empowerment is all about big picture. First of all, it’s not just doing the task. Empowerment is why you do the task. See, empowerment is much bigger than the job you do. It is making you the person, not only to be able to do that job, but to make you a person that’s bigger than that job, it’s big picture.

John Maxwell:
That’s what empowerment is. And empowerment is about accountability, because once people have been given power, they become accountable. Ken Blanchard writes, empowerment means you have the freedom to act. It also means you’re accountable for results. I like that a lot. One last closing thing had a person come up to me one time, said, John, all this training and equipping people you talk about all the time I’ve done that. And let me tell you, the downside of training and equipping and empowering people and then growing people is the fact that you train them and then they, they leave you and go to another company. You say, man, I just put time, money, resources in that person there.

John Maxwell:
They went off with someone else and they’re going to reap the benefits. I said, nothing could be worth than putting that time, effort, energy and money and people and training them and then having them leave. I said, oh, no, no. I can tell you something that’s a lot worse than that. This is what’s that? Not training them and having them stay. So let’s begin to grow our people so we can grow our organization.

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Mark Cole:
Hey, welcome back. I’m so glad to be digging into this with Chris. I think you, Chris, I certainly want to. One of our greatest passions, growing the team around us, there’s a quote by Jack Welch that says the most important job you have is growing your people, giving them a chance to reach their dreams. And I think that’s so true. I think that’s a chief responsibility of leadership, is to let your leadership be such that it impacts others. John asked this question. We meet with a lot of presidents and senates and representatives from other countries, and John will ask them the question all the time.

Mark Cole:
Will the people be better when your job here is done? And I love that question. It’s a great question for all of us as leaders, will people that you’re leading be better because of your leadership? And certainly helping them grow is a chief responsibility, 100%.

Chris Goede:
And you know, one of my favorite books that John has written in the last couple years is the leader’s greatest return. And as executives around the world will be like, hey, you got to read this book, right? Leaders Grace return. So what do they do? They want to know right down at the bottom of the financials, like, how does this improve my EBITda?

Mark Cole:
Exactly.

Chris Goede:
That’s not what John’s talking about at all. And I think that as you begin to develop and grow in your leadership, when you begin to see the fruit of people that are around you because of your intentionality, which we’re going to talk a little bit about that today, and who’s all involved in the growth process, man, that’s the greatest return, no doubt, right? We’re in the people business. We talk about that, and that’s what’s important. Let me from my lens real quick. Let me start us off with something. I think it’s so important. So if you’re in an organization, you’re leading a team or an organization, I am fascinated to watch the surveys that come back on an annual basis of why people are choosing certain organizations over another. What is it about it? Of course, culture is part of that.

Chris Goede:
Of course, compensation is a part of that skillset. Match all this up. But it is fascinating to watch this one line that I’ve seen move up over the last couple of years where it says they have to be assured that there is a growth and a career, personal growth and a career development plan in place for them. Before they say yes, I’m like, oh, my gosh, like there are organizations that are not even thinking about this. And so I just wanted to throw that out there because we’re going to talk today about game plan. We’re going to talk about growth personally. How do you develop people around you? What is the culture of your organization in regards to growth look like? And it’s just so important. It’s so important.

Chris Goede:
So let’s dive in. This is, this is what we do, right? We’re here to help people on a journey, a leadership journey. And so part of that is developing a game plan. And not only a game plan for your personal growth, but also for others. And I know that ever since I’ve been inside this organization with you, there is intentionality behind here is what our expectations are of leaders. To have a plan for those that are working with you on the team. To take them from point a sometimes might be to point b, sometimes it might be to k. So as you lead Maxwell leadership, and it’s such a passion for you, why we, you and I could talk about sports analogies all the time, but why is it so important to have a game plan for growth for, for other people inside the organization or your team?

Mark Cole:
Yeah. Well, the first thing I’d say, the reason it’s important. Cause it was a game changer for me.

Chris Goede:
Yeah.

Mark Cole:
I’ve said often on this podcast that it was truly the question that David Hoyt asked me, what is your growth plan? As my leader in Jon’s organization, that made me aware I needed to be intentional about my growth. And most of the time we have people on our team that don’t even know they need to be focused on that. I love the stat that you gave just a moment ago, and I believe that’s right. For so long, we paid people because why were we paying them? To help grow our company. But yet we didn’t realize that that should be reciprocated. And if we grow them, pay them well, but grow them, guess what happens? They grow the company.

Chris Goede:
That’s right.

Mark Cole:
And I think that real revelation, both as a company owner and as a person that’s worked for a company for a long time, it really does go both ways. So I think the first reason I would answer that is, is it made such a difference for me. I want it to make a difference for others. It’s a true heart to see others be impacted by intentionality around growth. I think also, as a business owner, what I just said is if I grow people, their enhanced capacity expands their responsibility in the organization, so the organization grows. I think the other reason that I would tell you is when you create a human element, that it’s more than just the colloquialism. Our people are our greatest asset. No.

Mark Cole:
When you really begin to create a culture that says, we are going to challenge our people, and not only challenge them, we’re going to require them to identify how they’re growing. I get asked all the time, how do I get good people on the team? I’d say you’ve got to hire growing people. Hire good people. Okay, that’s easy. Everybody says, no, no, hire growing people. So to this day, when I’m interviewing somebody, which y’all don’t let me do very much anymore, you do not.

Chris Goede:
Or John, you or John, me or John, same category.

Mark Cole:
But when I do get to interview people, my standout question in every interview is what are you growing in right now and how is it making a difference for you and how is it making a difference for the people around you? That growth question and creating that growth culture begins to let people know, hey, personal growth is important. It’s required. It’s expected in an organization like that.

Chris Goede:
Yeah. And I think what I love about this being number one as a game plan is in order to have a game plan, by the way, it takes some preparation, it takes for you as an individual to sit down and say, hey, I’ve got to intentionally think about what am I going to do over the next 30, 60, 90 days in this plan for Mark, if Mark and I were working together. Right. Like what I love about that is you can’t just walk into a meeting and say, hey, we’re going to go ahead and start coaching and we’re going to do this and we’re going to do that. And I want to see growth in this area. Like you got to come back and say, what does this plan look like? How are we going to attack the game? What are we going to do in the first quarter, the second quarter, we’ll make some adjustments at halftime. What do we do in the third quarter and the fourth quarter? The other reason I love this is that then it gives you something to measure against.

Mark Cole:
That’s exactly right.

Chris Goede:
Right. Like we can sit in here and philosophically say we’re gonna grow our team at the end of the year, say, well, where’d you grow? Okay, that’s great. But now let’s go back and look at what we, we talked about twelve months ago. Where, where are we at on that? And it’s, whether you do it by assessments or you do it through conversation, whatever it might be, that’s the importance of having that game plan.

Mark Cole:
And again, it was when David said, you need a growth plan. Here’s a template. And then what is it? Talk back to me that it really made a difference to me. I say this all the time. I don’t scholarship people for growth. They need to bet on themselves. I’m going to go against the flow on that advice today. And I’m going to tell you, listening to podcast, when is the last time you’ve invested in somebody to understand the importance of growth? When is the last time you have given somebody a plan on how to grow? We have a product out there called the 15 Laws of growth.

Mark Cole:
This is a plan by John Maxwell that people can take a multi series, like mastermind, if you will, from John on growing themselves. And just right now you need to pause the podcast. You need to go to the show notes and you need to order this and gift it to somebody that has never had a growth plan and say, I’m going to change your life. It’s Christmas and it’s not even Christmas. Here is a plan for you. And for $99, I’m going to invest in you to grow. You need to do that. You’ve been listening to this podcast.

Mark Cole:
You’ve been listening to this podcast. That’s a part of your plan. Why don’t you go and give somebody with a plan on your team?

Chris Goede:
I love that. Not to discourage you from listening to Mark and I, but if you think there’s some nuggets here, there’s some gold in them there hills in that content piece right there, it is, because that is the master talking about. So I love that idea to develop a game plan for somebody else and give it. Give it to them. So we talk about this as a game plan, and I want to take just a minute because as we’ve talked about in the past, right? We’ve got to grow ourselves and that has to happen. You talked about David challenging you, and that question changed the way that you do your year end planning, not only personally, but professionally. And all of what comes out of that, inevitably is a growth plan for the organization, no doubt a growth plan for your family and a growth plan for Mark Cole. What I love about that growth plan for you, and John talks about this under number two, and we’re just going to stay here for just a second where he says, put yourself in that growth picture because it really starts with you.

Chris Goede:
What I love about what you do, Mark, as a leader in this area, is you share often with what you’re learning. And what you’re learning often comes from that game plan. And so there’s not a meeting that doesn’t go by. There’s not a conversation that doesn’t go where you’re saying, man, let me tell you what I read this morning and how this impacted. When you’re doing that as a leader, are you doing that naturally as it just happened? Are you intentional about that? In order for us to absorb that, to learn something, what’s in your mind behind sharing what you’re learning? Because there’s not a meeting that we’re in where you don’t start off the meeting doing that.

Mark Cole:
It’s extremely intentional, to answer your question, is it intentional? And it’s intentional for really three reasons. One, selfish. If I will constantly be talking about what I am learning, it keeps me accountable. To do what? To learn and to apply what I’m learning. Right. It’ll keep me accountable. I want everybody to know I am not only committed to learning, I’m going to share with you real time what I’m learning. It makes me accountable to the idea of learning, and it makes me accountable to the current lesson.

Chris Goede:
That’s great.

Mark Cole:
It’s incredibly intentional, and it is very selfish. And it stinking works. Okay. It makes a difference. The second reason that I do it is because I’m setting the tone of expectation of growth in the organization.

Chris Goede:
That’s right.

Mark Cole:
And I’m telling you this, that’s not selfish. That is leadership.

Chris Goede:
That’s right.

Mark Cole:
Our organization is about growth. What I am learning should inspire you. Not to learn what I just learned, but to go learn.

Chris Goede:
Yeah, to learn.

Mark Cole:
Be a learner, be a grower. And the final reason that I would tell you that is extremely intentional. For me to do that is to give what I have been given. You cannot give what you not have, but you better give what you do have. Otherwise, it becomes way too selfish. I started with very selfish, but I’m ending with the danger of being selfish in what you learn because I don’t believe a lesson is really learned until it is shared and inspired to somebody else. So if it’s good enough for me, it’s good enough for you. Now, let’s go see what we can pull from what we’ve learned together and make a difference with that lesson.

Chris Goede:
Yeah, I love. I love those three statements and then your, your authenticity behind the truth there. But. But I see you live that out and model it. And I would encourage leaders that are listening or viewing on YouTube, I would encourage you to do that as well. You talked about setting the tone of expectation for your team, for your leaders, the organization, which is a great transition right into where John talks about number four. And I want to stop here for just a little bit and really hear your heart behind this because culture is important to you. Mark is our.

Chris Goede:
Is our chief culture officer, among many other things. But that’s the one that he, he wears with probably the most weight and pride in there. And we often talk around here about, you know, the common language of which we lead with a. Leads to different beliefs, and then what we’re all in the business of is behavioral change. Mark just gave you an example of that on how he does it personally. In the common language, we begin to believe man, we should really be learning because Mark’s over there learning. So what am I going to do? My behavioral changes to go act? But we want a culture like that inside the organization. And you know this.

Chris Goede:
I’m just going to kind of start this session with this little quick illustration. I’m going to let you run with it from a culture standpoint. John’s book just came out, high road leadership. Fantastic book. Our leadership team, we said, hey, as part of our culture, we’re going to start every leadership meeting by going through one chapter at a time. And we rotated it so the leader doesn’t have to carry the weight of it, by the way, it’s another intentional part of our culture is that we want then our leaders, you say this often, our repeaters, to then go repeat this with your team. We just went through John’s book twelve weeks straight in a row, investing a lot of resources in that leadership team and the time to spend 40 minutes going through that. So what happened from that? I’ll just give a personal example.

Chris Goede:
For me, it’s like, okay, dag, I’m like, I got to make sure that now I’m modeling that. So now what am I doing with my team, my team every week, right? And so it’s cascading. And that’s that culture that starts at the top with leaders, that you wanted us to be very intentional about consuming John’s content. Now, that’s because we’re in the leadership space and it drives culture. But, man, talk about your heart and passion behind culture. But more importantly, the act of growing and why that’s important in culture, John.

Mark Cole:
Says the only guarantee for a better tomorrow is growing today. That’s the only guarantee. And I think John’s been around enough to know, to make statements like that. That that’s the only guarantee. If you grow today, you can expect better things in the future. So for us to understand that the core belief of our culture is, is that we must be growing. We must be challenging ourselves to grow, is we’re not integrus if we don’t come and challenge ourselves to grow. I’ve told this story before.

Mark Cole:
When I first took over senior leadership of John’s company many years ago, over a decade ago, I went around the table and I asked everybody, there was 18 of us on the team, and I asked everybody, I said, hey, what’s your favorite John Maxwell book? Well, cricket started chirping and I went, uh oh. How many of you have read like five of John Maxwell books? I was thinking, man, I’ll start easy. Two hands. How many of you have read a John Maxwell book? I went down, all the way down, and I was surprised at the number of people, more than 50%, that had never picked up material that we were selling and sharing around the world. It struck me in that moment that we cannot be a growth company if we’re not growing. It stirs me. I’ve had years to where we lost money. I’ve had years to where we took steps back.

Mark Cole:
And it’s less. What bothers me more than losing money, and I don’t like losing money. What bothers me more is a step back is never a good thing. Now, it happens sometimes. Sometimes you have to take a step back to leap forward. Got all that? Understand all that. But it’s never a good thing in the moment to be going backward. And so it’s that mindset, Chris, that wakes me up every day and go, how are we growing? What are we doing? I just started something with one of our young, up and coming leaders carrying a lot, a big load on his shoulders.

Mark Cole:
And so now I’m asking him the question when he brings me a problem. Hey, how are you growing through this? Not how are you solving it? Not what are you doing? I’m asking that question all the time.

Chris Goede:
Love it.

Mark Cole:
How are you growing through this challenge that you have there? That’s a bigger question than how are you solving it? How are you making it better? Yeah, I want to know how you’re growing.

Chris Goede:
Yeah, yeah. And that right there, in essence, is part of that leader’s growth plan. Right? Like you’re intentional. You know, you shifted a little bit with some things that are going on. You say, man, I gotta start asking this question. That’s part of our, it’s part of our culture. Now, John, in his lesson, he says, hey, here’s a couple of things that you can do. Mark and I are sharing with just an example of a couple of things that we do here at Maxwell leadership.

Chris Goede:
But, man, he talks about this, that personal development happens with training, happens with discussions, happens with projects. So there’s all kinds of ways to connect. I want to, before we move on to the last point here, I want to share a, just a quick story in regards to how we saw this show up in one of our team members. So we have an incredible team member, especially with us, for eight years, and she’s retiring. And as this podcast comes out, she has retired. We’re super excited for her in this next season in her life. And so what I did was we threw a little team company lunch and celebrated her. And I had her think about a couple of questions the night before, because I wanted her to share with the team, and I wanted them to catch the culture of what you set inside this organization, of what really matters most to her.

Chris Goede:
I didn’t know what our answers were gonna be, and I. One of the questions was, what was one of the most impactful, memorable growth times for you here over the last eight years? Again, I didn’t know where it was gonna go. Could have been a disagreement she. I had, or whatever, right? We’re going at it. Whatever. Here’s what she said. She said, I’ll never forget, we spent twelve weeks as a team going through change your world tables, and we got to know each other. And all we did was for six weeks, there was the first half of the change your world.

Chris Goede:
We spent 45 minutes a week going through a content piece that John has created. And then the team was so excited. I was like, we’re done. You know, really? Do I really need to? I’m not going to say waste, but I could use that time somewhere else. Right? But we did it. And now almost. That would have been almost six years ago, five years at her retirement lunch, and she comes back and says, one of the greatest times of my growth journey is being a part of this culture where we went through that. And I was like, if that doesn’t mean that growth is not important in your culture and why people are at your organization or want to be there.

Chris Goede:
And I’m not saying we do it right. I’m just giving you an example of how we live that out and then what we heard this week and why it’s important.

Chris Goede:
No, no.

Mark Cole:
We’re doing it right. Well, let me break this down. What you just heard. I’m having a proud papa moment. If you have one of those with somebody that’s older than you sitting across from you, he’s not really older than me.

Chris Goede:
I feel older, and I have more replacement joints.

Mark Cole:
He’s not older. I just having a proud papa moment. Cause let me tell you what Chris just did. Number one. He asked somebody when they’re leaving, what was the greatest growth point, the greatest impact, the moment, the thing that made you better moment. You don’t ask that question in a lot of companies when they’re leaving, you ask, hey, what was. What did you like the most? Or something? He’s asking a question that’s intentional. To make this teammate recall what a growth moment was for her.

Mark Cole:
That’s not accidental, and that’s doing it right. Fist pump. In front of everybody. Number two, what she went back and referenced was when the leader said, man, I could be leading a lot. I could be doing a lot of things with this special, important time, very rare time that I have with my team, but they’re saying, whoa, this growth is happening so well, I’m going to. I want to do it more. Which leads me to my third thing. He created the environment and then he reacted and adjusted schedule so that the environment could keep the person growing.

Mark Cole:
How many leaders call personal growth a checkbox on their agenda rather than the spirit of what they’re doing? And you just gave me three examples. One, you asked a growth question in departure when most people are just giving out watches and high fiving. You showed that it works because a leader gave her example of what a growth moment was, was when y’all were intentionally trying to grow. And then you modeled how growth is not a box, it’s a mindset. Because when the team clamored for more after six weeks, you gave them more because it was working. Case made dropped the mic. That’s exactly what’s supposed to happen.

Chris Goede:
Well, I appreciate that. The team was incredible, very vulnerable through that time. Here’s what I just want you to catch, is then we move on to the last one and let Mark wrap it up. She also happens to be the account manager on one of our biggest accounts. And it could have easily went to this, this and that, and she didn’t even go there. And I would not. I didn’t know the answers and I didn’t know that. And so, man, it’s important people like, it’s important to your family, it’s important to your peer group, it’s important to those that you lead.

Chris Goede:
And I hope you hear Mark and my heart about the importance. Yes, growth is one of our values and it’s why we’re sitting here and it’s what John models in us. But, man, we got to grow our people. So John ends this with one that I absolutely love, which it’s like, hey, we got to empower our people. And he made a statement that he says, it’s why you do the task. Right? When you give people tasks, that’s delegation. Let them go do it. When you empower them, John says, man, that is when you’re giving them the why behind it.

Chris Goede:
And then he ends with the quote from incredible leader Ken Blanchard and John’s friend where he’s just like, yeah, no, let them run. Let them have the freedom to run. And then they’re going to be accountable for it, don’t get me wrong, but let them have the freedom to run and under this. This is an incredible way for you to have growth in your people. Talk to leaders where we’ve been burned by this. Let’s talk about both sides of it, where you’ve empowered people and it didn’t work out, but they grew. You’ve also empowered people where it did work out and they grew. So how do you handle that as a leader? How much do you focus on this as a leader and how much have you seen it create growth environments in the people and then wrap us up for today?

Mark Cole:
Yeah, so I work hard at it, Chris. I mean, I can remember a year where we gave people two extra days off. If they would commit that, they would use it to plan their life. Plan, growth plan. We did that three or four years ago. I don’t feel like I’m doing it enough, and that’s how I rap. But as a leader, I’m telling you, in the area of growth and in the area of responsibility, I believe the greatest difficulty, but the greatest reward, you talked about one of your favorite books, getting leaders greatest return. And I think one of the greatest challenges and one of the greatest rewards is when we effectively empower our people to grow themselves and to take on more responsibility.

Mark Cole:
Cause they have grown themselves. My daughter is now in college, and I’m watching her move into taking this responsibility. And I’m struggling because I want to step in and do what I’ve done for 18 years. I want to just do it for her. But yet I’m trying to back off. And it’s the greatest challenge that I’m having right now. I gave us a challenge. I never do this.

Mark Cole:
I tell people, bet on yourself. Don’t ask me to bet on you. But I’m going to tell you, podcast listeners, I am personally challenged that what my daughter is going to get right now, and I’m not going to go comp it just because I own the company. I’m getting ready to go pay dollar 99 and I’m going to tell Macy, paying $99 for her growth plan to go through the 15 laws of growth. Growth is that important? And what lesson could she learn that is better for her right now in college than the idea of growing herself and podcast listeners, I’m going to finish this up by challenge you to go and invest in somebody getting the mindset of growing themselves. You can do that for $99. Do you have somebody in your life? Maybe it’s a teenager like I have. Maybe it’s a high potential leader on your team.

Mark Cole:
Do you have somebody that is worth $99 investment to show them the importance of creating a growth culture? That’s what John’s saying. Effective ways to grow your people. The best way you can do it is show them the importance Valerie listened to the podcast leadership blind spots. Remember that one very well. This is what Valerie said. Every leader must listen to this podcast on blind spots. Very, very insightful and eye opening. Do you know, many of the people that we’ve been talking about today don’t even realize they need to focus on their personal growth, on the idea of growing.

Mark Cole:
Go invest in them. Go show them that growing is very important and you will have led well because everyone deserves to be led well.

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