Maxwell Leadership Podcast: The Heart of Leadership

Mark Cole:
Hey, welcome back to the Maxwell Leadership podcast. Now I say, welcome back. I know it’s January. It’s the beginning. Some of you are just getting plugged to this community, but we want you back. Even if this is number one, we want you to go back because this is a podcast that truly, since its very beginning, we have committed ourselves to add value to leaders like you so that you will multiply value to others. My name is Mark Cole. I’m the CEO of Maxwell leadership. And today, John Maxwell is going to teach you about the heart of leadership. And I think with great integrity, John will show you that the heart of leadership is serving people, serving others. John will share five guidelines on how to serve people and how to serve them. Well, then, my co host, Traci Morrow, and I will be back to offer some practical application for your life and your leadership. Now, every single episode, we develop what we call a bonus resource. And for this episode, we have one as well as this episode is on YouTube. So if you’d like to download the bonus resource or look at the episode, be a part of our visual audience on YouTube, go to MaxwellPodcast.com/serve. Now grab a pen. Open your mind. Here is John Maxwell talking to you about the heart of leadership.

John Maxwell:
The heart of leadership is serving people. In fact, I say the heart of leadership is always serving others, not ourselves. And I was in my 20s when I heard Zig Ziglar walk across that stage in that good old southern draw of his and say, if you’ll help other people get what they want, you’ll get everything in life that you want. You see, that was a life changing day for me because up to that stage, as a young leader, I was getting everybody to help me get what I wanted, get on my train, buy into my vision. That day, I said, oops, I’ve been doing it wrong. Instead of trying to get people interested in me, I’m going to become interested in them and trying to get people to help me, I’m going to help them. And I found that Zig was right, because Zig was basically introducing that day when he said, if you’ll help other people get what they want, you’ll get everything you need and want in your life. He was teaching servant leadership. And I’m going to give you some guidelines for serving people that I have myself. Number one, I don’t rely on my position or title. In other words, I don’t use my position or title to tell people they ought to serve me, that I’m over you. I’m the founder of this company. You know, what? I’m the head here, so I never use that. In fact, every day I work hard to earn the respect of others. Every day. I don’t rely on what I’ve done in the past. I don’t rely on my past successes. I don’t rely on my position. I just don’t allow that to make me feel that people should serve me instead of me serving them. Number two, I choose to believe in people and their potential. And because I choose to believe in people and their potential, the more that I believe in them, the more I want to serve them. One of the things you’re going to find is there’s a relationship between how much you serve a person and how much you believe in that person. Number three, I try to see things from the perspective of others. That’s why I constantly ask questions, because I found out that knowing how other people think helps me to serve those people in a better way. Number four, I work to create an environment of encouragement. I think encouragement is oxygen for the soul. And I think people thrive good in an encouraging, uplifting environment and culture. And number five, I measure my success by how much I add value to others. In fact, the success of others becomes my success. And so let me just connect that with you that are listening to my teaching today. I evaluate how successful I am today in my teaching and sharing by how much this will help you improve your life. In other words, if you see me a year from now and say, boy, john, that day I sat with you, you taught me some principles that just helped me become a better leader, a better person, a better person in my family, better person in my community, better person in my company, then I’m going to feel that I was very successful. Your success is my success now. That hasn’t always been true. I, for many years, was a ladder climber. I was successful and I was producing and I was doing great things and it was really working out really well for me. But I made a switch about 15 years ago, and instead of a ladder climber, I became a ladder builder. And what I do now is I build ladders for other people to be successful. And I’m very happy with that because I don’t mean Chris unkindly or certainly don’t want to mean it in a wrong spirited way or an arrogant way. I’ve been very successful. And what I found is there’s something more exciting than my personal success, and that is helping other people be successful.

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Mark Cole:
Hey, welcome back, everybody. I’m here with Traci Morrow and we try, every single week, we try to kind of have a standout statement of what we’re trying to accomplish, what we’re trying to communicate with this particular episode, this particular podcast. And today’s standout statement is one that I’ve watched John Maxwell absolutely focus on all of his life, and that is believe in people. And I think to really believe in people, what you’re hearing from John today is it requires a servant heart, a servant attitude. John has said this often. He didn’t say this in the teaching today. So I will quote what John says often. And that is when you see people as hurting, you try to help them because you see them as hurting. When you see people as in need, you try to make a difference for them and try to give them something of value. But when you see a person as valuable, you serve them. And I think today what we’re seeing with John is a passion. To serve one another is the heart of mind and your leadership. And Traci, you have led teams, you lead teams, you’ve worked alongside of John and others for all of your life. And there’s something about fulfillment as a leader when we’re able to serve one another.

Traci Morrow:
It’s so true. I just love the term, and for some people, it puts them off a little bit. But when you really wrap your head around the term servant leadership, it really, again, turns it upside down. It’s when we tend to think of leadership as a kid that we get to be on the top of the pile. And when John talks about servant leadership and he kicks it off with this zig ziglar quote, it really shifts our mind. If we help other people get what they want, we end up getting everything in life that we want. And I think I was in my 20s, mid twenty, s a young mom when I first heard that and really started learning that. And in my young leadership journey, John is always so open to share about where he kind of learned these thoughts in his journey. I was in my twenty s, and I thought in order to be. I wanted to be a good conversationalist. I wanted to be interesting. And I can remember when I was first married, Casey would, under the table, squeeze my hand or squeeze my knee, and that was his signal to me to stop talking and ask a question. And I can remember thinking, being. I could feel my face turn a little hot with embarrassment. And later he would say gently, and he was kind, but he would say, like, you would be talking too long, you needed to ask them a question, because it was too much of you talking. And it was me truly just trying to be the person who was interesting and engaging in conversation. And that was a lesson to me, to start asking questions as a young 20 something. And it wasn’t until I was in my 30s that I heard it in sales, said, this way, don’t try to be interesting, be interested. And that meant be interested in what other people were saying, not so much in trying to be the hero or the interesting person at the table. And so I’m just curious, what was your story? What was it that. How did this comment from Zig Ziglar? Because I know you and I, our journey was very much the same. How did this impact you when you learned if you help other people get what they want, you end up getting what you want?

Mark Cole:
Yeah. And I remember I was in several arenas when Zig Ziglar was teaching, and I’ll never forget the first time he said that. And then when I heard John continue to allow it to live and even show it a different way, it goes back to your question, how did I learn? Where did I learn? And it comes from my dad, of course. Many of you know this. I grew up as a preacher’s kid, and our whole life was about serving others. But it goes back to even a philosophical way of living. It was Gandhi that said, the best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others. And I think truly true identity of life, of oneself, comes when you make that life, the life you’re living about serving others. I remember seeing my parents model that. I remember when I first came on John Maxwell’s team. I was 30, and I would watch him truly live out this concept of making other people the hero. John makes statements like, before you can lead people, you got to find people. He makes statements like, when you help enough people, as Zig Ziglar says, get what they want. John makes these statements of, except for one trivial exception, the world is made up of others. And he makes these statements. And some of them are cute, some of them are memorable. But really, they are all insights to a life John Maxwell has lived. Well, lived for the service of others. I think we couldn’t do justice to this lesson, Traci, without recognizing military personnel from around the globe. All of us. I mean, we have dozens and dozens of countries that tune into this podcast every single week. And no matter what country, you are the people that have made serving their country as a military personnel a high, high calling. We honor you. For those of you that are first responders, those of you that are health professionals, those of you that are in education, all of you that are service oriented, we honor you because you are demonstrating every single day when you show up, you’re demonstrating the heart of leadership.

Traci Morrow:
I’m curious, as we get into the guidelines for serving others. Now, for those of you who didn’t print out our bonus resource, please make sure that you do because it makes it easier for you to follow along. And John is always a generous mentor, that he shares his notes with us and we share them with you. But in the guidelines, he talks about not relying on position or title. And I feel like. Correct me if I’m wrong here, Mark, I feel like we were getting into a real focus about ten years ago, maybe 15, of servant leadership becoming more of a common term. And then I feel like with COVID people became more isolated and it became more individual. People working from home, people being more isolated, actually. And so do you find that people are relying more on position or titles again and just separating again, that servant leadership is becoming something that they’re focusing less on on this side of COVID or is that something that you think was trending even before COVID was coming back around?

Mark Cole:
It’s a really good question. And I don’t know. Chicken or egg right here, right. I don’t know if we started leaning this direction with our leadership, with society, with a new culture, a new generation coming in to lead, and they went back to relying on position, and then Covid exacerbated or showed that up and kind of put a spotlight on it, or if Covid is kind of where it started, here’s what I can tell you in our purview and the people that we’re dealing with, that, yes, there is a much stronger dependency on the position or the title in driving people. And I think as it relates to post pandemic, I believe we got away from the hard work of relationship development, the hard work of serving others. Because we didn’t have as much relational interaction, there was not as much social connection. And so we went back to the, you either have to like what I’m saying by clicking the social media thumbs up icon or emoji, or I’m just going to railroad through it. It doesn’t matter if you like it or not. I’m just going to tell you what you need to do. We lost the art, especially in politics, of working across the aisle, of learning how to influence people that doesn’t see a situation or an issue or a worldview the same way that we do. And we either write them off or we try to railroad them off. But either way, we’ve stopped working as leaders in helping others and are connecting with others. And because of that, the idea, the art of servant leadership seems to have been lost along the way.

Traci Morrow:
I would agree with that. Which leads right into the next two. And as you’re taking steps away from that, if you’re going more towards position and away from servant leadership and you’re moving away from people and you’re becoming more isolated, then those next steps where it’s saying, choose to believe in people and their potential and seeing things from the perspective of others, it’s very easy to miss those because you’re isolating, you’re becoming more like, this is my job. These are my hours. This is what I do. I check out, and then I get to do what I want to do, because it’s just a box that you check the job that you do, the hours that you serve, and then you get to do what you want to do, and it’s separating more from what you do to what you really want to do. And so I’m wondering how those. I mean, maybe it’s kind of the answer in itself, but there’s got to be something deeper. How is it that leaders are missing the step of seeing things from their people’s perspective and seeing their potential when it seems that their potential and their perspective seems to be such a difference maker?

Mark Cole:
Yeah, I love that you really brought those together in this concept of servant leadership because they are taught separate. They are separate ideas, but, boy, they are so related, especially with people that have lost the art of servant leadership. And that’s because when we see the potential in people in a non servant leadership heart, in other words, a dictatorial, a directive leadership heart, we see the potential so that we can get the best out of them.

Traci Morrow:
Right.

Mark Cole:
Which then doesn’t come from the perspective of the others, it’s coming from me. But yet, when we serve others and we see the potential in them, we want to get the best from them for them, the best from them, for them, rather than the best from them. For me then allows them to feel like their perspective matters, that their value is intrinsic rather than their value is to be extrapolated. And too many times, non servant leaders see a high potential person as a goal. Mine to get as much goal out of them rather than to work with them and see them as a reservoir that if I keep putting stuff in, it’ll continue to grow and be a greater producing leader. And oftentimes anymore, we don’t take time to put back into the life of a leader what we’ve taken from that life of the leader.

Traci Morrow:
It really does make me think about how we tend to look at the big picture, and it’s so big, and we think, oh, the world needs to change. We need to change the world. We need to totally change this big, huge thing, when really we need to pare it back down to how do we have an impact in our world, in the pieces that we touch? And that’s why I’m so glad that John wrote the book change your world is because it really applies to everything that we’re talking about here. We have gotten off track, and it’s not that hard to get back on, because we can change it in the places where we show up, in the spaces where we show up and the people whose lives that we touch. And it goes right to number four, and that is, encouragement, is oxygen for the soul. We can encourage the people that we interact with in our homes, in our work environment, in the places and spaces where we show up by first seeing and valuing the people that we interact with, but that’s by understanding them, knowing them, seeing their potential, and understanding their perspective. And that just takes spending time with them. And so in that number four, where it says work to create an environment of encouragement, talk to those leaders who are like, okay, we’ve missed the mark. We’re disconnected from our people. We do want to create this. We want to change our world with the people in the places and spaces that we touch. What does an environment of encouragement look like, and how does a leader create that?

Mark Cole:
Well, I think one, you got to understand, what encourages one of your teammates does not encourage the other one. I mean, there’s a reason there’s five different love languages, right?

Traci Morrow:
Right.

Mark Cole:
I’m a words of affirmation guy. And by the way, throw me a hug every once in a while, and we are good. We’re tight. The world is getting ready to be changed because you’ve given me fuel. But then there’s others that just need some quality time. They just need you to hear them. They need you to spend time with them. So I think one is we have to see this idea of encouraging others or creating an environment of encouragement the same way that John says you need to see leadership. Management is treating people all the same. Leadership is treating everyone different. And encouragement is really about finding out the ways that your team is fueled. How do they feel celebrated? What gives them energy to come in very excited the next day? What is required in the environment for them to reach their full potential? And you’re not going to know things. We talked just a moment ago about see things from others perspective. We talked about now how to encourage, how to create an environment of encouragement. Man leaders, I’m going to tell you something. Let me tell you this. If you’re listening to these current podcasts, and this is not down the road, we’re in the second week of January, and some of you have yet to ask people how their holidays were. And you also have yet to ask them what’s their growth ambitions for this new year. My point in this is whether you’re listening to this when it’s current, the second week of January 2024, or whether you are listening to this five months later, when is the last time you have asked your team questions to find out where they are, rather than asking them questions to get them where you want them to be. And as leaders, we need to slow down and understand where our people are before we can take them where we want them to go. I gave the Gandhi quote earlier. I think another great example of this is Jesus, the historical leader. If you don’t believe in the faith figure of Jesus man, he lived with his disciples for three years to understand where they were, what their challenges were, so that he could equip them to do great things after he was done, after he was gone. Great leaders demonstrate servanthood by asking questions to find out where the people are and then celebrating that, getting where those people are, rather than finding out where they are so you can take them where you want them to.

Traci Morrow:
He closed. John closes that out by saying, measuring your success by how much you add value to others. And I can remember thinking years ago, learning from changed. When I walked away from whether it was a meeting or one on one or a group of people or whatever it looked like, whatever that meeting looked like. When I changed my assessment for myself, with I wonder how well I did to, I wonder how they walked away feeling, how I left them feeling about themselves, not how they felt about me, but how they felt when I touched them. Did they leave that touch, that meeting, that moment with me? Did I leave them feeling cared for and valued by me? And that became the measure of my success. Then it changed the way that I showed up in that meeting, and that made a huge difference in my own leadership journey. So I’m curious, and as we’re closing out, how has that mindset shift impacted your leadership journey? But then also, if you feel like you have time, if that isn’t too lengthy of a question, how does a ladder builder, which is kind of the same thing, what does a ladder builder look like in today’s leadership environment?

Mark Cole:
Yeah. So to kind of answer that question, I love to build on the foundation of what John’s success looks like. John says success is when those that know you the most think the most of you. I think leadership success is when people feel like you’re more for them than you are for yourself.

Traci Morrow:
Yeah.

Mark Cole:
When they feel like that your interest is their success, not your success. I think it’s when they feel like their challenge becomes your challenge and you don’t desert them during their challenge. I believe those are kind of the attributes, the aspects of what really people think of leaders. I’ve got a little bit of time in this podcast to tell you of a stat we have. We started working several years ago with. It’s now turned into about 12 million kids all across the continent of Africa. But we started in Ghana and we started in Rwanda. Rwanda. But it’s really Rwanda. We started in those two countries with 1101,100 young people with this simple question. The schools that invited us and the government invited us and said, we have a leadership crisis. We asked this question, how many of you, when you’re done with high school, want to have a leadership role, a leadership position? Traci, we were blown away with the fact that 76% of these young people said, we want nothing to do with leadership or a leadership role when we’re done with high school. So we went another step deeper and we said, what does leadership mean to you? And those kids said, it’s corruption, it’s selfishness, it’s absorbed with your own agenda. It’s not for the people, it’s for oneself. They began to identify the antithesis of what John believes is the heart of leadership, serving others. So we took them on a 16 week course, Traci and podcast family. We took them on a 16 week course to where we said, no, it’s servant leadership. It’s helping others get where you want to go, where you value others. And so we started it out, and we said, hey, what does leadership mean to you now? And they sure enough, they said, servant leadership. It’s adding value to others. It’s helping people accomplish great things. It’s things of significance. So then we asked them the question. We said, how many of you want to lead now? It went from 76 that said, no, thank you, to 84% that says, sign me up. I want to lead.

Traci Morrow:
Wow.

Mark Cole:
We had radically changed people’s passion to leader, young people’s passion to lead by identifying that leadership really is servanthood. And so when we talk about this concept of measuring your leadership success by how much value you add to others, you got to start asking questions, what do you value? So that I can show you? I value that, too. What makes you feel like that you have been added value to? Then we need to do those things. And I think by just becoming conscious, turning a listening ear toward our people in this year, as we begin to lay out leadership, it will profoundly impact your ability to successfully lead the people under your responsibility. The last few episodes, what we have done is we’ve developed a resource, or really, it’s a resource that’s already been developed. And so I asked the team, I said, I want to do something for our team that will help them feel inclined to become a better servant leader. How do they think bigger than themselves? How do they think about a world beyond themselves? And John, several years ago, wrote a book called change your world. Traci, you got it right up over your shoulder there. It’s an incredible book. And what I’ve asked the team to do is to make that digital product available to our podcast listeners. This is a content that’s going to help you. And so we’re offering our podcast listeners the online course, change your world. Now, normally, this course is $299. You can check it out online. That’s what it is. But this week, for our podcast listeners, when you click on the link in the show notes, you can get it for just $99. Now, if you’d like this course for yourself, maybe you want to take a teammate on a journey to change the world around you. Just scroll down to the show notes wherever you’re listening, and you’ll be able to click the link. Because, Traci, truly, if we can get our heart and our mind around making a difference in the world, we will begin to demonstrate this heart of leadership, this idea of serving others. I want to finish our podcast today with a comment from Ivan. Ivan listened to a recent podcast and he was just kind of blown away and I love it. Ivan, you said wow, just wow. So what you really showed is you could spell wow frontward and backward. Wow, just wow. Ivan said thank you for this episode. It made my day and it will make my life better so I can serve better. Ivan, that’s why we did the podcast, be the one. That’s why we do all of our podcasts because we believe that if we can bring powerful, positive change to you, Ivan and others, we believe that if we can show you how to serve others, the world will be better. The world will be more positive. We will bring positive change to the world around us. And isn’t that what you want? That’s certainly what I want because we believe everyone deserves to be led well.