Maxwell Leadership Podcast: The Leadership Shift from Managing People to Developing People

Mark Cole:
Welcome to the Maxwell Leadership podcast. As you know, this is a podcast that has a promise. And that promise is, we’re going to add value to you, so you’ll go multiply value to others. What I love about that is each and every podcast, we bring you something that will help you with the expectation you’ll go and help someone else. And that’s gonna be no different today. I promise you. My name is Mark Cole. Today, I have an incredible new friend to me, but a CEO, a leader that I have come to respect.

Mark Cole:
Matt Tresidder is the CEO and co founder of leader. That is L-E-A-D-E-R. I got it. I understand. It’s L-E-A-D-E-R. He’s the co founder, the CEO of leader. And leader is an organization that transforms people management into people development. I can remember a time I truly signed my signature on my email, developing people, Mark Cole.

Mark Cole:
And today I’m bringing you somebody that not only is passionate about developing people at the personal level, he’s passionate about developing leaders at the technical level. He’s not only passionate about developing leaders at the individual level, but at the collective level, at the group level, at the company level. I love their philosophy. It says, a healthy leader equals a healthy team, and an unhealthy leader equals an unhealthy team. Matt and his organization aim to develop a million leaders is just the start. I’m telling you, these guys are going to make a passionate difference in your organization. In my organization, they want to develop leaders that will drive performance. Matt, I can’t tell you.

Mark Cole:
I’m so excited to talk about it. Before you say anything, these people have to hear southern all the time. Let them hear what New Zealand sounds like. It’s good to have you, man.

Matt Tresidder:
The deep south. The deep, deep south.

Mark Cole:
That’s exactly.

Matt Tresidder:
Really good to be here. Thanks for having me, man.

Mark Cole:
We’re so glad. In fact, I will finally get my wife to listen to a podcast, because she wants to just hear you talk.

Matt Tresidder:
Yeah, right.

Mark Cole:
So, hey, man, welcome. Welcome to the south. Welcome to Atlanta. But I. You did. You grew up in New Zealand, is that right?

Matt Tresidder:
Grew up in New Zealand. Yeah, born and bred. And I got 5 million people. 25 million sheep.

Mark Cole:
Yeah.

Matt Tresidder:
That’s about what we’re known for.

Mark Cole:
Well, and you’re also known of kind of being, like, Australia because I told Matt before we got started, I said, hey, man, probably our podcast family knows this. I have a bucket list to come to your country and just hang out for a while and see some of the beauty that’s there. And you said, oh, man, look, you’ll love it. I said, well, I’ve been to Australia four or five times. You said, it’s nothing like it.

Matt Tresidder:
No.

Mark Cole:
Everybody from New Zealand said, it’s like a trigger.

Matt Tresidder:
Exactly. I can’t not respond that way. We just. We grew up. Rugby, cricket, swimming, anything. We just have to not like each other.

Mark Cole:
Yes, exactly.

Matt Tresidder:
And so the moment you said, I’m like, I’m gonna fight him.

Mark Cole:
You’re gonna fight me. If he stands up on the podcast, for all of you listening or watching, rather, on YouTube, you’ll find out he would win because the arm reach span that he has. Cause of this. What are you, 6565? I nailed that one, didn’t I?

Matt Tresidder:
It’s your greatest talent.

Mark Cole:
It’s your greatest talent. And so, man, it is good to have you.

Matt Tresidder:
Thank you.

Mark Cole:
We’re a developing friendship. He’s already telling me that he’s going back home to take the first grandchild of two sets of grandparents back home to New Zealand when she. He. She is nine months old. I honor you. Already 15 and a half hours. You are a brave man.

Matt Tresidder:
It’s gonna be a thing. It’s gonna be a thing. We’re already praying. It’s gonna be great.

Mark Cole:
I love your passion for people. I love that you start that at home and want to get this grandchild over to your parents. It impacted me right when you were telling me that.

Matt Tresidder:
Yeah, they’re gonna freak out. I can already tell.

Mark Cole:
So all of you podcast listeners that’s listening this live, and you’re already trying to figure out how to get out of Thanksgiving because you don’t want to put the kids in the car for 2 hours. Think of matt. You’re in trouble. You’re going to take the trip. Hey, seriously, take me back to kind of your corporate. You’re doing something really cool with Leader. And by the way, if you have googled Leader, you’ve already missed it, because in New Zealand, they spell leader without the e, evidently. Tell me why, Leadr.

Mark Cole:
And you don’t have to tell me why. Why, but just tell me how. That has been probably the brunt of a lot of conversations, right?

Matt Tresidder:
Add that with my accent, it’s a real problem.

Mark Cole:
What are you saying?

Matt Tresidder:
Speak like, so, where do you work, leader. Lida. With an a. Like, no leader. And with an e. Well, no e. I’ve already lost. I’ve already lost.

Matt Tresidder:
My thought was, we know something about leadership, but not as much as John. And so we had to start taking letters out of the name.

Mark Cole:
And so right when I first saw the name of your company leader without the e. I went, well, I’ve heard there’s no I in team. I guess there’s no second e in leader either. And this whole time, I thought there was a canadian leader.

Matt Tresidder:
We should put that on the website.

Mark Cole:
I love that.

Matt Tresidder:
I love that.

Mark Cole:
Hey, but before leader, there was a guy that was killing it, crushing it in the business space. Talk to me about before leader. What’d you do?

Matt Tresidder:
So I joined a tech company started in New Zealand. I joined as employee number five as their first sales rep. And so I came on board when it was just mission, like paper clips and duct tape. There was nothing to it. And the mission was, we want to see a billion dollars of giving drop into the local church and to charities. And I thought, I can get behind that. I’ve never done tech. I’ve never done startup.

Matt Tresidder:
I’ve never done sales, but I can get behind the mission. And we just hit hyper growth. We went from five to 500 employees in about four years. And so you talk about growing pains. We experienced every single growing pain under the sun.

Mark Cole:
Wow.

Matt Tresidder:
And so we started leader because if I could go back and do it again, the healthy leader, healthy team dynamic that we saw play out, I thought to myself, if I had a platform that would help turn managers into coaches, our culture would have been better, our results would have been better, and the longevity of our team would have been longer. Like we just had. Would have had more fun for a longer period of time. So it was the secrets kind of. It was built for me, and it happens to be relevant to others.

Mark Cole:
So if I heard you correctly, leader will help you go from five people to 500 much quicker than four years.

Matt Tresidder:
Or at least to a healthy, healthy.

Mark Cole:
Yeah. And I love that. It’s just in our conversation and just in. By the way, Maxwell leadership is using leader, and we’ll talk more about that later. But I love your passion, that hyper growth is not on your resume, that your passion to be different is founded on a passion for healthy people.

Matt Tresidder:
Right.

Mark Cole:
And I love that. Talk to me about how did you discover that?

Matt Tresidder:
Well, when I took, I took about six months off after the last gig because I needed a break. I just needed a minute to rest and refresh and figure out what’s next. And when my co founder, Chris called me and said, hey, do you want to do this startup thing again? I said, yeah, but I’ve got some conditions. And he said, what is it? I literally said to him, I want to be healthier at the end of this journey. Than I was when I started. And I couldn’t say that the first time around. I was a wraith of a person. In fact, what I wrote in my journal when I quit the last gig, I wrote, I’m not proud of who I’m becoming.

Matt Tresidder:
And so what I realized was, it’s possible to accomplish great things, but in the midst of that, lose your sense of soul, your sense of why, your sense of mission, and you’re trying to hit numbers at what cost? And I just think winning at all costs is a lose lose proposition. And so that’s really where that came from for me.

Mark Cole:
And so really, the why behind leader was this passion. To be healthy in your growth, do.

Matt Tresidder:
It a better way. There has to be a better way of doing it. So when I first stepped into the CEO role, for starters, I said no to Chris, my co founder, about ten times. It took him about two years to convince me to take the CEO role because I had a front row seat to him doing it over the course of eight years. And they accomplished all the things. He just went through all the struggles, and he came out the other side, and he’s a freight train. The guy will never stop. And he’s a legend.

Matt Tresidder:
He’s gone and started 15 more companies. But I saw what he went through as a CEO, and I said, why would anyone want to do that job? And so when we started leader together, I said, I’ll do anything but that job. And then about two years in, he said, hey, Matt, your motto is refuse to be the bottleneck. That was kind of my motto in life. And he said, you’re the bottleneck for leader growing if you don’t take the job. So he kind of call my bluff. And so I took the CEO role, and the learnings started pretty significantly personally for me from there on. And I thought I was already doing the role of a CEO.

Matt Tresidder:
And I thought, oh, they’ll slap a new title on me. It won’t make all that much of a difference. And, man, I was wrong.

Mark Cole:
Wow.

Matt Tresidder:
Yeah.

Mark Cole:
Well, and let me say this, because I want to get into leader. I want to talk more about that and your role as CEO and kind of the purpose and what you’re doing. But let me say this, that is very important to me to say about you and then very critical for me to underscore for our podcast family. And that is, I got to see you for the first time today. I stood you up on our first date. That’s never a good start because there was some things that didn’t allow us to do this podcast a little bit earlier. I let you know, I think within 24 hours, I couldn’t get you to fly into Atlanta to come do the podcast in the studio, and you said, no problem. So I felt like I had to apologize for that, get it off my chest first.

Mark Cole:
And you went, man, no harm, no foul. Let’s go. Let’s move. But here’s why that is. That’s a guy that has determined a bigger picture, that relationship. And keeping relationship healthy will lead to great companies, rather than great companies lead to good relationships. And I knew somewhere along the way, before I ever started talking to you, that you had figured that out. Even how you treated me at a last minute cancellation on a guy that’s getting ready to fly across the country, halfway across the country to come to a podcast with me.

Mark Cole:
So thank you for sharing that. I can tell leader was founded on something, but let me tell you something else that let me know that when I talked to Heather Manzano, who helps me with our culture here at Maxwell leadership, she said, mark, there was an instant rapport with a group that has the same values as Maxwell leadership. Now, I hope you know enough of us that’s a compliment to you, but we think that’s a compliment to you.

Matt Tresidder:
I’ll take it. I love it. Huge compliment.

Mark Cole:
But it’s a compliment to us that you would see us as a team. I mean, you are really sacrificing. You’re doing a lot to get this program instilled here at Maxwell leadership. And I want you to know I love your heart. I love your values. I love your passion to add value to people. And it’s got to be in that order, right?

Matt Tresidder:
Oh, no doubt. A thousand percent. And I think when we try and separate our deep passions from our work, and it’s like, oh, that’s for my volunteer work. Or that’s when I’m doing ministry. It’s like, no, no, no. It’s all one thing. And so the reason why I wake up every morning and treat this, I’m taking the long term view. And when plans change, it’s not a big deal.

Matt Tresidder:
It’s like I’m thinking about the million liters, so everything’s just a little speed bump on the way to a million liters. And you already said in the intro that goal’s too small. So now I’m thinking about, okay, it’s too small. You called me out on that. I’m still thinking about it. I’m like, let’s add a zero. It should be ten.

Mark Cole:
Well, here’s the goal of you take the credit for the first million. When the zeros start adding. After that, I’m gonna come and give a little bit of credit. Is that fair enough? Yeah, fair enough. John Maxwell has this statement right here. He says, when people use his content, and all of us in podcast family, we use his content over and over again, don’t we? John says, hey, you can use my content. You don’t even have to give me royalty. The first time, give me credit.

Mark Cole:
The second time, say, you know, it’s been said, and by the third time say, you know, it’s mine. I’ve been thinking, and so I’ll take a little bit of credit on the front end, and then you’re just gonna kill it. Hey, let’s do get into leader, though. I want you to tell our listeners more about leader. Take us a few minutes and talk about leadr. Leader.

Matt Tresidder:
Got it. So the personal experience that I had, cause like I said, I built it for me, was I’m a first time manager. I’ve never led people in the workplace before. And from a technology standpoint, I just felt fragmented because I was taking notes in this system, I was doing reviews in this system. We had a learning management system over here, review system over there. And so because the technology was fragmented, the experience that my direct reports was getting was fragmented, because they’re kind of all over the place. And I thought, there’s got to be a better way. If we could find a way to use technology to turn managers into coaches.

Matt Tresidder:
That was the initial thought I had. How do we coach more in the workplace, not manage more in the workplace? How much different is the experience going to be in our culture and our people? And so when you walk into our office now, the first thing you’ll see along our wall is people want to be led and developed, not managed. But the key part to mention there is the result of leading and developing well is that the effects of management are going to happen far better anyway. So when you say people say, well, lead in development, it’s kind of like warm, fuzzy kumbaya feelings. Nice to have. No, no, no. You get this right. The results are better.

Matt Tresidder:
Your attention is better, productivity is better. So that’s really where all of it came from.

Mark Cole:
So, you’re now CEO of this very growing company, helping a lot of other companies. How do you make sure that the pursuit of excellence in your product does not shortchange the pursuit of excellence in your culture?

Matt Tresidder:
I think we’d be hypocrites if we didn’t prioritize. If it wasn’t so true and evident within our team and we were trying to serve other customers with this, I think it would be completely hypocritical. So I take our culture beyond seriously, and I tell my team all the time. At the end of the day, maybe this thing is just for us. Who knows? And I get all the warm fuzzies when my team get up. We do a weekly all hands every Monday. And one of the things that we do is our team will get up and tell a story about how a core value was lived out that week. It’s one of my favorite moments of the week, and I sit there often.

Matt Tresidder:
It happened literally this Monday, where someone said, the experience that they’ve had, and one of our values is we operate as a championship team. And so it was nothing about leadership, it was nothing about me. It was nothing about the product. They were literally saying, the way that my peers treat me and hold me accountable is the thing that gets me to come to work every single day. And I’m like, mission accomplished. I love it, Matt.

Mark Cole:
It’s so true. I was in a team meeting today as we’re recording this podcast. I was in a team meeting, and it was one that was just meant to build culture, right? So we talked no business, we talked no numbers, we talked no job responsibilities. We talked random questions, some of the most random questions. And we interviewed a leader, and then the person that was interviewing the leader had to answer the same question.

Matt Tresidder:
Oh, I like it.

Mark Cole:
What we uncover. I’ve worked with some of these people for 20 years. What we uncovered in 1 hour and a half session today on connecting people and gave me insight that I haven’t had in 24 years. That’s what you’ve learned to do with a piece of technology.

Matt Tresidder:
And you can’t tell me that does and make you a more effective team. You can’t tell me that the trust that you established today isn’t going to drive results and make you more effective as an organization. There’s just no way you could separate the two of those.

Mark Cole:
So let’s talk about these leadership habits that you’re developing, both in leaders culture, but also in the technology that leader, the product that you represent. How do you cascade those same healthy leadership habits down to your team as a leader of leaders?

Matt Tresidder:
I love it. The first one that comes to mind, one of the things that’s embedded in our culture, and one of the things that I want to fix within the workplace is creating a healthy feedback culture. And so one of the sub points within our values, for example, is we care enough to be candid. We care enough to be candid. And I think the word candor is shied away from, and I think it’s something you should lean into. So let me start with a personal story about why I’m so passionate about us. And then I’ll talk about cascading. I figured out as a CEO that the thing that I need to do is stay six months ahead of growth.

Matt Tresidder:
I know that what the business is going to require from me six months from today is wildly different than where we’re at at the moment. And so what I can do best is ask for feedback from my team, candid feedback, and then go out and relentlessly execute on that. Right. So this happened to me once. It’s super awkward. You’ll like this. I’m in a meeting with someone, and I noticed that I could tell just since they were having a bad day, and I said, hey, how you doing? And they said, oh, I’m fine. And they kind of shut off the moment I asked them.

Matt Tresidder:
And I was like, no, seriously, what’s going on? How are you doing? And they said, oh, I’m not going to tell you. Okay, tell me more about that. And they said, I was told not to process things with Matt.

Mark Cole:
Wow.

Matt Tresidder:
And I was like, say that again. Yeah. My manager literally said, if you’re going to catch up with Matt, don’t process things with him because he just likes to make decisions. So hearing that feedback that I’m so action and decision orientated that someone doesn’t even feel comfortable even just venting with me, I’m like, that’s a problem. So now what we’ve done is we try to make that just a normalized part of our culture. So cascading it through to my managers, for example, I say, every single quarter is just part of our culture. You send out a feedback request, how am I doing with my peers? How am I doing with my boss? How am I doing with my direct report? Not. Not too dissimilar to the exercise you did today.

Matt Tresidder:
Let’s just make it normal, because I don’t want feedback to be this weird word in our culture. I just want it to be normalized. And so when I sit down with my managers, I say, hey, this is not something we’re doing as a leadership team. The best thing that you could do is sit one on one down with your people and say, hey, at least on a quarterly basis, how am I doing? What are my blind spots? What are my gaps? Because if they don’t see it lived out by them. It doesn’t matter what I say at my all hands meetings on Monday. Do you know what I mean?

Mark Cole:
Yes.

Matt Tresidder:
That’s not going to go anywhere. I like to think my word carries weight, and people listen to the CEO, but if they’re not treated that way by their manager Monday through Friday, it’s all for naught. And so what we do is we spend so much time investing into what are the basics, the fundamentals that those managers are doing on a daily basis. Because if they’re not doing it, that word cascading, it stops at the leadership team. It’s not going to go further.

Mark Cole:
I want to ask you this question. Why do you think it’s so hard for leaders to create a plan for their middle managers? But before you answer that, let me tell you this. One of the most challenging things, you may not know all of my story. Our podcast family knows. 24 years ago, I started Maxwell leadership podcast family as an entry level telesales rep in a stock room. And then I went through this. No leader. Everybody was above me to becoming a little bit kind of a recognized as the go to person to be coming a manager, to be a middle manager.

Mark Cole:
And then 14 years ago now, John Maxwell asked me to be the CEO. And one of my greatest challenges as a CEO is when people come to me and say, I would rather work for you than the middle manager in the role. They think that’s a compliment to me. And I go, how did I not get people to represent that? So talk to me about why you think it’s so hard for leaders to create this middle management team that represents the CEO.

Matt Tresidder:
You’re preaching the choir. This is what keeps me up all night. We solve this problem, we change the world. Right? Because they’re ambassadors for the culture of the organization is defined by the executive leader, but they’re not the ones that are the ones living it out on a daily basis. It doesn’t matter. So let me think about it this way. The curse of knowledge, have you talked about that before?

Mark Cole:
I have a little bit, but explain it.

Matt Tresidder:
Yeah. So the curse of knowledge is this idea of we have this knowledge that we think we knew innately. We were just born with it. And then when we look down at our management team and they’re not living it out, they’re thinking to themselves, no one taught me that. You look down at your frontline managers saying, oh, you can’t even do performance management. No one taught me that. So then you just fire them and you move on. To the next person.

Matt Tresidder:
The curse of knowledge is at some point someone did teach you that, but you’ve been doing it so long now, you forgot. And because it’s just a natural part of who you are. And so I think one of the reasons we don’t actually invest into our frontline managers is we think to ourselves, well, no one did it for me, so why do I need to do it for them? And so we almost displace ownership and say, I’ve got other things to solve. I’ve got a sales strategy to come up with. I’ve got a marketing budget to fix. That stuff’s so much more important than me sitting down with you and being like, hey, do you know how to hire and fire? No one ever had to do that for me. And so we don’t do it. And so I think the curse of knowledge is the biggest thing stopping us from saying, actually, someone did teach you that, Matt.

Matt Tresidder:
Someone did show you along the way and we should sit down and do it. It’s either that or it’s, we think it’s a nice to have. We think. I don’t think that’s really going to move the needle. I’ve got other priorities and other initiatives and training and development. I feel like as an executive just goes further and further and further down the list.

Mark Cole:
I do. It goes back to something we say around here, Matt, podcast listeners, viewers, that if a leader don’t possess a passion to learn, a passion, a hunger to get better, it’s very hard to teach them and how to get that cascading vision down. Leaders are repeaters, and too many times the middle managers feel like they’re either trying to climb to the top so they’re self absorbed or they feel like that they, they’ve got to carve their own way and they begin casting a vision or a thought that is different. Maybe one degree at first, but one degree becomes a lot unchecked.

Matt Tresidder:
Yes.

Mark Cole:
What I love about you is you’ve created some fruit in your organization. You’re seeing fruit of developing employees and watching them drive better results in the organization. Talk to us a little bit about that.

Matt Tresidder:
I brought a story.

Mark Cole:
Okay, good.

Matt Tresidder:
Can I read a story? So this is from one of our customers. They’re a Fortune 500 company. They’re actually based here in Atlanta, and it’s a sales leader that we rolled leader out to. And this is what he said, fire me up one time, mark this thing. If I put, I need to put this on my wall or something. So this person says, I wanted our people to know that they matter and that they are more than just a sales number. We want to help them become a better person, mother or father. I want our people connected to something bigger than just a paycheck.

Matt Tresidder:
We realize that if we poured into them that way, then we don’t have to be so heavy handed on the performance side, because they’re going to feel like they’re getting as cared about as an individual. We’ll get the performance because they want to work for a company that cares about them and sees them more than the bottom line. And then I love this. The consistency of excellence is actually leading to better performance. We now spend less time talking about performance and more time talking about development. Yet performance is rising. This was a case study where we rolled leader out to one team and didn’t do it to the other, and the end result was the team felt more cared for. Lo and behold, the results follow.

Mark Cole:
Let me say one more thing. Please do. Please do.

Matt Tresidder:
So that’s. That’s a customer story. But the thing that gets me fired up is this happens internally in my team. So shout out to Robin. I first met Robin about eight years ago. She was the receptionist at the last company that we work with through development, through feedback, through her ability to just take on more and more responsibility. She is now the enterprise onboarding coach for all of our largest customers. About a month ago, I called her just to check in, and she was onboarding the Dallas Cowboys and a zoo in one day.

Matt Tresidder:
Eight years before that, she was the receptionist. That right there is development. And so I look for those moments every day. I’m like, hey, listen, if this journey ends tomorrow, for whatever reason, that Robin moment, worth it. Do you know what I mean? And even if I see that, I’m getting goosebumps because, yes, I love the customer stories, and I’m seeking and I want to get more and more of those because I think we can turn the workplace upside down. But for Robin, worth it to me every single day.

Mark Cole:
So let me give you a Robin story, my Robin story, because I’m a customer. We use leader. Podcast family. Le a D R. We use leader. We’ll talk about how to get and find you in just a moment. Well, let me tell you right now. Le a D R.com Maxwell, for all of you that just can’t wait, that’s where you’re going to go to find out more about leader.

Mark Cole:
But let me give you a customer story. Robin’s name is Sharon. Today, just today, Sharon did not know what that. What I was coming to do this afternoon. I didn’t even talk to her that was coming to meet you. She said, mark, now let me tell you, first of all, who Sharon is. Sharon’s been on our team. She welcomed me.

Mark Cole:
When I walked in the doors 24 years ago, Sharon was a telesales. She would never let me call her that. She was a ministry consultant. That’s what we call ourselves back then. And Sharon welcomed me when even nobody else knew me and my family did not even accept me at home. And Sharon welcomed me with open arms. We sat down at lunch today. She says, mark, I got to tell you something.

Mark Cole:
Leader, I didn’t even know that this was not warranted. She had no way I was going to do. She said, leader has helped me know things about people on the team that’s been on the team for 20 years. She said, it’s matching personality types. It’s letting me see them. I know things that they like that I, I never asked. This piece of technology impersonal, right? This piece of technology has made me more personal. And I went, Sharon, this is exactly what I needed to hear today, because every one of us want to find people that can produce well enough with longevity that we still want them around 25, 30 years, don’t we? It establishes dependability in the organization, and it shows that there is sustainability in the organization.

Mark Cole:
That’s the things you want from longevity, employee engagement and tenure allows you to see productivity because you’re not trying to replace them. Every leader wants that. What Sharon told me was, hey, I’ve stayed around here for 25 plus years, but today I’m better because a piece of technology has made my team more of a family. So put that on your, on your wall as well. Hey, talk to me about your focus right now to help. That helps you as a leader develop your team internally.

Matt Tresidder:
One thing that I’m working on is peer accountability, which is one of those things that feels really nice as a quote and one, and really nice as something that you’re trying to work on, but it’s really tough. There’s a PJ fleck quote. I’m sure you’ve heard it. Average teams are coach led, exceptional teams are player led.

Mark Cole:
Learn that. Great.

Matt Tresidder:
Yeah, it’s beautiful. So what I’m trying to do is, even for us internally, as a small team, we’re about 80 staff. I still find that so many challenges, difficult conversations, decisions are coming up the chart when I’m trying to say, hey, look, we’re going to delegate trust, delegate authority, and I’m trying to create a peer accountability culture as close to the front lines as possible. And so that’s when I talked about feedback earlier. That’s one of the things that I’m trying to instill within our team. And we haven’t figured it out, but we’re getting better at it. And anytime that I can see that peer accountability played out on the frontlines fires me up because it allows us to move faster. There’s that great quote.

Matt Tresidder:
People move at the speed of trust.

Mark Cole:
Yep.

Matt Tresidder:
And so I think the more trust that we can instill within our team and that people can call each other out in a healthy way, we’re going to run so much quicker. So that’s internally something that I’m actively thinking about.

Mark Cole:
It’s why you as a leader, I can sit and talk. Fact, if you’ll stay a little bit after the podcast, I want to spend some more time with you. Can we do that?

Matt Tresidder:
Yes. Okay.

Mark Cole:
Lucky me. Too bad. We’re going to cut you off and we’re going to catch up. But here’s what I love about you, which you have somehow figured out how to put in your technological offering, is I love this concept. You heard it at the beginning of this podcast. John Maxwell’s life purpose is adding value to leaders who multiply value to other leaders. Okay? And so it’s all in us, this concept of leaders, developing leaders. And you have figured a way out to get technology to bubble leaders up so that you can challenge them to go create additional leaders.

Mark Cole:
That’s one of the reasons we’re super excited on a personal level, CEO to CEO. That’s why we’re very excited to be a client, a customer of yours, because you’re helping our leaders on our team bubble up. We can see them, we can identify who’s engaging with the technology, and now who can we commission, challenge, and encourage to go develop others. So talk to me about why leaders and how leaders do a better job of developing the people on their team.

Matt Tresidder:
I love it. I think, first of all, you have to start by saying the leader comes first. And you know, this is John, right from the beginning, when I was volunteer at a youth group, I had an epic 101. The youth group was called Epic and I had Epic 101. And it was, first of all, if you want to be a leader, learn how to lead yourself.

Mark Cole:
Yeah.

Matt Tresidder:
And I pretty much just quoted everything from Maxwell. So shout out to you.

Mark Cole:
He appreciates it. Thank you very much.

Matt Tresidder:
I didn’t take the credit back to you earlier.

Mark Cole:
You gave it to Maxwell. I did.

Matt Tresidder:
So it has to start with the leadership team, I think what the last thing an employee needs to hear is a management team coming to them saying, you need to develop more. So it has to start with the leadership team. Hey, transparently team. I haven’t done a good job of leading well. And so here’s some of the things that I’m going to work on. If you want to have a development culture, start right at the top. The fish rots at the head. Right, the fish rots at the head.

Matt Tresidder:
And so if you don’t, if you’re not encouraging your frontline managers to be transparent, to be vulnerable and open up and say, hey, this is something that I’m personally going to work on, the message of, you’ve got to go and develop is just going to fall completely flat. Practically speaking, I would say the fastest and most effective way to grow is just by doing. And so here’s a story from this week. We run an internal development program called Leader U leader University. And one of the guys, Jonathan, he said, hey, I’m terrified of public speaking. So what did we do? We didn’t hand him a book. We said, you’re speaking at all hands next week. So he spoke literally this Monday.

Mark Cole:
Okay.

Matt Tresidder:
On our call value. Got up there for five minutes. He said, hey, my name’s Jonathan. I’m scared of public speaking. It’s how we opened. And the whole team was like, let’s go. I’m so excited. And he shared five minutes.

Matt Tresidder:
Everyone got up high. Fivedom. Crushed it. I was like, hey, when do you want to do the next one? So development is not by some small, hey, you’re doing great. Hey, keep it up. That’s not development. Development’s handing over stretch projects, figuring out the things that people have tried to run away and avoid forever, and then volunteering and signing them up for it. Which sounds a little mean, but it’s the fastest way to grow.

Matt Tresidder:
It really is.

Mark Cole:
You know, as I watch how much time we’ve been on here, I truly love how you think as a leader, and I love that you’re doing what your product is intended to do before you ever get to the point of a sale of your product, you’re building a team that does what your product is supposed to deliver. We got to get to the action statement that I want on this podcast. I wanted to talk leadership with you because I love your thinking and Maxwell Leadership podcast. People, leaders, friends, you have gotten a ton of content to jot down and go lead better, whether you’re a CEO or whether you’re someone climbing influence. But I want to talk about the platform for a minute. You’ve got a tool that truly helps me. I told you, I said, man, I wanted to go talk to some of my teammates today. I talked to Sharon.

Mark Cole:
Been working together for 24 plus years. She’s been on the team 25 plus years. She’s at a, she doesn’t even have direct reports. And she’s loving leader and she’s loving how it’s helping her develop others. I talked to Heather, who makes all of our people decisions and lifts the lid. I talked to our CFO. I talked to three levels of the organization very intentionally, and you have developed a product that will help those of us in the field that wants to lead like you’re leading to use technology to do it. Give me just a little bit more practical on leader and what the platform.

Matt Tresidder:
Does to me that the two biggest, because I’m one of the biggest users, like I said, built it for me. The two pieces is it reminds me of what’s most important because I’m easily want to move on to the next one. So you mentioned that profile card. Every single person I lead, it’s telling me favorite foods, favorite snacks, it’s telling me personality assessments that they’ve filled out. It’s telling me workbook days, anniversaries, kids, pets, you name it. One place for everything related to leading people. It’s not that I don’t care about those things. I just forget to.

Matt Tresidder:
And so having that in one place allows me to be intentional and it reminds me. So that’s the first one. The second one is it fixes our meetings. Our meetings so frequently move off topic and become ineffective. And so because every single goal is there, it provides visibility, it provides transparency, accountability, like we just touched on. So every meeting, you can’t not have conflict because they’re red, yellow, green goals right there. And so it’s making my meetings more effective, and it’s making me more effective at being intentional with my people. Those are the two biggest parts for me.

Mark Cole:
And one of the additional things that I’ll say this, because I talked to Heather and I said, Heather, how are we already seeing results in our culture from leaders? So you touched on one personal insight. Now, I haven’t got a Coca Cola and a Reese yet from one of my staff members that knows that’s one of my favorite foods. But when that lands on my desk after I come back from a trip, I’m going to pick up the phone and I’m going to call you and say, leader works. Leader works okay.

Matt Tresidder:
My snack says Pringles.

Mark Cole:
Okay.

Matt Tresidder:
And I got a pack a week. And so now it says Pringles. But don’t buy me any.

Mark Cole:
When I say there’s too. I’ve had too much Coca Cola and too much Reese’s. We’re gonna go. Leader not only works, it’s working too well. So I love the personal insights, the stuff that Sharon learned about her coworkers that she never knew, because technology drove us to not only answer questions that we had never asked, it gave us a place to find the answers that we never looked for.

Matt Tresidder:
Exactly.

Mark Cole:
I love that.

Matt Tresidder:
Exactly.

Mark Cole:
The second thing that you mentioned is productivity. How do you make your meetings better? How do you check up on each other and make it better? So that team productivity standpoint for us, it’s helped us. We’re a virtual company. We have people all over the place. Our team connection, our team awareness of what’s HapPening, because the communication device, the way that they can know where to go, how people can know. Who should I talk to in the organization about this particular problem? Because the built in chart feature that you have, that team connection, because of the virtual nature of our organization, is a third one that I would add to you.

Matt Tresidder:
I’d agree. We’re the same, by the waY. Our team’s hybrid, too.

Mark Cole:
Yeah. So let’s do go what you did, because I wanted you on. I wanted to hear your philosophy on developing people. You’re a tech guy. You’re from New Zealand. You can’t even spell leader.

Matt Tresidder:
I can’t. It’s a problem.

Mark Cole:
How is this GUY leading a company that’s doing so well? And I wanted to just talk people development with you, and you’ve given us an incredible gift. But I never want to have a podcast that I don’t challenge people to do something. And I said, I want to let them know about L e a d r without the e a. Leader, your platform. And so, team, you can go to leader.com leadr.com maxwell, by the way, I like that you didn’t put Maxwell leadership, which is how we normally do it, because you would have shown that we spell it wrong. So thanks for not putting that in there, Leader leadr.com maxwell. And then get more information. But you’ve provided some free things for us.

Mark Cole:
You’ve provided some. Some things for our podcast listeners that will help them participate or build or look for a culture like that. Talk to us about these things. Your team’s developed.

Matt Tresidder:
Yeah. Our highest reviewed, requested value that our customers get is called the manager’s toolkit, which is just a, a little cheat sheet playbook, if you will, on what are the basics of leadership? So if you’ve got frontline managers in your team that we were talking about them earlier, how can we support and help them? We’re providing them with a free toolkit. How do you do good one on ones? How do you have good tough feedback? How do you do performance reviews? It’s all there. It’s written by me, so you’ll have to pretend it’s in my accent as you’re reading it.

Mark Cole:
Is the spelling correct? I just want to know if the spelling is correct.

Matt Tresidder:
The spelling is american. I can say that much. But we just wanted to give that away free to your listeners. Go to lida.com, leadr.com, maxwell, and just sign up.

Mark Cole:
And all the ways to get that is there. Jake, we’ll put that in the show notes, I’m sure. The website, yeah, the link, we’ll put that in the website. We’ll make sure that people can get to you. Hey, any final thoughts, whether it’s about the platform or the resource tools that you’ve provided or even your concept on developing, developing leaders that will develop other leaders.

Matt Tresidder:
Two thoughts, if you don’t mind. First one is for those leaders out there that are struggling with the burden of leadership. The internal monologue that I’ve had to tell myself every day since becoming a CEO is leadership is a burden, but the burden is a privilege. And so if you’re struggling with the burden, mister executive or misses executive leader out there, the burden is a privilege. And tied to that, the second thing I’d say to you is your people need you. You don’t know what people are going through in your team. I’m, I’m consistently surprised in a, in a saddened way, almost, about what real challenges people are facing, whether it’s in the workplace or at home, and what do they need is good leadership. And so you think that saying, how are you and how are you doing and how’s it really going? You think that that’s going to fall on deaf ears? It won’t.

Matt Tresidder:
One of my early mentors, Ross, used to come up to me and you’d say, hey, Matt, how you doing? I’d be like, yeah, good, Ross, how you doing, Matt? Fine, how you doing? I don’t know.

Mark Cole:
Right.

Matt Tresidder:
Someone might in your team, just with good leadership, might just need that weekly check in to say, hey, how you really doing and how can I help? Those be my two thoughts.

Mark Cole:
Well, and podcast family. What Matt’s just given us is a reminder that no matter what your business, no matter what your product, your purpose is, your people. And I love that. Leadership is a burden, but the burden is a privilege. Did I say that right? I love that. It reminds me of what John Maxwell says when he says there’s no two good consecutive days in a leader’s life. It’s a burden, but the burden is a privilege. And you have truly inspired me today.

Mark Cole:
I loved our pre talk. I loved our talk on the podcast. Too bad, podcast family. I’m cutting the recording off, and Matt and I are going to keep talking about leadership and developing people. But let me say this. I want to do some more with you, and I hope our podcast listeners will go get those free resources. You’ll find out more like we did on making the leader platform a part of our culture building, exercise and commitment and disciplines, and I hope that adds value to you. Thanks for joining us.

Matt Tresidder:
So good to be here.

Mark Cole:
Thank you for listening. And remember, everyone deserves to be led well.