Maxwell Leadership Podcast: The Power of 5

Mark Cole:
Sometimes as leaders, we think there’s no way someone could do the job as good as me. It can be easy to feel like we must have our hands in literally everything for our organization, for our team to succeed. But as we all know, I couldn’t be further from the truth. No one accomplishes anything great by themselves. We want to be leaders who are thoughtful, effective and compassionate. We want to walk slowly through the crowd, as John Maxwell often says. But in the reality of day to day life, that’s easy to say, but all together, difficult to do. How often do you find yourself running through the metaphorical crowd to get to your next meeting or to your next task? Great leaders delegate.

Mark Cole:
And if you’re listening to this podcast, I know you want to be a great leader. And Belay is here to help you do just that. For over a decade, Belay has dedicated itself to helping leaders like you and me accomplish more by juggling less. Their highly vetted, us based administrative assistants, marketing assistants and accounting specialists can take the task off of your plate and free you up to focus on what matters most. So to help you, Valet is offering its leadership toolkit free to you as our listener. In this resource, you’ll learn the necessary steps every leader needs to accomplish more and juggle. To claim this offer, just text the word Maxwell Maxwell to 55123 for your free copy today. That’s Maxwell to 55123.

Mark Cole:
And in no time, you’ll be back to doing what only you can do, leading your business. Welcome back to the Maxwell Leadership podcast. This is the podcast that adds value to leaders who multiply value to others. My name is Mark Cole, and today we’re talking about how success is found in your daily agenda. In John’s lesson, he is sharing what he calls the power of five. What are the five things that, if you do them every day, will help you accomplish the goals that you have in your life? I’ve heard it said often that we’re a product. We’re the sum of our daily decisions. And today, John is going to share with you on being intentional on what those daily decisions are and or what they should be.

Mark Cole:
Can’t wait for you to hear this lesson. Can’t wait to sit down with my co host, Traci Morrow. After this lesson, she and I are going to discuss how you can apply these five things to your everyday life and to your leadership. Now don’t miss out on the bonus resource or the option to watch this episode on YouTube. You can go to maxwellpodcast.com/powerof5. That’s the number 5 to access those resources. Okay, here we go. What is your rule of five? Here is John Maxwell.

John Maxwell:
So, let me just talk about the power of five for a moment. I do a teaching that is life changing. In fact, I’m going to do it now with you, that when I go into companies and organizations, they often say, just talk to us about the power five, because this concept, this principle that I’m about to share with you has life changing potential. So let me illustrate it. Let me teach it. Let’s say that I have a tree in my backyard that I want to cut down, okay? And I have an ax. And every day, I go out to my backyard and I pick up the ax, and I go over to that tree, and I swing just five times with the axe hitting that tree, put the axe down, next day, go back out, pick up the axe, go to the very same tree, do the very same thing five times, chop away at the tree, put the axe down, next day, go outside, pick up the ax, you’re getting it. Go into the very same tree five times, put the axe down.

John Maxwell:
If every day, every day I go pick up that axe, go to the same tree, five times I hit that tree, let me ask you, what is eventually going to happen to that tree? What is that tree going to do eventually? You know the answer. Eventually that tree is going to fall down. Okay? That’s a fact. There’s no disagreement at all on that. If I every day pick up that ax and go to the very same tree, and all I do is swing, just every day, just five times every day, eventually that tree will fall. Now, when the tree falls, determines on the size of the tree. If it’s a small tree, well, I don’t know. Maybe in a couple months, the tree would fall down.

John Maxwell:
If it’s maybe a big tree, maybe takes three, four, five years. But we know this. If every day I pick up that axe, I go to that same tree, and every day I just swing five times, eventually that tree will fall. So when people come to me and they talk about the dreams that they have for their life, the goals that they’re writing down that they would like to accomplish, I always think of the power of five. Because in this little story that I gave you are five things, five things that if you do every day, you’ll accomplish the things that you really want to accomplish in life. So let me teach the power of five to you. If I want to cut down that tree in my backyard, there are five things that need to happen. Number one is I need to know what I want to accomplish in this story.

John Maxwell:
I want to cut the tree down. In other words, I must be very clear on my dream. I must be very clear on what I’m going to be committed to, my time, my effort, my energy, my money. I must be very specific. I must know what I want to accomplish. Cut the tree down after you know what you want to accomplish, then the second part of the power of five begins to play into the game. After I know what I want to accomplish, the second thing that I must do is I must have the right tool to accomplish the task. So what tool do I have in my yard? I go out and I pick up what an axe.

John Maxwell:
Now, an axe can cut some wood, and so it’s the right tool. I go to that axe and I swing five times. Now, what makes this swinging effective is I have the right tool in my hand. Let’s just say, for example, instead of picking up an ax, let’s say I picked up a baseball bat and I went over to that tree, and I’m faithful, I’m diligent. I’m swinging five times. Can I taste something? The tree is never going to fall. Am I working hard? Yes. Am I faithful? Diligent? Yes.

John Maxwell:
Yes, yes, yes. Well, why isn’t the tree falling? Wrong tool. I’ve got to know what I want to accomplish, and then I have to have in my hands the right tool. The right tool is essential. And so when people tell me they’re working hard, it doesn’t do a lot for me unless I know that they’re working hard with the right tool. The third thing that has to happen to have the power of five occur in your life is you have to take action. You see, if I know what I want to accomplish, cut the tree down, and if I have the right tool to cut the tree down. But let’s say instead of when I go out in the backyard, instead of picking up the axe and going over and swinging five times and taking action, let’s say I just sat on a porch and I just, maybe, I don’t know, I sharpened the axe and said, boy, this is an important tool that I have, and.

John Maxwell:
And I sharpen it. Maybe I shine the ax. Okay, now you’re getting the picture. You know that as long as I’m sitting on the porch shining the axe, sharpening the axe, that tree isn’t going to fall. You see, I’ve got to do something with the tool that is in my hand. I’ve got to take action, you know, in the word traction, which means to be able to make movement towards something you want to accomplish within the word. Traction is the word action, and there is no traction without it. So many times we really don’t take the action step.

John Maxwell:
It’s kind of like when we sit down and we begin to write out our dream and, well, this is what I would like to accomplish. This is what I want to do in my business. And we write the dream down and we get all excited when we look at the dream. We talk about the dream. We’ve written the dream down. We kind of got a dream map for ourselves. But here’s what we miss. We have to take action.

John Maxwell:
That’s why I tell people all the time, the reason that the dream is fun is because the dream is free. It’s a very free thing to be able to say. Here’s what I want to do in the organization of my daily choice. This is. Wow. I want to go to the top. That’s good. You see, the dream’s free.

John Maxwell:
The journey isn’t the moment that you take action. There’s always a price to pay. You see, people, most people, many people want the dream to be free. They want the dream to be handed to them. They want the dream to become automatic, and they miss the whole action part. You see, to be successful in my daily choice, you got to take action every day. So the power of five says, okay, you have to know what you want to accomplish, have to have the right tool in your hand. You have to go use that tool.

John Maxwell:
You have to take action. And number four, you have to stay focused. You notice that when I gave you the story. In the story, I talk about the same tree every day. Pick up the ax, swing the ax, same tree, same tree, same tree. Stay focused. Stay focused. Now, what would happen if the second day, when I went out, instead of going to the tree that I had chopped away five times the day before, I look over and said, well, there’s another tree that I need to cut down.

John Maxwell:
So I went over there and it hit it five times and put the axe. Next, I went out and said, you know what? I think that third tree needs to. Yeah, I need to cut down that one, too. So I’m over at the third tree next time over the, the fourth tree, and next day over the fifth tree. And, you know, I’m just, I’m just going around, you know, just cutting trees, but none of them are going to fall. I’m not effective. I’m just scarring all the trees in my yard. Now what’s happened? Why? Why am I not accomplishing what I need to accomplish because I didn’t stay focused.

John Maxwell:
You see, a lot of people, they start well, but they get distracted. And when you and I get distracted, all of a sudden it takes us off of our game plan. When we’re distracted, it keeps us from accomplishing what we want to accomplish. Are we still working hard? Yes. Are we still swinging the axe? Yes. Are we still taking action? Yes, yes, yes. But we’ve forgotten what our focus is. And number five, you have to be consistent.

John Maxwell:
Did you notice when I gave you the tree story that there was a word that just kept popping up? That word every day. Every day, every day, every day, every day. You see, what I’ve discovered is consistency compounds. And no one ever quit their way to the top. No one has ever said, well, you know, I was in the game for a few months, but after a while, you know what I mean? I got tired. Do you have to do this all the time? And no one has ever quit their way to the top. What I want you to understand is that that tree wouldn’t fall the person as they every day swing five times, which is showing you again that you don’t have to work all day, but you have to work every day. Remember, consistency means you’re better to have a set time of doing it every day than to do it really long one day and then skip three days.

John Maxwell:
You see, what we don’t understand is we never know how long it’s going to take to accomplish our goal and our dream. But we do know this, that if we ever stop, if we fail to be consistent, what we know for sure is this, we’ll never accomplish our dream. It’s possible because we don’t know when the tree is going to fall. It’s the story of a sledgehammer with a rock that you just keep pounding on that rock and nothing seems to happen. It just, I mean, you just keep pounding and, you know, after a while you kind of say, I don’t think anything’s happening, I’m going to quit. And I don’t know, after 800, 900, there’s a certain amount of pounds and all of a sudden the rock cracks. That last swing was the one that made the difference. Success showed up on that last wing.

John Maxwell:
We were already successful. We were successful when we took the sledgehammer the first day and began to pound on that rock. We were successful when we took the axe and the first chop into that tree. We were successful on the first chop as we are on the 1100 and whatever number I gave you earlier chop. In other words, because consistency compounds, the more you invest in something, the closer you are to accomplishment. Consistency compounds. And once you get in the game, and once you stay in the game, and the more that you invest in the game, the higher the return that you get out of the game. Now that is the power of five.

John Maxwell:
The power of five just simply says to us, if we know what we want to accomplish, if we have the right tool, if we take action, if we stay focused and if we continually are consistent, we will be successful. In my daily choice, that’s a fact. That’s not any theory to it. That’s not a hope. So maybe so could be, should be. No, no, no. The power of five will bring you success.

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Mark Cole:
Hey, welcome back, everybody. Traci, I’m so glad you’re back. You and I have set in this powerful lesson live. We’ve watched John do it. In fact, we were laughing right before we started recording that old clap. I’ve heard that clap so many times, I can actually do it. John was just, we were just in Paraguay just a few weeks ago, and John was giving this talk about the power of five, his rule of five, if you will. And he loves, in international communities because of the translation, he loves to tell everybody to clap five times.

Mark Cole:
And then invariably somebody goes the 6th, the 7th, the 8th time and has a good time with it. But here’s what John did several months now, ago, maybe even over a year now, he taught his rule of five for several years. Here was his rule of five. To read, write, file, think, ask questions. And then he realized he needed to take a step back, Traci, and talk about the power of five. And so today, as you hear this, John talks about it. Rule of five. Power of five.

Mark Cole:
But Traci, this has been an empowering lesson for me. I know it has been for you. And I’m so glad we’re able to dig into what is now the power of five. Five reasons, five things, five areas of focus. To get your rule of five, essentially.

Traci Morrow:
That’s right. I love talking about the power of five because for some, I think we’ll be listening and maybe for the first time are hearing this lesson, and they are maybe waking up to the idea of this, and it’s maybe thinking like, gosh, the consistency of this is a little alarming if you have been inconsistent. But for some of you, like it was for me, the first time that I heard this, it was very freeing, because sometimes your agenda is this. In your mind, it feels so much busier and bigger. But when you get it down and you write down your five and you identify what your five things are, then it’s so much easier. Like, once you check those five things off for the day, you feel so incredibly accomplished that, you know, all I got to do is those five, and that tree will fall. And so, as we dive into these today, I hope that all of our listeners will print out your bonus resource, but also spend some time thinking about your power of five diving right into it. I would love to ask you, Mark, on behalf of our listeners, but really, for myself, how would you advise our listeners to use the power of five? How do you use it personally? Do you have one overarching power of five? Do you have, like, a power of five for several aspects of your life? Do you have many checklists of five? Or do you just have one big for, like, your big dream of your life?

Mark Cole:
Yeah. So I have multiple rules of five or things that I need to do. So if we’re talking about growth, I have one set of disciplines, and, and I try to do those every day, what I have found and how John has taught this. And again, for those of you that are just catching this power of five lesson for the first time, and you’re going, aha. Because you haven’t heard John much or you’re just new to the podcast, new to our family. I don’t want to leave you, but. But I also want to stretch us beyond the way that John has taught this for years, which is there’s a rule of five every day. He reads, writes files, thinks, asks questions, and John uses that as a thought leader.

Mark Cole:
That’s what John Maxwell, the thought leader, which is how he’s known. You’ve either read a book, heard a speech, or been impacted by one of his companies. It’s kind of how you know John. And so John overarching when he taught this lesson for many, many years as the rule of five, he taught it as an overarching every day. This is what I do to stay relevant and to stay creative in creating content that will impact people. As we’ve talked through it. He’s also now taught his rule of five for growth. He’s taught his rule of five for leadership and some of those things.

Mark Cole:
So to answer your question and to really challenge our podcast listeners to do something with this lesson today, I would take an area in your life that you want to sharpen and you want to become. Let’s say you want to become the top 10%, you want to be in the top number, the top percentage of this particular area. Let’s take leadership. If you want to become a top leader in your company, in your organization, in your community, then you need to get a rule of five of how you want to do that, how you’re going to be effective at that. And as we apply it, as Traci and I kind of break this on down, what John’s talking about, let’s identify which goes right into the first, first point that John makes. You need to be able to know and articulate what you want to accomplish. That is super important before you even get a rule of five. And so for me, let’s take leadership every day.

Mark Cole:
For me to be the leader of a very recognized leadership brand, every day I do five things. I learn every day I have to learn something. I give a report to myself. I’m looking constantly, I’ll be looking in Traci’s content right here to learn something so that then I can do. Number two, I can apply every day. I want to learn something every day. I want to put it into action. Number three, every day I want to share something because I don’t want to be a reservoir.

Mark Cole:
I want it flow through me. So when I learn something, when I apply something, I now try to share it to others where they will be able to share it as a leader every day. Number four, I want to add value. I want people to go, wow, we are better. Because Mark was in the meeting, Mark was in the room. Mark was on the podcast. I want to add value every day. And then every day is very important to me that I want to review.

Mark Cole:
I want to review what I have learned, applied, shared and add value to so that I can build on it. Because the ceiling of today’s impact is the floor of tomorrow’s opportunity. And so I must review so that I’m ready to build on what I have done this day or this month or this year. For me, that’s my rule of five.

Traci Morrow:
So I love that you’ve jumped right in and giving that, given them an example of what five might be. So I’m going to give one of my five. Mine would be every day I like to learn something. I start out by learning that might be a couple different books, might be spending time in my bible. I like to spend time thinking about what I’ve just learned so that I can process it and plug it into my life of how that might play out. I like to connect with people, which leads into the next one, which is sharing what I’ve learned and then applying what I’ve learned into my own life. So those would be five for me. But there’s, there’s also the big dream, what he talked about.

Traci Morrow:
And so our listeners might be thinking about if they really want to accomplish something in their life, then they might be, they might be plugging in like they want to start a business or they want to expand their business or they want to move their family or start homeschooling their children, whatever that is. I’m just throwing out a few of them. You need to know what you want to accomplish. Let’s go to number one. And I love that where he said, and you can review it there in your notes. I must be very clear on my dream and what I’m going to be committed to. And so I believe this step is so huge because if you don’t get clear on this, I believe it can derail the entire rest of the process because you can get distracted, which is number four, or quit, which is number five. Because if that’s not crystal clear, you’re going to be off the rails in no time.

Traci Morrow:
When things get hard, it inevitably gets hard. Or when you get bored or when somebody pops up with a better idea on social media that you’re like, hey, maybe I should have tried that if you don’t have your blinders on to keep yourself focused. So how important, especially if you mark talking to our CEO’s and people who are big picture people, how important is getting this? Talk to our big dreamers who are creatives or entrepreneurial? Because I’m going to say I have worked with CEO’s before who are entrepreneurial, who are creative types, who are popping up with a new plan and of what they want to accomplish. Maybe it’s a big picture thing, but their method of doing it. And maybe that spills over into number two, which is tools, but it’s different every week. It’s different every month. They’re changing their method all the time instead of staying on the course. How important is it to crystallize on that dream to know so that they can commit?

Mark Cole:
Well, I haven’t met all of our listeners and all the creativity out there in our podcast family, but I can tell you that I’ve met a lot of leaders, and I will also tell you that John Maxwell is one of the most creative people I know. Free spirit. He don’t understand systems. He don’t understand process. He feels confined. He feels like they’re a box and he hates boxes. And yet, what John realizes in the area of your aspiration, in the area that you want to accomplish something great, you better streamline your system, your process, and your commitment to discipline in that area. So for those of you that are the creative type, and we love you, we need you.

Mark Cole:
Thanks for keeping the world bright. We need more of you. I would tell you your creativity is untapped in its full potential. If you don’t have a systematic way to mine that creativity within you, if you wait for the inspiration to hit and you run into a difficult time in your life, guess what the inspiration is not going to hit. If you are a free spirit type and you’re kind of waiting for the moment and you haven’t put yourself in an environment where the moment can strike you, you’re losing some of the creativity and the world is losing it because you haven’t tapped into it. So I don’t want to let you creative types that feel like John Maxwell that says, oh, my goodness, tell me five things I got to do and I’m going to buck the system. John says his favorite bumper sticker that he’s ever seen is, I know what the rule is. Just tell me what the fine is.

Mark Cole:
In other words, I know the rule and I’m going to break it. So just tell me what the penalty is going to be. And I’m probably telling too much on John right here, but he loved that bumper sticker and, but here’s why he’s a creative type. Don’t put me in a box. And Traci, I’m so glad you asked this question because creative people out there, if you don’t create a systematic way to mine the creativity in you, we’re waiting on it to show up. And I think we can do better than that. I think we can intentionally go after it.

Traci Morrow:
That’s right. And the system is important because leading to number five, that consistency is so important. I know we’re hopping all over between the five, but they all lend into one another. And if you, once you’ve decided what you want to accomplish, then automatically we need to be consistent with these five. Because just hitting at that tree five times in one day or three days or three times a week, it’s going to be a much slower and there’s more opportunity for you to be distracted or just give up. So the consistency is really important. Number two, he talks about having the right tool and he jokingly talks about going out and taking a bat to the tree. But it’s, it’s a joke.

Traci Morrow:
But it’s also really an important piece that I think probably does break down the system for some people when they are trying to accomplish something that they might be using, maybe an outdated tool or something that has always, always done it this way. This has always worked from us in the past. Or maybe they’re a little bit afraid. I know that some people are. I’m not saying this is pro or con AI, but I know that right now that’s maybe a hot button topic right now to say, you know, we don’t want to go there because we’re afraid or we don’t even want to take a look at it because that would maybe be a tool that could, that’s maybe an example of a tool. So let’s talk about how obviously is that when you’re using the wrong tool, an outdated tool that you need to modernize the tools that you’re using, or be open minded to younger generations who will say, hey, what about trying this tool? Because I feel like some people will just go to another tree or another project before they’ll take a look and assess, do I need to try another tool?

Mark Cole:
Yeah. So let me tell you this. I think there’s a couple of reasons that John really focused on you having the right tool. One, when you found a tool that has worked for you in the past or is working for you in the moment, and then all of a sudden it’s not working. There’s one of two reasons. One, the situation has changed. You’re going after something a little bit different and you need a different tool. You don’t have the right tool in your hand.

Mark Cole:
I think the other thing that we have really got to be careful of and where I want to hone in on answering you is how sharp is your tool. In other words, you have the right tool. You just haven’t done the diligence of sharpening the tool that’s in your tool belt. And oftentimes we get scattered and think, oh, my tool is not working. I got to try something else. And then we get frustrated because that doesn’t work either. That doesn’t work either. And it’s just because we’ve lost the discipline of sharpening what we know will work.

Mark Cole:
That’s in our tool belt. But let me say this, because you brought up aih, I have not completely locked in on how we at Maxwell leadership is going to use AI. But let me tell you what. We’ve got about ten people right now that are testing different things that we can do with AI because I don’t want to miss it, but I don’t want to sell out to something that’s not proven either. I want to keep sharpening the tool that we know that does work. So, for instance, we’re constantly around here at Maxwell leadership looking for tools to equip people with. We created in John’s new book. Most of you know this.

Mark Cole:
If you’re watching by YouTube, I’m holding it up. High road leadership, it’s a book that we’ve, we’ve sold out to, we’ve committed to in 2024 because of the state of division that’s in society right now, from political to religious to geographical. I mean, there’s a great division. This book is huge. If you haven’t got it, I’m going to give you a place to where to get a link and go get it. But some of you do have it. We created another tool to sharpen this message called the free high road leadership assessment tool. It’s free.

Mark Cole:
Did you catch that word? It’s free. It’s the high road leadership assessment tool to find out what kind of leader you are. And so in the show notes, we’ve created a link for you to go and get that free assessment. You’re going to love it. It’s going to enlighten you and it’s based off of this book. If you don’t have the book, you’re going to need to get that to understand what the assessment is meaning. But go take that free assessment. My point, you need to be sharpening how well you are treating the tools that’s in your life.

Traci Morrow:
I love that and I hope that our listeners will follow that link. Make a little note of that. That’s part of your power of five today. Your rule of five today. Follow that and take the assessment. Let’s move on to action. This is a step, I think John is taught on this so often, how taking action is such an important step that we don’t want to be sharpening our tool, making sure that our tool is ready. Getting so busy getting ready to get ready that we never actually take that first step or take that second step.

Traci Morrow:
So talk a little bit about, you know, where John says there’s always a price to pay, and I think that that might freeze some people up a little bit, you know, as they sharpen their tools, sharpen their axe, thinking about, do I really want to pay this price? I’m not really sure. As they contemplate it, as they sharpen their axe, talk a little bit about action and traction and what you’ve learned about that as a team leader leading your team.

Mark Cole:
Yeah. And let me, this is going to sound like I’m answering your question by going back to point number two, but I’m not. Listen to what, listen to what George Washington said. George Washington said if I had an hour to cut down a tree, I would spend the first 50 minutes sharpening the axe and the last ten minutes cutting down the tree. And so often we, again, we get into action before we’re sharp enough to be acting. That’s what George Washington is really saying. Don’t miss the point. That part of action is to make sure that you’re equipped to take action.

Mark Cole:
Now we’re ready. Now we’ve done the 50 minutes of sharpening the tool. We’re ready. We’re in action. I love this statement that John has said in the lesson today, the dream is free, but the journey isn’t. And your ability to begin? My ability to begin, Traci, to put action in place, to get some traction with our action. Absolutely. Is one of the greatest separators of the players and pretenders that John talk about the leaders and the wannabe leaders.

Mark Cole:
It’s their propensity to put into action what they’ve learned. I loved when you shared your rule of five. I shared my rule of five of leadership. It is always put in place depending on how much you apply, what you’ve learned. And you had a ply in yours. I have a ply in mine. There is a propensity to action that every leader must have if they’re going to really, truly make a difference. Too many people are getting ready to get ready.

Mark Cole:
They just spend all their time getting ready to get ready. I’m about to do it. I’m about to do it. We’ll quit about doing it and go do it. It’s not going to be good the first time, not going to be great at it. But you got to get started to get good. You’ve got to get started to get action. And too many people say, well, I’m waiting to get traction and I’m going, well, what are you doing up at this point? Well, I haven’t done anything yet because I don’t feel like it’s time to start.

Mark Cole:
You’re never going to get traction if you don’t start getting started and then the traction will come.

Traci Morrow:
That’s exactly right. That’s exactly right. And then once you have that, we need to. He talks about staying focused and then, of course, consistency. I know our time is running short, but I just wanted to say, ask you or have you speak into this? It’s easy to lose focus if you aren’t sure. I kind of hit on that at the first one because I feel like one really leads into number four. If you aren’t sure that this is where you’re supposed to be, if this is what you want, if this is what you really are going for. So really solidifying that.

Traci Morrow:
I feel like by the time number four and number one work together, being sure of what you want to accomplish, but once you do, I think it’s also true to lose focus if you don’t have your blinders on. So what are some tips for those of our listeners who are easily distracted, who are habitual distracted, people who are known for, oh, I’m just scatterbrained. I know I’ve. What do you say to your team members who, you know, have so much to bring to the table, but they are known for getting distracted along the way?

Mark Cole:
Well, I first assess if they have the ability to get focused. I’ve met a lot of creative people, a lot of people that add a lot of value to our team and they literally don’t have the ability to stay focused. The blinders are not big enough to block out the squirrel, the distraction. They just can’t do it. And so with people like that, and I determine, okay, I put them in a place to where their long term focus, or the lack thereof, I should say, is not detrimental to the team. So that’s the first thing as a leader I do, do they have truly the ability with disciplines and accountability in place, do they have the ability to get focused? And some don’t. Just go ahead and relief yourself. You can work all your life and some are just not going to get it.

Mark Cole:
Those that can get it, put accountability around them, put responsibility around them. Give a reporting structure that makes them report in a consistent way, that knowing that report being due, that report due date keeps them focused so that they can get the things done. So accountability, reporting, giving them a helper that keeps them focused, all of that are things that I do with people that has the ability to focus to get that traction.

Traci Morrow:
Okay. All right, so that’s good. And we’ll close on consistency. So I, again, like I said at the beginning, this was a game changer for me, just understanding that just those five, you don’t have to work all day. You just have to be very, you know, direct in getting those five things done. So what I. One of the things I did for my team is I created an app that had, like, five checks of what they needed to do for those five, for our rule of five. I determined what that was going to be for my organization, and then I created an app so that they could just log on, they could click those, and at the end of the month, it would go onto their calendar once they had finished those five, and then they would send off, you know, their little calendar to their direct report so that it could show how many days that they had completed their rule of five.

Traci Morrow:
So how do you. How do you recommend to your team or to our listeners how that they might develop consistency? Is that like a checklist on a little scratch piece of paper, or how do you recommend that to somebody who has never been, maybe very good with consistency?

Mark Cole:
Well, so I. I think that the simplicity of the concept of consistency overwhelms people. But it is absolutely that simple that you have to wake up every day. The way John taught this many, many years ago when he first started teaching the rule of five, which, again, today we’re talking about the power of five, is he would say, every day. Every day I read a file, I think. I ask questions. I write every day. Every day I read a file, I think.

Mark Cole:
I ask questions. I write every day, every day. And he’d say, what do I mean by every day? I mean every day. On Christmas, on vacation, on New Year’s. Every day. I read, I write, I file, I think. I ask questions. The simplicity of every day overwhelms people, says, but wait, wait.

Mark Cole:
I don’t take a sabbatical. You don’t take a sabbatical from every day. Every day means you’ve got to be consistent. And I know that flies in the face of people that, you know, I got to have a sabbath, I got to have some time for me. I got to have some me time. And I’m not taken away from that. Yes, you do. Yes, you do.

Mark Cole:
But those five things that you should do on a day basis, you take a month away from being, using your tool of thinking, writing, filing, asking questions, writing that John’s talking about. And the tool becomes dull. Now, you can change the way you can do it. You can change the expectation, you can change the setting, you can have a wonderful vacation, you can do all of those wonderful things, but the rule of five and consistency demands of us to you don’t have to do it all day, but you got to do it every day. You don’t have to do it every day the same way, but you got to do it every day. And that’s what consistency means. And that that consistency really trips people up when it gets into practice because they want to have a Thanksgiving excuse or they want to have an Easter excuse or they want to have I’m having a bad day excuse. And before you know it, there’s more days that have a holiday from your rule of five than you do have a work day on your rule of five.

Mark Cole:
Get a rule of five that energizes you, it fulfills you. It don’t feel like work on your sabbatical. It doesn’t feel like a challenge to do it in place of something else. It actually feels like an opportunity. I want to remind you, just kind of as we close out today, that you, we want you to take this high road leadership assessment. It’s free. There’s not a price barrier there because I want you to find out what kind of leader you are. We’re passionate about high road leadership.

Mark Cole:
If you haven’t read this book, get it. If you have read the book, but you haven’t shared the book, get it and give it. But I want you today, the big challenge is I want you to take this assessment and I want you to find out how well you’re doing on the high road of leadership. We had a listener comment, and I love our listener comments. I’m going to take a little bit of time at some point and talk about some recent podcast listeners that I’ve met. But this is from Estella. Estella listened to a leader’s greatest enemy, and this is what Estela said. I was able to listen to this podcast about pride, a long fight in my life with a smile in my heart.

Mark Cole:
Thank you for your example, to put the cookies at a low shelf for us. And that is exactly, Estella, that’s exactly what we’re attempting to do with every one of these podcasts. We’re trying to take complex things and simplify them so that it’ll make a difference. Why? Because this world has to have some high road leadership this world needs powerful, positive change because everyone deserves to be led well.

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