Maxwell Leadership Podcast: How to Put People In Their Place
Today we’re talking about how to put people in their place. No, not like that! This is about how to put the right people in the right place in your organization. See, you might have all-star players on your team, but if they’re not in positions that utilize their strengths, passions, and know-how, your business is probably underperforming, your turnover is probably high, and you’re probably feeling frustrated! The ability to put your people in the right place may very well be one of the greatest skills of a leader.
So, John Maxwell is going to teach you three things that every leader needs to know if they’re going to put people in the right positions. Then, Mark Cole and Chris Goede are going to share some stories and application about how they’ve implemented this teaching here at Maxwell Leadership. And they’re going to offer you applicable ways for you to apply this to your own leadership.
Our BONUS resource for this episode is the “How to Put People In Their Place Worksheet,” which includes fill-in-the-blank notes from John’s teaching. You can download the worksheet by visiting MaxwellPodcast.com/Place and clicking “Download the Bonus Resource.”
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Read The Transcript
Mark Cole:
Welcome to the Maxwell Leadership Podcast. This is the podcast that adds value to leaders, multiply value to others. My name is Mark Cole, and today we’re talking about how to put people in their place. No, not like that. This is about how to put people in the right place in your organization. See, you might have all star players on your team, but if these players are on your team, but they’re not in the right position, they’re not able to utilize their strengths or their passions, they’re not using their know how, their gifting, then probably your business is still underperforming. Your turnover could be high. Your business performance is not being what it needs to be. Maybe even the culture is struggling. It’s because you’re frustrated, they’re frustrated. All God’s children are frustrated. See, the ability to put your people in the right place may very well be one of the greatest skills of a leader. So first, in this episode, John is going to teach you three things that every leader needs to know. If they’re going to put people in the right positions, then Chris Goede has joined me today and he and I are going to share some stories and application about how we’ve implemented this teaching here at Maxwell Leadership. First, I’d encourage you, if you would like to watch this episode, you can go to YouTube and go to Maxwellpodcast.com/YouTube and be sure to subscribe. Also, if you’d like to take advantage of our free PDF worksheet, this accompanies John’s teaching and you’ll be able to follow along as he teaches. Go to Maxwellpodcast.com/Place and click the bonus resource button. Now, I hope you’re ready. I am. I’m ready to put some people in their place. Here is John Maxwell.
John Maxwell:
How to put people in their place. Now, before I talk to you on this subject, that’s kind of a negative statement. When you think of somebody, well, boy, they put me in my place or I’m going to put them in their place, you usually think of it as a very negative thing. It’s a kind of a downer. You’re looking down on somebody. But this lesson is going to be very positive. So don’t worry. This is a very positive lesson. But I am going to talk to you about as a leader, developing a team, how to recognize people’s uniqueness and giftedness and truly, how to put them in the right place. And the first thing I want to share with you on your notes, the sign of an outstanding leader is the proper placement of people. Before I talk about putting people in the right place, there was one thing that occurred to me that I better cover. There are two types of people that you want to bring on your team. The first one is what I call the superstar. You need to find a place for that person. In other words, when you find a person that’s a ten talent person, if from one to a ten. They’re highly gifted. You just bring them on the team. You don’t even have to have a place for them. You just bring them on team because they’re good. If they’re a superstar, bring them the team and you’ll find a place for them. That is a very person driven objective. Now, that is normally the way it is, because there aren’t too many superstars. There aren’t a lot of eagles out there. I’ve seen superstars passed over by a team because somebody says, we don’t have a place for them. Can I tell you something? If they’re really good, they’ll make a place for themselves. They’ll take you. So I always, whenever I find a superstar, man, I bring around on the team. The second person you want to bring on the team are the stars. The people that they’re gifted, they’re talented. Now, the difference is, when you get the superstars, those are person driven. What you do is you have to find a place for the person with the stars. You need to find the person for the place for them. You have a place that you want them to land, and if you don’t have a place you want them to land, you don’t bring them on. But for the highly, highly gifted person, the rare eagle, bring them on, you’ll find a place for them. I think the best way I can explain this before I start talking about putting people in the right place is the leader is like a quarterback. The job is not to run the ball on every play. That’s not the quarterback’s job. The job of the quarterback is to assess the situation and put the ball in the hands of the person that can best advance the ball for the team. I want you, in thinking of this lesson of putting people in their place, to think of yourself as a quarterback. You don’t have to always run the ball. You don’t always have to score the touchdowns. In fact, that isn’t why you’re the quarterback. You’re the quarterback because you have been assessed by the coach that of all the players on the team, you have the ability better than anyone else to put the ball in the right person’s hand at the right time for the team to be successful. How to put the right people in the right place. To put people in the place, the leader must know the following number one, the team. And when building a team, the right person is a priority. In other words, if you’re starting to build a team, don’t look to fill positions at the beginning, just look for the best person, because they probably can place several positions. So when you’re starting to build your team, your highest priority is not to fill a niche or to fill a place. Your highest priority is just get the best person and the reason. And I can tell you this, almost all of my best people in my organization have had several different jobs because they came on, they were just good. And I said, well here’s what I need right now because you’re building a team and you say, this is what I need. And the next three months, oh man, we really need this. And you just kind of move them around and they’re just filling all these places because they’re multi gifted and they’re good. So when you’re building a team, the right person is a priority. Now let’s go on. When fine tuning a team, in other words, when your team is becoming matured, the right person and the right place are both priorities. Now, as you’re fine tuning the team, you’ve really got to concentrate on the place because you already have people slotted in different areas. And now you got maybe two areas that you really need to fine tune. So you got to know the team. Secondly, to put people in the right place, you have to know the situation. And when I talk about the situation, there’s another law. In the 17 indisputable laws of teamwork, there’s another law that helps us with the situation. It’s called the law of the scoreboard. The law of the scoreboard says the team can make adjustments when it knows where it stands. Here’s the way this works. And you use a sports analogy for a moment. A team, when they go into a game, they have a game plan. And in the beginning, the game plan is absolutely it’s their bible. These are the first seven plays are going to run or whatever, okay? They have a game plan. The longer the game progresses, the less the game plan dominates their thinking and their decision making, the more the scoreboard does. Because now all of a sudden they’re in the middle of a game and things have turned. There have been some turnovers or whatever it is, and all of a sudden they’re behind more than they thought they’re going to be behind. So the scoreboard allows the leader to make the adjustments. And that’s where I’m talking about the fact putting people in the right place. You have to know the score. You got to know what the situation is. So leaders get the best position out of a situation by understanding six things. A the time. B the timing. Those two are different. Three, the opportunity, the old strike while the iron is hot, deal. Four, or letter D, the resources. What are the resources that we can call upon at this moment? Number five or letter E, the competition and number six or letter F, the players. And those six things require you to make whatever decision it is in the situation that you’re going to be in. So you’ve got to know the team. You got to know the situation. And thirdly, obviously, you have to know the players. So let’s look at that for a moment. While a leader needs to know to place a person correctly. Nine things. Letter a experience. How much experience has this person had, this member of the team? Are they young in experience or are they more old? Okay Letter B abilities. Letter C is temperament. Did they have the temperament that will fit that position correctly? Letter D is attitude. Letter E is passion. Letter F is potential. Letter G is emotional strength. Their ability to handle difficult issues and emotionally. Letter H is their relational strength, their ability to get along with people. Letter I is discipline. These are the nine things that, as a leader, I look at my members of the team, my players, and I have to go through this, and I have to know these things to be able to place them correctly. If I don’t know these things, in other words, this is checklist for you. As you get ready to put people in position, go back and say, okay, what kind of experience have they had? Do they have the right abilities? And go through that, and that’ll help. Now, Chris lesson on how to put people in their place, when I thought where’s the roots of this? It goes clear back to 1970, 319, 74 in my life when as a young pastor, I was trying to put everybody in the same place instead of the right place. And you have to know your players, and you have to know these nine things that will help you. Okay, now let me switch this for just a second. Let’s say you’re not a leader, but you’re a member of the team to be placed in the right place. In other words, you’re part of the team. A player must do the following things. Number one, be secure. To be placed in the right place, you got to be secure. My good friend Wayne Smith in Michigan said, no amount of personal competency compensates for personal insecurity. Boy, that’s truth. I have found no matter how gifted you are, if you’re personally insecure, you’re in trouble because insecure people do not take risk. Insecure people do not like change. And insecure people are not flexible. That’s just a fact. So if you’re going to be placed in the right place as a team member, you have to have a good secure base or else you will be unwilling to get out of your comfort zone. The second thing a player must do is trust the leader. You have to have a trust in the leader, which basically says, I trust you to put me where I’m going to be most effective. So there has to be this trust. In fact, as a leader in developing relationships with people, I always have to ask myself the question, can the people trust me? Because if they can’t trust me, they will not only follow me, they won’t let me place them correctly. So there has to be this trust relationship between the leader and the people. And so in your notes, a leader’s first question should be, am I a trustworthy person? And trustworthy questions should be such as, I’m just going to give you not all, I’m going to couple them. Can I be trusted with this organization’s future? Can I be trusted with the future of the organization that I’m leading? And another great question can I be trusted? Again, leaders are asking themselves this question can I be trusted with this person’s potential? Can I be trusted to really tap the potential of the person that I’m trying to lead? And questions such as, will this direction be best for the organization? Will the direction I’m taking this organization? Is it best for the organization? Should the organization be going this way? And will this direction I’m taking be best for the people? Because again, one time I was talking to leaders and I said, as a leader, you always need to ask yourself, should I be going where I’m going? Because leaders are activists, so they’re going to go somewhere. Should I be going where I’m going? But the next question you ought to ask is, should the people that are with me be going where I’m going? And that day I talked about journeys that leaders ought to take by themselves versus journeys that you ought to take with people. There are some journeys you got to take alone, and there’s some journeys you take people on the trip with you. And there’s a world difference between those two. Okay? So those are what I call trust questions that a leader has to ask himself or herself. Because if you’re going to let somebody place you in the right place, you have to trust them. Thirdly, if you’re going to let somebody place you in the right place, you have to see the big picture. That’s the only way that you can ever let somebody place you in the right place. You have to see the big picture. Here it is. To be placed in the right place, a player must be secure. Trust the leader, see the big picture. And one more thing have past experience. You got to have past experience. Some people speak from experience. Others from experience. Don’t speak, but you got to have past experience. Now, one more thing in conclusion, results of a leader putting people in the right place. Eight things. One, difficulties are reduced. Does that not make sense? All of a sudden, the problems begin to go down. Two, people are encouraged. These are very simple things. Three, growth is ensured. Four, teamwork is increased. Five, fulfillment is experienced. Six, potential is realized. Seven, victories are secured. And eight, if you’re a leader, you’ll understand this leaders are rewarded. There’s a huge reward as a leader. Senior players in the right place, doing the right thing for the right reason. And that’s where it compounds.
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Mark Cole:
Hey, welcome back, everybody. Chris and I were sitting here in the studio laughing about man when we first saw this and knew we were getting ready to talk about john’s going to help us put some people in our place. My first thought was, man, it’s going to be a good night at the Coal household. Stephanie is going to finally get put in her place. Or maybe you have a rogue teammate that made you click on the link and listen to the podcast today. Well, as we know now, after John’s teaching, he’s not really helping us put people in their place like that. He’s actually helping us position people to get the best and the most out of them. And this is a great lesson, but Man, I got to tell you, when I first saw it, I went, yes, okay.
Chris Goede:
We may have had a record number of downloads just because of the title, because they’re like, I need that, I need that, I need that personally and professionally.
Mark Cole:
There’s some people that needs to be.
Chris Goede:
Put, and then all of a sudden we’re going to see the numbers drop off once they realize what we’re talking about here. But I loved in your introduction because I think this is so true. And I think we see this in teams and in businesses and organ organizations and in communities wherever you might be leading that having people in the right place drives business results. And we talk about the fact that we’re in the people business. It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, doesn’t matter what you’re doing. We’re in the people business, right? And that’s a huge part of this. And so I want to dive in here. There’s a couple of points. I just want to pull out some thoughts and some application from you today. And the first one is where John talks about the leader must know the team. And under here, I thought it was very interesting. He said, when building the team, the right person is a priority. So we got to find the right person first. That’s how important people are in what we’re doing. But then to fine tune that team, we got to make sure the right person is in the right place. And so I had made a mention to you just before we started that’s the importance of hiring and the process and the tying it to your values and what you’re looking for in people. People are the lifeblood of our organization. Even maybe more importantly, I think that’s critical when it comes to promoting something because by the way, your team and your people are now exposed to that individual and it’s even more important of why you’re promoting them. And so I know you’ve been around a lot of teams, a lot of people have hired, have promoted. But to understand the team and the people that you’re bringing in to make sure they’re in the right place, what are some application pieces that you’ve used in your time when it comes to this point?
Mark Cole:
Well, as I was talking, john publicly says perhaps you’ve heard him hear podcast Friendly. John says, I’m terrible at hiring people. And then he goes on and says, because I put a tent on everybody’s head. So I immediately see the people. I don’t really assess them correctly because I have put a tent on everybody’s head. And then it’s up to them to disprove it. The challenge with is if you hire somebody with a proposed or supposed ten on their head, they’re going to take your organization and your organization’s performance to prove whether you were right or not. And so John makes that statement. And to be honest with you, through the years, I’ve kind of picked up some of his tendencies and I would now say Chris, and we kind of laugh about it, for sure, but I would now almost at times give myself the same grade that John gives himself on what it really means to hire people effectively. So I’m going to go probably a little bit different on this lesson than maybe the listeners are anticipating. By the way, the title has already messed you up, so let my content mess you up as well.
Chris Goede:
That’s how I go.
Mark Cole:
But really it comes down to I think there are three reasons that we make a superstar, a falling star in our leadership. They’re a superstar. They really are a ten on their head. We’ve read their pedigree, we know what they’ve been successful of, and we bring them in. And I think there’s three contributors of why we take a superstar and we put a sheen on them that makes them shine less bright. And I’m going to give those to you. That’s not in the lesson. It’s not even in my notes. But I’m going to give you this right here. And one is, I think we do that by giving too much hope and not enough expectation. Too much hope, not enough expectation. In fact, John and I do this quite often. We have this new project, we have this new idea. We have this new opportunity that’s come our way, and we find somebody that we love and we shove them in and say, hey, go figure it out. Oh, and doesn’t the leader in us love to be told, go figure it out until figuring out takes too long. Figuring out is incorrect from what they really wanted to be figured out or figuring out never happens because it wasn’t figureoutable. And so because of a lack of expectation and too much hope, we actually cause a superstar to fall. The second reason that I think is because we empower them. We don’t communicate with them. We over empower and we under communicate. So we go, hey, we found a person. Oh my gosh, they’re a superstar, they’re a rock star, they’re all the stars go do it. And then we leave it to them and don’t provide guidance. John says, I do it, I do it, you watch, you do it. I watch you do it, you do it and help somebody else do it. That’s our formula of empowerment. But a lot of times when we find a superstar, I do it, you watch feels too elementary to them, it feels too demeaning to them. So we overempower them as if they’re the superstar that they are and we under communicate to make sure that we’re still serving them along the way. The final thing that I would say is we give them too much autonomy and not enough dependency. We give them too much autonomy, not enough dependency. So they’re a superstar. They deserve autonomy. They used to have autonomy. They’re accustomed to autonomy because they were so good the last time. And we don’t show them that they need to be dependent on the current business model, the current team, or the current visionary. And so before they’re able to actually find and leverage their place on the team, they lose their stardom because we didn’t set them up successfully. So I want to tell you, this is an open confession for all of you. I feel like I have caused way too many superstars in my leadership to be fallen stars because of a lack of clarity, a lack of communication, and a lack of dependency that that person should have on the rest of the organization. Because superstars want that, I want them to have that. We give each other that and then we lose our way because we don’t counter that tension with the things that you must have to be empowered to be autonomous and to be seen as that great successful superstar that you are.
Chris Goede:
Podcast listeners. That didn’t cost you anything extra for this free podcast. And I don’t know if you’re like me, if you’re watching us on YouTube, I’m taking notes. I’ve never heard Mark share that content. And that is really rich stuff right there. And what I love about it is that it does go right along. You went off script. Yeah, but it goes right along with the fact of we got to make sure that we have the right people first and then we do put them in the right place. And then with those three bullet points, make sure that we are addressing that that we’re leaning in and we’re not doing that. I know I can think of certain leadership examples where I’ve done one of those with a new person, two of them, maybe all three. And so I know that added a tremendous amount of value to those.
Mark Cole:
So let me go where you were taking us. But as I was listening and thinking, I went, wow, I want to be a star gazer and a star raiser, but I’m afraid sometimes that I diminish someone’s luster and I cause them to fall before they ever gave a chance. So we got that off of my chest.
Chris Goede:
Love it.
Mark Cole:
Forgiveness?
Chris Goede:
No, thank you.
Mark Cole:
Ask for forgiveness. But now let me go to this question and how you ask it. I think there’s so many times, Chris, that leader find that superstar. And for John and I, again, we see that as a positive thing. And we put so much emphasis on the people and not enough emphasis on the position and not enough emphasis on the desired outcome. So it really is a combination, because if you just go around as Jim Collins challenges us, they get the right people on the bus, but you never define where they’re sitting on the bus, driving, holding the luggage in the back, on top, underneath, whatever that rule is. If you don’t get it, you will eventually have the right person on the bus, but you’ll be on the wrong bus because you’re not getting the best out of them. And expectation clarity, which is position and direction, really is important, as well as getting the right person on the bus.
Chris Goede:
I didn’t know you were going to share that. I had a quote for our listeners that aligns directly with what you’re saying. As I was doing some work thinking about our title today, because I was confused, as you were, when we were going to be putting people in their place. It just doesn’t align with our DNA of leadership. So I thought I’d start doing some homework before I listen to John’s lesson. But the quote was, determining whether people are right for the right seat begins with assessing the performance we’re expecting against the expectations of the outcome that we want.
Mark Cole:
Sure.
Chris Goede:
And when you do that and that’s what you’re saying, that’s what you’ve said for the last few minutes and unpacking all of that. And by the way, it falls on us. Leader right. That’s our gap to close, and so we got to be able to do that. All right, let’s talk about the second point here that John talks about how to put people in their place is really the situation that we’re putting them into. And I know that you were sharing with me a little bit about some conversations you’ve had recently with John and a scoreboard, and John has written on the law of the scoreboard. John likes results, by the way, and as most leaders do, they want production. So just share with our audience a little bit about that conversation. I think it’ll be very helpful when it comes to this.
Mark Cole:
Yeah. So John has written in the 17 Laws of Teamwork, which, by the way, if you want the 17 Laws of Teamwork, john wrote this book several, several years ago. If you would like it, we’re making that available to all of our podcast listeners this week. You can go click on the link in the show notes and use the keyword promo code podcast and you’ll be able to get another 15% off of it. But in this book, The Laws of Teamwork, john talks about the law of the scoreboard. John spoke recently to a very successful organization down in Orlando, and the guy that asked him in, the CEO, wanted him to talk on The Law of the Scoreboard. And so John was letting me contribute to the lesson that he was prepping as we were on the plane down to Orlando. And John made an interesting statement that said, when you are winning, you don’t need to look at the scoreboard. When you’re losing, you don’t want to look at the scoreboard. But yet a great leader will always look at the scoreboard and figure out, how can I make it better? And too many times we look at the scoreboard to indicate how we are doing, rather than to inspire us in how well we can do. Okay, so we’re losing in the fourth quarter. We’ll never pull it out. Don’t talk to the Falcons about that. Against Tom Brady in Super Bowl, whatever number that was. That was a disaster. I was there. But we look at the scoreboard and we say, we can never return. But, hey, we don’t have to stay zero. We don’t have to be a landslide. We can come back and make it respectable. And I’ve watched great leaders, great coaches never stop till the final buzzer. I’ve watched great teammates always watch the replay of that scoreboard, not to see how well they did, but how much better they could have done. And my question to you is not, do you have a scoreboard? I hope you have one. But the question is, why? Do you have a scoreboard? To show you how well you’re doing or to tell you how much better you can do? And when we look at the scoreboard in our life, in the situation like we’re talking about here, putting people in their place, I believe the scoreboard should be driving a person to peak performance, not celebrating a person’s moderate performance. John Wooden, who mentored John, said the greatest concern that he had was when his players got so confident in a big win that they didn’t come out the next week in practice, and they didn’t come out the next game at peak performance because the scoreboard told them they were better than they were. Don’t let the scoreboard lie to you, even when it’s a winning score. Can you do better? Are you doing better? How do you make Bursell better? And that’s the purpose and the point of the scoreboard.
Chris Goede:
Yeah, I love that. I think most people look at it just like you talked about. They look at it for one or two reasons, right, whether they want to look at it because they’re winning or they don’t because they’re losing. And I know there’s a lot of people now, listen, we don’t support betting in sports, but there’s probably a lot of people that towards the end of the game, when a team scores, it kind of ruins the spread.
Mark Cole:
Yeah, right.
Chris Goede:
You just cost a lot of money. But that’s a leader who’s looking at it saying, hey, we can’t, to your point, get shut out. Like, what is it that we can be doing just to get a little bit better? Well, John then goes on to talk about not only the situation a little bit more in depth. He talks about the players, and then he spins the narrative on this lesson, and he starts saying, hey, if you are a part of a team and we’re going to make sure that you’re in the right place, you got to be a couple of things, and you got to be secure. I think that’s huge. I think that’s something we don’t talk enough about in leadership. But then he comes to this point, this word of trust, which is the currency to all leadership influence, is built off trust. And he says, man, you got to trust the leader. I know this resonated with you a little bit, talk a little bit about this to our listeners and why that kind of stuck out to you in John’s lesson today.
Mark Cole:
Trust takes two people, right? You got to have a trustee and a trustor. And so oftentimes when we say you got to earn trust or are you trustworthy or do you trust your leader, it’s this two way street, right? Often we find ourselves looking at trust as a two way street, and I am not undoing that idea around trust. But here’s what really struck me, Chris, that I said, hey, let’s take a minute, a couple of minutes and talk about trust. Before we started recording, John asked a question in your notes. Again, I’m going to challenge you to go back and download the PDF. He asked this question. He said a leader’s first question should be, am I a trustworthy person? Now, John in this segment, and I don’t know why this struck me so much, but I feel like it’s because something that our podcast listeners need to absorb John challenges is in this idea of the players on the team. The first question is of ourself, am I a trustworthy person? And I look at that and I go, well, you know what? Did you lie last night? Did you steal something? Did you cheat? Okay, you’re good. I’m a trustworthy person. John’s going much deeper than those moral, ethical characteristic issues. He’s saying, can this person trust that I have what’s best for them at heart? Am I a trustworthy person? Because then he goes on and he says, can I be trusted by the organization’s future? Will this direction be best for the organization? And he asks, Can I be trusted by this person’s potential? Will this direction be the best for people? All of those are very reflective questions that I believe a leader should ask before they have every conversation. I’ve got tough conversations. I have all the time. Had a few a couple of weeks ago. Got a few coming up. If I sit down and I ask myself the question, chris, I’ll be in trustworthy here. This is not talking about, does somebody else see me as trustworthy? This is digging deep. But I will tell you this. I believe trust originates in a blind spot. And if I have a blind spot I love when John teaches this. If you have a blind spot, guess what? You can’t see it. You can’t say, you know what? Last night I was sitting at Loan and I saw a blind spot. No, you can’t see. Blind spots are always pointed out to you. And to be honest with you, the bigger the blind spot, the bigger the surprise when you see it. In fact, the bigger the blind spot, the more resistant you are that it’s a blind spot when you first hear it. So am I a trustworthy person? I don’t think you can answer that question internally, even though it’s an internal question. I think you have to get people around you and say, give me the body of my work in situations like this, am I a trustworthy person? Give me the body of work and how I have treated this organization’s time when they’re paying me, am I a trustworthy person? Too many people try to answer that question, as John directs to answer, am I a trustworthy person? But most people don’t go through the discipline of figuring out if they have blind spots before they answer that question. My greatest challenge to you, and this is why, Chris, I wanted to bring it back up. My greatest challenge to all of us is to really ask the question, am I a trustworthy person? Before you go, make a hard leadership call before you make a leadership decision, am I a trustworthy person? But I’m going to take you one step further. Don’t just ask the question, get input about the question, because chances are, in the area of trust, you trust yourself. You know where you’re coming from, and so you consider yourself a trustworthy person, when really you’re just a comfortable person that’s pretty blind to your own way of doing things.
Chris Goede:
Why this is so important is people are looking to their leader for their career development. So stay on the professional side for just a minute. And nowadays, inside organizations people are joining or staying with companies. Top three reason because what is that leader going to do to develop me? Do I trust that leader? And I love how you’re posing us to ask that question. I’ve also heard another way where they say, what’s it look like to be on the other side of my leadership? And are you willing, to your point, are you willing to put people around you to be able to answer that, so that when you do put people in the right place on the team, the organization benefits, but the person benefits even more. And then, oh, by the way, third, then you’ll benefit as a leader. Well, one of the things I was thinking about while you’re talking about this, I made a note. Isn’t it true that as we think about the people on our team, most appreciable asset that we have, we’re in the people business and yet we have monthly, maybe quarterly planning sessions for rollouts of our marketing and sales incentives and products and all this kind of stuff. But man, we don’t even think about do we have people planning sessions? What does that look like when it comes to the succession inside our organization? And oftentimes when we use the word succession in organizations, they think what we’re walking through with you and John Mark is succeeding and leading the company and the CEO. But this is at every level we need to be thinking about this every single level. Are you having time as a team to be having people planning sessions to make sure they are on the right seat of the bus as we’ve talked about in the past before? So I think when we do that and I’m going to wrap this up for my thoughts and throw it to you for close, john then goes on in the last part of this lesson in your notes here and talks about hey, these are the results of doing that when we have the people in the right place. I think I wrote down a couple of things that stand out to me when we have people in the right place, productivity rises. I think that the results then of that productivity increase, I think everyone begins to have fun. That by the way, that’s one of the things we try to do in our meetings. Jared Kegel if you’re listening, number twelve. And when you do that, I think you’re creating a cadence for that team when they’re in the right spot. And we know we can feel it when we’re not in that cadence as a team, whether you are the one that’s not in cadence or you have a team that’s not in cadence and you can feel that. And by the way, that is because we haven’t done a good job of figuring out if people are in the right place. So close up with some thoughts you might have around this lesson now that we’ve gotten over the title, and we feel a little more comfortable going through the content piece and wrap it up for us today.
Mark Cole:
Well, I think the cool thing is let’s go back to how the title kind of slipped us. Leaders, it’s your responsibility to create the atmosphere, the environment, the culture that makes superstars stay superstars. You have within your leadership the ability to create superstars. You have in your ability to diminish superstars. In other words, our responsibility I love jake always provides us the standout statement. A lot of times, it’s something john said, but the standout statement that jake put in here was location, location, location. We’ve heard that all about real estate and retail.
Chris Goede:
Well, guess what?
Mark Cole:
Location, location, location is a necessary ingredient to the success of your team and the people on your team. My challenge to myself, my challenge to you, Chris, my challenge to you, all of us is what are we doing to position our people correctly so they can operate at optimal performance? I say it like this in my purpose statement, I exist to help people reach their full potential. That requires a focus on location and how we position them. I love how john did that. So, yeah, put your people in place. Don’t try to go home and do that with your significant other, but put your people in place. Today, I want to end with a comment from tanaka. Tanaka said this was deep. By the way. He’s talking about a podcast that we did recently to where we talked about the personal responsibility of a leader in their own development. And so, tanaka, thank you for enjoying that. We’ll put that episode in the show notes. Tanaka said this was deep. Truly what I needed to take my team to the next level. And that is what we want to do is to help you take each other to the next level because the world’s desiring powerful, positive change, and every person in your path deserves to be led well. We’ll see you again next week.
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