Maxwell Leadership Podcast: Transferring the Vision to the Heart and the Head

Mark Cole:

Hello, podcast family. Welcome back, and to some of you, welcome for the first time to the Maxwell Leadership Podcast. This is the podcast that is designed to add value to leaders who multiply value to others. This week, we’re talking about something that has been a challenge to learn, but it’s a huge asset to everyone’s leadership, and it’s been a real impact to my personal leadership, and that’s casting vision. Oh yes, that’s it. Casting vision. See, when your people understand the vision, it gives them direction and it gives them confidence. Believe me, if those two things are critical to what you want to accomplish, then you need to look for every way to establish confidence and clarity of direction. If you want to create powerful, positive change, this lesson will help you lead and do just that.

John is going to talk about the two ways your vision needs to appeal to the people on your team. It needs to appeal emotionally. That deals with the heart and logically. That deals with the head, so after John’s lesson, I’ll be joined by my co-host, Traci Morrow. We’re going to discuss the importance of transferring vision to our teams and how we live out those principles in our own personal leadership. To download this episode’s bonus resource, please go to maxwellpodcast.com/heart. This resource is a free fill-in-the blank PDF that accompanies John’s lesson and will make it easier for you to capture notes. Lastly, if you would like to watch this episode on YouTube, please go to maxwellpodcast.com/youtube, and be sure to leave us a comment. All right. Here we go. John is going to help you on transferring vision to the heart and the head. Here is John.

John Maxwell:

Vision determines the direction of the team. Vision is what gives any team direction. In your notes, teamwork gives you the best opportunity to turn vision into reality. Pat Riley said, “Teamwork requires that everyone’s efforts flow in a single direction. Feelings of significance happen when a team’s energy takes on a life of its own.” In my 17 Laws of Teamwork, I talk about the law of the compass. The law of the compass says vision gives team members direction and confidence. What I have discovered about vision, since vision determines the direction of the team, which is very essential for success, what I’ve discovered about vision is that vision requires both emotional and logical transference.

I’m constantly asked. In fact, one of the questions I’m asked the most is, people come to me and say, “John, how do I cast a good vision?” Because every leader knows, to develop a great team, you got to be able to cast vision, so when they ask me how do I cast successful vision, I have to break it down as I am now for you and say, “There is a logical transference that is important to a vision, and there’s an emotional transference that’s important to vision.” What I have found is, here’s where I’ve discovered the weakness of many leaders in team building and vision casting. Some are very logical in their vision casting, but do not have the emotion, which is the fuel that carries the vision. There are some that are very emotional in casting their vision, but they lack the logic to sustain it, so it’s both, so let me just break it down for you quickly.

What is needed to emotionally transfer a vision? Number one is credibility. The most important essence of emotionally transferring a vision is integrity and credibility to the person that is casting the vision lives the life, and the team knows that that individual walks the walk and talks the talk. Number two is passion. Have you ever heard anybody try to cast vision but you weren’t sure they believed in it and they were trying to pass it by you, but they weren’t passionate about it themselves? Number three, relationships. The closer we are as a team, the quicker the buy-in.

Number four is timing. Kenny Rogers was right. I mean, he wasn’t talking about vision casting, but he was right. “You got to know when to hold ’em. Got to know when to fold ’em. Got to know when to walk away.” It’s the very same thing with a vision. There’s a right time to cast the vision. There’s a wrong time. A good vision with the wrong time will fail. Not because it wasn’t a good vision, but because we didn’t understand the timing. Number five, felt need.

Now those are the five things that when you’re going to cast a vision that you want to make sure that are part of the emotion. Studs Terkel said, “I think most of us are looking for a calling, not a job. Most of us, like the assembly line worker, have jobs that are too small for our spirit.” I love that phrase. Jobs too small for our spirit. Jobs are not big enough for people. Now, what is needed to logically transfer a vision? Number one, a realistic understanding of the situation today.

I stop long enough to say this. When you’re trying to cast a vision, if you’re not realistic today, people know that you have no reality about tomorrow. Now, here’s a mistake leaders make all the time. I’ve seen leaders cast a vision of tomorrow because they aren’t doing well today. Vision for some people is a cover-up. It’s a cover-up for not what you’ve accomplished today or not what you’ve dealt with in the issues today. The realism of today has to be part of the vision casting tomorrow because if it’s not, people say, “Well, if they don’t understand and aren’t realistic about where we are right now, how can we ever be realistic about where we want to go?”

Number two, an experienced team really helps with the logical transference of a vision. Number three, a sound strategy, that step-by-step process of how you’re going to get there. Number four, acceptance of responsibility by the leaders until they not only have buy-in, but they put their name on the line and say, “We’re going to make this happen.” The success of a vision almost always is based upon the buy-in of the leaders who are willing to put their name by the bottom line number, whatever it is. In fact, I often say, “Don’t cast the vision until your leaders are ready to put their name by the bottom line. Sign it right there.”

Number five, the celebration and communication of each victory. Very important to transfer a vision. Number six, evaluation and communication for each defeat. Here’s what we did wrong. Here’s why we did not accomplish what we need to. Obviously, number seven is time. Isn’t it interesting? To emotionally transfer a vision, you need proper timing. To logically transfer it, you just need time.

Jim Tunney, many of you’ll remember him, used to be a major official in the NFL. He said, “A common reason goals aren’t accomplished is they are not clearly defined. If employees don’t understand their company’s goals and its game plan, these goals won’t be achieved. Football doesn’t make this mistake. Its goals are always clearly defined. At the end of the field is a goal line. Why do we call it a goal line? Because 11 people on the offensive team huddle for a single purpose to move the ball across it. Everyone has a specific job to do. The quarterback, the wide receiver, each lineman, every player knows exactly what his assignment is. Even the defensive team has its goals, too, to prevent the offensive team from achieving its goal.” So vision determines the direction of the team.

Advertisement:

Hey, podcast listeners. Do you have a clear plan for growth? Achieving big results most often does not require big life changes. Small improvements over time compound into big results. Download the Maxwell Leadership app. It’s the new free app where our expert guides and John Maxwell help you pace your leadership journey and set a clear plan for your own personal growth. You can also find all sorts of resources on the Maxwell Leadership app, including this podcast, information on upcoming events and much more. Just search Maxwell Leadership in your app store and download the app today.

Mark Cole:

Hey, welcome back. Traci and I are here in studio. I cannot wait to dig into transferring vision to the heart and the head. I want to come right out of the gate and put in the show notes a reference to another podcast that we did called Leader Vision, How to See and Sculpt the Future. John did this podcast. We broke it down in application some time ago. It’s in the show notes. In that podcast, John made a statement that I love, that Jake and our team highlighted today for us. Here’s what it said. Vision casting can be done by a communicator, but vision convincing can only be done by a leader. So Traci, here we go. With that backdrop, boom.

Traci Morrow:

Starting out with a mic drop.

Mark Cole:

That’s exactly right, so here we are applying this, connecting the vision to the head and the heart.

Traci Morrow:

Are you ready for this topic today?

Mark Cole:

I’m ready. I’m ready.

Traci Morrow:

You guys don’t know. We had a whole conversation and Mark is fired up today. I am really excited.

Mark Cole:

So, behind the scenes. I love the fact that we have a great audience that tunes in every month or every week rather to YouTube and sees us interacting, but today is the day that not only did you join us on YouTube and visibly come in here in the studio with us, but I wish you would have been in the studio when-

Traci Morrow:

Just saying.

Mark Cole:

… For one of our first times, Traci, I said, “Okay, Jake. Stop John’s recording. We got to talk some leadership right here.” So Jared, Jake, myself, and Traci, we all huddled around. Boy, if we live out that part of that conversation, welcome everybody. This is going to be a two-hour episode of the podcast.

Traci Morrow:

That’s right. I’m going to do my best to stir the pot and recreate with my questions a little bit of that passion for you friends, but I will kick it off by just asking something that stood out to me. At the very beginning, John said something. The law of the compass. He referred to the law of the compass by saying, “Vision gives team members direction and confidence.” I have seen this in my leadership journey, and I would love if you could speak to this a little bit. What happens when a leader has vision ADD? What I mean by that is they’re going this way with this direction and then they either read something or they learn something new and then they take the vision in a different direction and it leaves their people whiplashed almost where the vision is continually changing based on what the leader is learning or is growing in a certain area. What happens and what do you do when you have a leader that has vision ADD?

Mark Cole:

I love this question. We did not discuss this, but you had told me. You said, “I want to hit something at the very beginning.”

Traci Morrow:

Yes.

Mark Cole:

I love this, and let me tell you why. It is true that most of us entrepreneurs, and I’m looking into the camera for those on YouTube, and we have a lot of entrepreneurs. We see squirrels everywhere, right?

Traci Morrow:

Yeah. Yes.

Mark Cole:

Oh, squirrel. Oh, squirrel. As an entrepreneur, it is common to not be clear even within ourself what the vision is. Okay? I’ve got it. The assumption that I make as a leader, when you have a team helping you chase a vision, you’re not as entrepreneur ADD vision as it may seem when we’re a solo entrepreneur starting something. In other words, you’re big enough that now you have aggregated a team. You’re paying a team. You’ve engaged a group of people to go. My common assumption at that point is to not think that the leader has vision ADD. They have opportunity ADD, and within them somewhere, the vision is still the same.

Now, I worked for John Maxwell for 22 years. Don’t tell him I said I worked for because he’d kill us. I have worked with John Maxwell for 22 years and every single month, if not week, if not day, John Maxwell has a new idea. John has opportunity ADD, but let me be really clear. I’ve never in all of my years felt like that John had vision ADD after asking him a couple of questions. I’m getting ready to tell you how to ask. So the way you framed this question was how do you deal with a leader with vision ADD? The way I deal with a leader that I’m on their team, that it feels like they have vision ADD is number one, assume they don’t have vision ADD. They have opportunity ADD.

Somewhere, every opportunity, every waking moment when they come in and turn this way and turn that way, somewhere it’s making sense to that visionary that he or she is still on the same vision track, so here’s why that’s important. Number one, assume they don’t have vision ADD. Now I’m going to go in and say, “Hey John, this vision you just cast, this idea that you just shared, this direction you just asked us to go in, it doesn’t feel like the vision we’ve been chasing. Can you help me connect it to the vision, so I can be on the same page with you?”

Nine times out of 10, slowing a leader down, they do one of two things. “Yes, I can.” They share the passion that I just shared with you, Jared, Jake, and in the studio just here, my vision. They share it with you. You go, “Oh my gosh. They’re not distracted. They’re actually very clear.” There is one to two to five to six percent of the time that leader looks and says, “I can’t. Thank you for checking me up that I was chasing something that was getting us off vision point.” See, because no leader wants to have ADD in their vision because they know a vision that fluctuates every day is something that’s never going to be accomplished. No leader, no matter how entrepreneurial they are, wants to realize that they are chasing a new vision every day, but every entrepreneur leader wants to feel like they’re chasing a new opportunity every day. It’s their lifeblood. It’s the air they breathe.

Traci Morrow:

Yeah. Yeah.

Mark Cole:

So I have found, when I ask the question, “Can you help me connect this to the vision that I thought we were chasing,” more than 50% of the time they do it and do it quite well, and I just didn’t see the bigger picture. The other percentage of the time, truly Traci, there is an awareness that says, “Hey, thank you for making me do that. This was a bad idea that would get us off point with the vision.” I don’t have a third option for you that I get. If I slow down as the person that is wanting to help the leader chase their vision, and I just ask them the question, “Will you help me connect this to the vision?” So I assume, unlike others that have worked for John Maxwell that goes, “I can’t follow him. He’s always got a new vision.”

You’re not giving the leader the opportunity or the benefit of the doubt that they really don’t have a different vision. You’re just hearing their opportunity ADD as another vision, and it’s really not. In their mind, it’s settled that this is the same trajectory they’ve been on as it relates to their vision. Then at other times you have this realization. “Whoa. Thank you for calling me out on that because I was off point in this. It would have affected our vision.”

Traci Morrow:

So a good leader asks the great question, and for those of you who were driving or you got distracted, the question was, “This feels off vision. Help me connect it to the vision,” and then see if they can.

Mark Cole:

Yeah.

Traci Morrow:

Okay, so now let’s get into transferring vision emotionally. Then John gives us five ways, five things that are needed in order to emotionally transfer a vision. Can you share with us a little bit where you’re at in your personal journey right now as you are, having a big meeting with your leadership team coming up, needing to transfer. Passion is definitely not your problem as we’re all going to see here in a bit.

Mark Cole:

Yeah, intensity is my passion. I mean, my problem but not passion.

Traci Morrow:

So what of these are you struggling with? Where are you at in your leadership journey as you are needing to emotionally transfer your vision? We’ll talk about logically in a minute, but right now just honing in on emotions, where are you at in your journey right now with your own team?

Mark Cole:

Full disclosure. For all of you where Traci just promised we would get to logical in just a minute, number one, it will not be a minute. Number two, we may never get there, so let’s just start right there. Okay? Just full disclosure in what Traci just said. We may never get to logic in this conversation. So, let me illustrate this for a moment to you, Traci. I’ll take all five of these points, and I’ll talk to you about how I personally am working through emotionally transferring our vision right now.

Traci Morrow:

Great.

Mark Cole:

Number one is credibility. Recently, right before recording this podcast … Sometimes we record and a week or two later it comes out … I had a real significant conversation with somebody that’s been on my team helping me impact and challenge literally tens of thousands of people to join our team. It was a deep, meaningful conversation about from her vantage point she felt like that we were off point with the vision that we’ve been chasing the last 10 years and because of that, it has created a disconnect for her team that’s really helping us chase a part of a very important initiative within our vision. So, I began to take time with her and talk about how that growth … The conversation was how is this growth app, this Maxwell Leadership Growth app, how is that fitting into a vision I thought we’ve been chasing? Is this a vision alternative?

I began to share with her that John Maxwell is where he is today because of a commitment he made a long time ago to personally grow. I reminded her of my story of a broken, busted human being at 30 that joined John Maxwell’s team, and personal growth focus became the foundation for the leadership effectiveness that I have today. Then I explained to her that you pull personal growth out of John Maxwell’s life at any point in his leadership journey or you pull it out of my leadership life like it was in the first part of my leadership journey. It was absent. I was not growing bigger on the inside than I was on the outside. You remove that one facet and you put a shelf life on leadership.

If you my dear friends, my podcast family, if you are not actively growing yourself from the inside out, you have a shelf life. We may not know that where the dash is. I’m not talking about life and death, death as in physically dying. I’m talking about leadership dying. If you do not have a passion to grow yourself and become bigger on the inside and you do not have an intentional plan, you may be living your best days today, but your best days are not in your future because it puts a shelf life on it. I began sharing with her that while John had that at the personal level, I’ve had that at the personal level, we have not had that at the personal level as a discipline in our business and in our business deliverables. If we don’t get that into our business deliverables that we will not have the luxury of selling and pursuing the things that we’ve been pursuing the last 10 years.

When I began to give her that as a reference point for me personally and why this on a personal level was driving the vision and the expectation I was putting on the organization, she went, “Wow. I now understand why this is so important to you because it’s important to yours and John’s way that you’ve personally led. Therefore, it’s important to us and how we help other people lead, and we did not have that as a business offering for the last 10 years.”

In other words, what I did is I established credibility with this teammate, that’s very important to me, back to the vision. When John says that you cannot transfer a vision until you put an emotional point that gives you credibility, he’s 100% right. Us as leaders have got to lead from a place of credibility or there will never be an emotional transference to our teammates. It’s got to start at the heart level of the leader before it will ever be affected.

Traci Morrow:

Before you get to passion, I want to just highlight for our listeners the importance of what you’ve done for your team there that I think leaders who are listening need to hear. I think it’s so important because John has always talked about having an open ear policy with his team. I think the fact that there could have been a huge disconnect between you and this team member who influences tens of thousands of people who are coming into the organization, if there was not an open ear policy where she had the freedom to come to you to say, “There’s a big disconnect here,” if there was not the freedom, if you had an ego? If you were in a place where this person could not come to you, you would’ve never known that there was a feeling of a disconnect. I think it’s important for leaders to put on their big boy pants, their big girl pants and say, “Hey, I’m open to hear what you’re feeling so that we can move forward.” That also adds to your credibility. Okay. I think that was an important piece.

Mark Cole:

I do, too. Thank you. I do, too. Thank you. By the way, if you want to hear me talk on passion, we have 220 plus episodes of the podcast. Just go back and listen to it. I’m talking about passion all the time. I want to skip to number three. It’s not that passion is not important. Go back and listen to the other 200 plus podcasts, but I want to talk about relationships, Traci, because we had a conversation in here. You are my pick, John’s too, but I’m going to just talk from a personal standpoint. You are my pick to represent our future from John Maxwell’s relational perspective. We believe that everything John’s ever communicated, everything John’s ever written is written with a context of leadership in the form of clear communication, leadership, equipping attitude and relationship. When John and I said, “How do we continue growing the trajectory of John’s influence in the area of relational leadership,” we picked you. No pressure, but we picked you.

Now we’re sitting here having this conversation about emotionally transferring a vision. You’re going, “Mark, I feel super disconnected from where we are right now.” Do you know how riveting that was to me? Our relational leader feels disconnected, and John says, to have relationship, you’ve got to have the team closer rather than farther. You’ve got to pull the team together. That’s what he just said in the podcast, just now in his teaching. To really have an emotional transfer of vision, the team’s got to feel a closeness, a connectivity. My relational guide is looking at me and saying, “Man, Mark. I feel really fragmented right now.” It’s a violation of our very foundation of what we’re doing.

Now I’m not putting you on the spot and we’re not living out our dirty laundry. This is a very important point, though. When you’re in the middle of vision transfer at the emotional level and anybody on your team, especially in my case, the relational guide, but when anyone on your team goes, “I’m feeling a little disconnected,” you are violating one of the key points on what John says is needed to emotionally transfer a vision. A sense of disconnection, leaders, is not emotionally transferring. It, in fact is the exact opposite. So, in this setting that I shut down the recording and said, “I don’t want to hear John right now. I want to talk what John is saying,” you gave me valuable insight to carry into my upcoming meetings. My relational guide is feeling disconnected. It’s a violation of our founder’s statement of what is required for emotionally transferring the vision.

That’s all I want to say about that right now because I’m a little fired up, to be honest with you, so that’s all I’m going to say right now. I’m just going to tell you guys in podcast land, I need to listen to our own podcast because for us to emotionally transfer, you cannot do that with a disenfranchised team. You can’t do that with a sales force that has one foot out and one foot in. You can’t do that with administrative people that see no specific contribution that they’re making to the vision. You can’t have an emotional transference with disconnectivity. You can’t. Let me go to timing.

I do think that this timing thing, we’re in the middle. All of us, everybody listening, we’re in Q3 of the calendar year. You may have a physical year, but we’re in Q3 or excuse me, we’re in Q4 rather of our calendar year. October, November, December is when we’re putting a bow on the year and we’re planning for the next year, so this is the timing to understand, “Am I having logical and emotional transfer of the vision as a leader?” It’s time to start checking ourselves, leaders listening to this podcast. This year is coming to a close. Were we emotionally and logically connected to the vision?

For me, I’m living out in podcast land. I’m living it out. I don’t know that we have had a great emotional transfer of our 2022 vision. It’s not the end of the world. Traci, you’re still here. You’ll be here on a podcast coming up. Your disconnectivity is not the end of the world. We’ll figure it out, but I’m assessing myself right now in front of podcast land saying we did not get high marks on emotionally transferring our vision this year, and you are point number one to illustrate that.

So the timing of asking all of ourselves the question, “Are we emotionally and logically transferring,” is now. THe timing is now. Don’t wait till the next podcast. Shut the podcast down and ask yourself the question. Is my team more connected at this point in the year to my vision or less connected? If they’re less connected, that’s okay. There’s your building block for next year’s plan. Then final thing is the felt need. I think I’ve probably expressed that one a little bit, a lot, a whole bunch, not enough. I want to talk about it more. It’s a real felt need for me as the leader. Now the question is, can I get it to be a felt need for our leadership because that’s the ship I’m driving right now is the leadership.

Traci Morrow:

So, if someone is listening, I can’t help but think that a leader is listening to your transparency of where you’re at right now. That’s part of explosive growth, isn’t it?

Mark Cole:

Right.

Traci Morrow:

Where people do feel a little bit disconnected when explosive growth is happening, it’s a sign that growth is happening. These logical questions, these questions that John has us go through, these seven questions about logically transferring the vision, is what I think helps anchor the emotional piece to it. As you’re asking these questions, do I have a realistic understanding of the situation today, you’re asking yourself that. You’re asking your team that. You asked us here in this room. You’re going to ask that question at the meeting next week. Do you have an experienced team? Do you have a sound strategy? All of these questions.

So, if you are asking yourself these questions or someone on our podcast is, and they’re deciding, “Maybe I do, maybe I don’t,” how do they rebuild or build a team based on these questions, or how do they engage their team as they’re asking these questions? Like you’re asking some of these questions and some of them are, No. I’m accepting responsibility as a leader for my team. Now how do I engage my current team now that you’re figuring out some of the emotional disconnect with the logical questions? How do I engage my current team? You’re right in that right now. How do I engage my team with these seven questions?

Mark Cole:

Yeah, so I’ll be able to have this podcast a lot better seven days from now, but let me say a couple of things that is very riveting to me. My favorite podcasts are the ones to where I feel like I am the listener that needs to apply. That’s my favorite ones because I just want to be a lifelong learner. I’m looking at this and I’m going, “Do I have a team that has a realistic understanding of our situation today?”

You shared with me some insights. I talked about the call that I had recently with one of my other leaders that is leading one of the frontline teams that has given me description of the team. They’re saying, “One foot’s in, one foot’s out,” and I’m sitting here going, “Does our leadership team know logically that I’m having these kind of conversations with this level of disconnectivity?” Do they? Everybody that I’ve talked to, not just you, Traci, which you were very kind to me during our discussion, but everybody I talked to said, “Hey, I’ve talked with our leaders. I’ve talked with the leader. I’ve talked with the person you’ve put in leadership over me,” and here’s what I love about it. That means that we do know, but the question we as senior leaders need to understand is, is there a realistic understanding of the situation?

There’s two words I want to key in right there. Is there an understanding? Is there a realistic understanding? Understanding means that I’ve tried to have the conversation. I did have the conversation. It was a great conversation, but was there a leadership filter, a realistic leadership filter by the leader to understand the gravity of the feedback, the importance of the feedback? I’m not sure about that. I don’t know, but as senior leaders, we need to know. Has there been an understanding transfer? Then two, is it realistic? Is it seen from a leadership perspective or have we just set it aside and said, “That wasn’t as important to me as a leader as it was to that individual that gave me the feedback?”

The second is an experienced team. If your team podcast listeners are like my team, we are gaining on the job experience. We’ve never been here before. We’ve never pulled a baton from a dynamic leader like we’ve had. I’ve never been in an organization that we went from founder to foundation. Neither has any of my leadership team. One of them has, but most of us have not been here before, so we’re not experienced, and we allow ourselves grace.

Traci Morrow:

Space and grace.

Mark Cole:

Space and grace because we’re not experienced in this. We’re learning as we go. I mean, we’re on the point. Then the sound strategy. I think every leader needs to allow themselves to tweak the strategy as they go based on what I’m learning today. I think our strategy is sound, but I think our team needs to understand and be able to weigh in to that. An acceptance of responsibility by the leaders. Are we going to convince ourself that we have an emotional transfer of the vision or a logical transfer of the vision? Are we going to allow these signs to let us realize that we can do better? I’m getting ready to find that out. Are we going to have this, “We can do better,” or we’re going to have this defiance that, “No. We’re doing good. Everybody is just not understanding?”

I think you can determine that as a leader. Is there an acceptance of responsibility? The celebration and communication for the victory? I’m getting ready. I’m so proud of one of our teams and one of the accomplishments they’ve just had. We just launched a Spanish version of one of our big events, and we’re going to celebrate that crazy because it was such a successful time. Then the evaluation and communication for each defeat. Are we good? We’re a very positive environment. We almost have this positivity bubble around us that if you’re not speaking positivity, you have something wrong. You got leprosy or something. I mean, you’re off because you’re bringing something that’s not positive. I think we can over insulate ourselves with positivity. I want to make sure that we’re evaluating and communicating on the defeats as well in the logical transfer of the vision. There’s some areas we’re doing really, really good, a celebration. Some areas that our vision is not transferring, we’re not doing great. I want to be able to evaluate and communicate that just like I communicate the good times.

Traci Morrow:

I love that. I love that this is in real-time with you, and I wish we could do Part 2. Maybe we could, Jake, and come back and see how that went. I’m sure it will leak out. That’s going to come out in the future podcasts as you share, as we see that as that’s coming out. John closed by saying vision determines the direction of the team, and you’re right there in the middle of all of that. You are steering a huge ship as it has changed from founder to foundation. Everyone is certainly behind you because this is a big thing. We’re a part of something. We are passionate. I can speak for myself, passionately connected to being a part of this foundation, of this movement. My closing question to you would just be, as you are steering in this direction, where do you see this new direction in your leadership of where you are currently leading vision-wise in your leadership journey?

Mark Cole:

Yeah. What I love is I really wanted to. Jake was very kind to set up a discount for a book that matters a lot to me called The Five Levels of Leadership.

Traci Morrow:

A great book.

Mark Cole:

If you’re viewing this on YouTube, you see me hold up a book that looks a little different because we released the 10th anniversary recently, and they did a great job on the cover.

Traci Morrow:

Yeah, they sure did.

Mark Cole:

I’m just sitting here looking at it. It’s beautiful. The good news about your question is John has really given us a template. I think of all the structures and strategies and thoughts that John has given us on leadership, the one that is best for how we lead multifaceted multitasked leadership teams is this book Five Levels of Leadership. So, to be honest with you, I’m going to go back to the basics here and tell you that I’m going to really dig back into the five levels, the positional levels. Some people are following me because of my position. John gave me the baton. Where do you want to go because you must be pretty good? John gave you that. I may just have just a positional relationship with some of the people.

Others is relational. They’ll follow me wherever. They love me. They care for me. Traci, you pray for me every single week. I know this. You’re vested into me. You’re not letting some of this disconnect stop you from filling your importance. It’s stopping you from filling the priority of your responsibility. It’s not a buy-in question. It’s a priority question. It’s a clarity question. That’s because we have great level two synergy. Some of us really need to get some things done. It’s level three. It’s production. We have got to start making some momentum in 2023. We didn’t make it in some areas in 2022. For others, it’s reproduction. I need people reproducing the vision communication points that show an emotional and a logical transference so that they’re carrying the vision the same way that I am. It’s a level four issue.

Then for us, it’s all level five. This is carrying John Maxwell’s legacy of impact. We all listen to this podcast. I guarantee you, we listen to this podcast because somewhere down the road, some past experience we had with John Maxwell impacting us. We all want to carry that forward. I start every podcast by saying, We add value to leaders who will multiply value to others.” You know where that came from? John Maxwell. It’s his life purpose. It’s our organization’s purpose, so I’m going to go back to this.

By the way, we’ll give you a discount for this. If you’ll go to our show notes, there’s a link there. Enter the keyword or the discount code, PODCAST. It’ll give you 15% off. This book will help you just like it’s helping me.

We have a great listener comment today from Shelly. She listened to the podcast, The Wise Leader, and this is what she said. She said, “You guys knocked the podcast out of the park today.” I guess that means we got strikeouts other days, Shelly, but no, it’s all good. I’m just kidding. She says, “As an individual who is a leadership advisor to school leaders, I’m seeing so many challenges this year because we are back to full in-person school post-pandemic. People are struggling and leaders don’t know what to do. This podcast was absolutely loaded with nuggets that I can pass on to my clients.” She said, “I love the part on doing an autopsy on success. I’ve passed that along to other leaders already.”

Shelly, thank you. By the way, Andy Stanley, thank you for that autopsy on success. That came from you, and thank you to all of our podcast listeners. We exist to bring powerful, positive change to your world, to our world because everyone deserves to be led well.