The Wise Leader

Mark Cole:

Welcome to the Maxwell Leadership podcast. This is the podcast that adds value to people who will multiply value to others. My name is Mark Cole. I’m the CEO of Maxwell Leadership. And today we’re talking about a word that often comes to mind when we think of leadership, and that word is wisdom.

Now, as Sandra Carey says, never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you make a living. The other helps you make a life. So in today’s lesson, John Maxwell is going to share his own thoughts on wisdom and what it really means to be a wise leader. Plus he also shares some thoughts on wisdom from Benjamin Franklin. Once John is done, I will be joined by my co-host, Chris Goede, and we’ll discuss John’s lesson and discover how Chris and I are attempting to be wise leaders, or maybe just wise guys.

Anyway, if you’d like to find that out for yourself, I invite you to download our free bonus resource, which is a fill in the blank worksheet that accompanies John’s lesson. And this too will help you discover how to be more wise in your leadership. You can find this at maxwellpodcast.com/wise. Also, if you’d like to join us visually on YouTube, please visit maxwellpodcast.com/youtube. We’d love to see you there. And now let’s hear from really true wisdom, John Maxwell.

John Maxwell:

The Hebrew word, wisdom, means skill in living, suggesting that time, years, is a requirement for achieving it. Noted evangelist and elder statesman, Billy Graham, once said that knowledge is horizontal, but wisdom is vertical. It comes down from above.

I want to give you some wisdom thoughts. To know what to do with what you know is the essence of wisdom. Wisdom is knowing what to do, and skill is knowing how to do it. Virtue is doing it. So it’s harder to do the doing part isn’t it. Huh? Wisdom is knowing what to do. Skill is knowing how to do it, but virtue is doing it.

Disraeli, Prime Minister of England, years ago said, the fool wonders, the wise person asks. William Cowper, great quote here. Knowledge is proud that it knows so much. Wisdom is humble that it knows so little. And then there’s the Japanese proverb that I love, knowledge without wisdom is a load of books on the back of an ass. Oh, that’s Maxwellian, isn’t it?

Let’s go on in your notes. A wise man learns from his mistakes. A wiser man learns from others’ mistakes. The wisest man learns from others’ successes and Sandra Carey said never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you make a living, and the other helps you make a life.

Now think about it for a moment. When we want to quote somebody that seemingly had wisdom, one of the people we quote is Ben Franklin. I mean, isn’t it true? I mean, you just kind of quote Ben Franklin as a man who was wise and had some thoughts of wisdom. And so I pulled out some of my Ben Franklin wisdom quotes from all the stuff that I have filed away. And I’m going to give them to you. These are just wisdom thoughts from Ben Franklin.

Give without remembering and receive without forgetting. And I’m afraid sometimes we turn that around. Give without remembering and receive without forgetting. Success usually comes to those who are too busy to look for it. Here we go. Forget your mistakes but remember what they taught you. That goes back to a statement I make a lot of times, experience is not the best teacher, but evaluated experience is. Here’s another Ben Franklin quote, be not afraid of going to slowly, be afraid of standing still. Another quote of his, there is more to life than money. Life must have meaning. One more. The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra. I truly believe that.

Today there is lots of knowledge, but little understanding. Lots of means, but little meaning. Lots of knowhow, but little know why. Lots of sight, but little of insight. Those are just some thoughts of wisdom out of my files.

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Mark Cole:

Hey, welcome back. I’m reminded of Albert Einstein’s quote that says any fool can know. The point is to understand. And Chris, I listen to John here, and truly I can say, in both your world, my world, that it’s truly fun to be a little more wise as a leader.

Chris Goede:

It is.

Mark Cole:

It’s not fun to pay the price for wisdom, but it is fun to have a little bit more understanding that is applied to this idea of leadership. So I love that we’re tackling this today, and I want to challenge all of our podcast viewers, you’re listening, I want to challenge you because so many times we think wisdom comes with age. And first, let me say this. I do not think wisdom comes with age. I know a lot of older people that are not any wiser.

Chris Goede:

That’s good.

Mark Cole:

So debunk that. I think we also believe that age is a prerequisite of wisdom. I don’t believe that either. I believe experience is a prerequisite of wisdom. So the good news is I can cut straight to the chase today, Chris.

Chris Goede:

Love it.

Mark Cole:

You want wisdom? Go get some experience.

Chris Goede:

That’s right.

Mark Cole:

Get experience by doing something. Do something by actually applying what people like John Maxwell say in your life. So I’m really excited to dig into this with you today.

Chris Goede:

I love how you set that up because when you do think of a wise person, a wise leader, my natural reaction is to go to someone that is older. And you’re right, it’s not. And I was thinking through that as you were talking about the things that come with wisdom, and it is hard. There’s a lot of things that you could unpack with us as a leader that you’re going through now and have gone through that are hard and sweat and tears and pain and all that stuff. But that’s what wisdom comes from through that experience. And so I love that.

It also comes from, as John mentions in the notes, their mistakes. And wisdom comes from their mistakes. But I love what he also said where he said that the wisest person learns from other successes. And I want to stop here for just a minute. And I want you to talk about, as a leader, from both sides of this, because as an organization, you have created a culture where it’s okay for us to make mistakes. And then often you’ll say, well, just tell me what you’re learning about it. Where’s the knowledge so that there’s wisdom that’s going to come from it? And that comes obviously from John’s mentoring of you and how you’re leading now.

But also I’ve heard you talk about, man, when we’re succeeding, when things are going well, what are we learning? Not only from others’ successes, but from your success. And I always love, John says, man, listen, when things are going well, and you’re succeeding, don’t take time off. Don’t take a vacation. When things are going bad, that’s when you do that. But there’s a lot of wisdom that comes from that, both mistakes and from our successes and others. Talk a little bit about that from your perspective, as a leader, things you’ve learned through either of those, and then how you go about actively leading teams and people with both those things in mind.

Mark Cole:

Well, so I love speaking of how you set it up. I love how you set that question up. While you were talking, I was like, I’m reminded, I will butcher this quote from Bill Gates, but he says, success is the leader’s greatest enemy. And here’s why is because when we’re successful, we feel invincible. We feel like everything is incredible, and we don’t slow down to learn in times of success-

Chris Goede:

That’s right.

Mark Cole:

… like we do in times of difficulty.

I’m also reminded of Andy Stanley. Andy Stanley says that good leaders do an autopsy on success. Most of us do an autopsy when something’s dying or dead. And we go, oh my gosh, what’s going on? What do we do? No, do an autopsy when things are living and vibrant and awesome because that’s where true wisdom is going to come when we dissect why something is working or not working.

It goes back to the question that you’re asking and you go, true wisdom, I believe, it’s different than knowledge, but it’s a derivative of knowledge. In fact, I would say that wisdom is a derivative of knowledge, and I’d go one step further, wisdom is a derivative of knowledge applied. I know a lot of people that have had a lot of experiences, and they are no smarter for it. I mean, they did not get a return on failure, as John talks about. They didn’t get a return. They repeat the same mistakes. I have some few people very close to me that repeat the same mistake.

So it’s not just wisdom is knowledge. I know a lot of smart people that are not very wise, but I don’t know very many wise people that don’t have a lot of knowledge. And therefore-

Chris Goede:

That’s a good statement.

Mark Cole:

I think we get knowledge, but I think we have to apply that knowledge. And then wisdom begins to happen in the life of a leader. I think about some of the things, Chris, that I did early in my career, even with John. I was 30 years old. I joined John’s team, and I felt very inadequate to be doing what I was doing, even though that was an entry level in an organization that represented wise leadership.

I’ll tell you, 22 years later, I have a lot more knowledge. I think I even have more wisdom. But there’s an awareness in me as I look at John, some two decades, a little over two decades older than I, and I still have this incredible inadequacy when I think about wisdom. I think there’s health in that, and I also think that there’s a detriment in that to not realize that I have a responsibility to apply knowledge in the form of wisdom in my leadership.

Just recently, I was meeting with our finance team, and we had a couple of oversights in year end projections and tax consequences and things like that for more than a half million dollars, almost $600,000. And man, there was just something about that, Chris, that I was like, okay, guys, we’ve got to all come together, and we’ve got to figure something out because something’s not adding up. And we went through a diligent process, a diligent process. And all of you that understand in the states paying taxes or getting a tax refund. We went through a diligent process at the end. We really get a refund rather than a tax payment.

Now I love one of our finance teams that says, wow, Mark, you’re so wise. I said, no, no, no, no. I’m not wise. I just don’t want to pay that much money. I was determined. There’s no wisdom in that. I said, now here’s wisdom. What are we doing right now to make sure at the 2022 mark that we don’t miss things like that? And somebody gave an answer, somebody else gave an answer. I said, now that’s wisdom. There was no wisdom in going, I don’t want to pay this. Can we really look and see and see if we did anything wrong? That’s not wisdom. That’s just a pain point. But wisdom is when we took that experience, and we make sure that we’re not there again at the end of this year.

Chris Goede:

Yeah. What I love about what you’re sharing here is that they do go hand in hand. And I want to back up, and I just want to make sure that our listeners and our viewers get the statement that you talked about in regards to, you said, and this just got me, and I didn’t hear anything else you said after this, which was, I don’t know a whole lot of wise people that don’t have knowledge. You have to have the knowledge, but you then got to take that next step, and as you had just talked about, you got to be able then to have the ability to make the correct judgements and the correct decisions moving forward.

Now, and so you just gave us a great example of how you are learning wisdom from experience. I think there’s another way that I’ve seen you live out how to gain additional wisdom, not necessarily just from you going in the trenches, and you learning and sweating. Yes, you got to do that first, but then also you seek outside knowledge, outside wisdom. You shared your experiences and then gained additional wisdom from that. Talk about the power of that from your development as a leader in going from, hey, yeah, I had the knowledge, and I gained wisdom, but then the wisdom was probably 10X’ed when I did ABC. Talk a little bit about that because it’s powerful for leaders to understand this.

Mark Cole:

Yeah. And so give me a minute because I’m going to tell about some things that I did pretty well in the pursuit of wisdom through knowledge. And then I’m going to give a really recent story of something that a 53-year-young leader should not make the mistake that I just recently made-

Chris Goede:

Great. Love it.

Mark Cole:

… in the idea of wisdom.

For years now, I have believed in the power of mentorship, and I have not only believed it, I have lived it. So I will identify people that I have met. I’m talking about world class leaders of epic global brands that are leading big things with global consequences. And for years now, because of John’s relationship, I’ve had access to those kind of people in a mentorship relationship.

And I would go in early in my CEO career, the last 12 years, I would go in, and I would ask them questions. Now some years, I would ask them the same seven questions and get seven different or five different responses from five different global brand leaders. And I’d get these questions, and I dissected, and I would get that knowledge, and then I would try to apply that knowledge. And then over time, I would get wisdom hopefully. Don’t ask Stephanie. I would get wisdom.

What I found is the years that I went in and said, this is the question I started this year with, these are the experiences I’m having now, what am I not applying to what I’ve already known to the problem I had at the beginning of the year and the experience that I’m having right now. And when I went in and asked these leaders to give me their perspective of what they would do in a similar experience, the gold of wisdom dropped. When I asked the question, I got knowledge. When I shared an experience and asked for input-

Chris Goede:

For reactive [inaudible 00:17:10].

Mark Cole:

… I got wisdom. And it was brilliant for me to go, wow, how you frame a question is whether you get knowledge in return or whether you get wisdom in return.

Chris Goede:

That’s good.

Mark Cole:

And as leaders, I still feel like I’m a kid. I know I just gave my age, but I promise you, I still see myself as a kid. And as young leaders, forgive me, I know I’m not young, but I want to be, for young leaders, if we could understand the perception, the way that we frame the things we’re trying to learn will result in a knowledge transfer or a wisdom transfer. And I want to challenge us to go after the wisdom. The sooner we can get wisdom, the better.

I love this. John says this often. It bears repeating right now. John says, my best thinking has been done by others. And we all laugh, and he says, I’ll put that quote in my book. I’ll give you credit, but I won’t give you royalties. John is no stranger to letting other people’s thinking shape him. Well, I’ll tell you my statement is this, my best wisdom is the wisdom of others. It’s not my wisdom. It’s the experience of others speaking into how they would live out my experience that gives me wisdom. I think people that think they are wise beyond their years or wise beyond their experience are faking themselves out. I think wisdom beyond our experience is because our wisdom is coming from the people around us that can help us live a more effective life with their wisdom.

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Chris Goede:

It’s a lifelong process. And I know that you say that you’re young at 53. I’m not there yet so you’re a little older than me. But I think what I don’t want our listeners to miss about what Mark’s talking about here is he would gain knowledge, you would gain knowledge, and then you wouldn’t just go ask questions to seek wisdom from outside, from your outer circle. You would actually then get in the trenches. You would learn, and you would sweat. You’d gain wisdom from that. But then the way you pose the question to those that are wise in your eyes would then 10X your wisdom in that situation.

Mark Cole:

That’s right.

Chris Goede:

So I love how you unpack that. I just don’t want our listeners to miss what Mark’s saying here because in today’s age, there’s a lot of resources out there for people to gain knowledge. There’s a lot of people gaining a lot of information without doing anything with it. And so you’re saying no, no, no. Get the knowledge. Get in the trenches. Lead, learn, whatever it might be, sweat cry, all that stuff. And then talk about your experiences, imposing the question to people that you look at as wise, and then it’ll 10X your wisdom. Absolutely love that.

Mark Cole:

Yeah. Well, and I’m going to throw it to you for just a moment because you made a couple of great comments. A couple of them were cute. You can even share the cute ones. But you had a couple of comments before we started recording today about how social media has impacted the landscape of wisdom. And it was so good that I think it bears repeating. So just spoof off of that, just a moment of how social media has impacted wisdom.

Chris Goede:

Yeah. I think my comment was Jake and our team, they go back, and they pull lessons from John, and that’s what that lesson was today. And I told our team, I said, never more relevant is a conversation about this wisdom and where we’re at with what we’re dealing with in social media today. And there are people that have a lot of knowledge, and it’s dangerous, and they’re out, they don’t even have any experience in it, but they have knowledge. And so they’re out saying things that they have no right to even be saying. And then John talked on here, there’s lots of means, but little meaning. Now my little cute comment, which listen, I’m 6’4″, 250 pounds. I’m almost a 50 year old male, and I don’t like to be calling cute, except for by Mark Cole. That’s another subject. So just, if you see me just don’t come up to me say you’re so cute.

Mark Cole:

You’re so cute. That’s right.

Chris Goede:

But my thing was, there are lots of memes out there. There’s lots of these image out there, but what do they really mean? And so I just think, man, that’s a message right now for us as leaders and as people of influence to understand.

Mark Cole:

Yeah, I think this world of Twitter where John really started issuing quotes, and then people come across statements, and they repost, I think all of those are great. But when you see those, and you repost, or you see somebody post those, I think the bigger question is is where has that been applied?

And I mean, I’m sitting here in the studio, and again, I hope all of you join us on YouTube at some point. We love to have you here in this community. But I’m holding up the book, The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. And what’s humorous about this book is John has updated and modified a couple of laws at the 10th edition. In this edition, John has changed some of the stories. But by and large, when you hold a book that still, to this day, 8,000 to 10,000 to 12,000 copies of this a month is being sold, you realize this wasn’t just something wonderful to say in a tweet 25 years ago, because Twitter wasn’t available. This wasn’t something to post on Instagram 25 years ago. It stood the test of time. And my concern is our social media instant access content in a bite size nugget is dumbing down the wisdom of just applied leadership experience.

And so I hold this book today, not because we’re going to give you a promotional 15% discount, although we will. I hold this because anytime you’ve got a book or an idea or a life lesson that can stand the test of time and that can inspire others to begin testing time, there you have wisdom between the covers, between the book covers. You have wisdom that actually will inspire a leadership depth that will extend beyond knowledge.

And you made a statement, and maybe we can go here just a little bit, but this idea that wisdom in the right time, this knowledge in the right time, is a difference maker in how we turn knowledge into wisdom.

Chris Goede:

Yeah. I want to, one of the things I asked mark as we were getting ready to start, I said, man, listen, there is a communication deficit out there as we are growing and learning as leaders. And in order for us to continue to experience and become wise as a wise leader, there’s things that we can look at in all areas of our leadership. But one of the things I was talking to Mark about, and I wanted to learn more from him is, I was saying knowledge is knowing what to say, but wisdom as a leader, somebody with influence, and that’s how we define that here, is knowing how and when to say something.

And I’ve seen you do this to where we’ve had conversations actually about, hey, sometimes you have to deliver a message with here’s how going to do it. Sometimes you have to deliver it of here’s why we’re doing it. So there is that whole process of how you deliver it. But there’s also a timing thing, and that comes with wisdom, and you gain wisdom from that. And as a leader, especially at your level as a CEO, talk just a little bit about, man, there are things that you know with knowledge, but it’s not the wisest thing to say until it’s the right time to say that. How do you go about figuring out the timing of that and when to share what? Because that truly is wisdom in communication.

Mark Cole:

So I believe eatership… Wow guys, this is the eatership podcast. Makes me hungry.

Chris Goede:

Yeah, I’m in.

Mark Cole:

Yeah. I believe the art of leadership is really as important as the skill of leadership. And when you get into things like intuition and timing, I think you’re into a concept of what I call the art of leadership. And so let’s do talk about this art of leadership. I love Max Dupre quote, I’ve quoted it on this podcast multiple times, leadership is about disappointing people at the rate they can stand. And really what that is talking about, as leaders, if we see more, and we see before, and John says real transformational leaders see more, and they see before. In fact, he goes on a step further, as only John can do, and says they see more more and more before. And if leaders really see more more and more before, then there is a responsibility to seeing things that others can’t see.

And I can tell you, Chris, as a member of our leadership team, what I see, but if I tell you when you can’t see it, and I distract you from what you can see, I have a responsibility for your ineffectiveness for the next week while you’re trying to lift your vision if it’s not time to lift your vision. And oftentimes leaders, especially visionary leaders, opportunistic leaders, as John has mentored me to be, we see all these opportunities, and we come on. We say, guys, there’s another opportunity. There’s another opportunity. Oh my gosh, there’s another. There’s an opportunity. There’s an opportunity. And we go and we challenge our team from being able to focus on their responsibility in anticipation of them seeing the opportunity. And then we don’t hold ourself responsible for their ineffectiveness at their responsibility.

So I want to share with my team the opportunities that I see, but when I share it, I am just as responsible to as what I share. And oftentimes so many leaders just come and blurt it out, create chaos, leave, come back. Nothing’s accomplished since the time they came back, and they don’t even take responsibility that they missed the law of timing. It’s unwise leadership.

Chris Goede:

Yeah, that’s good.

Mark Cole:

Then there’s other times that I see it, and we’re stuck in this mundane. We got to get this done. We got to get this done. And we forget that we got to get this done so that we get to the next peak to see what else needs to be done. And so understanding that art of when my opportunistic visioncasting excitement for the future is a distraction or a incredible lift to the organization is what we’re talking about here in the art of leadership.

And I’ll tell you this, the only way I can help you to figure that out is to try it because doing it with my current leadership team is different than the leadership team that I had five years ago. So I have to know, I have to watch them respond, and there have been times that I have determined that my current leadership can’t handle all of the opportunity expressions as much as a previous leadership team could. So it’s the dynamics of when someone can hear it, when someone can get excited about it, when somebody will get distracted about it and what’s on tap for the current leadership productivity you’re on.

Chris Goede:

I love your suggestion of just try it. Right? And going back to saying, we just got to live this out. You got to live it to gain the wisdom.

As we wrap up, as you were talking, I want to give just another example. I want you to unpack this a little bit as you wrap up. I was thinking about something that as a change inside an organization is where really communication has, man, all eyes on it because, man, people are, when it comes to change, they’re like, how’s that going to affect me? And communication’s got to be on point. As a organization, as a leader, we were going through a change, and we didn’t do a very good job of communicating it very effectively several months ago. We then gained knowledge from that. You unpacked that knowledge for us and then challenged us as an organization to make sure that now that we’re communicating a new change, a new leader, a new standup, a new solutions group, hey, we better gain wisdom and then live it out a little bit differently.

And you led us through that, and it was a great example of, hey, we did it this way. We had a little wisdom, all of us in the room. But then, man, we learned a ton, going back to what we started off about learning lessons from failures. And then you helped coach us through that. And then you said, hey, and here’s what we’re going to do. And now we’ve done it again, and now we’ve got more wisdom. And so to your point, it’s just like, man, you just got to try it. You got to keep moving. You’re never going to be perfect, but you got to keep living that out and just be able to accept that.

Mark Cole:

Thank you, and I’ll wrap up here, Chris, but I do want to talk about that. I don’t believe… I believe we hold ourself as leaders to a standard of needing to have wisdom with leadership. I’m the leader. I should have wisdom. I’ve been leading for 20 years. I should have wisdom. And I’m not opposed to that. We should be pursuing wisdom. I love, John started the whole lesson with the Hebrew word for wisdom means skilled at living.

Now I love that descriptor and how he started it because oftentimes we are doing something for the first time, and we get frustrated with ourself because we don’t have wisdom. And I don’t think you can have wisdom the first time.

Chris Goede:

No, no.

Mark Cole:

And so we go through this. And the example that you’re just giving, we didn’t have wisdom then because we had never tried to implement a shared solution before. The second time, we had, and we were starting to make similar steps to what we took the first time without contemplating. I don’t believe we are held to the same level of scrutiny the first time as we are the second time, because wisdom should be more apparent in the second time. Knowledge applied, right?

I want to challenge us as leaders today. I continue to hear leaders spinning out of control emotionally, and we’re in what’s called the Great Resignation. And I think we’re in the Great Resignation because we’re holding ourself to a standard of wisdom that is not available in the world today. Nobody, Chris, that you and I are mentored by led post-pandemic, nobody. And yet we find ourselves, now that there is a normal or a new normal, or we’re not all cooped up in homes and wearing masks and waiting, we find ourselves now judging our leadership aptitude and ability with how we led pre-pandemic, and there is no more leading pre-pandemic. We’ve been through a pandemic.

Chris Goede:

That’s right.

Mark Cole:

And I’m watching the emotions of leaders spin out of control because they no longer feel wise. But I’ve never led two years past a pandemic when a potential recession is on the horizon, when people want virtuality in their workplace more than they’ve ever. They’re not wanting it. They’re demanding it now. And if I can just encourage us in the Maxwell podcast leadership family, quit judging yourself post-pandemic with wisdom that you think you and I should have that is only relevant to pre-pandemic conditions. We’re leading differently now. There are no models to lead. And I know there’s a sense of normalcy coming, but emotionally, there is no normality in leadership right now because things are different. And I just want to challenge you and I to let’s support one another as we garner knowledge of leading in post-pandemic conditions and let’s hold ourselves to becoming knowledgeable and don’t hold ourself to being wise yet.

Chris Goede:

That’s good.

Mark Cole:

And as we navigate through this, we will lead because here’s what I’m going to tell you, I hate to see the Great Resignation because the world needs powerful, positive change. And all this challenge and negative and emotional negativity that we have is not bringing about a better world. We need you. We need you engaged. The world needs you to be a leader of powerful, positive change because everyone deserves to be led well.