Mastering the Push and Pull of Leadership

Perry Holley:
Welcome to the Maxwell Leadership Executive Podcast where our goal is to help you increase your reputation as a leader, increase your ability to influence others and increase your ability to fully engage your team to deliver remarkable results. Hi, I’m Perry Holley, a Maxwell Leadership facilitator and coach.

Chris Goede:
And I’m Chris Goede, executive vice president with Maxwell Leadership. Welcome and thank you for joining. Before we get started, I’d love for you to download the learner guide and in order to do that I want you to go to MaxwellLeadership.com/ExecutivePodcast. You can do that there. I also want to encourage you take that learner’s guide and I want you to hand it out to your team. Have everybody listen to the podcast. And then a lot of organizations as they start their team meetings, they’ll review their notes, come away with their top takeaway and be able to share just a great opportunity for you to help develop your team. Well, today’s topic we’re going to talk about mastering the push and pull of leadership.

Chris Goede:
Today’s topic is for every single leader. Remember, we define leadership by the way as influence doesn’t matter, your title, doesn’t matter, your tenure. You need to understand this. You need to understand the push and pull. I would even say maybe relationships. But leadership is influence. It’s about relationships. So Mr.

Chris Goede:
Perry, Holley, take us away.

Perry Holley:
Thank you very much. I was inspired by some reading two guys that I have worked with in the past and like very much but Dr. Jack Zinger and Dr. Joe Folkman. Joe has written a book, most recent book he’s written called the Trifecta of Trust. So I was doing some work on adding some trust ideas and I thought it was very good. But Dr. Folkman spoke about this push and pull.

Perry Holley:
I’ve also heard John talk about the push and pull that’s there and he it’s funny what Zinger and folk men do is they do a 360 degree surveys of leaders. So when people have an assessment about from people above them, beside them and below them, and these are anonymous, they collect those and they have hundreds of thousands of these and then they’re researchers, they parse this data and then they write books about them. So if you find anything by Jack Zinger, Joe Folkman, you should get it. They’re very good. Jack has been a friend for years and I just love the way they think. But the what came out of this was that Joe was looking at when people say drive for results was a, a big thing or inspiring others. These are topics that come out that that People say that what they see the most in their leaders was drive for the results. But the number one thing they wanted to see came out was inspire others.

Perry Holley:
And what I’ve discovered, you may know this is too my. In my own leadership style, I’m pretty good and pretty proficient at pushing others to. And when you think about pushing, it’s really for driving performance, setting high standards, delivering results, those types of things. But the pull is inspiring, empowering, and connecting with people. Maybe in our world, you might say, I would love your opinion of this. Is that is the. Is the push is level three, the pull is level two. Yeah, that think that, but I wanted to talk about it.

Perry Holley:
So how do we balance that and get better at that?

Chris Goede:
What I love about this is it’s directly in alignment with our five levels of leadership. Like our content aligns directly with what he’s saying here. And the other thing that’s interesting is I think this whole push and pull, if you can understand and learn the inspiring part of this, the pool side, I believe your people will actually move faster, produce more than what you could.

Perry Holley:
Even push them to do.

Chris Goede:
Right. And that’s what we talk about. We talk about setting the foundation at level two so strong that they want to be a part of what you’re doing, which is achieve something maybe they didn’t even believe they could achieve or you guys didn’t together as a team. And so let’s explore kind of how. What does this look like? And. And how do we balance? Because you do have to have a balance. We talk about this. We say, listen, if you stay at level two, nobody has a job, by the way, because no one’s producing.

Chris Goede:
If you. If you just go sit right at level three, and this is what we’re talking about right here, people end up walking out the back of the door. You have lack of engagement and that people feel like you’re kind of running over them. So Folkman’s trifecta of trust, they provide a framework that’s really grounded, as you said, which we love the research and the. And the data, and it’s aligned with our principles. So let’s dive in. And he really highlights three essential behaviors that build trust. Number one, you got to build positive relationships.

Chris Goede:
Number two, demonstrating technical competence, how to know what you’re doing instead of being like, how did he or she get that job? Okay. And then three, this is one of my favorite leadership words right now, is showing consistency. When. When leaders do all three of these, trust goes right up through the ceiling. It just increases and as we like to say, trust is a currency to all leadership. And so let’s start with number one. Let’s start with positive relationship. And I think really the heart of the pull in leadership is this.

Chris Goede:
You want to inspire people to follow you. They need to know that you care, that you want them to give you permission to influence and lead them.

Perry Holley:
So huge. And I. I’m thinking, I know we did a podcast like the 360 now. So somewhere back in the 200s, I have no idea. Somebody asked me this week, by the way, he said, how the heck have you come up with 360 episodes? I went, thank you. Yeah, thank you for knows. I have no idea.

Chris Goede:
Chris has been pushing me. Doesn’t even pull. I’m glad you noticed.

Perry Holley:
Will you tell Chris that. Yeah, I’ve gotten to the point now. I’m just so glad there’s only four Thursdays in this month, not five.

Chris Goede:
That’s right.

Perry Holley:
There were three. Five Thursday months.

Chris Goede:
There was.

Perry Holley:
Okay, sorry. The podcast that I’m calling was. I called it the Five Levels Danger zone. And it was that some of us are just level two specialists. I think you and I both, we love people. We’re very engaging. We like to mix it up. We’re very level two.

Perry Holley:
Ish. I know I am. But I. I can give Level 3 a short, short look. I don’t. I’d much rather camp out at level two. And you just said, what? Why is that dangerous? Well, you’ll come in one day and say, what happened to Chris and Perry? If I love them, they got fired because they’re not producing results. That’s right.

Perry Holley:
But those of you listening, and you’re. You’re good at this, though. Well, I’ve had to learn it, too. Is that I had to learn level three. But some of you listening are level three experts. You are really good. The pushing of the business of, you know, setting expectations, setting goals, setting a standard, holding people accountable, having the difficult conversations. You’re good at that.

Perry Holley:
But you give level two. You like to skip level two, where we like to camp out at level two. And this idea around, you know, why is it dangerous for you if you skip level two? You kind of hit that, too, is that people don’t want to be boss. People don’t want to be pushed. They want to. They want to know, do you care about me? Do you? Are you trying to help me? Can I trust you? Are you. Are you in it with me? Or you just want the result? You don’t care. Care about me?

Chris Goede:
Yeah.

Perry Holley:
And so the Idea of getting both of those to build solid relationships is going to help you push for results.

Chris Goede:
Yep. And as we said earlier, driving for results is ranked as a top strength for leaders. Like I always equate it to. We want to validate immediately the opportunity we have to lead. Right. We’re like, we want to prove that we’re going to get this done. We’re just going to drive for results and we want to do that. But inspiring others is rated as the lowest.

Chris Goede:
And then when you look at that, the direct reports or the people that are being led were asked, it’s the exact opposite. And so we’ve got to pay attention to that. We got to understand that because then inspiration topped the list. That’s what they want. So this is especially important in our younger generation. We’ve done some work on leading multi generational teams. It’s a podcast on this. And you know, when you get to the millennials and the Gen Z’s, they, they want that connection, they want that purpose and they want to get results done.

Chris Goede:
But it’s not as important as the leaders probably think it is. And so they really want to make sure that you have that connection with them. They don’t want you pushing them as much. You got to get some things done, but you’re going to have to make sure you really pull them for inspiration.

Perry Holley:
Yeah, they want purpose and that’s you’re inspiring. This is, there’s something bigger here than me just coming to work every day. I’ doing something meaningful.

Chris Goede:
Right.

Perry Holley:
And that’s, that’s inspiration. Let’s go to the second one about. I thought this was interesting that, that it builds trust as technical competence in displaying your. Your good. I always ask when we’re doing five levels, what’s the more important EQ or iq? And most people will know that oh eq. But by how much? And they’ll say, oh, it’s, it’s big. And again, another Harvard research science. It’s like 85% EQ people skills, your emotional intelligence versus only 15% IQ, your competence, your ability to do the job.

Perry Holley:
However, that the IQ is the ticket to admission. I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna be inspired by you or follow you if you’re incompetent in leading in the role. So I need to know that my leader is competent in the role. But people won’t follow you just because you’re smart. They follow you because they trust you and they know that you care about which goes back to do I have the solid relationship. It’s okay for me to be smart, incredibly smart in my job, and competent, but am I going out of my way to make sure I bring you along with me in that and show you that relationship side?

Chris Goede:
We talk in the five levels about how you never leave a level behind.

Perry Holley:
Yes.

Chris Goede:
And it’s extremely fluid. Right. This is a great example of it. Like how do you balance both of these? How do you, how do you in essence push? How do you drive for level three results? And and then at the same time, how are you pulling periodically for level two connection? I think it’s a dance that you have to do as a leader and as as an a contributor on your team to increase your influence with people.

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Perry Holley:
I always think of the law of connection from the 21 laws really affected me because it says that leaders must touch a heart before they ask for a hand. People like you and I that are level two specialists, we are touch the heart, Touch the heart. Touch the heart, Touch the heart. We’re not really good at asking for the hand. Those of you that are level three specialists, you’re asking for the hand. Ask for the hand. Ask for the hand. You’re not so good at touching the heart.

Perry Holley:
We both have to get better. And John would say you got to balance care and candor. If you’re on that level two specialist, we’re really good at care. Not so good at candor. If you’re level three specialist, you’re really good at candor, not so good at care. And these are the type things that go through my mind is saying, I know I’m touching the heart a lot, but I need to ask for the hand. I know I’m doing a lot of care, but I need to be more candor. I’ve got to say tough things.

Perry Holley:
I’ve got to have difficult conversations. Once you start balancing these things, you know, I’ve got the push and the pull. I love you, but I’m going to challenge you.

Chris Goede:
Right.

Perry Holley:
You’re valued, but I’m going to push you. And I think people appreciate that. People don’t mind working hard. They just want to make sure you care about. That’s right. Working hard.

Chris Goede:
And it may be the first time you begin to really balance these out. It may be a little uncomfortable, but it’s going to get easier over time. And so that brings us to the third behavior that they talk about, which is consistency. This is where your trust with them is solidified or sabotaged. Like, we have all worked for inconsistent leaders before. We don’t know what to expect. We don’t know when they’re going to show up. We don’t know when all of that.

Chris Goede:
Right. And our influence, what we think of their influence is, is continues to drop. It’s probably a level one, as we would describe it. And so. But when you are consistent, when you do what you say you’ll do and you lead with integrity, then I think people are going to feel like they’re in a stable environment and they’re going to be comfortable with both the push and the pull that you may need to have with their leadership. I love this next statement right here. Without consistency, your push becomes pressure and your pull feels like it’s manipulative. It makes me think about the motive behind what we’re doing is in a line, right? It’s like, yeah, like, if I’m not consistent, what’s my pure motive behind it? Like, or does my motive drive my consistency? Like, I think there’s something there because you want to have really pure motive and you want to be consistent about why and how you’re doing it.

Chris Goede:
So. But when your team expects what they know what to expect from you and your values and behaviors are aligned together and you’re living that out, then you become a leader that people want to follow.

Perry Holley:
Well, this is why it’s so important, this consistency. And let’s be clear, consistency. What do you mean? Consistency of actions, consistency of words and consistencies of emotions and what you’re sending to people is that you’re a known quantity.

Chris Goede:
That’s good.

Perry Holley:
I don’t, I don’t risk or. I’m not nervous about telling you bad news, even though I know there’s consequences for bad things happening. You’re not going to shame me, embarrass me, yell at me. I, I know that your consistency of emotion is you trustworthy and that’s what you know, if you think about the push of this around, challenging the team, holding high standards, that’s all important. The pulls about empowering others and connecting and initiating input, inspiring growth in people. The catch is none of it works without trust.

Chris Goede:
Yeah.

Perry Holley:
And that’s why Dr. Folkman is so intense. That’s why these are the three pillars. The trifecta of building trust is your ability to do both. Tells people that I want to work. You go back, you said about Level 2, the P word is permission. I always struggled with that. What do you mean? Well, at level one, you, the leader have all the power.

Perry Holley:
You have the right to tell people what to do. At level two, the power goes to the follower. They have to give you permission to influence them. I thought, wow, isn’t that the greatest leap in all of leadership?

Chris Goede:
I want that.

Perry Holley:
What would make somebody do that? Oh, they watch these three things and they begin to have trust with you.

Chris Goede:
So, yeah. So leaders, here’s the question for you. Are you only pushing or are you pulling as well? Or are you only pulling like we talked about, it can go either way. And so you need to make sure that you’re inspiring, you’re connecting, you’re building relationships that invite people to join you on this ride, not just comply with you.

Perry Holley:
And I think it’s. I just before let you close. It’s just an everyday thing. You, you never assume you have trust today. And I’ve never met a leader said, I’m coming in today, I’m going to break trust. I mean we know we never.

Chris Goede:
Yeah, we don’t do it intensely.

Perry Holley:
But, but we need to be thinking about am I, am I too much on the, on the push today? And, and you got to push. I’m. No, no doubt. But pull is so important on the inspiring, the motivating and your motive. I love you added that motive matters. People can tell, are you trying to manipulate me or motivate me?

Chris Goede:
Yeah.

Perry Holley:
And, and they’ll tell.

Chris Goede:
So we’re talking about this content here and we’re using all these words that start with P. So let me give you a couple of others as I wrap up. There’s going to be leadership tension between pressure and permission. Like you got to have that pressure at times to push them and you’re going to have a little pressure sometimes with the permission, but you got to figure out how to balance both of those. And we need to make sure that we’re pushing for performance and we’re pulling them for growth. So if I could push someone for performance and they’re going to grow. But if I could pull them and it be a growth pull, that growth is going to be exponential over the push growth. Does that make sense if you think about that? Right? So it’s definitely a dance.

Chris Goede:
It is a jump from, you know, 1 to 2 and 2 to 3 in the five levels. But it’s something for you to be thinking about and asking yourself that question that we just posed a few minutes ago, maybe after every meeting, because it’s super important question asked and it’s just.

Perry Holley:
Really simple about asking, do people follow me because they have to, because they want to. Yeah, I can usually tell what’s going on there. Great input. Thanks, Chris, and thank you. If you want to know more about these offerings that we’re talking about, the five levels of leadership or the 360 leader, if you’d like to get the learner guide for this issue, you can do that at MaxwellLeadership.com/ExecutivePodcast. You can also learn about our other podcasts like the Multi Generational podcast or or you can leave us a comment or a question. We love hearing from you. Very grateful you’d spend this time with us today.

Perry Holley:
That’s all from the Maxwell Leadership Executive Podcast.

Transcript created by Castmagic.