Executive Podcast #251: How Leaders Can Move From Good To Great

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. As we get started, if you want to download the learner guide that Perry and the team have created for us, I’d encourage you to visit Maxwellleadership.com/podcast. Also, you can learn more there about some of our coaching, some of the training that we’re doing with organizations, fill out a form, and our team would love to follow back up with you. Well, today’s topic is how leaders move from good to great. And there’s a book about good to great. We’re going to talk today a little bit about how do leaders do that. Are you a good leader? Are you a great leader? How do you move the needle to become a great leader? There’s so many factors that really distinguish a good leader from a great leader. In some of the research that we’ve done and Perry’s looked at by Jack Zinger and Joe Folkman, some of the factors are improve communication effectiveness, encourage others. We talk about that on here. To grow and to improve. Be a role model, be a champion for your team. Recognize when change is needed, otherwise you’ll become irrelevant. And then finally, the last one we have on here is improve your ability to inspire and motivate those that are in your influence.

Perry Holley:

Lots of good stuff. And Dr. Zinger and Dr. Falkman doing this research, what they did was they took 360 degree feedback data and looked the critical skills of leaders who were progressing most in their leadership. And they pulled these topics out. The one that I thought that’s so key to what we talk about anyway, that I thought we should maybe go a little deep on today was about communication effectiveness. I think how you communicate really affects your reputation as a leader. And today I want to get practical.

Chris Goede:

I love it.

Perry Holley:

So we’ll talk about some of the concepts, but how do we actually get practical about that? I’d like you to walk away from this time. You invest with other data, one or three things that you can work on between now and working with your team. Is that okay with you?

Chris Goede:

Yeah, absolutely. Love that. So the first way to increase communication effectiveness is to become a better listener.

Perry Holley:

Okay, hang on a minute. I just heard those radios clicking off.

Chris Goede:

That’s right. No one wants to do that.

Perry Holley:

No, they all think they’re I’m a great listener. What? Are you kidding me? Yeah, I’m a fantastic listener, as my.

Chris Goede:

Wife says all the time. Right. I know you hear me. You’re just not listening to me. So I think that there is room for all of us. And what’s really key about this is that we often ask a question in some of our training and we say we play this would you rather game? In essence, what’s more important to be a better communicator or an effective listener? And then we challenge them, we say, well, whichever one you pick, you have to pick this or that. You can’t use the other word as you’re describing why you picked the answer that you did. And it’s always fun because especially when you get to this one and you talk about communication and everybody’s right, it’s a trick question, they go, Well, I can’t do that because they’re one and the same. Listening is part of communication and they’re spot on and we do it and we have fun with it and we talk about how really there’s a two way pathway in regards to communication and that second pathway is to really become a better listener. You can be a great communicator but if you’re not listening to what you need to communicate then it’s not going to be very effective or vice versa. You can be a great listener, but if you don’t have the ability to communicate and so I love that we’re going to dive into this and really unpack how do we increase our communication effectiveness? And the first one is to become a better listener.

Perry Holley:

Well, I find that listening is the number one way to show you value someone you’re giving something you can’t get back, which is time to do that. I think when a leader invests time in actively listening to their people that it demonstrates respect. You begin to understand team members points of view, you begin to understand how they think. I just think that when you begin to truly appreciate a team member’s perspective, you do that through you can add so much to your own thinking by just listening and asking good questions and listening actively to what your team members are telling you. So most people think they’re better listeners than they really are, as we were joking about a minute ago. So I really wanted to get practical about are there some things, even if you think you’re okay listening, do you think you could get better? I know I could and so what are some of those ideas? And I thought we could bat that about.

Chris Goede:

I think that when you become intentional about improving your listening skills, it will absolutely increase your connection with people, your influence with people. We joke all the time about our spouses who are our only two listeners to the podcast, about how you and I could do a much better job of listening. And I think it’s something that if we all slowed down and we remove distractions, we could all get better at. But man, we live in a time at a pace where things are moving faster than they’ve ever moved before. Social media and devices are everywhere and it’s a problem. I even think about the fact that I have a couple of nephews that are staying with us this week and we love it, we have fun with them. I begin to watch the difference in generations and the influences that are in their life take away from their ability to listen. And so, man, I think this is going to be something as we move forward in organizations that we need to continue to focus on. And so here are a couple of things practically to really look at. We’re just talking about electronic devices. Put your phone away when you’re having a conversation with somebody. There’s nothing worse than having a conversation with somebody and their phone is right there and they keep glancing at their phone and it’s buzzing and they keep going off. Man, if it’s going to be doing that, that’s not a problem. Just try to put that away. Remain in eye contact with the individual. Have that connection with them while you’re listening. Give them your complete attention. I’ll never forget when I was much younger, someone said the greatest thing that you could do is when you’re listening to somebody is for them to think, holy cow. There’s a lot of stuff going on right now, and it seems like nothing else matters but our conversation, because you’re giving them complete attention. And then don’t interrupt them. Oh, man. This is one of the things that just bothers me is that when I am speaking or I am watching a conversation and somebody just keeps interrupting a conversation, allow them to finish that and then finally take notes from what you’re hearing from them. I’ll never forget I was at an event one time and John was speaking, and so we were there. It was a client of ours, and it’s a CEO of a very large company. And John was interviewing this CEO on leadership up on stage. And John was asking the questions and then just feverishly taking notes, listening intently, but taking notes. And so we’re on the ride home to the airport and I said, John, talk to me a little bit. I haven’t seen you do that before. Talk to me a little bit about what was behind you taking notes during that interview. And he said, oh, I’m working right now on becoming a better listener. I’m looking at becoming better engaged. And when I find myself having to think about what they’re saying to be able to take notes, it makes me listen better. And I thought, that’s interesting. And so taking notes allows you to do that. The other thing that I think is key here is that, yes, this will help you from a communication standpoint, but all of these things that we have laid out here, they’re going to add value to the person that’s talking to you. They’re going to think, man, I’m important, I’m engaged in this conversation. So just some practical ways to do that, to improve your listening.

Perry Holley:

I listen to you talk about, yeah, put my phone away. But you also need to master your wrist. I am so tired of people that’s so good while I’m talking to someone, they look at their watch, but they’re not checking the time, although they may be, which sends me a very bad message, but it may be worse. Yeah, I don’t have to pull out my phone. I can just look at my wrist because that’s where all my oh, no, don’t do that. And I was also the skill of curiosity is one that many leaders need to work on. Is that when someone’s talking to me, can I become curious about I’m curious. What is the point they’re trying to make? I’m curious. How does this apply to what we’re talking about? I’m curious, and it just makes me a little bit deeper in my thinking and listening. And then also I got some coaching on this. Was I’m trying to formulate instead of my response to what you’re saying, I’m trying to formulate what’s the best question I can ask? When you’re done and thought, before I give my response, I need to ask one question. And it could be a follow up, it could be something. But I also like little phrases that help me. I use, Tell me more. What happened next? And then, what did you do? And most people are just floored that you would encourage them to keep talking, because most, they’re used to waiting people waiting for them to take a breath so they could jump in and talk. And instead I said, well, tell me more. What happened next?

Chris Goede:

I also hear you say quite a bit lately, which I love, which is, I have a point of view on that. What’s your point of view?

Perry Holley:

I love that.

Chris Goede:

Right. And I love that. I love how you position that so that you can continue to listen more what they’re doing.

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Perry Holley:

Another way improving communication effectiveness and raise your leadership influence. Become intentional about your nonverbals. Like body language, facial expression, tone of voice, all the ways that people are reading you as they’re communicating. We talk about you’re always making people feel something. What is it? You make people feel. So when someone’s talking to you or when you’re talking to someone, let’s keep it on listening. Someone’s talking to you. What are you doing with your face? What are you doing with your body language? Are you facing them? Are you facing the door? Are you rolling your eyes? Are you get your hands on your hips. There’s positive and negatives about all that. But I think it really affects so much about how people feel. Are they being heard or are you just tolerating and waiting for your time to speak?

Chris Goede:

Yeah, this is so good for me personally just to even go through this because I’ll get lazy at times listening. And I know this, but maybe my actions don’t necessarily show that. And so, again, we’re in the leadership space. This is what we do every day. We’re in the communication space. And yet you’re challenging me with some of the things that we’re talking about here today. And so as you’re listening to this podcast, I hope that you’re being challenged as well to become a better listener. One other thing in regards to this is do you have empathetic communication style? You guys know what I’m talking about. There are those that do and those that don’t when it comes across that way. And an empathy in your communication means that you have the ability and you can relate to the individual and maybe not exactly what they’re going through, right. But you can get into that place with them and you can be empathetic during a conversation. And when you do this, it no doubt increases your ability to connect with people and then will increase your influence as a leader. When you were just talking about mind your face, I love it when you say that, right? What is that face telling people? I was having this conversation just recently, within the last week with a leader, and we were talking about as conversations happen, the facial expressions will change. And somebody said to this individual, what’s going on with the face? And he said back to we’ve worked together for how long? You know, this is just and so they kind of started laughing about it. And the he said, oh, let me tell you another funny story about kind of the mind your face as you’re talking about this and listening. He said that some of his team want the masks to be a policy of what they have to wear while they’re working because it covers his face and they don’t have to look at his facial expressions while he’s listening or communicating to the team. That’s the power of what you’re talking about here in connecting through communication and whether you have empathy or not is mind your face. Do you smile? Do you welcome people? Are you approachable or are you not?

Perry Holley:

Yeah, empathy versus sympathy. Can I feel for you or do I feel sorry for you that people can tell if you’re relating to them. Another great way to improve your communication effectiveness was to master this skill. I call it a skill of providing regular feedback to those you work with. And when you provide constructive feedback, you communicate that you care about me, that you want to see me grow and improve. And I think, unfortunately, many leaders shy away from this because they fear the conflict it might cause. They don’t want to give bad news. I don’t know what I’ve heard many reasons for this, but done correctly, I believe that feedback can be your friend is a great way to really find the greatness in other people. And so when you say my communication style, if you expect that when you’re with me and we’re performing in our role that I’m going to give you feedback and that I expect feedback from you, do you think that raises my reputation as a leader? I think so. I think people turn to expect, say, Perry, what do you think? And that’s what I’ll use. I have a point of view, but what do you think? Because I want to hear what they think first, but get practical on that one.

Chris Goede:

I love that. So let’s talk about this feedback. We’ve all heard of the feedback, right? And the reason that we really do it, and this is so good, is that we really do that because it makes us feel better about giving the feedback.

Perry Holley:

That’s what I’ve learned.

Chris Goede:

Yes. They know what you’re doing, by the way, right. And so they probably have their guard up even more than they’re not even listening.

Perry Holley:

Explain the feedback, sandwich.

Chris Goede:

So where you end up giving somebody something positive, then some constructive feedback, and then you close with a positive comment.

Perry Holley:

And again, get out as quickly as possible.

Chris Goede:

As quickly as possible.

Perry Holley:

Now I feel better about myself.

Chris Goede:

Yeah, that’s right. And so man, I gave them two positive things, one negative. And so to your point here, is that man, yeah, absolutely. I think that that is more for you than the so I’ve heard you teach and talk about getting away from the Feedback Sandwich and talking more about a feedback conversation.

Perry Holley:

Right.

Chris Goede:

And the feedback conversation goes like this as close to an event that you’ve witnessed as possible as a leader. Share something that you thought the person did well, then share something you think they might have done better. And then ask the question what you were just talking about a minute ago, which is, what did you think about that? So you’re creating this dialogue versus giving statements on that sandwich and you’re inviting them to have a conversation. And that is a much different approach to a topic than just having the Feedback Sandwich.

Perry Holley:

It’s worked amazing for me is that, hey, that sales call, I thought you did a great job on engaging the client. The prospect in a conversation, one area I thought you could have improved on was how you presented our value proposition. What do you think? And the salesman looks right at me and says, no, I thought it was great.

Chris Goede:

What? Are you kidding me?

Perry Holley:

I go, well, really? I thought some confusion on the customer’s face, and I was just observing, but maybe I’m wrong. How did you see it? And he goes, well, now that you mentioned it, I did get a little tangled up, and I was very vague on a couple of things, and I really wasn’t sure how to I said, well, tell me, how could we have done it differently? And now we’re in a beautiful place. I’m having a great conversation, and actually, the salesman what salesman ever did this is, hey, would you do a role play with me on that? Nobody ever asked for a role play. I thought, yeah, let’s role play that for a moment. How could give me the value prop to do that? Another area I think you can improve your reputation as a leader and increase your influence and increase your communication is we talk about it a lot here, but I think it really applies is those three questions that every follower, every person you’re listening to is asking about you while you’re leading, while you’re influencing them. Do you remember the three questions?

Chris Goede:

No.

Perry Holley:

Okay, you do.

Chris Goede:

I’m just kidding. Yeah, absolutely. So what they want to know is, hey, are you going to help them? Do you care about them? And can they trust you?

Perry Holley:

Yeah. Love these.

Chris Goede:

And this is a staple of John and really when he talks about leadership and connecting with people. And so these are a great way to frame your question. Now, what we want you to know is, man, if you can answer yes or these questions are being answered yes about your leadership, then your communication is in a pretty good place, and you have the ability to increase your influence and your reputation as a leader. The getting practical behind this and why we put this in here is if the answer to any of those three questions is no, then dig into that. Why is it no? Why is it that it is no? What can you be doing or working on to move that from a no to a yes? They’re simple questions, and it’s a simple answer. Yes or no if it’s yes, hey, keep trudging, keep getting better. But if it’s no, we really want you to kind of unpack and look into that.

Perry Holley:

Yeah, fantastic. And then finally, I just thought that John’s new book out on the 16 undeniable laws of communication, I was really taken by a truth in one of the laws there was that the law of credibility. That great. Communicator knows that you’re not the main attraction. All your communication is about others. And if you make it about yourself, if you’re talking in a way that makes it about you, you’re not making it meaningful for others. So I thought for me that was a great reminder is that in my communication, is it about others? Am I talking to other? Am I listening with respect to others? Lots of things that make up a great communicator. But being credible in your communication by the life you live and the way that you present yourself and then that you make it about others goes a long way.

Chris Goede:

Goes a long way. Well, as we wrap up, remember we started this by talking about how leaders move from good leadership to great leadership. And I love that you said, hey, let’s just take one and let’s get really practical. What’s interesting is that, one, when we work with organizations, we go through a discovery process and no doubt about it, in the top three every time. And you know this you’ve been on a lot of discovery calls is, man, listen, we got to get better at communication as leaders. We have leaders that don’t do a good job of communicating. As an organization, we don’t do a good job of communicating. So here were just a couple of very practical, simple ways. Go back, listen, have a little bit of an assessment, check yourself on these areas that we brought to you. And I promise you, if you work on becoming a more effective communicator by some of the tips that we get that we gave you, you will go from being a good leader to a great leader.

Perry Holley:

Fantastic. And reminder, if you’d like that learner guide, you’d like to leave a question or a comment or you want to learn more about our offerings and how you can contact us, you can do all of that at leadership Podcast. We love hearing from you and very grateful you’d spend this time with us. That’s all today from the Maxwell Leadership executive podcast.