Becoming a High Road Leader (Part 1)

Chris Goede:
Welcome to 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. I’m Chris Goede, and you guys are listening right now. And you’re like, wait a minute. I’ve never heard that out of Chris Goede’s mouth. I just told Jake and our team, I’m going to have to read my script here because Perry Holley, who is my sidekick, is unable to join us today. And so we are going to talk a little bit about high road leadership. I’m super excited. I’m going to tell you a little bit more about that in just a minute.

Chris Goede:
But bear with me. This is the right podcast. I just wanted to clarify that for you guys. Hey, as we get started, I do want to remind you again, if you have a topic, if you have a question, if you want to learn more about how we can serve your team or your organization, please visit maxwellleadership.com/podcast. And there, if you’ll click on this podcast, you can fill out that form and put your question in there or leave your information and we’ll follow back up with you. Well, I mentioned just a minute ago about Hiro leadership. I am super excited. Not only this episode, but we are going to do another one as well.

Chris Goede:
And we’re going to devote the topic to John Maxwell’s newest book, High Road Leadership. And in studio with me today, I have none other than our executive vice president of personal solutions, also our publishing department, also a ton of other stuff that we were just talking about. Mister Jared Cagle, thank you for being here and joining us.

Jared Cagle:
Thanks, Coach.

Chris Goede:
Yeah, that’s right. I love Jared. We share a lot of things in common about sports and families and leadership. What I want to do today is I want to just connect with you and then connect with our audience about this book that John has coming out here in the very near future. And by the way, hang with us because we’re going to talk about some content, but then we’re going to talk about an event that in just a week or so, a free event that you’re going to be able to register where John will be talking even more in depth about the content of this book. Take, take a minute and give us a little backstory about this book, kind of an overview of the book and the content in it that John’s so excited about.

Jared Cagle:
Absolutely. Yeah. John for quite some time, maybe you’ve heard him say he’s leadership. Sad. And when he talks about that. He’s talking about the nature of leadership in our world today, specifically around politics and not just our country, but the way that the world is sort of being run. And he has been passionate about this topic for quite some time. So high road leadership is all about bringing people together in a world that divides.

Jared Cagle:
And we believe it’s a necessary message, really, for such a time as this. And so in the book, he gives twelve principles, twelve characteristics of high road leaders, and each chapter is another one of those characteristics. And then at the end, you know, you see how you can live out those characteristics yourself, whether it’s in your organization, your family, whatever the case may be. And so we’re really excited about this message. It’s the first time in some time where we feel like it is poignant for the time that we’re in. And John’s really, really thrilled about the book.

Chris Goede:
I even love a little spoiler alert. I even love the design of the COVID Okay. Right. And the message that it’s given. Yeah. Yeah. It’s not, it’s not off the press. We got, oh, we got them right there.

Chris Goede:
We got them up. We got them right there. We threw them up. But especially here in the US, about what we’re going to go through over the next four to six months. There’s going to be, there’s going to be tension on leaders and, and families, to your point, I think, I think John has been talking about leadership. Sad. Not only at the highest leadership level, but throughout the communities and throughout our organizations and teams. And so there’s going to be nuggets.

Chris Goede:
And what I love, what you talked about is there’s takeaways in each one of these chapters and you can really learn how to develop yourself as a leader with these characteristics. So what Jared and I thought we would do is we would, we’re just going to pick one chapter, okay. And we’re going to unpack the content behind that chapter and talk a little bit about it. Now, I’m going to have to admit, I have not read the book completely. Um, jared has read the book multiple times. Matter of fact, we were talking about before we came on the air, and he’s like, hey, that’s my job. Like, I’ve read it a ton. So what Jared’s going to do is just give us some of the thoughts on the, on the principles and the characteristics.

Chris Goede:
Characteristics in there and then we’ll react against it. We both lead teams. Jared’s a leader here in the organization, and we’ll talk about what that looks like in leadership for teams. So let’s talk about chapter nine. Give us a little background and a breakdown of the chapter, and then we’ll go back and forth.

Jared Cagle:
Yeah. So chapter nine’s title is take accountability for your actions. And John describes the difference in taking accountability and being accountable.

Chris Goede:
Oh, that’s good.

Jared Cagle:
Those two things are unique because the process is not passive accountability. Taking accountability is active and intentional. Being accountable can be a passive posture. Taking accountability can be an active posture. And so this chapter, I think, is going to be really, really helpful for people. And ultimately, when you go into what it means to take accountability, being active about surrounding yourself with individuals, leaders, people that can speak into your leadership and your life, then you get into taking part, personal responsibility. And then the next layer is team responsibility as a leader. And then the next layer after that would be leadership responsibility.

Jared Cagle:
And John unpacks all three of those in this chapter. Maybe we can spend some time kind of going there. But responsibility goes farther than accountability. And that’s what he’s unpacking in these three levels, personal responsibility, team responsibility, and leadership responsibility. So I’d love to kind of volley something to you, maybe ask you a question about each of these.

Chris Goede:
Let’s do it.

Jared Cagle:
Personal responsibility, John says, is a success starter. Excuses. Making excuses is a success stopper. And there was a quote in this chapter that I thought was really interesting, and I’d love to get your thoughts. Gilbert Arland said, when an archer misses the mark, he turns and looks for the fault within himself. First. Failure to hit the bullseye is never the fault of the target. You don’t see an archer immediately blaming the target that he missed the mark when he shot towards the target.

Jared Cagle:
So to improve your aim, improve yourself. And I wonder for you, as you lead teams, as you coach other leaders of teams, and thinking about taking personal responsibility, what does that, what does that say to you?

Chris Goede:
You know, the first thing I was just thinking about, which, that’s a great quote, you and I, one of us is better than the other. At the game of golf, don’t we often hear that? Daggum club. Right. You blame the club and then blame the club. All of a sudden. I had somebody tell me one time, they’re like, listen, it’s not the arrow. That’s right. It’s the indian, Chris.

Chris Goede:
Right. And I happen to be the Indian when it comes to that. And so. But I love that. Right. And so when we talk about taking personal responsibility, one of the things that we talk about often is that leadership is contagious. And so leaders need to go first. Okay, so let’s back this up and let’s say, okay, if it’s contagious and I need to go first, what is my team seeing me do personally? Right? And then what am I doing and what am I sharing with them in taking responsibility for my own personal growth? My own personal responsibility and what that looks like.

Chris Goede:
I love this little quote you and I were talking about a minute ago about where it’s individual responsibility, collective pride. I expect not only in my leadership, but also in our team as a whole to take individual responsibility, but as a team, we’re going to be collective. Now, how’s that going to happen? It’s only going to happen if I’m leading. If I’m going first, what am I taking responsibility for? We talk a lot in this organization about growth. It’s one of our. It’s one of our values. So a couple of things that I do that I want to take responsibility is that I often will share what I’m learning, right? So, hey, I’ve got to be responsible for my own personal growth. Matter of fact, I’ll be transparent here I am in a little bit of a rut in regards to consuming content.

Chris Goede:
And so I talked to another one of our leaders in our organization just last week because I know that I can’t stay there long, and I got to own it. So I owned it. Right? I’m like, hey, I got to figure this out. And so I was just asking some questions. When do you consume content? How do you capture it? You know, how are you then talking about it and then teaching it to your team so that I can become better at owning and being responsible for. Again, we’re just talking about personal growth. There are a lot of things, I think, in this topic specifically that you need to take responsibility for. Personally, we’re just talking about growth because it’s one of our values.

Chris Goede:
But I think, again, going back in its simplest form, it is contagious and we need to go first. And if you want your team to see that and take personal responsibility, they need to see it in the leader.

Jared Cagle:
So good. So good. So sharing what you’re learning is key. I thought you might have had a couple more. I thought she might have had a couple more right there.

Chris Goede:
No, no, that was it. That was it. That’s all I got.

Jared Cagle:
Share what you’re learning and finding ways to do that.

Chris Goede:
Yeah. And again, sharing what when it comes to share. Sharing the things I do wrong and the mistakes I make. Right. So you do have a couple excuse me, where’s Perry? Can Barry come back? But, no, I. And I think, you know, being that vulnerable on the personal side, like, what were my emotions in a certain situation? Did I need to come back and. And apologize? Did I. Did I, you know, did I stay calm? Was I consistent through what we were dealing with? What were my behaviors in that moment? So, yeah, there are other things that we could unpack in regards to that, but I would just encourage everybody that’s listening here, whether you’re leading yourself or you’re leading your team, you have to take personal responsibility.

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Jared Cagle:
Let’s take it another layer deeper. So team responsibility now, right, when you think about the team, accountability becomes the glue that holds the team together. That’s what John teaches in the book, no matter how difficult the circumstances get. Accountability is that glue. He has a story of Lou Holtz in the book, in this chapter, which is pretty interesting. I know you’re. You’re a football fan. You know, you were in the trenches at one time, you know, long time ago, you played wide, wide out.

Chris Goede:
I don’t.

Jared Cagle:
We’re not going to tell him what.

Chris Goede:
Left out is where I played.

Jared Cagle:
But he tells a story about Lou Holtz, and the night he. Lou Holtz told John on the night before his bowl games, he would go to each individual player and he would ask each individual player the same question, and he would say, what can I count on you for that’s going to bring us as a team to victory? What can I look to you for individually that’s going to help us be victorious? And he tells a story. The result was the players started taking responsibility personally, and they began to see themselves as a part of the team and then hold each other accountable to that. I wonder if you had thoughts on that or even maybe some tips for the audience on how we can take similar things to our team.

Chris Goede:
Yeah, I love that. I had not heard that story and have not read that in the book yet, but I absolutely love it. Two things for you that I just thought about. Number one, my son has had the privilege of playing college football and at a fairly high level in two different programs.

Jared Cagle:
Go dogs.

Chris Goede:
Go dogs. And what made me think about this was you mentioned that the night before a bowl game, coach Holtz would go around and say, whatever. One of the things that he told me was a drastic difference between one organization and the other was the night before the game, they would be in their offensive meeting and they would put up a certain play on the screen and the offense of coordinator would be like, all right, here we go. And he would go through each one of the starters. What are you responsible? Right. Right here. What are you responsible for doing? Wow. And each one of them had to, had to stand up and say, this is what I’m doing.

Chris Goede:
This is what I’m responsible for. You want to talk about team accountability and to each other and to the coaches, you better know what you’re talking about. Another program he mentioned was that he said, hey, we would go in there night before and they would say, okay, everybody at one time blurred out. What are you responsible for when they put the play up? And so it’s like just a bunch of gibberish. Sure. And people could have said whatever they said, and so people didn’t really know whether or not they could trust that individual that’s sitting next to them. And so I thought, man, that’s two ways that you can look at. How do you get to the point to where you have team accountability? Make sure the team’s taking responsibility for the numbers.

Chris Goede:
So what does that look like in the corporate world? One of the things is that a lot of leaders don’t like to hold their team accountable. They don’t like to ask the tough questions. They don’t like to say, man, hey, you let me down here, Jared. You said you were going to, you know, you were going to make 42 calls and you made 35. Like, what are we going to do next? Now, others, they love it and they’ll get into the trenches and, and they don’t have a problem with it. Well, one of the things I found was when I run my weekly team meetings, I put it all out on the table for the whole team. So now what we do is similar to the first example I talked about in regards to the pregame and the offense coordinators calling out and each individual stands up we go around the table and we’re like, what did you accomplish last week in comparison to what was your responsibility? And so we’re able to hold each other accountable as a collective unit, not just the leader going, hey, why didn’t you do this? Why didn’t you do that? And it becomes, you know, a little bit more of a command and control, but yet it’s this unified. Hey, we’re going here, and we all agreed that it’s going to take this to get there.

Chris Goede:
So now let’s all report back to each other and be accountable as a team and be responsible for what we committed to.

Jared Cagle:
All right, let’s go there for a second. Okay, so leadership, responsibility, that’s the third level that John describes in the book. And you just triggered something in me right there, how you mentioned earlier the leader has to go first. Right. And responsibility becomes contagious. So how do you, in those meetings, when you have the team go around the room, how do you go first? Or what are the ways that you show what you’re taking responsibility for as the leader?

Chris Goede:
Yeah. So the first thing I do is I report on a bigger level to them of the organization. Okay. So my team is a vertical is a part of our enterprise. So I actually come to the table because I sit on a leadership team that not only does our team funnel up to that, but other teams do. And I take responsibility for all those teams. Right. We’re in that together.

Chris Goede:
And so I will come to the table and I will talk about some of the things that we’re supposed to be hitting that we’re not, some of the things that we are exceeding. But I’ll talk about it from a macro level of the enterprise and own it when we’re not, or celebrate it, depending on the leader that is responsible for that business unit. So one of the things that we’ve started doing that I love is our director of HR. You know, Heather sits in these meetings and says, hey, guys, here’s four things as an enterprise that you need to be communicating. They’re not all good. Some are good. And so I now take that as part of that posturing when I go first. So I think by me going first is doing that also.

Chris Goede:
If we’re not as a team, my direct team, if we’re not producing, I will 100% own that on the front end and get in it with them, and I will make that statement in the very beginning. So that to your point, that that characteristic, that attribute is contagious. And, and hopefully it’s showing up at every seat around the table.

Jared Cagle:
So good. So good.

Chris Goede:
Yeah.

Jared Cagle:
Take accountability for your actions. That’s, that’s chapter nine.

Chris Goede:
I love it. I love it.

Jared Cagle:
Incredible.

Chris Goede:
Well, look here. First time ever, we’re sharing a chapter right out of John’s newest book on that content piece. There’s one thing that we do want to share with you guys as we, as we wrap up, there’s an event that John’s very excited about. You’re excited about. Your team is behind putting this together and it’s amazing. Some of the speakers that are going to be on there. The event is free. It’s April 23, and we’re going to tell you how to go and register for it.

Chris Goede:
But before we do that, I’d love for you just to share with our audience a little bit about the event, how it came to be and what they can expect on that day. Sure.

Jared Cagle:
Love it. Yeah. John is very excited about getting this message to as many people as we can. But the way that we’re going to do that is we’re really calling on individuals that are passionate about helping be a part of the solution in these divided times. And so we want as many people to hear it as possible. But we really want people at this event that have a passion for helping other people lead on the high road and be a part of bringing people together in a world that divides. So we’ve brought some speakers together, as you mentioned, we’re so blessed and honored to have some really big names and influential people at this that are going to take a chapter that we think they embody in some way. And they’re going to teach out of that topic, which says a lot, too, about the respect for John, for these influence.

Jared Cagle:
You know, Craig Groeschel, Molly Fletcher, Pete Vargas, Eric Thomas et the hip hop preacher. He goes by, you know, Henry Cloud, Doctor Henry Cloud’s going to be there. Will Gudara, who just wrote unreasonable hospitality that everyone’s kind of raving about. That book sells. First time author. That book sells 3000 books a week right now. Still and unbelievable. Gretchen Rubin’s going to be there.

Jared Cagle:
We have a good list of people that are going to help us carry this event forward. Rory Vaden, Pete Vargas. And it’s going to be really exciting. So here’s what I want to say, too, about that, because you mentioned it was free and you said that a few times. There is a portion of it that’s free.

Chris Goede:
Gotcha.

Jared Cagle:
You know, there’s a, there’s the first portion that you can come to for free, but the whole event, you gotta pre order a copy of the book because we want you to have the book in your hands. We want you to take this seriously and be. And be a part of the solution. Right. And you get some benefits and some bonuses as a part of that pre order copy books out on May 7. So this event’s before that. It’s a pre order, but we’re excited to offer a lot of good bonuses. And you can check that out.

Jared Cagle:
They can check that out at highroad leadershiplive.com. I’m sure you’ll cover all the details.

Chris Goede:
Yes. No, that’s good. Yeah. High road leadership live is where they can go. Now, when they go there, can they purchase the book there to be able to see the whole event? So you’re telling me I just need to purchase a copy of high road leadership and they get the whole event?

Jared Cagle:
One copy?

Chris Goede:
That’s fantastic.

Jared Cagle:
Yeah, you get more, too. You’ll see on the website.

Chris Goede:
You can get more, too, as well. Well, listen, I want to encourage you, man, just talking today about personal accountability, team accountability, leadership, accountability, which we kind of encompassed all of those conversations around. We got to take responsibility first. And what I love is that John has handpicked other communicators to come on and talk about each one of the chapters and what it means to them and how to live that out. So, again, highroad leadership live.com, you want to go there, fill that out. Remember the books not even coming out till May 7.

Jared Cagle:
Yep.

Chris Goede:
Right. So you’ll. You’ll be able to get that in front of everybody else once. Once we get it delivered. Well, listen, thank you for joining us today, watching us on YouTube or. Or listening to us. This content is so needed in organizations, in teams, in our countries, whatever it might be, and I’m super excited about it. We would welcome any questions that you might have, any follow up, anything that we need to help with clarity.

Chris Goede:
Again, go back to maxwellleadership.com podcast. There’ll be a form underneath our podcast that Jared and I did today, and if we can help you in any way, just put that in there and we’ll let you know. That’s all for today. Thank you for joining us. This is the Maxwell Leadership executive podcast.