Executive Podcast #335: Recruiting the 21st Century Leader

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. I am 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 want to encourage you to go to MaxwellLeadership.com/Podcast there if you’ll click on this podcast and there will be a form for you if you have a question, an idea or you know, Perry and I talk a lot about the five levels of leadership. It’s the methodology of which we coach on, we deliver training on, and if that’s something that would work for your leadership team or your team, we would love to come visit you. Well, today’s topic is recruiting the 21st century leader. How about that? Yeah, I love this. And you know, it’s going to come straight from things that Perry’s learning, not only in all of his studying, but also on coaching calls or with leadership teams. So I’m excited to dive into this the art of 21st century leadership, from Succession Planning to Building a Leadership Factory.

Chris Goede:
That’s the title of an article that really kind of spurred Perry to think about this, and it was by Bob Sternfels, Daniel Packad, Kurt Strink, and Wyman Howard. And in this article, the authors actually explore what it will take to be a leader in this century, which is much different than the century of which Perry led in. I just had to throw that in there. But how can we then build up these leadership factories that shapes, develops, and mentors the next generation of leaders? This is really what we talk about in regards to level four influence. How are we developing and adding value to that? We have a client, a partner of ours right now. Where this is their big hot button in 25 is how do we go about doing that. And so in this article, they suggest that the organizations that treat leadership development as a core capability and proactively address the needs of both existing leaders and aspiring leaders can actually raise their overall resilience and substantially improve the odds that they will be able to withstand disruption, whatever it is, and wherever it appears next. So that sets the context for where Perry’s at, why he brought this to us.

Chris Goede:
So unpack that a little bit and give us some vulnerability behind why we’re going to be talking about this.

Perry Holley:
It caught my eye because I’m hearing a lot from the leaders we coach and work with just Got back from a couple of keynote opportunities. I’m working with the senior teams. They’re talking about how complicated things are and how the leaders have to really. They don’t reference it to being different from the past, but they said you really have to raise your game. And we’re looking for certain characteristics. And this article, the authors, I thought, captured it beautifully and about what’s going to be required from now, going out for the next years. And so I thought I just would present four or five of the characteristics they said and get your feedback on those. But number one was, I thought it was interesting.

Perry Holley:
They made it. Number one was a positive energy, personal balance and inspiration. Like, whoa, that’s, you know, it’s a collection of traits they said that focus on the leaders need to develop and protect the mind, body and spirit. So I think the very first characteristic talks about taking care of you and are you, you’re going to give yourself to others as a leader? Are you doing that? They mentioned a McKinsey research that said. I’m just going to read it. It said a mobile post pandemic, multi generational workforce. It’s only. Everything we’ve been talking about is looking for more, more authenticity and more inspiration from their leaders.

Perry Holley:
And energy is becoming a critical commodity. I don’t ever think, you know, I know we have limited time and limited energy to put into things, but I don’t think enough is being done today on our. Are we doing the priorities? Are we doing the right things to manage my energy? Where am I putting my energy into the right things?

Chris Goede:
Yeah. I think there’s two other things there that I want to call out. The personal balance. I know you and I both struggle with this.

Perry Holley:
Yes.

Chris Goede:
But it is something that is in the future going to be something that we need to be aware of. We do a values card exercise with a lot of organizations and we’re seeing the value of balance show up a little bit more. It’s hard for me bringing up another generational leader to be like, hey, let’s make sure we focus on balance, because that’s not how I’m wired. You know, that’s not how you’re wired.

Perry Holley:
No. Completely baby boomer, very driven.

Chris Goede:
Something else real quick, just off script a little bit. Tell me some of the coaching calls that you’ve had. And people that struggle with balance are trying to get balance or having emerging leaders that desire to have that personal balance. How do they, how do they manage that? Like, how do they, how do they balance. Helping lead them to have balance.

Perry Holley:
Yeah. Most of the conversations will lean toward. And I’ll use the term guardrails. Is that.

Chris Goede:
Yeah, that’s good.

Perry Holley:
I don’t, I’m like, if you see these, you know, road going through the wild, there’s nothing. You go off the road, you’re going into the prairie somewhere. You’re not going, there’s nothing, nothing to stop you. And so now it is really this younger generation coming up. And it started in the 90s, 80s, 90s with the millennials and then the Gen Z’s. But they’re driven. Not like you and I are an ex and a boomer that we are more success and driven and money and status and promotion and we’ll just do whatever it takes and we’ll work all the time. And it was kind of expected you’ll work all the time.

Perry Holley:
But now it’s more purpose and meaning and doing things for the right reasons. And they don’t want their work to be their life. They want to work. So they live and we live to work. And lots of these comparisons. But I thought about what I’m seeing with the coaching work we’re doing is putting guardrail. Guardrails aren’t right next to the road. So you, you can get off the road a little bit, but the guardrails are there to keep you from going over the cliff someplace and making something bad.

Perry Holley:
So guardrails are a little far back from the road, but they’re there for a reason. And just. Or do you have the guardrails and then we can get into long. What are the guardrails? You know about deciding what are the hours I’m going to work one of the hours.

Chris Goede:
They’ll be different, right?

Perry Holley:
Yeah, but you decide. And I’m picturing Johnson. We’ll decide once manage daily is decide that’s good. I’m going to do it and then today I’m going to have to man it. Today we were, you know, we’re in the podcast studio, so we both had to manage our days, but we’re going to be within the bounds of what when we start and finish. It’s not just attack on. It’s going to go on and on and on to do that.

Chris Goede:
And I think for a 21st century leader, I love what you said just a minute ago, which is, hey, let’s have that conversation up front. Let’s create the clarity. We know personal balance is important to you. What does that look like? And then you set that guard. You start those guardrails based off of their explanation and then you just manage that together to help them do that. The other thing is, is that they talked about they want more connection. And I’ll never forget Tim Elmore telling me up and coming generations are so connected but have no connection with people.

Perry Holley:
Right.

Chris Goede:
And so it’s interesting to see this. Right. Because they’re so connected on social media and all these different things, but yet now they’re starting to desire connection, which I love to see especially for you and I when we have so much devotion to level 2 influence of connecting, connecting with people. Another thing that the author said 21 21st century leaders will need to be is servant and selfless leader.

Perry Holley:
Did you believe that?

Chris Goede:
That I love that. I know. This is incredible. So the highest performing leaders are focused on making the team and others successful, not just themselves. And they make sure that they are helping with others deeds and actions and outcomes and rolling up your sleeves and oh, by the way, doing all of what we’re talking about right here is going to increase your influence. So you may go, oh, I’m about to turn this off because I’m not a 21st. I’m just telling you right now these are core principles that will work for you as well. And so we got to make sure too.

Chris Goede:
The other thing is that what we’re helping them accomplish and by serving them and being selfless, we do it in a way that aligns with the organization’s purpose and impact and, and mission. They’re probably there because that was a top three to five reason on why they joined the company in the first place. So make sure that we are doing that in a way that aligns with why they were there.

Perry Holley:
Well, I love it because we, we started talking servant leadership a couple years.

Chris Goede:
Ago and we, we built, people thought we were crazy.

Perry Holley:
Yeah. And we built a course on it and we, we talk to organizations about how to raise your servant leader mindset. And so this is really spot on to what we’ve been seeing as well. And also I saw they had another McKinsey quote in there. Around 70% of a large group, I think 1,000 leaders employees that they surveyed said that their work largely defines their meaning and purpose is where their meaning and purpose comes from the work they do. So if you’re not serving and putting yourself in that position to, to have that servant and selfless leader in there, you’re dealing with somebody’s purpose and meaning and so can you really help them in that third thing that the authors brought out in the article said that’s going to be a 21st century leader is Continuous learning and a humble mindset. This is. We could have written this article.

Perry Holley:
100%, this is us, right? That said, the highest.

Chris Goede:
Barry, will you start writing articles that you can put your name and my name on? Yes.

Perry Holley:
There you go. The highest performing leaders never consider themselves to be the highest expert or the smartest person in the room. Their superpowers are humility and a willingness to be vulnerable. There’s that word again. We keep talking about that. But this continuous learning and humble mindset, don’t you love it?

Chris Goede:
I love it. I know that when Nadella was at Microsoft, for instance, when you talk about not knowing everything, he was a big advocate for transparency. And I love this statement where he says, learn it all rather than know it all. Like, that’s the attitude.

Perry Holley:
Don’t be a know it all. Be a learn it all.

Chris Goede:
Yeah, like, like, what are you learning? Being curious. What. What’s next? At all levels of the company, 100% would. Would help the culture of that organization.

Ryan Leak:
Hey, everybody. Ryan Leake here, and I’ve got some exciting news for you. Data Grow is just a few weeks away, and it’s happening on March 19th in Orlando, Florida. And I cannot wait to see you there. I’ll be talking about my new book, how to Work with Complicated People. And let me tell you, this message has the power to change the way you lead and live. And it’s not just me. John C.

Ryan Leak:
Maxwell is going to be in the building. Tim Tebow, Stephanie Chong, Jesse Itzler, and an amazing lineup of speakers will all be there pouring in to you. But here’s the thing. Seats are filling up fast. So if you haven’t registered yet, now is the time. Don’t wait. Make the decision today to invest in your personal growth. I’ll see you, my friend, in Orlando, Florida, on March 19th.

Ryan Leak:
Let’s grow together.

Chris Goede:
Well, number four is grit and resilience.

Perry Holley:
Boom.

Chris Goede:
This is.

Perry Holley:
Yeah.

Chris Goede:
And this is something we’re working on right now. We’re going to talk about that in just a minute. But as hard as it may be, sometimes leaders, you need to be stoic in the face of disruption. We’re going to have all kinds of disruption in our businesses, in our teams. And if you can have that grit and that resilient and you can work to assimilate the best ideas around the team, but then be able to make the decision, never waver from. It’s not a collaborative decision. It’s a collaborative discussion and assimilate the thoughts of the team. Just make sure that when you’re doing that you’re analyzing the situation with the team, you’re staying calm, you’re looking for the root cause, you’re being consistent.

Chris Goede:
And I think by doing that, what’s going to end up happening is you’re going to drive the grit, you’re going to drive the resilience of the people. And this is something that I, I try to focus on now. I’m wired this way, so it helps. But I love when we talk about being consistent no matter what the situation is around us. I’m attracted to that. So when things are going crazy or there’s all kinds of chaos, I want to be able to be with someone that can calmly analyze the root cause of what the situation is, make decisions and then go from there. And so real quick, let me go back to this resilience and what we’re working on. You are very in the throws right now with Valerie Burton.

Perry Holley:
Yes.

Chris Goede:
And Valerie is going to be coming out with a book later this fall around resilience. And so we are honored because she has asked us to partner with her then to develop resilience training for organizations and talk a little bit about that. What you’re learning right now from Valerie, your excitement about how that is going then to appeal to our corporate partners, it’s been fascinating.

Perry Holley:
She is such a talent and just delightful to work with. But she, her vision is and what we’re building into the course is how can you and I in the individual build a your personal resilience system for you? And there’s 10 rules of resilience that she presents and how she puts that into a way that we can formulate that into building your, your personal system for resilience. And it really is about. We all go through tough things, everybody does. But how do you keep moving? How do you come out with endurance and to fight through and to come through tough stuff. Yeah, I think it’s going to be.

Chris Goede:
So we are super excited. So real quick, before Perry goes on, I just want to go back to what we talked about early on. Go to MaxwellLeadership.com/Podcast, click on this podcast and on that form just put your information there and put resilience and we’ll follow up with you once we get that course finished.

Perry Holley:
Good. Number five, the authors talking about 21st century leadership. I could have written this one. Yes. Levity. High performing leaders recognize it’s important to bring humor to their conversations and sometimes even during serious matters. I love it. Said research has shown that leaders with a sense of humor, even a so so sense of humor, like yours are 27% more motivating and inspiring.

Perry Holley:
These moments of humor help people bond. I mean, I kid because you. We do. You and I, we laugh a lot. Yeah, we laugh a lot. And it diffuses the high stress situations can unlock creativity from the, from the entire group. It just, it’s that idea of that work can be enjoyable and we can, we take our work serious, but we don’t take ourselves too serious. And we have a little fun with that.

Chris Goede:
We have a lot of fun. There’s no doubt about that. I do want to say something about this real quick though, because when you talk about having levity, I love humor. I love to goof around and listen. Everybody’s got their crazy and we just got to get through it together. So let’s, let’s have fun. But I do. I’ve learned a lot over the last couple of years in regards to how I use this as a leader and making sure that I do bring humor, but not at somebody else’s expense.

Perry Holley:
That’s correct.

Chris Goede:
And I’ve made some mistakes in that before and having fun. And I told you. Yeah, I, I didn’t even know you had feelings. That’s why we were here together, because neither one of us have feelings.

Perry Holley:
Right.

Chris Goede:
And so just, just keep that in mind. I just. As you were talking and we’re talking about this, it just came to mind. I just wanted to share it with our audience because I think if you keep that, I think it’s needed 100. In order for us to get through anything that we get, we need to get through. Just make sure that it’s not at somebody else’s expense. And they always say, you know, it’s only laughter and fun if everybody’s laughing. And so if somebody’s not laughing, that’s probably a problem.

Chris Goede:
So. And finally, stewardship. The best performing leaders take the long view or maybe the high road.

Perry Holley:
Yeah.

Chris Goede:
Based off of John’s latest book. And they see themselves as stewards of the organization and the teams for now. Like, are you. Are you being a good steward of the resources that, that you have and understanding that markets are going to shift? Customer demands are going to change. The task of leadership is going to evolve just as the organization does. And we need to keep that in mind because we’re going to have to adopt a very intentional approach to developing leadership capabilities across the organization.

Perry Holley:
Yeah. Stewardship. When you’re done, you’ve left it in a better place than when you found it. And you left the people in a better place than where you found Them and you, you carry it. It’s not just about success. It’s about significance. And so I just, I love this. It’s a really deep word, stewardship.

Perry Holley:
But, yeah, you carry it. It’s not yours, but you, you treat it like it. Yeah, more than yours.

Chris Goede:
That’s good. Well, as we wrap up, as Perry and I were kind of having fun working through this, these are core principles. These are core pillars to increasing your influence and, and leading people. So real quick, the first one, positive energy, personal balance, and inspiration. Do you have that as a leader? Are you helping develop that as a leader? Are you looking for that? Second one, be a servant and be selfless as a leader. Number three was continuous learning and a humble mindset. Number four was the grit and resilience. Number five was having levity.

Chris Goede:
And then finally, as we were just talking about stewardship, keep that list in front of you. I would challenge you even for your own personal journey right now. Maybe write it down, maybe put it on your desk, maybe put it at the bottom of your computer screen and just check yourself. Have a little self awareness. How am I doing on that? What does that look like? Maybe who’s better at that than me? And what can I learn from them? And be curious and be asking questions. Just be in that mode of being curious about those six different topics.

Perry Holley:
Beautiful, Chris. Thank you. And just a reminder, if you would like to know more about those offerings, the courses, the classes that we offer, the coaching, know more about our podcast family. There’s other podcasts here. You can do all that at MaxwellLeadership.com/Podcast. You can also leave us a comment or a question. We love hearing from you and we’re very grateful you spend this time with us today. That’s all from the Maxwell Leadership Executive Podcast.

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