How to Fast-Path Your Potential

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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 today, I would love for you to go to MaxwellLeadership.com/ExecutivePodcast. There you’ll see a form. We would love to hear from you. Do you have a question? Do you have a leadership challenge that you’d love for us to talk about in an upcoming podcast? We would love to do that for you. Maybe even you have an opportunity for some training or coaching. We would love to serve you there.

Chris Goede:
Just fill that form out and our team will follow back up with you. Well, today’s title is How to Fast Path, your potential. I love this. I’m like, yeah, all of us want to do that, right?

Perry Holley:
Good.

Chris Goede:
Especially in the day and age right now of everything’s moving faster. You put things in AI and you get things back faster, right? We’re all— technology is moving at that pace. And so again, we were hap— we happened to be at an event. We were on the road. Perry and I had the opportunity to sit under some of John’s teaching and he had a a lesson where it was the mentoring breakthrough, the mentoring breakthrough. And this is what he said, and this is what drove Perry for this title. It said, the fastest path to your potential runs through other people.

Perry Holley:
I love that.

Chris Goede:
Runs through other people. And so we’re gonna talk a little bit about this, about the mentoring mindset, what it’s all about, and how you can grow your potential through others. And I just wanna say this as a caveat, ’cause we teach this all the time. with the right motive behind it, right? ‘Cause that’s how we define influence. Influence is motive matters. Motive matters, yeah.

Perry Holley:
Yeah, it was a great lesson. I personally thinking about mentors in your life or you being a mentor or having a mentor. John’s is so fascinating to listen to him, the list of people at certain places in his life that were mentors in a certain season he was in that gave him what he needed and it really helped him fast path through to his full potential by having these, the voice of others in there. A question I had written for you was, you know, I guess we could both answer, but if you could sit down with anyone, I guess it could be dead or alive, but we’re talking mentors right now, alive, anybody you could sit down, you could ask them questions, do you know who it would be? Do you have other people come to mind?

Chris Goede:
Yeah, so a couple of people come to mind. I do wanna hear yours. I’m just gonna give you one, mine. Nick Saban.

Perry Holley:
Hmm.

Chris Goede:
So I’ve had the opportunity to meet Coach Saban, but not in this type of environment. And I’m always, I’m always so intrigued on how he was able to set systems and processes in place to lose key leaders and to continue to do the same thing over and over and over again at the highest level. And I just think there’s so much that I could learn that would fast I wanna say fast pass because when you go to Disney World or you, they have all these fast passes, the, the fast path to my potential. I would love to learn from him as a mentor. That’s a good one.

Perry Holley:
That’s really a good one. I, I don’t know if everybody would know Ed Mylett.

Chris Goede:
Oh yeah.

Perry Holley:
His podcast. But I met Ed at a Live to Lead session we had a few years ago in Atlanta and I just met him, but I didn’t get the chance to talk to him, but I’ve been following him ever since. And it’s the way he thinks. I’ve also been fascinated with Tom Cruise, just the, what he, he’s just not the average movie star. He, right. how he prepares, how he gets ready, how he— I just, I have so many questions about it. Not about movies, but about—

Chris Goede:
The process.

Perry Holley:
The process. That’s right. And I think my Latin knows. So I think anybody you think about for that, who are those that might add value to your life and fast path it for you? John, like I said, him doing his whole career, his philosophy was simple. Every person he meets has something he needs to know. Boy, can you—

Chris Goede:
how do you—

Perry Holley:
I think that’s where the first place would probably— I know for me, I need to start with that. Every person I meet, right, doesn’t have to be famous, doesn’t have to— could they teach me something?

Chris Goede:
100%. And I think as leaders too, when we think about this mentoring, it doesn’t have to be this formal structure. We, when we’re working with organizations, we talk a lot about succession systems and we talk about How you don’t have to have this well-articulated plan and do this, do that in order to build successors, to mentor people. Man, we’re already doing so many things that we’re just like, hey, just gotta find the right person. Gotta be able to connect with ’em. You don’t have to set up the program. And so today we’re gonna unpack what does that really look like to build a mentoring mindset and then be able to unlock your growth as a leader to fast path what your potential is as a leader.

Perry Holley:
And I love that you, it’s not this formal, it can be formal for sure.

Chris Goede:
It can be.

Perry Holley:
Yeah. But just thinking about the, making it, another word we use a lot, intentional conversations you have around what can I pull from, you know, this person? What we’re talking about, one thing, is there something else I should ask? I’ve had a couple of situations lately where I was introduced to someone and I thought, because I’ve been studying this lesson, I go, huh, what do they know that I need to know? Well, who do you know that I need to know? No, what do you know that I need to know? So I might just ask a question about what have you done in this area? Have you ever done anything in that area? Somebody asked about AI. I’ve been looking at AI. I’m not an expert at AI, but we were talking about different use cases. So I just started listening. And I think I’m always thinking about what do I bring to a conversation? Versus what can I receive? What should I be asking to do that? So I gave us some things to talk about, about developing this mindset. You want me to just start us on that and say, let’s just talk about ways that if you want to develop more of a mentoring mindset, that it is a mindset, okay? About how do you fast path what you’re doing through other folks?

Chris Goede:
I was just listening to you talk about shifting your mindset. I was thinking about everyone has something that they could teach me. If you really had that mindset and you went about it like Perry was talking about with questions, wouldn’t that change the way that you look at everybody?

Perry Holley:
Just a question.

Chris Goede:
Maybe it was a little internal reflection, calling myself out. But as you were thinking about that, I was like, man, if I went around, I was like, every single person—

Perry Holley:
Is it a bias that we maybe have that we—

Chris Goede:
Maybe.

Perry Holley:
Yeah.

Chris Goede:
There’s probably a little deeper, you know, than that. Like I’m thinking about instead of us walking through the airport, which I do what you do now, trying to force people to smile at me and then maybe judging ’em a little, I thought, what do they have that I would love to learn from them? How would we then view other people?

Perry Holley:
Just a thought.

Chris Goede:
I was thinking about that when you were saying—

Perry Holley:
But it is, but it is a practice. And it is. And, uh, yeah, I had a guy come to my house yesterday for a service, uh, fireplace chimney thing, and I had to go let him in and I just, uh, I’ve been practicing, so I thought I’m gonna practice. I only got a couple minutes with this guy and he’s here for a purpose. But I—

Chris Goede:
That’s amazing.

Perry Holley:
I asked something about, you know, how long have you been doing this? He said, well, when I came to Georgia, I’ve been doing this now. I go, where did you come from? He said, well, I was from Portland, Oregon. I said, that’s funny, my wife and I are about to go visit Portland and do some work out there. She goes, oh. So 6 minutes and my wife said, what are you doing?

Chris Goede:
I go, hey, I’m preparing for my podcast.

Perry Holley:
I’m trying to learn who this guy is. And she says, why? I go, you never know. He might know something I need to know.

Chris Goede:
Yeah.

Perry Holley:
So one that I think gets in the way of your mindset, I know it has mine, is that I’ve already arrived.

Chris Goede:
Yes.

Perry Holley:
I know everything I need to know.

Chris Goede:
That’s right.

Perry Holley:
Now, none of us would say that out loud.

Chris Goede:
Yes.

Perry Holley:
But we kind of act it.

Chris Goede:
Yes. Yeah, 100%. We’re there, especially as leaders. And we say the hardest 3 words are, I don’t know. And so that cannot be back and forth. So couple of ’em we just talked about. Everyone has something I need to know. I’ve arrived.

Chris Goede:
Another one is even part of what you were just talking about, about never losing your curiosity. It’s a big, big word that we talk about is how do we become curious, which blends into another one of these, which is what exactly you just did preparing for a podcast. You continue to ask questions in those conversations, and we get in such a hurry, and a lot of leaders are so focused on what we have to do or what we have to say. that I think we miss even both of those items about the mindset of a mentor.

Perry Holley:
Yeah, and I’ve heard John say this, that he has an opportunity, he’s thinking about it, he knows what he would do, but he always kind of has this, someone has a better answer. Someone has a better answer. So he’ll use that as his kind of a motive in keeping his mindset crisp. But everyone I’m talking to, maybe I should float this. I need to do more of that. It kind of feeds into, I’ve arrived, I have the answer.

Chris Goede:
Yeah, that’s right.

Perry Holley:
But maybe someone has a better answer. In doing that.

Chris Goede:
Yes, that’s exactly right. Another one on our list here is action attracts resources, people, and answers. What I love about this is movement creates this. So one of our vice presidents here at Maxwell Leadership, Chris Robinson, he helps people grow their entrepreneur business. And he always says this, he’s like, get out of the house. You wanna grow your business, get out of the house.

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Chris Goede:
And in essence, what he’s saying is you’re taking action, you’re getting into the community, you’re getting into the, the businesses. And from that, it’s going to attract things to you that you didn’t know about other businesses and how to position what you’re, you know, what you wanna talk on or what you wanna coach on. And so action will attract that, but you, but you gotta take movement and have the right mindset around mentoring.

Perry Holley:
And I will say that whole idea of that staying hungry to learn it, but I’m gonna use the word teachableness. Are you teachable? If you don’t actually think you can learn something new, if you don’t actually think there might be a better answer, you’re gonna have a really tough time with this whole concept. And I think you’re gonna slow down your development of your potential by thinking that you’ve already got it. And I know I’ve been guilty of this. And so trying to be really teachable in these later years as I’m growing so much in these areas, I thought, Wow, who can I talk to and who can I have these conversations with?

Chris Goede:
No doubt.

Perry Holley:
Who can help me with this to do that?

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Chris Goede:
I think this last one that I’m just going to mention to you that we have on here really encompasses several that, and all of them that Perry and I were talking to you about, which is there’s no finish line. This is an infinite game that we’re playing. That’s why we talk a lot about, and John has really kind of embedded this into us, of he doesn’t like to set goals. He wants to talk about growth because it is continual. And it’s an infinite game and there is no finish line. So every item that we talked about or unpack a little bit for you right here is, it’s really a belief more than it is an actual behavior. And again, we’re going after the mindset. Okay.

Chris Goede:
What do you think, just quickly, what do you think is the hardest one for most leaders? to adopt that we mentioned today?

Perry Holley:
Probably that I’ve already arrived. I already have the answers.

Chris Goede:
I have the corner office. I’ve been here before.

Perry Holley:
And kind of losing that teachableness maybe a little bit. But yes.

Chris Goede:
So for me, it is just making sure you were talking about that other people have better answers, right? There’s always a better answer. And so for me as a leader, I think one of the hardest things is that someone has a better answer than me, ’cause I’m paid to do this job and I have the answer. And so I think that’s hard. I think that’s extremely difficult.

Perry Holley:
You mentioned curiosity earlier. I think we did a podcast a long time ago, but it was on the— I called it the killer skill. It’s just the skill for leaders to have. If you can be curious and just be asking versus telling and not judging the answer, thinking, well, maybe another way, maybe there’s an— and John uses the word perspective a lot. I really like, is there another perspective Yeah. So I have one and you have one, but what would it mean if I learned your perspective? Would it expand my perspective on things to do that? So let’s move toward closing this. John mentioned some gifts, 4 gifts mentors give. And so they kind of open your mind to this new perspective I’m talking about.

Perry Holley:
How do you see this? It’s a gift when people help you see another perspective, don’t you think? Well, Yes.

Chris Goede:
Unless it’s directly tied to your faults or your challenges. We talk about this when you have a mentor and what they see from their perspective. We ask the question oftentimes, what’s it like to be on the other side of my leadership? Perry, for me, will be that for me in meetings, in certain situations. I’ll say, hey, will you just have a lens on the other side and then come back and coach me on that? It’s not always easy to hear, right? But in this mentoring relationship, I’m seeking wisdom and counsel from him because he’s gonna have a perspective of what’s different than what I think is happening, right? From here to there. And so what I love about that is he’s able to help me in the right way of what I’m missing because of your perspective. And so it all comes down to what’s it like to be on the other side of me, whether you’re communicating, whether you’re leading, whatever it might be, to have somebody that as a mentor speak back into that. It’s a major gift.

Perry Holley:
I love that kind of inner circle stuff where people can tell you the truth.

5 Levels of Leadership:
Yes.

Perry Holley:
That type thing. Another gift that you get from a mentor is they kind of walk you through their success. And I think it’s important about the difference in coaching and mentoring. A coach kind of tries to draw it out of you, what you think you should do. But the mentor can kind of tell you, I’m not gonna— the coach would never tell you what to do. The mentor’s gonna tell you what I did.

Chris Goede:
Yeah. And oftentimes, don’t we talk our things tough, talk ourself out of things before we even start it? Right. And then you have a mentor that the gift they give you is like, oh, that’s possible. And maybe it’s not even a mentor, but it’s this right mindset. And you’re looking at another leader in the organization and you’re going, it’s possible. Like, it opens up the possibility of your thinking when you know that it’s already been done, maybe a different style or a different way from a mentor, Versus you just automatically selling yourself short because you don’t think it can be done.

Perry Holley:
And I think you’re hitting on the third gift about raising your thinking. Lift your thinking through their wisdom. And that’s what you’re saying again, another way, there’s more possible. I didn’t think that I could do that, lifting that up.

Chris Goede:
Totally agree. Let me just tell you a quick story. You’ve told me this, but the first thing I thought about when you talk about this and having knowledge, So a lot of times we’re on camera and we’ll have a sports coat on. And I think the difference between knowledge and wisdom is knowledge knowing I probably should have had a sports coat on for that session. Wisdom was knowing that I should probably sit on the back of my sports coat because then it holds the shoulders down. Now, you may be sitting in your car right now laughing, or maybe you just walked off the treadmill because you’re like, what are we listening to? Truly, Perry’s You spoke into me, who was coaching me and mentoring me, right? Like, I know you’re laughing, you think this is silly, but it’s true. And this is something where it’s just like, hey, this is what I’ve done. This is what I’ve learned, right? And I know it’s not necessarily a higher level thinking, but it allowed me to have a higher level of the way my jacket sat on my— I would’ve never thought to sit on the back of my jacket in that.

Chris Goede:
And you were able to pour that into me.

Perry Holley:
And how do you think I learned it?

Chris Goede:
Somebody else.

Perry Holley:
I was in a studio in New York and somebody said, hey, sit on your jacket and it’ll make your shoulders look— it won’t look like you’re humped over. Hey, good tip.

Chris Goede:
Yeah.

Perry Holley:
Amazing.

Chris Goede:
Yeah.

Perry Holley:
Pass that along.

Chris Goede:
That’s right.

Perry Holley:
The last gift is they enlarge your sense of yourself through their presence. So you think about that, it makes you enlarge my view of me.

Chris Goede:
Yeah.

Perry Holley:
When somebody’s speaking into me.

Chris Goede:
Yeah. We have a belief deficit in our world, and I think the more that we can authentically speak belief into people, but even more importantly, we can have this mindset that we’re talking about with our potential, have a mentor give this gift of, of speaking that belief into you, man, just having that person do that for you, you can just kind of put those shoulders back, right? Without sitting on your jacket and kind of be lifted up. Your ceiling goes up of what your potentials are.

Perry Holley:
Have you had somebody in your life that believed in you more than you?

Chris Goede:
Oh, I think there’s numerous people that have done that along the way. Everything from my athletic career to my leadership career to my communication career. And, um, and we need those people. And so if you’re— let me just switch the, let me just switch the, the audio for just a second. We need ’em. The people that are around you need it as well. I want you to do it authentically. Hear me say that.

Chris Goede:
But man, we’ve got, we’ve got to do that because there are people all around us that have potential. And I think this is one of the easiest ways to be able to help them achieve that.

Perry Holley:
Yeah, for sure.

Chris Goede:
Um, so one of the things that I wanna talk about is how— let’s make this practical. So what does that look like? Okay. So if a leader is inspired by everything that we’ve talked about today, what are the most important things that we can do starting right now? First, okay, I want you to audit— that word, I love it— audit your current conversations. Who are you learning from right now? Okay. If you can’t name one or two people, if things that you’re learning, not only people, but the things aren’t coming to your mind, Okay, then we’ve got to think about that. If you can’t name 2 or 3 people that are stretching your thinking, then that’s a gap as well. Okay? Not a program problem, but it’s a priority problem for you. Meaning we, again, as leaders, right? We put our head down and we just hammer through.

Chris Goede:
We walk through the crowd. We don’t pay attention. We’re not learning. We’re not wondering what— we’re not valuing the people. We’re not having a right mindset. You’ve got to recheck that because John, it’s such a simple— I mean, John to this day still has learning lunches every month. He’s 79, the leadership expert of the world, and he has learning lunches lined up for years to come. And he comes with a pad, doesn’t even eat, talk to me.

Chris Goede:
He’s got questions that he’s just answering. Is that our mindset as leaders? And if not, then we’ve got to change it.

Perry Holley:
A good point there to what you’re saying is monitor the quality of your questions. Do you come prepared? I’ve not done this, but I’ve started practicing since I’ve been studying this for this podcast was I’m going to just a call. I don’t know who I’m gonna be on the call with, but do I have 2 or 3 questions I could ask about this of this person? What do they know that I should know? And am I learning from that? Am I taking it serious? So being intentional about what are the questions I’m gonna ask instead of just trying to— Wing it.

Chris Goede:
Yeah. Yeah.

Perry Holley:
Hope that it comes together.

Chris Goede:
The other thing is we talked about, some of us think about in this mentoring relationship and mindset, We talk about, oh, it’s gotta be so structured. We also go, well, if I was gonna have a mentor that’s gonna help fast path my potential, it needs to be John Maxwell. Okay? No, it could be, it could be people on your team. It could be people that you’re doing life with. It could be family members. It could be somebody in your community. But when you begin to change the way that you look at it, I think you’ll see your scope of people that can— can do that for you will open up.

Perry Holley:
And I’ll just encourage you, if you’re receiving from a mentor, maybe you should also be giving as a mentor. So maybe you can even build a culture on your team where you look at each other and come prepared. What can you learn from your teammates? And sometimes we overlook that. I have especially overlooked the peer-to-peer. I can always learn from my boss and they can always learn from me that look up to me. What about the people beside you? What can you be sharing with each other and have that mentor mindset permeate your name on that.

Chris Goede:
Yeah. One additional thing to that, and then I’m gonna wrap us up, is not only giving back to others, but also that mentoring relationship periodically, just encourage them by telling them a success that you had based off of something that they, a gift, as Perry took us through the 4 gifts that they’ve given you. I promise, right? It will go a long way to them continuing to pour back into you. So here’s the challenge for this week. I want you to schedule one intentional learning conversation with someone that has a perspective that maybe you need or 100% is different than yours. One of our CFOs that we used to have here, a guy by the name of Norwood Davis, he would always challenge us and he’d be like, what are you guys reading? And he’d be like, well, that’s the wrong thing to be reading. That’s in our bubble. You need to go read something 180 degrees different, right? To get a different mindset, right? So who is that? And it’s not, this is not a, if it’s someone on your team, it’s not a status update.

Chris Goede:
It’s not a one-on-one. It’s not a project meeting. This is where your only agenda is what we just talked about. It is to come in and get ready to learn. Come prepared with questions, a notepad, a paper, maybe it’s your phone or iPad, whatever it might be. And come in with questions and be ready. And then afterward, what I want you to do is write down What is the one thing that I learned today that I want to start to apply? What was the greatest? And then one other thing I want you to do is once you apply that and you see a difference in your life, I want you to tell that person that you met with the impact that that one thing had on your life as a leader.

Perry Holley:
Fantastic. Thank you, Chris.

Chris Goede:
Sure.

Perry Holley:
As a reminder, you can get the learner guide for this episode, as well as learn about our offerings and our other podcasts and our podcast family. You can do all of that at MaxwellLeadership.com/ExecutivePodcast. You can also leave us a question or a comment there. We love hearing from you. Very grateful you spend this time with us. That’s all today from the Maxwell Leadership Executive Podcast.

Transcript created by Castmagic.