Great Leaders are Willing to Make Hard Decisions

Mark Cole:
Here’s what I’ve found. Courage is a muscle in the life of a leader. And when you begin to exercise courage in courageous moments, it gets easier. Welcome to the Maxwell Leadership Podcast. Leaders, I’ve got good news. I’ve got bad news. In today’s lesson, John is going to tell you that a high school student could make 85% of your decisions. Or the good news is that you get paid for the other 15%.

Mark Cole:
So you’re still needed. but you’re not needed most of the time. And so that’s today’s takeaway that John’s getting ready to share with you, because I do believe this, great leaders are willing to make the hard decisions. And Chris, I bet you can talk about hard decisions. You can immediately think about as a parent, as a husband, hard decisions are a dime a dozen, aren’t they?

Chris Robinson:
Yeah, they’re all amongst us every single day. And we’ve got the opportunity to either take the easy ones or the hard ones, but the hard ones are the difference makers in the direction that we move.

Mark Cole:
Yeah. So Chris and I get the privilege today, as in so many times, we get the privilege to listen in with John. He’s getting ready to teach us a lesson about making hard decisions and great leaders willing to make those. But then we get to give application. And so I’m really excited. I invite you back. We want to add value to you leaders. I know I just gave you the hard news that a high schooler could take your place.

Mark Cole:
And I think John maybe exaggerated a little bit, but maybe not. Maybe your high schooler could, but then there are those times where we We have to earn our keep as leaders. And that comes around adversity, it comes around difficult decisions, and it comes around being a model of what your culture looks like. And so we’re super excited to be able to give application today. If you would like to join us by following along, we have a bonus resource for you and you can download that bonus resource, follow along. You can pick that up at MaxwellPodcast.com/HardDecisions. At that same link, we’ll put our show notes. We’ll put different links that we will link to.

Mark Cole:
In fact, I hope we can do this, Jake. There’s a statement that Peter Drucker said, a quote that I want you to have in your mind as you go listen to John’s teaching today. And maybe we can put that quote in our lesson notes as well. Whenever you see a successful business, Someone once made a courageous decision. I know today, Chris and I, we stand on the shoulders of people that went before us and made a courageous decision that we’re the benefactor of, as well as now we get to lead it to the next season of hard decisions, because we’ve made a few of those ourselves as well. So grab your pen, go use that bonus resource. Check us out on YouTube, and let’s listen in to John teaching us how to make hard decisions.

John Maxwell:
Anyone that’s in a leadership position understands that probably the deciding difference between a leader and a non-leader is the willingness to make the hard choices. In fact, I’ve always said that people that don’t lead are not people who don’t know the right decisions. People who don’t lead are people who are unwilling to make those right decisions. We wanna make palatable decisions. We wanna make decisions that people are agreeable with. So let me give you 4 reasons why hard choices are hard to make. Number 1, the price is on the front end and the payoff is on the back end. When we make a hard choice, usually the price is up front.

John Maxwell:
And the payoff is down the road. And most of us, understanding that, want to have the payoff sooner than what it should come. And so therefore, we many times forfeit and don’t make the hard decisions only because the price is on the front end, the payoff is on the back end. Number 2, the second reason that hard choices are hard to make is that few people gather and affirm the hard Choice. Very seldom people come around when you make a real hard decision and say, hey, I just want you to know, great decision. If everybody was affirming you and saying great decision, it wouldn’t be a hard one. It would be a popular one. We could just take a poll and make decisions.

John Maxwell:
We could do survey stuff. Hard decisions are hard because we don’t get a lot of people gathering around and affirming those decisions. I know it’s out of that context that we have the words that are used often with leaders, it’s lonely at the top. Well, it’s lonely at the top because you’re making the hard decisions and during the— and remember, the price is on the front end, the payoff’s on the back end. You know what I’ve learned about hard decisions? When you make the hard decisions, nobody is there to congratulate you and affirm you in the beginning, but when they pan out, they all come around and they say, you know, I knew that that was a good decision. Amen. The third reason hard decisions are hard to make is the hard choice always includes risk. Think about it.

John Maxwell:
If there’s no risk, there’s no hard choice. The very fact that we have to get out on the end of the limb is what makes the choice hard. And I always tell people, get out on the end of the limb, that’s where the fruit is. Quit hugging the tree trunk, there’s no fruit there. The only fruit that’s gonna come to you at the bottom of that tree while you’re kissing that tree is the spoiled fruit. You don’t want that. You gotta get out on the limb. You can’t get to second base until you take your foot off of first base.

John Maxwell:
I know a lot of people, they don’t mind stealing second if they can hold on to first until they get there. There’s a risk involved. Hard choices are hard because there’s a risk involved. And number 4, the hard choice usually places others and the organization above self. And that makes it many times tough because others benefit instead of ourselves. Peter Drucker was right when he said, whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision. I would take that great quote by Peter Drucker and I would extend it. For he said, whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.

John Maxwell:
I would say whenever you see a successful business, Someone is continually making a courageous decision. You cannot live off of one courageous decision. I can tell you success is making one tough, hard decision after another. In fact, on decision-making, I love to teach on decision-making. In leadership conferences, sometimes I’ll do a whole session on nothing but how to make decisions, especially the timing of decision. The timing of a decision, a leader understands, is as important as the decision itself. When to respond, when to move, when to act. But when I do decision-making seminars, sometimes I make this statement that 95% of all decisions can be made by any intelligent sophomore high school kid.

John Maxwell:
95% of all decisions, any company, any church, any organization can be made by any good intelligent sophomore kid, but you get paid as the leader for the other 5%. It’s those 5% that’s going to make you or break you, and that’s always in the hard decision arena.

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Mark Cole:
Hey, welcome back. Chris, just as John was teaching today, and I sent everybody off to listen to John realizing that we are where we are today because somebody before us made hard decisions. Yeah. Whether that’s whatever country you’re in, we’re in America. And man, there were people years and years ago that made some very hard decisions that give us some of the benefits that we experience today. I know my parents, my parents, they grew up in a time that was extremely different and difficult. And then I stand on John Maxwell’s And so many other leaders that have gone before me to be able to sit and even be a part of this Maxwell Leadership Podcast, millions and millions of downloads, is because somebody made a courageous decision. And so, boy, I love what John shared today.

Chris Robinson:
Yeah. And he talks about the price first, and he talked about the price that someone paid for you to be here for both of us, everybody. Somebody, if you have success in something, it’s either because you’ve paid the price or somebody ahead of you has paid the price. The price has to be paid. And John talks about that one in this one, and we’ll get to that one in a moment, but let’s go ahead and talk about some hard decisions. All right? So let’s talk about what’s a hard decision you knew you needed to make, but just kept putting off, and what finally made you move and take that action?

Mark Cole:
Well, I think that for me, I went back as John was teaching, I went, man, I’ve made some hard decisions in the last 7 years as owner. I’ve made A lot of hard decisions over the last 16 years as a CEO. I made some, a lot of personal life hard decisions. And I went back to those hard decisions and went back to your question, which is, when do you know it’s time? You got to make the hard decision. Right. And we’ll talk about timing perhaps a little bit later, so I won’t go there. But you know that a decision needs to be made when confusion and hopelessness and disconnect from the purpose or the mission is beginning to be greater than the opposite. Hmm.

Mark Cole:
So when there’s more clarity than confusion, or when there’s more buy-in than there is disconnect, then it’s a timing issue. But when you start seeing these fractures in your leadership of unity, of clarity, of hopefulness, and you start seeing people starting to disconnect, you know that you got to make decisions. I remember, this is a small decision perhaps for some of you compared to some of the hard decisions that you’ve made or even harder decisions that I’ve made, but I can remember when I had to let a really close friend of mine transition. And when I say let, it was either going to be a, I’ll give you a chance to resign or we’re going to have to do a termination. It was a very, very important person to me. I can remember the people under their leadership standing in line at my door saying, when are you going to do what you know that needs to happen? And I can remember the level of hopelessness and the level of disconnect and unity. And that was really the thing that drove me because I had so much personally vested in it, Chris, that I could not make the decision relationally until I realized— the challenges it was having to the people around me relationally. So I had to use relational component to make a relational decision, but it was the relationship of others.

Mark Cole:
And I would look you in the eyes if you were in studio with us today, leader, and I would go, what areas of your leadership is providing more confusion than clarity, is providing more disconnect, discouragement, despair than hopefulness? And which one is providing more disconnect than unity? And when you can identify one that has those 3 components, guess what, leader? It’s time to make a decision.

Chris Robinson:
Yeah, I like that. That’s a great, great equation in order to break that down for a person to be able to make that decision. Let’s go back and let’s talk about this price. All right?

Mark Cole:
Yeah.

Chris Robinson:
The price comes first, the payoff comes later. How do you stay confident When you’re paying the price and you’re not seeing the results and people are questioning you?

Mark Cole:
Well, yeah. So how do I stay confident? Man, I love how you asked that question. I’ll come to the answer, but let me just double-click on what John taught just for a little bit, because I can remember it’s been in the last 5 years that John has started making a couple of statements that when he first started saying, I was like, I don’t like that. I don’t like that. Let’s not teach that. That’s not good. And one of those statements was, we all used to hear that you wanted to pay now so you could play later. And I went, yeah, exactly.

Mark Cole:
And I’m ready to start playing a little bit, boy. I’ve been working hard. And he went, it’s not true. In a leader’s life, you pay now so you can pay more later. And I went, do what?

Chris Robinson:
I don’t like that either.

Mark Cole:
So what’s going on? I thought the easy day was coming, and John just literally ripped the rug out from under you of easy. I’ve been looking for easy street for about 3 years on hard boulevard. And I was looking for easy street, and hard boulevard just felt like this no-exit ramps kind of thing.

Chris Robinson:
I hadn’t heard him say that yet, but I don’t want to hear him say that.

Mark Cole:
You haven’t heard him say that? And I was like, I don’t think you want to say that. That’s kind of discouraging. The other thing that he said that absolutely riveted me was when he said, I can remember the first time to where those of you that are watching us on YouTube, I wish more of you would, but John used to do this right here. Everything worthwhile is uphill. And the problem with uphill dreams is you have downhill habits. And I go, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s so good. It’s so good, man.

Mark Cole:
I’m taking notes. I took that note 100 times. That’s right. Then he took it to the next level and he said, everything worthwhile is uphill. And he added 3 words, all the way. And I went, where’s the plateau? Where’s the break table? Where’s the bench? Where can I slow down and just enjoy? the fruit of my labor. And what John was really saying is a leader’s life is uphill all the way, every day, every way you go, it will be uphill. And so first I want to double-click on that because when you come back and you go, how do you know the price of leadership and how do you know that you’ve paid enough or how do you know that you’ve had to pay more? I will tell you, in my life, the way that I have embraced leadership at this stage of my career is the hope is not in the destination.

Mark Cole:
The hope is in progress. The hope is in making momentum, and the hope is seeing people come with you. It’s not in easy street. or our sunshine day or the plateau. It’s actually in knowing and realizing that we are making a difference, that we are moving, and that we’re taking people with us. Because I’ve said this often on the podcast, it bears repeating in this point and with the way you worded your question, Chris, that is everything worthwhile is uphill. It’s going to cost you more. It’s going to take longer.

Mark Cole:
And the fulfillment factor is going to come in the journey, not in the destination. And too many leaders have destination disease. I will be happy. I will be hopeful. I will be complete when I reach X. Got

Chris Robinson:
it.

Mark Cole:
It’s not true. Number one, it’s elusive. We know this. Success is elusive. Number 2, it’s not as fulfilling as you think it will be. But mostly number 3, and this is the biggest key point, is it’s going to cost you more. It’s going to take longer.

Chris Robinson:
Right. Gosh. Well, I mean, I hate to hear that bad news today from my friend. So John— Here to encourage you. Pay now so you can pay more later. There’s one other statement like that that he said to be true years ago. I remember when I first came onto the role and you and I were with him and he said, Chris, he’s like, you guys had a great day today. He’s like, but there’s no 2 good days in a leader’s life.

Chris Robinson:
And I’m positive, John, come on. There’s 2. There’s 2. I’m going to prove that wrong. And I can’t find 2.

Mark Cole:
I can’t find 2. Yeah, exactly. John made the statement the other day and he got backstage and I said, John, I can attest. I now can say there’s no 2 good consecutive days in a leader’s life. But I’ll tell you what, there’s a lot of consecutive bad days. That’s right. So what just happened right here? That’s

Chris Robinson:
right. I love it. I love it. All right. So in the resource here, there’s a quote by Peter Drucker that says, whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision. How do you tell the difference between needing more information and simply needing more courage?

Mark Cole:
I think, I’ll be honest with you, I think in a leader’s life, you need to always assume you need more courage and you need to be open to more information. And way too many leaders get caught up in leadership paralysis because they feel like they need more information. And that is a 10-to-1 effect of inactivity more than somebody that just has too much courage and not enough information. Because I’ve found that if you have the courage to make the decision and it doesn’t end up well, you’ll be okay. Okay. You’ll come back and figure it out because it started with a place of courageous, a place of courage. So I’m strong on relying on my faith, as many of you in the podcast know. And there’s been a lot of times that our journey John and I journey, it likens to what Moses and Joshua went through when Joshua’s trying to extend the influence of the great patriarch of the Israeli community, Moses.

Mark Cole:
And Joshua was like, man, I don’t know if I can do this. And on 6 occasions, here was what God would have Joshua to understand, be strong. And of good courage. Mm-hmm. And I just believe that courage in the life of a leader is much more important than information, much more. But we pursue information because you can get information, you can get a little bit more, and then you go, okay, okay, I don’t know if I should do it today. I don’t know if I should do it tomorrow. I think it comes down to courage.

Mark Cole:
And I think when you can get the courage in place, information will clarify. In the journey. You don’t get good information from a place or a stature of being docile or being fixed, because information is not fixed. It’s just a snapshot. You want best information? Start moving in the direction you know you need to go. How do you start moving in the direction you need to go? Get courage.

Chris Robinson:
Right, right. I love it. I love it. We also talk about making these courageous decisions, but how do you make a decision that’s right for the organization When it’s painful for people you care about? I’ve seen you have to do this inside the organization many times. I’ve had to deal with it, but how do you do that? Because that’s a hard place for people to make those difficult decisions.

Mark Cole:
I think I have the privilege of being on, he’s on our board, Ed Bastian, CEO of Delta. And I’ll never forget when John Maxwell and I sat down with Ed and said, what’s the difference in being the CEO of Delta and being the president of Delta? And he gave a great answer. I wish I could remember an episode where we talked more about this and I would give it to you, but he gave a great answer. It’s a pretty thorough answer. Mostly just distilled down so I can complete the loop for you is he needed to be thinking about the next 6 months, not the last 6 months and today. The president is thinking about executing today in light of yesterday. The CEO is about— The future. accomplishing the future in light of where we are today.

Mark Cole:
And it was good. Again, there’s a lot more to unpack with that. I have found, Chris, that in my leadership as a CEO, the ability to find hope in the intangibles is incredibly important. I’m a people leader, and I have found that As a CEO, I can’t always make people decisions. I have to sometimes make organizational decisions. And man, I’m a guy that started out my career in the nonprofit space, all about mission, all about people. I promise you, I’m sitting here today as the CEO because I was good with people. So people was my pathway.

Mark Cole:
And then you all of a sudden wake up one day and say, man, I’ve got to make an organizational decision. that’s not going to be agreed to by people. It’s a very hard shift for me. Yeah. To this day, I would tell you I’m still not great at it, but I have learned this year, in fact, I’ve learned a lot more that somebody has to stand in gap of stewarding the mission and the vision of a team or an organization and have to take that courageous decision when nobody else agrees, nobody else understands. And that was something I’ve heard leaders talk about. And I go, okay, yeah, you still make people decisions, but you just have to do it my way because I’m a people pleaser. I know how to do it.

Mark Cole:
And this year I have learned that there are times that you make an organizational decision and you have to trust that the people knows your heart, that it is for the people, but it has to be an organizational decision.

Chris Robinson:
Yeah, I love that. Wow.

Mark Cole:
Don’t love it. It’s not that fun.

Chris Robinson:
I know, I know. But the fact is, is we have to face it. We have to do it. That’s why I love it is because we have to talk about the hard things. And so many times we want to read about it, we want to see it, but when it comes face to face, I love that you’re giving a practical blueprint for us to be able to go out and execute.

Mark Cole:
You and I, we get the privilege. In fact, we’ll talk a little bit about this throughout November here. You and I get the privilege of influencing a lot of influencers, and we call them Maxwell Leadership Certified Coaches. You and I recently had to make an organizational decision about this biannual event that we have called IMC.

Chris Robinson:
Hard decision.

Mark Cole:
It was a brutal decision. And you and I were making it from the people. We love the people, but to be able to serve the people better, we’re going to have to make an organizational decision. And I can remember how hard you and I wrestled with that to get to the point of the announcement. And then we announced it, and wouldn’t you know it? We had to make it as an organizational decision, worried about how it was going to impact the people, but be able to impact the people 6 months, 12 months, 24 months down the road. We had to make this organizational decision. And I can remember how hard it was for you and I. We made the decision, we announced it, and the people loved it.

Chris Robinson:
Yeah.

Mark Cole:
But man, you have to make a decision whether the people are going to love it or not. You have to make a decision. But when you do it from a place of purity, I believe, and a place from not forgetting your values, we are people of value that value people, and we think of ways to add value to them, when you still keep your values in place as an organizational decision, the people will catch it. Yeah, they do.

Chris Robinson:
They’ll catch it. They do. And I remember that moment, just even after that announcement, just the release inside the room where we’re just literally sitting here going, oh my goodness, because there was so much anticipation and so much work that went into making that decision, as difficult as it was, and to just be able to get it out there. And I think that’s what holds a lot of people back is they hold onto making these hard decisions And if you go ahead and make it, it gets it off your shoulders. That’s one of the things that I pride myself in is like, hey, I don’t want to carry this on my own, or I don’t want to carry this for very long. We need to address this, get this behind us so that we can move on, and let’s unpack this thing. And when we did that, just the release that we had and the ability to release our minds mentally to go on, do, and fix the next thing in front of us was so much easier. Now, again, it’s hard.

Mark Cole:
Yeah. Yep.

Chris Robinson:
But it was easier because we had that big one behind us.

Mark Cole:
I agree.

Chris Robinson:
Wow. Well, that’ll get us wrapped up here for the day. But Mark, thank you so much for always adding value. Thank you for helping us talk about making hard decisions today. I look forward to jumping on next time.

Mark Cole:
Yeah. You know, Chris, before we sign off, John talked a little bit about the timing of hard choices and kind of that you can’t live off of yesterday’s. I have found, and this is not anywhere near a heavy or a downer reality. I have realized that in the life of a leader that’s leading something with an incredible cause and an incredible opportunity to create provision for people, create safety for people, create purpose for people, when you have a people-oriented— and most leadership environments should be for the people. That’s That’s the whole point, that you live from courageous decision to courageous decision. I laughed at the beginning of our show today that John says that our job can be replaced by a high school student, most of our job, he said. But I’m sitting here at the end of this podcast and I’m realizing that our ability today to have inspired you to be a leader that is willing to make the hard decisions. I was talking with one of our coaches some time ago.

Mark Cole:
time ago about, man, I don’t know if I’m made for this speaking thing or this coaching thing. And I tried to encourage that leader with one simple statement. I believe, borrow my belief. Secondly, I have courage, borrow my courage. Because here’s what I’ve found. Courage is a muscle in the life of a leader. And when you begin to exercise courage in courageous moments, it gets easier. You realize that you can carry more.

Mark Cole:
You increase your capacity. And what I want us to do with this podcast is I want you to increase your capacity on making decisions with courage. That’s the whole point of this whole podcast. And I can tell you this for me, and I believe it true for you. The more courageous decisions that I make, the quicker I make them. The more decisions that I make that uses and needs courage that I did not know I have, the more I find I had courage. I could do it quicker. And the sooner you’ll make this decision you’re waiting on courage for, the sooner courage will reveal itself to you.

Mark Cole:
So let’s go. Let’s take this podcast today. And let’s go be courageous leaders that our people need us to be, because everyone wants powerful, positive change. Everybody needs you, leader, to make the decision that only you can make. Make it. Watch that lift the belief of your team and go lead well, because everyone deserves to be led well.