Building a Diverse Team (Part 2)

Mark Cole: Hey, podcast family. Welcome back to the Maxwell Leadership Podcast. This is the podcast that adds value to leaders who will multiply value to others. If you’re joining us for the first time, we’re so glad that you are here. This week, we are finishing our series on building a diverse team. Now let me pause right here. And if you are new, let me tell you, you need to go back to part one. 

It was a raw, vulnerable, in-depth look at how leaders can remove barriers to creating diversity in their thinking, in their team, and in their effectiveness with the people that they are designed to serve. Go back and listen to episode one maybe even right now before you continue today. This week, John will be teaching on the benefits of building a diverse team. There are so many leaders who would rather build a team of people who look, think, and act like themselves. 

But building a diverse team will always take you further, it will make you better, and it’ll increase your reach. After John’s lesson, my co-host Chris Goede and I will explore John’s teaching together and offer some ways you can enjoy and apply this lesson to your own leadership. If you would like to download our free bonus resource, which is a fill in the blank PDF that accompanies John’s lesson, please go to maxwellpodcast.com/diverse and click the bonus resource button. 

All right, let’s get ready. Grab the pen. Grab the paper. Here is Dr. John C. Maxwell. 

John Maxwell: Let me give you some benefits of building a diverse team, because there are some wonderful things that happen. Once you commit yourself to diversity, there are some wonderful things that happen. Number one, a diverse team will fill in the knowledge gap. We all have a knowledge gap, and that is none of us know enough. Okay? In fact, I put in here, it is important to know what you don’t know and know those who do know, so you can focus on what you do know. 

Now that’s one you need to look at a couple times, all right? You need to go over that little statement, but just trust me on this. Here’s what I’m saying, there are a lot of things I don’t know as a leader. I depend on people around me to know those things, because I don’t know them. I not only don’t know them, I don’t particularly want to know them, because it’ll keep me from knowing what I need to know. You have to start with this premise, you can’t know everything, so you have to know what you need to know. 

And what you need to know as a leader are the things that are basic to success in leading. There are a whole bunch of things that are important to know, but they’re not basic to the success of leading. But what you have to do is you have to have people around you that can help you in those areas. The key in diversity is that when you get the right team around you, that they have knowledge that you don’t have, it really begins to fill in the knowledge gap. 

The knowledge gap really gets filled in when you got people around you that perceive differently, see differently, think differently, feel differently. That’s huge. The second thing you fill in with a diverse team is the perspective gap. Let me just take you through this little sequence right here, because I got perceive, believe, receive here in the lineup. You can see how this is working, and there’s a sequence I want you to get. What I see determines what I think, which determines what I get. 

That’s a fact. Basically what I receive in life has a seed of perception in it, that it begins with perception. How I see something determines how I think about something that determines most of the time what I’m going to receive out of that. Perception is huge. It’s not always reality, but it’s huge in how I think and how I act. A diverse team will really help us in that process. Because how do I think and receive differently? Well, I’ve got to perceive differently. Well, how do I do that? 

I do that by diversity, because not everybody in the room are going to see things like I see things. Number three, a diverse team will fill in the experience gap. Diversity and experience is really essential, and it goes back to the Proverb, if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Oliver Wendell Holmes has this great coat, the young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions. And to know the road ahead, ask those who are coming back. 

Very important. Fill in the experience gap with people around you. Number four, diversity will allow you and me to fill in the problem solve gap. Because what do leaders have to do? They have to solve problems all the time. One of the things that I found really worked well for me in the problem solving gap and if you’re a leader and you have a team, or if you’re on a team, this will be some good, I think, practical advice. 

What I discovered about teams was that there are people on the team that can always tell you about the problem. There are some people they just automatically find the problem. You know what I mean? They’ll just say, “Let me tell you, there’s a problem over here. We got a problem over here.” I got tired of hearing my team talk about the problems. One day I looked at him and I said, “Let explain something to you. Any idiot can find a problem. Low IQ people can say there’s a problem. 

If you found a problem, you’re not smart. You just found a problem.” But I said, “It takes somebody smart to solve the problem. Here’s what we’re going do, don’t bring a problem to me unless you have three solutions.” It was one of the greatest things I ever did. First of all, shut up all the problems. You just had all these whiners. It’s just wonderful when whiners have to shut up for a while. You know what I’m saying? Gives you peace in the valley for a period of time. 

Do you follow me? But here’s what happened. It got them on the creative side. It got them on, how am I going to fix this side? What am I going to do about it besides just tell you there’s a problem here? And hat would you do? I found that to be a very helpful thing in dealing with problem solving teams is just say, “Hey, please, please, please tell me about the problem, but then how would you fix it? What would you do about it? What do you suggest that we do? What would you do?” 

You see, leadership, let me explain something here to you, leadership is like a quarterback in football. The quarterback doesn’t get paid to carry the ball. The quarterback gets paid to know who to get the ball to. He gets paid to call the right plays and put the ball in the right hands in regards to what situation they’re in. What I want you to understand about leadership is you got to have a team around you that is diverse, that is different. 

You got to know what players to call on, because different situations call for different players. When I wrote The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, the most enlightening thing that came out of that book… When I wrote it, I didn’t know it was going to come out. In fact, I write the book and then sometimes, two or three years later, out pops the thing that really help people the most and lots of times I didn’t figure it out. I just wanted to write the book because I thought it would help people. 

But when I wrote the 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, a couple years after that book came out, pretty much everybody began to say, “I can’t do 21 things well.” When I evaluate myself with the 21 laws, I’m not a 10 on all those. In fact, on five of the 21 laws that I… I wrote the book. On five of the 21 laws, I’m average or below average. And that was a little disgusting to write the book. 

In fact, those that I was average or below average, I kept fighting that and saying, “They certainly can’t be a law of leadership. I do them poorly. Maybe there should be 16 laws of leadership.” But no, there are 21. I don’t do them all well. What came out of that book was just very simple. If I don’t do them all well, then I need to find somebody that does well what I don’t do well. I need to bring somebody around me that will complete me, not compete with me. They’ll complete me. 

They’ll compliment me. And that was the essence of what happened and that’s the value again of diversity. Well, that’s the value of diversity of teams. That’s the value of bringing the people together, because magic happens when you’re secure enough to bring enough people around you, that you can add value to each other. Well, let me give you one more thought, and that is the value of diversity of teams, it fills in the giftedness gap. 

Because Mother Teresa said it well. She said, “You can do what I cannot do. And I can do what you cannot do. And Together we can do great things.” 

Mark Cole: Hey, welcome back. So glad you’re here. Chris, it’s good to still be in the studio with you. Part one, part two. What an incredible day of learning just for you and I on how to lead. 

Chris Goede: Yeah, and what’s been really powerful is even in between this, is us having a conversation with our team and talking about, what does this look like here? What are the barriers? Have we overcome them? And then now we’re going to transition into some of the benefits of it. 

Mark Cole: I’m glad you say that because not every time do we get to kind of sit here and do part one and part two, because not every time is a series. But in between us recording last week’s podcast and then recording this podcast today, we had a brilliant conversation. We’re incredibly blessed with the new teammate Javan. Javan brought a perspective to us on barriers, and Jake is just a young cutting edge artist. He performed last night. Didn’t invite me. That’s another whole problem, Chris. You and I were not invited. 

Chris Goede: We were not there. 

Mark Cole: Our team here and the diversity of our team just caused us to have a great conversation in the middle. Today we get to talk about barriers, or today we get to talk about benefits. We’ve talked about barriers, but today we get to talk about benefits. There’s this standout statement that we want to deliver in this podcast that says this, together we can do great things. John quoted Mother Teresa and the lesson, but it’s this idea that we are better together when we focus on what connects us rather than what separates us. 

So much of our society is trying to do that. Man, I’m excited to get into benefits today. It was Winston Churchill that said diversity is the one thing we have in common. Celebrate it every day. I love that. He made a commonplace out of our uniqueness. Everybody that I talk to, no matter what culture, no matter what race, what gender, whatever you come from, everybody wants to continue to own their uniqueness, but they want to be valued with the common. Anyway, man, we’re in it today and I’m super excited. 

Chris Goede: Yeah, and I love the fact that we’ve had the privilege of working with a leader and serving a leader that for years upon years has led this way, has had diverse team, has worked through the barriers, and then we’ve seen the benefits of that. I want to dive in and get some of your thoughts from a leadership perspective as you now are responsible for leading Maxwell Leadership and carrying this mantle of where we’re going. 

One of the things that I’ve seen as we’ve begun to build this diverse team is… I love the statement John talks in here and he used a lot of, you know, they know. Again, you have to go back and let’s do it. I think it’s in the notes. You have to follow it along, but there’s a knowledge gap and we don’t know what we don’t know. Oftentimes, you and I talk about, because we’ve been around here a long time and I’ve been blessed to do that, to where we feel like we’re in a bubble. 

I would challenge that I think, leaders out there, the longer you lead, the more in your position, the more you’re in the organization, where you’re going, we get to a place to where we get very comfortable. We have lack of self awareness and we don’t know what we don’t know. One of the things that you’ve done as leader recently is begin to build this diverse team. The benefits that we’re seeing of that is the knowledge, where John talks about increasing knowledge gap. 

I’ve watched you be teachable. I’ve watched you be curious and ask questions and in a learning mode. Talk about that just from a leader standpoint of the things that you’re learning, the people you’re bringing around you that are helping us as an organization fill that knowledge gap. 

Mark Cole: Yeah. For me, it’s really easy. Going back to something you said, I don’t use the word fear often. I don’t know if it’s pride. I hope not. I don’t know if it’s my macho way of I want to be seen as a guy of courage. 

Chris Goede: Sure. 

Mark Cole: Not of one of fear. But very rarely times do I feel fear. But I’ll tell you in leadership, there is one time that I constantly feel fearful about, and that is that I’m missing something. What’s it like to be on the other side of me? What are my blind spots? What am I missing? What is it that I need to know that I don’t know. I mean, these are questions that plague my mind quite often. Not always in a healthy way. I’m not going to teach you on how to have healthy fear and feeling like you’re missing something. 

There are sometimes I feel like I’m missing something and I’m not. It paralyzes me, just like fear does. But this idea of the knowledge gap, what I am enjoying most about leadership now is when I walk into a setting and leaders have already thought about a next step, and I am surprised. Probably this was most illustrated at the recent event that we have. It’s called the International Maxwell Conference. We had over 2,000 people there. We were certifying to be one of our coaches, speakers, trainers. 

And in fact, if you want more information, you can go to maxwellleadership.com and you can find out more information on joining our team of certified members and be a part of that. But we were at this event, Chris, and we’re rebranding. We’re doing some really cool, exciting things. It’s a big deal. I showed up that morning and my executive assistant, she said, “Hey, you got to be at a staff meeting at 7:30.” And I said, “A staff meeting? Why a staff meeting?” 

She said, “Because some of the stuff you’re communicating at 9:30 needs to be communicated at 7:30 to our team. We’ve got swag, and we’ve got gifts, and we’ve got all this stuff.” I went, “Who thought of all this?” It was this perfect euphoric moment for me of how the knowledge gap trends related to culture building team dynamics. And for years, I have felt like those ideas either had to start with me or come through me. This particular time I was just showing up and it was brilliantly done. 

And that knowledge gap, to your point, of people knowing an even better way and not feeling like as the leader that I had to deliver that was a real cool experience of the diversity of thinking and the knowledge gap, because we have products of the product leading. 

Chris Goede: You wouldn’t have even maybe thought or known to do that, right? I wouldn’t have. That’s not how I’m wired. The fact that we now have team members that are thinking outside of experiential things that we would is just a benefit of that. I love that story. Now, moving right into this next one that I want to talk about, you and I were talking about, as we were getting ready to kick this off, we were like, “Man, I don’t think I’ve heard John talk about that before.” 

Podcast listeners, viewers, this may be something new right off the cuff right here that John is teaching. But if we’re going to have people on our team that are diverse and are bringing things to us that we don’t know, and it should be that way, what we’ve got to do is we got to make sure, hey, now we’re going to hear a different perspective on things. I love the statement of make sure that we are learning the perspective of others in all situations as a leader versus just stating your own truth, right? 

Make sure that, hey, they have the knowledge. Not only do they have the knowledge, but we need to understand their perspective. John lays it out here with these three words that we were talking about, the perceive, believe, and receive. As a leader, talk to me about the impact of that, because that kind of struck you when you listened to John talk about that. 

Mark Cole: Yeah. You always talk about perception. Perception is reality, right? We’ve heard, “Oh, perception is reality.” Me and my wife disagree about that statement all the time. She says, “No. Reality is reality. I don’t care what your perception is.” I go, “Yeah, but your perception is reality.” We have this conversation. 

Chris Goede: By the way, Stephanie wins. 

Mark Cole: Yes. Every time. Let’s make that really clear. This idea that John is helping me, what you see determines what you think, which determines what you get out of life. I don’t know, Chris, I told you before we started recording, I went, “I want to just go and spend a couple of days on how John listed out the perceive, believe, and receive components of perception. Are those the three building blocks? 

Because I do absolutely believe that what you see determines how you think, and how you think determines what you receive in life. I get all that. That statement is brilliant, but how that is really the three building blocks or components of perception. We talked about Stephanie. Now let me talk about my daughter, Macy. Macy’s a driven, driven girl with a lot of strengths and intelligence and things. Just ask me, I’m her dad, right? She’s got a lot going for her. 

I’m watching her perception last night at dinner. I was working with Macy on her perception right before big key test. She gets all these people that wants her to help them by sending her completed work right before the test, right? It sounds like John paying people to do his homework, but that’s all… 

Chris Goede: By the way, those that aren’t watching us on YouTube, you need to because there was a little air quotes there. 

Mark Cole: Oh yes, thank you. Thank you. 

Chris Goede: That Mark was saying, “There might be a little bit of…” 

Mark Cole: Sorry. Yeah, video podcasters, you caught that. Thank you for making that true. That might be a little bit air quotes, might be a little like John getting some assistance with his homework. But I was telling Macy, I said, “Macy, you can either be celebrated or rejected based on your skillset. If you have a skillset and people want it, whether you help them by sending them free your test results or your test preparation or not is not the point. 

If you are lamenting the fact that people are coming to you because they recognize your strength of intelligence and preparedness, you will then begin to be ostracized or looked at as a challenging teammate or schoolmate because you’re not open about it or appreciative of it.” Because she was telling me one of the comments she sent back to them and says, “We’re not friends. This is the first time you’ve ever texted me.” We’re friends, right?” 

We were kind of laughing about it, and I said, “Macy, don’t despise your giftings. Embrace them. You still don’t have to give out the answers to people you don’t, or it gets you in trouble, and all that stuff, but don’t despise your giftings.” I was relating with her, if you’ll allow me to do that. I said, “A lot of times right in a critical time in my leadership, it seems like everybody needs something from me. This person texts me. That person texts me. I get a phone call. And it’s not that I don’t and enjoy those.” 

Chris, you need to call me more. We travel all the time. Get to come to the studio and get to see each other. It’s not that I’m mind the calls. It just feels like it floods me on the days to where I need this kind of focus. By the way, I’m covering my eyes, listeners. And yet, that’s when it feels like everybody’s demands on me. The days that I respond and go, “Man, can anybody do anything without them,” is the days I’m despising the strength of leadership. 

Perception, what you see determines how you think, how you think is what you get. On the days that I don’t see that as a gift, and I think people are just can’t do anything without me, drive, I get that frustration from a very thing that I have prayed, sought, and trained myself for for years is to be the go-to person. We can despise it, and that’s a perception issue, not a reality issue. 

Chris Goede: Yeah, yeah. I love how you just took the benefit of having a diverse team and talked about how if you’re not careful, it can then overwhelm you and become a frustration. And then what happens? You ignore all of it. So then you’re throwing out the benefit of having that diverse team. Be aware of that. I love how you talked about that. Now, I want to move to… Because we’ll spend some time here. 

This is something that you and I growing up around this organization and the environment know we were just smiling as John was talking about this, problem solving gap. The benefit of having people that solve problems differently, that think differently, that have different perspectives is that you’re going to have the opportunity with the help of solving problems. By the way, a good friend of ours, Carly Fiorina, defines leadership as solving problems, right? 

Mark Cole: That’s exactly right. 

Chris Goede: She literally talks about, “Hey, you are leader if you solve problems.” Now, we have a diverse team that will help us solve problems. Now that’s great, right? But John laid out an incredible system of how to have the team respond to the leader in solving problems. We’re not there yet. You and I talked about that. We’re not there to where you have modeled that in your leadership with John, and yet we’ve got some growth to do. 

As a leader, talk about the power of that, what’s brought to you, what that does for your thinking, what that does for the culture of our organization. 

Mark Cole: Yeah, and I will. I envision our podcast listeners and perhaps video viewers, I envision you grabbing your pen and paper and then John gives all this content, and then you’re kind of sitting back and saying, “Let’s see how Chris and Mark can mess this up in the society.” That’s kind of my vision of you sometimes. Forgive me. I believe in you a lot more, but I kind of feel like we provide the things not to do and what John says you need to do. 

Chris Goede: Yeah, that’s exactly right. That’s right. That’s right. 

Mark Cole: Grab your pen and paper though right now, because this is going to be a moment to where I want to mature this fill in the problem solving gap. Because John said he got so frustrated with people bringing problems, bringing problems, bringing problems. Finally he said, “Don’t bring me a problem again until you bring me a solution. When you can bring me three solutions, now bring me your problem.” 

He said, “It’s not that I didn’t want to hear the problems. I like hearing problems. I just want solutions with it, because my team kept making their problems my problems.” Okay? I’ve taught about that before. But I’ll tell you, there’s a maturation. There’s a maturity to that that John and I have developed in my last 12 years as a CEO that I want to show you the additional components of that formula. Let you take notes on it. 

And then Chris will talk a little bit about how our team is still trying to mature into this problem solving gap. Again, problem… This is John’s words. I kind of cringed when he said it. He said, “Any idiot can identify a problem.” I went, “I’m the idiot that’s identified a lot of problems for John. Present. Tardy. Guilty. Whatever.” Any person should be able to identify problems. In fact, some people the question is, are you identifying the right problems? And is your problem really a problem, or are you making it a problem? 

We got all that. But there is a problem. And for John and I, I saw pretty early on that what I identified as a problem, John said, “Yep, we’ve got a problem.” Now I had to get good at coming with solutions that felt good for how John would solve things. So then I went through a maturity on solution suggestions, and I got better. I would come John and say, “John, here’s the problem.” He’d go, “Yeah, we got a problem.” Here’s the three solutions that I’d come… Man, Mark, that’s three good solutions. 

But now let’s mature this a little bit further to where he would ask, what’s your recommendation? We go from problem identification, solution suggestion, to now… Solution suggestion to now my suggestion. What is my personal preference on the solution we should go with? Solution selection maybe. I would look at that and I would say, “This is the one I think that we should go with,” and then he would say, “Why?” There’s the complete formula: problem identification, three solutions, option of recommendation, and now why. 

Chris Goede: That’s good. 

Mark Cole: And what happened in why, Chris, is John could determine two things. Because he said often, “Mark makes 97% of the decisions in the organization.” What he wanted to identify in the why, and we as need to identify, is why. Have you properly thought it through? It was a question of preparedness. The why was a question. Is Mark prepared when I ask him why? Secondly, it was a question of passion. Was I passionate about my suggestion? 

He was going, “Does Mark have the tenacity to see the solution through?” And then it was a question of accountability. Is Mark accountable to something in the why that will hold him true to this being the solution to go through? 

Chris Goede: That’s good. 

Mark Cole: If we can see this problem solving gap through the lens of a true tangible thing that we can process our people through… So now back to John and I have talked a little bit about that from stages in different countries of how we have led together so well. I feel like with John and I, at least, we’re getting an A on that whole gap right there. We’ve done really good with that. Well, then you said, “Well, how do you think the team’s doing?” And I’m like, “Oh, that might be a C,” and that might be a generous C. 

We’re not there. Leader’s vulnerable moment. I’m doing a better job of providing that than replicating it. Now the question I’ve got to ask because right now I feel like I have a lot of problem identifiers, a few solutions, but no ownership to the solutions. I’ve got to work to mature that in a reproducing mindset. Because while it feels good to say, “John and I are nailing it,” it does not feel very good to me to say, “Myself and our team are not nailing that.” 

Chris Goede: Yeah, yeah. Appreciate the vulnerability. I went back and thought about even some conversations where I can see you beginning to model that even in our relationship and our leadership to where you’re like, “Okay, no problem. What do you think we ought to do?” Do I have three? Maybe, maybe not. Do I have two? And then you go, “Why?” 

I hadn’t thought through the process, and I think it’s a great model for leaders to understand that you are going to have people on your team, this is an incredible benefit, that are going to think about problems differently than you. They’re going to be able to identify them. They’re going to think about solving them differently than you. As they do that, they may be able to solve them better than you. And that’s awesome. That’s why they’re on your team. 

Mark Cole: Now, before you go further, let me tell you this. I told you last week that I was going to talk about something I observed in you that was a benefit. This is where I want to serve it. All of you that tuned in this week to say, “Good grief, does Chris bring a benefit to the table? I got to tune in,” here’s your moment, okay? Seriously, Chris does not even know what I’m going to say. We have not had one conversation about this, but me and Matt Rearden, our new COO, have had multiple conversations about this. 

Matt doesn’t know mine and your history of saying, “Chris, I got to hear you. I got to know what you’re thinking. I’ve got to have your authoritative voice in some situations.” He wouldn’t know all that. Never shared it with him. Doesn’t matter. Shared it a little bit on the podcast. We’ve laughed about it. We were in our last leadership meeting couple of weeks ago, and I watched something unfold in our meeting that didn’t make sense to me. 

There was this branding decision about some blogs and how we were going to do our social media and all of that. There was this conversation that came up, and I’m watching our leadership team wrestle with something. I’m just kind of listening. Take note, I hadn’t been in many of these meetings back to our first point of the knowledge gap of the knowledge, of not in a lot of these. 

I watched you guys just kind of wrestling with it and kind of stayed silent, made a couple of comments about, “Yeah, the team really needs to be agree with this.” And then all of a sudden, your voice comes piercing through the conversation and said, “Whoa, guys, half of this conversation has been revisiting a decision we all collectively made a few weeks ago. We’re talking about the wrong thing here. 

What we need to be talking about,” and then you went on to what needed to be talked about, rather than what was being talked about because of that authority. Matt Rearden, our new COO, came to me after this and he said, “You cannot know what it did for that room, Mark, and even for what I’m trying to influence the team with.” When Chris went, “We’ve already talked about this,” you’re a private processor. You’re a processor, and you do it internally for the most part. 

I watched you on something that had already been processed through as a team, which we want to be collaborative, I watched you stand with… You didn’t stand, but I watched you insert yourself with authority and say, “We’ve already talked about this. We’ve already agreed. We’re talking about the wrong thing. This is what we need to be talking about.” 

For the people that was trying to revisit it perhaps to try to see if they could convince somebody with a little more authority to see their way, we don’t know why, but what we do know is every person in the room benefited. It was a benefit of your processing perspective to come in and say, “We’ve already processed this. We decided. Quit revisiting what we’ve already processed. Let’s move forward.” 

When you allow people that know how a problem solve, that have giftedness, that has the experience, that has the perspective and the knowledge, the safe place to use their voice, the benefit will move the ball forward for who? Every one. The detractors will shut up because they’d already had a chance to talk about it. The people that were not yet mature enough to have confidence to say, “We’ve already talked about it,” were edified because they had already done all the preparation to have it. 

And then you moved us through to where we really accomplished something in that segment. It was this moment where I went back and relived all of our funny conversations and went, “Wow! That is the benefit.” Sometimes you process slower than me. Sometimes I process way too fast for you. But allowing both of us to sit on the same leadership team, it was an epic moment in your leadership. 

Because people that have no idea of what we’ve been through, talk through, sit around tables discussing, have no ideas, they just went, “Oh my gosh!” Something was said in that moment that nobody else in that room could say because you had a voice. 

Chris Goede: Well, I appreciate that. 

Mark Cole: Ain’t that true though? 

Chris Goede: It’s very true. It’s very true. 

Mark Cole: And you’re surprised with that observation because you didn’t even know I observed all that. 

Chris Goede: The benefit of that as the topic today around the diverse is I just think differently. 

Mark Cole: You do. 

Chris Goede: And I process differently. I was listening to this conversation and just, our mentorship and coaching over the years, used a time in the meeting to use my leadership voice of what felt logical to me and where I was at. 

Mark Cole: It was powerful. 

Chris Goede: Again, that’s just an example of, and I appreciate you sharing that, but it’s an example of having a diverse team. Again, back to what we talked about, we love the fact that John has taught us and this is what Maxwell Leadership is about, that we want to value all people, and that we want to value them equally in a way, no matter where they come from, the nationality, the gender, the leadership experience, but to use people’s gifts and how God created them to be able to impact your organization, to be able to help lead your organization. 

And by doing that, you’re going to have people that are going to help you solve the problems that show up inside your organization. And if you can take the model that Mark just explained to us and begin to live that out and begin to teach it in your organizations, you will see the lid lifted, and you’ll see the benefits of having people that think can solve problems differently. 

Mark Cole: Absolutely. Absolutely. 

Chris Goede: Thanks, Mark, again. The last two sessions, this session and last session, is something that is being talked about with leaders all around the world, because of the platform we have at Maxwell Leadership and John and your platform. Thanks for the opportunity to talk about it. What we will want people to do is now begin to act on it, right? Good leaders ask great questions, right? Even better leaders act on what they hear. 

What you’ve heard today, man, start with yourself and take some of the vulnerability that Mark has shared over the last two sessions. Some of the processes he’s shared, some of the questions he’s asked, and spend some of time thinking about that and digging in. And then whatever you’re learning, share it with your team. 

Mark Cole: Yeah. Chris, the beautiful part about what you just said is John has this question that really challenges us in the diversity of our actions, and you’re going to know it as soon as I say it. When is the last time you’ve done something for the first time? Boom, diversity of action. I need to do something different. I need to do something diverse. When is the last time you have listened to somebody that doesn’t think like you, act like you, look like you, have the same gender as you? 

When is the last time you’ve truly sit down to listen to somebody different, from a different perspective? Leaders I know has become cool to listen, learn, and then lead. In fact, I finished most of our podcasts that same way. I’m not talking about sitting down and letting somebody else say what they want to say, and then you go away the same. I’m talking about sitting down with somebody and letting their perspective, their life experience, their diversity make you different, think different, act different, believe different. 

I mentioned this last week, but for me recently… In fact, for me today in studio, was Javan giving me a perspective that helped me hopefully minimize the barriers to having a diverse team and edify the benefits, lift up the benefits of having a diverse team. It’s happened to me today. I hope it happens again. Because for all of us, getting that diversity is huge. Hey, there’s a couple of things I want to remind you. Go back and listen to part one, if you haven’t. It’s a podcast. We’ll put that in the show notes for you. 

There’s also another podcast that’s relevant to this, and it’s the Core Values of a Winning Team. We’ll put that link in the show notes. I want to close today, as I like to do these days, because you guys are doing so well giving us comments. You’re giving us feedback. I’m hearing it on the road everywhere we go, Chris, of how the podcast, the Maxwell Leadership Podcast, is helping people add value to themselves and multiply value to others. Today, I want to highlight Flo. 

Flo listened to the podcast Players versus Pretenders. By the way, I have heard from many people that that’s one of the favorite podcast of all that we’ve had. We’ll put that in the show notes as well, Players versus Pretenders. But Flo listen to that and she said, “Awesome lesson. Indeed, we are enough. We don’t need to be anyone else. I am enough. I don’t need to be anyone else. Let the player in all of us shine more.” Flo, you caught the point. It’s exactly what we were trying to do in that podcast. 

In this podcast, we’ve been challenging you to surround yourself with diversity, with people, thoughts, ideas, actions that are different than the normal you. I hope we’ve added value to you today. We hope to see you again next week. Until then, let’s listen, let’s learn, let’s lead.