Four Questions to Identify Potential Leaders

Mark Cole: Welcome to the John Maxwell Leadership podcast. I am sitting here with John Maxwell, John, thanks for joining us today. 

John Maxwell: I am delighted. I always love the podcast and just sharing kind of where we’re living, what we’re thinking, and what we’re doing right now. 

Mark Cole: Hey, we’re getting to impact people, and for those of you listening in on the podcast, we hear it everywhere we go, John, but we’re so glad to be meeting with you today and adding value to you today. That’s your life purpose, add value to leaders who multiply value to others. 

John Maxwell: Well Mark, it is. And the only reason that’s happening is because the people that are listening to the podcast are telling others. 

Mark Cole: That’s right. 

John Maxwell: So you either are on it. I want to thank you very much because hopefully we’re adding value to you. And I think the real way, you know you’re adding value people is they go tell other people. 

Mark Cole: That’s right. 

John Maxwell: I always say, “Don’t worry about branding to make your life. If you’re good, it makes your life.” And if I just found that if you just help people and add value to them, they’ll tell others. So thank you all that listen to us on podcasts because I know what’s happening, you’re subscribing and you’re calling your friends and you’re getting them to subscribe and get on it. And so thank you very much. 

Mark Cole: Yeah. If you’re listening for the first time today, you can subscribe. Every Wednesday, we release a new teaching from John with some application by myself and some team members. John, recently, you do this, I don’t know, just a very few times a year, you will get together with a very small group of leaders. And you did that just recently. We were in West Palm Beach, down at your home, and really had a powerful time. Now in our session today, I want you to teach some stuff that you talk to those young leaders, but before we kind of get started, tell, tell me a little bit about that experience and why you work so hard to make that such a memorable experience. 

John Maxwell: Well, one of my favorite things, Mark, is just the privilege, sometimes opportunity to take a group of 20, 25 leaders and spend some quality time with them where I can share, but where they can ask a lot of questions, pretty much they set the agenda by the questions that they ask. And so we had a group of what, it was about 23 young leaders and we qualified them. They were young leaders, but they were really doing a pretty effective work already. Early the next morning I got up and I began to think about them. And of course through dinner, I got acquainted with all of them and really kind of began to know a little bit about them. And so I decided to do a new lesson and it’s just a simple lesson on four questions to ask about leaders. 

I mean, and Ill tell you where that thought came from, Mark. The Leader’s Greatest Return. And so in the Leader’s Greatest Return, one of the things I do is I talk about one of my chapters is how to know you have a potential leader. I talk about bringing them to the leadership table and let them get into some leadership discussion. And I think off the Leader’s Greatest Return, I began to think, okay, what can I do for these 23 young leaders to help them be able to not only spot potential leaders, but form them. I mean, if you’re going to form a leader, how do you do that? I mean, what do you want that leader to look like? And we’re not trying to make them look like ourselves, but I think there are some things that you just want to look in to a person’s life and that you need to maybe ask some questions that will guide you Mark into helping that leader become the leader that they want to become. 

So I wrote that little simple lesson, four questions to ask about leaders. And then of course we got together that day and wow, it was magic going there. 

Mark Cole: Yeah. It really was. I want you to teach that, I asked you just right after that session, I said, “John, I want you to teach that to our people at podcasts,” because those of you listening in today, those of you that are a part of the podcast, you’re in for a treat because I sit there that day and listened to this lesson and it was impacting. And John, in just one minute, we’re going to get started with a lesson, but I got to tell you, I want our podcast listeners to know this lesson was built with a lot of intentionality. It’s going to benefit us. But John, thanks for giving these young leaders that huge moment. Now, by the way, most of them without you even trying, most of them have already become huge partners of your nonprofit Equip and the John Maxwell Leadership Foundation, because they were so moved by what you and your foundation is doing that they wanted to jump on board by their own intentionality. They said we want to be a part of it. 

John Maxwell: Yeah, they were incredibly generous and it’s very humbling. 

Mark Cole: Yeah. 

John Maxwell: It was very humbling to see how quickly they saw the vision of what we’re doing internationally. And so it was a great day, but again, there’s something special about a small group of leaders and then giving them some quality time and letting them ask questions and trying to help them. And I love that. I don’t do it very much. Like you said, just very few times a year, but every once in a while, we decide to get a mentoring group together and we’d always do a different group too. I think that’s, because I like to get as many small group leaders as I possibly can to influence them. So it was great and hopefully this will help our podcast. 

Mark Cole: So let’s get started. I love the four questions to ask about leaders. 

John Maxwell: Yeah. Well, Okay. Let’s jump right in here. The question number one is, are they grounded? And when you write that question down, beside it just put a little phrase that this is the foundation of leadership. So Mark, when I look at a leader and I ask, “Okay, is that leader, do they have a groundedness to them?” I’m talking about, is there a solidness or do they have a good foundation under them? Because you can only build your building as big and high as your foundation. Your foundation determines the size of the building, literally. And the groundedness of a leader, the foundation of that leader determines basically how far they can go and how great they can become. 

And so if I’m looking at leaders and I’m asking questions, either trying to spot a potential leader, or if I’m forming that leader, I mentoring that leader, one of the first things I want to do is I want to ground them. I want to get some maturity under their belt. If you’ll remember several years ago, back in the 1990s now and Enron when they of course messed up because they were unethical, and so I was called to New York by Time Warner, who was at that time, our publisher and Larry Kirshbaum who was the CEO of that division, took me out to dinner. He said, “John, I want you to write a book on business ethics because obviously we’ve got a problem here in America, in some corporations.” And I looked at him and I said, “Well, there’s no such thing as business ethics. What do you mean by that?” I said, “Well, it’s just ethics. If you’ve got them, it works in every area of your life, it works in business, family, community. If you don’t have them, then you’re in trouble. 

And out of that, it stimulated a great conversation in which he asked me to write this book to try to help people be ethical. And I set up a writing team. We said, “How can we do this in a culture that doesn’t have absolutes?” And Mark, that was the catalyst for me to begin to understand that if you really want to ground people, if you want to get a foundation for them, you start with values. We hear a lot of times in America, like we’ve lost our way. Well, what we’ve done is we’ve lost our foundation. We’ve lost our values. And out of that, unknown to me, the golden rule which became the ethics 101 book now that people want to get it. But out of that beget the foundation for our transformation of countries and we’re getting ready for transformation of communities of basically saying, if we’re going to transform them, what we have to do is we got to teach good values. 

When people learn good values and they live good values, they become more valuable to themselves and to their neighbors and to their coworkers, to their family, et cetera. And, but it all came out of this kind of a real journey over the last 20 years of me basically understanding that before you talk about what is your potential as a leader, the first thing you want to do is what’s your foundation? And in fact, sometimes people ask me, Mark, you’ve heard them ask me this, what’s the first leadership book that I should read? And I know my answer always surprises them, but I say, “Really, if you’re going to, probably the first leadership book that everyone should read are the 21 Qualities of a Leader.” 

Mark Cole: Yeah. 

John Maxwell: Because I said, “Don’t think about what you want to become or what your goals are, basically, what are the qualities that you have to have? What’s the foundation? What are the values you have to have?” And as I taught that day, as I’m sharing with our podcast listeners right now, basically what this is about when I’m talking about being grounded foundation for leaders, what I’m really talking about, I’m talking about being better on the inside than you are on the outside. 

And by the way, Truett Cathy had Chick-fil-A when Chick-fil-A really started growing and doing really well and they started to get some traction, Truett Cathy, the founder had a lot of pressure on them to expand real fast. Let’s get bigger. Let’s just start a whole bunch of restaurants all over America. If we’re good, if one’s good, why not 1000, 2,000,3,000. And he held up his hand. He said, “No, no, no, no.” He said that, “Our goal isn’t to grow fast.” He said, “Well, what our goal is, is to get better.” 

And then he had made that great statement. “If we get better, the customer will demand that we get bigger.” And you see that man was grounded. That’s a grounded leader. That’s a grounded leadership thought that, my first priority isn’t to get bigger, it’s to get better, because here’s what I, if I get better on the inside, I’ll get better on the outside. It’ll show up. I mean, the whole culture of Chick-fil-A is obvious, that they’re really good. They’re really good. And if I get bigger in myself, in my spirit and my attitude and my values and my values grow, I’ll get bigger on the outside. 

Mark Cole: Well, you know what’s interesting about that, John? You and I were recently in London and your phone rang, and it was Dan Cathy, the first CEO of Chick-fil-A. And of course, he gave you some numbers and he’s as humble as his dad was, but he was giving you some numbers and truly they have perfected. In fact, he said, “John, glad you’re in London. Guess what we’re going to? Chick-fil-A is going to?” In other words, they have built such a foundation and they have gotten so intentional about being grounded, by being bigger on the inside than the outside, now they are able to see a bigger horizon because they have a strong foundation. 

John Maxwell: That’s so true, and that’s such a good illustration. But the tendency again, and our culture and space, what was I dealing with? I was doing young leaders who have been very successful very quickly. I mean, those leaders, some of them in their late twenties, most of them in their thirties, and they’re growing very fast. And they’re growing very fast because they’re very good. They’re charismatic, they’re on the edge. So I admire all that about them. But what I know is that if you grow on the outside without growing on the inside, it’s only a matter of time until the outside tumbles. It does. We have an Enron in our life. 

Well, whenever I’m out of balance and I’m bigger on the outside that I’m on the inside, it’s a matter of time till I topple over. And by the way, a lot of times companies who have fast growth, they have to almost have a couple of years of settling to get their infrastructure caught up and the culture, make sure the culture is what it needs to be before they can go on. There’s a naturalness about the fact that you can’t get so big on the outside that your inside doesn’t stay with you. You can’t let the outside get away from you. And so I talked to them about the very fact that what they really want to do is they want to ground their leaders and help them understand everything worthwhile is uphill, help them understand that it’s okay to take care of yourself so that you can take care of others. 

Mark Cole: Yeah. 

John Maxwell: It’s so grounded. 

Mark Cole: Yeah. 

John Maxwell: That’s the first question. Okay. Can we go to number two? 

Mark Cole: Let’s go to number two. 

John Maxwell: All right. Podcast listeners, here we go. Number two. Is, are they growing? And when I think of that question, just as, are they grounded is about the foundation of a leader, are they growing is about the potential of the leader. 

In other words, when I look at a person I’m asking, do they have growth potential? That is such an important question. And you don’t really, you don’t know that. You really don’t know that until you get them in the game. And then you begin to find out what kind of an appetite they have or are they going to be satisfied with the game they have or do they want to grow in the game? But this question, are they growing is essential. And so what I was teaching the young leaders which I’m teaching all of you today is the fact that you’re responsible to develop a culture of growth so that you make it easy, easy is probably not the right word there, you may give them the opportunity to grow. You give them the opportunity to really develop themselves and grow themselves. 

And I talked to the young leaders about you set that example. You set that course. As a young leader again, my mentor walked in my life and asked me what my growth plan was, and I didn’t have one. And then he said, “John, growth is not automatic,” and wow, that was life changing. And then I said, “Okay, I’ve got to be intentional in my personal growth.” So when we’re talking about the book, The Leader’s Greatest Return, you know as well as I do mark, that that’s a perfect example of growth. 

Mark Cole: Yeah. 

John Maxwell: Because that book was originally going to be Developing The Leaders Around You 2.0 because my publisher asked me to revise that book that I wrote 25 years ago. And so I started to work on revision of developing the leaders around you. And I remember calling you on the phone, I’m saying, “Mark, I’m looking at this book that’s 25 years old and I’m reading these chapters and they’re not as relevant as they can be, and wow, I’ve got more to say now than I had 25 years ago. There’s so much more I can share and illustrations and teachings and principles. I’ve had 25 years of growth under my belt. And this book doesn’t satisfy me at all.” And by the time I got to chapter four, trying to revise it, I realized I couldn’t revise it. That I had to give new birth to something that, it’s kind of like a teaser to give new birth that is resurrected there. 

Mark Cole: Yeah. 

John Maxwell: And so, that’s a perfect example though about a growing leader. If you’re a growing leader, what you did five or 10 years ago, I mean, you look back and you have an appreciation for it, but you don’t say those were your best days. You don’t look back and say, “Oh my God, those were the days. Those were the days my friend.” If those were the days, then you’re not growing now. Any time you can look back at your past and kind of say, wow, that’s the best it could ever be, or people say sometimes I’ll say, I hear them say, “That’s as good as it will ever get.” And the more they tell me, that’s as good as it will ever get. I say, “What do you mean?” I say, is this your best day or you’re not going to grow anymore? 

And if anybody asks me Mark, if somebody came into my life and said, “John, if you could put your finger on one thing that has allowed you to be successful in life?” I would tell them, I think without any question that it’s the fact that I’ve continually personally grown and developed myself and that I’ve never been satisfied with where I was. Let me put it [inaudible 00:16:32] I’m very satisfied with where I am today but I’m not satisfied with where I am today to the place where I say, I’m going to stay here. 

It’s kind of like, I have the ability to be pleased with myself and satisfied in the moment, but also unsatisfied if I’m going to be the same I am tomorrow that I am today. And one of the things that was interesting Mark, when I decided to write books in my late twenties, when I decided to write books, I ask myself the question, well then what am I going to write books on? And I studied Success for two years and decided that I would write books on four things that help people become successful regardless of their occupation. You know what those are relationships, equipping attitude and leadership. 

Now, what really happened in my life was, this was very catalytic. Because up until that time, I was a goal setter. And when I said, “Okay, I’m going to write on the four things that cause me to be successful in life, or can help people to be successful. I’m going to write books on those four things.” So I began to grow in relationships equipping attitude and leadership. Now, all of a sudden my emphasis on growth shifted from numbers of this is what number I want to have by next to it began to shift to subjects. I want to be good in relationships. I want to be good in equipping. I want to be good in attitude. I want to be good at leadership. And now, I’m not trying to set goals. I’ve gone from a goal mindset to a growth mindset in the area of what will bring success. 

I tell people all the time, if you can determine what you need to do to be successful, and you can determine what your strengths are and you can grow in your strengths and you can grow in your success areas. You’ll become very good in whatever you’re going to do. And it just changed me from being a person that was goal-oriented to being growth oriented. It changed me from how long will it take to how far can I go? And that’s absolutely huge. And again, when I was with those young leaders, you were in the room with me that day, Mark, when I talked to them about switching from how long will it take to, how far can I go? The lights were just coming on and these young leaders, men and women, they were gravitating to this back because in their young life, they’re all playing this race. And I’m a little bit bigger than she is, or he is, and here we go and they’re getting very competitive. And what they realize is that that’s not where they want to be. 

If they really want to grow, when people say, are you competitive? I’m competitive with me. I’m trying to be better than I was last year. That’s my biggest competition. So are they growing? This is huge. And by the way, in mentoring people, when you can see that a person either doesn’t want to grow anymore, the two questions I ask, can they, and will they, can they is about ability. Will they is about attitude? Well, sometimes people don’t grow because they don’t want to grow any more. There’s an attitude issue. I mean, they could. And then there’s some times that people really kind of maximize out on ability. But whenever I ask the can here, can she or will they, whenever I ask that question, whenever I see them settle, I realize now that they may still be valuable in their niche in the team, but I can’t spend much more time with that person because you’ve got to constantly be giving your time and attention to people who want to grow and do better. Makes sense? 

Mark Cole: Yeah, it does. And you mentioned, before you go to question number three, you mentioned The leader’s greatest return. And of course, those of you that are listening to the podcast, you can go to Amazon or you can go to Barnes and Noble and pick that book up. Now, most of you listen to podcasts like audio books. That book is available. John, you read the book? 

John Maxwell: I did. 

Mark Cole: You’ve read the book. So it’s the author’s voice in the audio book, The Leader’s Greatest Return. So John- 

John Maxwell: I want to say something about reading a book because you know that’s … the one thing I never liked about writing books is reading the books, but I now am starting to enjoy it because a couple of years ago, I think I started with Developing a Leader. 

Mark Cole: That’s right. 

John Maxwell: A couple of years ago, I went to Harvard and said, “What would happen if after I read a chapter, I just talked to the reader about why I love this chapter and why I wrote it and how I think it’ll help them.” And they said, “Yeah, try that.” And I remember we did it and it became a great success. So I do that all the time. And on The Leader’s Greatest Return again, I said, now let me talk to you about what my favorite part of that chapter is. And here’s what I pull out of it for myself. And I really like the audio books now because I do read the books, but I also get personal commentary on each one of the chapters. 

Mark Cole: You’re growing John, back to this question, because I remember for years when you would on the two or three days that you had to record the audio book, I would make sure my schedule took me very far away because it was not a great day. And now you’re calling after you’re done with that and saying, I am really enjoying this. Congratulations, you’re growing. So that’s right. 

John Maxwell: You didn’t want to be close enough for me to say, let me tell you what I’m doing, right? 

Mark Cole: Right. So are they grounded? Are they growing, two? Let’s go to question 3 

John Maxwell: Then number three is, are they grateful? Are they grateful? Now when I asked the question, are they grateful? This is about the perspective of a leader. This is now what is their perspective? What kind of perspective do they have in their leadership, because if I find a leader is not grateful for where they are in their journey and for the people that they lead and the opportunities they have, guess what you become if you’re not grateful? You become resentful. And the moment a leader starts resenting what he or she has to do, or the people that they’re leading, everything in leadership begins to go south. Now, all of a sudden, when gratitude is replaced with either resentfulness or with a sense of entitlement, entitlement is an antithesis of gratefulness. Well, I’m entitled to this or whatever. 

The moment I feel that I’m entitled to something, what do I do? I start taking advantage of my people, the people that I lead and I lead them to serve me or for my life or my kingdom to get better. And so to me, this whole gratefulness is an attitude perspective check on leadership. And I just love it because there’s nothing more beautiful than people to follow a grateful leader. And there’s nothing I think more difficult than people to follow a leader who thinks he or she deserves what they have or are entitled to what they have or they feel that they’ve been wronged and so they’re resentful. 

So gratitude is, I want to see it. I want to see the perspective of a leader that everyday they’re grateful for what they have and who they are and what they get to do. And if they’re a joy to be around if that makes sense. Because, most of my blessings are undeserved to be honest with you. I mean, I better be very grateful because when I think about it, I mean, most of the things I didn’t even bring to pass. I mean, when I think about my calling, July 4th, back in 1976, what I felt in my faith that God was calling me to, to train leaders, well, I mean, that was a calling I received. I didn’t even ask for it. It was something like one day I woke up and I said, “This is what I’m supposed to be in. It became my purpose. 

When I think of my giftedness, I’m very grateful for my giftedness. My mentor, Fred Smith as you know, sat me down one time and said, “John, let me explain to you about your giftedness. Your giftedness is allowing you to be very successful, but you’re not as great as your gifts. And so when people come up to you and tell you how wonderful you are, you’re not that wonderful. You’re just John, okay? Well, you’re one step from stupid. You’re not that wonderful at all.” But what they’re really saying is they’re watching you operate in your gifts and those gifts are amazing. So when they say, “You’re amazing,” they’re not really saying, “You’re amazing, John.” They’re saying your gifts are amazing. And so he said, “Get that figured out, that you’re not amazing. You’re just a human center like everyone else, but your gifts are amazing. And so never take that personal. Never [inaudible 00:25:08] because if people tell you you’re amazing, and then you think that you’re amazing, then pretty soon you’re unbearable as far as that part goes. It gives perspective. 

Well, when I learned that from him, it made me very grateful for my gifts. They’re gifts, I didn’t deserve them. They were given to me by God, just like every one of you on the podcast, you have gifts that you don’t deserve. Your talents, your abilities, there are certain things that you do better than others, but not because you’ve even worked harder. It’s just, you have a natural bent toward that area. 

And so I think with a leader, I just want to see them continually expressive in the gratefulness in their life because I think that keeps them balanced in their perspective. I think that keeps them from going off course and beginning to think of themselves more highly than they think they need to think of themselves or it’s some time to say, I deserve this or I’ve worked hard for this. When people tell me, “Well, you deserve what you have.” I say, “I’ve got way more in my life than what I deserve.” Did I work hard? Yes. Did I try to do well? Of course I did, but I still have more than I deserve. And when a person feels they have less than they deserve, they’re ungrateful, then they’re always feeling well, you got something I should have and why don’t I have that? But the moment that I realized I have more than I deserve, it takes all of that out of me all my life. 

Mark Cole: I think it’s almost like a muscle. Are you exercising an attitude of gratefulness everyday? And I love that about you specifically, traveling the world, some of the greatest accolades that anyone could get, and you always keep that in a perspective, it’s my gifts- 

John Maxwell: Yes, that’s right. 

Mark Cole: … but I’m grateful for the opportunity that I’m getting. And understanding it is the gifts that the people are applauding, but keeping a spirit of gratefulness I think keeps all of us balanced. 

John Maxwell: It does. I know it does. That’s a good comment there, Mark. I like it a lot. Question number four. 

Mark Cole: Let’s do it. 

John Maxwell: Are they generous? When I’m looking at a leader, I want to know if they have a generous spirit and here’s why. Just like gratefulness is it helps us with our perspective of leadership and growing as, of course, if you’re growing that’s going to determine your potential. And of course, if your ground that’s going to be your foundation. When I look at a person ask, are they generous, here’s why they know. The more generous they are, the more people they’ll bless. My whole desire is to add value to people. I mean, that is very simple. When people talk about how we build our business as well, we add value to people. And we specifically, because we have a leadership calling, we add value to leaders, again in our statement, we multiply value to others. But you don’t add value to people if you’re not generous. If you’re not generous, you want people to add value to you. And so, why are you building a business? You know what I’m saying? 

I mean, you and I both worked for Casey Crawford, our wonderful friend at Movement Mortgage, and I was greatly moved by the story of Movement Mortgage when he talked about the fact that he built a business to bless other people. And it’s an incredible successful business and billions of dollars are going through that company right now. But his whole reason for doing all that is to be a blessing to a lot of people. He has this incredible, generous spirit in his life. And people see me now, I think they would describe me, I think one of the words they would describe me is generous. 

But when I started off as a young pastor in Southern Indiana, I remember the first year I was there, I did a stewardship of teaching people how to manage their gifts and their times and their talents. And I gave out resources for them and taught lessons on it and it was, I was just young, it was hokey, but it was very effective. I mean, at the end of that month, the people really appreciated and grew in their stewardship. And so in my little denomination, other pastors, they began to hear about my stewardship. And so they asked me and said, “John, how did you do that? What did you do? What were your resources?” And you know what, Mark, sadly, this is a sad commentary on me. I didn’t want to tell them because I wanted to beat them. I’m in that denomination, I wanted to become number one and I had a high competitive spirit. And I thought, if I don’t share my secrets with these people, they’ll be my secrets, and they’re going to allow me to pass everybody. 

And so for six months, when pastors asked me to share with leaders, I’d say, “No, no, that’s it.” And then of course, I began to realize how selfish this was and what a dead end street. So long story short, at a district camp that summer, there were not a lot of them, probably maybe a hundred leaders there. I shared with them how I did that stewardship month and I not only shared with them and told them how I did it, but I gave them all my resources. I gave them all my sermons, my lessons, all my handouts, everything I gave it all. I had it packaged for everybody and gave it to them. And that day I saw these young leaders have incredible joy in their life. I mean, I wasn’t prepared for how grateful they were and I can still remember walking back to my hotel after that was over and saying to myself, there is great pleasure in adding value. 

Mark Cole: Wow. 

John Maxwell: There’s great pleasure in, as a pastor, me learning how to build a church and be successful and develop programs and resources, but there’s even a greater pleasure if I don’t keep it to myself. And that’s the day I determined to develop resources for other pastors. It was again, small hokey, not big time at all. In fact, if anybody saw my early resources … in fact, remember when those young leaders were in my office, I pulled out one of the old kits of mine, which was terrible. I mean, the first thought of everybody when they saw the kit was, “Oh my gosh, that’s not very good.” Well, of course it’s not very good. It was my first kit. But the point being that day, I realized that I could either add value to myself and build my kingdom, or I could add value to others and build a whole bunch of kingdoms. 

Mark Cole: Yeah. 

John Maxwell: That day I went from adding to multiply in my life. Now what’s interesting is out of that little stewardship story I just gave you, and finally how I got over my selfishness and competitiveness and I shared it with those young pastors and I watched them get successful with it, that was a stewardship resources of what was it? 25 years later, I started a stewardship company that literally became the biggest company in America and we raised $3 billion to help leaders build their dreams. But think about where it started. I would have never had that $3 billion company if I wouldn’t have taken my little hill ham story and passed out my mimeographed lessons to them and said, “Hey, it’s yours. Take it, use it, call it your own. Bless you.” And so it was birthed out of that generosity. Does that make sense? 

Mark Cole: It does. I mean, and again, I had the privilege of being a part of that organization through my 20 years with you and the impact that had, not just on 3 billion, but the impact on communities that had, because you gave up that selfish mindset, I want to be better than everybody else, let me hoard it, the multiplied millions of people in communities all over the world that have been impacted because of that $3 million is huge. 

John Maxwell: So as I wrap up this lesson, we had out of those young leaders, at the end of that, we had seven of them come up and say, they wanted to be legacy givers for the John Maxwell Leadership Foundation. A legacy giver gives $100,000 a year to our nonprofit to help us to train and transform leaders around the world. And so I’ve gotten each one of them and I’ve thanked them for their generosity, talking about generosity. I thank for the generosity, but I also gave them a note and said, I just want you to know that there’s one thing not possible. You cannot out give me and I promise you I’ll come and I’ll serve you and I’ll give up a day and give you a free day and go speak for your companies and your organizations, and I’ll give you a higher return than the $100,000 that you’ve given our nonprofit organization every year. And I will. It’s again, [inaudible 00:34:12] give 60 and then take 40. It just works. And I think, again, living that generous lifestyle, it just returns to you more than you could ever, ever imagine. 

Mark Cole: John, thank you, four questions to ask about leaders. Are they grounded? Are they growing? Are they grateful? Are they generous? So thankful. Thanks for being generous with your time today in the podcast. Any final closing thoughts you want to give us today? 

John Maxwell: Well, I think that for all of our podcasts listeners, I always, when I’m done Mark, I always ask, I wonder who we helped today? 

Mark Cole: Yeah. 

John Maxwell: I wonder who got some seed of truth or a principle off of this podcast that they’re going to go now and it’s going to make them a little bit better in their world. And I know the answer is a lot of people are getting better, not because you and I are on this podcast, but because we intentionally come on this podcast to make them better. 

Mark Cole: Right. 

John Maxwell: And we were very intentional in this and every time you listen to us, I’m believing that when you’re done, you have something, a nugget, a principle of truth, an idea, that you’re going away and you’re saying, I just became a little bit better because I listened to Mark and John, because that’s the only reason I’m in this game with you, that’s the only reason. So, be sure every time when you’re off the podcast, remember just take a little bit of time and reflect and say, “Okay, what’s the one thing that I’ve picked up here today that I can learn and I can apply to my life?” Because that’s what we want. We want it to be successful, don’t we? 

Mark Cole: Yes, we do. So thank you. Thank you, John. Thanks to all of you listening to the podcast today. Four questions to ask about your leader about leaders. Pass this along, give this to somebody else. I think it will help them as well. We will talk to you next time. Make a difference with this podcast.