5 Questions Every Resilient Leader Asks Themselves

Mark Cole:

Welcome to the Maxwell Leadership Podcast. This is the podcast that I promise you after today, you’re going to know it adds value to leaders who multiply value to others. My name is Mark Cole, and today I am so excited about this episode, not only because of a friend of mine that’s with me today, but because the treat this is going to be to you, your leadership, your growth. Today, Valorie Burton is with us in studio to talk about coaching yourself.

Now, you may know Valorie as a prolific author. You may have seen her speak, you may have seen her on good morning shows. You may have seen her all over media, but I’ve seen her in every one of those settings, yes, but I’ve seen her as a thought leader, somebody that can take a leader like me, a leader like you, and cause you to think and cause you to act. I’ve met people that’s caused me to think, but didn’t do a whole lot of action. I’ve met a lot of people that’s caused me to act, but with a whole, just a little bit of thought. But Valorie is someone that every time I sit at the table with her, every time John Maxwell and I think of Valorie, we think of a thought she has dropped into our life that has challenged us to change behavior and increase productivity.

That’s why when John and I felt like Maxwell Leadership needed a group of thought leaders, one of the first names that John Maxwell and I came up with was Valorie Burton. Written a lot of books, yes. Given a lot of speeches, absolutely. But well-rounded one of the best coaches, one of the best inspirational people that I know. That’s why today you are in for a treat because Valorie, while new to some of our podcast listeners, may be new to you, she is not new to John Maxwell and I and I want to introduce you to her.

Valorie is a life strategist, a world renowned speaker. She’s the CEO of the Coaching and Positive Psychology, which is known as CaPP Institute, as well as a Maxwell leadership thought leader. She has written 13 books translated into several languages, including Let Go of The Guilt, we’ll talk more about that later. It’s About Time, and Successful Women Think Differently. We’ll talk about that a little bit later as well. All of these books we will put as links into the show notes because you want Valorie mentoring and influencing your life.

Now, like I said, you have a treat today because after you have learned from Valorie, she and I are going to come back and discuss how we are applying these principles at Maxwell Leadership. I can’t wait for you, Valorie, to share with this group, to share with our podcast family, and to challenge them to coach themselves. Not get a coach, but you be the coach. Hey, if you would like to watch this episode on YouTube, you can do that by visiting the maxwellpodcast.com/youtube. Trust me, you want to go to YouTube because Valorie’s jacket is fabulous. It may be on me, the next podcast episode, just so you’ll know. I also would like to invite you to download our bonus resource for this episode, which is a fill in the blank worksheet that accompanies Valorie’s lesson and makes it easier to capture notes. You can do that by going to maxwellpodcast.com/coaching. Okay, I’ve said enough. It’s your time to learn from Valorie Burton.

Valorie Burton:

I am excited today to talk about a few things that are very close to my heart and the research and the work that I’ve been able to do over the years. I’m going to be talking about five questions that every resilient leader asks themselves. Now, you might ask this of others, but the first, I think, and most important rule of leadership is being able to lead yourself. And so, it really has to do with your own personal growth. We often think about as leaders needing to coach others, needing to develop others, which is really important, but we get so much better at leading others when we coach ourselves, when we focus on our own development. One of the best ways to do that is to ask the kinds of questions that get you the answers, that get you unstuck, that move you forward, and that really stretch you out of your comfort zone because of course when you stretch, that’s when you grow.

How far you are able to go as a leader in your relationships, in your finances, in your career is largely determined by how much you’re willing to grow. And so, I want to share five questions in particular that I’ve been talking about a lot lately that have gotten a pretty overwhelming response from people because when we ask questions, the assumption is that we have some sort of an answer. Even if it’s not the perfect answer, we’ve got some sort of an answer. Questions tend to engage you. As I ask these, I want you to answer them for yourself. You might right now answer them in your head. You might later say, “Hey, this one or two or three questions really spoke to me,” and I invite you to take some time to really ponder it. Maybe talk it out with someone else, maybe in your quiet time, it’s talking out with yourself.

The first question really comes from the research in applied positive psychology, which is my background. A lot of times, we think of psychology as fixing problems, fixing the things that are wrong with us, but positive psychology really is the study of what is it that enables things to go right with us? What happens when you perform at your best level? What helps you to be more productive? What is it that causes higher levels of success or even causes you to bond more with people who are more likely then to follow you? One of the biggest factors is a sense of positive emotion. Positive emotion is not just about feeling good, although that’s probably one of the top benefits, but the truth of the matter is that feeling good is actually good for you.

I want you to think for a moment about the things that are really important on your plate right now. Your top priorities. Perhaps it’s a project that needs to get done, maybe it’s a task that you’ve been procrastinating about, maybe it’s something that you’re doing with someone else and it’s just kind of become routine. Maybe it’s kind of drudgery. Maybe it’s just something else that is on your to-do list, that long to-do list that sometimes feels overwhelming. This is the question I want you to ask. How could I add more joy to what I’m doing? How could I add more joy to what I’m doing?

Now, you might think this isn’t what I’m expecting for the first question around resilient leadership, but here’s why this is so important. Positive emotion actually expands your ability to deal with adversity and with stress, it actually helps you make better decisions. It actually causes you to set higher goals and to persevere towards those goals longer. When you’re dealing with a lot of stress, when you’ve got a lot on your plate, sometimes what happens is you begin to feel a sense of negative emotion, even for those things that at one point you were excited about doing, now it’s just another thing that needs to get done, or maybe it’s not going as smoothly as you want it, and there’s a lot of challenge in it. You can begin focusing on the challenge or on the negative over focusing on the parts of it that really bring joy.

When you asked yourself that question, “How could I add more joy to it?” A lot of times, it’s the simple things. When I’m working on a book, I have to set the intention that I’m writing with joy, otherwise I turn it into this project that’s got a deadline and this is stressful and I’ve got to get this done, and oh my goodness, I’ve got writer’s block today. Before you know it, I’m stressed out doing the thing I love most. When I ask, “How do I infuse this with joy?” Number one, I remember that it’s a part of my purpose. And so, what I’m doing every single day is what I really want to do. I actually remember that. I may come up with rituals, whether it is lighting a candle, whether it is the music that I’m playing, whether it’s the little rewards that I’m getting along the way for reaching certain writing milestones.

But for you, this might be a question that you ask of your whole team. You’re working on a project, how could we make this a bit more fun? You might be practicing for a half-marathon. How could you make it more fun? It might have to do with something new you’re doing in your finances or in your planning. How could you add more joy to it? Sometimes that means involving other people. Sometimes that means making sure that you’re celebrating the milestones along the way rather than just racing past them. You actually stop and there’s some sort of celebration that you’re doing together.

And so, when you find fun, and sometimes it’s about finding fun again, because a lot of the things you’re doing now are things that 5 or 10 years ago you were wishing you could do. You were hoping for that promotion or to move towards building that business. Now you’re in it. Don’t allow yourself to get so used to getting to a new level of success that you don’t tap into your sense of gratitude and joy for it. In fact, scientists have a name for that, it’s called the hedonic treadmill. We basically adapt to continually improving circumstances. And so, the things that used to make us happy, suddenly we’re used to it. It’s just the new normal. And so, we don’t get as much joy from it unless we find ways to notice in the moment what it is that we have to be grateful for, how far we’ve actually come, and the worthiness that there is of celebrating that.

I start there because positive emotion will energize you. It will help you to be more creative, it will help you to renew your energy for your goals, and it simply makes work and life a lot more fun. How could you add more joy to what you’re doing is question number one, because that positive emotion literally makes you stronger and expands your ability to deal with adversity and stress. You’re automatically more resilient when you’ve got more positive emotion in your life.

Here’s question number two, and this is a question to use when you’re faced with a situation that might cause you to be less than your best. Maybe it’s a difficult conversation that you need to have. Maybe it’s a challenge that is really, really challenging you. It might be causing you to doubt your own abilities, causing you to lose a bit of confidence. Perhaps it is a situation where you haven’t figured out the best way to communicate what needs to be communicated. Whenever you are faced with a challenge that could cause you to maybe not step up and be at your best, ask yourself, how do I want to show up in this situation? How do I want to show up?

Sometimes there are difficult circumstances that we are at a loss for what to do or how to do it, but when we ask how do I want to show up, we make that decision. Maybe there are layoffs and you’re the one that has to deliver the news, but the way you want to show up is with compassion and gratitude for the person’s service, and perhaps it’s with a bit of encouragement for them. Maybe it is a difficult negotiation and you want to show up with confidence and authenticity. You don’t want to back down from what’s really important to you and maybe your core fear is disapproval or rejection. And so, when you’re in a negotiation, sometimes you don’t actually ask for what you want.

And so, when you ask yourself and you coach yourself with that question, how do I want to show up, you’re deciding in advance who you want to be, how you want to be, what is the best version of yourself that you want to show up in that situation. This applies in every area. I mean, even in parenting, which I think is probably our most important leadership role. You might have a challenging child in your life and sometimes they push those buttons and you’re deciding, the way that I want to show up is calm and peaceful. I’m deactivating those buttons. They like to push and I’m breathing. This is my goal. And so, that begins to inform every element of how you respond in the situation. Very simple question, how do you want to show up? If you want to be resilient, you want to be intentional and choose how you want to show up in the situations that matter most.

The third question, this is one of my favorites, and I know that the importance of this because you’re listening to this podcast, a John Maxwell Podcast, and this is so core to who he is. This is a question that really helped me as I began speaking as a public speaker. I often would get nervous before I had to go on stage. Usually, it would start the day before, maybe it would continue right before I would go on stage, but it was nervousness. The nervousness really was rooted in a couple of questions. Questions like are they going to like me? Am I going to be funny? I mean, you don’t want to be the boring speaker, so you want people to engage with you. Am I going to remember everything that I’m needing to say?

These questions would come up and I would start to get nervous. Sometimes I would think about the audience because often I’ve been invited to speak to audiences of just very successful, very impressive people. And so, I began saying, “I don’t want to show up nervous. This is ridiculous. I know what I’m doing.” The question that really changed everything for me and has coached me ever since, and this is probably 16, 17 years ago that I first asked myself this question before going on stage, and it’s simply this, how are you meant to serve today? How are you meant to serve?

There are many situations as a leader where you are called to step up in a big way, a way that might feel intimidating even though others might not know it because you’re the leader, a way that might feel anxiety producing where you might have doubts, where your confidence isn’t quite where you want it to be. But here’s the thing, if your focus is on how you are meant to serve, the nervousness goes away. Who gets nervous about serving? Because serving is built on the belief that you have value to add to other people, that your path is crossing paths with those people in that moment for a reason whether it is a presentation that you need to make or a conversation that you need to have or a project that you are working on that you are uniquely equipped to complete.

When you focus on how you’re met to make a difference, it’s all about how you’re going to give, how you’re showing up in a way that makes things better for others. And when that’s your focus, what happens is you take the focus off of you and what everyone’s going to think about you, and you put the focus onto them and how you are intending to make life better in some way for them. Whether that is for the team members that you lead, whether that is in your own family, whether that is you standing on a stage. When you ask how am I meant to serve, you get back to the core of why you’re doing what you’re doing.

Even if you’ve never said to yourself, oh, my purpose is, and you fill in the blank because you’re clear about what it is, even if you’ve never done that before, here’s the thing. Your purpose is always about how you are serving others, how you’re making an impact, how you’re making a difference. And so, tapping into that really just relieves you of all of that pressure and the weight of what everyone else is going to think, even if those thoughts are, oh, I’m going to be embarrassed, oh, I’m not going to do it right. It’s okay. The bigger question is did you serve in the way you were meant to serve?

I’m wondering where you need to be asking that question. How are you meant to serve? How are you meant to serve your community? How are you meant to serve in the organization that you work for even if you’re the one running the organization? How are you meant to serve in your own family? Keep a focus on that and that’s where your strength will be.

Now, I’ve got two more questions I want you to coach yourself with. The first one sounds so simple, it’s probably one of the simplest questions to coach yourself with, and it has a lot of application in different scenarios. I like to apply it particularly when someone is tempted to complain or over-focus on what’s going wrong. Now, as leaders, we have to pay attention to things that aren’t working, because oftentimes, we need to fix things. We need to come up with new systems or diagnose a problem so that we can clear the way.

To be resilient as an organization or as a person, we’ve got to clear some of those blocks, but sometimes we can over-focus on what’s wrong. We can over-focus on weaknesses. We can get into a situation where all we’re talking about is the problem, which is really what we don’t want. We can start talking to everybody else about it. We can start complaining about it. When you find yourself talking too much about the things you don’t want, stop yourself and ask, what do you want?

I’m wondering what the situation is that’s presenting itself to you right now, where you’ve been talking too much about what you don’t want, whether it is the team member that’s not stepping up the way they need to, whether it is the career that you no longer like, or maybe you never liked it in the first place. You did it for other reasons because it was expected of you, et cetera. Whether it is the fact that you really would like to do something entrepreneurial because you don’t like where you are, whether it’s something very personal, maybe you don’t like your weight, you don’t like your health habits, and it can be easy to over-focus on what you don’t like, what you don’t do well, what someone else isn’t doing well. The bigger question is what do you want?

The research shows that when we’re coaching and coaching is really helping someone move from where they are to where they really want to be and to be able to navigate the obstacles and the challenges and even the opportunities that appear along the way. And so, one of the things that we know from research is that when we can help a person focus on their vision, it immediately moves them from a place that feels negative emotionally to a place that feels positive. It actually is where the inspiration comes from. Suddenly, in coaching sessions, you’ll notice a lightness in the person’s voice. When they’ve hooked people up to brain scans while they are being coached, and they ask questions that cause them to think about their vision, it actually changes the brain chemistry, what’s actually happening in your brain.

When you’re over-focused on the stuff that’s going wrong and you don’t stop and say, “Well, what do I want,” you end up making it much more difficult to bounce back from those negatives. At some point, you have to stop with the negatives and say, “Okay, what do I want?” Sometimes that’s, “What do I want instead?” In other words, what’s the solution? What’s the vision? If you’re having trouble over and over again with one team member, or maybe it’s a collective number of team members, maybe it’s a leadership issue. If you get honest about that, what do I want? I want a team that operates cohesively where everybody’s moving towards this common vision and they’re energized by it, where everyone’s working within their own strengths. Now, you’re painting a clear vision of where you want to go. Now, there might be a lot of steps to getting there, but when you ask that question, you now realize the real problem that needs to be solved, some changes that need to be made, and there’s no need to be intimidated by it if you’re honest about it, you begin to understand the answers.

It may start with simple steps. It may start with retraining. It may start with you getting clarity of vision so you can share it, and then you can operate by it. What do you want stops you in your tracks from talking too much about what you don’t want. You need to understand what you don’t want, but at some point, you need to pivot. You need to say, “Okay, so this is what happened. What am I learning from it and how will I move forward?”

All right, this final question that I want you to coach yourself with, and that I think is absolutely critical for resilient leaders comes from a book I wrote called It’s About Time: The Art of Choosing the Meaningful over the Urgent. The question applies when we’re trying to make a decision about how to spend our time, and these are decisions we make every single day. In fact, we’re often making micro-decisions. You might have made micro-decisions in the last 5 or 10 minutes. Your phone might have been dinging and you had a text and you needed to pay attention, but somehow you got distracted, and so you were multitasking. There you go again, maybe you rewound the podcast because you weren’t really listening.

We make those micro-decisions all the time because we’re constantly distracted, but we also make even bigger ones. And so, what you need to ask yourself is very simple. It’s this. Is this meaningful or is it urgent? When I say urgent, what I’m referring to is what I like to call false urgencies. We have a lot of them today, things that feel urgent because we got them right there in the moment, but in the long range scheme of things, they’re not urgent at all. It is you turning on the TV and seeing breaking news, but the breaking news is a celebrity couple that had a baby, and you don’t even know who the celebrities are, but you’ve stopped what you’re doing to perhaps not pay attention in that conversation with a loved one because, oh, there’s breaking news.

It’s the texts, it’s the scrolling on social media. It’s the person who wants you to do something that makes sense for them right now, but doesn’t really make sense for you, but maybe you feel like I have to say yes because you fear telling people no. You’re addicted to approval. But if you stop and you say, is this meaningful or is it a false urgency? You’ll pause, you’ll take a breath, and you’ll be able to say, “Meaningful?” If it’s meaningful, you’ll be glad a month from now you did it, a year from now, even 20 years from now. In that moment when your child needed your attention, your spouse or your partner needed your attention when you decided to put away all the distractions and finally focus on building that business that you wanted to build or going back to school because you know it’s going to bring you closer to a career goal.

When you realized, yeah, I’m going to make the meaningful choice in eating something a little healthier because I’ve decided that it’s not negotiable anymore, I need to take good care of myself. When you pause and ask, is this meaningful or is it a false urgency? You always get the right answer. Like I said, I often will ask, “Gosh, is it meaningful? Is it meaningful a month from now? Is it meaningful a year from now?” Okay, then that’s the right answer. Since we are often bombarded with so many decisions to make, this becomes even more important to ask of yourself a very, very simple coaching question.

That’s it. Five questions every resilient leader asks themselves, and ask these of yourself, but keep them in your back pocket because a great leader coaches others. And so, these are great questions that you might even ask those you’re developing. How could you add more joy to what you’re doing? How do you want to show up in the situation? How are you meant to serve today? What do you want, and is it meaningful or is it just urgent? I cannot wait to talk about these with you, Mark, because this is what I do. I love coaching, but I love coaching through questions.

Mark Cole:

This happens to me often, not every episode, but there’s these episodes that we have, Valorie, that after John teaches, you teach, somebody teaches, I just want to say, okay, cut off the cameras, cut off the lights, cut off the microphones. I need to go back into a hole and I need to work on me. Today is yet another moment of coaching myself, and I’ve got coaches, I believe in coaching. You’ve been a coach for me. You coach for our huge army of coaches around the world. I get it. I get a coach. But this concept that I all of a sudden am the coach and the coached is so interesting to me. Talk to me about the importance. We’ll get into some of the questions that you just taught us in just a moment. But Valorie, you got to talk to me about the importance of a leader self-coaching themselves.

Valorie Burton:

I first started this idea of self coaching, gosh, probably 18, no, 20 years ago. My second book was coming out, and I had been coaching for a few years at that point, and I thought, how do I communicate the power of coaching in my books? I wanted to be able to have people coach themselves by giving them powerful questions and helping them understand the importance of pausing, reflecting on questions in order to get answers. Often we look for the answers first without asking the question.

As leaders, and you say this, John has said this many times, I mean, we have to lead ourselves first. That means in order to develop other people, you have to first work on developing yourself. It’s great to have a coach. I think everybody should have a coach.

Mark Cole:

Yeah, me too.

Valorie Burton:

Obviously, I’ve been training coaches for years. I believe in the power of coaching. It’s transformed my life. But here’s the thing, I don’t care how great your coach is. Your coach can’t be with you 24 hours a day. You’re going to have moments and decisions. You’re going to have places of doubt, a lack of confidence, opportunities that pop up where your coach isn’t going to be there to coach you. You need to understand how to coach yourself.

When I began coaching, I realized part of what I need to be teaching the people I’m coaching is how to do this for themselves. Of course, there’s always going to be value to having a coach and that coaching conversation, but in a practical way, every single day, what are the questions you’re asking yourself? What are the challenges you’re facing? And how could you be more resilient? You could be more resilient by pausing, acknowledging the challenge or the opportunity in front of you and saying, “What’s my best way forward? What answers haven’t I considered? How do I want to show up in this situation?” When you give yourself the chance to reflect on that, oftentimes you’re inspired. You get the answers that you need.

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Mark Cole:

You know what I love about you, Valorie? We talked about you were kind in saying that my introductions are effusive, I think was your exact words.

Valorie Burton:

They are.

Mark Cole:

I told you, I said-

Valorie Burton:

I appreciate it.

Mark Cole:

Well, I told you it’s really easy. I think one of the reasons it’s easy is because you employ positive psychology. You and John Maxwell don’t come at it from, oh, shame on me. I should have done this or I did this. A lot of times when we’re coaching ourselves, we can be our own worst critic.

Valorie Burton:

Oh, definitely. Yes.

Mark Cole:

That’s why I love having a coach, somebody that can reinforce me because I’m a words of affirmation guy. That’s my love language.

Valorie Burton:

That’s mine too.

Mark Cole:

Is it really? Come on.

Valorie Burton:

No surprise, speakers and writers.

Mark Cole:

That’s right. But isn’t it interesting, and this may not be true for you because you’ve been trained in positive psychology. I am my worst critic, and yet I respond best to words of affirmation, and yet sometimes I give myself words of an extreme negative critique. I want to establish that because your very first question is how can I add more joy?

Valorie Burton:

Yes.

Mark Cole:

How can I lift my spirit? I think just even starting with that question, and I know you didn’t give them in a sequence of importance.

Valorie Burton:

Oh, I did.

Mark Cole:

Oh, you did? Sorry. Stand corrected.

Valorie Burton:

Not importance, but that first one was on purpose.

Mark Cole:

Is on purpose.

Valorie Burton:

Yes.

Mark Cole:

I think it’s important because again, I’m a words of affirmation guy. I think I’m a pretty positive guy, but yet when I go after myself, it’s not always positive psychology. It is a lot of times critiquing condemnation. I love that you started with this concept of how can I add more joy to my life, to my leadership. You just said that was on purpose, but unpack that a little bit of why that was on purpose.

Valorie Burton:

Because I think sometimes we can drive ourselves too hard, not acknowledge even when we make mistakes, how hard we were working at it, what we’ve been through to get to where we’re going, how hard it is to persevere. And so, self-compassion is a powerful concept. Being able to be as kind to yourself as you would be to a best friend, somebody you care about, you don’t beat them up when they make a mistake or they’re feeling down or they’re frustrated. You don’t go, “Oh, you’re right. Yeah, go beat yourself up some more. I can’t believe you did that.” We don’t do that to our friends.

Mark Cole:

That’s right.

Valorie Burton:

Why can’t we be the friend to ourselves? Starting with adding the joy to it, and how can I infuse more joy is understanding, like I said, that when we experience positive emotion, it opens up our minds. We actually see more possibilities. We’re more likely to keep going. If we want to be resilient, especially when we’re going through difficulties, that joy is even more important.

In fact, Mark, and I love talking about the research because I think it’s fascinating, but positive emotion builds up like a cushion over time is what the research shows. When you have a bad day, it’s like you’ve got a mattress that you’re landing on, when over time you’ve built up more of that positive emotion. When you haven’t, there’s no cushion. It’s like landing on concrete when things go badly. You want to be building up that cushion. You want to do that in your teams. If teams don’t have a cushion of positives of being affirmed and thanked and celebrated, then when a project gets hard, there is no room for any critique. There is no room for those mistakes. Teams start to lock up. As a leader, you want to lead with joy, because it’s powerful in more ways than one.

Mark Cole:

I want to stay with this first question. I could spend literally 30 minutes on every one of these questions, gang. I know that you kind of want me to, but I’m going to be mindful, but I want to stay with this question. Number one, you said like when you’re training for a half-marathon, and immediately I went, “Training for a half-marathon sounds like joyful, because I’ve trained for a lot of full marathons, and just the concept of cutting it in half sounds really joyful.” But when I was training for my marathons, trying to drop a hint that I’m in more in shape than I am, podcast family, but when I trained, it was the sense of accomplishment that drove me rather than I would consider it a sense of joy. Talk to me a little bit as my coach. Is that the same thing? I’m driven by accomplishing things. Can I get joy out of that or is there a difference in joy and a sense of accomplishment? Am I thinking of it-

Valorie Burton:

There are many paths to joy. One of the assessments I’ve created over the years that with one of my books is a happiness trigger assessment. There are things we know from research that trigger happiness. Dr. Martin Seligman began talking after some time about achievement as one of those triggers, that some people just by checking something off the list get this boost of positive emotion and joy. Now, that doesn’t move everybody, but I’m one of those people. I mean, I’m one of those people to the point where I check stuff, I add stuff back to my to-do list I forgot to put on it just so I can check it off.

Mark Cole:

Me too! Yes!

Valorie Burton:

That brings me great joy. It’s no surprise you’re achievement-oriented. I would say most people in positions of leadership get joy out of achievement. The only way that that ends up a negative is that when we are over-focused on achievement and we’re overachieving to the detriment of something else. But achievement in itself, it does bring us joy. It makes us feel productive and fruitful. “Look at what I’ve done.” And so, there’s a quote from Sir Richard Layard. He wrote a book just called Happiness, and I’m paraphrasing, but he said something along the lines of, find any happy person and you’ll find a project. Even look at children, they want to know how fast can I run, how high can I jump. Basically, we are wired to want to produce, to want to be productive. And so, achievement is one of those paths to joy. Yes, you get a boost when you achieve something that was difficult to achieve.

Mark Cole:

I’m going to come back to achievement in your life in just a moment, but let me skip number two. I don’t want to skip anything, but I’m going to skip number two and go to number three. Number one, I thought that the way you set John up and that he’s so good at this question was truly appropriate. I’ve never met somebody that wanted to serve. We call it a lot of times adding value to someone, but it’s serving, as you said. I love two things about this question. How are you meant to serve? Then, you pause for a moment and then you say, today.

Now here’s what I love about that, is John wakes up every single day, and I’ve traveled the world with him. He wakes up every single day and says, how can I add value to somebody? What is a way, he thinks of ways, does things, and looks for ways to add value to people. That’s kind of his little metric or formula of adding value. Now we’re talking about serving people and then we make it very specific. It needs to be something that you do on a daily basis. When you’re coaching yourself that, is that a daily question that you’re asking? Do you ask that on the front end so that you plan and look for ways? Do you ask it on the back end or is it kind of both you’re doing from a planning and an accountability standpoint?

Valorie Burton:

I think it’s a planning, and some people are morning planners and some are evening planners, and some are listening and going, “I haven’t been doing either, and this is an invitation.” Coaching yourself in the morning or the evening can be very powerful. As you’re preparing in the evening, looking to that next day, the question might be, how do I want to serve tomorrow? You’re looking at your calendar, you’re looking at whose path you’re going to cross, and you’re asking that question. Very simple. And a lot of times you end up coming up with little things that you wouldn’t otherwise think of. You can do the same thing in the mornings.

And so, that question of service is a happiness trigger. We’re happy when we serve, when somehow we are able to add that value to other people. Serving is particularly important when we are in a… It’s important always, but it can be even more important when we’re not in a great place, because over-focusing on yourself can take you in a downward spiral. “Oh, look, things aren’t working the way I want it. That didn’t go the way I want,” and we can over-focus on ourselves. When you say how can I serve, you’re taking that focus off of you and you’re realizing that even in spite of everything going on with you, you can still make a difference for someone else. Suddenly, that focus not being on your problems and what’s not right for you transitions into, “Oh, and what am I here for anyway?” I’m here to serve. I’m here to love people. I’m here to make an impact. For me, that becomes a very spiritual, very important element of my faith.

Mark Cole:

I see that.

Valorie Burton:

What am I here for today? That might not even be somebody you know. It might be that whoever I cross paths with today, my goal is that they feel better having been in my presence. That could be the cashier at the store, that could be the person that was the Uber driver taking you to the airport, that can be somebody you cross paths with at the park while you were taking your walk. When you realize, you never know who you’re crossing paths with and who else they’ve been in touch with, maybe not anyone that was asking that question. You can make an impact every single day, but only if you’re intentional about it. Coaching yourself with that question is a very simple way to be intentional about it.

Mark Cole:

Beautiful. All right. Let’s go to the last question. Is it meaningful or is it urgent? Oh my gosh. I wanted you to teach for another two hours on this and I didn’t want you to coach me, and I didn’t want you to challenge me to coach myself. I wanted you to talk to me because my personality makes everything urgent. I mean, we talked about achievement, we talked about that. Talk to me a little bit more, and you did a great job in the teaching, in the breaking down the question, but as you were teaching this, I went, okay, I got to get you to help me a little bit more. How do I best decipher as a type A driven leader between the meaningful and the urgent?

Valorie Burton:

Meaningful matters into the distance, into the future. Urgent is there to pull you away. The thing that’s so important for us to understand today is that so much of what we consume media-wise, whether it’s online, TV, et cetera, is designed to get our attention at all costs and to keep it. They hire psychologists just to help them to do that. And so, it’s harder than ever for us to do, which means it’s even more important for us to be very intentional about what’s meaningful to me. If you haven’t answered that question, you can’t answer is it meaningful or is it urgent?

Mark Cole:

Great point.

Valorie Burton:

What is meaningful? At this stage in my life, meaningful is what serves my family life, meaningful is what feels peaceful to me. I’m not interested in being overly stressed out. That doesn’t mean I’m not doing hard work or work that matters. It means that I’ve got to do it in the right proportion, and I’ve got to choose because there’s lots more opportunities than there were 20 or 10 years ago. It can feel like, oh gosh, I want to help here, I want to help there. You can’t do everything or you run yourself ragged. What’s going to have the most impact? What will you look back years from now and wish you had done? When you think of it from that lens, you’re basically giving yourself the benefit of hindsight. If I’m looking back next month, next year, next decade, what will feel meaningful? What will I wish I had done? That’s what’s powerful.

Mark Cole:

That’s brilliant. I want to take the last little bit and go back. I don’t say this often, but I’m going to challenge all of you who listen to this podcast, you need to listen to this one again and again. You need to go back. You need to absorb these questions and how Valorie presented them to us because you killed me on this too. You stirred me. How she presented this to us and you need to listen this over and over again and make it a habit, not a one-time occurrence, but a habit on coaching yourself. These questions, I bet you, the more you ask them, the deeper you’re going to get into how these questions drive you.

But I want to go back for a moment in the few minutes we have remaining, and I want to go back 20 years ago, and I hate to do that to anyone, especially you and me who’ve been longtime friends. But 20 years ago this year is the first time we worked together, and we worked together on an event that was my responsibility to produce, but it was your responsibility to present at this event that was helping women thrive rather than survive. That was kind of our whole little buzz line, if you’ll remember it.

Valorie Burton:

Yes.

Mark Cole:

Your work, Valorie, for the last 20 years that I’ve known you, but you had already been working pretty hard, was about taken specifically in a lot of your work, not exclusively, but taken women that have a lot to give, a lot to lead, and teaching them how to think differently than they ever thought before. You gave them permission, number one, to think, hallelujah, because we lived in a time 20 years ago where we still wasn’t sure if we wanted women to think. You remember those days. You, number one, gave them permission to think, but then you gave them permission to think successfully. What does successful women think like?

And so, I want you to go, because one of the books we put in the show notes is Successful Women Think Differently. I remember you speaking on the stages back then about that, and you turned the light bulbs on, and that’s one of your books that continues to sell. It continues to impact. Talk to us about this book, this concept of Successful Women Think Differently. The reason I want to do that is a month ago we celebrated International Women’s Day. While I’m extremely thankful for where we’ve come, we’ve got so much further to go because I look at you and one of the many things I admire about you is your commitment to your family, your commitment to your husband, your commitment to a well-rounded life, and your commitment to take your platform and impact the world. Somehow you’ve rolled all of that up to be able to be successful, but it was started with how you thought. Talk to us a little bit about that book and help our podcast listeners with that.

Valorie Burton:

Gosh, I wrote my first book in 1999, in the last century, back in the 20th century. It was about a month left to go when that book was published in the 20th century. But nonetheless, I knew my mission was around inspiring others, especially women, to live more fulfilling lives. That was just a calling for me. I started coaching a couple of years later. My love of learning led me to go back to grad school a second time to study positive psychology. When I was looking at all of the research, the bottom line, and I said this in class one day, one of my classmates was like, “You need to write that down.” The bottom line was that successful people think differently. They make decisions differently. They face opportunities differently. They deal with challenges differently.

And so, my whole capstone in grad school was that, it was actually successful people think differently. It was the publisher who said, “Can we focus on women?” Which really spoke to me because I knew that although I was speaking to everybody, I had a special calling to women. And so, that’s how the book was born. That was a little while after you and I met. The original book came out in 2012. You can have two people, two women with similar gifts and talents, similar experiences, education and similar goals, and you will see one excel in another, perhaps just kind of languish or not really reach their potential.

People think it’s about knowing what steps to take. It’s not. It is in the face of each obstacle you face along the way, what are you saying to yourself? What are you thinking about the opportunity in front of you? What are you saying to yourself about that no or that rejection that you received? What are you saying about the challenge? Are you saying, “I knew I couldn’t do it,” or are you saying, “Huh, what could I learn from this? Because I’m still looking at my vision, and this is just part of the path you face challenges.”

The woman and man for that matter who can notice their thoughts and whether those thoughts are moving them forward and getting them unstuck or keeping them stuck and can be intentional about shifting those thoughts is the person who is going to excel. And so, it really is about how we think and we get over focused on, well, what did so-and-so do to be successful? I’ll just go do that. You won’t do that unless you’re thinking the same way they were when they faced the obstacles and the challenges that they faced.

Mark Cole:

Again, for our podcast listeners, we’re going to put in the show notes a link to Successful Women Think Differently. You want to pick that up. There’s one more book that is profoundly impacting anybody that I talk to that’s picked this up, and it’s this idea of guilt that we all struggle with. And so, it’s a book for all of our podcast viewers. I’m holding it up. It’s Let Go of the Guilt. I want to take just a moment because this book is really impacting on a level that I think teach every leader that I know struggle, that wants a balanced life if there is such a thing, but wants a life that has more meaning outside of just work and what they do. Struggles with this concept of guilt, and you’re talking here, let go of the guilt. Give our podcast listeners just a little bit about this book.

Valorie Burton:

The subtitle for Let Go of the Guilt is Stop Beating Yourself Up and Take Back Your Joy.

Mark Cole:

I love it.

Valorie Burton:

What I realized is that I was feeling a lot of guilt as I was becoming more successful and as I became a mom, particularly when I would travel and I really only would travel overnight. I’d have a keynote, I’d go back home, and I’d feel guilty. And so, I started mentioning it when I would speak, and I noticed in the audiences often of business leaders, there would just be like a collective groan when I would just say the word guilt. And so, I decided to write the book in part in letting go of my own guilt, but also because so many of us experience what I call false guilt. We haven’t actually done anything wrong, but we’re feeling guilty. What is guilt? It’s a message. Guilt says you’ve done something wrong. Sometimes we’re telling ourselves we’re doing something wrong when we are not.

When it’s real guilt, that’s important to take note of. But when it’s guilt over things like the work that you are doing or perhaps a mistake that you’ve made, others have forgiven you for it, you haven’t forgiven yourself. A lot of times, we did a whole survey from about 600 people for the book, and I was amazed. Top ways that people are feeling guilty, what they’re eating, not exercising, parenting. Those are top three areas.

But another way that people often are feeling guilty is something we don’t often see as guilt, which is I’m not doing enough. We’re bombarded. If you are on social media, you’re watching TV and you’re watching what everybody else is doing, you can begin feeling like, “I’m not measuring up, I’m not doing enough.” This is particularly important for successful people, because the top personality trait for the most successful people is conscientiousness, and conscientious people have a very strong belief system around what’s right and how to do things right, and oftentimes they aren’t measuring up to their own standards, which are too high for them to meet. That’s what Let Go of the Guilt is all about. If you’ve got that lingering feeling like you never are doing enough, if you aren’t getting it right, you need to stop beating yourself up so you can get your joy back as we just talked about.

Mark Cole:

Exactly.

Valorie Burton:

That joy is so, so important.

Mark Cole:

Podcast listeners, viewers, we’ve got that also in the show notes, Let Go of the Guilt. In fact, we’ll provide a link there and you can click that link, use the keyword podcast and we’ll give you a 15% discount on that book and get it out to you. Valorie, my question to you, putting you on the spot, you’ve got to come back.

Valorie Burton:

Well, of course, I would love to come back.

Mark Cole:

We’ve run out of time and I already know the impact that this podcast is having, and we want to come back and do it again, and I know that you will. Hey, one of the things that I am really excited about, and we’ll put this in the show notes as well is Valorie, she doesn’t travel much, so we’re very protective of her days, but Valorie goes and works with companies on all the subject matter that she has brought to the table today that we’ve talked about coaching, how successful women think, let go of the guilt, resilience is coming, and how to coach and be effective.

I want to challenge you that if Valorie’s message has impacted you today, bring her to your organization, bring her to your team. We’ll put in the show notes how you can do that. Those of you that don’t go to the show notes, just go over to maxwellleadership.com. You’ll find Valorie and more information about her there. I’m super excited about getting to partner with you, not just through the podcast, our podcast family, but publishing books, getting your message out there. Thanks for being a Maxwell Leadership thought leader.

Valorie Burton:

Mark, I want to thank you and John for inviting me into this Maxwell Leadership family. I’ve been reading John’s books since before I wrote my first book and been impacted by him. Of course, I’ve known you now for 20 years, and so it is truly an honor and a joy to get to share with the Maxwell Leadership audience.

Mark Cole:

For those of you wondering, Valorie and I met when we were teenagers. That’s our story and we’re sticking to it. The reason we partner with people like Valorie, the reason we bring her and her books or content, her thoughts to you, is because the world needs powerful positive change, and everyone deserves to be led well, so go lead well.