Turn Bad into Better: How to Grow From Tough Experiences

Mark Cole:
Hey, welcome back to the Maxwell Leadership Podcast. This is the podcast that adds value to leaders who multiply value to others. My name is Mark Cole, and I’m really excited today for you to listen to John Maxwell’s lesson. In this week’s episode, John helps us answer the question, how can I take something bad and make it better? In fact, as John will share with you, he’s going to give us six things today that will help you take a bad situation and make it better. In fact, as I was listening to the six things, I was excited because John is going to give you six things that you need to be intentional, whether it’s bad or good. So I don’t want you to say, ooh, I don’t think I need to listen to this. I all think everything’s good today. Number one, give me your email address.

Mark Cole:
I got a few bad things I want to ship your way. But number two, I’m going to give you some things after we debrief that will help you take any situation and make it better. I’m going to be joined by my friend and co host, Chris Robinson. We’re going to help you apply what John shares, and then we’re going to give you application to make your life and your leadership better. If you would like to download the free bonus resource for this episode or even watch it on YouTube, you can go to MaxwellPodcast.com/BadToBetter. I just like that. Bad to better. So here we go.

Mark Cole:
Here is John Maxwell.

John Maxwell:
I’m going to give you a challenge. Be one of the few that take a bad experience and turn it into a better experience. Now, how are we going to do that? So write down that challenge. Okay? You know, John challenges me to take a bad experience and turn it into a better experience. Okay, you got that? Now I’m getting real practical with you here. For the next three minutes, how do I do that? How do you do that? How do we take something bad and make it better? We have to be intentional. What I’m going to give you can’t be accidental. It has to be intentional.

John Maxwell:
I have to be intentional in six things. Right now. I have to be intentional, first of all in my personal time. So what am I going to do in the time that I have? And I hope the answer is not watch TV. I don’t mean that’s unkindly. TV’s fine. But I hope we’re going to upgrade ourselves just a little bit. For example, for me, on my desk, if you went into my home right now, my desk on the left side, right here on my desk are six books.

John Maxwell:
Six books that I have purposely intentionally picked out and said, okay, I’m going to read these books. Now, I’m also going to make it a time of exercise. I’m going to make it a time of trying to get a little bit better and healthy and eat a little bit better in that whole process. Okay, well, that’s personal. But the question is, what are you going to do with your personal time? You’ve got to be intentional. I challenge you to be intentional in your personal time to do something that will make you better. Number two, your family time. What are you going to do in your family time? Margaret and I have kind of developed a list of movies that we kind of want to see at home, perhaps together, and we’re going to take more walks than we’ve taken before.

John Maxwell:
In other words, what are you going to do with your family? That’s just going to be positive. Maybe. Hey, maybe with your family, you would want to sit down and share what I’m teaching.

Mark Cole:
Wow.

John Maxwell:
Wouldn’t that be good? Sit and gather them around. Say, look, this is how we need to be thinking. Okay, how about ketchup time? How about your ketchup time? That’s the third area. I’m not talking about ketchup that you put with fries. I’m talking about C A, T, H. I can catch up on some things that I would have never gotten to. Things like mundane things, like commitment I’ve made is to clean my closet out. That closet’s needed to be cleaned out for three years.

John Maxwell:
Every time I go into it, it just looks at me and says, clean me out. Clean me out. And I’ve ignored it. But I got a little time. I’m going to do that. How about, oh, here’s a good one for you. Number four, be intentional in your adding value time. Okay.

John Maxwell:
People need encouragement and added value more than any other time. So why don’t you every day write down one name of a person that you need to encourage, a call that you need to make. Just a touch that say, I’m gonna add value to these people today. Get intentional. You’ll be surprised not only how it will help the people, but how it’ll help you. Number five. Okay, I’m a person of faith. You don’t have to listen to this, but I have what I call my faith time.

John Maxwell:
What am I going to do as a person of faith? Well, one of the things I’m gonna do is I’m gonna develop my trust muscle. I’m going to really work on that. And a trust muscle basically means I’m going to have to trust God to give me strength and peace when I don’t have all the answers. But I’m going to work on my trust muscles. I’m going to work on my gratitude now because gratitude is most hard to express during difficult times. And I’m going to work on my prayer life. Okay, the sixth thing I want you to work on is your thinking time. Your thinking time.

John Maxwell:
And I want you to put yourself through a positive grit. This morning I wrote three questions I want you to consider every day as you think. Question number one, how will this crisis make me better? It’s a great question. Give yourself 10 minutes, 15 minutes every day and say, okay, I’m going to write these questions down. I’m going to think upon this. How will this crisis make me better? There are answers. If you think about it, you’ll find them. Number two, how will I use this crisis to help other people? Wow, that’s huge.

John Maxwell:
And by the way, you’re going to get an abundance of answers in that because everybody needs help in a crisis. And number three, what action will I take? Oh my, this is great. What action will I take that will improve my situation? What action am I going to take that will just. What can I do that’ll just make me better?

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Mark Cole:
Hey, welcome back everyone. I promised you that these six things would not only take a bad situation and make it better. It really will. It’ll make life better. And I’ve watched John work very intentionally with these different times throughout the year. And so Chris, I’m really excited not only just to unpack this from the concept of taking something bad and making it better, but just upsizing, making better, improving every area of our life. And so I’m excited about getting into it. So let’s go.

Chris Robinson:
Yeah, well, I love this topic because, you know, bad times come for everyone. And so it’s either one of three things that are happening right now. You’re either in a bad time right now, you’re coming out of a bad time right now, or you’re getting ready to go into a bad time. So it’s coming so if you’re watching today and say, hey, look, things are good right now, just wait, it’s coming. I love the outline of what he said that we can do during these bad times. And, you know, it touches a wide range of areas, but at the same time, it gives us a battle plan, I think not just in the bad times, but also in the good times for us to be intentional about these six specific areas.

Mark Cole:
Well, and, you know, even as you were saying that, I was thinking about. I was thinking about some bad times, actually, that I’ve really led through. So sorry about the downer, but I was thinking about that, and then I was thinking about the times to where my mindset was prepared, where I didn’t know the bad time was coming. But because my mindset was prepared for the bad time that I didn’t know was coming, the bad time wasn’t as bad. And so I agree with you that those three areas, you’re either in a bad time, so sorry, you’re either coming out of it. Oh, hallelujah, happy day, let’s go. Or guess what? Get ready, it’s coming. So I hate to be a prophet of doom, but, yeah, I’ll tell you this.

Mark Cole:
I do believe when you have systematic approaches to these six areas, I think the bad are not as low. I don’t think they’re as bad as what they would be without it.

Chris Robinson:
Right. Well, let’s dive into it. The first area that he talks about, we won’t get a chance to talk about all six, but the first one I want to talk about is personal time. He referenced his books for me years ago. I used to always ask every single successful person, I would get around, hey, what book are you reading? What book are you reading? It’s good in philosophy, but things change when I begin to filter what it is that I was reading from these people. Because what would happen is they would tell me, hey, here’s a good book. I would begin to read that book, and there would be no application to my life at that time. And so I was off.

Chris Robinson:
And so what I began to do was either read towards my problem. So if I’ve got six books, they’re all lined up in that specific problem, or they’re towards my passion. So, hey, there’s a stack of pickleball books at the house that lead you down there. But what happens when we do that? We move through that content faster and we’re able to apply it easier because of what John teaches us about layered learning in your personal time. When it comes to Books. How do you kind of prepare yourself and tell us about some of your personal growth time?

Mark Cole:
Well, first I want to make sure everybody caught what you just said because it’s really good. I read according to my problems or my passion and it makes reading more enjoyable, it makes it more applicable and it makes it more effective. In other words, you do more because there’s more content that you want to gain, especially on the problems. You want to solve the problem, you want to fulfill the joy. So I love that as just a framework. When I look at reading, Chris, or when I look at personal time, I sound much more anal and much more structured and put together perhaps than I am or maybe I really am. The jury, I guess is out as I thought about that. But I get really passionate at the beginning of the year of the components that’s going to drive my content intake.

Mark Cole:
And so I link that back to a process I talk about quite often. My year end review, my life planning. It really drives the books and the subject matter of what I’m going to consume. I’m a guy that I don’t spend my personal time on golf. I don’t spend my personal time, I mean anytime I’m going to play golf, a lot of times it’s begrudgingly because my golf game’s so bad right now. And it’s begrudgingly by the people that have to play with me because my golf game is so bad. And it’s begrudgingly to the groundskeeper because what they have to do to the ground once I am done because my golf game is so bad right now. Have I mentioned my golf game’s bad right now? So in fact I tell people often golf is not my hobby because I would not lament a hobby like that.

Mark Cole:
It is something that is necessary. Many times what I have found in personal time is really get rolling up my sleeves and solving problems and getting into a leadership piece is what energizes me, it’s what fulfills me. It’s what rejuvenates me, is really getting into that. I guess I’m a glutton for punishment, but I really love that. So with my personal time, what I use for my personal time is alone time. I’m an outgoing person, but I have found that when I can get some time to refresh and really focus on some things that I want to accomplish, I get much more effective. So I don’t do a lot of tv, I don’t do a lot of movies. I do movies with a purpose sometimes read a lot and think A lot is how I get that.

Mark Cole:
So that goes into thinking a little bit that John finished with. But I get really focused on key relationships one on one time with myself and then focused on solving problems to really make use of my personal time.

Chris Robinson:
Yeah, I love that. I love that. You know, he talked about family as well. You were on the road a ton. Yeah, I’m on the road a ton of talk to me about the intentionality of when you do get back home. How are you intentional on your return?

Mark Cole:
Yeah, well, my return is effective because of how intentional I am on the front end. You know, John says it often. We’ve heard him on this podcast. You’re either preparing or repairing. And so you’re either going to repair the fact that you have been gone a long time or you’re going to prepare for the fact you’re traveling and out of the house for a while so that when you come back, you’re not repairing from what you’ve done. So let’s start there because I do have something I think will help those of you that travel or those of you that are very busy. You have a lot going on. And so balancing things at home or keeping the family engaged in what you do is somewhere that you need some help there.

Mark Cole:
I started so when Stephanie and I got married, I had a daughter, 11 years old. And so coming out of the gates, already traveling a little bit, I began something that continued with our baby daughter that’s now in college and that is continuing now with. I’ve shared, I think, on the podcast that we’re spending a lot of time parenting our four grandchildren today, this season. And so I’ve spent. I spend a lot of time preparing with all my travel. I started something again 20 years ago that continue today. I sit the family down before I leave and we had this family meeting of what are the key points when dad’s gone, when GPA is gone. And I’ll walk them through each day and I’ll say, gang, at one o’ clock on Thursday is when my meeting with the president of Argentina is going to be.

Mark Cole:
And that’s where we’re people of faith. That’s where I really need you praying. And this is what we’re trying to accomplish here. What I watched is as my daughters, none of my grandkids have phones yet. Well, maybe one of them does. And who knows? I’ve been traveling for a week, maybe more of them do now. But this is the point in the day that is going to be really important. I’m meeting with the president this is what we’re trying to accomplish.

Mark Cole:
And if we accomplish this, then 200 of our coaches are going to go down and it’s going to be huge. And we’re going to see country and kids just like you that you’ve never met. It’s going to be learning values each and every day. And I cast the vision of what could happen if this meeting goes well.

Chris Robinson:
That’s good.

Mark Cole:
Now what happens When Macy got her cell phone, Macy would text me five minutes before the meeting, say, dad, just so you know, I know you’re going in your meeting. I’m praying for you. This was an 11, 12, 13 year old girl that was engaged with me at that time of the day and she said, we’re going to win this thing. We. I’m the only one going in here. Oh, no, no, no. She was going in with me. And then one hour later, two hours later, later that evening, she’d text me and say, how was our meeting? Our meeting, it was her language.

Mark Cole:
She was in the room with me. We would come back, we would celebrate, we wouldn’t go eat because dad had came back. We would go eat because dad successful. And so our re entry was all about the success of what our family was a part of. And so just last night I got in from, I think it was a seven day trip, walk in the door and the first question out of the deal was not for my grandkids saying, hey, what’d you bring this? What little trinket did you get? They were like, hey, how was that meeting in Reno? How was that meeting out there in Nevada? What happened was Mr. Tebow, Tim Tebow was there. Was Mr. Tebow there? And can we see a picture? And that was kind of the first question coming in was what was accomplished there? So we’ve been really intentional in making our travel about the family accomplishment, not just about the trip that we took or the destination.

Mark Cole:
Another thing on family travel that I hope will help some of you is I learned this from John. John doesn’t take a family vacation that he does not have. Every family member answer to question, what did you love? What brought you pleasure? What did you learn? What was the thing that you took away that makes your knowledge base that much greater? Well, we’re very intentional even on vacation to be learning something and to be enjoying something.

Chris Robinson:
Yeah, I love that I integrated the what do you love and what do you learn with the family? But man, what you shared in these first two points is for me to take home right now. That’s something that I Do not do at this point. You know, I’ve been very intentional over the years about what I’m going to take and when I’m going to go. And oftentimes, you know, I. They understand that I’m going, but I’ve never looped them in to, hey, this is what’s happening. This is why I’m going. This is when it’s happening. I’m going to integrate that today.

Mark Cole:
Good. Because let me give it. Thank you. I’m glad. But let me give you an example. And I love all of our podcast family. I love each and every one of you. But, Chris, when you go home today, say, guys, I know I wasn’t at dinner, but let me tell you what our family did while I was missing dinner.

Mark Cole:
Over 100,000 people will hear what happened for the podcast that we recorded today. And our family was able to impact 100,000 other families that will listen to the podcast and go do something intentional about their family time. And when I can go home and tell my kids that tonight, and they probably won’t care tonight because they had dinner with me last night and they don’t care what I did today. I’m just home tonight. And that really is the case sometimes. Sometimes I give them a break because they’re like, okay, it’s a lot. It’s a lot. Just glad you’re home.

Chris Robinson:
Just glad you’re home.

Mark Cole:
But sharing that with them and engaging them in the journey, man, there’s nothing like it.

Chris Robinson:
Yeah, I love that. I absolutely love it. So what were the key points of the meeting and what are we trying to accomplish? Hey, I’m integrating that into my life today.

Mark Cole:
Good, man. Good. I love it.

Chris Robinson:
You know. You know, the fourth one he talked about was adding value and being intentional about adding value to people every single day. How do you make sure that that isn’t just a cliche that we say around here, but you actually implement that and do that?

Mark Cole:
Yeah. And it flows off the tongue so well for us. And I have to slow down when John gives the intentionality around that, the. The taking it and doing it in a crisis. In other words, it’s in the renewed focus of application to where I get really energized with this, because around here we go every day we add value. Every day we think of ways to add value. Every day we do things that add value to people. Every day we challenge others to add value to people.

Mark Cole:
And it really does flow. All of us flow off of the tongue to where it creates almost what we call a leadership bubble. Around here, we’re in a value add bubble.

Chris Robinson:
Yeah.

Mark Cole:
And I. I got to remember, number one, how blessed we are because of that. Chris, it really is a blessing to be in an environment. You were just showing me your website. I can’t wait to have you on here to talk about the book that’s coming out. Guys, we got a lot to talk about with Robinson over the next little while. I call you Robinson in the office. Chris Robinson, podcast family.

Chris Robinson:
There’s multiple.

John Maxwell:
Chris.

Mark Cole:
There are multiple. Well, you know, why didn’t. Hey, that’s right here last week in our podcast family. That’s right. In our podcast family. We have to say Robinson and goatee, too, because we got you Chris’s. But we’ll talk more about that soon. But it’s this a real privilege of what we get to do that really does create this bubble.

Mark Cole:
Almost what is the Truman show kind of experience. Right. If you ever saw that movie, the Truman Show. And I have to slow down because we’re talking about doing things that add value to people, having. Adding value of time when we’re turning bad into better. And all of a sudden, this concept of bubbling around and being all positive and exciting and adding value to you and looking for ways to add value to you when all you want to do is lick your wounds and deal with the crisis and still be consistent in adding value to people. Time is tremendously difficult. I’ll never forget John’s walking on stage in Houston, Texas, several years ago.

Mark Cole:
He’s walking on stage, and I just got terrible news. And John and I have an agreement that says we don’t protect one another from the difficult just because we’ve got opportunity ahead of us. We don’t even time difficult. We deal with difficult, real time. Because John believes a leader’s capacity should allow them to deal with difficulty in the moment. I’m not as good with John on that. I’ve instructed my inner circle. Can I focus on speaking before you hit me with the bombshell? Because I’m not as good as John.

Mark Cole:
And that’s a true story. John wants to know immediately. So literally, he is 20 seconds from going on stage, and I say, hey, John, she’s got terrible news. And it was bad news. It was millions of dollars of decision. It was mischaracterization. John was being accused of things that were not true. It was terrible.

Mark Cole:
And I give John the notice, and he went, whoa. And I watched John visibly just kind of catch his breath. He said, we got this. Let me go help some people. Because that’s what it’s all about. Anyway, went out and nailed it. Came off stage. I was like, I do what I do always with John.

Mark Cole:
I’m the cheerleader. I’m backstage. Man, that was incredible. He said, okay, okay, now this is you. This is what I’ve been thinking the whole time I was up there. And I went, man, when I’m on stage, all I’m thinking about is, don’t mess up Mark. Don’t use some Southern slang that everybody’s gonna go, what was that?

Chris Robinson:
Turn right.

Mark Cole:
And. But so he’s up there and he’s solving the problem because he’s in his sweet zone and he’s doing it. Here’s my point. The worst of times should not stop us from daily finding ways to add value to people. Recently we had a high level leadership position we were filling in our nonprofit. And I brought in four people. I was doing the interview. And on this it was kind of fun.

Mark Cole:
I haven’t been doing an interview in a long time. And so it’s fun. I’m driving the interview process with these hires based on what we’re asking them to do. And I brought them in and I sat each one of them down and I said, hey, I’ve got to tell you something. I’m going to be looking for things in this interview that will give me the ability to give you things to go work on from a personal development standpoint. And I’m not critiquing you. The things that I note will not stop you or hinder you from being considered as job performance. I just have to look for ways to give you a chance to better yourself in the interview to a T.

Mark Cole:
Every one of them at the end of the interview, text me or called me back or emailed me back and said that moment that at the end of the interview, I said, hey, here’s a couple of things that I noted that you might want to work on. Here’s a couple of resources that would help you. That moment of you doing that let me know a statement that I say all the time, you guys are the real deal. You’re a product of the product. And I went. And so I was telling that to another call that I was doing a teaching on. And they went, are you really for real that you did that? I said, absolutely. And they asked me to build it out for them.

Mark Cole:
And I did. I gave them a couple of scenarios from that. When we were done, the guy asked me, roy, what’s his name? And Roy said, why do you do that? And he said, aren’t you just trying to find the best candidate. And I said, no, I’m trying to add value to people and develop people. That’s my product. And if I can’t do that in an interview to find out if people really will respond to that, I don’t know if they’re a good candidate or not.

Chris Robinson:
Yeah, Love it.

Mark Cole:
It was a light bulb moment for Roy, but what it was for me was a test. Am I intentionally, in the good times, the bad times, got a role I need to fill? Am I still looking for ways to add value to people? And the answer is yes.

Chris Robinson:
Yeah. You know, in looking for ways to add value to people, you know, we, again, we do say this phrase all the time, and we can teach it, but then sometimes it has to be caught. People have to see that interview in order for that to happen and go, wait a minute, I could do this one day when I’m a leader. I can resource people. We’re spending time together, and every choice that we’ve made in life has led to this moment. So, you know, why don’t we add value to that? I think about a time when we were out playing golf with John, and we were, you know, each and every single hole, he would go off and I’d see him talking with the groundskeeper. And one of the times I saw him reach into his pocket and he had been doing this the whole time. And he tipped the landscaping guy.

Chris Robinson:
And I said, john, did you just tip the landscaping guy? He says, yeah. He goes, I wanted to add value to people today. He goes, and guess what? Nobody ever tips the landscaping people.

Mark Cole:
Isn’t that crazy?

Chris Robinson:
He goes, that stands out more than. And he wasn’t doing it for, you know, he didn’t tell us, hey, I’m going to go tip the landscaping guy. But that was a moment of which I caught just another way to add value to people. So you have to be intentional about adding value to people, but also be on the lookout from others of how they add value to people to integrate that into your life.

Mark Cole:
Yeah, for sure. You know, I want to take just a moment. I want to share with you a way to expand your time the way. The way to grow your time. And so I’m going to talk about the 15 laws of growth a minute. But then I do want to wrap with thinking time. So, by the way, if you do want to expand yourself in one of these areas and how to think turning bad into better, we do have a promotion product that we want to expose you to for a next step. Today’s Podcast, and it’s called the fifteen Laws of Growth.

Mark Cole:
It’s a digital product and boy, we’ve discounted this down 20%. It’s down to $99 from 500. And we want to make that available to you. Go check it out. You can get that as one of our podcast families for that. And I, and I wanted to give you that because. What are you doing? And I’m looking right at the camera. If you’re not watching the podcast today, I’m looking straight through your audio device.

Mark Cole:
I am staring into your ear right now. And really what I’m doing that for is because I really want to challenge you. I believe that bad times are not as bad as they should be. And what I mean by that is if we can get intentional in these six areas that John has shared with us and begin to create disciplines in our life, we can mitigate. We can actually limit the fallout of bad times because of great disciplines in our life. And probably there’s none greater than this. Thinking time, Chris. It’s what goes on between your ears.

Mark Cole:
It’s what’s in your thoughts that shape your outcome. I was just recently with Nito Cobain and he said, let me tell you something. The setup is everything to anything. The setup. He said, it’s all about how you set something up. It’s all about how you position it, is what he was saying. He said, positioning is truly the art of the sale. It’s the art of enrollment.

Mark Cole:
It’s the art of what we do around here. At High Point, what Nita was saying is how you see things is how you’ll do things. How you think about things is how you will solve things, how you respond to things is how you will be defined by the difficulty and I have found of all these disciplines, my personal time, my family time, my catch up time, my value time, my faith time of. Of all of these disciplines. How I. And if I spend time with think, time is the difference maker. It’s why every single year I wrap up the year, I begin the year in a cone of silence so I can be overwhelmed with the volume of my thoughts. I want to be overwhelmed with the volume of my thoughts.

Mark Cole:
And podcast family, podcast listener, I want you to be overwhelmed with the volume of your thoughts. Because when you can begin to think through and listen through and work through, you’ll begin to make a difference. It’s what Theodore Roosevelt said. He said, it’s only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things. I believe what Roosevelt was telling us is we can turn bad into better. But it is going to take disciplines and systems and thinking times for us to be able to make that happen. We had a great comment today from Josh. Josh said what? Well, it’s from the podcast, what all leaders have in common.

Mark Cole:
And what Josh said is, I love listening to John’s teachings. They make a difference. And I agree they make a difference. But I’m going to tell you his thoughts or, excuse me, his teaching doesn’t come from his hip pocket. It comes from think time. I’ve been with him enough to know he is spending time in thinking, thinking. And that’s what I want you to do today. So, hey, if you’re in a bad situation, turn it into better.

Mark Cole:
Or if, like Chris said, you’re getting ready to go through a bad situation and he just discouraged you like crazy, it’s okay. You can make it better. And by the way, I believe that leaders are dealers of hope. And that’s what I want you to be. That’s what I want us to be to those that we are influencing, because everyone deserves to be led well.

Transcript created by Castmagic.