Maxwell Leadership Podcast: The Value of Contextual Leadership

Mark Cole:
Welcome to the Maxwell Leadership Podcast. We’re the podcast that commits ourselves to add value to you so that you will multiply value to others. Today I’m joined with Traci Morrow as we co host an exciting lesson that John is going to talk on. The value of contextual leadership. Oftentimes in leadership, the why behind the decision is as important as the decision itself. But always in leadership empowerment, the why is just as important as the what. So today, John Maxwell is going to go through contextual leadership and will identify nine ways to give context to a leadership decision. I’m really excited because Traci and I will come back and we’ll begin to live that out so that it can apply to your life and to your leadership.

Mark Cole:
If you would like to download the free bonus resource for this episode or you would like to watch this episode on YouTube, go to MaxwellPodcast.com/Context. Now, here is John Maxwell.

John Maxwell:
I’m going to teach a lesson today that I sure wish somebody would have taught me 25, 30 years ago. Cause it could have really helped me in seeing the big picture. It could have helped me in making decisions. And so I’m going to teach a lesson called the Value of Contextual Leadership. Now, I usually don’t like words like contextual. It’s kind of a big word. And I’m kind of a simple person. I like to kind of break it down.

John Maxwell:
But when Mark and I are talking about decision making in our organization, the word context comes up continually. Mark will come to me and he’ll give me a scenario of maybe a decision that needs to be made. And I’ll say, now, Mark, I need context on that. And when I’m asking for context, I’m really asking for, give me the total picture. Give me all the factors. All may be too strong. Give me most of the factors that I need to know to understand the situation so that I can make the right decision. So what this lesson is going to do is so practical.

John Maxwell:
This is going to talk to you about what I call contextual channels. Channels that help us to understand context. For us to understand context. Here’s what we need. Okay, number one, there’s what the first channel is. What what I call just purely informative context. It’s just what it sounds like. Informative context gives you information and it’s basic information of what you and I need to see the big picture.

John Maxwell:
For example, I do this weekly. I’m doing what I call pre calls with companies, organizations that I speak for. And maybe I’m going to be there in a month. And so we have what I call a pre call. And the pre call is very simple. I, I want to know what they need from me. I already have the date and the place and the company. But.

John Maxwell:
Okay, do you have a theme? If you have a theme, tell me what your theme is. Maybe I can do a lesson with your theme and then just share me. What do you want to get accomplished in there? When I’m done, what would you like to say happened? I mean, so talk to me about what your expectations are. And so I’m asking questions. In fact, they’re very surprised because if it’s a 30 minute call, 20 minutes, it’s just me asking them questions. And I got my little four color pin and my legal pad out and I’m just taking little notes. Now what am I doing? I’m getting information, context. To make good decisions, to give leadership and give direction.

John Maxwell:
You just have to have information. So what do I need to know? That that’s kind of, that’s kind of where it starts. Okay. Number two is historical context. This is all about background. This is all about yesterday, it’s not about today. You know, there’s a statement that says, before you tear down a fence, find out why they put it up. Just don’t go somewhere and tear down the fences.

John Maxwell:
I don’t like the fence. Well, go figure out why they put that up now. Now when you figure out why they put it up historically, now that you have the background, you may go tear it down. It’s okay. But you better don’t tear it down till you figure out why it was put there in the first place. So now this is talking about yesterday. What do I now need to know about yesterday that’s going to affect the decision that I’m making today? That’s very important. You got to know what went on before you.

John Maxwell:
Why was the fence built? The third context is situational context and situation. Now this is okay if it’s handled correctly, you really bring growth to your organization. If it’s handled not correctly, you can certainly bring grief. This is what is happening right now that I just need to know. Because what is happening right now is usually what’s on the mind of people more than anything else they’re concerned with. Well, this just happened. And so now I’m looking around, I’m saying what do I see is happening right now? And whatever that situation is, it begins to help give me direction on how I need to, how to lead. The fourth context that really helps your channel that you want to have is what I would call collaborative context.

John Maxwell:
That’s where you sit with people and you share, okay, you have conversations with people and what you’re doing here is you’re coming together and you’re asking them questions and you’re getting different perspectives and viewpoints and understandings. And so collaboration is so important in understanding how to lead and how to make decisions. Now let me just say this. Of all my things, of all my contextual stuff that I want to bring in to my leadership life, probably collaboration is my favorite. I probably like to collaborate with people more than anything else, with our team, with our leaders. I love collaboration because it broadens my perspective. You sit down and you talk and get different viewpoints and all of a sudden you see things a little differently. It shows my team that I value their opinion.

John Maxwell:
When I bring my team together, say, let’s all talk about this. What do you think we ought to be doing? Gosh, that just puts value on what their opinion is. It increases my options because you get more options when you get different perspectives. And it just helps me improve my contact and grow as a communicator. Okay, let me go to number five, immediate context. Nick Saban, who is the coach for Alabama in college. Just in fact, he just retired last year. But I’ve watched him in games many times.

John Maxwell:
If a player does something wrong on the field, when that player comes to the sideline, coach will stop coaching the sideline. He’ll have one of his assistants kind of watch the team for maybe a minute and he’ll go sit down with the player. And I know what he’s doing. Immediately he’s saying, okay, let me tell you what happened on that last play. Let me tell you why you didn’t block that guy or whatever. And he understands the value of just immediately taking care of what happened. I think sometimes, well, I was never in favor of like 6 month reviews. I know that companies have them, but I, and I just think it’s much better to say we’ll fix it now.

John Maxwell:
I mean, so I tell people all the time, don’t worry. I mean, if I call you in for a meeting, I’m not going to take something six months ago. I’m going to tell you right now what I think you did well, what you didn’t do well, what I think maybe it could be better to maybe be changed. That’s immediate content. Then there’s the inquiring context. That’s questions. That’s where again, that’s where you remove the assumption out of, out of leadership. Again, that’s where you hear me talk about what do leaders do? They ask questions.

John Maxwell:
Why do they ask questions? So they can listen, learn, and then they lead. Leaders who don’t listen will eventually because you’re not listening, you’ll eventually be surrounded by people who have nothing to say. Why do they have nothing to say? Because you don’t listen. You don’t have an inquiring context. Number seven, the seventh channel is the experiential channel. This is where you ask people who have had experiences in the past to give you kind of their thoughts and what they’re thinking. I don’t do this often. I think I’m going to read something to you out of this is an old thing.

John Maxwell:
When I wrote the book Failing Forward. Now if you’ve read the book Failing Forward, you may remember this story in it because it’s in it. It’ll take me two minutes. I’m going to read it to you. Just listen for a moment. Business professors Gary Hamill and CK Perhalid have written about experiment that was conducted with a group of monkeys. Four monkeys were placed in a room that had a tall pole in the center of it, and suspended at the top of the pole was a bunch of bananas. One of the hungry monkeys started climbing the pole to get something to eat, but just as he reached out to grab a banana, he was doused with a torrent of cold water.

John Maxwell:
Squealing, he scampered down the pole and abandoned his attempt to feed himself. Each monkey made a similar attempt, and each one was drenched with cold water. And after making several attempts, they finally gave up. Then researchers removed one of the monkeys from the room and replaced him with a new monkey. As the new monkey, as the newcomer, began to climb the pole, the other three would grab him and pull him down to the ground. And after trying to climb the pole several times and being dragged down by the others, he finally gave up and never attempted to climb the pole again. One by one, the researchers replaced the original monkeys with the new ones, and each time a new monkey was brought in, he would be dragged down by the others before he could reach the bananas in time. The room was filled with monkeys who had never received a cold shower.

John Maxwell:
None of them would climb the pole, but none of them knew why. That’s a powerful illustration, isn’t it, of how experience kind of absolutely influences our life, either in a positive or negative way. Number eight is relational context. Relational context is, again, perspective. Here’s a relational context question that I ask my team all the time. What’s it like to be on the other side of me. I know what it’s like to be me. But what’s it like when you sit across the table from me? You’re not me.

John Maxwell:
What’s it like to be on the other side of me? What am I missing? These are all kind of relational context questions. And basically, you know, here, let me put a chair beside, sit down beside me. Let’s have a conversation. This kind of context is. Here’s what this is. This is powerful. You explain the why behind the what you see, you make a decision. But when you explain why you make the decision now, that connects, that’s relational with them.

John Maxwell:
That’s absolutely huge. By the way. Number nine is future context, which is nothing but vision, you know, okay, hey, just like I want a historical context, what’s behind I want now I want future context. Well, what do we think is in front of us? What do we think is before us? So I gave you there kind of a context chart, okay, for leadership information. What basics do I need to know before I start history? What happened yesterday that could affect today? Situational context. What is changing that might consider me to change now? I mean collaborative context, who am I talking to and listening to? That’s giving me the perspective, immediate context. What is happening now that I need to adjust to? Inquiring context, what questions will remove our assumptions? Experience, context, what are we doing right now that’s making us better? Relational context are the main perspectives being considered. And then future, knowing all the factors today, what would I do in the future? So that’s, I rushed through it so I got a lot of content.

John Maxwell:
It’s a little bit of a leadership art lesson. But anyway, I hope that you really understand now that in consideration in all leadership, the more context you have, the better leadership that you can give and to the people, the more leadership decisions that you can make. So that’s the lesson and I’m sticking by it.

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Mark Cole:
Hey, welcome back everyone. I really am excited been listening to this lesson. I remember John and I discussing this lesson on a plane and just Going, John, you’ve always helped me to understand why you make the decisions. In fact, I told John, the reason I today am able to make 97% of the decisions we make in our company without John is because he spent so many times earlier in life, earlier in my leadership, giving me context. Today, many of my leadership decisions are made by others, made by Kimberly, my executive partner, or Jake or Jared on our leadership team. And that’s because we take time on the front end to give context so that on the back end, decisions are made from a place of empowerment. So today, I’m super excited. In fact, I’m reminded of Margaret Wheatley’s quote that says, leadership is always dependent upon the context, but the context is established by relationships.

Mark Cole:
And so, Traci, I’m excited to dig into this lesson with you today. Thanks for being with us.

Traci Morrow:
I’m so pleased to be here. I’m cracking up. I even wrote it down that you said 97% of the decisions that you make are because of John’s influence. How did you come up with that percentage?

Mark Cole:
Because I truly will go into any decision, and for several years, I would take decisions that I made in groups of 10, and I would literally make over nine of the decisions without even needing John to speak into it. And so, yeah, it’s truly about three out of every hundred that John goes, hey, I probably need to give you some more context on that right there.

Traci Morrow:
You’re like, 3%.

Mark Cole:
I’ve got this 3%, man, I’m doing it. I’m doing it.

Traci Morrow:
Well, there is so much meat to this. We should dive right in. So I’m thinking for our listeners or all of us, we’ve got a decision to make. That’s what he set us up for. These are the questions that he asks to get context when he has a decision to make with you, Mark, or. Or on his own or with you, kind of helping you as you’re processing through together. And so the first one that he starts out with is really gathering information. Why do you think the question that he asks is, what do I need to know? I’ve heard John ask that question so many times in a meeting that I’ve been in, just listening in as you guys process through, or if he’s asked me something, if he’s been helping me with my team, why do you think that asking this question is so difficult for leaders? I think a lot of leaders just that I’ve seen anyway or sat under, they just rush right through and they.

Traci Morrow:
They jump right to it. Why do you Think asking what do I need to know is so difficult rather than just assuming that they know what they need to know.

Mark Cole:
I think it’s because of the pressure we put on ourself that comes with a leadership position or a leadership title. By the very nature a leader believes that she or he should have all the answers and people are coming to them for the answers. And when a leader takes a humble place or a humble posture that says what do I need to know? They actually feel like they’re not holding up a leadership responsibility of that is knowing more and before anybody else in the room. And so I think it’s very vulnerable to say what do I need to know? That’s why I’ve always coupled that question that John asked with his being comfortable in his own skin of his security that he has this self assuredness that John has. He has so much self confidence in and certainty in his leadership that he’s able to ask that question and not attribute it to insecurity or a lack of a leader’s responsibility to know more than anyone else in the room. And so it was hard for me too to go into this informative thing because I felt like I was supposed to be the smartest person in the room. I very rarely am. And it’s liberating to say that, but not at first.

Mark Cole:
It was maturity that allows me to be liberated in saying I’m not the smartest person in the room. And that doesn’t make me less of a leader. It is not, it’s counterintuitive to what leadership’s all about.

Traci Morrow:
Do you think that’s something that comes with age? Like you have a multi generational team. Would you say that you’re equally as comfortable with a new hire who is younger who would be asking that same, that same question, who you’ve just hired maybe into a position that you, you hope that they’re going to know something, but are you equally as comfortable with them coming in right off the bat saying what do I need to know?

Mark Cole:
Yeah, it’s funny, I don’t believe it comes with age, but I do believe it comes with maturity. And isn’t it funny that we see sometimes those as interrelated? And John says it like this, he debunks that by saying, hey, people think that quality, or excuse me, that people get good as they get older. And he says, I know a lot of people getting older, they’re not getting any better. So it really is not age, but it is maturity. And maturity can come with a lot of losses and a Lot of things that you go through that gives you security. Maturity can come with age. Maturity comes with a lot of experience sometimes. I think maturity also comes with some characteristics that stabilize you.

Mark Cole:
I know a lot of old Souls that are 25, 30 years of age and here’s what I mean by that. They act well beyond their years of experience or of living in their leadership. There’s just a maturity to them. And so I do think that the more mature you get, the more you want more information because you don’t want to miss something and you want to let others feel like they’re contributing, even at the informative level.

Traci Morrow:
I agree with that and I want to say give a shout out and a freedom to our young old souls who are listening. That old soul mentality and that mature leadership of our younger leaders doesn’t mean that you showed up and you had all the answers. It meant you showed up with a settled maturity in your position that you were comfortable enough to ask the questions. What do I need to know? So I just want to undergird that because if you are somebody listening in the car or you’re, you know, in your parents car in your 15, 16, 17, or you’re in your 20s or 30s and you’re listening and this is a new thought to you, I want you to really feel settled in that because that’s, I think that is so important to empower our leaders. Okay, so then he talks about historical, the context, all about yesterday where he talks about you don’t come in and just pull down a fence before you ask what it’s for. Have you ever seen this? Personally, I don’t know if you want to take a personal story on this, but have either in your own, in your own story or in as somebody sitting under a leadership where you saw somebody come in and just pull it down. Have you ever come in to be the change right away and pull down a fence way too soon that you would want to share a lesson that you learned or maybe something that you’ve seen?

Mark Cole:
Well, I’ve seen it a lot of times to where myself and other leaders, they feel like they’ve got to come in and make a mark quick. We call it you got to get a quick win. And I agree with that. And oftentimes the way that a leader comes in to get a quick win is to debunk something that wasn’t working from other people and they go, oh well that’s not good, I can come in. Or they use the fact that some people were perform a previous leader was performing at a certain level. And they can come in and up it real quick and get that instant rapport and that great credibility and that I’m the knight in shining armor running in and I’m going to throw this thing out. And it’s a very real temptation. And a lot of times it’s very effective.

Mark Cole:
Here’s what you do. All the people that were championing that and defending that and supporting that gets an instant guard up with your leadership. And I’ve watched too many leaders in get an instant win by debunking yesterday’s strategy and putting on top a better strategy. And they undermined people and therefore lost relational equity that they didn’t have to lose. What we’ve done here at Maxwell Leadership is I have a rule by every leader that comes in at the executive level that they can change nothing. Not people, not strategy, and not plans for 90 days. Because it takes 90 days for you to understand why the fence was in place in the first place. I’ve had so many leaders that went, man, you’re holding me back, man.

Mark Cole:
There’s so much that I could get done and they really could. And there would be an instant win, but they would lose long term credibility. And I would rather for long term credibility in place of an instant win every single day. So that’s why we do put that in place. And it’s because to your question, I’ve made way too many mistakes in the first 90 days. And what drove the mistake was not the win or the loss, it was the long term credibility that I lost.

Traci Morrow:
Hmm. That’s so good. I know somebody needed to hear that. Okay, so moving forward, because we’ve got nine of them situational, he talks about asking good questions and assumptions. I made the note that assumptions can taint this if you aren’t asking great questions. And he hits on assumptions a little later. So we’ll maybe jump over that. Unless you had something that you wanted to.

Traci Morrow:
Okay, great.

Mark Cole:
I love it. I love to go to collaborative.

Traci Morrow:
Okay. Collaborative, yeah, Because John said this was his favorite. And I think collaborative is such an important one because this can be a scary one. I think John is so great at collaboration because he’s so great with people and he has such a Midas touch almost, but also he’s developed that. So I don’t want to make it sound too mystical or too much like, oh, it’s beyond people’s reach. Um, but it does broaden. He said it broadens his perspective and it increases options when you are collaborating with others. And so I think it would be worth it for us to spend a little time here.

Traci Morrow:
But I also feel like collaboration is where you really, when you are inviting other people in and asking lots of questions and getting a lot of different perspectives, that can be scary sometimes for a leader who has maybe a control issue or maybe has something where they feel like, oh man, if I open this up to the team, everybody’s going to come in with their opinion and then what am I going to do? Then people pleasers are going to be worried that if they don’t choose everybody’s their plan that people are going to be upset or the other people are going to feel like, oh my gosh, now I have all these great ideas, what am I going to do? So I feel like this is one that where you really need discernment. And if you are a person who can’t discern between all those, then you’re probably not collaborating because you’re nervous. But let’s talk about this. I can see why this would be scary for a leader. So can you just camp a little bit on the power of collaboration?

Mark Cole:
Yeah. So the power of collaboration that I’ve watched John model and true to me too is when you really have a mindset that the best idea wins, then you really know there is no way to live that out without collaboration. And I’ve just watched too many rooms completely turn when a direction was suggested, but yet input was invited to where there was a much better conclusion. I’ve just watched it way too many times compared to a room to where the direction is set and asked to be challenged so that we can move quickly and you just don’t get best idea because they’re in there going, man, is this a hill worth dying on. Oh my gosh, this leader’s already made their decision. Do I just need to wait for another day and collaborate? True collaboration from a contextual standpoint is the best way, if not the only way, for the best idea to win. Now I think the reason that someone can be effective, and this is why John’s commitment to this being one of his favorite contextual leadership traits, is because he doesn’t care who gets the credit. He just cares that the team is headed in the right direction.

Mark Cole:
He doesn’t care if his idea wins. He just wants the best idea to win. And there takes, there has to be a lot of security in a leader that can really understand that and allow it to win the day. The reason that so many leaders don’t allow collaboration to happen is, is because they get too set on their opinion and on their suggestion on how it should move forward. Just recently I was with one of our leaders and he asked me, I alluded to this in another podcast. He asked me the question, he said, hey, I observed you making a leadership decision the other day and I felt like that there was a better solution to what the direction you were setting. How should I best approach you when I feel like your direction needs to be challenged so that by collaboration we can come up with the best idea to win? And it was a great question. It was a very straightforward.

Mark Cole:
We had this long conversation, I’ll save it for another podcast. But here’s what this leader was really saying. I really wanted to collaborate with you on that, but I thought you were too close minded. What do I do in that setting? What Jared was illustrating to me in that conversation is, is in that setting, I was not interested in collaboration context, collaborative context. I was more interested in execution on my decision. And after he broke it down to me and we broke down that particular situation, he had a much better idea than the one I went to, went to the market with. And I lost the opportunity to really capture the initial market share grab because I was not interested in collaborative context.

Traci Morrow:
So let me ask you this, because this just happened in my team and I too had a very clear view of how I wanted things to go. But my team leads all stood in agreement that it should go differently and they were excited and jazzed about it. And to me, based on my past experience, I did not think that. I thought that was going to get just too out of, out of control. What they were, what they were planning and were excited about and had already picked a little traction up as they were experimenting with it. And I just could not see it. I wanted to collaborate, but to me it was like getting, it was getting too, too messy. And so I brought in somebody who, I highly valued their opinion to come in and say, like, can you please sit in on this meeting and listen in if I am being too closed to this idea? And in the end, this person said, I think you’re fighting an uphill battle, that the team is already excited and has momentum at their back.

Traci Morrow:
Why would you want to fight against that? I don’t understand your thinking. So I had to lay down what I saw because the rest of the team leads were like, we have momentum going. And so it’s the same kind of situation. Like in that situation, I was going to ask you, have you ever been in a situation where, where you just, you still saw it so clearly, but Everybody else didn’t. And you just had to say, okay, well, for the peace among the team and to give it a try, you just had to say like, okay, well, then I will lay that down and let everybody else. The majority wins. Have you ever been in a situation like that?

Mark Cole:
All the time. You know, we laughed about the 97% that John and I do, and he publicly says that number, and I publicly say that number because we took a body of work and over a series of times, we found out how many times he got back involved in it. John Maxwell would do things different than me. Probably six out of or seven times out of 10, he would say that. And that doesn’t make his way right or my way right. It just makes the person who has to do the work should win the game. So the 97. The 3% of times that John comes in, it’s because I was drifting on vision or on culture or on.

Mark Cole:
Are on characteristics that were very important to John, but on things getting done or whether it’s messy, whether it can be done a better way from John’s perspective, all that kind of stuff. John allows the person most responsible for executing and getting things done to win the game 97% of the time. So therefore, I don’t know all of your particular situation, but I just left it. Chances are it was more stylistic, are more operational in nature rather than vision in nature. And you should let the people that are most responsible win the day 97% of the time. And John has done that with me. Therefore, in a contextual situation that John loves, usually where he drives it is on opportunity and on vision, because he’s a better opportunist than I am. And he is the sole owner of the vision in those two areas.

Mark Cole:
John wins the day in collaboration on execution, implementation on stylistic. I win the day 97% of the time.

Traci Morrow:
This is very good for me. I mean, I. I did it. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like how it felt, I should say. But I think that’s. I think it’s important sometimes for the team to hear that it doesn’t always end on. And I just kept thinking, what would John do? What would John do? And this person was like, you have to just let it go.

Traci Morrow:
And so I’m saying that to somebody else out there, I had to let it go. May you just need to let it go to get unstuck and get. Keep moving again. Okay, we are. We’re about out of time, so we have five more to go. But I just want to Land on number six. Because I think removing assumption out of leadership is very important. Too many leaders, myself included in the past and.

Traci Morrow:
And still fight against assumption, taking an assumption out of leadership. And he says, why do they ask questions? Because so they can listen, learn, and lead.

Traci Morrow:
And I believe that so many leaders, and I’ve done this myself in the past, could do it exact opposite. They lead and then they learn, and then they listen. They learn the hard way and then they finally listen. Why do you think that we get this so backwards? And what can we do to set up a. Set ourselves up to succeed so that we learn to listen. And we learn to listen so that we can learn and then take those steps in leadership?

Mark Cole:
Yeah, you’ve heard it. I won’t teach it because you’ve heard it too many. Because people have done a good job teaching this. Ready, aim, fire. Ready, aim, fire, get ready, aim and then fire. But then there’s a lot of people that fire, aim and then get ready. Or there’s some people that aim and then aim and then aim and then aim, and they never fire. And you’ve heard people teach that.

Mark Cole:
And it’s fun and it’s humorous and it’s absolutely true. Yes, I do believe that what happens often in a leader’s life is they have such a propensity to action that they lead. Then they learn to make sure that they lead better. And they never listen. I mean, they just. What’s that word? That word is not in my vocabulary. A lot of leaders are like that because again, they have a propensity to action and they’re okay learning on the fly rather than learning before they activate. All very natural, very normal.

Mark Cole:
I think the reason John says this idea of listening is because we’re talking about context here. We’re talking about the idea of taking a team with you rather than pulling a team with us. And every leader should have a desire to take the team with you. No leader likes things to happen to them. They want things to happen with them. Well, guess what? The people you’re leading feel the same way. They want to feel a part of the decision. They want to feel a part of the journey.

Mark Cole:
They want to feel like they are going with you, not being driven, drug with you. And so I think what John is saying here, this inquiring context allows a leader to make sure that the team, one, feels heard, two feels like they’re apart, and three, feels like they are owning the outcome. So inquiring context allows you to, as a leader, to know where your team is but it allows your team to feel like they’re a part of where we’re going. I would say one thing on this, Traci, before we run out of time, in this inquiring context. Often because we talk about, you remove assumption out of leadership. And John and I talked a long time about this. You want to take assumption out of leadership, but you never want to take intuition out of leadership. And sometimes leaders get confused on assumption and intuition.

Mark Cole:
When I’m making an assumption, I am going to get it wrong often, and I’m going to leave collateral damage in the background. But if I numb my ability to intuitively lead from something, then that gut instinct that really serves leaders well begins to be minimized and therefore ignored. And therefore it stops being used and you lose it. I think you can lose intuition if you don’t operate in it periodically. But assumptions is where there is information at my disposal. And rather than go after that information, I just assume the information and execute. And often, not only am I wrong, but I lose credibility because other people in the room that I didn’t inquire contextually with knew that my assumption was wrong. And I lose credibility because I didn’t take time to get context and inquire on different ways to look at it.

Traci Morrow:
I think that’s a great thing to end on because I want to wrap that up, because my question was going to say, can you define the two? And you ended on that. And so I want to highlight that you talked about assumption. The difference between assumption, intuition being assumption is there’s information out there, but you don’t go after that information. You just act without it. And intuition is going with a leader’s gut, and you just, you know it and you go with it. It’s not like there’s information to be gathered necessarily. You just know and you go with that. I think that’s a very helpful discernment between the two.

Traci Morrow:
If it’s like, you know what? There is more, I could ask a couple more questions before I do this. If there’s not really a question, I think that’s helpful. Thank you.

Mark Cole:
That’s great. Yeah, you’re welcome. And just sort of kind of a wrap on that. I believe that an intuition still looks for context, looks for information, but can’t get it, but still knows that intuitively there’s something there. I need to go after this. An assumption makes the assumption that there is no more information and therefore doesn’t ask. If you’ve got an intuitive feeling, you still want to ask because you want to validate the intuition. If you’re making an assumption, you don’t want to ask because you’re afraid that what you’re assuming is not right.

Mark Cole:
And so often people think, oh, I’ve got an intuition, let’s go. No, you make it an assumption, so let’s go. An intuition says, hey, what am I missing right here? I feel like this is the way to go, but give me some information. There’s no information to have. Act with your intuition. Assumption is, I’m going. I’m not even going to assume there’s information. And you end up going, but yet there was information all over the place that you just left on the table.

Traci Morrow:
Oh, that’s even better. Because what you’re saying with assumption is you’re afraid for more information because you want to make this decision.

Mark Cole:
Intuition. You want more information.

Traci Morrow:
Keep feeding me information as I’m taking these steps. Excellent. That’s so good. Excellent. Bam.

Mark Cole:
Thank you so much. Hey, we had an episode recently called Become a World Class Leader and I’m gonna include that in the show notes today because it’s such a great augmentation, such a great supplement to what we’re learning today. And I wanna let you have that as a resource as well. Veronica gave us an incredible sort of feedback from Courage to continue another podcast that’s incredible that we’ll put in the show notes. Veronica says, so good Mark. Comparison is a fear that’s hard to get rid of. Taking a step to start is hard, but this is encouraging to take the step anyways. Veronica, you’re right.

Mark Cole:
You captured the spirit and the heart of that. For all of you that are out there listening and taking in our podcast, please on your podcast player give us a five star rating. Let us know that we’re doing well, but also let us know what we can be doing better. We’re constantly looking to improve. Improve. I believe great leaders are always improving because everyone deserves to be led well.