How to Lead in Difficult Times

Mark Cole:
Welcome to the Maxwell Leadership podcast. This podcast is truly about you. And today I want to thank you for being a part of this podcast. Some of you, this is your first time. Welcome. We’ve been waiting on you. Others of you have been here for quite some time. And either way, this podcast really is intended to add value to you so that you in turn, will go and multiply value to others.

Mark Cole:
My name is Mark Cole, and I’m privileged to be on the team with John Maxwell. And today he’s going to share something that I will think will help you today during a challenging time. Or for those of you that just finished a challenging time, you’ll look back and say, boy, I did that right, didn’t do that so well. Or maybe some of you are right on the edge of a pretty challenging time, because John’s going to share with us seven leadership practices that help us learn and lead our people when difficulty arises. Now, after John’s lesson, I’m joined today by Chris Gode, my friend, my buddy, my co leader. We’re going to discuss how we can apply this both to our life and to our leadership. I can’t wait for you to listen to this episode. Now, what you need to do, if you want to download the bonus resource, or if you want to watch us on YouTube, you can go to maxwellpodcast.com/lead and you’ll have all the bonus resources.

Mark Cole:
You’ll have the link to watch us on YouTube, and you’ll be able to take advantage of a discount on a book today. Now here we go. Here’s John in this lesson that will help us learn to lead better in difficult times.

John Maxwell:
Have you ever wondered, how would I handle myself in a time of crisis? Or have you ever wondered yourself, and this is more important in the leadership context with which I teach, have you ever asked yourself, how would I handle others in a time of crisis? Well, here’s what I know about crisis, and here’s what I know about leadership. In your notes, are you ready? A bad situation needs good leadership. Now, that’s just a simple thought, but it’s true. In times of crisis, there are some people emerge in a positive way, or they emerge beautifully as a leader. For some leaders, in your notes, a crisis will put them on top. Now let me say something else in your notes. For some leaders, a crisis will topple them, and all of a sudden, they go to the bottom. I’m gonna give you some leadership practices in times of crisis.

John Maxwell:
Here’s number one. Stand up and be seen. When the crisis occurs, the leader must be visible because the leader is a symbol of many things that gives the people security. Okay? Justice must not only be done, but must be seen to be done. The same goes for leadership. This is not the time to lock yourself away in strategy stations. It’s time to be visible. Now, what I’m saying is, in times of crisis, what does a leader do? A leader becomes extremely visible for the people.

John Maxwell:
You’re right out there where the people can see you, where they can touch you, because you give a sense of security. In fact, here in your notes, let’s go right straight to them. During a crisis, leaders serve as a repository of people’s fears, and they absorb uncertainty. When the people see the leader, there’s a great amount of security that is given. Leaders can also act as a mirror, reflecting a group’s anger, grief, resolve, or joy on a much larger scale than is available to most. Leaders say, in effect, I hear you. And what we’re really trying to say as a leader is when I say stand up and be seen, you will have fears, you will have questions. But as a leader, your first responsibility is not to display your fears or not to ask the questions.

John Maxwell:
It’s to show confidence and security. Things are going to be fine. We’re going to win this. We don’t have all the understanding of it yet, but trust me, we’re going to make it through. We’re going to be successful. That, I think, is extremely essential. As a leader, your decisions throughout life make you. Whether good or bad, a crisis reveals you.

John Maxwell:
If you’ve got the good stuff in you when the crisis comes, don’t go huddle over in the corner. Stand up. Be visual. If you’ve been putting good stuff in you that day, it’ll be squeezed out of you, and it’ll be an incredible blessing to the people that follow you. If you don’t have the good stuff in you that day, the bad stuff will be squeezed out of you. The second thing to do in a crisis is embrace brutal optimism. Now, let me read something for you here that’s gonna be, I think, very helpful. Let me explain what I call brutal optimism.

John Maxwell:
In the end, the best leaders combine two countervailing messages, basically saying, if you pay the price today, there will be success tomorrow. Now, question in your notes, how much emotion should a leader show the followers? I’m talking, obviously, during crisis, the answer, it’s okay to show quite a lot of emotion, but it’s not okay to show fear. And let me just talk to you about what happens when a leader shows fear. You see, fear constricts the mind, preventing it from doing two things. One, taking in new information, and two, fashioning creative responses. So when as a leader, I have fear, I shut off new information I can receive, and I also stymie creative responses that I should be given as leader. So fear paralyzes me. So when it comes to fear, it’s just huge as a leader, to be able to successfully not rid fear.

John Maxwell:
You’re not gonna rid yourself of fear, but to manage it correctly, people need to hear the bad news straight so that when they hear the good news, it means something. That’s a great statement. They need to hear the bad news straight so that when they hear the good news, it means something. That’s that brutal optimism that a leader must have. Always tell him reality with a little bit of faith mixed in it. Number three, leadership practices under times of crisis. Number three, stick to the facts. Stick to the facts.

John Maxwell:
Don’t get ahead of them. Don’t let them get ahead of you, and don’t bog down in them. Just stick to the facts. Don’t get ahead of them. Don’t let them get ahead of you. Don’t bog down in them. Okay. In your notes, nothing is scarier than a leader who offers reassurances that fly in the face of facts.

John Maxwell:
Oh, yes. To have their proper effects, words must be aligned with actions. So when I talk about sticking with the facts, in times of crisis, what you say and what you do has to fit. You gotta align your actions with your word. So you don’t get up in front of your people and say one thing and then show them a total different response. Because remember this, people will follow what you do, not what you say. Reassurance and security is not wrapped up in words. It’s wrapped up in actions.

John Maxwell:
Don’t tell your people to stay calm and panic. Don’t tell your people to stand still and run. You know, actions gotta align with words. Okay. Fourth practice in times of crisis for leadership is tell a story in a statement. The best leaders, what I’m saying here, use narratives, not PowerPoint slides, to inspire people. And they have the ability, in a sentence, to tell a story. For example, Abraham Lincoln’s story in 1861.

John Maxwell:
Here’s what he said. The union stands for liberty. Succession would destroy the union. Therefore, succession is a threat to liberty. What a great, classic statement. Or Churchill. Here was his story in 1942. This is not the end.

John Maxwell:
It is not even the beginning of the end, though it is perhaps the end of the beginning. He was explaining at that time what was ahead for them in World War two. These stories, in a statement, distinguish leadership from crisis management because they are, above all, forward looking. They tell a story, but the story is more than just what is. The story is what is to come. That’s what leaders see. A manager would tell you what is. A leader would tell you what is, but what also is to come.

John Maxwell:
Let me give you the fifth practice of leaders. In times of crisis. The bottom line comes second. When you have a crisis, leaders do not go to the bottom line issues, because many workers feel a company reveals its true color during a crisis. Companies that come off as insensitive or grudging run the risk of alienating employees permanently. Now, very simple. What I’m saying to you is, when the crisis comes, forget the bottom line, minister. The people care for the people.

John Maxwell:
Give them security. People don’t care about the bottom line during a crisis. They want to know, are they safe. They want to know, are they secure. They want to know, is there a way out? Is there hope? And great leaders understand that. And they have the ability to what maybe they would, in normal times, press that bottom line, or those results or that production. They let that all slide back, and now they’re into sharing and caring and loving and assuring and reassuring. That’s their whole mode of operation.

John Maxwell:
Practice number six. In times of crisis, link the ordinary to the extraordinary. Take what is ordinary and try to link it to that which is extraordinary. But what happens is when you take the extraordinary and link it to the ordinary, when you take the crisis and then somehow connect and kind of put the cookies on the lower shelf so everybody can get it, all of a sudden, everybody feels apart. And leaders do that exceptionally well. They let everybody have a piece of the action. And during the times of crisis, people want to do something, they want to say something, they want to express something. And as leaders, you have to give them that opportunity to share, to vent, to give, to do, to act.

John Maxwell:
And that’s how you link the extraordinary to the ordinary. In other words, make yourself as a leader, the conduit between what happened and what the people are feeling. And somehow let them touch, let them respond, let them feel the event and become a part of it. Okay? Now, when a crisis occurs, leaders must do three things, and I give them to you in sequence. First thought of a leader. When a crisis occurs, stabilize. Get everybody calm. Get everybody under control.

John Maxwell:
Stabilize the people. If you can, stabilize the situation. Once you feel that the stabilization has happened. Number two, organize. Now, you began to put gifted people in organized responses to begin to handle the issue. And then, thirdly, mobilize. Mobilize them. Link them up, let them go.

John Maxwell:
Okay. But always think of that in sequence. You stabilize, you organize, and then you mobilize. Number seven, one more thing that leaders must do during a crisis, and that is don’t overreach. Don’t do more than you need to be doing. And this is a timing issue. This is almost an art issue. But let me explain what I mean by don’t overreach.

John Maxwell:
And I think you’ll have it. So you’ve done everything right. You’ve earned your leadership merit badge, and now your people are giving you a standing ovation. Here’s the next piece of advice. They’re not really cheering for you. They’re cheering for themselves and for the group’s ability to unite and persevere under a threat. Lose sight of that, and you violate the delicate compact between leader and lead. As a leader, if you do it right in a crisis, and this is so true of what we’ve already read, they’re not really cheering for you.

John Maxwell:
They’re cheering for themselves. They’re doing what they thought was not possible. They’re living, behaving, acting, responding on a higher level than they thought would happen. And so when they’re all excited and you brought them through a tough time, and it was a dark day, and the valley was low and the going was rough, you know what? As a leader. Oh, yeah, they’re thanking you. Yeah, thanks. We like you, leader. But really, what they’re saying is, we did it.

John Maxwell:
And you overreach. As a leader, when you make yourself more important than the event, you just led them through. Understand, the only reason you got a lead was because there was a problem. So don’t overestimate your value and don’t overreach as far as what you try to accomplish, this is not a time during a crisis for a leader to ask, what’s in it for me. What’s in it for the leader is a lot of work, sleepless nights, difficult, agonizing, unbelievable decisions to make, but you got a charge to keep. My father had a verse that I heard all the time when I grew up. He’d say, john, remember this. To whomsoever much is given, much shall be required.

John Maxwell:
You’ve been given a lot. Now, that’s the good news. Let me tell you the other side of it. To whomsoever much is given, much will be required. And during a crisis, leaders understand that they have a charge to keep. Take them and apply them to your life. Take them, apply them to your leadership, to your people that follow you, your group. And I think as you really reflect on those, it’ll help you and it’ll help me to be a better leader to other people who are so depending on us to walk slowly through the crowd and make a difference.

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Mark Cole:
It was Brian Traci who said that the true test of leadership is how well you function in a crisis. And, Chris, I know you and I, we were talking a little bit about this as we listened to John today. We’ve led through times of great crisis. You and I have led together in sales, in mergers and acquisitions. We’ve led through Covid, that big, looming thing. We’ve led in the good times. And I’ve just determined, like Lou Holtz, I’m a better leader in good times.

Traci Morrow:
Me as well.

Mark Cole:
Lou Holtz said it. He’s telling John one day, and you may have heard him say this, because I’ve heard him say it publicly, too. He says, I’ve coached bad players and I’ve coached good players, but I’m just a better coach with good players. I’m a better coach when it’s not so crisis. I hope that’s not true.

Traci Morrow:
That is not true.

Mark Cole:
A better leader during crisis, because that’s when leadership really is needed. Right. And so it’s good to be able. We have walked through a few walk with a limp here and there. Got a battle scar, two around. So it’s good to be on the, on the podcast with you.

Traci Morrow:
I may even have some replaced joints due to the work environment here and some of the things we’ve gone through. I love how John, to your point with Lou Holtz and a couple other statements, he starts this lesson off where he says, for some leaders of crisis, we’ll put them on top.

Mark Cole:
Yeah.

Traci Morrow:
And then for others, it might topple them. And I think that is, I think that is true. And I think as we grow in our leadership, the more experience we get. If you’re not in a tough time right now or your leadership is not challenged, whatever that might look like. I love how you said personally or professionally, it’s coming.

Mark Cole:
Yeah, it is.

Traci Morrow:
And it’s in a cycle, and we’ve got to work through it. And so this is relevant to no matter where you’re at right now as you’re leading. One of the things we want to talk about, we want to start off with is really jump into the second point that John talks about in this lesson for us where he says, embrace the brutal optimism. I wrote out to the side of mine. Realistic optimism. Right. Like, it can be brutal. But we need to make sure, you know the number one rules.

Traci Morrow:
Leaders define reality. We need to make sure our team understands reality as well. And when we go about doing that, we can confront that. We got to have a positive outlook for them, but we’ve got to address really what’s going on. You’ve done that a lot lately in your leadership. And so I want you to just talk a little bit about your man. You are a rah rah guy. You are a hope guy.

Traci Morrow:
You are energy guy. But it calls four times making sure we understand what reality truly is. Share a little bit with our listeners on how you lead through times like that so that the team is very clear where we’re currently at.

Mark Cole:
Yeah, and you said it well, and I tried to say this in the setup of the lesson. We’re not always in times of crisis. In fact, for us, we led through three very challenging years during COVID and a little bit beyond. And we just looked at ourselves this year and says, change the narrative. This is going to be a year filled with hope. And so I want to be very sensitive to some of you went through years of crisis and you’re like, please give me something filled with hope. And I think we’re going to do that today. Some of you are right in the middle of one of your biggest challenges, like I was last year, and you’re going, please give me something that’ll help me.

Mark Cole:
Hold on. I will tell you what John’s talking about here, and specifically in this point number two that you’ve asked me about. Chris, I think we can all do a better job of addressing the brutal optimism, or as you said, realistic. The realistic optimism. I think we can all do a better job of that in our leadership. No matter how we identify with a difficult time right now. It’s in memory. We’re out in the middle of it, or it’s anticipation.

Mark Cole:
It’s right around the corner. And that is that people really do want the truth. Even your most positive people get concerned that you’re giving them smoke and mirrors. And I’ve watched you, and I’m probably gonna say this a couple of times in this lesson with a couple of things we’ve got. I’ve watched you be very predictable, and that’s not in a bad way. It’s in a very confirming way and comforting way. I’ve watched you be very consistent in your leadership, and I strive at that because I want to tell you all the good things, man, I love the gray. It’s not your color, but I love the gray that you got on that I don’t usually say the rest of sometimes of what I’m saying, the brutal facts, the brutal optimism, or the realistic optimism, because I’m so hope filled.

Mark Cole:
John says it like this. He says, I don’t hire anymore. He said, because I put a ten on everybody’s head and I don’t ask the additional questions to make sure I have the real facts or the brutal facts. Sometimes my leadership is more in the optimism side of things than in the realism side of things. And I really have to learn that. And today, while again, I’m really excited about where we are as a team, as an organization, I have brought in a very intentional way, because my time is short, with all of my direct reports, with all the people that I lead, I have brought in a way of finding sound bites around the realistic or the brutal facts. Last week, if you hadn’t heard the podcast, go back and listen to it. I gave an example of an airport moment where I just hit it hard and I just said, hey, I trust that you love me.

Mark Cole:
I did something. I did something since that time to where an email went out, a communication went out, and it was geared toward leaders, but it was sent to everyone. And I immediately went in and I copied our HR director, I copied our COO, and I copied the leader that had sent an email that was very, it was educational, it was inspirational, it was about leadership. But what happened in the content that was applicable to leaders was it gave followers a chance to critique their leaders without the leaders being able to speak into it. And so I immediately, just like that, I went, hey, thanks for this email. It really helped me personally, but I think it did detriment to the culture that I’m expecting around here. I don’t want to send out a leadership email to non leaders so that they can critique how well their leaders are applying or not applying that contract. The response will come back, oh, my.

Mark Cole:
I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you. And then the HR director was. Went, oh, I replied positively, but maybe I shouldn’t have. Whoa, wait. Everybody missed something. This was not meant for correction. This was meant for instruction.

Mark Cole:
Leaders never correct people publicly, but you can instruct people correctly. And I had to let our leadership team know. If this would have been a correctional email, I would have done something different. But it needed to be instructional to deal with the brutal optimism that I was trying to put right there as we need to have real conversations with our people.

Traci Morrow:
Yeah, that’s good. John goes on also in this, and you probably do not struggle in this area, but you and John have coached a lot of leaders in all kinds of organizations. And so I want to pick your brain for just a minute where he talks about, hey, it’s okay to show emotions. And you do show emotions, right? That that’s how you lead. Um, but it’s not okay during times where your team is being challenged, you’re going through some change management, whatever it might be, to show fear.

Mark Cole:
Right.

Traci Morrow:
And I don’t know that I’ve ever seen you lead with fear. I’ve seen you talk about, hey, I’m not wearing this weight by myself. We’re wearing it as a team. Right. And so that may come out of a little bit of fear of the heaviness of yourself. But. But I think you have experienced a lot of leaders that have been in situations with organizations that you and John have coached, have taught leadership to their leadership team, that maybe you’ve seen them lead out of fear. What’s the result of that? Where you can lead emotionally, but during times like this, where there’s change going on, that might be a crisis, whatever it might be, where the fear dictates a negative response in the team, which then results in not the outcome that potentially could happen.

Mark Cole:
You’ve probably heard John say this. Cause he said it quite often, that hurting people hurt people. Right. Fearful leaders create fear in their organization. I’m very thankful we did not talk about this off mic, but I’m very thankful that you could not feel fear recently, as in last year, man, I had a ton within me. I think a leader’s responsibility is much like what Max Dupree says, disappoint people at the pace they can stand. I think you have to be optimistic. I think you have to be realistic at a pace that your people can stand.

Mark Cole:
One of the great compliments that you’ve given me on this podcast that I get when I travel around and meet some of our podcast family is how vulnerable and open I am. I try to be very vulnerable, and I try to be very vulnerable about my struggles and perhaps even my fears, but I never try to come across as fearful guys, I have a concern that this is what’s going to happen. I’m a little fearful. I have a little bit of fear of the unknown right now.

Traci Morrow:
I would agree with you, dude, but.

Mark Cole:
I never emulate a fearful sense or a lack of control sense, because what that’s going to do is breed discontent, concern, anxiety, stress, fear within the people that I lead. So somehow, to John’s point here, you have to embrace brutal optimism. At the same time, you have to make sure that ability to be real plays on both the optimism side and the fearful side. A leader’s fear should be reconciled within them before they communicate. You can’t eradicate the fear. You can’t hide from the fear, but you can’t communicate from fear. You got to communicate from optimism. People do not look to you to validate their fears.

Mark Cole:
They look to you to inspire hope. Never forget that leaders, followers can deal with their own fear. They don’t need you to substantiate the fear. They need you to give hope that we can get beyond the fear.

Traci Morrow:
Yeah, that statement you just made is worth the entire podcast right there. Leaders, your people, they don’t need you to validate their fear. They’re going to get there on their own. Right. And I love the statement, you can fear things, but not lead from a fearful place. And I think that’s powerful. And I’ve seen you use the word, hey, I fear we’re going down this path. I fear that you’re not fearful.

Traci Morrow:
And I think that’s a great difference between those two words and how we lead.

Mark Cole:
It’s perhaps a wrong play on the word, but let me go there anyway because I’m hokey and from Georgia. Fearful means full of fear. You can never be full of fear. You can have fear, but you can’t be full. There’s got to be a thread of optimism in there, or you need to resign from your leadership position. Because again, people are following you because they believe you can lead them from the place they are to a better place. If you’re full of fear, fearful, then you can’t find that thread of optimism to then lead from.

Traci Morrow:
Yeah, they need that positive outlook from you gotta be realistic, got to know what’s going on. But that, that’s really good. So this leads to the next point that John talked about. And by the way, if you haven’t downloaded the show notes, I’d encourage you to do that because the statement that he makes in between point number two and point number three, both, Jake, Mark, myself, we were like, that statement is gold. I’ll let you find that when you download those show notes. Right. But he goes right into where he says, stick to the facts. Now, this goes right with, hey, we got to be, we got to be realist of what’s going on.

Mark Cole:
Yeah.

Traci Morrow:
And there’s a statement that I use often where I say, hey, I want to lead from data, the facts, not with it. I’m not going to come and throw it in your face, but I’m going to, I’m going to do, I’m going to do a little bit of work to figure out what are the facts like, where is this coming from? Talk a little bit about the importance of you and this point that John makes right here about sticking to the facts as you lead through times like.

Mark Cole:
This, I think more so than any other time when you’re going through a challenging time, let’s say you’re transitioning somebody. Let’s say that you’re having that difficult conversation. You have got to be very factual. I’m going to give you two illustrations. One, I did pretty good. One, I didn’t do so well. Both involved a difficult moment in leading another person. So just think transitions, think firings, think having that conversation of a lack of performance, just a difficult conversation.

Mark Cole:
And leaders, you have them all the time. You should be having them weekly. We lead through difficult times. And one time I stuck straight to the facts, and within the first 45 seconds, I reminded them that as a leadership team, we have a tenant around here. And the tenant is we will have difficult conversations, we will have upfront expectations. And so that’s a leadership creed that we have around here. We will have upfront expectations. We will have difficult conversations.

Mark Cole:
And so in the first 35 seconds in a meeting that, you know, has got difficult news for somebody else to hear, you need to say in the first 10 seconds, this is going to be a difficult conversation. Now, that doesn’t always reveal that that’s going to be a transition. It doesn’t reveal exactly what it is, but you need to remind, we have a leadership creed around here and we have difficult conversations, and we will have difficult conversations. What you say next is super important to substantiate that. Too many times I’ve watched people use the sandwich philosophy, positive, negative, positive, which I subscribe to that philosophy. Not in difficult times, I don’t. In difficult times, the positive is lost if it’s on the front end. They believe everything you said was a lie.

Mark Cole:
And now you give me this. You buttered me up and you didn’t do it. If it’s on the back end, they’ve already tuned it out anyway because they don’t have the challenge. So you’ve got to go. In a difficult conversation, you got to go like this. I have some facts today that’s going to be very difficult for us to converse about. I’m going to give you those facts, and at whatever point afterwards you have further questions about the facts, or if you want to hear some of the other supporting things about the facts, I’ll give them to you. But here’s the facts you have.

Mark Cole:
X. We are going to do this next. And when you do that, well, the big people in life will say, well, tell me why. The bigger people will say, well, are there some positive things I can take from this difficult thing to make me better? But their response. I’ve transitioned a lot of people, I’ve had a lot of difficult conversations. Let me tell you something. The difficult conversations that went well is more about the person that heard the news than the fact that I did it right. Because as a leader, you don’t need to be worried about doing it right.

Traci Morrow:
That’s a true story.

Mark Cole:
You need to worry about doing it factually. This is what we were struggling with. This is how you’ve performed or underperformed. This is what we’re going to do because you underperformed. And that can be done in a minute and a half period. Minute and a half. Then everything after that is absolutely a response of how well the person is receiving that news. One time I had this difficult conversation, I put together a flowering email about this individual rather than sticking with the facts.

Mark Cole:
They called me so offended. They were not offended with a difficult conversation. They were not. They were difficult that I tried to butter it up afterwards. And I did more harm than good by trying to make a very difficult situation better with my flowering words. And I literally did not offend them with the decision. I didn’t offend them with the conversation we had one on one. I offended them with how I communicated it afterwards.

Mark Cole:
And man, I had to send a cleanup email on an already bad situation. I had made it worse and then had to send an email that made it even worse. Don’t do that. Stick with the facts.

Traci Morrow:
By the way, I remember, you know.

Mark Cole:
Exactly what I’m saying. You had to counsel me on that.

John Maxwell:
Seriously.

Mark Cole:
Do you remember that?

Traci Morrow:
Yeah, but you had to. I think what’s really great about this is we start out by saying about how do you lead in difficult times? This is a difficult time. Leaders, you’re gonna deal with this stuff all the time. It doesn’t have to be a major crisis or it doesn’t have to be a majority. Difficult conversations with people should be hard. It should be difficult. And I love that advice, because growing up as a young leader, you try to do the sandwich method, and to your point, it just doesn’t do any good. Not in difficult for your leadership and for the one receiving it.

Traci Morrow:
The other thing I think that’s, that I want to bring to light here is that the people that are around the team that are around the situation, they know the facts. And then as a leader, when you are doing it in a way that’s not serving that individual or what the facts are and you’re not sticking to the facts, you lose credibility. To your point, right. Maybe the communication was a little fiery. People are like, does Mark not really know? No, no, Mark knows that. That’s why he made the decision. It’s just the way that we communicated it. But not everybody may understand that.

Traci Morrow:
And that’s why I think the more direct you can be, both in the one on one conversations and without breaking confidentiality, the way that you communicate out to the team is essential during difficult times. So I love that. All right, let’s talk about the next one that John brings to our attention here. This is brilliant, because I think as we go through different situations, difficult times, we want to make sure we continue to drive engagement with our team through that, with us. Right. We need them to stay with us. We want to be inspired. We also want them to remember where we’re going.

Traci Morrow:
And oftentimes when we’re getting squeezed and there’s a lot of pressure and a lot of extra work and hitting certain quotas and this and that, where we’re at the end of the year, end of the month, like you’ll, you’ll forget about really what the bigger picture is. But if you’re able to do this, where John talks about, tell a story in a statement, you’re able to connect something for them in a memory that will allow them, during difficult times, high pressure, whatever it was, why we’re doing what we’re doing, you do this really well about our big old goal around here of sustaining John’s legacy, and why talk about how you have led from that, how John has coached you and led through that. Cause John’s a master storyteller. And the power of that, as you’ve led teamspeople through difficult times, people relate.

Mark Cole:
To and remember stories much more than principals. And so, you know, you and I have had the privilege to hanging out with people like Don Miller or Don Jaeger. Sticks with the Don, right?

Traci Morrow:
Yes. Yes. Both are phenomenal.

Mark Cole:
Both are phenomenal storytellers. And if I’ve learned anything that’s throughout my entire leadership, people will remember the Macy story, my daughter, or will remember the grandkids story, or will remember the illustrated failure more than they will remember the principal that I’m driving to. I think that’s true in leadership, too. So that’s definitely true in communication. We know that from some the world’s greatest communicators, as they’re great storytellers. I think it’s true in leadership, too. First of all, let me state this. The greatest leader I think have ever walked the earth is Jesus.

Mark Cole:
What did he tell? Parables.

Traci Morrow:
Parables.

Mark Cole:
He drove the principles of this kingdom he was setting up through the power of storytelling. I think we often lose sight of that as leaders. We get so bottom line driven. Well, the numbers say this, the numbers say this, and I think every leader needs to know their numbers. Right? You told me recently that we had a 27% year over year increase that we celebrated some time back. I think leaders need to know their numbers, but I think leaders mobilize and engage people, not with the numbers. They motivate and engage people based on the story behind the numbers. So what do we do around here? Often we talk about the impact.

Mark Cole:
We talk about this person that was impacted and turned their business around. And that is because leadership can be caught. When the story illustrates the principle and the concept, leadership can be followed with results. But leadership is caught and transferred in the power of story that is illustrated.

Traci Morrow:
I think the key here is going through my mind, and I’ll throw it back to you and let you wrap up. I was leading a team in one situation where it was difficult for this team because of what they were doing, yet not a part of something that was going on in another part of the organization. And one of the things that we’re challenging our leadership team to do is during times like that, is to share what is going on, share the statement in a story form of the impact that the enterprise is having. And so I’ve started a little practice in my leadership, in our team meetings, where I say, hey, let me just give you a little bit of glimpse of what’s going on in the enterprise. Let me show you the impact. And I tell a story in a statement about what happened at the event. And it’s been game changing, really.

Mark Cole:
That’s exciting, because the team will back.

Traci Morrow:
Up no matter what they’re going through, no matter what they’re struggling with. They’re like, I’m a part of that. Like, that is tied into it. And to your point, they may not remember they missed their number that month. They. They may not. Whatever. I don’t want them to forget it that easy.

Traci Morrow:
But maybe they. But they won’t. They won’t forget the fact that we did x, y, and Z as part of Maxwell leadership enterprise that is changing the world so that everybody, you know, because everybody deserves to be led well. And when you begin to do that, they remember, to your point, it’s sticky, and they remember it. So why don’t you wrap up for us?

Mark Cole:
Well, I will. I’ll wrap up with kind of an example of this. JJ, he listened to episode 300. We just had that three or four months ago, and that episode was looking back at your favorite episode, and we just kind of took clips from it. But JJ said from that, he said, thanks for the insurmountable value in each episode. I love you guys and gals. Let’s keep growing, leading, and finding ways to add value. And then he makes the statement, be the change.

Mark Cole:
Here’s what he’s really saying. Make sure that the story that articulates where we were, what it took to make the transition, and actually are making a difference. And I love that statement, JJ, that you used be the change. Because a story illustrates a change, illustrates transformation better than anything else. So, hey, how to lead in difficult times. John’s given us an incredible amount of content and ability to do that. Chris has always loved sharing with you. Hey, we exist because we want you to bring powerful, positive change, because everyone deserves to be led well.