How Empowerment Fuels Team Success

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Mark Cole:
Hey, welcome to the Maxwell Leadership Podcast. We are so excited to be spending January with you. I hope that you’re enjoying the podcast. If you’re new, I hope that you’ll keep joining us. We exist to add value to you so that you will multiply value to others. And today Chris, man, that’s what we get to do on a daily basis, man, isn’t it?

Chris Robinson:
It is, it is. And I love doing it, man, and just always an honor and privilege to be in the room with you and being on this journey to help add value to people. Let’s do it today.

Mark Cole:
Let’s do it. So Chris Robinson and Iowa, after John’s teaching, we’ll come in and we’ll do some application and just have a good conversation around empowerment. How if you will empower effectively, you will fuel the success that your team is having. So oftentimes that we as leaders feel like that the more we can control something or the more that something is dependent on us, the more that we can predict success. I’ll tell you, the less unpredictable a leader is. But more empowering a leader is, the more success that they’ll have. And so listen in to John, he’s going to share with you some things. In fact, if you would like to follow along as John is teaching today, we have a bonus resource and we’ll provide that for you just as a part of being a podcast listener.

Mark Cole:
You can go to MaxwellPodcast.com/Empowerment. You’ll find the bonus resource there. You’ll find a link to the YouTube version of this podcast, the visual version, and we’ll put some other things in there that will add value to you as well. All right, let’s go. Here it is. John’s going to teach us about the power of empowerment. Here’s John.

John Maxwell:
Let the people that are on your team, let them know up continually that you need them. Now, I wish I would have heard this best advice when I was a young leader, because, to be honest with you, when I started out leading, I had the opposite philosophy about leadership. And instead of letting the people on my team know that I needed them, I really wanted the people on my team to know that they needed me. It was kind of like, wow, I’m the leader, and you need me. And if you have me on your team, there’s a better shot of us winning. And I had it all turned around. In fact, I had a district superintendent. But, you see, I started off as a pastor, and a district superintendent is kind of like an overseer of pastors.

John Maxwell:
And I had an overseer. His name was Leonard Fitz. And I’ll never forget, he would come to me periodically, maybe every three or four months, and we would have a lunch or a dinner, and in every conversation, he would lean over and he’d say, now, John, I want to share with you something I’d like to try to accomplish, and I need you. In fact, the reason I’m coming to you and we’re having our little time together is honestly, if I can’t get you to help me, if. If you don’t come alongside of me, I’m not even sure I’m gonna try this, because you’re really key. If I can get you. I think that. I think we’ll get others to be on the team, but I need you.

John Maxwell:
And over a period of about three and a half years, I began to understand that his way of leading was better than my way of leading. Instead of him walking into my life and saying, I’m the leader and you need me, and I can promise you this is gonna get better because I’m here, he would always say, you know what, John? I need you. Through watching Leonard Fitz over those three and a half years, I began to change my entire leadership style. And I’m just here to say to you that over the years, as a leader, I have found that me realizing how much I need people and realizing how valuable they are to me has allowed me to, I think, be a fairly effective leader. Let people know that you need them. When I was in the Seventh grade, I read the book how to Win Friends and Influence People. And it was life changing for me. In fact, I read that book, how to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie every year from the seventh grade through high school.

John Maxwell:
And when I started writing books, I remember one day I thought, I want to attempt a Dale Carnegie how to Win Friends and Influence People book. And so I made an attempt on it. I wrote a book called Winning with People. It’s still out, it still does very, very well. And it was kind of my Dale Carnegie book. And it had what I call people principles in it. Now we’re talking about let people know that you need them. And some of the people principles are so people-dependent, like

John Maxwell:
the learning principle, each person that we meet has potential to teach us something. The charisma people people are interested in the person who is interested in them. The foxhole principle. When preparing for battle, dig a hole big enough for a friend. The partnership principle. Working together increases the odds of winning together. So many of my people principles in that, my Dale Carnegie book are all about the fact that you need others that if you’re in trouble, be sure to have a foxhole that you build that’s big enough for two people because you’re going to need that help that if we learn to work together, we win together. So how do I let you know if you’re on my team, how do I let you know that I need you? How do you let your team people know that you need them? Well, there are just really quickly two things that just are very helpful in this.

John Maxwell:
Let me give them to you. Let people know that you need them. By number one, this is simple, isn’t it? Asking them to help. Henry David Thoreau said, the greatest compliment that has ever been paid me is, was when someone asked me what I thought and then they listened to my answer. In other words, Henry David Thoreau said, you know what, when somebody came and said, you know, I would like to have your opinion on this, what are your thoughts about this? He said, it was the greatest compliment that I ever received. And I have a feeling that people on our team, when we come to them and say, you know, I need your help. I’ve been thinking about this, but I think you can expand this thought. I think you could take me a little bit further than what I’ve gone so far.

John Maxwell:
Could you help me? I need you. Could you help me? I run into people sometimes and they come to me. Maybe I’m at a party somewhere, I’m introduced to somebody I don’t know, and they Say, well, they’ll shake my hand. They’ll say, well, you know, I’m a self made man. Whenever they tell me they’re a self made man or a self made woman, you know, I say, well, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. And that kind of takes them back. They look at, well, what do you mean you’re sorry? Well, I’m sorry.

John Maxwell:
I mean, honestly, if, honestly, if you’ve been able to make everything yourself, you really haven’t made much. You see, when I get a big dream, when the dream just gets bigger, it’s bigger than me, that’s for sure. Okay, when I have this dream and it’s bigger than me, I have two choices. I can either give up and say, well, it’s bigger than me, or I can go get help. And this lesson is all about get help. Say, hey, I need you. One of my favorite poems is entitled the Indispensable man. And I love it because the words are just so true.

John Maxwell:
There’s so much about what we’re talking in this best advice lesson today. Sometime when you’re feeling important and sometime when your ego’s in bloom, sometime when you take it for granted you’re the best qualified in the room. Sometime when you feel that you’re going would leave an unfillable hole. Just follow this simple instruction and then see how it humbles your soul. Take a bucket and fill it with water and put your hand into it, up to the wrist and pull it out. And the hole that’s remaining is the measure of how much you’ll be missed. You may splash all you please when you enter and you can stir up the water galore, but stop and you’ll find in a minute that it looks just the same as before. The moral of this quaint example is to do the very best that you can.

John Maxwell:
Be proud of yourself, but remember, there’s no indispensable man. We really succeed when we take our vision from me to we. And how do we get our vision from me to we? It’s very simple. Let people know that you need them. Let people know that with them you’re a lot better than without them. And so you let people know that you need them by just plain asking for help. Try that. That’ll work.

John Maxwell:
But you also let people know that you need them by empowering them. It’s one thing for them to come and be on your team, but there’s something very engaging and compounding about taking people and saying, I need you so much that I not only want you to be on my team, but I’m going to empower you to go out and make our team even better. Craig Groeschel is a wonderful friend of mine and I think a tremendous leader. He leads the Global Leadership Summit. In fact, it was at the Global Leadership Summit a couple of years ago when I was with him in Chicago that he made this statement. And I wrote it down because I thought, yes, this is very true. He said, you can have control or you can have growth. He’s talking about leading your organization.

John Maxwell:
He said, you can either control your organization or you can have growth. But he said you can’t have both. In other words, what Craig was saying is you can’t control your organization and your people and have them grow and blossom with that tight control that you have on them. You got to choose. Am I going to control my people or am I going to grow my people? And when you grow your people, you grow them by an empowerment, environment and mindset that basically says, I not only need you on my team, I need you to develop and build other people. And I’m going to read this to you because I don’t want you to miss it. And just follow along with me for a moment. If we delegate task, we’re actually creating followers.

John Maxwell:
We’re creating people that only know how to do what we directly ask them to do. That’s why as leaders, we don’t just delegate task, but instead we delegate authority. If we delegate task, we’re creating followers. But if we delegate authority, we’re creating leaders. And this lesson on asking people to help you and then empowering them is really a major leadership principle.

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Mark Cole:
All right, welcome back, everybody. Hey, Chris. I was thinking as I was listening to John, I had a text going on from John. You were sitting right here. There was all this stimulation going of what we get to do. But isn’t it incredible what John Maxwell has done for you and I to empower us with his influence to go and build? I mean, you’ve written books now, you’ve stood on stages internationally that you never anticipated, all because of an empowerment feel that John has. And so, hey, what he just taught, he’s living. And it’s good to be living it alongside you.

Chris Robinson:
It really is. I mean, it’s awesome being empowered by John, you know, and today, you know, as I think about, you know, my leadership journey and growing, you know, as I preach progressed, it was initially I was, I need to be in the room with John. I need to be in the room with John, and I want to be speaking in this place with John. And now being empowered, I’m on the opposite side of that going, john’s there. No, I got to go here.

Mark Cole:
Yeah.

Chris Robinson:
And I’ve got to be in this other room so that I can be impacting people as well, too. And it’s because of him saying, hey, we need to build more. You know, he’s impacting one room, you’re impacting another room. And as I think about just the other day, I think when we were recording last month, you know, you were in one room recording something, I was in another room recording something. Jared Cagle was in another room recording something. Brian Broche was in the room recording something. Doing all different audiences at the same time, an event was going on. And I’m going, man, you know, when I was thinking about this one, like, we’re living out this thing of being empowered and, you know, we’re needed by John.

Chris Robinson:
And you say this to me often as well, too, is, Chris, I need you. I need you. John talks about this here today, but talk to me about why. Why is being needed not just appreciated.

Mark Cole:
Essential for team members, you know, So I think. I think in all of us, we want to matter. Our good friend John Griffin says, often you matter. I think there is a sense in humanity that the more we’re needed, the more, the

Mark Cole:
more value we have. The more we’re needed, the more sense of worth that we have. And I think what your question really drives me to go, I think we have to combat that. Because as leaders, the more we’re needed, the less we’re leading, the more that everybody has to have us, the less we can do what we only can do. See, leadership is all about empowering everyone else, so you can do what only you can do. But too many leaders have a laundry list of the things that only they can do. And not because they’re so talented, because they’re poor at empowerment. And so we’ve got to.

Mark Cole:
This year, let’s make a commitment. Podcast family. We’ve got to resist the need to be needed. We’ve got to resist the need to have our hands on everything. And we’ve got to start empowering others, because the less we empower, the less leaders we will attract, the less leaders that we will keep. Because if you don’t empower a leader to go deeper, something, they’re going to go figure out a place where they can do something.

Chris Robinson:
Yeah, absolutely. They will. They will. You know, and when coming back to this, being needed as. And making our people feeling needed, though, what breaks inside of an organization if people stop feeling needed, though?

Mark Cole:
Yeah. And so let me even go a step further, Chris, on this idea of telling people that they’re needed or showing them that they’re needed, because I went on a leader’s mindset right there, but now to come back and do on this question, make sure that it doesn’t break and that people feel that less significance. See, when you and I, we’re in a leadership perspective, I do my best. You’re the world’s best ambassador of Maxwell leadership team certification. I’m not just saying that. I say that publicly in front of you and behind you, and you always humbly accept it, but go, okay, But I’m dead serious on that. The more I can empower you to be that ambassador. Here’s what happens.

Mark Cole:
You walk into rooms now all over the world, and people know that not only John Maxwell, Mark Cole has endorsed you, but they sense the value of you individually. So in other words, by empowering you into a room where I don’t need you in this room, but I need you in that room, you’re able to transfer the value, the sense of being needed to other rooms. See, you and I cannot do what we do for John without our 59,000 coaches. We can’t. Not just building businesses, but doing good in communities, mobilizing to go transform countries, doing great things to help people on their success journey with beyond success. It all works when we communicate to our team they’re needed. But if I need you, excuse me, if you need me to go do that, it won’t get done. If we need John Maxwell to go do that, we wouldn’t be able to do that.

Mark Cole:
By the way, you’re scaling and teaching other people to do the same thing. So it’s interesting because if you need too much of the leader, you Won’t get very far. But if you don’t communicate the need for the team, you won’t get very far. And so there is this dichotomy that we’re talking about, really. It’s a paradox to where you’re trying with empowerment to show that you don’t need the leader while communicating, that you really do need the people and the leader to be together. And that dichotomy, that paradox, is the power of empowerment. Because if I can really tell people, Chris, and we’ll forget anybody else that’s listening, and the people that’s not on the team will feel sorry for them right now. If I really can communicate and demonstrate your importance to John and I, that importance will fill the room with something John and I couldn’t even do.

Mark Cole:
Because now it’s John and I’s empowerment, but your uniqueness, which is true power, because then it’s not. It’s when empowerment turns to power, and then that becomes your own influence, your own platform.

Chris Robinson:
Yeah. I love it. I love it. Wow. I mean, I love the dichotomy of it and the back and forth between being the leader and then empowering, you know, those that are following. I mean, we can talk on that one for a little while. I want to stay there, but I can’t. I got to keep moving.

Chris Robinson:
I got to keep moving, you know, and here he talks about in the book Winning with People, he says that people are interested in the person who’s interested in them. You know, what does that look like for leaders who are busy scaling and under pressure? Like, you just don’t have time to be interested in people sometimes as a leader, and that can come off the wrong way. So talk to me about what does that look like for a leader who’s busy scaling and under pressure?

Mark Cole:
If we get asked a question overe

Mark Cole:
and over again, it would be something along this line in that, how can I be a relational leader? How can I be an empowering leader? How can I communicate the importance of my people and yet do the things that are required me to be away from the people? How do I communicate their value without spending so much time?

Mark Cole:
Why do I have to spend so much time with the people and not be empowered? And the best way I know, I do what only I can do, the best way I know to help people with this. And this is gonna take me just a minute, Chris, but the best way I know to help people with this need to be needed, this need that they need your presence, and then you’re a leader that needs to go do things that require only your attention is a concept that I learned from John. John says this often. He says, you don’t have to earn my love. My love is yours. It’s unconditional, but you have to earn my time. You have to do something that earns a leader’s time. And leaders, you have to prioritize your time not on your relationships, but on your performance responsibilities.

Mark Cole:
And I know that’s tough for some of us people pleasers, some of us recovering people pleasers. We don’t know how to tell people no, because the last time they asked us for something, they didn’t give us any return on that. The last time they asked us for advice, they didn’t take the advice. John calls those people ask holes. Okay, Ask holes. Those of you that are not watching on YouTube, you need to hear the kids, because what they really do is they ask for your advice all the time, but they do nothing with it. They ask for you to give them some input, and they don’t acknowledge it. And then they come back a week later, a month later, and they ask a totally different related subject and you go, what did you do with the last thing I told you? I think as leaders, we’ve really got to hold ourselves accountable to being responsible, to being good stewards of the time we spend investing in people.

Mark Cole:
Again, I’m not trying to dehumanize or to deny the fact that people are the greatest asset, but I am trying to help some of us that invest in people and don’t get any return in that, and then feeling guilty if we don’t invest again, I’ve got to help you leaders with that. And that’s what we’re talking about. Because that’s not empowerment, that’s dependency.

Chris Robinson:
Right?

Mark Cole:
And if I give you. If I give you just enough that you need me, again, I’ve not helped you. If I give you just enough that I’m required to be back in the room the next time. That’s not empowerment. That’s dependency. That’s codependency. And what we as leaders have got to do is we’ve got to make sure that we give enough to the individual, enough empowerment that they can go do something with it and come back and show a return. So we give them more.

Mark Cole:
So we give them more. If you’re giving some people something and they’re coming back and cycling for the same advice, you either didn’t empower them or you don’t have a leader that you can empower. Make a decision which, because you Keep doing that, and you keep investing in that. You can’t free yourself to go do what only the leader can do.

Chris Robinson:
Wow, that’s good. That’s good. I love it. You know, we talk here, you know, from being interested in people and also empowering people. But John talks about asking for help. You know, why do you think leaders resist asking for help? And what changes when they finally do?

Mark Cole:
Yeah, so I love this question, you know, because there is a need for a leader to give answers. John says leadership is influence. Nothing more, nothing less. Carly Fiorina says that leadership is problem solving. Nothing more, nothing less. I’ll tell you this. Leadership is giving answers. Nothing more, nothing less.

Mark Cole:
I mean, you got to give answers. As a leader. If you don’t have the answer, are you the leader? John says often, he says if you’re not seeing more and before in a room, you’re not the leader. If everybody else has arrived at a conclusion before you, you’re not the leader. So really, there comes an expectation with leaders, and most of the time, the expectation is bigger on the inside than it is the outside. Chris, you’re over a. You’re over a particular area. You’re over 59,000 coaches.

Mark Cole:
Hey, what should we do about this? If anybody knows what we should do about this to be team friendly, it should be you. So when we walk in, we’re trying to solve it, and you don’t have the answer, you don’t feel like a leader, do you? No. So now why do leaders feel like they’ve got to give answers? Because that’s what leaders have to do. How do we not face the temptation of giving a bad answer just because we think we got to give an answer? How do we face the feeling that we’re not the real leader when we need time to come up with the answer? That’s what we really have to work with. Because I know why leaders feel like they have to have it. I know why leaders feel like that. They’ve got to walk into a room and they can’t not know what’s going on because that’s what we’re supposed to do. Yet that’s not truly repeatable.

Mark Cole:
Every single time. It’s not possible every time you come up with a challenge to have the immediate answer. So I think the way that I would want our team, our people listening today, I want you to relieve yourself the pressure of having an immediate answer. I want you to relieve yourself of the pressure at times of always having the answer and give yourself latitude to go find the answer and to get the answer from another source than inside. And when leaders. The way I believe leaders have to do that is they have to get comfortable in their own skin. They have to get comfortable in their own identity. Because when we feel insecure, when we feel like that we are not delivering, when we feel insecure that people don’t like us or not following us, then we put a pressure on us that we need to have an immediate answer or we need to have the solution or we need to have the empowerment.

Mark Cole:
That’s natural and it’s true. But if you get comfortable in your skin, you won’t feel like you have to do that immediately, and you won’t feel bad about doing that by getting collective input into a particular thing you’re trying to solve.

Chris Robinson:
Yeah. Again, I think that times have also changed where, you know, in the past, I think the previous leaders and generations would be, I’ve got to have the answer, and that’s it. And I think now we’re moving into a society of, oh, it’s okay not to have all the answers, and it’s okay to ask for help and understand that, you know, if I can’t get this done, well, who’s the best person to get this done? If I don’t have this information, who’s the best person to have this information? And I think we’re evolving to a place to where, you know, we get to, just like John is talking about here is, hey, ask for help. Because I think too many leaders hold it too tight to the vest for too long and they choke themselves out.

Chris Robinson:
Or they overwork themselves and get burnt out, you know, and then they fall into this next trap of trying to control everything. You know, Craig Groeschel says that you can either control your organization or you can have growth, but you can’t have both. Why is control so tempting for leaders, and how does it quietly limit growth?

Mark Cole:
Well, let me say so why it’s tempting is, I think, speaks to the darkness of the human heart. Right. We want power. We want control. We want our organization to thrive. That comes from a good place, but we want to be the reason. That comes from a prideful pace. We want our team to be bigger and better and brighter.

Mark Cole:
That comes from a desire for growth, pure place. But we want the credit for it. That comes from, I want to be the man. I want to be the one. And so I think we know how that really can impact an organization. But I think when we talk about this idea of how does it limit the organization or how can it stop the Organization. I think that gets into accountability. I think that gets into.

Mark Cole:
I think everybody, Chris needs a coach. You know, we’ve gone to a place in the mental health space, I believe since pre Covid or since COVID because of quarantine and the fear that we had during that time. What’s going to happen? Am I going to lose my job? Am I going to lose my health? Am I going to lose a family member? We went through a lot of fear then and we didn’t fight it and resist it the way we have always done that. And by doing that, I think we’ve created a real challenge from a mental health standpoint. We all see that. But let me tell you what else has happened. We’ve really created a real challenge in the area of empowerment with leaders because now we are celebrating bad leaders by rewarding them with positions. It’s happening.

Mark Cole:
That’s not just an American public political statement. That’s not a church anti church statement. But in every region of the world that I travel in, people are scratching their head, perplexed at the philosophies of the leaders in power and how distant it is from the people they’re supposed to be serving. We have popularized polarizing leadership and we’ve sat back and allowed ourselves to do it and not forced ourselves to come to the table and agree and find things that we agree on with others. And I think that’s playing out right in this question. We are not challenging ourselves as leaders to stay in it with people so that when we empower them, they do feel that sense of accomplishment and we’re making them dependent on bad leadership. And here’s why. The world has become so polarized that we’ve got to have likes, we’ve got to have social media likes, we’ve got to have Facebook, Instagram likes to prove that our leadership is good and not just what is being produced with our leadership.

Mark Cole:
It’s how popular is our leadership?

Chris Robinson:
Wow. Wow. Incredible. You know, this is great this week. You know, let’s wrap up with this question here because we’re talking about empowerment this week. But what’s one act of empowerment that would create a big ripple effect for somebody that’s leading a team today or in their lives in general?

Mark Cole:
I am challenging myself as I listened to John today and as you’ve asked these questions, I’m challenging myself to answer the question, where am I not empowering the leaders on my team? Where am I not empowering my kids? Where am I losing my ability to see our team’s success because I’M not empowering, Giving power, giving authority, giving resources to teammates, to leaders. Specifically on my team, I think the big action item that I would challenge myself really and all of us is to really identify the areas in 2025, just last year, what are the areas in 2025 that you held onto, that you’re still holding onto, that you should never be holding onto? What are those areas? And then quickly come behind that with who can take that? For me and sometimes we have a lack of awareness in what we’re holding onto. Other times we have the awareness, we don’t have the solution. But I want us to at least have the awareness. So I would challenge us to go in and I really would. We have an app on a leadership standpoint or on a growth standpoint. We Maxwell leadership app that is designed to help people really identify these blind spots, to identify a tractionable plan, if you will, to grow and to become better. And I’ve asked our team to give the podcast family a seven day free trial for our podcast listeners and try it out for seven days.

Mark Cole:
No cost, no charge. Try it out for seven days and in that seven day period, check yourself and say, hey, am I discovering blind spots? Am I discovering areas? I’m not empowering others in my life. When you go, click that link, by the way, the link is in the show notes. Use the promo code PODCAST7, PODCAST7, and we’ll give you a seven day free trial for all of our podcast listeners. Hey, we have Misty, one of our podcast listeners. We love Misty. Misty listened to the podcast how to Live With Purpose Every Day. We’ll put that podcast in the show notes as well.

Mark Cole:
For all of you that want to go back and listen to it, here’s what Misty says. She says I will have this podcast on repeat all day long. Well done and thank you for sharing your personal experiences, sharing what you have reflected on and where you’re discovering areas you needed to grow and has helped me to do the exact same thing. Chris, it goes back to what you just said. What’s one actionable item to empower our team to success? What we go with this seven day free trial. We want to give you resources and tools here so that you will go lead better because everyone deserves to be led well.

Transcript created by Castmagic.