Questions to Ask the Leader in the Mirror

Mark Cole:
Welcome to the Maxwell Leadership podcast. Our goal with this podcast, with this next 30 to 35 minutes, is to add value to you, a leader, because we know you’ll multiply value to others. My name is Mark Cole, and today’s episode John is going to share a few important questions that all leaders, every one of us, should make sure to step back and ask ourselves at different points in our leadership journey. Now, after John is done teaching, I’ll be joined by Chris Goede to discuss how we can apply John’s lessons to our life and to our leadership. I’m excited for you today to sit down with me and listen and learn from John Maxwell. Now, if you’d like to watch this podcast on YouTube, when you want to download the bonus resource, you can go to maxwellpodcast.com/mirror and you’ll see a bunch of bonus resources there. The link to watch as well as the bonus resource hey, here we go. Here is John Maxwell.

John Maxwell:
Robert S. Kaplan said, there comes a point in your career when the best way to figure out how you’re doing is to step back and ask yourself a few questions. Having all the answers is less important than knowing what to ask. To assess your performance and my performance and stay on track, I would encourage you to step back and ask yourself these key questions. The first question deals with vision and priorities. What do I see and how am I going to make it happen? What’s out in front of me? What’s important today to make sure I achieve what’s out in front of me? Let’s go to your notes. In the press of day to day activities, leaders often fail to adequately communicate their vision to the organization. And in particular, they don’t communicate in a way that helps their subordinates determine where to focus their own efforts.

John Maxwell:
How often do I communicate a vision for my business? Have I identified and communicated three to five key priorities to achieve that vision? If asked, would my employees be able to articulate the vision and the priorities of my life? What I learned many, many years ago is it’s impossible to have your priorities correct or your passion intact if you don’t clearly see your dream. The proper sequence is first vision. You have to see it clearly. Then strategy. What will it take to get there? And then priorities. How are we going to make it happen? Because here’s what I know. The vision, without the strategy or without the priorities is absolutely going to cause us to fail. Let’s go to the second question.

John Maxwell:
This is about feedback. Leaders often fail to coach employees in a direct and timely fashion, and instead wait until the year end review. This approach may lead to unpleasant surprises and can undermine effective professional development. Just as important, leaders need to cultivate subordinates who can give them advice and feedback during the year. Questions such as, do I give people timely and direct feedback that they can act upon? Do I have five or six junior subordinates who will tell me things I may not want to hear but need to hear? Okay, what I’m going to give you now in 60 seconds is a plan that I have used for feedback for 25 years, and I promise you this will really work. If you want, in your office, in your people, your inner circle, if you want to get good feedback from them, the three questions I’m going to give you will get right to the bottom line. Here’s what you ought to ask your team. Question number one, what should I stop doing? Of all the things I’m doing around this office, what’s the thing you wish I had stopped? Question number two, what should I keep doing? Of all the stuff I’m doing around the office, what do I need to keep on keeping on? Question number three, what should I start doing? Wow.

John Maxwell:
Those three questions will get right to the bottom line quicker than the other three questions. If you really want good feedback, fresh ideas, different opinions, and new thought, Stephen Covey said, it takes humility to seek feedback. It takes wisdom to understand it, analyze it, and appropriately act on it. Let’s go to the third area that we ought to ask ourselves a question on that’s leading under pressure. When times are tough, we need to kind of look in the mirror and ask ourselves some questions. A leader’s actions in times of stress are watched closely by subordinates and have a profound impact on the culture of the firm and employee’s behavior. Successful leaders need to be aware of their own stress triggers and consciously modulate their behavior during these periods to make sure that they are acting in ways that are consistent with their beliefs and core values. Questions such as, what types of events create pressure for me? How do I behave under pressure? What signals am I sending my subordinates? Are these signals helpful, or are they undermining the success of my business? I want to give you what I call the outcome formula.

John Maxwell:
This is not my formula. I learned it from W. Clement Stone. I heard him speak in the middle 1970s, and I began to read his writings. And so this is his. This is not mine. The formula is very simple. E plus r equals zero.

John Maxwell:
Event plus response equals outcome. Event plus response equals outcome. Stay with me in your notes as I teach this incredible principle. The basic idea is that every outcome you experience in life, whether successful or failure, whether wealth or poverty, health or illness, intimacy, estrangement, joy or frustration, is the result of how you have responded to an earlier event or crisis in your life. Okay, here’s the important statement. Okay, this next statement. If you don’t like the outcomes you are currently getting, there are two basic choices that you can make. This is true for all of us.

John Maxwell:
Number one, you can blame the event either for your lack of results. Outcome. No doubt, all these factors do exist. But if they were the deciding factor, nobody would ever succeed. They’re not the deciding factor. It’s part of the life itself. It’s part of the process. It’s part of the cycle.

John Maxwell:
But they’re not the deciding factor. Let’s go on. The other response is you can instead simply change your responses to the events the way things are until you get the outcomes you want. You can change your thinking, change your communication, change the pictures you hold in your hand, your images of yourself in the world. You can change your behavior, the things that you do. That is all you really have any control over anyway. Unfortunately, most of us are so run by our habits that we never change our behavior. We get stuck in our conditioned responses to our spouses, children, colleagues at work, to our customers, our clients, our students, to the world at large.

John Maxwell:
We are a bundle of conditional reflexes that operate outside of our control. You have to regain control of your thoughts, your images, your dreams, your daydreams, and your behavior. Everything you think, say, and do needs to become intentional and aligned with your purpose, your values, and your goals. In my book, the difference maker, I have this thesis, attitude isn’t everything.

John Maxwell:
It’S the main thing that can make a difference in your life. That is a fact. And when you begin to waver from one and two of these, two responses to events and response equal our outcome. E plus r, equal o. When you begin to waver back, understand attitude. It’s not everything, but it’s the main thing that gets you through these very difficult times. The fourth thing that you want to kind of, when you look in the mirror, you got to ask yourself a question, and, boy, I wish I had an hour of this one alone, but I don’t. But I’m going to give it my best shot.

John Maxwell:
So here we go. Number four, staying true to yourself. You got to look in the mirror and you got to ask yourself, am I the real deal? Successful executives develop leadership styles that fit the needs of their business, but also fit their own beliefs, personality, values, the question I have to ask myself is, is my leadership style comfortable? Does it reflect who I truly am? I’m going to give you my two favorite quotes about being true to yourself. The first one is from Abraham Lincoln. He said, I desire to so conduct the affairs of this administration that if in the end, when I come to lay down the reins of power, I have lost every friend on earth, I shall have at least one friend left. That friend shall be down inside of me. But this last quote is very true. The better you know yourself, and the more true you are to yourself, the greater your success.

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Mark Cole:
Hey, welcome back, everybody. Wow. John maxwell as he does. And by the way, he’s not just teaching this gang. Chris goede and I has traveled with john, been around the world with john, and he is constantly assessing himself and his leadership, and that’s what he’s challenging us to do today. Now, I feel like I have to introduce our co host today. This is Chris gode. Everybody watching.

Chris Goede:
This is Chris goede.

Mark Cole:
I know we haven’t seen him. We’ve done high road leadership yours, and my schedule has not been able to link. It’s good to have you back, man, but this is a good lesson to be back to.

Chris Goede:
And I thought it was just because you went to YouTube and you said, chris and mark, jake said, chris, you’re no longer allowed to be here. But I am glad to be back. This is a phenomenal lesson. What I love about it is you started off with something that is so true. John does this all the time, and. And we see this lived out. This is really, at the top of my notes, I put a self awareness lesson. Yeah.

Chris Goede:
Are we really. Are we really checking ourselves as leaders enough? Are we really asking ourselves enough questions? And I feel convicted. I was like, no, probably not enough. And then John goes through this lesson. So what I really am looking forward to today is taking John’s principles and then pulling the application out for you as a leader and, and how you’re living that out. So let’s dive in. Let’s jump in. Let’s start talking about what this looks like.

Chris Goede:
So John goes over and he talks about, hey, over. Around vision and priorities. We want to make sure we’re asking ourselves some questions. And I love his statement of, hey, how often do I communicate? You often hear about that, where they say, you got to communicate all the time. All the time. All the time. What I want to talk to you a little bit about is how do you ask yourself the question, how effective am I communicating this to my team? How do I make sure that what I’m communicating, my team is alignment with when you’re not around, when you’re around? Because oftentimes we can communicate things, but we may not be doing it very effectively. How do you juggle that as a leader to make sure you’re effectively communicating to us as a team?

Mark Cole:
Well, it’s so interesting. We probably should have recorded the conversation we were having beforehand.

Mark Cole:
Right. Jake’s over here, the taskmaster, and tells us to get going. I feel like looking at you right now, Jake, and saying, you should have pressed record a while ago because we were talking about that, Chris. If we go back one short year and you guys know this, I live out my leadership when I’m on the road, as I have been a lot late. And I always get, always now I get somebody come up saying, hey, I love the podcast. I love what you and Chris, you and Tracy, I love what you guys do as well as love what John does. He’s always good. And I think the reason people love it is because we just break it down in a real vulnerable, here we are way.

Mark Cole:
So here we go again. Those of you that like that and compliment me on it, this segment is for you. Because one short year ago, it was a very long year. So I used the word short, tongue in cheek there. One short year ago, I made a decision that for 120 days, it wasn’t going to get on a plane. And I said, I’m going to stay here because I’m not connected with my team and we’re not performing like I want to. And I launched 2023 with a paradigm that my presence and my proximity and being in every meeting was the answer for the leaders. Don’t take yourself so seriously, because I can tell you one year later, at the end of Q one, and we’re now in May.

Mark Cole:
But at the end of Q one, I looked at our performance, I looked at our unity, I looked at our culture. I looked at all these things. And don’t forget, we’ve adjusted. We’ve adjusted salaries, we’ve laid people. We’ve went through one of the hardest, difficult years. And yet I looked at it one year later and I went, wow. The difference of Q 120 24 compared to Q 120 23 is dark night. It’s night and day.

Mark Cole:
It’s night and day this year.

John Maxwell:
Leaders, don’t take yourself so seriously.

Mark Cole:
Last year I said, my presence is paramount. This year, I have traveled more this Q one quarter than I have in a very long time, if not ever. And yet we’ve probably had the best quarter we’ve had maybe in three or four years. So it wasn’t my presence. It was more than that. Now, that doesn’t mean your team doesn’t need your presence. That’s not the point. That’s not the takeaway.

Mark Cole:
The point is, is we have figured out how to make sure that vision and priorities stay the same and that my voice is more strategic when it is hurt and I can tongue in cheek go, wow, thank God I got out of the way. And you guys, Chris is one of the major ones that’s making this happen. You guys are making it happen. And there’s some truth to that, truly, because I’m doing what I need to do right now, and you guys are killing it. There’s some truth to that, but it’s not as jokingly or even humorously as possible. You don’t need me as a leader. No, you need me. You just need me to make sure that I am doing great at communicating the vision of the organization and the priorities we need to have for accomplishing that vision.

Mark Cole:
And I would say it’s going to be interesting, your comeback here. I would say we’re doing that better with me from the right than we did last year with me in the office in every meeting. Would you agree with that?

Chris Goede:
I would agree with that, yeah. And let me comment on something you said there. I think as a leader, one of the things you have realized, we’ve realized as a team, is that there are certain things that only you can do as a leader. Leader, this is for you, too. There are certain things that only I can do on my team as a leader, and I think you realize that. And some of that was missing, and that got you back to where, hey, these are things that I need to be doing for the team. Oh, but by the way. We need to make sure that the vision that I have is driving complete, complete clarity with my team, and they understand the priorities and what you started doing, and I think this is kind of the key to it, is you started saying early on, even while you were present, what did you hear? Repeat back to me, what did you hear? And then if a team member couldn’t articulate it to the right way, you went, worked one on one with them.

Chris Goede:
Maybe we had to shift that team member, whatever it was. And I feel like you have gotten to a point to where your communication is often but now more effective because you’re asking follow up questions to make sure that there’s clarity around that.

Mark Cole:
There’s not a time for us to talk about this here. But I promise you, not only will I get John in studio and do this live because it’s so profound to me. I’m not a great question asker. I can read a room very quickly. God’s gifted me with some gifts to where I can assess a problem quickly and give a solution. All of that I’m very grateful for. Here’s the downside. The minimizer of that, as Liz Wiseman talks about, the minimizer of being able to see more and before, is you often don’t wait and slow down and let people see it for themselves.

Mark Cole:
You want to let them see it through your eyes. And so John’s now mentoring me on the art of the second question. So he’s been trying to pound to me for a long time to just slow down and ask the question. Mark, can you just ask a question? And I say that laughingly, but it’s really true because I just, I know where I need to go, and I don’t have time to slow down. Just let me tell you what we need to do. It’s not great leadership. It’s not effective. And so now he’s got me to ask him more questions.

Mark Cole:
Thank you for what you just said. Now he’s taking me to the next level, and that is, quit setting an agenda based on what you believe the answer is going to be in the first question and set your agenda and direction after the second question. The first question is to get insight. The second question is to get buy in. See, I want to ask you a question to see where you are. The second question is to get you to determine how you will buy into where we need to go. And he says, you can’t. You oftentimes go in and ask the question and you check the box.

Mark Cole:
Ask the question. Now, let me tell you he said, but your team is still not buying it into their involvement and their conclusion. And it’s always better to lead people from the place that they’re concluding rather than a place to where you as a leader has concluded.

Chris Goede:
The first thing that came to mind when you said that was, I’ve heard this statement about there’s a big difference between listening and curiosity. And I think what John’s talking to you a little bit about there and teaching you, mentoring you, is as you are asking these questions, not only of yourself and others, it is, hey, I’m going to ask the first question listening. But, man, I really want to get curious to figure out where they’re at and where that next opportunity is. And so you go into that extra mode of being curious that I think is huge that you just brought out there. And I love that John’s doing that with you. Well, that, that leads me to this. John also talks about feedback, and you just shared with us. Obviously, you get continuous feedback from John because he’s coaching you, and it’s always something new when we come together on the podcast about something that he is helping you with personal growth.

Chris Goede:
And I love that. I was reading a study from Zenger Folkman where it said 44% of leadership want more feedback. They’re just not getting it from their team, from their peers, from whoever’s leading them. And I think that’s critical. I think the things that the feedback you ask John for or John gives you is critical not only to your personal growth, but it’s crit. It’s critical to the organization’s growth and where we’re going. So John talks about three simple questions. And I started smiling when he talked to us about this because I remember learning this a long time ago, and I started using this at home, you know, with my, my spouse or with my kids.

Chris Goede:
It’s a great question. My question for you is, what are the questions you’re asking John right now? Are they similar to those three that’s allowing you to get that feedback from him?

Mark Cole:
Yeah. So specifically, he is mentoring me on more effective leadership because, again, I’m traveling a good bit more in 2024 than I did in 2023. Very obvious and very successful reasons for that to happen. But I still have the responsibility to lead. So one of the things I just mentioned that I’m asking him, how can I ask better questions? So I’m asking one of the best question askers in the world, how can I ask better questions? Which is what I’m asking. And when that’s when he discovered he’s never taught it. And he went, I’ve never taught this before, so I’m bringing out things in him that’s being discovered on better ways to teach about asking questions. And then he’s obviously helping me.

Mark Cole:
The other question that I’m asking him is, how did you see that opportunity right there? So, John, one of any of you that have not taken strength finders 2.0, some great work by Marcus Buckingham. You want to go do that? One of John’s strengths, top five strengths, is maximizer. He can take something and maximize the moment, the memory or the opportunity. He’s just great at maximizing. So I’m trying to learn some of that. And I’m asking him the question, how did you see the opportunity and what went on your head for you to be able to maximize that opportunity and getting incredible results on that? And now, because I’m asking him that question, Chris, after a particular meeting and we’re having a lot of opportunistic, futuristic meetings right now, and after everyone who goes, hey, I wouldn’t said that right there. Hey, I think the way you pose that question, you close down that opportunity from being able to grow before it even had a chance to kind of take root. And so I’m getting, because I’m asking questions on opportunity, I’m now getting good feedback.

Mark Cole:
Those of you that are in a mentoring relationship, we just did this. I’m going to illustrate it, what we did in the studio just a moment ago. Those of you that are being mentored, you’re paying for a coach. You are a coach. If you will ask more questions, you give an indicator of where you want better mentorship. Because I’m sitting here talking to you just a moment ago in the studio, before Jake didn’t hit the record.

Chris Goede:
Let us talk.

Mark Cole:
And I’m giving you. I’m asking you questions about a leadership environment that I was not in because I trust your voice. You see leadership the way John, and hopefully the way I see it as well, you see leadership. So I’m asking you the question. Just tell me what you think. When you give me the answer, I then say something back to you. That is kind of my perspective. When I give you my perspective, what did you do now? Let me come back and clarify something because now that you’ve given me feedback, I can better tell you my reading of the room.

Mark Cole:
You answered the question, you listened to my feedback about your answer, and then you gave me a little bit better of a way. Questions are great, but if you’re in a mentoring relationship. Your questions, if thought through, will give you insight, because the person you’re asked the question of will tune it in. More in the area of feedback.

Chris Goede:
One of the things I want to add about feedback right here to our listeners or our viewers that are joining us on YouTube, is a question for you, is, does your team know that you value feedback no matter where it comes from? And I will say, from a leadership standpoint, one of the ways that you do that, that I would encourage all leaders to do is to share what you are learning through some of those tough feedback. I mean, you’ve always been very transparent about your conversations with John as you’re getting feedback, and you share not only the questions that you asked, just like you’re doing with our viewers and our listeners right now, but then also the feedback that you received and then what you did with it. You know what? That happens. That’s contagious.

Mark Cole:
Hey, let me give you another example on that, because I’m having to lead from moments right now. I’m having to lead from moments. We had a moment right before we took broadcasting. I had another moment with one of our leaders over. He runs one of our nonprofits, and we had a leader that we were working through, finding the right spot and working through. And we had a known problem that we were dealing with as a team. And right before we got on a plane, we were going up to somewhere. We were going up somewhere, and right before we got on a plane, he said, hey, I talked to.

Mark Cole:
I talked to this leader that we’re working with, and this is what I said. And this is the kind of thing. And the whole flight, I was going, I love what was said, but I don’t like what I know was heard.

Chris Goede:
Wow.

Mark Cole:
So I sit down at the top of the list.

Chris Goede:
That’s a podcast lesson right there at.

Mark Cole:
The top of an escalator in this airport. It was in Nashville. The top of the escalator in Nashville. I told this leader, I was sitting in a different place. Airport, airplane. I waited on him. We got off the airplane. I said, hey, I gotta ask you a question.

Mark Cole:
I only got five minutes to ask you this question. I said, thanks for telling me and giving me that update about the teammate. I said, what do you think the teammate heard? He stopped in his tracks and went, I didn’t even think of that. I said, let me tell you what I think they may have heard based on the body of work that we’re working on. And I went through the process, and the lights came on in five minutes. When I was able to tell him that you, as a leader, what you say is one thing, but what is heard is something else. Because the person wasn’t looking for feedback. The person was looking for a validation.

Mark Cole:
And when you give somebody that is looking for validation a word, they hear it from their framework of wanting validation rather than feedback. Leaders, you always want feedback. You always want to open yourself up. And we, as leaders of people, we need to make sure that we’re giving input based on the posture of the person we work with. Are they looking for validation? Are they looking for feedback?

Chris Goede:
That’s phenomenal. Model that as leaders, I promise you, and it will cascade throughout your organization. We literally could talk about that topic for a while. That’s fascinating. Let me go to the last point here, because I really want to dig in and get behind your leadership right here and talk about some application. Because when we talk about leading authentically, that’s pretty big. We talk about that all the time. You know, I know HBR did a study where they, they studied 200 leaders for two years, and they, they were, what are the attributes about a leader? And the number one came back is it’s authenticity.

Chris Goede:
Right? Like, you’ve got to be authentic. You have and are leading at a level, almost monthly at a level that you’ve never led before. Right. And you’re growing and the pace and John and different organizations, and you’re, you’re running in different circles now. How do you go about at times where you want to stay true to who you are as a leader? And can you share? Sometimes maybe you’ve gotten away from that and then how you recorrected that? Because I think this is huge right here. I think if, of all these things, if we can get to a place to where we’re looking in the mirror and we’re saying, hey, am I leading like Mark Cole was created? I mean, we’re perfectly and wonderfully made. And, and how do we go about doing that? Because when we do that, our people feel it, they know it, and our influence will continue to grow. So how do you get to that point? Because you’ll self admittedly say, I’m in some rooms I should not be in.

Chris Goede:
I’m leading some things that I don’t have experience to lead. I’ve led some ways, maybe I haven’t. Share some of that with our listeners to learn from how important that is and the lessons you’ve learned from it.

Mark Cole:
You know, it’s so funny. I tell the story just this morning in our John, in our Maxwell leadership podcast studio. I got to do another podcast for an organization that their podcast is being broadcast into 3400 prisons.

Chris Goede:
Wow.

Mark Cole:
Over 500,000 to a million people listen to every podcast because it’s on this system right here. And they invited me onto their show and they flew to me. It was like, incredible. It was heaven. And I was talking to them about stuff that I’ve talked to our podcast family, those of you that are listening right now. And I was telling them about 2023 being a very difficult year for me. And it was funny that it was difficult, Chris, because when I started Maxwell leadership, now, hey, guys, I just celebrated two weeks ago. I just celebrated 24 years.

Mark Cole:
Rah, rah, rah. They can’t get rid of me around here. And I go back to 24 years ago, Chris, coming to the realization that for years I had been leading from a place of external expectation, external accolades, external perception, and not internal. Right. My first Maxwell leadership book was developing the leader within. You read it at 17, that was the last moment that I focused on myself internally as a leader, and I began to focus on, how do I impress this person? How do I get this promotion? How do I get a higher position? It was all external. Then I go through this radical life change, 30, come into Maxwell leadership, read the book again. I go, man, I will never stop focusing on developing the leader within you anymore.

Mark Cole:
So every two years, I’m reading this book, 2023, the pressures of leadership from a new role, a new expectation of ownership, over the last three years, once again put external pressure into my internal fortitude. So I. So here’s my conclusion. I’ve learned it in very valuable, very important times in my life, and it’s something that we continue to slip away from, that we don’t stay true to ourself. We try to make it about others. So going back to points three and four, leading under pressure and staying true to yourself, John says this all the time, Chris, you’ve heard it. You could quote it, you can teach it. And that is difficult times reveals us.

Mark Cole:
It doesn’t improve us. It doesn’t. Difficult times is when we see ourselves. What do you get when you squeeze a leader? Whatever’s inside you get all of that. And yet, when we are, as leaders, begin to go through new or go through difficult times, we often don’t stay true to ourselves. I’m a hard worker, and I hope you agree with that. I haven’t been around the office for a while, so you may be wondering that right now. I’m just kidding.

Mark Cole:
I’ll tell you one thing I brought to John Maxwell was something that I brought to my home at four or five, six years old. Man, give me something to do and my body will be pointed in that direction. I’m going all in. 2023. I worked so hard to be a good leader. Here’s what happens. You watch leaders in difficult times. They pause and step back, back.

Mark Cole:
They don’t know what to do. You look at methodical leaders that come up against something. They don’t know. What do they do? They slow down and they think through things. What happens when somebody that is a hard worker goes through a difficult time? They try to work even harder to make it happen. So you hear people that they silently quit. I think there’s some people that silently get more intense. And I’m telling you, for me, 2023 under pressure, I allowed what I am good at work, hard work ethic.

Mark Cole:
I allowed it to become a nimbus because I was so busy trying to fix that I didn’t spend time thinking and going inside. And so what I have discovered in Q one, and now we’re in May, what I’ve discovered this year is last year I worked too hard to try to fix the situation rather than stay at the same pace and let the situation begin to reveal itself on how to lead better. What do we do? We resort to who we are with intensity when tough times come. And that sounds good at the surface, but it can be over baked, it can be overcooked. And what I would tell all of us in staying true to yourself is the times of pressure, the times of difficulty. You need to pause for a minute, and some of you are having a very difficult year. And I know this. I’m out there.

Mark Cole:
I’m talking to you. I would challenge you to not overplay your strengths and overplay your intensity in times of pressure. Just like you don’t need to underplay them, you don’t need to become something different. But becoming something different can be overplaying the strengths at the same time. And I couldn’t figure out why. I couldn’t work myself out of it, and that put even more internal pressure on myself.

Chris Goede:
You know, John talks a lot about, in this leadership where we have these strengths, he talks about blind spots. And as you’re talking, and you’re explaining this, I’m going, yeah, that’s exactly what we do in all phases of life. But then it’s, it’s completely on steroids when we’re going through a very, very tough time. And in essence, what you’re explaining to us was hey, I work hard. That’s what I do. So we’re going to solve this by. We’re going to work two times as hard. But really, that became a blind spot.

Chris Goede:
Here’s why I say it was a blind spot. You’re now aware of it. You know why you’re aware of it? Because our team, as you made a shift towards the end of last year, and you revealed it to us, and this is what you discovered again, through feedback and self awareness and looking in the mirror, and you said, no more. No more. And we were like, yeah, it was.

Mark Cole:
Almost a standing ovation.

Chris Goede:
We were like, I mean, we’re glad to get you back on the road. That wasn’t what we were standing for. It might have been.

John Maxwell:
It might have been.

Chris Goede:
We didn’t know it was. But what it was was like, yeah, like, and you know this. Cause you’ve had people at all levels in our organization say, that’s the mark that I want to follow as a leadership. And I think what you’re talking to us about and unraveling here is that, man, where our strengths are, they become blind spots when the pressure gets on, as John teaches. And you just gave us a great example of what that looks like to be lived out, and I appreciate you sharing that with us. And so it’s something we need to be aware of because we’re all gifted and have certain strengths. We just need to be aware of that when we’re going through that, because what ends up happening is you weren’t authentic to who Mark Cole was, and that had a huge impact on the organization, and you need to be real and be able to do that. All right, as we wrap up, I got one last question for you.

Mark Cole:
Yep.

Chris Goede:
Outside of anything that we’ve talked about today, what’s. What’s one question you’re asking yourself right now? If we were to get into the mind of Mark Cole, you’re looking in the mirror. You’re by yourself, and you’re like, well, that’s the case. I wouldn’t share it on a podcast that’s listened to by millions of people. I may not be invited back on another podcast. That’s a question. What is the question you’re asking yourself right now as a leader?

Mark Cole:
It is, truly, and it’s so funny that you asked that question, because I didn’t know you were going to. And as soon as I saw the title of this and we listened to it in studio and listened to John, and it’s questions to ask a leader to ask in the mirror, questions they ask of themselves. And I went, man. The question I have always asked, sometimes out of fear, sometimes out of a desire to grow, sometimes out of wanting to be the most powerful, knowing person in the room, and sometimes out of insecurity, that I feel like everybody knows more than me. The question I always ask, Chris, is, what am I missing? And there’s times that that’s very nostalgic and very good, and it’s been a very generous question to me. There’s some times that it paralyzes me to the point that I feel like I gotta figure something out before I move. There’s other times that it makes me a conspiracy theorist. I always feel like there’s something right behind the curtain right here.

Mark Cole:
And then there’s other times that it truly weakens my confidence that I need to not worry about what I don’t know today and let that information come to me.

Chris Goede:
That’s awesome.

Mark Cole:
And so that question. That question is a great question. But you know what I’ve started asking recently? That this is brand new to me. Why do I want to know what I’m missing? Is it fear? Is it a sense of entitlement? Is it anxiety that I don’t know enough? Is it? Or is it because I’m going, I’m not missing anything? And I hope everybody else knows that I’m the smartest person in the room, this cockiness. And so that second question that I’m asking has become a really good friend, and it’s new to me. I’ve asked for a long time, what am I missing? But now I’m asking, why am I asking, what am I missing? Because I have found that that question becomes a crutch to me in times of difficulty like we’re talking about. I found that that crutch becomes a sense of identity to me, because most often, a leader should know more than anybody else in the room. John says, leaders know more than before.

Mark Cole:
So sometimes I ask that, going, what am I missing? Nothing. I hope everybody else knows how smart I am. And then sometimes it truly is paralyzing me, because so, so going in and asking the question I always ask, which I hope I never stop asking that question because it’s a learning question. But asking the why is a motive question. And that motive sometimes can become obscure in the passion I’m learning. And it really is problematic that I’m slowing down and letting that question be answered before I move.

Chris Goede:
All right, I said I was gonna let you wrap up, but I have one. Two comments. Listeners, viewers. This is brand new. Right. I asked for one. He gave us two. You’re hearing this before our leadership team even hears this.

Chris Goede:
And he’s always sharing what he’s learning from his feedback. So that’s. That’s the power of listening to this podcast with Mark. Uh, the second thing I would say is that as you’re going through that, um, it’s awesome to hear you say, hey, let me. Let me check back on that. What’s my motive? Because what we often talk about around here is there is a fine line between influence and manipulation.

Mark Cole:
Yeah.

Chris Goede:
And John always says it’s that fine line right in the word. It’s called a motive. And I love that you’re asking yourself those two questions and wanting to know the motive behind it. I appreciate you sharing that.

Mark Cole:
Thank you for saying that. You know, I’m so glad Jake brought this to my attention. The book that we want to highlight this week is the self aware leader by John Maxwell. It’s a great book. It’s a smaller book. We call it an impact book. It’s a smaller book. And I will tell you, it is a great next step to today’s podcast.

Mark Cole:
If you’ll go to the website in the show notes, you’ll find that we’ll click. We have a link there that you can click. Use the promo code podcast, and we’ll give you a 15% discount. But that’s absolutely a great next step for you. Hey, Mauricio gave us an incredible comment after the podcast. Give your best to your best, which kind of relates to today’s podcast, to be honest with you. But Mauricio said, this podcast is great. I heard about John Maxwell so many years in a course of the 21 laws of leadership.

Mark Cole:
I read the book, and now I follow the podcast. Thank you for sharing your knowledge through this podcast, Mauricio. Thank you for being a part of the podcast. And hey, go bring some powerful, positive change to the world around you, because everyone deserves to be led. Well.