Muse

John asking me the question, do you want to be popular with people or do you want to be productive with people? Do you want to lead people or be loved by people? And that was a riveting thought for me because I was like, loved? I want to be popular with people. I'm all about the people, John. And he's going, yeah, it's going to be a liability to you one day. Welcome to today's leadership podcast. We're the Maxwell Leadership Podcast. We want to add value to you so that you'll go multiply value to others. I'm really excited about today's podcast, Not only because I'm joined with Chris Robinson and love getting to do stuff together, Chris, and talk about John's content and how we live it out and apply it, but also because John did a lesson recently that was riveting to everyone that got to hear it. And that lesson was all about success stabilizers. How do you keep success in check in your leadership? How do you make sure that it doesn't create challenges or create disconnect from you and your team and you and others and even you and yourself. And so I'm really excited because today we're going to talk about how to stabilize your success. But for the next couple of weeks, next couple of episodes, we're going to take some time and really dig into this concept. So whether you think you're successful, whether you want to be successful, or whether you want to figure out how to deal with those successful people that are problematic, whether you are right there. You're going to really enjoy the next three weeks of episodes. And today, Chris, I just want to start off. You've been really successful in your life, really, really successful. What do you think probably is the thing that you consider the thing you've been most successful at

in your life? Most successful? Well, again, I think success is relative. We all have degrees of success. I've had a degree of success. But honestly, I would really break it down to something very simple as I'm still alive, I'm still healthy, and I'm making a difference and an impact on people around the world. Now, if you go back to and say, well, Chris, that doesn't seem like very lofty at all, but you got to understand that, you know, I thought that as a teenager, I was either going to be dead or in jail. Yeah, for sure. Like dead or in jail. And I never saw my life beyond the age of 21, 25. I didn't have a vision beyond that. I honestly thought those were going to be one of my two paths. And so the fact that I live well beyond 21, well beyond 25, the fact that I'm raising kids, that I am making an impact and difference in people around the world, that to me is a great success well beyond what I thought of as a kid.

Well, you're being successful. I'll tell you that much. Hey, and we want you to be successful too. And we want you to stabilize that success against some of the things that at times will distract you in believing too much about your success. So here we go. I want you to grab a pen, grab a paper. Maybe you want our bonus resource, which is just a follow-along tool, as John teaches. You can get that tool and other things, links and things that will make you in your leadership journey better. All of that is at maxwellpodcast.com forward slash stable. And if you'll go there, maxwellpodcast.com forward slash stable, you'll also see the link to follow us on YouTube. You'll be able to take in this podcast visually and get to be a part of it that way. Take a moment, get ready. John is going to challenge you to be successful, but stay connected and stay relevant. Here is John Maxwell.

i have never heard anybody talk about how do you stabilize and um make solid the success that you have in life because as we know a whole bunch of people that are highly successful become train wrecks are you with me and they crash and burn and i've watched it happen you've watched it happen and I've never heard anybody teach on, how do you stabilize your success so that it's solid and it's got a core? When you're successful, there are certain things that happen with your success and when they happen, how do we stabilize that? You've heard me teach that the greatest detriment to tomorrow's success is today's success. In the 1980s, that's basically 87, 88, I was really starting I'm like 40 and I'm really starting to experience a lot of success the church that I lead is they've written a book on it it's one of the 10 most influential churches in America but the books I'm writing are selling a lot they're doing really well they're really picking up. I'm getting a hundred and every month to speak. And so it's just a real good time for me. And this is what I caught myself in this, you know, in this success kind of wave. And I'm reminded of what my wonderful, precious good friend Jamie Kern Lima said don't confuse a tailwind with success and I began to look at other people that were successful many have more much more much more successful than me and they were they were crashing and burning and they weren't they they were not doing well in other parts of their life and that's when I I said I have got to develop an inward definition of success. Now, here we go. Before you have an outward definition of success, I think you should have an inward definition of success. You could not travel without successfully until you first traveled within. And so when we crash and burn on the outside, almost always is an indication that the inside isn't solid. So probably for six months, I kept asking myself, what's my personal definition of success? What is going to be success for me? And I think it's important for you to do that because I think a lot of people will tell you

what success is. And if you're not careful, you'll start chasing other people's idea of what success is. After about six months, I came to the conclusion, and by the way, since 1987 probably, this has been my inward personal definition of success. Very simple. Those closest to me who know me the best love and respect me the most. Those closest to me who know me the best love and respect me the most that has been my core that has been my success stabilizer so that when everybody's kind of applauding and kind of going crazy I go back and say now now John they don't probably know you very well but but the people that know you really well the people that know you the best do they love and respect you the most? Because if that's true, you are very successful in life because you're the real deal. You're very authentic. Because those who are close to me, I mean, you take people like Barbara and Lyndon and Mark and Aaron and all these other people that are my, you know, all these people that I have around me, they know me very well. And they now don't know what I do well. Well, they know all of my idiosyncrasies and I have a whole bunch, and they know all my faults, they know all my weaknesses, they know me, they know me very well. And we have a great relationship, there's no covering, we don't try to cover anything, we just are who we are. But when people who really know you well, they love and respect you more than people who don't know you well, that's success. let me let me let me just flip it so you make i make sure you have it when people who don't know you well like you better than people who know you well are you with me you got that one didn't you then you got a problem isn't that right and so that has been my i would have to say that's been my core and no matter where i was or what i was doing i constantly kept that in front of me do those who know me the best, do they love and respect me the most? That's a stabilizer for me. Now you're getting the picture. So let's talk about success because success gives people a lot of stuff. One thing that success gives, and I'm going to give you several right now, they're not in any order like one's more important than the other. We just start with one. If you're successful, you get a lot of power. Power comes along with success. This is huge.

You know, a lot of power. Now, power unchecked is incredibly unhealthy. You know, power corrupts and absolute power absolutely corrupts. So you give a person power without a stabilizer in their life, and they're going to get off the rails real quick.

So how do I, when I have this power, when I get this authority, how do I stabilize myself and not mess up? Well, the stabilizer for power is accountability. The moment that you make yourself accountable to someone else, where they can speak into your life and talk to you honestly, and that somebody is, quote, checking up on you, this becomes absolutely huge. You see, we judge ourselves by our intentions and we judge others by their actions. That's just human. That's who we are. What accountability does is it closes the gap between intentions and actions. and everybody everybody needs to be accountable to somebody i don't think i would follow anybody as a leader if they didn't have someone that they were accountable to if they didn't have an accountability structure within their life And by the way, you have to give people permission to hold you accountable. I'm the founder of seven companies. If I wanted to, I could look at everybody and tell them to take a giant leap and that they're my companies, and I'm going to do whatever I want to do. And I could run my life like that. If I wanted to, I could. But it's a dangerous way to run your life. It's a stupid way to run your life. It's going to catch up with me. It's only a matter of time, but you have to be, you have to, you have to make yourself accountable to people. You've got to, and by the way, you don't need to make yourself accountable to a lot of people. And if you make yourself accountable to people, make sure that they love you unconditionally so that they don't have another agenda. They're not, they're, they're, they're, they're not trying to destroy you, but the same sense, they're not like, see, when you get the right person to be accountable to they're not going to destroy you because they love you unconditionally but they're not going to let you destroy yourself don't miss that so they're they're they're always on your side but what part of being on your side is to say hey you need to make a change now by the way let me just say this about accountability I think one of the most important things to stabilize our success with power is to is to be personally accountable to ourselves i i've often said i set the accountability bar on myself higher than anybody else sets it and and so i i don't i really have never needed anybody to say john strive for excellence i never have needed anybody to say work a little harder that there's there's a there's a wonderful self-discipline about making

yourself personally accountable that just really is is huge in my book no limits i talk up in there about self-awareness and and i talk about how do you reach your capacity and i talk about the fact that one of the ways that you that you reach capacity is is to have self-awareness but i've also come to the conclusion that um that there's no such thing as self-awareness We have blind spots. I have blind spots. And I'm never going to see, I'm never going to discover those blind spots on my own. I need you to help me. I need you to walk in my life and say, John, that's a blind spot for you. I mean, if they're blind spots, guess what they are? They're blind spots. What part of blind spots do we not understand? but when somebody comes in and speaks to us our self my self-awareness today is not that i was self-aware my self-awareness today is someone else made me aware until i could be self-aware myself do you follow me i i got it i picked it up i picked it up from from somewhere else so when things are great and they happen and i write a book or communicate well or standing over what all that stuff. I'm totally aware. I'm aware. I'm aware that it's a gift. It's not me. And a person with ego, they really lack awareness of all the people around them that have helped them be

successful. Hey, I hope you really enjoyed that, Chris. I know I did. And just hearing John teach that and then share a component of that, this podcast episode was really impacted. I was reminded of a quote by Theodore Roosevelt. He said, success, the real success, does not depend the position you hold, but upon how you carry that position. And so as John's now talking not only about success and defining it for us in the lesson, he's really challenging us, and will do for the next couple of episodes, how do you stabilize that success that you have? And so I'm super excited. John says the greatest detriment to tomorrow's success is today's success. So by the way, whether you feel successful today or whether you don't, if you want to be successful tomorrow, your success perspective today is the determining factor. So we all want to be successful tomorrow. That's right. And it takes looking at our day today and going, hey, what can

we do? Something a little different. I agree. I think about earlier today when we were in a meeting together and, you know, you were asking the question of the team, hey, what are you guys doing today that's a little bit different from what you did yesterday in order to shift the results that you get today? And so I think that that leads us off well with just hearing that fresh from you before we even listen to the John teaching here this morning. But he talks about this phrase from Jamie Kern Lima, says, don't confuse a tailwind with success. Now, I think that we had a period of time where we had a little bit of a tailwind. We started this journey together in 2020, and immediately we were thrown right into COVID. And I mean, we actually, we navigated and did well through COVID and man, we were gliding. And then there was this headwind. I mean, we were now and today even getting resistance. And I kind of got to ask you the question, like, what were you seeing there? What was the difference between the tailwind and the headwind

that we've faced throughout these years? It's so funny that when I heard John give that quote today, Chris, number one, I did. I thought about you and I and our leadership. And I love the reference that you did to a leadership meeting that we had today, I thought about the different phases, the different times that we have led. Last week, I was with Ed Bastian, the CEO of Delta, and he was talking about over the last 21 years of his leadership at Delta as president, as CEO, all the different things that he has faced. And there's been times that he has experienced great tailwinds. He's in the airline business, and so tailwinds, headwinds kind of work for him, right? He's in great success moments, and it was less about his leadership and more about extenuating circumstances that he couldn't really control. But that's also true about some of the most difficult times of his leadership. It was things that was outside of his ability to control, COVID, wars, bankruptcy, some things that he inherited in his leadership. And it reminded me, number one, Chris, that difficult times is when leaders are need much more than successful times. But leaders often feel like they're having the greatest impact in the successful times. And I think that's what Jamie Kern-Lima is talking about. I think that's why it caught John so much. I remember the first time Jamie said that in front of John, and John went, whoa, whoa, wait, say that again? And she says, oh, yeah. And that time she interchanged it, and she said, don't confuse momentum with a tailwind and then came back and restated and said don't confuse a tailwind with success. And I think if you look at our leadership, even today, the leadership that we have, resistance or this soaring ability that almost everything you touch seems to be working, I think what we have to do as leaders and what John's trying to communicate in this, how to stabilize your success. Don't get too caught up in success being the determining factor of your effectiveness as a leader. Now, we all want success. We all believe that leaders, good leaders, everything rises and falls on leaders. Good leadership brings success, but don't let that determine the ability or the responsibility of how you lead. And that whole quote, don't confuse a tailwind with success, is really a sense of abdicating responsibility of leadership and leaders' responsibility to productivity as being a dismissal factor when it's a tailwind, when it's things outside of your control.

Yeah. Well, what about, so, so we, we look at the success side of it. We can dissect that, but talk to the team member, you know, or the person out there listening that just can't find a win. Yeah. And there's no momentum. What do you do to stabilize that or to get back to stabilization after everything is unstable? I had a season in my leadership. You will

remember that you're leading right beside me. I had a season in my leadership that I really, truly had that thought. Why is nothing winning? What to do when you're not winning? My wife, who knew that feeling for me, she found a message online by a good friend of ours, a guy named Steven. Furtick. And I went in, and what he helped me do is a couple of things. You're Mr. Positive, and so you'll understand some of this. It was truly a case to where tangibly, it didn't feel like anything that we were touching and moving was working. And I went in and I really had to dissect my leadership and my perspective. And the first thing that I did was I unwound the idea that just because we were not winning did not make me a loser. Now, that sounds crazy, doesn't it? We're positive environment. We're all good. I worked for John Maxwell. We're having more success in several parts of our business than we ever did. But I had to truly disconnect not winning to meaning I'm a loser. I really had to. The way I did that is I made a list of all the things that I had won in. I went, and you've heard these gratitude lists, podcast listeners. You've heard these challenges. You need to make a gratitude list every single day. And I went and I said, you know what? I'm going to make a winning list and I'm going to show of all the things that have won in my leadership. That probably doesn't apply to most of you. It did to me that day. And when I did that, man, I got done with that list. And then I did something that Stephen Furtick did not challenge me. I went and listed out the adversity I overcame to have that win. And boy, as I did, I created the winning list and then I created the adversity overcame list to have that win, man, I walked into the office that day and I went, we're going to win. So number one, I identified that I disconnected being a loser. Number two, I made a list of the wins because at this particular time, I really needed it. The third thing that I did do that I think's really important is I did create that gratitude list. What are the things that I am grateful for right here? And what I found was most of the things that I was grateful for in the difficult times was the same things I'm grateful for in the good times, and that is, I'm glad I'm in the game. I'm glad I feel the weight of this right now. It's Jack Nicklaus. We did an event with Jack Nicklaus not too long ago, and they said, how do you handle the pressure of Sunday? He went, I live for Sunday. So the first thing that I do is I embrace the pressure, because the fact that I have the pressure of the Sunday crowd means I played well enough on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday to be in the last group to feel the pressure. He said, great leaders welcome pressure because they're in the game for the pressure. They're in the game for when the stakes are the highest. And so I created a gratitude perspective that says, boy, I'm glad I'm the one leading right now. And I'm not waiting around, waiting for a leader to make a decision on whether we're going to make it or not. I'm glad I'm the one that gets to determine that. Right. Now, John also gave us

the definition side here of success. John gives us that definition of those closest to me who know me best love and respect me the most. How would you define success or would you agree with John

in that statement or how have you modified it? I do think that success should be determined by those closest to you and not determined by yourself because, boy, power and success and money and fame and effectiveness is such a distorter of the truth. And too many people have taken a winning moment and made it a championship, and it was nothing more than a moment. And so I do agree with John's success. I'm heavily influenced by that. Success is defined by those that love and respect me the most. And so I agree with him. For me, I go one step further and define what success is, and then let people around me tell me how well I'm doing. And the best way I know to define success for Mark Cole is going back to that infamous second day, second most important day in a leader's life, according to Mark Twain. The first day being the day they were born, the second day they discovering why. And I believe that rests around purpose, around one's effectiveness at living. And for me, that is to motivate and inspire people to reach their full potential. So every day I ask myself a success question, Mark, how well do you think you added value and motivated and inspired people today? How well do you think you did that? And then on days when I'm not sure, I ask a couple of people that I met and said, did I motivate you and did I inspire you? But ultimately, I'm letting on a consistent basis, sometimes yearly, sometimes monthly, I'm letting people close to me give me very big, very clear specifics on how well I am motivating and inspire people to reach their full potential.

I love that. I love that. And I think I live underneath the same philosophy of John, but I think the iteration for me comes down to, you know, I really want who I am on stage and who I am in person to never be a mismatch or who you all see on the podcast here to you meet me in person. there's not a mismatch because I've shared it before and I think this is what John is saying too, but it's how I articulate it. We've met very, very incredible author speakers all around the world and you've read their books for years and then you meet them and you go, oh, I love their books. Keep it at the books. I don't want that gap to be there because I've seen it too often where somebody has a persona on stage and they have a persona off stage. They have a persona on camera And then they have one off camera. And for me, I want that to be as close as it could possibly be. For sure. It's also modeled by John Maxwell because out of all of the authors, speakers, authorities, celebrities that I've been around, he's got the closest gap between who he is on stage and who he is in person. Well said. To who I experience. And so I love, love that there. Now, he talks about power in this one as well, too. And power, he says, the stabilizer for power is accountability. So there's two things I want to talk about there. The first one is I want to talk about, because you've shared stories in the past of when you were five years old, you knew that you wanted to lead somebody because you gave an order and they did it. And you got them to do it. And so as people grow in success, they get this access to power. Tell me about a time when you really began to sense that power and how it could be used for good or it could be used for bad.

Yeah. So, you know, this has happened to me multiple times. John said the statement in the lesson, you guys all heard it, I'm sure, and underlined it, bolded it, highlighted it. Power corrupts and absolute power absolutely corrupts. And there is a component of leadership, especially when you're known for it. And leadership, first frame of reference, first revelation of leadership for me was telling people what to do. And like you said, loving it when they did it. I absolutely did. At five years old, I can remember a baby of seven in our family, two parents and five kids. I can remember getting them to do what I wanted them to do at five years of age and going, yes, this is everything. Well, that unchecked and that unfiltered, and as John says, that as power begins to destabilize success. It takes that power and it begins to manipulate people rather than motivate people. I said often, I said earlier that I exist to motivate and inspire people to reach their full potential. I don't exist to manipulate and challenge people to reach their full potential. Because most of the time I challenge you because I'm not getting from you what I want from you. I want to inspire you so you can get the best out of yourself. I want to motivate you rather than manipulate you. Manipulating is for my benefit. Motivating is for yours. And I have found for me personally that when I began to use my success, use my leadership position, use my authority to manipulate people, I have become destabilized in whatever success gave me the privilege to do that anyway. So I have learned through the years that that comes out in multiple factors. We may talk about this in a little bit, but I've seen that that comes out sometimes in control. I want to control, right? We'll talk about that one. Yeah. And so I'm sitting here, and I really have to realize it. And for the next couple of weeks, this is not a teaser. We're really going to go deep in how destabilizing success can be because it can confuse you, it can lie to you, and it can paralyze you to tomorrow's success if you get satisfied with today's. take a moment and really slow down and identify a place where you have tasted success or where you're tasting success and put that as a framework because we'll find some places I'm confident that

you're destabilized in that area yeah when um you know so we talk about this accountability then you get this here but then there's also these blind spots that he talks about and so I noticed something recently now you just talked about just kind of kind of slipped out there said hey I got this control deal. I've watched you here recently begin to give up control of some things inside the organization that you've always had control or a handle on. Where is that coming from? Is that coming from accountability? Is that coming from, you know, accountability partners or people that are speaking into your life? Talk to me about this shift that I'm seeing. Yeah. So, you know,

I can remember, I'm glad you're seeing the shift because we're leading so much. You're in the office today. We're in meetings today, doing podcasts. And so I'm glad to know, one, that you've noticed. Two, I'm glad as this podcast continue, I hope that you're able to start giving even more illustrations of me giving agency or a delegation of authority to leaders in my life. It comes from a lesson, however, that has been as profound to me as the lesson And I talk about on this podcast often about.

being a people pleaser. John asking me the question, do you want to be popular with people or do you want to be productive with people? Do you want to lead people or be loved by people? And that was a riveting thought for me because I was like, loved? I want to be popular with people. I'm all about the people, John. And he's going, yeah, it's going to be a liability to you one day. And he began to mentor me on that. It was a long process. Very similar thing happened to me about my leader. I'm very much a people-oriented leader. But some of the people, some, not one, not two, some of the people that I have been the most effective leading through the years decided all of a sudden to tell me what it felt like to be on the other side of my leadership in a way that demonstrated I'm a control freak. Now, my wife's not going to give an aha to that. People very close to me know I'm pretty controlling, but how it felt and how it debilitated and how it paralyzed on the other side of me was an aha, a true aha. And to be honest with you, it wasn't just an aha. It was an uh-oh. It was like, wow. What I have done, and by the way, it was very successful during my 15 years of John Maxwell CEO. It was becoming ineffective as the owner CEO because now my control freakness was not on benefit of somebody else. It was on benefit of me, and now it was starting to feel like manipulation. It had went from motivating, let's charge the hill for John, to manipulation. Let's get what's best for Mark. And I'm just telling you, Chris, it was an aha moment. You asked the question before the podcast, you went, hey, what's a moment that you really had a blind spot on how you were misusing power? And I went, I got it. I know what it is. And you're getting the benefit of agency and empowerment like many people before you didn't get because it worked so well for me before, and it was not a manipulation problem before. It was a motivation. But as it began to be me, the benefactor, I was taking that control freak that I've always been. I was turning it into manipulation for what I needed from people. And it was devastating, number one, to see that. It was devastating to see the unchecked results of that, that I'm still working to repair some of that. And now it's even more interesting to watch me change my mindset and to watch the lids come off of people. And they go, oh, OK, I can do this. I'm watching you. I'm watching you lead in a different way right now because you've been given the opportunity that this clarity that I had in my leadership was not even an awareness to me.

That's amazing. And, you know, I was jokingly putting you on the spot here, but, like, that, seeing that and hearing that makes all the difference in the world. Yeah. So thank you for your transparency on that and that shift, because I know that it'll help our organization as a whole, but somebody else out there right now is going through this exact same thing. For sure. Where, you know, they're in your exact same position going, hey, I want to be the controlled person and just that giving up of that control, what that does for other people to allow for them to lead. Because once you control it, you always have to control it.

When you lead from a place of motivation with your team, you will see that motivation turn into results like you've never seen. For instance, I was leading from a controlling environment on behalf of someone else, on behalf of the CEO, and realized that when I became the top leader, that leading with control began to feel like manipulation, and that manipulation was no longer motivation, and there was a diminishing return on my team's results. When I realized that, I removed my control freak, my sense of power, and I began to replace it with motivation. The results and the instant step into a greater belief of impact in my team was remarkable.

Man, well, hey, first and foremost, thank you for your vulnerability today. Thank you for sharing today. It helped me grow. Hopefully it helped our podcast listeners out there grow, and I cannot wait to be back on again.

Yeah, it's going to be great, Chris. I love what we're talking about here of just dealing with the concept of success. I'm going to get to a listener comment here in just a moment, but I want to ask you a question. How do you create a culture where your team feels safe to be accountable without fear of shame or punishment? If you can get that question and really dig into it, you will have taken home a lesson from this podcast that will make you a better leader. You can be successful and stay connected. You can be connected and successful and not be seen as too powerful. And you can be effective and successful.

and give others that same sense of success. Today, we have a comment from Karen. Karen heard the podcast called Preparing is Caring. In fact, I would challenge you, we're going to put it in the show notes at maxwellpodcast.com forward slash stable. Go take in this podcast, Preparing is Caring, and also I'm going to put another podcast in there called Cultivating Humility for Lasting Influence. Here's what Karen says. She says, how can I try to anticipate someone's reaction when they think differently than I do. She goes on and gives some clarity. Thank you, Karen, for that. She says, we have a wide range of ages on our team, and I often have a hard time figuring out how some of them might receive the messages I'm trying to communicate. I'm not very good at getting inside someone else's head when their perspective is very different than mine, but I would like to improve. So back to this, how do I get or anticipates someone's reaction? I have a friend of mine, a great communicator, incredible communicator. When he's getting ready to stand before an audience, he tries to get as many of the people he's getting ready to speak to, he tries to get them in three or no more than four people groups, four avatars, if you will. And he makes sure that his message will impact those avatars, like a single mom, like a college student, like somebody that's pretty successful, all hearing the same message, how do I make sure that it is resonating and connecting with as many people groups as possible? So first thing I would say, Karen, is anticipate what their reaction could be. But the best way is when you're done communicating something, ask questions. What did you hear? What do you anticipate doing with what you heard? And how could I have said it better. And Karen, if you will discipline yourself to really ask those questions, it'll make a difference for you. And by the way, that's what we want to do. We want to make a difference with people that want to make a difference through this podcast. Thank you for leading today. Let's go lead well, because everyone deserves to be led well.