High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 440: Developing Your Mission-Critical Leadership with Jon Lokhorst, Keynote Speaker and Leadership Coach

Episode Date: June 27, 2021

Today on the podcast we have Jon Lokhorst, who is a leadership coach, keynote speaker, corporate trainer, and author of the new book, Mission-Critical Leadership: How Smart Managers Lead Well in All Directions. He works with organizations to develop leaders everyone wants to follow, build teams no one wants to leave, and deliver exceptional results. Before launching Lokhorst Consulting LLC, Jon enjoyed a 30-plus year career as a CPA, CFO, and organizational leader. He has a Master’s in Organizational Leadership and is recognized by the International Coach Federation as an Associate Certified Coach. He also serves as adjunct faculty in the School of Business and Nonprofit Management at North Park University. Jon is a member of the National Speakers Association and serves as President-Elect of the Minnesota chapter. In this episode, Jon and Cindra discuss: The 4 directions of leadership How leadership skills are “power skills” Why the “mission-critical leader” is different from other perspectives on leadership The critical behaviors that someone needs to lead in all 4 directions His TIES acronym to use to develop your leadership skills HIGH PERFORMANCE MINDSET SHOWNOTES FOR THIS EPISODE: https://www.cindrakamphoff.com/429-2-2-2-2-2/ FB COMMUNITY FOR THE HPM PODCAST: https://www.facebook.com/groups/highperformancemindsetcommunity FOLLOW CINDRA ON INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/cindrakamphoff/ FOLLOW CINDRA ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/mentally_strong TO FIND MORE ABOUT JON AND HIS WORK: https://lokhorstconsulting.com   Love the show? Rate and review the show for Cindra to mention you on the next episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/high-performance-mindset-learn-from-world-class-leaders/id1034819901

Hey, my name is Cindra Campoff and I'm a small-town Minnesota gal, Minnesota nice as we like to say it, who followed her big dreams. I spent the last four years working as a mental coach for the Minnesota Vikings, working one-on-one with the players. I wrote a best-selling book about the mindset of the world's best and I'm a keynote speaker and national leader in the field of sport and performance psychology. And I am obsessed with speaker and national leader in the field of sport and performance psychology. And I am obsessed with showing you exactly how to develop the mindset of the world's best. So you can accomplish all your goals and dreams.

So I'm over here following my big dreams. And I'm here to inspire you and practically show you how to do the same. And you know, when I'm not working, you'll find me playing Ms. Pac-Man. Yes, the 1980s game Ms. Pac-Man. So take your notepad out, buckle up, and let's go. This is the high performance mindset. John Maxwell once said, the true measure of leadership is influence. Nothing more, nothing less. Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook, said, leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence and making sure that impact lasts in your absence. And John Lockhorst, who I interviewed today for the podcast, said this, leadership skills are not soft skills. They are power skills. Welcome to the High Performance

Mindset. This is your host, Dr. Cinder Kampoff, and thank you so much for joining me here for episode 440. Today on the podcast, we have John Lockhorst, who is a leadership coach, a keynote speaker, a corporate trainer, and the author of a new book, Mission Critical Leadership, How Smart Managers Lead Well in All mission-critical leadership, how smart managers lead well in all directions. He works with organizations to develop leaders everyone wants to follow, build teams no one wants to leave, and deliver exceptional results. Before launching his consulting company, John enjoyed a 30-plus year career as a CPA, CFO, and organizational leader. He has a master's in organizational leadership and is recognized by

the International Coach Federation as an associate certified coach. And in this episode, John and I talk about the four directions of leadership, critical behaviors that someone needs to lead in all four of these directions, exactly how leadership skills are power skills, and why the mission critical leader is different than other perspectives on leadership. We also talk about his T.I.S.E. acronym, which is my favorite part of the episode, where he shares with us how we can develop our leadership skills.

If you'd like to see the full show notes and description for this, along with a transcript of the podcast, you can head over to syndracampoff.com slash 440 for episode 440. And if you enjoyed this episode, we'd love for you to leave us a rating and a review wherever you are listening. We'd be so grateful. And this helps us reach more and more people each and every week. So thank you so much. All right, without further ado, let's bring on John. I'm so excited to have John LaCourse today on the High Performance Mindset Podcast. John, how are you doing? I am doing great. It is a beautiful day and it would be a great day to be out playing hooky, but the next best thing is to be here together with you. That's perfect. I completely agree. It's a

gorgeous day out today here in Minnesota. And John, as we get started, I'd love to hear, just tell us a little bit about your passion and what you're doing right now. Sure. Interestingly enough, I come from an accounting background, which people don't always associate with leadership development and all of that. But I spent 18 years in public accounting, shifted into about 15 years in the nonprofit sector. And so I've seen a lot of different views of leadership and all throughout that have had this passion and interest about leadership. And what is it that

makes some leaders really thrive and are effective? What is it that makes them create these teams that no one wants to leave, everyone wants to be a part of? So I trace a lot of that back, even back to when I was in middle school and high school, just having that mindset about leadership. And so that passion, that interest has really followed me through my entire career. And about, I suppose it's six or seven years ago, decided to make that the last season of my career, as I like to call it, and to shift into working full time with leaders and organizations to develop better leaders and better teams. Yeah, and that's how we know each other is through the speaking circuit and as keynote speakers and trainers. So I'm curious, like what made you decide to make this shift of, all right, full-time into helping organizations and leaders be their best? I think part of it is what I was seeing coming from a finance background

myself, recognizing that oftentimes people who have that highly technical background, they get promoted and they advance and they build businesses often based on those technical skills and yet often lack the soft skills, if you want to call them that. Or as one of my colleagues likes to say, since the soft skills tends to draw the eye roll, let's call them power skills instead. Because that's really what makes you effective as a leader, as a business owner, and as an entrepreneur, it's those power skills, the people skills, the communication, the leadership that goes along with that. And so as I recognize that, I saw an opportunity from my finance background, understanding that mindset and that perspective to jump into that area. And so, you know, today, that's one of the areas that I do a lot of work in is with people in the financial services world. And then healthcare is the other

area and similarities there because those are individuals who also come from highly technical backgrounds, don't always understand the leadership side or the business side of what they're doing. Yeah. And John, very few people, you know, get intensive training on leadership. And I'm thinking about when we're in college, we're maybe studying the industry that we're working in, right, like finance, and very few opportunities to really learn about these principles. And I like what you said about power skills, you know, not soft skills, they give you power. You know, as we kind of dive into your book, Mission Critical Leadership, I'm just curious about what do you kind of see the best leaders do? If you can give us kind of like a high level picture there first.

Yeah, and I think this is very pertinent in the environment that we're in today, Sindra, because, you know, there's this tremendous labor shortage out there. And you can see that in virtually every industry. You know, there's help wanted signs out when it comes to retail and restaurants. But even in the professional world, there are a lot of job openings. And so if you really want to retain your best people and develop your best people, I think the first place is to think about how do you really engage your people? And when I say your people, this will tie into some of the paradigm of leadership that comes out of the book, but it's not just the people you supervise. It's also your colleagues and your superiors, the entire

community or network that you work within. It doesn't even have to be people within the same organization. I think that ability to engage others in the pursuit of whatever that mission is, is going to be the differentiator in terms of successful leadership. Absolutely. So tell us about mission critical leadership and what makes that different than maybe other concepts of leadership or perspectives on leadership? There are a lot of definitions out there for leadership. And there's so many books, so many resources. I think at one point, I did a search on Amazon with the word leadership, and it was like 60,000, 70,000 different resources that popped up. So there are just tons of definitions, tons of models for leadership.

What I found is that most of them focus on leadership in a singular direction in the organizational hierarchy. They're really about downstream on the organizational chart. It's how to be a good boss to the people that you supervise or that you lead. And don't get me wrong, that's very important. It's crucial to be a good boss. But if that's all you see in terms of your perspective on leadership, I think you really have an incomplete view. Because the book as the subtitle would indicate the best leaders know how to not just lead downstream to their direct reports or their team members. They're also able to lead up to their superiors. They lead across among their peers.

And, of course, all leadership really starts with self-leadership. If you can't lead yourself well, it's going to be really hard for you to lead others well. And in fact, in terms of derailment, leaders that get off the tracks and lose their credibility, lose their ability to lead, often the failure is a self-leadership failure at the core. So the four sort of hows of mission-critical leadership is leading yourself first, leading up, leading across, leading down. I completely agree with that, John. When I think about leading, many times we're thinking about leading down and we're not thinking about leading our peers or leading up and influencing up. When you say leading yourself first, because I completely agree with that as well. If you're not, you're not leading yourself, it's really hard and difficult to lead others. When you see,

you know, the strongest leaders that you worked with, who are our mission critical leaders, how do they lead themselves? I think you can go back, It was, I believe, the philosopher Aristotle that said, above all,, your natural behavior tendencies. When it comes to from a leadership perspective, you know, your leadership style, and how you approach, you know, people and how you approach work. The part of the paradigm for leadership, and it's part of my definition of mission critical leadership, you've got to be able to build relationships and deliver results. Virtually every person is oriented a little more in one of those directions than the others. There are very few people who are dead center and evenly balanced between the two. And that's just an example of part of how you need to know your own hard wiring and your own default. Because once you know that, it gives you the ability to flex

your approach. So I think it's that self-knowledge. And then part of that also is having a really solid personal foundation. I like to say you can't build a skyscraper on a foundation that's meant for a garage. Eventually, that building is going to crack and crumble and collapse. And the same thing happens to leaders who don't have that solid personal foundation. And, you know, that gets into, you know, what is your vision? What is your purpose? What are your values? What's the mission that you're after? And so when you have that strong self, sense of self, it gives you the ability then to lead yourself. So, you know, the direction that you need to go moving toward your vision and mission. And then from that,

you can lead others at the same time. Yeah, excellent. My husband and I, who's a school principal, elementary school principal, we were, we were talking last week, we were like, you know, the older we get, the more we realize we have so much more to learn about ourselves, you know, and it's like we're still learning and growing. And you'd think that, I don't know, that stops. But I think if that stops, then you really aren't growing into who you could become. And I just think there's always more like a peeling back the layers, the onions of like who you are at your core. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a perfect example, peeling back the layers of the onion, because you can continue to go deeper and deeper. And it's been really interesting in my coaching work, I use an assessment tool that provides some

of those insights, you know, we don't often step back as leaders, especially, you know, leaders and high performers are used to go, go, go. And, you know, there's that goal to achieve, there's that bar to climb over. And so the assessment tools that are out there are great. I call them guided self-discovery. It's like a guided tour of who you are. And it's always fun for me as a coach in that coaching work and that training work to see people who realize they get those insights and they're, oh, now I see why sometimes I get in my own way. My biggest barrier to my success is me. And now that I understand this about myself, I've got some better ways to

navigate that and to be a better leader. Yeah. And I think coaching is one of the best ways to learn more about yourself. I've had my own coach for seven or eight years and continue to grow in my self-awareness, but also feel like I know myself a lot better than when I started before starting with her. So your definition of mission critical leadership, building relationships and delivering results, why do you think both of those are really important? Like I said, Cinder, before, I think that most people lean more in one direction or the other. And some people lean very heavily. And I'll just use myself as an example because the assessment that I referred to, which comes from a group called Right Path Resources, that's one of the aspects that they measure.

And so I wasn't surprised by this. But when the results came out and I looked at it, what it says is that I am heavily results oriented. I don't just lean a little bit in that direction. I lean a lot in that direction. And I think when I was younger, earlier in my career, I didn't recognize that at times that was not the right approach, that I needed to lean more into that building of relationships. Now, fortunately, we've got a lot of flexibility. So even though by nature, I'm heavily results oriented, I can act in a way I can behave in a way that brings about that building of relationships. And so there's a difference there between natural behavior and

learned behavior. Over time, the more you practice that learned behavior, the more natural it becomes. So, you know, if I take my career over the last 30 years into account, I can see how I've learned how to build those relationships to where it becomes more natural. But, you know, if there's a time pressure, if there's stress, you tend to go into that default mode much more quickly. And so if you're heavily leaning toward the results, you might accomplish the goal, but you look around and where's your people?

Where's your team? The people that you work with, they may still be there physically, but they've checked out somewhere along the way. And right now, burnout is a huge factor. And so you got to be careful that you're not burning out your team because they're going to jump ship on you. So, you know, there's some dangers in being too heavily, you know, oriented toward the result side. On the flip side, you know, if you're too heavily leaning toward relationships and you lose that side of the results, well, number one, you don't accomplish those goals, which if you're leading in an organizational setting or if you're part of a team where winning is a part of the goal, you got to post those points on the scoreboard. You're not going to get there. And so you're going to run aground as far as your leadership goes there. So, you know, there's a dance that you have to do between the two. And, you know, oftentimes I describe leadership as

you're playing a role. It's like being an actor in a play or an actor in a movie. And I like to use Tom Hanks as an example, because he's one of my favorites of all time. You know, just think about the diversity of movies he's been in. And, you know, Cinder, the one that comes to mind is, I'm losing the title of it, but it's the one where he's got the volleyball and he's on the island. Yes, of course. It was the movie, now it comes to mind. You think about a movie like that as compared to some of the very serious roles, like one recently where I saw he was the commander of a submarine during wartime. And, you know, he's learned how to play the role. He sees the environment, he sees who he's working with and what the script is, and he adapts. And so even

though we've got these natural strengths, we also have that ability to adapt and to play that role well. And I think so much of leadership is about that. And, you know, even going back to that concern for engagement in this season that we're in right now, you know, you can play that role. You can learn those skills to help really engage the people around you. Yeah, love it. I really appreciate the emphasis on building relationships and results because I'm thinking about people that I know that maybe are really great at building relationships and results, because I'm thinking about people that I know that maybe are really great at building relationships, but then not necessarily produce the results, right? They might quickly get fired, right? Or the opposite. So results oriented that

they're not connecting with their people and then, right, burnout or a lot of pressure, you know, is experienced within the organization or team. When you think, John, about these four hows, right, leading yourself, leading up, leading across, leading down, which one do you feel like was the most difficult for you or the one that's, you know, the most difficult for you now? It's probably about the hardest question that you could ask, Cinder, because now it puts me in this mode of having to, to be, you know, open and honest, not just with the listeners, but also with myself. Yes. You know, and it's interesting, because the seeds for the book were planted during a graduate school program. I've, you know, I went and got a master's in organizational leadership. And as part of that, one of the projects that I did was a composite 360 degree evaluation. And for listeners that may not be familiar with that, that's basically where you go to

people who you've worked with in all those directions that we described earlier. It's the teams that you've supervised, as well as the bosses that you've served under, and then peers that you've worked with as well. And you get feedback on what was their experience of your leadership. And there are a number of tools out there for that. And I love those tools because you can segment the ratings based on the category that you're getting those ratings from. And of course, best practice in all of those is that you do getting those ratings from. And of course, you know, best

practice in all of those is that you do your self-evaluation first. So you've got a benchmark on how you viewed yourself and your own leadership, and now you get to compare. Well, when I did that as part of this class project, I was very surprised. It wasn't a huge drop-off, but it was enough to be noticeable. My peers overall rated my leadership performance lower than the ratings that came from my direct reports, the teams that I supervised, as well as the bosses who I served under. And it was one of those moments where I went, huh, I wonder why that is. And so I thought back to those different roles, the different organizations that I was in, and even the people that I worked with. And I tried to reflect on, okay, how is it that I ended up with, you know, less, you know,

favorable results from those peer groups. And it really required a lot of reflection. And even recently, one of my coaches asked me a question that brought another incident to mind when I failed to lead well peer to peer. And I'll just share a quick example of that. So I was working in the nonprofit world in fundraising, and we were launching a big campaign. And it was a huge priority of our CEO or executive director. And it was going to require a lot of collaboration, a lot of cooperation among different departments, among different team leaders. And because it was a fundraising campaign, I was really one of the key players in all

of that. So I was dependent on all these other departments to get what I needed from them so that my team, we could do our work. Well, I remember really well that I was going into a meeting with one of these other department leaders to get an update on their part of the project and find out where they were. And imagine my surprise when I walked into that meeting and I found out that they had done virtually nothing to move their part of the project forward, which, of course, then was going to mean my part of the project was stalling out as well. Sure. And quite honestly, I almost lost it in that meeting because I was so frustrated and so upset. And now in retrospect, I realize that I very quickly went into role power mode. Now, I didn't have any role power over my peers, which makes that peer to peer leadership the most complex form of leadership.

If you and I are peers, you know, I can't come in and just bark orders at you because you can turn around and look at me and say, well, John, you're not the boss of me. You know, one of those phrases that got used often in our family growing up with my siblings. And so I couldn't just bark orders at this other department leader. But what I did rely on, I brought the role power of our common boss, our shared boss, our executive director, CEO in, and started, you know, kind of barking with that. And that really wasn't that effective, that wasn't going to get us very far. And it's only been recently in retrospect that I realized, I did not bring the influence, I did not build the trust that I needed with that peer leader to help move this project forward to bring about that collaboration. And so that was just a classic

example, I think, of why my ratings from my peers came in, you know, so much different from the other groups that I got those ratings from. What's been interesting, Cendra, is that in my coaching and training work, and even when I'm doing speaking for groups, and I have conversations afterwards, I find that that's pretty common. It's not unusual. I'll use a polling question, for example, you know, which of the directions is hardest for you to lead in, and quite often, leading peers comes up first. And, you know, when it comes in second, it's usually second to self leadership, you know, like we said earlier, I've also found that the research bears that second, it's usually second to self-leadership, like we said earlier. I've also found that the research bears that out. There's a leadership development group out on the West Coast called Zenger Folkman, and they do a ton of work with 360s, and they've got thousands of them in their database.

And I heard recently that when you take those average scores and you break them down by those rater categories, on the whole, leaders get rated below from their peers as comparison to the ratings from their team members or their superiors. So, you know, that told me that I was on the right track, you know, both my own experience and the experience of other leaders. Yeah, that's great. As I was listening, John, I really appreciate just your vulnerability there and sharing what's most difficult for you. When I think about it, you know, leading up is the most difficult for me. And as I say that there have been times where I do great leading up, but then the moments where I've struggled the most with my leadership are leading up and maybe times where maybe I don't.

Maybe I lead differently than the leader above me or there's maybe that not trust and rapport or something's kind of missing there. That's what I find really difficult. And maybe a lot of people don't think of leading up. Right. Let's say your boss, you think about your boss leading you, not you leading your boss. Yeah, the role power gets reversed there. And one of the reasons leading up is challenging is because you're going against the current of that role power. And yet, when you think about the importance of leading up to your boss, you know, who else other than yourself has the most impact on your, your career, your performance as an, as an individual, you know, whatever that, that role

might be. And it doesn't matter. It doesn't have to be in the workplace even, but, you know, it's, it's so critical to lead up. And I think part of what makes it challenging is that, you know, with that role power, you can shrink back and go, I don't know. And so, you know, I often say that when you're going to lead upward, you know, the trust factor is huge. And then you have to be able to communicate and be candidly respectful. And there's a tendency to err in one direction or the other. You can err in the side of being respectful where you're too deferential and you might hold back. And then there's the other side where if you're not careful, you're going in with guns blazing

and you've got your opinion and you're ramped up. And that doesn't always land well either if you're just flat out candid without bringing the respect into it. So I think when you bring those together and approach with that kind of mentality, you've got a much better chance of that upward leadership. That's great. I think of some people that I coach right now who are kind of struggling with giving candid feedback or giving feedback in the moment. Maybe their empathy score is really high. So I like to give the strength finder assessments, people learn more about what their strengths are. And sometimes when I find when someone has a really high empathy, but they, they don't really

want to give that tough feedback. So and you had you talk about this in the book, the mission critical mission critical leadership is what would you say, you know, for people who do struggle with giving that candid feedback? I think part of it is just recognizing the cost of not giving it, you know, what are the consequences if you hold that back. And I think that feedback, you know, just like this paradigm can go in all directions. You know, the example that I gave earlier, I needed to give feedback to my peer leader, that other department director. And by failing to give meaningful and timely feedback in that situation, it just really led to that, that project stalling out and not getting the traction that we needed. And so in all those directions, I think if you don't provide that feedback, there are some consequences to that. And when you come to grips with, okay, if I don't do

this, what am I going to lose? What is my team going to lose? What is my boss or my coach going to lose in this? And then, you know, ultimately going, all right, now that that should help me to take that risk and see, this is for the best of everybody. And as long as I have the best interests in mind, I'm not using this as a tool for punishment, or I'm not using feedback as a, you know, vindictive, vindictive way, I can, I can make this really productive and for the good of everybody. Yeah, I'm, you know, we're motivated by both pain and pleasure. And so it's like, the pleasure of when I do this, how it'll make me feel when I accomplish this goal, how great it will be. But

also, what's the consequences if I don't go for it, right? So I really appreciated what you said is like, what's the consequences if you do hold back? And maybe the consequences on the person's development or the organization as a whole or the culture, you know, all of those things are really powerful. When you think about all of these four hows, like leading yourself, leading up, leading across, leading down. What do you think, John, are the really crucial behaviors that help someone lead in all of these directions? I like to use an acronym as I pull it all together. And it just so happens that the acronym is T.I.E.S. So what ties it all together? And they're words that start with the letters T, I, E, and S. And it's in a little different order than what it shows up in the book. And each of them associates with all of the directions, but I highlight them a little differently for each of those. So when it comes to leading upward, as you mentioned earlier, Cinder, it's about building trust. So that trust word, the T, how do you build unwavering trust with your boss? What does it take to do that? And that's often a question that I raise in training and coaching with people. When it comes to leading across, leading among your peers, I find that the key behavior starts with the letter I, influence,

because you don't have the role power to rely on. You've got to rely on influence. And how do I build those relationships of influence where, you know, let's say it's you and I working together and you want to collaborate with me or you want to cooperate, you want to support me, and I want to support you because ultimately it's us working together for the good of the team, the good of the organization. So the I is for influence. The E is the word that I used earlier, engagement. And I think that's critical in all directions, but it's especially true when you're leading your team. How can you engage them in a meaningful way in their work to where they want to be there, they want to contribute, they'll go the extra mile, they'll speak well of you, your team, your organization. And they're really plugged in then at that point,

you've got a much better chance of retaining those people and developing them if they're really plugged in then at that point. You've got a much better chance of retaining those people and developing them if they're highly engaged. And then the S at the end is self-awareness. It's that self-awareness about your own strengths, your own struggles, the leadership style that you bring to the table. Awesome, love the acronym. So TIES, T-I-E-S, Trust, Influence, Engagement, and Self-Awareness.

Let's take the first one, John. And I'm curious when you think about developing this kind of unwavering trust, like you said, with your peers, but you said, especially when you're leading up. Tell us how we do that. There's a little bit of a contrast in there, if you will, or maybe a juxtaposition. And I think high achievers, high performers, you want to set that bar high. You've got these big goals. You want to hit the home run. Since we're in baseball season, we can use that as the analogy, because if we hit the home run, we're going to impress our boss and we're going to impress our superiors. And, you know, that's true. That's good. But what we know from baseball is that the players that hit the most home runs

also tend to do what the most, they strike out a lot and they often strike out far more than they hit the home runs. And so there's a tension there. And so I like to say that, you know, yeah, it's great to hit a home run. It's great to hit a triple once in a while, but just consistently hitting those singles and doubles, that faithful performance over time, showing up, putting in the effort, making things happen, bringing a good attitude. I think that's going to get you noticed. I think taking initiative is another part of that where your boss or your coach can see that you're not just relying on somebody else to drive you to do what you need to do. You've got that self-motivation, that self-discipline, you're taking that initiative to make things happen. And I think when you start to develop that trust and your boss

feels like, okay, it doesn't matter what I throw at John, he's going to follow through. And if he can't do it, he's going to be honest with me and we can renegotiate and all that. But it's really what puts you in the position of being that go-to player. Yeah, love it. What else would you tell us about influence or engagement or self-awareness and how we can develop those that maybe we haven't talked about? Yeah, I think engagement and influence are both built by relationship and developing that relationship at a more personal level. And I think fortunately in the workplace now, we understand that it does not have to be completely arm's length. I think, you know, for years in the workplace, it was much more transactional, it was much more arm's length. And, and yet we spend so

much time in the workplace. And, you know, I know recently, it's been more by, you know, this kind of mode by Zoom than it has been in person. But still, you know, you spend a lot of time with your colleagues and with your coworkers. And when you can get to know people at a personal level in an appropriate way, they start to see that you've got an interest in them beyond just the work that they perform, beyond just the production. And so I think that's really important. No one wants to just be seen as a cog in the wheel, you know, part of the machinery. They want to be known as people who have, you know, real dreams and struggles and challenges of their own. And so as you get to know people at a more personal level, you know, they start to see that you've got their best interests in mind. And I think of a training session that I was in yesterday where, you know, that came up.

You know, how do you build those relationships? How do you get to know people? And, you know, one of the great ways is if you know that colleague, if you know that team member is a parent. Well, virtually everybody enjoys talking about their kids, right? I guess that's true of you too, Cindra. You're happy to talk about them even when they're getting in trouble, even when you're frustrated with them. You know, parents love to talk about their kids. And just a little hint for the listeners, I happen to be a grandparent and I love talking about my grandkids even more. So, you know, you find things like that that you can relate to. And, you know, just think about how much it means if you have a colleague that knows that one of your kids is, you know, we'll just conversation and they say, you know, Hey, Cinder, I know one of your kids is playing soccer right now. How's the season going and how much even better yet, if they know, you know,

your kid's name and they use their name in that, you get this sense that, huh, you know, whether it's my boss or a colleague, one of my team members, you know, there's a connection that develops there that helps you to build that, that influence and engagement. That's so true, John. And a few years ago, I went to interview for an NFL job as working with this team doing mental training.

And during a normal day interview, you have all these different meetings. And I sat down with the head coach. And I had 45 minutes with him. And for 30 minutes, he asked me about my family and about me as a person. And I left there thinking, I want to work for him. Yeah. You'd run through a brick wall for somebody like that. And, you know, and then it was 15 minutes about what I could do and the results I could deliver,

but it was really fascinating how I've never experienced that before in my life. you know, and then it was 15 minutes about what I could do and the results I could deliver. But it was really fascinating how I've never experienced that before in my life. You know, think about a traditional interview. It's more like kind of what can you do for us? But it was more like, tell me about your kids and, you know, and what do you enjoy? And I instantly felt this connection and it made me think a lot about kind of this, this relationship orientation or relationship focused leadership and how, yeah, you're right. I would run through a brick wall for that guy. And you'll never forget that, you know, and it's so true, you know, people,

you know, they, they, they don't forget how you made them feel as their leader or as their teammate. They may forget a lot of the conversations or the work that got done, the wins on the scoreboard. They may forget a lot of that. And there'll be trophies on the trophy case or plaques on the wall to remind you of that. But you remember those people who made you feel like you were really important, that you were really significant, and that, you know, your contribution to the team was significant.

Yeah. And even those people who you maybe start a conversation with, how's your family, you know, instead of, did you meet that deadline? Right, exactly. Well, John, I really enjoyed talking with you. You should grab John's book. I got it right here. Mission Critical Leadership, to the website, missioncriticalleadership.com. Now that's a long word, no punctuation or anything, you know, other than the.com. So missioncriticalleadership.com. And Cinder, I think that'll be in the show notes as well. The, you can go to that page, go down a third of the way down the page, and you'll see an orange button where you can download a

sample chapter from the book. You don't have to put in your email address, no strings attached. It's just a way for you to check it out. And if you like it, you can follow up on that. And then if you go down a little further on that page, you'll see a second orange button, and that's the button where you can contact me. So if you are interested in exploring the companion training experience that goes along with the book, I do a private label, Leadership Academy, or you just want to talk about leadership. I love conversations about leadership. I invite them all the time. And, you know, whether that leads to anything formal or not, you know, even those informal conversations, I think, are a great way for us to have that mutual learning.

That's wonderful. And so missioncriticalleadership.com, where else can we follow you on social media or anything like that so we can keep up on what you're doing, John? Yeah, I try to maintain a fairly active presence on LinkedIn. That's my social media platform of choice. And so you can just look me up by name

and it's John, J-O-N, Lockhorst is L-O-K-H-O-R-S-T. I happen to have two names that are easily misspelled. So J-O-N for John and Lockhorst is no C. It's L-O-K-H-O-R-S-T. And so if you find me on LinkedIn, I'll gladly accept your connection. And I curate a lot of content from others in the field, but publish some of my own content there as well. Oh, wonderful. So here's what I took from our interview today as I can summarize and then we'll wrap up. I love at the beginning,

you talked about leadership is like a power skill, not necessarily a soft skill. I thought that was really awesome. Mission critical leadership is about two things, building relationships, but also delivering results. We talked about four hows of mission critical leadership, leading yourself, leading up, leading across and leading down. And really like your acronym of T.I.E.S., you know, these commonalities that people have, behaviors in all four of these hows, right? T.I.E.S., T-I-E-S, trust, influence, engagement, and self-awareness. So John, thanks so much for gifting us with your gifts today.

Absolutely. Thanks for the chance to have this conversation with you. And you picked up those points really well, Sindra. Awesome. What final thoughts about leadership or final advice do you have as we wrap up? I think that a big part of leadership development in whatever context you're leading in, whether it's in the workplace or not, it doesn't matter which fear we're talking about. It's about continuous improvement. It's that opportunity to continually get better. And even you just get better by a degree, you know, every day, over time, you're going to develop that. And so I think, you know, creating a development plan for yourself, and there's some guidance in the book on how you can do that. But just, you know, identifying where do you want to learn and grow? Where do you want to get exposure to new opportunities and in leadership? And, you know, if you continually ask yourself that question,

and I know this is part of that high performance mindset that you do a lot of work with, it's like, you know, it's continually moving that bar up and you establish new benchmarks for your performance. And that's true of leadership as well. You get better and better. And eventually you'll become that leader that everyone wants to follow. And you'll build the team that no one wants to leave. And in the process, you and your team are going to deliver those exceptional results. Awesome, John. Thank you so much for joining us today. Absolutely. Thank you. Way to go for finishing another episode of the High Performance Mindset. I'm giving you a virtual fist pump.

Holy cow, did that go by way too fast for anyone else? If you want more, remember to subscribe. And you can head over to Dr. Sindhra for show notes and to join my exclusive community for high performers, where you get access to videos about mindset each week. So again, you can head over to Dr. Sindhra, that's D-R-C-I-N-D-R-A.com. See you next week.