Start With A Win - Become an AUTHENTIC Leader | Chris Goede from Maxwell Leadership

Starting point is 00:00:00 And as leaders, if we're authentic in the good times and the bad times, when we have to make those changes, when we have to make those tough calls, if we were authentic and we connected with them, they're going to trust you. They're showing up because they have to, not because they want to perform. You're going to have your change resistors, you're going to have your change empathizers, and then you're going to have your change agents. What is a key leadership tip that you have to share with them today? Welcome to Start With A Win, where we unpack franchising, leadership, and business growth.

Starting point is 00:00:32 Let's go. Coming to you from Start With A Win headquarters at Area 15 Ventures, it's Adam Contos with Start With A Win. Ever wondered what it takes to turn leadership principles into real world success? Today on Start With A Win, we're diving in with Chris Godey, a man who's not just talked the talk, but has truly walked the walk in the leadership arena. From his days playing college and professional football to steering high growth companies in real estate and manufacturing, Chris brings a wealth of experience in team building and executive management. As the executive vice president at Maxwell Leadership, he's the go-to guy for transforming leadership theory into impactful business strategies. So if you're looking to learn from someone who's been in the trenches of both sports and business leadership,

Starting point is 00:01:19 you won't want to miss what Chris has to say. Adam, thanks so much for having us. Super excited to be on here with you to talk just a little bit about leadership. Awesome. Hey, can you give us a little bit about yourself? Give a little of the intro, but take us a little deeper on who is Chris Goatee? Yeah, I love this question. And what I love about this question is not because I want to talk about myself. The journey, when I get asked that question, it changes all the time. I've had the privilege of working under John Maxwell at Maxwell Leadership for over 23 years. And so with a combination of osmosis and maybe beat into me, I have a leadership bent on everything that I see and do. And I love sports. And so I grew up playing

Starting point is 00:02:05 sports. My family's in sports. And so I love tying leadership principles to sports. And here at Maxwell Leadership, one of the greatest things that I get to do on a daily basis besides sit on our executive team is to work with organizations and leaders every single day. And our focus is to do a couple of things. One is that we want to help them grow as a leader. And we also want to help them enhance the culture of their organization. And so every day I wake up and those are really the two things that I focus on. Awesome. And I mean, the Maxwell Leadership Organization is the pinnacle in leadership, education and development and is a great organization. I think I've read pretty much all of John's

Starting point is 00:02:45 dozens and dozens of books. And they're truly amazing. He has a great voice of leadership and great insight. And one of the key tenets that you guys live off of is education. Leaders learn, learners lead. And you don't become a better leader if you're not learning every single day. Can you start this podcast by telling us a little bit about how leaders should be perpetual students and about a kind of a recent aha moment in your education as a leader? Yeah. You know, you mentioned John and his, just as the breadth of leadership that he has written on, you know, he writes a book a year. And Adam, I don't know about you, but I have a hard time journaling every day, right? Like if I have great

Starting point is 00:03:32 intentions, I get all these journals. Yeah. And then I sit there and I just look at the journal and I go, I got nothing, right? And this guy is writing a book a year. And, you know, the simplest way that when he talks about how does he do that, I'll talk about John for just a minute, is he has what he calls the rule of five. He has five things that he does every single day. One of those is write. Another one is to think. Another one is to ask questions. Another one is to file. And he has these five things that he does. And oh, by the way, at the end of the year, he's got a lot of great content that he has just worked through, thought about, read and pulled out. And so he is the model for us of a perpetual learner. So when you're in this organization and I've been in it several

Starting point is 00:04:16 years, I've mentioned before, you better figure that out. Like it better be part of your DNA as you grow. So your question to me is a good one because you say, hey, what's something recent that you've learned or an aha moment? I mentioned a minute ago for us, we like to go in and work with organizations around culture. So I've been studying, you know, leadership and culture and change. One of our executives, facilitators and coaches by the name of Greg Cagle has really a passion for culture. And he developed this content around the four dimensions of culture. So this is an aha for me in a minute. When we talk about culture, we say, hey, in these four dimensions that he created, we talk about the bottom where you have this complacent culture.

Starting point is 00:05:01 Then there's a compliant, a committed and a courageous culture. Then there's a compliant, a committed, and a courageous culture. As I began to look at that internally and reflect, I was like, my aha moment was, because of the way that I'm wired, I tend to maybe sit in the committed or maybe the compliant culture as a member of our team, as a member of Maxwell Leadership. I thought to myself, in order for me to serve the people that I have the, you know, in order for me to serve the people that I have the privilege of leading, in order for me to serve John and Mark Cole, our CEO of Maxwell Leadership, I got to make sure I'm continuing to push myself past that committed and that compliant dimension. And how do I get into the courageous side of leading that? And again, I've been doing this for a long time. And so if you're continually learning,

Starting point is 00:05:45 those are some ahas you pop up and be like, man, why wasn't I doing that a long time ago? Right. And so that would be the first thing that comes to mind when you ask me that question, just about a recent aha that I'm, that I had takeaway or learning from leadership. I want to unpack that just a tiny bit, kind of a tiny bit here though, because when we look at the, you know, the four levels, what was the bottom one again? Yeah. The bottom one is complacency. That's the, that's kind of the, the, the, I don't want to say a negative, right. But we have a lot of complacent people and cultures in organizations, right? The, the three above it are more positive and you can

Starting point is 00:06:23 work your way through that. Right. So it goes where we go, Hey, we got compliance, compliant, we got committed, and then we got courageous. Now there are certain areas and certain times of your leadership to where you're going to have to sit in the compliance of a culture, our HR, our safety, they've got to have some compliance. And they may even lead some of the things. Then you've got some of the committed. But as a leader, I want to make sure that I'm not sitting in the complacency, in the compliance or the committed. I want to make sure I'm in this courageous culture, what I'm thinking of innovation and focusing on leading leaders in our organization, this, this aha for me around what Greg created, um, was making sure that I'm thinking about how do I lead a courageous culture inside our organization here at Maxwell leadership. I love this. And when you

Starting point is 00:07:16 start comparing this to employee results, it's fascinating because I I'm a big fan of the, you know, the different levels of engagement, employee engagement, and I'm a big fan of the different levels of engagement, employee engagement. And I'm also a fan of Maslow's hierarchy of needs and the psychology of going from safety all the way up to self-actualization. And it's interesting because when you climb these ladders, they all kind of look a little bit parallel when it comes to that. So, you know, when you're down in that complacency, you're in this position of fear almost where you're just hoping to keep your paycheck. Doing what you got to do to get by. Yeah. And I mean, it's fascinating because then you start moving up into love and all that unconditional giving and, you know, that self-actualization up at the top that you're talking about here with leadership. I mean,

Starting point is 00:08:05 I like to align this for our listeners simply because when you look around, you have to ask yourself, where's your business at? Where's your leadership at? Where are your employees seeing you in your culture as an organization? Give me an example of where you've kind of turned around an organization from these things, where the, where the employees are, they're showing up because they have to, not because they want to perform. So this, you just used a key phrase that we, it's a methodology that we use with all organizations. And you talked about the have to, to the want to. Another way that I like to talk about it, and even as you were talking about comparing the models, how do we get our team members to where they are giving us discretionary effort? Now, not for our benefit, okay? You and I both know this. There's a fine line between influence and manipulation. And that fine line is the middle called motive. And as leaders,

Starting point is 00:09:10 the only way you're going to get a win is if you have a proper motive for why we're leading people. Why would we want them to give us discretionary effort? And you just mentioned, you said, hey, how do I get people to go from, man, they have to follow me, the command and control, to, man, they want to be a part of what we're doing. And the way to do that is by drawing them to be able to connect with each other and to connect with their leader and to connect with how what they're doing ties to what the organization is going after. And when you do that, you get discretionary effort. That's where, to your point, that engagement level increases. As you talk about an example, we do have the privilege of working with organizations around the world, all sizes, small, privately held, publicly organizations. And one of the things that I am always blown away by is that I go in,

Starting point is 00:09:57 our team goes in and we work with executive teams or we work with leadership teams or we work with teams that are out in the field and on the floor, and they really don't even know each other. They're not connected to each other and what their stories are. We have a very simple little exercise we do that's tied to John's five levels of leadership. The methodology of which we use in organization, our consulting side and our training side is the five levels of leadership. And he talks about, you know, at level one, it's the half two, level two is the one, two, then we go on up. We actually will take them through a values card exercise, not an exercise for the company values. What is Adam's core values? And we work them through an exercise. You may have seen these in other places, but we get you down to what is Adam's core five values. And then we have you talk about why is that value important to you?

Starting point is 00:10:51 How is the organization doing a good job of leading you around those values? Or maybe how are they not? How would you like them to lead differently? Adam, it's not uncommon for me to be with teams that have worked together for 10 years and I'll lead this 15 minute conversation or organization. And I have people walking out of the room saying, I had no idea that that was X, Y, and Z to you. And all of a sudden you see that engagement, you see that turn to where now they are connected at a different level, which allows them to go through some tough times. It allows them to go through some tough KPIs and all those things. So just a simple little exercise like that. I've seen teams shift because they want to work with each other. They want to follow Adam. They want whatever it is because you've taken the time

Starting point is 00:11:36 to connect with them and get to know them a little bit better. Awesome. And I mean, we all know that when you get that culture aspect right and those values right, you get alignment, you get clarity, and you get trust in the organization. And those things are so important, particularly when we're making tough calls. Because, I mean, let's face it. If you're a business leader, you're making tough calls probably almost daily now. I mean, this is not just a tailwind that is pushing us all the great profitability today. We have to work hard for this stuff, folks. And we have to align our teams and create that trust to get there. How do you view getting those employees ready and getting those

Starting point is 00:12:17 leaders ready for those tough calls in how this all lines up? Yeah. You got to do the hard work on the front end. To your point, I think there's a phrase I love and it is around trust. I always say authenticity is a trust accelerator. And as leaders, if we're authentic in the good times and the bad times, when we have to make those changes, when we have to make those tough calls, if we were authentic and we connected with them, they're going to trust you. Back to your comment about if people feel like they have to follow you. By the way, I don't know about you, Adam, but I would never want to get up and go to work thinking I had to follow somebody. I can't wait till I get to work and Adam tells me what to do today. That just doesn't. Like it gives us goosebumps. And I'm sure all of our listeners feel the same way. And so if you are authentic, if you connect with them, when you have to make those tough calls, when you have to make those changes, they're going to, they buy into the leader before they buy into the vision of the change. Okay? So remember, set the course, authenticity,

Starting point is 00:13:26 connect with them, and they're going to buy into, you know what? I trust Chris. I trust Adam. And this may not make sense to me right now, but there must be a reason behind it. I'm going to get on here and go with them. Versus if I haven't done that work ahead of time,

Starting point is 00:13:39 if I haven't prepared before the moment to lead in the moment, then we're going to have a hard time getting our team member to stay engaged and work through that with me, even if they don't, they don't clearly understand it. Awesome. And, you know, we're talking about this evolution here in business. Evolution is about change. People hate that word. Employees hate that word, especially when they don't have clarity of where that change is taking them and where they can put their efforts together. So, you know, if you truly look at

Starting point is 00:14:11 change leaders that are listening to this, you know, it's about adaptation and about accepting and frankly, taking some heartfelt chances in your own life and trusting your leader. Chris, can you share a pivot point in your career where you've dealt with massive change and kind of how you've dealt with that with delivering the employees forward instead of creating this just chaos and everybody going, oh my gosh, the fog of war, we don't know what's going on. You know, we've, we've all seen it. Like COVID was a perfect example. You know, how do we work from this way or how do we work that way? Or, or, you know, I have to wear a mask when I'm in a meeting. Who knows what it is, but the reality is people hate change, but they love being able to trust somebody who's going to guide them through it. Take us on an experience that you've had around change. So I think there's a

Starting point is 00:15:05 lot of examples that our listeners today could refer back to COVID, as you mentioned, and how we all do business now is a lot different. And you had to go through that. As I was thinking and listening to you, there's a couple of things that came to mind. I want to talk a little bit maybe about a personal experience, a personal change that I had to make as a leader that that's probably relevant to what you're talking about. Our CEO shared with our leadership team several months ago. He said, hey, look, we're always John Maxwell is is a guy that is an opportunistic guy. He always wants to look for ways to add value to people, to organizations. And so things are always changing around here. Sometimes we say we may not be focused enough to run a successful organization because we're always moving around. So we live in a world of change. And we just developed a course called Leading Through Change.

Starting point is 00:16:00 And it's something that, to your point, is so relevant to organizations and leaders out there. I want to share a couple of things as you were talking that I thought about. Number one, Mark Cole shared with us, there are really three types of people as you take them through change that you need to be aware of. You're going to have your change resistors. You're going to have your change empathizers. And then you're going to have your change agents. And one of the things that we talk about with our teams here as we move through many different changes is that we know we got to be aware of all three of these types of people.

Starting point is 00:16:32 We're going to have the people that are verbal and pushback and they just resist it, right? A lot of us initially, when we hear the change, it's hard. You said, first thing you say is, well, how does this affect Chris? That's the first thing we all ask. Where the danger is, is those that does this affect Chris? That's the first thing we all ask. Where the danger is, is those that are change empathizers inside the organizations. They create silos

Starting point is 00:16:49 in cultures. They maybe go against what the leadership is asking to change, even though they may or may not agree with it because they're just empathizing with their peers and their team members. We don't necessarily want those type of people on our teams, but we do want people that are change agents. And how do you get behind the change? One of the things that we do often is people want their voice to be heard. If we want to win as an organization, as leaders, we may know where we're going and we may be able to communicate that clearly. We just may be uncertain of how we're going to get there. That's when you bring the team around, allow them to have a voice into that so that they can be part of the change agents.

Starting point is 00:17:29 One of the things I was going to share with you from a personal application to change as a leader that I wanted to share is I am more of an analyzer, right, by trade. And so I tend to aim, aim, aim, and then fire, right? And then all of a sudden I missed because the target's completely gone. And I have a lot of thoughts as a leader. And when I was talking earlier about how do we get to that courageous part of our culture, this kind of ties into that. And our CEO came to me and he said, hey, Chris, he said, you need to change the way that you're communicating. You need to communicate more. The people need to hear your voice. They need to understand that that they know that you're behind this change.

Starting point is 00:18:18 They want to hear your voice, maybe sometimes more than what you have to say, which I said, well, that's good, because I sometimes I don't say much, but I would love to hear my voice. So he challenged me. He said, here's what I want you to do. I want you to think about changes that have to be made or changes that you would make. I want you to write the decision down instantly, and I want you to put it in the top drawer of your desk. And then I want you to go and do your laborious processing, analyzing. And then I want you to come back when you finally make the decision. I want you to look at that piece of paper, and I want you to go and do your laborious processing, analyzing. And then I want you to come back when you finally make the decision. I want you to look at that piece of paper and I want I want you to tell me what was the difference. So I did this for about two weeks and I came back and I pulled out the decisions I made and the decisions that I wrote on that paper. And would you know that probably 98 percent of each decision that caused change inside the organization was the exact same and so what i learned from that was that i need to as a leader go through

Starting point is 00:19:14 this change i need to trust my gut i need to move i need to make a decision because by not making a decision i'm making a decision and and be able to communicate that because our team wants to hear that. So it was tough for me because my natural tendency is to just let me, okay, I'm not going to say anything right here. I'm not going to change right now. I need to make sure I do all my research and what I've learned and have had to develop a learned behavior. I've had to change my behavior in that is that I need to react a little bit faster.

Starting point is 00:19:43 It's not been comfortable. It's not been easy. And so I've had to try to work through that. I want to be a change agent for myself and for the organization. The only way to do that is to begin to trust what my inner gut is saying. Do you think some of that stems from the imposter syndrome? I mean, we all face the imposter syndrome. 100%. Take us through that just a brief moment so that our listeners understand. I mean, we've talked about the imposter syndrome in the past, but remind us as well as how can we do a better job? I mean, you give us a great team or great tool to try and overcome that, but take us through that process briefly. Yeah, I think some of us have the imposter syndrome stronger than others, where we walk

Starting point is 00:20:28 into a situation, a room, a relationship, a whatever it might be, and we automatically start having this self-talk of, I shouldn't be in this room. I shouldn't be sitting at this table. I should not be responsible for the size of that budget or that PL, P&L, or the number of people that are relying on my leadership. And you have, you know, some people talk about you got the angel on one side, the devil on the other. And it's just the self-talk that you allow into your headspace as a leader that we all have. We all have it. And I was listening to this morning, I was listening to a book on tape, Elon Musk's story, right? And in there, he just he confesses about some things

Starting point is 00:21:14 where it's like, yeah, I didn't know what I was doing. And I didn't make a decision. Hey, I'm like, this is one of the most creative, innovative, smartest IQ dudes probably we have in this planet. And so we all have it at some level. And it's getting to the point where you develop yourself enough. You have enough learned behaviors to go, no, I can't contribute here. I do. What is it I'm supposed to learn through this exercise or this environment?

Starting point is 00:21:41 Not I don't deserve to be in this room. Awesome. Great advice. Chris, for our leaders out there, for our listeners, what is a key leadership tip that you have to share with them today? Whoa, man. I would say this. Leaders, if your team doesn't have a common language around leadership, it is going to be hard to move the ship all in one direction. I recently, over the holidays, watched Boys in a Boat. It's a fantastic movie about a true story about a crew team, an eight-man boat working together. They had a common pattern.

Starting point is 00:22:29 They had a common rhythm. They worked together. When they didn't, they were off. One of the things I would tell leaders out there from a leadership standpoint is that we're looking for behavioral change. That's what we're looking for. If we have a common language, that will lead to common beliefs in our people. And then that will lead to common behaviors. So Adam, if you and I were sitting around a table with a leadership team or a leader right now, and we said, hey, how do you guys define leadership inside your organization? If there was five people around the table,

Starting point is 00:23:00 we'd probably get six or seven different answers because we'd have a couple people who give us multiple answers. That's a problem because then when they go out in the table, we'd probably get six or seven different answers because we'd have a couple people who give us multiple answers. That's a problem because then when they go out in the organization, they're leading with that bent of that language of how they define leadership, and it's not consistent throughout the organization. So my answer to that question is develop a common language around how you guys define leadership inside the organization, how you define the culture, and then hold your leaders, hold your team accountable to using that language,

Starting point is 00:23:30 to living that out, because ultimately we want to drive positive behavioral change in our people. Awesome. Chris Godey, Executive Vice President at Maxwell Leadership. Where can we find you online for more information, Chris?

Starting point is 00:23:44 Yeah, maxwellleadership.com or at Twitter, you know, at Chris Goatee, either place. We're there at Maxwell Leadership on Twitter as well. We're on social media or that website. Awesome. And I have a question I ask all the great leaders on this podcast. Leaders have systems and those systems get us going every day. Chris, how do you start your day with a win? Yeah, this is a great question. I love the old quote by Bill Parcells where he says, you are what your record says you are, right? And so you look at that and you go, hmm, wins and losses. We were just talking about this as a leadership team yesterday. We were talking about this quote. So it popped in my mind when you asked me that question.

Starting point is 00:24:29 And I told the team, I was like, hey, listen, we have some losses on our record. And we need to be aware of that, right? So how do I start my day with a win? A long time ago, somebody introduced me to the concept of automobile university. Now, Adam, I live in Atlanta, Georgia, and I travel a ton. So I deal with traffic when I'm at home. And I spend a lot of time on Delta coming out of Atlanta. And so I've committed to myself that every day, how I start my day with a win is with personal growth time. You know, who is writing to work with you? Who is on your commutes with you in the morning? Because we as leaders can't give what we don't

Starting point is 00:25:12 have. And what I've really found is that the longer we have led, the more complacent that we become, and oftentimes maybe even become more unaware of what it looks like to be on the other side of our leadership. And I found one way to combat that is to start my day with a win by going through this personal growth journey, whatever it might be. I mentioned this morning, I was listening to Elon Musk's book,

Starting point is 00:25:36 just trying to absorb some of his content. And so I wanna grow in my leadership in a way because everybody deserves to be led well and everybody deserves to be led well, and everybody deserves to be led the way they need to be led. And I need to expose myself to many, many different ways of leading people. And the only way to do that is to start my day by pouring into my, I got to be intentional about it, by pouring into my leadership development through personal growth. Awesome. Everybody, I would challenge you to be able to say, what have you done to pour

Starting point is 00:26:08 into your leadership and your personal growth today and be able to answer that every single day? Because it is a great way to start your day with a win. I personally do it as well. First thing in the morning, I sit down and I open up that headphone case and I put them on and I listen to a couple of the different leadership principles of the different leadership leaders, such as John Maxwell, that I follow. Great way to start your day. And then I'm getting in the gym and I'm making my body right. And it's wonderful because you hit the ground running during the day. Chris Godey from Maxwell Leadership, thank you so much for being with us today on Start With A Win.

Starting point is 00:26:46 And thanks for all that you do. Absolutely. Thanks, Adam.

Your Ad Here

Start With A Win - Become an AUTHENTIC Leader | Chris Goede from Maxwell Leadership

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.