The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 361: John Maxwell - The Essential Changes Every Leader Must Embrace

Episode Date: April 19, 2020

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk Text LEARNERS to 44222 Full show notes can be found at www.LearningLeader.com Episode #361: John C. Maxwell - The Essential Changes Every Leader Must Embrace Notes: Adaptability: "Good leaders adapt. They shift. They don't remain static because they know the world around them does not remain static." 3 questions to ask yourself every day: How will this crisis make me better? How will I use this crisis to help others? What action will I take to improve my situation? Leaders get paid to deal with uncertainty. They must relish it because it comes with the territory. Betty Bender, former president of the Library Administration and Management Association, explains, "Anything I've ever done that ultimately was worthwhile initially scared me to death." "Success in life comes not from holding a good hand, but from playing a bad hand well." - Warren Lester Leaders become invigorated with problems. "Doing the right thing daily, compounds over time." Ask what you can do to add value to others during this time. "Leaders don't rise to the pinnacle of success without developing the right set of attitudes and habits; they make every day a masterpiece." It's okay to be uncertain but it's not okay for a leader to be unclear. If you prepare today you don't have to repair tomorrow. The opposite of distraction is traction. Crisis moves us You help people gain traction by helping them gain perspective. Fear is a negative emotion, feeding fear is like putting fertilizer on weeds. The question is what is going to dominate between fear an faith and the dominant emotion will win the day. What gains your attention and focus only grows whether that's fear or faith. "A difficult time can be more readily endured if we retain the conviction that our existence holds a purpose, a cause to pursue, a person to love, a goal to achieve." Great coaches make adjustments during a game. Action is where all transformation takes place. The most overrated English phrase is good intentions. "Change is inevitable. Growth is optional."  A crisis doesn't make a person, a crisis reveals a person. "The difference between average people and achieving people is their perception of and response to failure." "Decision making is easy when you know what your values are." Right now the people come first, the company second, yourself last. Respect is learned and earned on difficult ground. "No one ever coasted their way to greatness." People don't want perfect leaders, they want authentic leaders. Experience is not the best teacher. Evaluated learning from experience is the best teacher. The first step to great communication is to get over yourself. It's not about you. Focus on others and adding value.

One of the things I like about a crisis is that it lets us know how much we really believe the things that we say we value. A crisis has a way of pressing up against principles and values that we supposedly live and teach. And a crisis reveals, a crisis doesn't make a person. You hear people say, well, they were made in a crisis. No, they weren't. They were revealed in a crisis. Are you looking to go back? beyond simply passively learning via podcast and books.

Are you looking to level up your leadership and take a more proactive approach? If so, the Learning Leader Academy may be for you. It's been designed to not only provide you with online training videos. In fact, I filmed 30 of them sitting side by side with my dad covering a wide variety of leadership topics. In addition to that, we created

a playbook, a manual to put into practice to help you becoming more effective leader. But the Learning Leader Academy also gives you the opportunity to interact with an active community of leaders with growth-oriented mindsets. The video lessons serve as a framework to stimulate discussion amongst our community of thoughtful and intentional leaders helping each other grow into the kind of leader that inspires others to follow. If this sounds interesting to you, go to Ryanhawk.me. That's Ryanhawk.me for more details about the Learning Leader Academy.

Welcome to a special live edition of the Learning Leader Show presented by Brixie and Meyer. I am Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Text learners to 44222 in order to join tens of thousands of learning leaders from all over the world. receive mindful Monday updates what I'm reading, writing, watching, thinking about. Also give you more details about my book, Welcome to Management, Text Learners to 4422. Now on tonight's featured leader to the great John Maxwell, number one New York Times bestselling author, coach and speaker, sold more than 30 million books in 50 languages.

Maxwell has been identified as the most popular leadership expert in the world by Inc. Magazine. And we recorded this one alongside hundreds of our friends from around the world on Zoom. It was fantastic. A few of the topics we discussed. The three questions to ask yourself every day. And then as a leader, how to deal with uncertainty and fear. followed up by the difference between good intentions and action and how you can become a person of action. Ladies and gentlemen, it's so good with John Maxwell.

Inc. Magazine named him the number one leadership and management experts in the world. He's written tons of books, bestsellers, sold 50 plus million copies around the world. And personally, to me, one of the kindest people I've. ever had the pleasure to meet. Please, let's give a kind of virtual clap to John Maxwell. John, welcome to the show, man. Hey, thanks, Ryan. Great to be with you. I've looked forward to this. Me too. It's good to see all these smiling faces to be. Like, these types of interactions give me energy. So I'm appreciative of John, of you doing this. And I was saying the last time we talked, one of the quotes that really stuck out to me was, nobody's ever followed me when I was

sitting my butt in the sand. People follow me. People want to follow when I am moving, when I am doing something. And I get a sense from following your work pretty closely that you in this time of crisis have chosen to increase your frequency of work, increase your level of communication. And I find that inspiring. Can you share some of your thoughts behind your mindset towards how you're trying to help others during this time? Well, I sure will, Ryan. And for, for, For all of your, all of your viewers, let me just start by saying, we're in a tough time. And I have increased my intentional effort to help people. And it's very simple.

People say, why have you done that? Because people need, they need leadership more now than they needed it, you know, before the crisis. And so I think leaders always respond very quickly to whatever that need is because what do? Leaders, lift people, guide people. And so I was in Israel. And I was having a wonderful trip with the 50 really good friends of mine. Pretty much they had for 10 years said, John, if you ever go to Israel, let's do a private kind of thing. And so I took them. We had a great time. But when I was over there, everything was kind of, the coronavirus was really coming heavy here. In fact, Ed Bastian, who's the CEO of Delta, is a wonderful friend. I mentor him.

and so I texted him and said, are we okay? Can we, you know, we got to get back in America? And he said, yeah, I'll make sure you get back. So I knew that we would be able to. And we did. We slid in and immediately went into quarantine. But without question, I've got to make sure I put this in context because the crisis is terrible.

Okay. But leaders like myself, we become invigorated with problems. And so the darker, the tougher times, we get just charged up and it's kind of like, I don't know, it's like touchdown, let's go. You know, let's get in the game. And so, you know, we have in the John Maxwell Enterprise, we have seven different companies. And Mark Cole, who's our CEO that oversees everything, Mark and I were having conversation about, you know, all of our business is changing, just like everybody else.

And everything's grinded to a stop and the whole process. And so I said, well, Mark, what we need to do is we need to understand right now what we we do is we call all of our clients and we just add value to them. What can I do? How's your family? Are you okay? Are you healthy? Is there something we can do for you? And just what you do is you help people. That's what leaders do. They help people. And even though there's a lot of uncertainty, and I have uncertainty when people say, well, how long is this going to last? I don't know how long it's going to last. I don't have all the answers. But here's what people miss. uncertainty, it's okay to be uncertain, it's probably not okay for a leader to be unclear.

And so what I do is what I'm doing with you right now, okay, then who can I help? How can we get the message out? Obviously, I'm not going to travel and speak like I normally do, but we can go, you know, social media is fantastic, and here we are, and we're reaching a lot of people today, and I'm adding hopefully value to all of your viewers. And that's why we're what I can do. And so what I do is, is I do today, I do what I should do today. I tell people all time, if you prepare today, you don't have to repair tomorrow. But so many times in uncertainty, what's this crisis due to us, right? It distracts us. People are all distracted. Oh, my gosh. And so they lose focus. And the opposite of distraction is traction. And when you have traction,

it means you're moving towards something that is beneficial. When you have distraction, it means you're moving away. So crisis move us. Everyone of us are moved. Everybody is watching us right now. It is not the same for them as it was a few weeks ago. And things are moving very quickly. And the question is not, are we going to be moved?

We're all going to be moved. The question is, am I going to be moved forward and gain traction out of this? Or am I going to be distracted? and basically lose my way. And I think that's the big question that everybody, I'm trying to help everybody gain traction. And you help people gain traction by helping them gain perspective. And one of the perspectives, John, that I think,

I've brought this up with other leaders, but I'm curious from your perspective, what is it like, have you had moments where you as the leader of the John Maxwell companies, as a leader for the CEO of Delta. But what about for you when you're by yourself and you're thinking about this, do you have moments of fear or are you scared? And if so, how do you personally deal with that? Well, of course I do. It just kind of cracks me up. Of course, I have a sense of humor. So about everything, I can almost put everything through a perspective and a grid of humor.

but but I just am always amazed at people who think that leaders are fearless or or they don't have the same emotions that followers have. Sure. And we all do. We're all human. And I have always amused when people say, well, get rid of that fear. And I'm kind of raised my hand and say, well, excuse me, I haven't got rid of mine. Tell me how I do that.

I don't know what you're selling. I don't know. I don't know. But whatever it is, I'll buy into that. I'll buy that because we all have fear. See, the question is not, do I have fear? See, fear is a negative emotion, okay? It doesn't help us. Fear doesn't help us, but we all have it. Having fear is like fertilizing weeds, okay, in a garden. I mean, you don't fertilize the weeds. You cut them out. So, so we have fear. That's a negative emotion. But we all within ourselves also have

faith, which is a positive emotion, the ability to think of things in a positive way. Now, so I've got this positive motion of faith. I've got this negative emotion of fear, and they're both within me. So the question is not, do I have both of them? I do. The question is, who's going to dominate? The stronger emotion wins, always. So if faith is greater than my fear, even though I have fear, I'll act in faith.

If fear is greater than my faith, then I'll act in fear. So the dominant motion wins the day. So I need to want to tell people, you need to feed your faith. You don't need to get rid of fear. Just feed your faith. Grow your faith, develop it. And the faith food, and somebody said, well, how do you feed your faith? There's a faith food.

And the faith food is very simple. What you focus on expands. That is a universal principle in life for everything. What gains my attention gets bigger, gets clearer, gets clearer, What I don't focus on shrinks. So I purposely, intentionally, focus on faith and let it expand in my life and grow it and fertilize my faith until it becomes the dominant emotion. But it doesn't mean that I don't have questions.

It doesn't mean that I don't have fears. It's just those fears don't run my life. Whenever fear determines your future, I can tell. tell you, you've got a pretty difficult future in front of you. I'm curious, what's your news consumption? For me, I've found that it's dramatically decreased and that's helped me. It's helped me focus. It's helped me be productive. It's helped me be helpful of other people, of consuming less meaning. I need to know what I need to know. Okay, at this time, I'm not supposed to, I'm supposed to distance myself from other people physically, not not mentally and not on Zoom and things like this.

For you, John, I'm curious, though, what is your consumption like of that? Is it just the bare minimum, or do you need to know at all? Or how do you do that? Very bare minimum. Yep, same way. I would probably watch maybe once a week news to kind of just kind of catch it up from where it was last week. And what I've found during the coronavirus is it's basically the same one week after another. I mean, it's, again, they're selling.

They're selling. And so what they sell is sensationalism. And so you just have to understand when you watch the news. I'm not anti-anything, so I'm not mad at anybody. But what you have to watch is when you're watching the news, you aren't watching what is the true balance facts of life. You're watching what they want you to watch. And what they want you to watch is something that's sensational that will draw you in.

And so, yeah, I just, I have sources of strength in my life, but it's not the news media. That's for sure. Yeah. In Leadership, which I think is a really good book for anybody here to read during this time, Leadership, it's good to read any time. But one of the words that you use that I think is useful is adaptability. Good leaders adapt. They shift.

They don't remain static because they know the world around them does not remain static. John, I'm curious from your perspective, how do we as leaders develop this skill of adaptability right now? Well, it's a very important skill. And in fact, let me just say this. The more extreme a situation is like a crisis, the more you have to be adaptable. In fact, in my leadership, what I'm telling people right now is I will lead you with clarity right now. What I won't lead you with clarity is a week from now. So what we do is we take one day at a time and we don't go way ahead because I don't really know.

And here's what I do know, that I'm going to have to adjust. There is no such thing. And in fact, you and I both love sports, okay? And so you know, tell your brother, hi for me. Okay. So we love sports. Now watch this. Every coach before a football game has a pre-game plan.

I mean, okay, here's what we think the opponents are going to do. these are the 12 plays we're going to run first. Okay, we've got a pre-game plan. But the great coaches, after the first half, they go into halftime and they make adjustments. Okay, this is what we thought was going to happen. This didn't have it all. Oh, my gosh.

In fact, we got to, whoa, we didn't even think about this. The great coaches, they win in the second half because they have the ability to leave their game plan. The thing, hey, the thing that they built, the thing they're proud of, the thing that they thought was just wonderful. And what we do is we find out as soon as we start walking in life, that life isn't perfect. And so they make those adjustments.

And so leadership, my book on leadership, which has been very popular, it basically is that all great leaders have the ability to be agile and flexible and adjust because they lead according to what is, not what they think should be or what they thought would be. That's a great point. I read that you said you should ask yourself three questions every day. And I'd love for you to expand this. The three questions were, how will this crisis make me better? How will I use this crisis to help others? And what action will I take to improve my situation? Can you expand on why those questions are very important for all of us leaders here to ask

ourselves on a daily basis? Yeah, they're very important questions, Ryan, because they get us focused back on what we can do to improve our situation. Yeah. And what we all know is that crisis has a tendency to paralyze people. So when they're in an uncertain environment, the tendency for them is to freeze. They just stop. They just say, oh, okay, all right, not going to do anything until I figure this out.

And that doesn't help anybody. So what I did is those three questions are very simple questions. They're not hard to answer. They're not asking for you to be brilliant. They are asking for you, though, to do some kind of positive action. They're asking you to do something that's going to make you better, other people better, and it'll leave the crisis to a certain extent. And what I try to do is I try to give people all the time very simple, doable action plans

because action is where all transformation takes place. My father, my father used to give me this little parable when I was a kid. He'd say, okay, John, five frogs are on a log. Four decide to jump off how many frogs are left. And I'd say one. And he'd say, no, five. I'm trying to do my math. Okay, okay, dad, you said five frogs are on a log.

Four decide to jump off. How many left? One, you know, math tells me. No, no, no. He said, just because you decide to jump doesn't mean you did. And the point being the most overrated English, phrase in the world is good intentions. Well, you know, you know what? I'd like to do that someday. That's an overrated word. Nobody's life has ever been changed by good intentions. No one has ever said,

you know, the good intentions changed my life. No, no, no, no. Good intentions has to become good actions. Nothing happens with good intentions. It only happens when we act on what we intend to do. And so in my world, I'm constantly trying to be a friend and walk with people and basically saying, you've got to get in the game. You just, you've got to get the game. And so many times they'll say, well, I don't know the game and I'm not sure that I'll do all the game. And I said, you don't know, you just have to get the game because here's what we find. We learn as we go.

We grow as we go. I call it advanced attraction. When I know who I am and I know what I want to accomplish, it's the same. the movement. It's the movement that begins to attract resources, people, opportunities to me. It's the movement. In fact, my friend Andrew, who's with me helping me today, he just gave me a great quote just right before we came on. And of course, I'm a person of faith, so kind of forgive me for that. Okay. He said, God meets us where we step, not where we stand. I love that because I believe that. And I believe that, that the

way out is to begin to move. And what happens is when we move, we discover the difference between putting together a puzzle and life. I mean, when our kids and our grandkids used to, now they live close to us, when they were far, when they didn't look close to us. And they come home with a holiday, Margaret would take like a thousand piece puzzle, put it out on a table, and then the kids would just come, you know, periodically get around there. And the goal was by the time everybody leaves, the puzzle's done. Well, I'm not really a puzzle person, so they just basically have me hold the box. But here's what I know about the puzzle.

You look at the picture to put the puzzle together. And you just keep looking at the picture. The picture tells you how to, and the picture, okay, here are these pieces. I think that's, look at the picture. You look at the picture before you begin. Life is exactly opposite. You begin before you get to see the picture. So people, they never see it because they didn't step out.

Everything becomes clearer with movement. And so I think the challenge for all of us right now is to basically say, what can we do? What can we do on a daily basis right now? And so, I mean, I have a list of things. I mean, I have a niece that's just very bad physically. she's dying of cancer. And so I'm kind of her courage companion right now. And so, you know, it's either texting or calling her and just touching her. And so I got a list of people that I call or talk or, you know, things that I can do right now. Okay. What's amazing is we may be homebound,

but because of social media, for the first time in the history of mankind, I mean, think of what it would be like to be quarantined without the ability to connect with other people. So this is a great privilege. So anyway, I think the point for all the viewers is the fact that, okay, the other day I was talking. And I said, during a crisis, there are three questions I ask myself. And these just work. What's my responsibility? What are my priorities?

And what are my possibilities? Now, these are three great questions. And my responsibility, I mean, I take care of my family, okay? I'm home and make sure everybody's good, everybody's safe. There are some things there that I do. What are my priorities? Well, okay, what is it that I can do right now? What I can do right now, not could do, but can do right now.

And I list those priorities. And my possibilities is, what have I wanted to do that I haven't been able to do? I got a little time now. And like for me, I'm a passionate. about transformation. We do it in other countries. We're getting ready to come to America with values, training, and through what we call transformation tables. And so I have this time now, and so I'm laying out of what I would call an 18-month transformation track for our companies to help people really get on a track to begin to have positive change in their life.

So what I'm saying is those, what are our responsibilities, what are my priorities, what are my possibilities? Those three questions, it just, again, an active, just once we start asking those questions and do something about it. John, there are leaders listening and watching here that are having to make really tough decisions that they never envisioned having to do, namely laying people off. I know there are people listening and watching that have been laid off and they're fantastic at what they do yet. It just becomes a numbers game.

So for both the person who is having to potentially lay people off, and maybe those who have been impacted by this themselves. What do you share, let's start with the leaders first. Because I'm not sure how it's impacting your whole company. I know you have a CEO who's running kind of operationally the business. But what about for those people who are thinking the revenue doesn't match up with our expenses and this is a problem? What type of advice do you share for that person? That's a great question.

And my companies are right in that spot, right? The only difference between having one company that's bleeding is you have seven companies and they're bleeding. Okay. So I know exactly, I mean, we without question will lose millions of dollars. Okay. Wow. And so, I mean, that's just, that's not a problem that you can fix. That's a fact of life.

So I think the point that I want to make here for leaders that are in this position is, One of the things I like about a crisis is that it lets us know how much we really believe the things that we say we value. A crisis has a way of pressing up against principles and values that we supposedly live and teach. And a crisis reveals a crisis doesn't make a person. You've heard people say, well, they were made in a crisis. No, they weren't. They were revealed in a crisis. A crisis squeezes me and you find out who I really am.

And I love that because now do the books I write, do they hold up during a crisis, do the values? And I think it was Roy Disney, the brother Walt Disney said, decision making is easy when you know what your values are. And the values don't change during a crisis. I mean, the principles of success, they don't change during a crisis. Not one of them moved, not one of them moved. So in our companies, as I was talking to our CEO, Mark, and he's having to make some very tough decisions. And so we're having a lot of conversation on it. And I share with her.

I said, Mark, I said, I'll be glad to talk as long as you want to talk about the decisions you've got to make. But I said, let's go right to our values. For example, we have the largest coaching company in the world. It's only nine years old, but we have 33,000 coaches and $1,000. 68 countries the world in that short time of period. And when they come in, the first thing we do with the coach is we teach them our values. We teach them, we give them what we call the John Maxwell DNA. And this is who we are.

And we do that right when they come. It will be maybe like 3,500 new ones come every six months to Orlando and we sit them down and we said this. And then we tell them when we get down that DNA, if this isn't your DNA, you don't have to belong to this team. In fact, we'll give you your money back. You go back, tell them we're delighted. We only want people on the team that have the values that we haven't. And our number one value that we teach our people is that we are people of value ourselves that value other people. People of value.

I'm a person of value and I value you. And because I value you, I add value to you. I'm a person of value that values you and I have value to you. So I looked at Mark, I said, Mark, that's who we are. So it's very simple. Every decision you make is made in light of valuing the people. So the people are first. The people are first.

The company is second, and you and I are third. We're at the very bottom of the list. And I just, just to teach him and give you example, I said, I'm not trying to put this on anyone else. So I'm not trying to, I'm just, talking from my perspective for a moment. Sure. So I looked at him and I said we want to hold on to as many people as we can. We want to help them. We want to financially take care of them. I mean, and so we're doing the same thing. Everybody else said, you know, would you take a week of unpaid

vacation and we're making all those adjustments? But I said, the first adjustment we make is you and me. Before we ask our people to cut their salary, you know, I said, it's very simple for you and me. You don't get any salary and I don't get any salary. You don't get any money and I'll get you money. Okay, now that's pretty level playing field. Wow. So that's what you guys have done? Just right off the top. Wow.

Yeah, so zero works. But we do, but we go first. We go first. If I truly said I valued you, right, and you were in my company, and I laid you off, but I kept my own money coming to me, I don't think that's true what I said. I think it's not true. And so now, that doesn't mean we're going to be able to keep everybody. but it does mean we're going to do everything in our power to keep everybody.

There's a difference between me letting people go when I have no other options and letting people go when I do have options. And so we take away the options. So we're first, you know, we give up first. And then we have. And our people have been fantastic. But why are they, I'll tell you why they're fantastic. Because Mark can look at it right in the eye and say, I've given it up.

you know, now could you make, what can you, and we let them, we let them pick out the number. We did, you know, you pick, what percentage can you give up for the next two months for us to see if we can get through this? And they pick it out. And it's not a right or wrong. It's not a right or wrong. We don't know everyone's financial resources and their needs. And so we really value them by even giving, giving that privilege. And I just think, but I love this because it's, it gives me a chance to practice.

my values because when that happens, and I lead him through a crisis, you know, respect is learned on difficult ground, and it's earned on difficult ground. You don't get respect from people until you've done something that's tough. And when we're talking to leaders on your program right now, this is where you get a moral authority with people, which is the highest authority you can have, much higher than titles and positions. A moral authority is where people say, that person has proven, they walk the walk, talk to talk. They've proven it. And so I told, I've told Mark, I said, Mark, this is going to be your greatest days as a leader. Trust me, five years from now, you're going to point back and say, that's where I got my moral authority.

That's where I got my respect with the people, because you're right in the middle with it. And then I looked at him and I said, let's just give worse. Let's say we all go under. We all go bankrupt. Okay. We've lost it all. Okay. At least I can look people right in the eye. Yeah. You've written, my name's John, and I'm your friend. I did my best. You've written about Betty Bender. She's a former president of the library administration and management association.

She said, anything I've ever done that ultimately was worthwhile initially scared me to death. And I feel like that is a quote for today. To think about that, it really speaks to me in thinking about any of the biggest moments or levels of achievement, what preceded that was insanely hard, whether it's preparation for a big speech or a big game or whatever it may be a big job, the moments leading up to that were quite scary. And I feel like, John, for you,

maybe you can expand on that is why that's such a useful mindset to have right now. Well, it's a fact. Yeah. No, Betty was, I love that quote too. It goes back to I do this with people all the time. This is life right here. Everything worthwhile.

It's all uphill. It's all uphill. There's not one thing precious to you, Ryan, in your life. It's not uphill. Good point. I mean, if you've got a good marriage, guess what? It's uphill all the way. You've got to work at it.

You've got to keep working at it. You've got to make adjustments. You've got to U-turn. You've got to ask for a good. It's uphill all the way. if you build a business, it's uphill all the way. If you have a great team, it's uphill all the way. Greatness has never been down.

No one ever coasted their way to greatness. Nope. Now, you've never read a book on somebody that wrote accidental achievements. Come on. You don't interview somebody successful and say, how did you get to the top of the mountain? And they look at it and say, oh, my gosh, I had no idea. How do you? I just woke up, but I'm here. This is amazing. No, no, no. It's up here all the way. Yeah. Now, that's the first thing that everybody needs to understand. There are no shortcuts.

There's no easy way. It's all uphill. Now, once I understand that, now I'm going to become equipped to go uphill. And the first thing that I need to be equipped with is that if I'm going to go uphill, I have to be intentional. I have to live and going uphill is all intentional. You don't fall uphill. You walk uphill. And the difference between every day when everything was up hill and a crisis is this, this is where it was before coronavirus, now this is the way it is. Still uphill. It's just a steeper hill, more danger. It's a lot slow. And by the way, when the hill is this deep, you need other people to help you.

You can't get up on the hill by yourself. You've got to, you've got to now get a team of climbers together because this isn't a solo act here. So we need each other. So this is a crisis. This is every day without the crisis. It's never this way. It's never this right.

See, our challenge is we have uphill hopes, Ryan, but we have downhill habits. And one of the great, now this is something to think about for a moment, because this is so true. Of all the crisis we've had, and I've been through, I count up the other day, I've been through eight big ones. So I've been through a few. I mean, that's, if you're old, you get through a few of them. Okay. Now, watch this. This is amazing, though.

The crisis that I've been through before have been quick hits. Oh, wow. 9-11. my gosh, you know, okay, we suck air, we all can't, but, but let me tell you something. This is the only crisis we've ever had that changed everybody's daily schedule. And we're quarantined. So what are kids? What are students doing right now?

They're online doing their courses. But what are people in business if they still, if they still have a job, they're at home. They're at home doing their work. Now, because the crisis is a long period of time, which we are contained, what's going to happen is out of this crisis, we're going to develop habits. Habits are going to be developed out of this crisis that have never been developed out of any other crisis.

And those habits are either going to make us better or they're going to make us worse. And so, okay, the students, I mean, take of a college kid who spent the first two years in a college dorm on a campus and now they're home and they're online and they're getting their courses done. And all of a sudden,

because they're not doing it for a day or they're not doing it for a week, but now they're going to do it for months and they're going to do it for a whole semester and they're just online and one day they just say to them, they're saying, you know what? This is a lot cheaper.

I can do it on my own schedule. I don't have to go back to a dormitory. How about the people that commute an hour every day back and forth to work or maybe two hours in the city and all of a sudden they're at home and they're developing this habit of, oh my gosh, I will promise you, commercial real estate will go down as far as the demand for it,

because there are going to be offices that we thought we needed to have that we don't need to have. Hey, hey, travel industry, I mean, all those times we put people on planes and spent money for tickets and lodging and transportation, and all of a sudden we realized, you know what, they could have Skype that in. Hold on, wait a minute, do I really need to send them and spend $3,000 there? So what I think is, habits are going to be birthed out of this that are going to, you know,

so when people say we're not going to go back to normal, we're not going to go back to normal, and one of the reasons we're not going to go back to normal is people are going to develop habits that they've never had before. Some good? By the way, some good and some bad. If I'm just at home killing time, eating food, watching movies, I mean, there comes a time when I'm going to walk out, I'm going to say, I sure blew that.

So, you know, just a thought. John, I want to open up to a few of my friends here that are joining us. I know you're good at this. So we're going to start with Stephanie Wernick Barker. Steph is the president of an incredible company, staffing and company called Mondo. I've done some work with their team. And I absolutely love her leadership. She's incredible.

And it's certainly a fan of your work. And so I wanted to open it up. for Steph to fire away and go first. Well, thank you so much, Ryan. I'm equally a fan. Yeah, so John, I think before I ask a question, I just, I don't really have a platform ever to be able to tell you this to your face. But I'm just going off of what Ryan said. I mean, we've built our entire leadership infrastructure from promotion, from contributor all the way up to vice president, literally from the five levels of leadership books. So thank you. It's in our DNA. It's in our language. We talk about someone's acting a certain way. We say you're acting like

level one right now. So we have that embedded. So thank you so much for all of that over time. The question I have for you, so a couple of things really resonated with me today just about how your values are really uncovered during this time and how, you know, really just shows who you are. And if you can lead by your core values, then you can make more sound decisions. So a big core value of mine in the organizations is truly leading by example is the only way to lead. So what do you recommend to leaders? How do you think, leaders need to show up right now. And, you know, if we're using the value, core value of leading by example, what does that mean to you? And what do you think the one thing people can do to lead by

example, lead from the front? So their followers are really approaching every day as their best. Well, first of all, Stephanie, I love that value. I mean, example is. I mean, if a leader cannot look at his or her people and say, follow me, that leader doesn't have credibility. People do what people see. That's a fact. Stanford research, 89% of what we know we learn visually. So when you, when you stress visual leadership and be an example, you're totally spot on. So I was just doing, I was just helping, I've been literally back-to-back social media for two days now. And I was helping, yesterday of 25,000 people in the mortgage business. And then I was talking to them and we were doing Q&A about example and this whole process and how do we, how do we extract it? And here's what I would say.

First of all, I teach also the power proximity. Now, one of the challenges we have during a crisis, Stephanie, is we can be close through social media. I'm looking at you now. You're looking at me. but I mean, we're not, we don't get the proximity that you would get like if you were in the regular work time, that will process. But what I was suggested to them out yesterday and I really resonated with them is, is in my mentoring, I need to have them sit beside me. And there's a difference between, in regular leadership times, you go before them and say, follow me. And these times, you sit beside them and say, walk with me. And it's a whole different mindset as far as even mentoring people. And what I mean by that is, I want to share with you.

I want you to walk with me. I want to, instead of me leading you in front and telling you all these things I think you need to know, I want you to experience them with me. Let's experience them together. So I suggested, for example, to me, there are three things that I'm with my people I'm doing every day. One is I'm sharing with them the source of my strength. because what's really needed at times like this is stability and anchoring and an inner core strength,

being bigger on the inside than you're on the outside. So I'm constantly helping them understand where my strength come from, what my source is. The second thing I'm doing is I'm sharing with them my emotions. In fact, I told him, I said, when this virus hit, I'm telling you right now, it made me angry. And the reason made me angry is because it seemed to me that people that were emotional and were filled with fear were much more dominant than what good, sane leadership would want. And it was kind of like leaders almost have to respond to all the emotion that's going on. There's to me an amazing amount of dysfunction happening right now.

And so I got very angry because you don't lead by emotion. Emotion is not going to get you what you want. It only exaggerates in a negative way. Fear isn't going to help us. It's going to make the crisis worse. And then I also said, but I want to tell what else? I was all so frustrated because within a few days, my whole life changed too. And it's just frustrated the heck out of me because I'm sitting there and thinking,

this was on my schedule. And I could have been doing this right now. I can't get to it. I can't even get to it now. And then I talked to him about disappointment. I said, I'm disappointed. I mean, one of the big things I had at the end of April, Pope Francis, has asked me to come to the Vatican, and for three days, the two of us were going to do a master

class with the Pope on leadership, basically to the world. And I've been with him before, and I'm so looking forward to this time. Well, I've lost all that. I've lost it. So now, what I'm saying to you is very simple. I think when it comes to leading by example, you help them understand your questions. I don't have all the answers. I don't know when this virus is going to be over. So I think it's very fair. I think people don't want perfect leaders. I think they want authentic leaders. And I think it's just very healthy to let him know the downside. Now, the flip side of it is I'm incredibly invigorated

because nothing a leader likes more than a crisis because now it's leadership. In fact, I told Mark the other day, now we find out who the real leaders are in all of our companies. We find them. There are some people, it's like John Wooden, who mentored me for so many years. He said, I didn't like to choose my captain on the basketball team,

until after the third game. I said, why is that coach? He said, I wanted to watch my players play real games under pressure. And when the pressure was on, he said, I wanted to see which players on my team wanted the ball and which players on my team hid from the ball. And he said, I picked my captain. I had to pick a captain. The guy said, give me the ball. Give me the ball. I'll take responsibility. I'll bring us to victory. He said, that's how you pick your captain. Well, right now, we're finding out how the captains are in our companies. We're finding out the people who are stepping up and say, oh, my gosh, okay. You know, let me try this.

And they're in the game with us. And when you find the people that are basically packing out. So when you talk about example, mentoring, what's my source? What are my expressions? And then the third thing, Stephanie, is what lessons am I learning right now? Because experience is not the best teacher. we hear that all the time. Experience is the best teacher.

Dear Lord, that's a stupid comment. Let me explain this. If experience was the best teacher, everybody as they got older, we'd get better because they get more experience. I know a whole bunch of people. They're getting older. They're not better at all.

They're getting worse. Experiences in the best teacher. Evaluating and learning from that experience is the best teacher. So, we're going through a crisis. And one of the best things you can do in leading by example is every day, share with them a lesson that you're learning.

Just here's what I'm learning today from this crisis. This is, this is what's, the other day I shared with my team and it just resonated with him. I said, I've come to the conclusion in this crisis that people have less stress with bad news than they do with uncertainty.

It's a fact. So I'm teaching them lessons. I'm giving them my emotions. I'm sharing my source. That's what I think is really what I would call good keen mentoring during a crisis time. Hopefully that helps you. And I'm glad you're using the five levels because the five levels gives you a common language, doesn't it? Once everybody understands the five levels, I mean, you just take off because now leadership is not something out there

that's nebulous. It's very tangible. I'm just, you just made my day. Thank you. That's great stuff. All right. Next one comes from another incredible leader here in Dayton, Ohio. John, this is Amanda Wilson who's running a business here, Wicked Smart. So I will hand it over to her. She had a few questions for me that she'd email me, and all of them were better than any questions I've come up with. So I'll let Amanda take it away. She gets the floor.

Well, thank you for that, Ryan. And thanks, John. Huge fan as well. One of the first books I read about leadership was developing the leader within you with my dad. So really memorable for me and impactful. I am really paying attention right now to how my team reacts and how my client's team is reacting and behaving during this chaotic time. And I'm just curious what traits are specifics you would recommend that I look for to help develop or find future leaders during this time. Well, I think, Amanda, first of all, I think you're very wise.

I think you're very wise in the fact you're watching your team right now. because again, price your words. You never can rely on words as far as to say that that's how you evaluate a person. It's their actions. And so what I tell people is don't tell me what you're going to do, show me what you're going to do. Okay. So, so, you know, I'm not into meetings. You know, people wear me out with their words.

You know, don't tell me how great you. Don't tell me what you're going to do for the company. Show me what you're going to do. Just show me. Well, to me, the other case, the first step is telling. The second step is showing. The third step is what we're in right now, showing during pressure. Without any questions, you will spot all of your leaders 100% during this time.

Because the press is on and the only ones that will perform at the level that a leader performs on are the people that are truly the leaders. talk is over now, the press is on. And so therefore, as you're watching, and I don't know how easy it is to watch when you're separated from it like this and that whole process, that makes it maybe a little bit more difficult. But I'm going to tell you, let me just say this, you're going to find out who your leaders are in the process. And one of the things that you'll do is you need to throw out to your team

things that they can do now. For example, we shared with all of our department heads that this was not the time to sell. This was the time to help and heal and add value and care. People don't care how you know until they know how much you care. And so we have all of ours intentionally calling all the clients, thousands of clients, calling the clients and saying, hey, just checking in with you. How are you doing? How's your family? And what I tell people all the time is if you will add value and care for people in the tough times, they will never forget you. when they come through it.

And so right now we are in an incredibly adding value time. And one of the things we're doing from the John Maxwell Enterprise is every Monday at noon through social media, I'm doing a lesson on crisis. And we've got over a million people following us right now. And it's just, it's free. Anybody can get on. They can all watch it. They can learn from it.

And it's everything, anything I could do now to add value. Do you Amanda, anyone else? anything, you know, Ryan, you know, Stephanie, anybody, anybody I can add value to, that's what I'm in the adding value business right now, because that's the best thing that I can do. And I would also say this, be the first to help. Now, that's a little late for this to be learned because we already into this maybe three, three, four weeks. But as soon as I realized what was happening, we said, okay, we're going to go, we did a thing called leading to a crisis for four days. And I said, we're going to go to social media.

And we're going to help. Because if you're the first to help you, distinguish yourself from everyone else, people remember that when somebody, oh my, they stepped up and they were there to help me and add value to me. So hopefully a few of those things,

Amanda will help you. And by the way, the developing leader within you book that you talked about that you and your dad read together, I revised it a couple years ago. It's called developing the leader within you 2.0.

And I don't know if you have the revised edition, but if you don't, you need to get it because I changed 85% of the book. book. Okay. Okay. Awesome. I'll have to read that with my dad. Yeah, thanks. Good to be with you, Amanda. Love it. Thank you. John, so I just texted somebody in the middle of this that I thought you might want to see. You mentioned to say hi to my brother. He happened to be free at the moment, so AJ is joining. I think he has a question for you to, or maybe a comment. So AJ, take it away.

Hey, John, I appreciate what you're doing here. I got to meet you at Ohio. Christian University when you were the keynote speaker. I remember, well, yeah, years ago. And I was just thinking of exceeding expectations, like, and what you do. You've had a high profile for long, long time, doing great work. And I remember I got to meet you backstage. And I had really high expectations for your talk. And I got out there in about two minutes into your speech.

You came to call it a speech. It's so interactive. It was really good. I pulled my phone out and got my voice memos on and recorded the whole 55 minutes or whatever it was. I don't know if you allow that or not, but I wanted to keep it. It was that good. I just wonder, like, as you, your profile has built over the years and you're bigger and bigger, how do you continue to exceed people's expectations? Because they expect a lot from you, I guess, when you are in front of a large group speaking. Yeah, as your reputation group, well,

you know, you played football. You know what it's like. I mean, if you really elevate your game, people come to the game to watch you. You're a star. They're wanting to watch, you know, is that linebacker going to make the tackles? And the whole problem. So the more significant, successful you are you do you lift your game and you lift the expectations of other people and so what I was sitting down by the way AJ go bucks you know okay I mean I'm selfishly I want to talk I'm wanting to talk football with you and you were a phenomenal player and I just followed you your college career your your pro career the whole deal you were just a great player now so I'm sitting with my CEO and he said john he said I watch you you go okay you go produce something big

you speak or whatever and everybody goes crazy and it's wonderful. And he said, I watch you kind of celebrate. It's wonderful. Thank you. Thank you. He said, the next day I watch you and you're totally discontented. And he says, I watch you celebrate and then in the next day, you're moving on. You're saying, I've got to improve.

And I sit down and I said, I want to explain to you the difference between best and better. You see, right now I'm with your brother and we're doing our best. I'm doing my best ad value to them. I'm giving him 100%, okay? I'm giving him my best. That is always my expectation to give my best. When I walk off, I say, I gave 100% I gave my best now. Here's what's huge, though.

When I'm done, I pull away and I evaluate. I evaluate how it went. What is best for me in the now in the moment becomes my floor that I build on tomorrow. Because there's always better, no matter. What best is, it can always be better. It's always going to be. So I take best for the moment and I use it as a stepping stone for better tomorrow. I build off best to get better.

And then when I do the next. And so what this does is this intentionally causes me to up my game all the time. And I never let anyone else set the expectations I have for myself. My expectations for me when I go speak or when I write a book or whatever is higher than what the reader's expectation or what the host Ryan's expectation. I always, in fact, if you let other people set your expectations, you're already in trouble. And I learned a long time ago, if 100 is perfect, a person needs to get in that top 5% to just really compound, influence, money, whatever they're trying to compound. You've got to get in that 5%. And so best is for the moment.

But whatever is best, I then take it apart and say, okay, how do I improve it? What did I do? What didn't I do? What did I do? And so I upgrade it every time. Well, if you keep upgrading every time incrementally a little bit, these expectations and the ceiling of your performance just keeps increasing. So I just never confuse the two.

Best is for now, but I don't rest on the best. What I tell me, don't rest on the best. Whatever best was, don't say, oh my gosh, when I hear people say, this is as good as ever going to get, I say, well, then die. Good Lord, die. If it's as good as you're going to get, you know, you're downhill from here.

Hello? No, no. This is as good as it's going to get for now, but tomorrow it can get better. The moment I think like that, I keep tweaking my way up to the top. Hopefully, hopefully that makes sense to you. You got another one, A's or are you good?

I think it's great. I was just, it was so impressive to me seeing how you did that and command the room. I know that you've done it forever and you seem so comfortable. But how interactive you were and how authentic, I guess, was the most impressive thing to me. Yeah, well, you know, I've done it 12,000 times. You've got a few reps. You've got a few rights. Hey, let's get perspectives.

Hey, let me tell you something. And after your first few thousand tackles AGA, you got a little better, too. Yeah, he still missed a few of those, that's for sure. Yeah, we all do. John, hey, how, after 12,000 times, I probably already asked you this, but I'm fascinated by it. Are you nervous? How do you feel right before you go on stage? No, not a bit.

Not at all. Why are you not nervous? Because I'm good at what I do. I don't mean this. Kindly, I'm really good. I know that. I know. I was getting ready to speak at a convention.

There were about 5,000 people, and there was a guy who was in the green room with me. And I guess I had mentioned him long distance. He was a nice guy. I liked him a lot. And so I was about five minutes out, and he looked at me and he said, okay, you're going to speak in five minutes. What are you thinking? I said, well, I'm thinking about the people. You said, what do you mean?

You're thinking about the people? I said, well, I'm going to go talk to people here in a moment. And I'm thinking about them and how they've come and they've sacrificed time to hear me and how they have hopes and they're wanting. I said, I'm thinking about the people. All I'm thinking about is how do I add value to those people? What do I do that when I'm done, they look at each other and say, this was worth my time? I said, I'm thinking about the people.

He said, you're not thinking about your subject? I said, no. I know my subject. I'm good. I'm thinking about the people. And what I tell all great communicators, Ryan, is that. the first step of great communication is you've got to get over yourself. It's not about me.

This show isn't about me. It's about you. It's about the things that you want for your viewers. It's not about me. I mean, you live this show every day. You work this thing all the time. You're committed to it. So when I come to be with you, it isn't about me looking good.

It's about helping you and helping the things that you love and that you believe in pass on. It's not about me. So I think the issue almost always, is focus on on adding value to people and make it all about them and and you know life gets pretty good one follow up to that from a jimmy jimmy asked as a leader how do you lead expectations of others when you when you think that they are too low well i tell people all the time i want more for you than you want for yourself yeah so let's just let's just start let's just start there so i i say

do you want to set your expectations or you want me to help you set expectations? And I ask them and sometimes they say, I want to set my own, okay, okay, that'll be good, that'll be fine. Sometimes they say, now if I'm going to help you set your expectations, I want your expectations first. And I let them give me their expectations. And whatever their expectations are, Ryan, I put it a bar higher. Because here is what I know. but we all sell ourselves short. And we all look for shortcuts.

And I'm not going to sell anybody short, and I'm not going to let them take a shortcut. I'm not going to let them wing it. I'm going to make them work for it. And what I discovered was that it's, when somebody that you really care for and respect believes in you, you'll do everything in your power not to disappoint them. And so what I found is when I put that,

I said, I put a tent on your head, the only person that's going to ever take that off is you. I'm not taking it off. And the moment they begin to see that, then it just lifts them. It helps them. It's great stuff. John, I just wanted to once again, I know you got a pack schedule today. And so I'm so appreciative, and I know everyone here is appreciative,

the hundreds of people who have joined us for your true investment in being 100% all in during your time here, man. It was so great to see you and talk with you again. right back at you right i admire you i admire what you do for people i i i just look forward to our time together and so thanks for let me be a part of it today i love it thank you and and thank you for everyone else for joining i know we all have a lot going on so i appreciate everybody being here i love doing these live shows seeing your smiling faces getting to interact build connection and community that's what this is all about there's there's maybe never a better time to do it than now so thank you all very

much for being here and certainly John for being the catalyst to make it roll man. Thank you. All right, everybody. Have a great day. Thanks for being here. What a great experience to record with John alongside hundreds of our friends from all over the world on Zoom. If you were a part of that, thank you so much for being there.

I love seeing the smiling faces and I intend to do more of those live virtual shows moving forward. A few of the key parts that I remember. the three questions to ask yourself every day. How will this crisis make me better? How will I use this crisis to help others? What action will I take to improve my situation? And then the Betty Bender quote,

anything I've ever done that ultimately was worthwhile initially scared me to death. Think about the big moments in your life, the inflection points, the times when you were very successful, or perhaps when you failed. How did you feel leading up to it? How did you feel during the moment? How did you feel afterwards? Think about that as you look to prepare for today. And then what gains your attention is what grows.

Don't water the weeds. Think about what you're focusing on and what is within your control. That is your attitude and your effort. And focus on that as. we look to make decisions moving forward. Again, I hope you enjoyed this one as much as I did. If so, I would love it if you would tell a friend or two, perhaps one that has never listened to the Learning Leaders Show that this episode with the great John Maxwell

could be useful for them. And because you continue to do that, it gives me, you give me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so much. with you next week. Can't wait.