Sam Donaghey
Welcome to the fast slow motion podcast where we teach you how to build a business you love while enjoying your life. I’m your host Sam Donaghey and joining me today is fast slow motion strategic client

Chris Goede
is great.

Sam Donaghey
Michael Johnson. Michael, it’s great to see you here today.

Michael Johnson
Sam, it’s amazing to be here.

Sam Donaghey
Absolutely. Today’s a really good one. We’ve got a guest today, Chris Goede

Chris is the executive vice president at Maxwell Leadership. Chris has spent decades starting, growing and leading companies and now helps organizations around the world apply John Maxwell’s principles inside their culture. His work focuses on creating leadership cultures, leading beyond a title and developing emerging leaders. So today we’re going to dig into his leadership approach.

the five levels of leadership and how you can build a stronger bench of leaders inside your business. Chris, welcome to the show.

Chris Goede
Sam, so good to be here. I really appreciate it. Michael, thanks for having me. I’m looking forward to our conversation today.

Sam Donaghey
Absolutely. Chris, you’ve been with John Maxwell on and off for nearly three decades and you now lead the B2B side of Maxwell leadership. So to start the conversation off, can you tell us what your work with leaders and organizations looks like today?

Chris Goede
Yeah, first, let me say this. I started when I was five. After hearing that introduction, I feel old that I’ve been around this long. But I have. I’ve almost been three decades with John. And man, what a ride. Just learning from osmosis over the years has been amazing. But my full-time role now is that I take our content, our principles, the things that we’ve learned, and I help organizations of all sizes understand what it’s like to ⁓

increase your influence, improve the culture, and really, at the end of the day, get to a place to where we’re able to work more efficiently and effectively together as a team.

Michael Johnson
Chris, it’s often said that leadership is influence and not really position. And so when you walk into an organization for the first time, what are some of the misunderstandings about influence that you see the most often?

Chris Goede
Yeah, this is great question. I want to back up just a little bit because as we think about our organization, those that are listening part of this podcast and you’re thinking about your environment, your organization, the first thing is, is to remember that the organization itself will never outgrow the capacity or the capability of the leader or the leaders in that organization. Right. So that is driven by

by influence. And so as we look at organizations, we really focus on organizational development, the culture, the leadership. What is the common language of leadership inside that organization? And most of them, to your point, could not say, well, it’s really about influence. Because what do we do as human beings, the first thing we do when we get an opportunity to either start our own business,

We get an opportunity to partner with somebody. We get an opportunity for a promotion. We go, man, we got to start producing. Like we got to go right to it, right? We got to get results. We’ve got to have our KPIs. We got to make sure we’re driving revenue. We got to make sure we save costs. And so we naturally just immediately go right after that. And we forget that none of that happens without people.

And the only way to truly understand how to lead people effectively with the right motive is to understand what it is to truly influence people. So I see a lot of doers when I go into organizations, but what ends up happening is we see a fallout from that because people are so so focused on the production side of things, which is great. We got to do that. We’ll talk a little bit about that, but it starts with truly understanding how to connect and relate to people to start building your influence.

Michael Johnson
Gotcha, so there’s a balance between production and influence that companies have to figure out in order to really do this great. Just a follow-up question on that, you talked about leaders, the organization only growing, only being as good as the leaders capability. And that reminds me of the concept of the lid, you know? And so how do you identify when a leader in the building has maybe hit their ceiling?

Chris Goede
100 % ⁓

Yep. Yep.

Michael Johnson
or maybe it’s worse, like toxic to the culture. Like, how do you identify that?

Chris Goede
Yeah, this is a great question. So if you’ve ever, if you ever seen John Maxwell teach the law of the lid and if you haven’t just Google it and go out there. There’s some, there’s videos of him teaching it. And when he teaches it, he sits here and he does this the whole time. He’s teaching it. Now listen, Sam and Mike, I don’t know about you guys, but I, I, sometimes have a hard time staying focused. And so I used to say to him, why, why are you doing this while you’re teaching? And he’s like, Chris,

Young whipper snapper, said, you don’t understand. They’ll never remember what I’m going to say, but they’ll always remember this visual. And now no matter where we’re at in the world, whether they speak English or not, or what, if anybody understands the concept of law, they just look at me and start doing this. And I’m like, well, that’s why he’s written 35 million copies of books, right? And he he still sides with my pay grade. Yeah. But what ends up happening, it’s a great question. Cause what ends up happening is you see leaders.

Sam Donaghey
Yeah

Yeah.

Michael Johnson
He’s got

it figured out.

Chris Goede
begin to lose their team. They begin to lose their people. They begin to lose their vendors, their partners. They begin to slowly leak the talent out the back door or the opportunities out the back door because as leaders, if we’re not continually really focusing on raising our lid, those that are around us, when their lid gets higher than ours, they’re out. They’re out in a heartbeat. And so I tell leaders all the time,

You know, you get an opportunity to grow your business, your team, you get an open, you know, rec to hire somebody. And let’s say we’re all humble leaders here. And on a scale of one to 10, we go, man, you know what? I’m probably a six. I’ve got some room to grow, but you have an open rec and you’re like, I’m going after an eight, nine or an 10 to join my team. Like I’m going after a rock star. And if you sell them to join your team and I strategically use the word sell because it will be a sales job. They’re not staying. They’re not staying.

Because soon as they begin to see that they’re outpacing their leader, their vendor, their partner, whatever it might be, they’re going to find a greener pasture. And so you’ll begin to see things like the turnover of that leader that keeps going up. There seems to be a repetitive problem. They can’t keep certain vendors or partners or processes in place.

And it’s solely because the leader is not challenging him or herself to grow at the pace at which the business is asking for them to grow.

Michael Johnson
Wow, ton of wisdom there, cautionary tale. I think maybe some folks, it might be the first time hearing this concept of leaders kind of progressing and this concept of maybe the five levels of leadership. And so maybe if it is their first time, listeners first time, could you walk us through the five levels of leadership and why you say maybe the real transformation happens in levels two, three and four?

Chris Goede
Yeah, yeah, great question. So this is a methodology that John developed. Boy, I think it was probably 25, 26 years ago. It was the first chapter of a book that he wrote called Developing the Leader Within You. And the first chapter really talked about what is influence? And so he developed this model called the five levels of influence, now called the five levels of leadership. And I’m gonna walk you through it really quick and then I’m gonna answer your question and I’ll give you some overall thoughts that I think are super important for those that are.

with us today that are listening or watching us because it seems simple and it’s gonna seem like it’s a stair step, but it’s pretty complex. It’s actually a methodology that really changes the leadership structure and the culture of organizations, no matter the industry, no matter the size around the world. John says you have level one influence with people when you have a title. It calls this positional influence, okay?

This is ⁓ to have some fun with this really quick. This is the because I said so. I don’t know how many parents are listening right now, but how many of you before you had kids, you said, I will never say because I said so to my kid. I know I said that and I think three weeks into my oldest being born, I already started using it, right? It’s like, it’s this command and control. Now there’s a lot of positive things to each level. There’s a lot of negative things to each level. So I’m having fun here for just a minute, but really.

Michael Johnson
yeah. Yeah.

Sam Donaghey
Hehehe.

Chris Goede
This is where people are following you because your influence with them is simply because of the title on the shirt. Now think about the lack of engagement in our teams and our organizations right now. I think the last poll I saw was around 32 % engagement level in organizations. Why is that? That’s because most leaders are leading from level one. It is because I said so, command and control.

Michael Johnson
Wow.

Chris Goede
Level two, John says you then increase your influence to level two influence when you connect with them or you relate with them. And here the key thing is that people begin to follow you because they want to. This is where discretionary effort comes in. This is where you get a little bit more from the team than just punching in and punching out, right? They’re just, they’re doing more than the bare minimum to get their paycheck on Friday or whatever it is that their goal is, it’s the bare minimum.

Then you increase your influence with them to level three influence, which we call this the production level. This is where not only yourself as a leader, but also in and through team, you are producing for the organization. People are looking at that leader, that team, that company, that entrepreneur, and they’re saying, man, they are getting it done, both personally and professionally. The balance to be able to balance both, right?

then you gain level four influence when you begin to develop them as leaders, when you begin to reproduce what you know in them so that they can then do what you’ve been doing. And all of a sudden you’ve learned skills and you become more competent in certain areas because of that leader. And they look at you and they say, hey, man, he has level four influence with me because. And then finally the pinnacle level, John calls this

the ultimate respect, kind of the ultimate leadership level. And this is where you have led someone so well for so long that they look at you as a level five leader. Now I was with an organization yesterday and we were talking about Jim Collins, who’s a good friend of John’s. We were talking about the book, Good to Great. And he was talking about, in there he talks about level five leaders and organizations. And what the great thing about that is, is that man, you know, Jim did tons and tons of work.

Michael Johnson
Mm-hmm.

Chris Goede
on organizations, studying great organizations, where John and our organization, we’ve done a ton of work on studying great leaders and great leadership and what does that look like? And so this methodology of the five levels is the how behind level five organizations, right? This is how you go about becoming a level five leader. Now, let me say this. A couple of really important things to understand about this model with the limited time that we have here. Number one,

Michael Johnson
Yeah.

Chris Goede
is that you’re on different levels with different people all the time. So leaders, you’re going, my gosh, are you kidding me? Like I gotta know where I am at with Sam and where I’m at with Michael. And we are, and the key is we gotta lead them the way that we have influence. We gotta lead them at the level that we have influence with them.

Sam Donaghey
Interesting.

Michael Johnson
Hmm… Yeah.

Sam Donaghey
Interesting, wow.

Michael Johnson
Mm-hmm.

Sam Donaghey
So it starts again and repeats every time you hire a new person,

Chris Goede
100

% Sam. So for example, I’ve been with John like we talked about for a long time. I would hope that there’s some people in our organization that I have level four influence with. But if I hire a new team member tomorrow, it doesn’t matter my tenure, my title, doesn’t matter how long I’ve known or been with John, I have level one influence with him or her. And I gotta start that process all over again.

Michael Johnson
Yeah.

Yeah.

Sam Donaghey
Hmm

I’d imagine reputation

speaks for itself as well, right? Within the organization, because people speak to each other.

Chris Goede
It does,

it does. Reputation is great. But when you’re leading somebody or input, you bet the proof’s in the pudding. It’s like, how are you leading me? I love the reputation. You have a leadership brand because how people expect you to show up based off your title and how you actually show up is actually your leadership brand. And so you’ve got to lead all them individually, which it’s tough, right? you got to, you got to understand that. The other thing is you heard me say just a minute ago, I hope that I have level four influence somebody.

Michael Johnson
Yeah.

Sam Donaghey
Yes.

Yes.

Wow, pressure.

Michael Johnson
Yeah.

Chris Goede
I meet with lot of leaders and we talk about this and they go, man, this is amazing. I am a level five leader. And I go, hold on a minute. You don’t get to determine what level of influence you have with them. They do. So we’ve got to go back and we got to let them be able to say, hey man, this is the impact. This is where you’re at leading me. We got to be able to hear that and understand that. Now, Michael, really quick to wrap this up, because I’m super passionate about this.

Sam Donaghey
Yeah.

Mm.

Michael Johnson
Yeah.

Chris Goede
in organizations. You talked about the key levels at two, three, and four. Here’s the final insight that I’ll share with our listeners today. Level one and level five are given to you. Level one, that influence level is given to you by the organization that you work for. They give you that title. Level five is given to you, okay, by the people you have led over the time.

Michael Johnson
Uh-huh.

Hmm.

Chris Goede
where all of the work has to be done by leaders is to understand how do I increase my influence with people at level two, at level three, and level four. So how do we connect? How do we produce? And then how do I reproduce and develop those people? When you do that, you’ll begin to increase your influence with people inside and outside your organization, right? This is not only what happens inside organizations. This is an everyday life.

Michael Johnson
Right.

Chris Goede
This is at home. This is in our community. This is with volunteers. This is an influence model that can completely change the way that you not only lead people, but you’re perceived as a leader to them.

Sam Donaghey
Love it. Love it. Chris, you also mentioned earlier about common language. So can you tell us how the, you how does the five levels model actually create a shared language inside a company, please?

Chris Goede
Yeah.

Yeah, this is something that ⁓ when we took this model years ago and began to operationalize it into corporate America, one of the things is we had to create a common language of leadership. For two, there’s two, I’m gonna give you one example and then one main reason. The reason is this, think about this with me real quick. Let’s say you have a leadership team of four people. And if I were to come in and I said, how do we define leadership here?

Michael Johnson
you

Chris Goede
I may get four or five, six different answers, because some of you would give me two. And all of them are right, because the word leadership is so broad, right? Like there’s all kinds of competencies that funnel up to that. What ends up happening though, and the problem, it’s almost like a silent killer.

is that then those four leaders go and lead their verticals inside the organization and they lead their team how they define leadership. They use their language of leadership. And we begin unintentionally to create three or four different silos or subculture of leadership and culture because the way that we’re leading and we’re doing it unintentionally, it’s the best that we know how.

But there’s no common language of this is how we’re going to define leadership here inside the organization. The other reason is we decided, man, we’ve got to have a language for leaders to be able to communicate effectively, efficiently, and not have to worry about maybe being misunderstood in the moment when things are, know, bullets are flying and we’re trying to get things done. So I’ll give you a real life example.

One of my ⁓ sales team that I lead, one of my teams, lead the sales guy. Number one producer, kills it all the time, highly relational. I can hear him coming down the hall sometimes in the morning, right? He’s got the cup of coffee, he just wants to come and sit down and talk. And I’m in here pounding out things and spreadsheets and trying to figure things out. One day I got this call from John said, hey, I actually need you to change your schedule. I need you to be here tonight. Da da da. Well.

If you have a family, you understand that changes a lot of dynamics. All of a sudden I’m not coming home that night, different things, I got all kinds of stuff on my head. He walks into my office and I said, hey, I gotta go level three really quick here. This is what happened this morning. This is I need your help with. Got it? He goes, man, I’m good, no problem. We’ll take care of it. We got this and he went out.

because I said level three, he knew that I was in production mode immediately versus if he comes in and I don’t have that common language of where I’m at that day or what I’m trying to accomplish in that meeting or that. And I just start barking orders at him. He’s going to turn around, walk back out, go to the water cooler and be like, don’t anybody go by Chris’s office today because he is not in a good mood, right? And then all of sudden what?

Michael Johnson
Hmm.

Right.

Sam Donaghey
you

Chris Goede
engagement goes down. So it’s a way for us to be able to communicate. I’ll give you one other quick example. Over last couple of years, I’ve been asked by John and Mark, our CEO, to lead a couple of different parts of the organization. And one of my founding teams that I have, I just, they’re an incredible team, they’re a mature team, they’re getting it done.

I hadn’t really connected with him in a while because I’m so focused on the other part of organization. One of them comes by and says, hey, man, I know you’re killing it. We’re doing good. Everything’s well, but it sure would be good to get some level two time. Anytime you get a chance, maybe go grab lunch or whatever. So just speaking that language helps us communicate without the emotional weight of what that looks like. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Here’s one other example.

Sam Donaghey
I was thinking that about the emotion, kind of removes the emotion. Yeah.

Michael Johnson
Yeah.

Chris Goede
All my Chick-fil-A fans out there, okay? Now listen, I live in the South. Our corporate headquarters here in Atlanta. I’m a huge Chick-fil-A fan, especially on the road. When my wife’s not with me and the Oreo milkshakes available, I’m in, right? Their common language, when you say thank you, is what? My pleasure, 100%. Well, we know the Cathy family really well. John’s friends with Truett and Dan and…

Michael Johnson
There you go.

My pleasure.

Chris Goede
Truett started saying, my pleasure, in the boardroom about 25 or 30 years ago. And he kept saying it. He kept saying it to his leadership team. Kept saying it. And now, for me personally, the biggest legacies that he’s left in their customer service is now in every store, no matter where you go, around the world, when someone says thank you, they say, my pleasure. Now, that’s their common language.

right around how they serve people and by the way your common language leads to your common beliefs which leads to your common behavior and we’re in the behavioral change business so when you say my pleasure they believe that and by the way it comes with a smile it’s not like they say my pleasure and throw the tray at you right the behavior follows the common language

Michael Johnson
That’s right, attitude follows action in many cases. Yeah, and so putting that out there, you set the tone, leaders can set the tone with the common language. That makes so much sense.

Chris Goede
100%.

Sam Donaghey
So Chris, when you enter an organization, what signals, whether they be positive or negative, sort of help you assess the health of its leadership culture?

Chris Goede
Yeah, it’s for us, one of the quick indicators is really their engagement level and the turnover percentage of the business. Now, some industries, they carry a high turnover percentage, right? Retention is low in certain parts of it. You think about…

some sales positions and specifically we have some clients that are in the automotive industry and those sales like it’s there. There’s industry standards but our goal is to go in and measure against the industry standards and benchmark a number and begin to help them improve that.

And then the engagement level, like do some internal surveys around being able to determine what is the engagement? they committed to what they’re doing? Are they super engaged? Are they sold out to what the business is doing? Are they behind the purpose of the company? And so when we start asking questions like that, we quickly bring to the surface.

different leaders, different verticals, different teams that have higher turnover than others. And often it leads directly to the leader of that team.

81%, here’s another thought for you. 81 % of the people that are engaged, this is a Gallup survey, said that they’re engaged because of their direct supervisor. So this is why we have to cascade this. So for example, I report to Mark Cole, our CEO, and John Maxwell. My leadership team, their engagement level is on me.

Sam Donaghey
Okay.

Chris Goede
And then you look at that all the way down and throughout the organization. And so you can quickly begin to identify where we have some problems in the culture and the leadership in an organization by just looking at those two things.

Sam Donaghey
So it’s not necessarily always a bad culture across the business. You’ve got subcultures within teams, but you need a unified culture across the board that works for everybody.

Chris Goede
Correct.

That is correct.

That is correct. That

Michael Johnson
Yeah,

and in that scenario, Chris, it’s really this difference between a have to follow and a want to, you know? And so what’s your advice or do you have any any tips for someone that needs to help make that transition from have to to want to?

Chris Goede
is correct.

Yes. Yep.

Yeah.

Yeah. So the let me go back to level one and this have to it is not a bad thing. Okay. It’s actually it’s actually a great thing. We’ve got an opportunity. We’ve got a promotion because by the way, every time you get a promotion, you got to really look at your influence with people and what that does on the new just because you’ve been at the organization for long time and you got promoted doesn’t mean that all of that influence goes with you. So

It takes a little bit of work to be able to then increase your influence to go from that have to to level two. And John uses this word of relationships is kind of how you move up from one to two. I want to go a step further though because I want to talk about connecting with your team.

If we’re being honest, there are people on our team right now that we like, I have no desire to build a relationship with that person, right? They’re extremely good at what they do. But I mean, we are as far opposite as you could actually imagine. I was gonna say, didn’t, sensed the tension between the two of you right here. Maybe this is going to be, this is actually going to be an intervention. Sam, you don’t know, but Michael told me that we’re going to be.

Michael Johnson
Sam’s thinking about me right now. Yeah.

Sam Donaghey
I’ve got his video. I’ve got his video off. It’s fine. I can’t see him

Michael Johnson
That’s right. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Sam Donaghey
Yeah,

it’s not even a podcast recording today.

Chris Goede
That’s right. Yeah. So it’s really about how do we connect with people? Well, when you start looking at that and you think about your own journey and you think about the way that you’re connected with people, man, there’s so many things that connect us with people. Number one, solving problems together, connect with people, right? Understanding their personal values and why, why, what is important to them that connects with people, right? Asking questions, being curious. Here’s another thing about leaders.

We do a really good job acting like we’re listening to our team when we already know where we’re going and what the answer is. Now we may know that, right? We’re the leaders. We got to make that decision, whatever it is. But I think if we would do a better job of being curious, and there’s a big difference between listening and being curious. And when you are, people want to be seen, valued and heard. That’s what they want. Okay? They don’t want to always be right. They don’t want their…

You know their opinion always be the direction we go or what we do, but they do want to be seen, seen, valued and heard. So when you understand what that looks like and Sam back to your point where we talking earlier about how you got it. This is different for every single team member you have. I have some dynamics on my team. I was talking this morning to one of my team members and. I was saying hey well.

so and so I literally understand this and I have to lead that person this way. That’s different than I lead this person this way. And it’s based off of really who they are, how they’re wired, what are their learned behaviors, what do they value.

And those are ways that I can connect with them and not have to build a relationship, not to have to have small talk, not have to sit there and act like I’m engaged in the story that they’re telling me just because I want to try to build a relationship with. No, we can do it through connecting in a ton of different ways.

Sam Donaghey
Do you find that most businesses that you work with don’t have a common value system that they’re all pointing towards? Obviously they’ve got a common goal, but do they have like a shared value system that they’re all aligned to when they get hired?

Chris Goede
Yeah, so this is a really good point. And this is a really deep thought and question that we could unpack for a long time. As organizations, again, doesn’t matter the size. You know what your kind of true north is and where we’re going. Along with that, we have a mission. We have a vision statement. We have our company values. All that’s great. However, when it comes to leadership and influence, what is really key here

is that every single person on your team really in your sphere of influence, they actually have different personal values. So one of the organizations that I was with ⁓ yesterday, I took their leadership team through a values card exercise. And this organization had, was there’s 35 executives in the room. And I had people that were there 20 years. And then I had people that were there two months across the board.

And we were talking about how we all believe in the purpose of the organization. And what was ironic was they didn’t really ever think about, OK, we know the values of organization, but what are Sam’s personal values? What are Michael’s personal values? Because that’s the key to understanding and influencing them, right? So we get done. And I was talking to the CEO on my way out, and he goes, he said, I’ve been around this organization a long time.

And what we accomplished in the last 30 minutes and having, because what I did is I had them go through this exercise that came up with their top five values. And then I made them get up and I’ll start finding somebody cross-functionally and to share their top five values with them. The engagement level in the room, you could just feel the energy just rise. And the CEO is like,

That’s amazing. Like we all think about being so organizationally focused on the mission and the values and where we’re going. Wow, that’s important. And the organizational values are super important. Understanding each other’s man that that’s that’s where you put fuel right there on the fire of getting them to produce, to connect, to develop people all around the focus of the organization.

Sam Donaghey
Wow.

Michael Johnson
Chris, I can see one of the challenges, ⁓ some of the stuff we’re talking about, especially with building relationships. And even in some of the examples you gave, a lot of organizations, I mean, including ours, are either remote or hybrid right now. ⁓ And so I can see that being a challenge to really try to intentionally grow influence and really invest in relationship. What do you see working now out there in the wild for hybrid or remote organizations?

Chris Goede
Yeah, on Monday we hosted our Maxwell Leadership virtual Christmas party. And so, all right, so I also have the privilege at Maxwell Leadership as the chief culture officer. And ⁓ if I am not stating it important enough,

Sam Donaghey
Wow.

Michael Johnson
wow, nice.

Mmm.

Chris Goede
or urgent enough that we’ve got to figure this out because this is the way that we are working going forward, right? There is a blend between what we have is kind of a remote, full-time virtual back and forth. And so after the Christmas party, you know, I had some feels during it, right? I was like, Oh, this is a little funky and awkward. This didn’t seem like we connected. And so I got on the phone. Hey, what did you feel? What was the experience like? It wasn’t perfect, but

Michael Johnson
Yeah.

Chris Goede
What I found was those that are full-time virtual, maybe not even the same state, right? We’re in Atlanta. We have employees, well, really around the world, but like California and on. And so what I found was those that are full-time virtual loved it, loved it to be able to see each other, to interact. We broke them out in breakout rooms, right? They got to talk about what their favorite ornament was, like in groups of five, you know, and we had tons of groups out there.

Michael Johnson
Yeah.

Chris Goede
Those that were in the office were like, I mean, I might not ever get that 60 or 90 minutes back in my life, right? Like, I mean, it’s just, so there’s no perfect answer. Here’s what I will say though. I’ll give you a couple of examples of how I’ve seen leaders really try to do this well. To their remote team, they’ll say, hey, know that I’m gonna have my zoom up from three to four today. I’m gonna be at my desk working.

Michael Johnson
Yeah.

Chris Goede
If there’s something that comes up, you want to pop by my office, just pop in there to say, Hey, Chris, and I got a, I got a question for you, right? Like they make them itself accessible virtually without it being around a structured meeting.

Michael Johnson
Mm-hmm.

Chris Goede
Now you have your structured meeting and your virtual meetings and you keep them engaged, but there are also times where you just have to have that open door policy. Like if they were in my office today, they could just walk by, knock on the door, come in and connect and get a question answered. And so I’ve seen leaders try to do that. The other thing is be very intentional about when you understand your team, even if they’re virtual, to continue to add value to them.

even if it’s through the mail, even if it’s through a gift card, even if it’s through a text, even like you got to get creative, right? And I tell leaders all the time, listen, if you’re really good at that and you’re really strong at that, awesome. If you’re not, what I need you to do is put a process in place to be able to do that, because this is this is the way we.

This is our new normal. This is the way it’s going to happen. And we need to be able to lead and influence properly both those that are in our office and those that are in the virtual world.

Sam Donaghey
Chris, can we back up just a little bit to what you mentioned earlier when you were talking about level two leadership, level one leadership and how you have to effectively continue to repeat that, right? As a leader, I don’t think we covered anything like practical in the day-to-day for a leader who might be stretched thin. So like for anybody that might be listening at home, do you have any practical tips for how to, know, what does that look like?

Chris Goede
Yeah, okay. So one of the things that we really focus on is how do we help leaders increase their influence with people in the process of doing what they do? The last thing that we want is another to do list as a leader. Now, we’ve got to understand our people, okay? We’ve to understand what feeds them and what wires them. But when that…

Once you get past that, then it’s part of what you’re doing. So I’ll give you an example. I’ll give you an example both at level two and level four, okay? So at level two, when you think about the power of questions, John wrote a book, it’s called Good Leaders Ask Great Questions. It’s a great book about different types of questions.

Instead of when they come into your office, okay, and you go straight to it, man, take maybe just take three or five minutes and ask two questions, okay? Or when you close the meeting, come up with some creative questions. I have a team member of mine at the end of our time together on my 101, I asked this question. Hey, on a scale of one to 10,

with no sevens, don’t, sevens are like Switzerland. don’t, sevens, leaders, don’t give your people options at seven, right? Because if you, seven’s the easy way out. So I’ll say to her, hey, when we were talking about this podcast that we were gonna do together, on a scale of one to 10, no sevens, how do you feel about where you’re at? How do you feel about what we talked about? And then,

Michael Johnson
Yeah

Sam Donaghey
sitting on the fence.

Chris Goede
she’ll sit back if she says six then I go stay right here we got some more to talk about if she says eight or above now that’s a simple little production question but it’s also a question me asking her where is she at like are we aligned like what does she think what remember I said seen valued and heard think about that she felt in that moment

Sam Donaghey
Yeah.

Chris Goede
She felt heard. She felt her opinion was valuable to me. It was. She felt seen, right? And so we think about what that looks like. So make it part of your meetings. One of the things I do in our team meetings, I meet with all my teams every Monday morning. The first 10 minutes, or five or 10 minutes, are my time.

Sam Donaghey
Yeah.

Chris Goede
And I use it for two reasons. Number one, I think leaders should always be learning. I think the leaders should be setting the example. And so I just share very vulnerable, transparently, things I’m learning, either through mistakes the previous week, maybe it’s something content I’m digging into, because leadership is contagious. So I’m trying to set that example. The second thing is I’ll use that time to go around and be like, hey, man, I want to know the number one personal highlight from all of you.

over the weekend, what was it? You have 30 seconds, now I don’t need a whole book about it, right? And we all have some of those on our team, and then I have some that I have to pull it out of. But just some quick personal, that draws the team and connections together. When it comes to developing people, let me give you another example real quick of kind of building it into what you do. We’re big believers that you should have a succession plan.

in place for every position in your organization as a leader from top down. A lot of people think about succession planning at the top, founders, executives, right? But we really should put something in place where every single leader in the organization has a plan for who’s next in their role, who’s up. Well, one of the things we tell leaders all the time is you are already in meetings, you’re already going lunch appointments, you’re making trips, you’re all these different things.

Why are you doing it by yourself? Who’s your number two? Bring them with you. Because what ends up happening is then organically, you begin to coach and develop. They begin to ask questions. so we’re saying, no, we don’t want you to spend a ton of time separate from what you’re already doing. Make them a part of it. And we begin, we think too much of it being separate.

Michael Johnson
Mm-hmm.

Chris, one thing that I think maybe people are wondering is that concept of the, say we are doing succession planning, or we’re trying to identify who is that second person, next person up, the person on deck. Yeah, absolutely. ⁓ How do we find, ⁓ or how can you tell someone has leadership potential even if they don’t have the title? What are we looking for?

Chris Goede
Next man up.

So this is a personal ⁓ opinion on kind of what I look for, what I see in leaders. There’s a couple of things coming to mind. The first one is, are they consistently performing at what their current job is? The greatest thing you can do as an individual contributor, as an up and coming leader, the greatest thing you can do is to do your job really well for your leader. Do your job really, so are they consistently performing is one thing I look at.

Another thing is, do they create energy around the ideas and the things we’re working on, or are they just completing the task? Is it just a checkbox? They just check in the box, or are they creating energy around that project, that task, that skill set? And then I think finally, this is super important, is,

Michael Johnson
Mm.

Yeah.

Chris Goede
and all of us that are listening to participate right now, we’re gonna think about somebody when I give you this example.

We all know people that don’t have very good self-awareness. I’m thinking about a couple of people right now, right? I’m like, yeah. And I think intuitively we can see that. So I look for people that demonstrate even early in their career, their comprehension and ability, I call it the emotional intelligence, the essential skills ⁓ of leadership.

Michael Johnson
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Chris Goede
They have the ability to kind of demonstrate some of that EQ even early on, some of the simple things. And then the second half is that they have great self-awareness. Because that is hard to coach when people don’t have great self-awareness or don’t want to dig in and get to the point where they can have great self-awareness.

Michael Johnson
Yeah, but ultimately that’s hard to lead if you don’t have that, you know, that’s the vulnerability and the trust that self-awareness creates.

Chris Goede
Yeah, 100%.

Michael Johnson
Yeah, so just curious as the work, the makeup of the kind of the work environment shifts, ⁓ do these traits, these things show up differently for maybe Gen Xers than they do Gen Zers? What do you see in?

Chris Goede
Yeah, we have a training that we work through and some coaching called leading multi-generational teams. One of the biggest diversity in teams right now is the generational diversity. There are five now going on six different generations in the workforce. OK, we have one. We have we have one client in the mid in the Midwest that’s in the energy sector.

Think about this town, right? It’s the main focus of this town. There are four, maybe five generations of the same family in the work environment. Because you got grandma and all that’s in the cafeteria, this and that, and you got the youngest one coming out of high school that’s on the line. It’s just part of what they do. Well, when you think about this, they all bring different traits to the table. And they’re not wrong.

it’s that it’s different than the previous generation. No matter what generation you’re part of, you think your generation is right and best, and every other generation is wrong. I saw this quote one time where the facilitator put the quote up and it said, this next generation, they’re entitled and don’t work hard and this and that. Everybody started laughing like, yeah, man, that’s so true. And then they popped up the author and it was Socrates.

Michael Johnson
Yeah. That’s awesome. Yeah.

Chris Goede
So this has been going on for a long time. And

so 100%, the environment and the culture in the world of which different generations were raised up, they bring different things because of that to the workforce. So this goes back to what we were talking about earlier. We were talking about we have to lead them the way they need to be led. We can’t lead.

everybody the exact same way because they all bring different things to the table and most leaders No fault of their own, but they really only if they haven’t been equipped the training developed They really only lead two ways. They either lead the way they want to be led or they want to lead the way they were led growing up and Neither one of those are right

Michael Johnson
Yep.

Yeah.

Chris Goede
The right answer is we need to lead Sam the way that Sam needs to be led. We need to lead Chris the way, and that’s different even if we’re from the same generation. Sam, I threw that in there because I want to feel a little younger because I’m 52, but I want to jump down into your generation. So yes, it is different. And that’s the challenge of a leader is how do we get to the place where we truly understand that?

Michael Johnson
Mm-hmm.

Sam Donaghey
you

Well, you you mentioned as well about leaders developing leaders, Chris. What is your plan of action when you’re transitioning a leader? You know, getting them to actually actively construct a development team for their own plan, sorry, for their own team. Yeah.

Chris Goede
Yeah, their own team. Yeah.

So there are so many free resources out there. Okay. This is what I tell leaders and organizations all the time. Let’s take this podcast for example. Okay. There is no reason that every single person that has a team, whether it’s one person, 30, 40, whatever it is, that they shouldn’t take this podcast.

on a regular basis and say, Hey, I want everybody to listen to this podcast, ride to or from work. And we have our team meeting. I’m going to spend 10 minutes. I just want to know, was your number one takeaway? What was your number one thought? That is as simple as beginning to develop your team as you can get. And I want to encourage everybody to listen to it, to do that, because this is a resource that you can use and put in front of your team then to be able to start a development culture. That’s how it starts.

some example like that. The other way that I encourage leaders all the time, because they feel like they have to sit down and develop this major plan for this individual. And then if you have six, seven direct reports, maybe more, you’re like, OK, I don’t have time to do this. I encourage them to make the team member a part of the planning process. So.

Michael Johnson
Mm-hmm.

Chris Goede
One of the things I’m doing in December with my leadership team is I gave each one of them. A day. OK, and so I said over the next 30 days I want you guys to take a day. And all I want you to do is to get somewhere out of your office. I don’t care where it is, doesn’t matter, but I want you to spend the day on what does next year look like for you? What areas do you want to grow personally and professionally?

And my only requirement is that as you evaluate where you’re at personally and professionally, bring those insights back to me on the business, but also personal. And I’m to sit down with you and we’re going to create a development plan next year. And I’m going to check in with you once a month, once a quarter, I’m going hold you accountable to it. So we don’t have to get to a point to where we feel like we’re doing it all ourselves. Now that’s some basic stuff.

that we could

as we go up in the levels of leadership and the executives and different succession planning. That’s a little bit of a different story and there’s some things that we got in place. But most leaders even with those two examples that I just gave right there. They can do both of those and their team will feel valued because there’s a development plan in place. I read an article.

This was two, three weeks ago where in the top three, you talk about Michael, different generations and how they want to be led. I don’t know about, you guys, but when I was looking for a career, I was like, Hey, how much does it pay? What’s the time off? What are the benefits? Right? Those are my reasons in the top three in the youngest generation coming up. Top three is they want to know what your development plan is for them. Not a career path.

So I tell leaders all the time, like you want a differentiator in the market where talent is tough to come by? During the interview process, you better get to a point where you’re laying out, this is how we are going to develop you. And not just on the IQ side, not just on the skill set side.

Sam Donaghey
Yeah.

Chris Goede
because the IQ gets you the job, EQ keeps the job. Okay, the emotional intelligence and the leadership and the development of EQ and self-awareness is what keeps the job. So it’s interesting because there’s a shift going on and as leaders and organizations, we better figure that out.

Sam Donaghey
Hmm.

Wow.

Michael Johnson
Yeah, I know Chris for me talking about some of this stuff. One thing that I need to really improve, one area I need to improve my leadership in is at home. And my kids would actually be the first people to tell you that. I’ve got three kids at home. So, ⁓ you know, I know your wife wrote and adapted the five levels into parenting with purpose. So how has applying those leadership principles at home shaped the way you think about leadership at work? And what can business leaders take away from that connection?

Chris Goede
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, we realized in being in John’s world for so long during COVID.

My wife sat down. Now, listen, we had to do this right once the kids got out of the house. We had to have enough credibility that we fully survived because we do we do a lot of ⁓ parenting seminars and workshops and people go, parenting experts were like, well, hold on a minute. No, no, we are parenting survivors. OK, like we made it. We made it. John Maxwell always says, I love this. He says, listen, when you get a chance to have grandchildren, they are the reward from God for not killing your children. And that’s true. Right. That is very, very true.

Michael Johnson
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Sam Donaghey
Okay.

Chris Goede
But what we realized was that we raised our children in a home with a common language around the five levels of leadership. Now, that wasn’t what we were calling it while we were doing it, but we began to understand it really was about levels two, three, and four of influence on our children. And we’re not saying being best friends with your children, we’re saying connecting with them.

Sam Donaghey
Hmm.

Michael Johnson
Yeah.

Chris Goede
We’re saying winning together, teaching them how to win, teaching them how to fish, right? Developing them. And now our kids are both out of the house, contributing to society with full-time jobs. And they will periodically call back and ask questions and mentor and man, you know, I remember this like, Hey, talk about that. And what’s what I love about it so much is that, you know, a lot of us know that our

or think that our children are not listening to us. We have this principle that we talk about around feedback and connecting with people. We call it the intent versus perception gap as leaders. So my daughter has got her first big girl job. She’s the 23 year old. And I hear on the speakerphone the other night talking to her mom and she drops this language. Well, listen, I know that was not his intent, but my perception was I go.

Michael Johnson
Yeah.

Chris Goede
Hold the phone. Like I am interrupting this. Did you just use some leadership language around connecting? She’s like, shut up, dad. I’m like, I just wanted to make sure. So to your point, Michael, it really is principles that cross over personally and professionally. I want to address the way you asked it though, because I know for me, and I probably know for most businessmen and women, what’s happening is,

Michael Johnson
There you go.

Yeah. Yeah.

Sam Donaghey
Hahaha

Chris Goede
We’re understanding leadership to some extent in our work world, but we don’t bring it home versus right where, we lead really well at home and now we’re showing up at work. No, it’s like, man, my wife was coaching this executive female of a big time medical hospital and she was telling her some things she’s struggling with with with her son. And so my wife asked her.

She said, hey, ⁓ let me ask you a question. If he was on your leadership team at work, what would you do? And this lady, extremely competent, sharp lady, goes, my god,

I never thought about it like that. Here’s what I would do. And my wife goes, that’s exactly what you should do. And so we really got to think about, now,

My wife and I joke around all the time. say the more impact that we have with parents around the world, I’m working myself out of a job because eventually these children are going to get to the corporate American. Hopefully they’re all incredible leaders. But my challenge is, is man, think about the leadership things that go on at work and how you lead people. Why aren’t we doing that at home? Why, why, why are people in the work world? If we’re thinking about balance and why are they getting the best of me versus my family getting the best of me?

Michael Johnson
Yeah.

Sam Donaghey
Hmm.

Chris Goede
Why am I not having weekly family meetings like I have weekly team meetings? Why do I not know that my daughter needs to be communicated to differently than my son does? Right? Like, so that was the aha. We get super passionate about it because man, is just, we’ve seen it completely impact and change parents.

Sam Donaghey
Yeah.

Chris Goede
from thinking about this leadership principle that we all kind of gravitate towards nine to five, and then we just throw it out the window when we get home.

Michael Johnson
Yeah, absolutely. I love it Chris, because a lot of the, gosh, a lot of the principles, you five levels and everything we’ve talked about, it’s really a focus on your internal capability, right? It’s not just like performative and here’s the five things to do, you know, which so much of leadership at home and at work is caught and not taught. You know, it’s so, people see it and they follow. It’s not something you can just check off a box and just execute.

Chris Goede
One, three.

That’s so good. So So good. Yeah.

Michael Johnson
I think that’s a lot of wisdom on just taking, hey, are the things, taking that mentality and mode that, your great leadership at work, how can you pivot and use that at home and the right application? So that’s really good wisdom.

Chris Goede
That’s right.

Yeah. Yeah.

Sam Donaghey
Awesome. Hey Chris, this has been a truly inspiring conversation. Before we close, is there a piece of wisdom or a guiding principle that stayed with you throughout your leadership journey that you’d like to share with us today?

Chris Goede
Yeah, well, I want to I want to add on to what Michael just said, because because I’ve been around John Maxwell for so long,

we always are growth focused versus goal focused, right? We have a very infinite mindset around that. It’s about the growth journey. And so I do want to add on before another thought that I’ll give you as I wrap up. Michael says it does start with us like

from day one, it’s about your personal growth, no matter where you’re at. What are your irreducible minimums every day to raise your level of competence in any area? Any area. Like I said, there’s so much free content out there. What are you waiting on? Now, the younger generations, Michael, back to something you said earlier, what we’re seeing is a lot of them have a ton of information, and they don’t get focused and then apply it, right? And so,

It starts with us because if people are the lid on the organization’s ability to scale and to grow, okay, then the individual’s responsibility is their own development. And so it starts with us. And so John, that’s just been something that man forever. It’s been, what are you doing? What are you reading? Who are you meeting with that doing things faster than you are bigger than you are? What are you, where are you challenging yourself to grow?

And then I’ll close with these two little statements that I, as a leader, really have adapted just because of being around John and this culture and the environment, which is the first one is, listen, learn, then lead. This is kind of a mantra that I think as leaders, if we would understand this, it’s so important. We need to be listening to people. You heard me talk about curiosity earlier. Learn something from that.

And then lead the person, lead the situation, lead. ⁓ Making sure you have the right and enough context behind every situation. Because we judge ourselves by our intent behind everything. But we judge other people, and this is human nature, including myself, by the way they act. Okay, we do it. And we never even take time as leaders to try to get behind what was the intent behind of X.

Sam Donaghey
Yeah.

Mmm.

Chris Goede
And so I just have this thing that I all the time, it’s for me. I need to listen, learn, then lead. And when I do that, I find out that I’m able to connect and produce and develop people ⁓ at a better pace than if I don’t do that. And my closing thought is this, the reason I do all that is because everyone deserves to be led well. Everyone.

Sam Donaghey
Love that.

Mm.

Michael Johnson
Yeah.

Sam Donaghey
Yeah.

Chris Goede
no matter where they’re at in the organization, in our community, in our family, in our volunteer group, everyone deserves to be led well. And if we can get behind that, was like Michael saying earlier, at home first, then at work, right? If we can get behind that, man, the impact that we will have, because we’re all in the people business, all of us, whatever entrepreneur is listening, whatever business, I don’t care if it’s widgets, we are in the people business because without the people,

Sam Donaghey
Yeah.

Chris Goede
then we could not have that business. And I’m working a lot right now, as a lot of people are, right? AI and leadership. And I tell people all the time, it’s a tool to help augment and automate things, but it’ll never replace the way that we should be leading people and that human connection behind it. Is it going to change some things? Sure. But man, at the heart of what all of us do, there’s people behind it and everyone deserves to be led well.

Michael Johnson
Yeah.

Sam Donaghey
I’m sure everybody listening will agree that this is such a positive, inspiring episode.

So that’s a wrap for today’s episode of the Fast Slow Motion Podcast. A massive thank you to Chris Goede for joining us and sharing his leadership insights. If you wanna learn more about Chris and the work the Maxwell leadership team is doing, we’re gonna include the links and the resources in the show notes. And as always, you can catch past episodes at fastslowmotion.com slash podcast, or you can subscribe on your favorite podcast platform.

And if you have a question or a topic that you’d like us to cover, you can drop us a note at fastslowmotion.com slash podcastfeedback. And we’ll see you again next time.