3 Lessons on Leadership from John Maxwell

For this months’ business book we’re turning to what some might call a classic read: John Maxwell’s 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader, written in 1999. Even though so much changes in the [business] world over time, leadership principles and qualities are two things that become not only more important and integral to success as a business owner, they are also something you can depend on to work well for you whether you’re learning from one of the kings of old or presidents today. Leadership is also something that we can talk about universally, which I really appreciate, which means that we can all gather at the table together and have conversations about it that are applicable to each of us, whether we run a pizzeria, big box store, ad agency, or staffing company because every company needs leadership to survive and especially to thrive.

As you may know, one of my favorite things to do in reading books on leadership is to learn how people define leadership. Maxwell shared a definition from history, that of Napoleon Bonaparte who said that leaders are “dealers in hope.” This is one of the defining factors I think in not only what makes a company successful, but also determines the culture of a company. If the leadership of the company is dealing in hope, you’ll find that the company is more welcoming, a place people usually like to work, has great rapport with their customers and that it’s preferred by customers time and again and they’re hard-pressed to choose other companies instead.

Second, Maxwell addressed the challenge we all face regarding weaknesses and things that need to be worked on. I’ll share what he wrote, but I want to preface it with saying that it reminded me that sometimes we have a hard time looking past the bad and seeing the good. As he said, yes, of course we should be admitting what’s not good enough and where we struggle, because when we don’t admit those things we leave the door open for possibly serious mistakes and big issues to happen. But what Maxwell shared is that we should focus 70% of the time on our strengths and only 5% of our time on our weaknesses (the other 25% is on new things). This is another reason why we should make time to celebrate and highlight the successes of our team, the good things that people do, and the ways that they contribute to the overall success, growth and health of our companies.

Finally, I want to close with a quote from the end of the book that really spoke to me about what it means to be a leader: “…all people…like to feel special, so sincerely compliment them. They want a better tomorrow, so show them hope. They desire direction, so navigate for them. They are selfish so speak to their needs first. They get emotionally low, so encourage them. They want success so help them win.” Right there are a whole bunch of great insights about how you can be a better leader to your people. Yes, of course we should be trying to integrate all of them into our leadership on a daily basis, but even if we pick just one each day to work on, I know we’ll come out far ahead of many other people in leadership positions who are not sufficiently focused on being a leader to their people.

What have you learned about leadership lately?

The Secret to (Business) Success: Connection

This month I read a book by someone many in the business world have heard of, Joe Polish: “What’s In It for Them? 9 Genius Networking Principles to Get What You Want by Helping Others Get What They Want.” The book is centered on what Joe did that made him so successful, especially with the Genius Network, which is learning how to connect and form relationships with people. Throughout the book Joe shows what an art form this can be, and that as much work as it is, it’s totally worth it in the end if you want to grow the type of businesses that Joe has (or even be really successful in general). As I often say connecting with people is a choice, and more often than not it’s worth the effort to go from a one way conversation to whatever you can do to make it into a two way conversation. That’s where the book starts, and that connecting and relationships principle is woven through many of the other lessons in the book.

I know ‘selling’ can be considered a dirty word, it can be confusing, and it can be hard, but I really like the explanation that Joe shares from Dan Sullivan as to what selling is: “Selling is getting someone intellectually engaged in a future result that’s good for them and getting them to emotionally commit to taking action to achieve that result.” Yes, that sounds like just as much work as many of us consider selling to be, but there are a couple of points there that really stood out to me. First is the fact that clearly Dan (and Joe) emphasize the fact that you’re always dealing with other humans and not computers and therefore they have brains and feelings and lives outside of a cut-and-dry transaction. Second, it highlights the whole reason why you want to get the buyer more involved in the sales process rather than going for a super quick, no-layers-to-it sales process: because the more invested they are, the more likely they are to stick through to the end result. Finally, this explanation includes a reminder to the seller that we need to have something good at the end of the sales process if we really want people to stick it through. Sell a quality product or service with great marketing, a great experience, great packaging and great customer service because, as we started: buyers are human and humans care.

One of the things I really enjoyed learning in this book is how similar Joe and I are about several aspects of doing business. First, as I shared above that we’re dealing with other humans who have lives and interests and cares. Second, that it’s far better to be in it for the long haul and build a relationship than to try to make the sale(s) on product/service alone. And finally, even good products/services need good marketing. You can’t skip the marketing just because your product/service is so good and you can’t expect one to make up for a poor job on the other.

Joe closed the book with an important reminder which brought the book full circle and really summed up the intricacies of being a business leader and running a business: “People want to connect. People want to feel special and cared about. People want to feel appreciated. People want to have their problems solved.” Joe has been in the business world for many years, and the core of much of what he does is about networking which is incredibly labor intensive, so he gets exactly how complicated and challenging it can be when you run your business that way. But when you know what people want, why would you do your best to avoid that? I’m not saying we all have to become extroverts and people persons, but we do need to be more aware of the power of relationships and communication and connection and do our best to integrate that into our business as much and as consistently as possible.

What ways are you most comfortable and successful in connecting with people?

Ideas to Build a Bigger, Better, Brighter Business

This month to end the year I read Loonshots by Safi Bahcall. The premise of the book is summed up in the subheading: how to nurture the crazy ideas that win wars, cure diseases and transform industries. It definitely wasn’t my favorite book of the year nor did I get pages and pages of notes from reading it, but it was a good reminder that many of the issues that we business owners face are faced by groups in many other industries even if they don’t see the issues the same way that we do.

One of the things this book explored in detail is the often challenging relationships and interactions that different groups of a business or organization may have. I appreciated that Bahcall and the examples he used never pointed blame or shamed, but rather explained that sometimes groups don’t speak the same “language” and therefore struggle to understand how they can work together to make the company or organization better, or even how to coexist in the same organization, all the while refusing to accept that both teams are necessary to the success of the organization. Many business owners have experienced this because they have seen their sales team and their marketing team for example be at odds over things because one side isn’t able to communicate their side of things in a way that the other side can understand. This again emphasizes the importance of leadership, teamwork and communication within businesses, but is also a very important reminder that when we spend our time fighting within the organization we’re not putting that effort into growing into the world.

A second recurring discussion and theme throughout the book is the topic of failure. Sometimes a failure means that you shouldn’t be pursuing an idea or that it’s not a viable idea, but more often than not a failure is simply an indication that you’re missing a piece to the puzzle, it’s not the right time for success yet, or all the parts of the puzzle exist but aren’t coming together in the way that you need them to. Which means that more often than not a failure is really a “that didn’t work, try again” indicator. So know that success takes a lot of patience, you will see failures and every thing won’t work out on the first try, and then again, you also have to be willing to throw in the towel for a season if not a lifetime before the ideas you have are really proven out, as well as be willing to look for other ways that your ideas could be used or other breakthroughs they could help create because what you thought they might be good for doesn’t have to be the only thing they’re good for.

The last bit of advice I would share from the book is to remember that ideas are great, but unless they’re brought to life, they’re not going to change the world. You may not have big lofty goals of changing the world in your business, but maybe you’ve got an idea or two that will make your customers happier or make it easier for your team to accomplish their goals more successfully. Ideas are absolutely necessary because without them we’d never get to big successes like Walmart, Pan Am, Bell Atlantic or the many medical innovations we’ve put into practice over the last hundred years, but ideas only go so far. Maybe 2023 will be the year you put more feet and life into your ideas rather than just thinking of the good ones and doing nothing with them.

What (non-fiction) book did you appreciate reading the most this year?

Building Trust in Business

Do people trust your business? If you’re not sure a great indication is if you have repeat buyers, your suppliers reach out to you with offers, and/or you’re referenced by influencers, the news/media, and leaders of other companies. This month I read a book that talked about how the author believes trust is really core to success both in the present and long term for a business: Trust Signals by Scott Baradell. I think it’s important to read books or learn about very specific topics like this from time to time, and learn about how one aspect of your business can do so much for you and the impact it can have on your business both positive or negative.

The reason I ask if people trust your business is because of something Scott said towards the end of the book: “The best defense for your brand’s reputation is a good offense.” Every interaction you have with customers or potential customers should be approached as an essential and highly important opportunity to build trust with them. And why does that matter? Because the more trust you have with them the less likely a failure on your part will cause them to sever the relationship with you. It’s a lot easier to smooth over a little issue than it is to try and work your way out of a huge hole you dug for yourself, and the difference often has to do with the amount of trust that has been built up over the duration of your relationship.

Fortunately or unfortunately depending on how you look at it, building trust requires consistent, regular effort on your part. It’s a lot harder to build trust through one email or news broadcast each year (thinking of Black Friday/Giving Tuesday), and there’s a lot less riding on that one communication being absolutely perfect if you’ve made hundreds or thousands of smaller communications throughout the rest of the year to help you build up to that point. Which means that it does matter if you don’t have information about your team on your website, don’t update your blog, don’t send out daily/weekly/biweekly emails, don’t update your social accounts daily/weekly, don’t show up to community events, don’t participate in and communicate about partnerships and sponsorships, and whether or not you do all the other marketing and community building activities that many business owners put off because they don’t seem to be the most important parts of running their business.

Is trust an important aspect of your business, and if so how do you build it?

Add Some Magic to your Business

This month for our business book I read Rory Sutherland’s 2019 “Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business and Life.” The book made an impact on me because as intimidating (and impossible) as the title sounds it shared that we may be actually trying too hard when it comes to getting creative and cutting expenses from our businesses. We absolutely should let research, logic and data have an influence over our business decisions because they do matter and can help us make good decisions. But they shouldn’t be the only thing we consider when we think about improving our business, comparing ourselves to our competitors, and meeting the challenges and opportunities of the future.

One of the examples that Rory used a couple of times in the book is about public transportation, and specifically train rides. What would be the goals that most businesses would say they think they should work on when it comes to train transportation? Most people would say to make the train faster or cheaper to operate. But in the book Rory raises a couple of options that might not address those two goals directly yet can have a positive impact on not only the train ride but perception of train rides too. First, he suggests that instead of making it faster at a huge cost, you work to make it more enjoyable, which usually costs a lot less. Second, instead of trying to fix the biggest complaints in ways that please everyone, just fix them to help your most frequent users. Finally, what if instead of asking how to make the train go faster, you instead work to reduce the total time that people have to invest between leaving their home (or job) and getting to their destination? Talk about some creative approaches to innovating train transportation, and they’re a lot easier to work on, right?! They’re also not the things that many other (train) companies are working on, so it gives you a lot of opportunity to take over the market and really make a notable difference in the lives of your clients.

One of the other topics that Rory discussed was about where business began. He reminded that business used to be an opportunity for companies to bring their best to the table and let the market and customers decide which satisfies their needs best, rather than trying to hash it out between the companies. He also brought up that reducing the number of options, uses or applications because when you get specific it’s really easy for people to know what the purpose is for the product/service you’ve created.

Finally, Rory included many thoughts on marketing, but two stuck out to me. Marketing can be the tool that helps you illustrate the meaning of something and explain why you are charging what you’re charging for it. For example donuts are usually around the same price regardless of what shop you buy them from. But when you get them from a shop that is run by a baker who just retired from working at the royal bakery, or the donuts are often donated to charity events like 5K’s, people are willing to pay more for them, even though the cost of producing them is technically the same as for other bakeries. But you won’t know about that difference and why they’re charging more unless they tell that story that in their marketing. Second, marketing can be used as a tool to do the opposite: reassure customers why a price is so low. When you see a $2 shirt online that comes with free shipping at a $10 minimum, what do you think? It’s a scam and probably really poor quality, right? But with the right (truthful!) marketing story you can explain exactly how you’re able to pass those great prices on to your customers and that it really is a great deal and not a scam.

Rather than trying to do something “better” than your competitors, why don’t you try doing something different that hasn’t been tried or isn’t the most obvious choice? It might add that magic that you’ve been looking for to your business.

Pandemic: Strength Builder or Bedtime Story?

This month I read a book on everyone’s favorite topic: the pandemic. Stronger Through Adversity by Joseph A. Michelli tapped into the lessons that over 140 leaders around the US and world learned and applied during the pandemic. Some of these leaders were new to the business they were leading when the pandemic started, some had been in leadership of a business for years before the pandemic started, some of the leaders work with new companies, and some of the leaders work with companies that have been around for decades. We’ll tap into the thing I found most interesting and the question we really have to answer about the pandemic second, and first I want to talk about a couple of the lessons the book shared.

Some of the key insights shared in the book were:
“Only the truth sounds like the truth.” (Michelli)
-“Transparency, honesty, kindness, good stewardship, even humor, work in business at all times.” John Gerzema
-The digital format that everyone switched to enabled leaders to “drop in” more consistently and easily to meetings and groups, not for the purpose of pushing or directing, but to be visible and to be available to help and assist in any way they could to make things easier for their/that team.
-Things like culture, mission, vision and purpose helped leaders and teams stay focused during the heart of the pandemic and helped motivate them and help keep them from burnout when things began to even out too.
-One of the greatest treasures of the pandemic was the proliferation of simple, honest, human connection.

So the interesting part about the book was how much of what was shared I felt I had already heard. Why is this interesting? Because it speaks to how willingly leaders were speaking out throughout the pandemic doing the best they could to be visible and vocal. So more than anything most of the book felt like a review of all that happened and how leaders led during the first year of the pandemic. In some ways I appreciated that there wasn’t anything really new because it meant that consistently, across the board, this is how leaders were leading and what we saw and heard then was exactly how it looks in review.

Which brings us to the issue and question, something that has been a concern I have and something many companies and employees have struggled with since everyone started trying to figure out what life would look as we navigate this stage of the pandemic and what comes next: is what happened during the pandemic just something we tuck into our playbooks for the next crisis and we pack it away until then, or will we use what we learned to improve the present as well as prepare for the future crises that will happen? If we think it’s just to be used for the next crisis, why is “everyone wins” OK only during a pandemic or similar crisis? Yes, I know that for some companies the pandemic has just moved things along several years and brought them to a point of progress they were working towards anyway, and they’re working to keep the progress and innovations that have been made during the pandemic as a permanent aspect of their company. But what about the rest of the companies and leaders who want to put everything about the pandemic on a shelf and return to life as it was before the pandemic? I think some will get away with it, but I keep coming back to the point of how successfully things did run and work for so many people. It wasn’t perfect, but I think that has to do with the implementation/preparation time (nothing) as much as anything else. I don’t think this is a chapter we write and call good, I think we should integrate as much as we can from what worked during the pandemic into our lives and businesses going forward.

What did you learn from the pandemic and are you applying those lessons to your business going forward, why or why not?

Big Business Wisdom for All Businesses

This month for our business book I decided to take a dive into learning about the company that everyone knows and has had some pretty dramatic and huge gains since their beginning: Amazon. As someone who is building a business/in business you have to have a level of respect for all that they’ve managed to accomplish and the fact that by and large they’ve got a good reputation. On the other hand of course they’re not my favorite company because of how they dominate business and do slide by on some things because they’re so big. But I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to learn about the foundation of what makes them so successful in “Working Backward: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon” by Colin Bryar and Bill Carr (both guys who worked at Amazon in leadership for many years).

One of the things that stood out to me in the book is what became Amazon’s commitment to doing a really deep dive on things they’re considering adding to their business. This commitment to investigation and putting out a product/service they can be proud of and is desired by the customer started with Jeff Bezos’ commitment to customers first, not competition. By having the various teams in Amazon go through an extensive process to get from idea to proof of concept to launch, not only do they work out many of the kinks, but they’re able to deliver a better product/service too. I know that most of us don’t have the financial resources available to us that Amazon does to do things like this, but I do think we can learn from it and apply the lesson of really doing our homework and researching before we just throw something out into the market and hope it sells.

This ties in with a related point that’s very important: failure isn’t the enemy. One of Amazon’s biggest commitments is to innovation and to never being “too big” to innovate and work on new things. But as we all know, they don’t get it right 100% of the time. Often it’s a case of something that has to be developed a little more, or is a little early for widespread adoption, but sometimes they do completely fail, in which case they accept the lessons they learned and move on. It doesn’t mean that people forgot that they failed, but what company is as big as them that doesn’t have a few failures along the way? So once you’ve done your research as we discussed in the previous point, go ahead and put it out there, even if it only has moderate or minimal success, or downright fails. Why? Because the lessons you’ll learn and new customers you’ll connect with might be exactly what you need to help get you to the next level.

Finally, one of Amazon’s big focuses is on the long term rather than the short term. Of course they want customers to be happy with the order they placed today, but they’re not just focused on the short term wins, they want to be a successful company for decades to come. This extends to their employees as well, because they have a focus on not only hiring (quality) people who will stay with the company for at least 5 years, but also continuing to answer and address the question of what kind of company do we have to be for an employee to want to stay with the company for 5 plus years? Do you make a point in your business of tending to and planning for both present and future? Or are you so busy putting out fires today that you don’t have any time or resources left to plan (and dream) for the future?

There are so many other lessons that we could learn from Amazon that weren’t shared in the book, lessons that apply to us even if we don’t have (and don’t want) a business the size of Amazon, but still can be helpful in building our business. What are some of the things you’ve learned from them?

Hook Your Customers

This month for our business book I read Hook Point by Brendan Kane. You may recognize his name because of some of the impressive results he’s gotten with social media (he’s known for generating 1milllion followers in less than 30 days), and over the years he’s worked on many marketing strategies that have been successfully used by celebrities, well known businesses and even movies. The whole premise of the book is found in the subtitle of it: how to stand out in a 3-second world. I know, 3 seconds isn’t long enough to really tell people what you’re all about. The good news for us businesses is that Brendan makes it clear that you don’t have to communicate your whole message in 3 seconds, but that first 3 seconds is the time you have to convince people either on or offline they want to read/learn more or stick around to hear the rest of your story. Let’s take a look at some other insights in the book.

One of the points in the book that stood out is the focus on the purpose of content. He emphasizes that it’s better to create quality content over quantity content. He also suggested that content creators focus on the goal of being able to satisfy the viewer as a way to understand if their content will resonate with their audience. What is satisfying content? It’s content that means the viewer will feel the time spent with it was worth the investment, the content was well paced and didn’t rush the point or take too long to get to the point, and finally the content was logically presented in an organized fashion that didn’t make the viewer have to figure out what was being said.

Second, successful businesses (and marketing campaigns) are built on relationships. What does this mean? It means that first and foremost you recognize that every person who sees your campaign or becomes a client is unique, which is why marketing campaigns have to change over time and no one campaign will resonate with everyone. One way of understanding this is to remember the concept that was shared in the early 1990’s and still resonates true today about the 5 love languages (Brendan’s book shared about a comparable communication personality types concept): what your love languages is isn’t necessarily the love language of your partner. And the same is true in marketing, which is why we’ve seen a huge focus (s0metimes with laughable results) on customized or personalized marketing. There are two important things to remember from this: first that what clicks with you won’t necessarily click with your audience, and second that the better you get to know your client or customer, the more successful you will be at convincing them what you’re selling is something that will benefit them or someone they know.

Finally, the reason that “hook points” work is because they focus on leveraging value instead of strictly selling a product or service. This ties in with the previous point because I think it’s hard to establish value for something if you don’t care about anything but the sale. And if you’re not establishing value, your potential customers will go to a company that is willing to communicate value. If you don’t care about the uniqueness, values, needs, life and concerns of your potential customer, you won’t make the effort to go over and above on understanding why they’re looking at your product/service in the first place and then being able to communicate back to them why your product/service is a good fit. And what we’ve seen over not just the past 3 years but the past decade is that the investment is almost the only way to really stand out in the market.

Do you have a hook point or other quick method of catching the attention of and communicating to people that you’re worth 3 seconds and more of their time? Because without having a quality presentation that’s engaging, well put together and invites them in immediately, you are likely to miss out on an opportunity to work with a client/customer that might be a good match.

The Business of Thought

This month for our business book I read Think Again by Adam Grant. It’s not a traditional business education book, but did have some insights that can help business owners overcome some of the issues that they face, just like anyone else faces when they are on a success journey. The premise of this book is that people don’t do enough thinking, or more correctly, they don’t rethink things. When you don’t take time to think or rethink you can easily get in a rut that isn’t the best, can miss out on opportunities to improve or upgrade, and most dangerously you can fall into the trap of brushing off things that are actually a lot more serious than you make them out to be. So let’s take a look at some other insights we can learn from the book.

One of the biggest dangers that many business owners face is how overwhelmed they can get and how long it takes them to deal with all the things that have to be dealt with and how much time and how many resources are wasted because of that delay. There’s no way to add more hours into the day, but I do think we can do a better job evaluating how serious issues are, better prioritizing them to get done, and doing a better job of getting things on our to-do list done.

Something we’ve talked about recently in other posts is the value of continuing to learn throughout our lives. There’s big value in applying this concept to our businesses as well, especially with regard to our culture. Business culture is one of those important (and somewhat trendy) topics that we talk about, but one that we don’t always know how to break it down into concepts or how to make what sounds and is so important a reality in our business. Which brings us to the idea this book shared, and that’s the opportunity in having a “learning culture.” Why does this work so well for at least a starting point for building a healthy culture? Because when everyone is open to learning, it makes it safe to ask questions, to question things, to re-think, to have concerns, to be wrong, and to make suggestions.

Finally, what’s the ultimate goal of re-thinking? It’s to be on a mission to always bring your best. The idea that you’re at your best on ‘day 1’ means that there’s no room for improvement in your life or business. And if we’re honest, none of us are “perfect” on day 1 let alone at any point in time in your life. There’s always room for improvement, especially if you want to bring or be your best. There’s no shame in being wrong, the only issue is if you don’t do anything about what’s wrong. One of the reasons we are in the pickle we’re in as a world is because we didn’t think that we could face a pandemic and nothing could ever happen that would impact our supply chains or production capacity or ability to move as freely around the world as we have for many decades. I think we’ve kicked ourselves enough over the past two plus years, and now it’s a time to think about how we can do better going forward for ourselves and our world.

Do you take time each week to make sure you’re not missing any important details and to rethink the “standards” to make sure you’re putting your best business foot forward? If not, maybe it’s time to learn more about your business and the untapped potential it probably has.

Business Success Present and Future

Then end of the month is almost here, and today’s post is the business book I read this month: “Winning Now, Winning Later” by David M. Cote. What really appealed to me about this book was the idea that even as hard as it is right now, it’s so important to consider both the present day and the future of your business when making decisions, and even better, that it’s possible to win both in the present and the future, you don’t have to pick one. Let’s take a look at some of the lessons Cote learned during his tenure at Honeywell.

One of the first lessons he learned was the importance of openness and honesty. While I wasn’t really surprised by the story, one of the first things he learned after he was hired as CEO was how poor the business was doing. It wasn’t something that was revealed to him before he accepted the job, and that initial shock pushed him to bring everything into the light about the business so that leadership was aware of what was going on and therefore could plan better for the future and keep it that way, even going so far as to give his successor the information Cote wished he had gotten so that the successor didn’t start off behind the proverbial eight ball.

Another important topic throughout the book is the idea of “intellectual laziness.” Basically it’s the rut that people get into of just doing things the way they’ve been done and not exploring the possibilities or asking the hard questions or asking different questions or pushing to see what else they could dig up or come up with. Cote worked really hard to banish intellectual laziness and encourage proactive and engaged thinking as much as possible from Honeywell during his tenure, and it made all the difference not only in the company’s success, but also in increasing the number of engaged employees they had.

Which ties in with the next lesson, and that’s the impact that a strong, positive culture can have on the workforce. Cote writes: “A strong culture [is] one in which people feel intrinsically motivated to do well, and in which they comply with the intent of policies and procedures, not merely with words but with actions…” How many times have you heard of the “rule book” that a company has that everyone knows is really guidelines and suggestions and no one reads let alone follows and ends up collecting dust rather than being a practical support for the company and employees? What if another benefit of having engaged employees and a culture that supports them is that the (good) rules you have as a company were followed in such a way that they helped the company grow rather than holding you back? It certainly makes the work of building a healthy culture more appealing.

Finally, towards the end of the book Cote talks about finding and hiring his successor, and the 3 things that he wanted to leave as a legacy. The first thing was that he wanted everyone involved with the company to make good money. The second was that he wanted to raise up and leave in place a lot of quality leaders who were committed to Honeywell. Finally, and the point I thought was most interesting and important, was that Cote wanted to set the company up in a position such that 10 years from his departure date he would still feel good about being part of the company and what he had invested in it. When we talk about legacy we usually talk about the actions we take and the impact they have while we’re at the company. But legacy is what happens after we leave too, and we should not just think about what we’re creating but how well it can succeed and continue to impact people into the future.

Are you setting your company and all connected people up for success for years to come, or are you just focused on the here and now? Are you creating wins both now and in the future for your company? What type of legacy will you leave through the work you do?