#413: Becoming an Influential Person

0:00What if the best thing you could do for your leadership is stop doing so much? Most leaders think growth means working harder, saying yes to everything, and staying in every detail. But real leadership capacity doesn't come from doing more. It comes from freedom. The freedom to think, to plan, to lead instead of react. When you free up your time and attention, you show up sharper in every room. You make better decisions. You lead with vision instead of survival mode. Belay's free resource, the Freedom Framework, shows you exactly how to create that space by delegating the right work to the right support. So you can lead at your full potential. Text exec to 55123. That's EXEC to 55123 to grab your free copy or learn more about belay's personally matched assistance today. Welcome to the Maxwell Leadership Executive Podcast. We're our goal to help you increase your

1:15reputation as a leader, increase your ability to influence others, and increase your ability to fully engage your team to deliver remarkable results. Hi, I'm Perry Holley, a Maxwell Leadership Facilitator and coach. I'm Chris Cody, Executive Vice President with Maxwell Leadership. Welcome and thank you for joining. We just want to encourage you to go to Maxwell Leadership.com slash executive podcast there. There's a form if your team is looking for some leadership training or coaching. We would love to help you with that. Maybe you just want to download the learner guide for today's session. We want to encourage you to do that. Use that as a resource and one of the things that we love hearing when Perry and I are on the road or around where me and the people is like, man, I love taking the lesson, giving it to my team. They fill out the notes and then we come and spend the first 10 or 15 minutes really just talking about it and how applicable it is in our organization. So we want to encourage you to do that. Well, today's topic is becoming an influential person. Now I did not say becoming an influencer. I thought

2:21this is where Perry wanted to go. He's getting to a place and he's like, you know what? I need to start increasing my influence on social media. I'm a ticker-talking a while. So I'm going to come up. Yes, I don't even know if that and nor would I ever see you on there because I don't have them. But one of the things that we've built this entire podcast on and it is something that we have seen change organizations and change leaders and it's why we do what we do is the five levels of leadership. And it's really an influence model that both can be lived out individually personally but also organizationally. We've operationalized the model for organizations to adapt as their culture, as their leadership language inside the organization. So just really quick for those that maybe are new to joining us to know the the content behind where we're coming from. The five levels is at level one you gain influence with people because of a title, a position that you have could be mom, dad, grandma, it could be manager, whatever the title is volunteer leader.

3:23And we all get those titles. Congratulations. This is great news. Right. Somebody saw something in you. You just made the lowest level of leadership, but you're there. But you're there. Yeah. We don't want you staying there. But you five follow you because I have to. You have to. And you're the boss. One of the things that it breaks our heart is that we see around the world probably 70% of leaders lead straight from here. Let alone. And so that's level one. Level two is a people follow you because they want to. This is where you're connecting with them. You're building relationships with them. You're learning about how to connect and to lead them. Level three is then you progress to where hey, now you're gaining level three influence because you are producing for the organization not only individually, but we also like to talk about in and through your team, whether it's your part of a team member or your lead in a team. Then there's level four influence, which is the people development level. This is where your influence is increasing because of the value and the developing and the reproducing of your

4:28leadership skills that you're giving and imparting on to the other individual. And then finally, the last one is also given to you. And that is level five. That is the what we call the pinnacle level. This is where you've led people for so well for so long that you have level five influence. And people give that to you. That man, listen, they will go anywhere with you to do anything because you have that type of influence with them. Yeah, fantastic. This has been life changing for so many leaders that personally have from me personally. And then for those I've gotten to work with to really make that I call it the greatest leap in all of leadership where people stop following you because they have to. You're the boss. And then they suddenly all of a sudden want to follow you because they want to because of something you did. I'd love about that level two is called permission. I never understood that position at level one. Yeah, I get that. You have a position permission. All the power changes to the follower. They have to give you permission to influence them. So I want to become this influential person because it's going to help me with the team that

5:28I have to to achieve the results that we need. People are going to have to choose to be with you rowing in your boat as we say. Not watching the scenery go by. This lesson was was very much influenced by the writing of Dr. Travis Bradbury. Many of you know him from his books on emotional intelligence one dot oh and two dot oh as well as others. I've really enjoyed that. His core point is really that influential people. What you're seeing if you find somebody as influential in your life is an outward thing you're seeing. They're they're they're confidence of the impact they have in your life. But it's all built on the internal work that they've done to build a set of habits around emotional intelligence and how they show up to other people. And this whole game of leadership is around people. If the people and John said this years ago and I totally come to believe it and see it all the time now is that you're not going to be successful in whatever you do. That's right. Less a lot of people want you to be. Yeah. How do I get them to want to be? So I thought in a few

6:30minutes we have today let's just talk about these habits. But I kind of grouped them into three components about how do influential people think? How do influential influential people treat other people? And then finally how do they handle pressure? Oh that's going to be a good one. But I wonder about just to start with the thinking. What are your thoughts? How do if you think about someone that's very influential in your life and how you've tried to build influence and yours to be influential? What do we think? Yeah. A couple of things that I see in those individuals is that they're focused on, they know and they're focused on the principles of things, not just preferences. That again, that's what's influential to me in thinking about this where they base their decisions, their communication, they have a decision making filter and it's based off of principles. Two other things for me is long-term thinking. I think that people that are influential with me

7:34are thinking out in front of me. I'm intrigued and they're thinking about things even maybe for me that I haven't even thought about. That is allowing them to become more influential. Not only thinking long-term but the final thing I was thinking about was they're thinking at a different level, meaning maybe different altitude, whatever we're talking about there. I'm like, how do I start thinking like that? That sounds easy. What you said is very logical and very easy. But maybe someone listening, I'm going to throw myself in there. I can be tempted to follow the thinking in the room or I'm following the group. What you're describing, and that's only this way it is an influential person, is you're coming above what the group thinks. Is that just me that has trouble with that? No, it's not. It's not. But I think that's where, and I do the same thing at times. One of the things that we do throughout Maxwell leadership when we work with organizations is we do one of the assessments. We do get into the right path four and six and we get down

8:39into the 16 subfactors and really identifies kind of what happens in a room. I'm in the middle on some of them, which in that means I can either lead in a certain situation or I can go with the group. I know when I don't have confidence in a certain area, I will be swayed by the group. That's why I was thinking about this even before we recorded today. For me, it's really those that they have their principles and they are not moving from that. The room may go one way and they'll be like, it's okay, this is my principle. I'm just going to instead of folding to the room and it was a little bit convicting to me as I thought about that because there are certain areas I need to make sure that I'm developing those principles and those areas. That kind of leads Dr. Bradbury mentioned that the influential people can be disruptive. The way you just said it was not in a negative way disruptive, but they kind of have their own, they've thought about it. They have a point of view. They don't mind disrupting the room a bit to share a different thought. Yeah, isn't there a

9:41difference when you think about some influential people that are, I love you talking about disruptive versus being distracting, right? There are some people that come in and they want to disrupt things, but they're just doing it for distraction. But I think those that are influential that disrupt things, I think they challenge things that are happening not the people that are doing those things. They're challenging status quo. They're, hey, why do we do that? We've always done that. Okay, well, let's not keep doing that. They're willing to disrupt things and maybe even question in the right way respectfully what other people are thinking. Maybe we're in that room. Let's go back to that scenario really quick. They're like, tell me more about why you're thinking like that. I have a point of view, but tell me more about that. They do it in a way. They do it in a way that does not jeopardize their connection at level two with people.

10:44I love that. I think they're not disrupting, are pushing back, can make a point, but they're genuinely trying to improve the outcome, improve the raise the level in the room a bit. I love that you said about what your point of view is that I realize other people have a point of view. I'm open to it, but I also have a point of view. It's okay to be disruptive in a positive way about that. Does this come about, I think, about the practical skill here of asking good questions, is it curiosity or is it just that respect that other perspectives may be in the room and I'm going to be respectful of those perspectives so that we have a curious discussion about those. I'm asking good questions. I would say that I think people that are disruptive and are influential because now I'm thinking about there are disruptive people that are not have no influence. Maybe those are the distracting people we talked about a minute ago. 100% they are curious and they are making sure, listen, as a person of influence,

11:48we've said this, people want to be seen, died and heard. We've got to close the intent versus the impact gap and the only way to do that, if you're going to be disruptive, is to make sure that you're asking questions, you're getting people just want to have their opinion and voice heard. They don't necessarily want to move in that direction with you, but if you come in and just distract and run over them, versus just being disruptive, it's a completely different influence and you're going to not be as influential as you want to be. What would change in your organization if every leader at every level took ownership of culture, communication and results? Not just the executives, not just the high performers, but everyone. That's what we build at Maxwell Leadership. We don't just train leaders. We build leadership systems that scale across teams, departments and organizations from developing mid-level leaders to strengthening executive alignment. Our programs help you create a culture where people

12:53lead well wherever they sit. See how leadership can become your competitive advantage by getting started with a free tool. The five levels of Leadership Field Guide is based on John C. Maxwell's number one New York Times bestseller and includes team mapping strategies, leadership self-assessments, and a clear model for turning followers into leaders. Download it for free at fivelevelsofleadership.com. The something you said earlier about seeing the big picture, you kind of looked up into the lights. I think they think bigger picture, but Dr. Brebbury said that they influential people are productive. He meant by that they don't wait for new areas or new ideas to just pop up on their desk. They kind of go looking for that. They intentionally scan what's coming next. I never really

13:58thought about that leading to having influences. You hit it in a minute ago that you're kind of looking out for just a moment. How did Perry know that? I remember having a conversation with Perry three months ago and now it's here. That's that influential part of you as a leader where you're able to that's thinking a little bit a long term and then being able to innovate, be able to think, be able to prepare and you're like, man, I get it. Here she is super influential. I remember in a conversation we had last week where I was sharing what I'm learning in AI and you said, what is the old guy doing with AI? 100%. That's right. You're learning at a pace faster than I am. And you got to be doing that every day in the AI world, right? And I'm like, say, what can we talk about that a little bit further? Can I reschedule another call? So let's shift as we're moving quickly through this because these each one of these sections, by the way, Perry and I could unpack for a couple of hours and they all tie back to the five levels. But the second one he talked about

15:01was influential people treat others and treat other people. What did you notice in your career as a leader about how highly influential people are communicating when it comes to this? Well, they're very people oriented and others oriented. Maybe I should say is that influential people, you're not going to have a lot of influence with anyone if you're focused on you. I'll never forget the day I understood for real what Dale Carnegie was talking about when he said, be more interested than trying to be interesting. And I just think that most influential people have a real knack for putting others first and being that using that curiosity fact, or realizing that you have a perspective and I'm not just going to run over you because I have a my I think mine is right and yours is wrong. I'm actually, you know, I'm interested in to do that. So I think they communicate in a way that doesn't shut down conversation. They respect,

16:05even if they have a disagreeing disagreement with you, they respect the connection. I John taught me this. It was I write it the word connection, align and content on the bottom is connection over content connection over content that no matter what I have to say in my communication, I always say it in a way that would respect our connection and maintain that level two connection. I can't just say what I'm by the way guys this this works at home amazingly. That's right. Just because you're think you're right and want to win. If you are right, and win, you're going to lose. So I protect the connection at all costs no matter what the content of my messages. Yeah, I love that. Maybe also think about make sure you're not always just making statements to your team to your people to your peers, right? Like as you're communicating and you're and you're thinking about how you treat other people, you the how many of us have been in a meeting, we walked them up like, here's what we're doing and that's why we should do this and they walk out versus like here's

17:07what we're doing. Here's the context why like what am I missing? What do we need? What would need to be true for this to actually work for us? So thinking about ending your your sentences and during communication with questions versus statements will allow the other person to speak and they love to hear their own voice just like you love to hear your own voice. And so you could it's right. I promise you this you could ask two questions and be in a 30 minute conversation let the other person talk and they would walk out and they'd be like man, Perry really cares about the master communicate master and Perry all Perry day was asked two questions. So just be thinking about that. Do you think it's just no one I'd made about abundance. I think influential people have an abundance mindset versus scarce. This is probably one of the biggest attributes in John Maxwell versus leaders that I have seen around the world. What do I mean by that? That Joker and yes, I just said Joker on

18:11vessel. I mean, he cares more. He cares more about adding value to other people. No matter what the situation is, doesn't mind sharing ideas and thoughts and serving and and so there are so many people that we have run alongside in my journey that I've been working with John that I just see there in a much better place starting with me because of the opportunities that he's given me that he could have given somewhere else or he could have taken them himself or the things that he has taught me. And so one of the things is it's hard for us because we'd actually want to have a scarcity mindset and we want to protect the things that we have because we think well that's our ticket. Yes, right. And and it's like no like and I it goes all the way back to even when I was 23 and started working. I remember he's like work yourself out of a job. I'll find another job. I was like no like I just got married and I have a family and so I was like he

19:17goes you need to do it. And I didn't know what he's talking about right then, right? But now multiple times over I understand what he was talking about. And so 100%. People are super influential with me when they have that type of mindset versus trying to keep everything close to the chest and hide it. Right. Right. Let's go to number three before we wrap up. But how do influential people handle pressure? I wonder what your experience is. Do you can you tell? Usually I say pressure doesn't reveal your influence. It doesn't create your influence. It reveals your influence. What do you think? Okay. So when you think about pressure, there's a couple of things that that come to mind is there are situations in this leaders that we run across that there I would say organizational pressure, their group pressure, but then there's also individual pressure. And for me, I think that the ability to be consistent and no matter the storm that's going on around you,

20:18organizationally or individually, I think the people that can handle that with humility, they can handle with consistency, win or lose, by the way, because I want a leader and I want somebody that I look up to that has a lot of influence that man, we miss the mark. But my leadership and my all the things we talk about with influence are consistent through that just as if we had the greatest year ever as an organization. And so there are pressure situations that I see leaders that just completely lose it. And some of them lose it on your coaching calls before they even get with the people and you coach them not to and then they still lose it. Well, it's a reminder that calm is contagious. That's perfect. Yeah. Yeah. The people are watching you and if they if you're out of control, they're going to be out of control. If you're going to lose it, they're going to lose it. And the whole idea every time I'm in London, I take a picture of this

21:20on the on the tube, on the subway platforms, it's etched in the concrete and yellow. It says, mind the gap. I took this picture and I put it over my desk for years to say, mind the gap between the stimulus, whatever, something happened and your response and that gap, the longer that gap, the bigger that pause, the better my response. And so to your point, that consistency of influence, you're not going to influence anyone if you react quickly and it's bad, negative or highly emotionally charged, the slower your response, the more selective your response, the more calm your response, the more people are going to be engaged with you and with your influence on that. Yeah. Let me jump in. Yeah. Yeah. I don't want thing you mentioned to me. I just want to hit on this for I wrap up about the book that you read and the contents out of here that were influential people expected good outcomes, both for themselves and for people around them. Can you can you unpack that a little bit for our audience? Like, is it a mindset thing? Is it a

22:22communication thing? Well, in the book itself, what was the what was the skill set tied to that? That can help our listeners. Well, most people that are have influence are trying to accomplish goals and their own path and everything, but they also believe that for others. I'd be like, you having your goals for what you're trying to do in the business, but you also believe in the goals for me, you're trying to see me achieve my outcomes. You're trying to help me to be on the stages, to be with the people, to have the impact that I'm trying to have at this stage in my career. And that you totally believe that what is possible in the organization is also possible for me. And I think by you extending that graciousness to other people really builds influence with others. I like that. That says, I not only believe in what we're doing, I believe in you and what you're doing. And so we don't let a lot of petty disagreements or, you know, different points of view things get in the way because you have as much belief in in my progress as you do in the organization. And when you think about the people in your life that believe in you and feel that

23:27they have a lot of influence with you, you'll, you'll, I got to take this call is from that person because they have a lot of influence with me. I love that. Well, let me wrap us up today with a couple of thoughts and maybe an action item for you as we're closing up. What I want you to hear I say today that is that this is a, this is a method. This is a methodology. This is a process that ties back to the five levels of leadership. And the influence is borrowed. Your influence is borrowed from the people that you're influencing one conversation at a time. But it's also lost that way as well. And Perry and I, when we facilitate, we talk a lot about five levels that it, it takes a little while to become influential. But man, you can lose it, right? In a hurry. And so know that every conversation that that people are evaluating you and thinking about that. One of the action items is back to this abundance mindset because this was really hard for me

24:28is maybe this week take the time to make one introduction to make one connection between you and another business opportunity with no strings at that. Remember, the difference between influence and manipulation is a very fine line. And it's the motive behind why you're doing what you're doing. And I would say this, anybody that going back to this title that has influential in my life or is influential in my life, I have no doubt that their motive is pure. So let's, let's start with that foundation. We didn't even talk about it. Let's make sure that, that that is part of your foundation. The other thing I want to close with is this is a 21 laws principle that John has taught for a long time. It's law of process. And it just goes back to us thinking about what I was talking about. The conversation just minute ago is that man, this is something that happens on a daily basis. And so people that are influential with you, they show up consistent on a daily basis. You want to become more influential with people.

25:31It's a process. It's not going to happen overnight. And it's going to take a little bit of time, but you got to be consistent with it. Love that. My favorite word. Well, thanks, Chris. And thank you all for joining. If you want to know more about this episode or get the learner guide for this episode, you can do that at maxwelledership.com slash executive podcast. You can also learn about our offerings there. You can also leave us a comment or a question. We love hearing from you. So grateful you spend this time with us. That's all today in the Maxial Leadership Executive Podcast.