Mark Cole:       Hey, podcast listeners. Mark Cole here. I'm the CEO of Maxwell Leadership, and I would like to welcome you to the Maxwell Leadership Podcast. This is the podcast that adds value to leaders who multiply value to others. Did you know that one of the greatest assets to mine and your leadership is the people we lead? Did you also know that one of the most frustrating aspects of mine and your leadership is the people we lead?

See, today, we're going to talk about how to lead difficult personalities successfully. Anyone who's led a difficult person, you know how frustrating, how draining that can be to us. You also know that leading them successfully is easier said than done.

So when John Maxwell is done with this lesson today, I'll be back with one of my most difficult... I'm just kidding. I'll be back with my co-host, Chris Goede, to offer some application that we've learned throughout our own leadership experiences. That way, you and I can apply these principles today to our leadership. We can add value to our life and to the life of those difficult leaders around us.

Every week we provide a bonus resource, which is a fill-in-the-blank worksheet that accompanies John's lesson. If you'd like to access that PDF, please visit maxwellpodcast.com/personality, and click the bonus resource button. Hey, if you're listening to the podcast today, you may not know this, but we now have the video version of the Maxwell Podcast. In fact, you can go to maxwellpodcast.com/youtube, and you can listen and watch as we try to break down what John is saying and apply it to your life. But whether you're listening, whether you're viewing, we're glad you have joined us. Now here is John Maxwell.

John Maxwell:  Today I would like to talk to you on the subject: How to Lead Difficult Personalities. So let's get in our lesson. You've seen your notes. 90% of the art of living consists of getting along with people you cannot understand. Gang, underline the word understand. Because what we're going to find out in dealing with difficult personalities today, what we're going to really find out is the reason they're difficult is we don't understand them. It's not even an issue many times of right and wrong, it's an issue of understanding. In fact, I wish I could go back and have another crack at some of them, because I want to tell you something. A lot of them that I failed in leading, I didn't fail in leading because they were unleadable. Is there such a word as unleadable?

I guess there is. Not only because they were unleadable, but because I didn't know how to lead them correctly. Is that fair? Let's go.

Let's fill in the first blank. Leadership is influence. Always has been, always will be. But it's very important for us to understand that in the setting of this lesson. Leaders influence others by knowing their... Here we go. I call this the Big Five. By knowing their personality. In other words, ask the question, "Who are they?" Their temperament: what is their style? Their heart: what do they love? Relationships: is there a bond? And dreams: what do they want? Now, I promise you, I just gave you the key that will literally unlock the door to a difficult personality if you and I will take every difficult personality through the grid that I just gave you. I call it the Big Five.

So to lead difficult people successfully, number one, I must know them. You see, the leader is the quarterback of the team. Now, what does the quarterback do? Two things. One, calls the plays: direction. In other words, the quarterback gets the guys in a huddle and says, "Guys, we're going to run this play." He makes the plan for the direction. Number two, the second thing quarterback does is gets the ball to the right player. That's delegation. Now, when you think about this whole process, that's exactly what we're talking about difficult personalities. You've got to give direction to these people, and you've got to be able to know which ones to hand the ball off to, and I'm going to talk to that in a moment. Notice in your notes, these two functions can only be done effectively if the quarterback, which the leader, knows two things: the situation and the players.

Now, think with me for a moment. This is a powerful thought. Listen to me, leaders. You're the quarterback. You're calling the play, you're going to give direction. You're going to delegate, you're going to hand it off to somebody. You're going to throw a pass down. Here's what you have to understand. You've got to understand the people around you. You've got to understand who that powerful runner is if you need a yard that you hand the ball off to. And I want to tell you something. If you need 17 yards because you've had a penalty and you've got to get 17 yards in one down, you don't give it to that wonderful, powerful fullback, you get one of those white-outs out there and you run a play. In other words, you've got to know what the situation is to call the right play, but you also have to know the strengths of your players.

And the number one failing in dealing with difficult personalities is that we see the difficulty of their personality so strongly that we do not take time to go underneath of that difficulty to understand them so we know how to handle them correctly. In your notes, when we cannot effectively evaluate situations and people, we will continually lose.

I spent three days with 30 other guys with Peter Drucker about five years ago. And he compared, as he sat there doing some mentoring with us for those three days, he compared a leader to an orchestra conductor. And he talked about the fact that the orchestra conductor, as he leads, understands timing, understands the significance of utilizing different parts at different times. And that bass drum or that symbol or that tuba may come in just a few times, but there are places for them. And that leader conducts that orchestra and he understands you only pull certain people out at certain times for certain functions, but if you do it correctly, it makes the piece beautiful. But if you do it incorrectly, you have havoc and terrible sound. That's exactly the way it is.

I can think back when I was pastoring at Skyline, because I had to develop people constantly. I had my board around me and I had 16 players on my board. Can I tell you something? I knew them all. I mean, when I say I knew them all, I knew those guys better than they knew themselves. In fact, if the two of us would've taken a test, I would've scored higher on them than they would've scored on themselves. And you know why? That's my job.

And so therefore, when my vice chairman, Bob Taylor, if there was something I wanted to see creative happen in the church, I always let him lead off. Remember, when you ever get a group of people together, you always let the person lead off that has that strength. That gets you started on a positive note, and that also helps you to make progress. And so when I wanted something creative, I always handed to Bob Taylor, because Bob Taylor is the maker of Taylor Guitars; he owns the company. And Bob Taylor loves creativity and he loves something that's different. And in fact, his goal in life... You know, Bob Taylor's goal in life is to make a different acoustical sound by guitar that's never been made in the history of music. And he is the top guitar maker in the world today. But he likes something creative.

And if I wanted to get to a bottom line quick, the media wasn't going quickly. I'd say, "Gary, tell me what you think." Gary Barlow would go bottom line so quick. He left everyone else. Just absolutely in lurch. He'd get, he, he knew how to cut through the fact. And if I wanted, if I wanted to have something processed, I'd hand it off to Jim Fletcher because Jim Fletcher could process all day. He could process all week. He could process all month. He could process till Jesus got, he was a processor and he was a major processor. And if I wanted, if I wanted somebody to do encouragement to the, to the rest of the guys, I would call on Dick Bower, find a dentist. And if I wanted somebody to ask questions, I'd ask Bob Whitelaw because Bob Whitelaw was born to ask questions.

When Bob Whitelaw came out, his mother's womb, he asked why, you understand? Now, all I'm saying is, all I'm saying is until you know your players this well, and go back to the big five, the big five I've already given to you. Personality, temperament, heart relationship dreams. When you could, when you go back to the big five and know those personalities, well, it becomes amazing how well you can lead them. So to lead difficult people successfully, I must one know them. And number two, I must develop a game plan just as that quarterback calls the plays and then gives the ball off. I must develop a game plan. Now, here is the game plan. Are you ready? Lead according to their dream, coach according to their weakness, mentor according to their potential, delegate according to their strengths, and relate according to their personalities and their temperaments.

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Mark Cole:       Chris, welcome back, but I told you, I want to go apply this lesson. I don't want to talk about it. It's a mic drop moment for me, especially where I am in my leadership now. And so I'm looking forward to debriefing and kind of applying this. We'll apply it to our life. And if everybody's watching or listening, they can pay attention to why we apply it to our life. You know, there's a real good quote. I don't know who to attribute it to, but I love this quote. It says, “When you need help in life, pay attention to who makes it happen and who makes excuses.” And I love that because a lot of times we look at difficult people as people that are making excuses or not effective, yet really difficult people is not what John's talking about that makes excuses. He's talking about the people that we need to learn more about. I love debriefing this with you today.

Chris Goede:     Well, we talked about before we got started about this could be a couple of hours. Like not only do we need to apply it. There's just a lot of meat here. And I love how John just vulnerably starts out and says, man, if I, as I look back over my leadership career, I just didn't know how to lead them correctly. Yeah, we have them in our lives. Right. We have those difficult people. Now, if you're listening to us or you're watching us on YouTube, which mark, thanks for inviting me back now that we're on YouTube. I was concerned once we went to YouTube, I wouldn't be invited back. But one of the things I love about this is we all have them on our life. If you're sitting here saying I don't have any difficult people, you may be that person.

Yeah. And by the way, what I love about this too, is that other people look at you as difficult, by the way. So it's not us just looking at other people. And I think this is just a great lesson for us to unpack a couple things I thought of as we get started, what I want to do is I want to talk to you really in two different areas on this, how do you practically apply this as a leader in a one-on-one setting? What does that look like for you? And then I want to talk about how you handle it as you lead a team of difficult personalities, as you talked about in the intro. One of those is me and we have many others. And by the way, you should have that. You should have that type of tension in your team.

And you call that out on us. You say, Hey, we need to hear from different personalities and well, how would you do this? And there should be that tension. And so we're going to dive in and we're going to talk about that. I thought about John's leadership book in the first chapter, he talks about going from a soloist to a conductor. Tons of great quotes in there. One of them makes me think about Steven Covey's, where you first you have to seek to understand before being understood. Just this is in our wheelhouse of so much content for us to talk about. And the other thing I want to just mention before we get into this is when people are alike, when you have similar traits and as John goes through and talks about when you understand them and know them, you're like, man, we are, we are separated at birth I know them,

At times, there'll be a little bit of tension, but what we got to be careful about is when we're completely opposite of them, that's where we identify them as difficult. And what ends up happening is we disconnect from them, right? We're like, we just can't deal with them, whatever, and you're missing how they were created and they're people. So with that as context, I've seen you lead many different personalities and do an incredible job at that. Some of them are difficult. Talk a little bit about like, when you are challenged with that opportunity to lead an individual that is maybe opposite than you or some of your other team members can be difficult in the way they think, and the way they lead the pace at which they play. Where do you go with that? How do you, how do you approach that in a one-on-one leadership setting?

Mark Cole:       Chris, I'm going to take a couple of minutes here if you don't mind to respond because something you said really made me reflect on something I've learned in the last couple of weeks with my wife, Stephanie, and don't send her the link. Just keep it right here. Yeah. But, but first let me, let me say this in specific to your, your question on how I have done this over the years, I'm a relational leader. So one of the things that John really has worked with me on, and I've shared it with our podcast listeners for a long time was, you know, I want to please people. And at times in my life, I've wanted to please them more than lead them. And I, if you haven't heard that go back to all of our podcast lessons, cause I've referred to it a lot. But in that really, I just wanted to win with people. I didn't want to win the day. I didn't want to win the argument. I didn't want to win necessarily my way. And my will now come back to something. I learned about myself with Stephanie.

I'm going to go back to that in just a moment, but I really wanted to win the day with people so that I would have an ability to influence them tomorrow. So a lot of my working with difficult people that you just complimented me on comes very natural. Yeah. In my desire, my relational bent toward connecting with people to have another day of opportunity with them. So difficult, not difficult. I want to win the day with them because tomorrow we've got another opportunity. And I just think like that. Yeah. Well, what happens is sometimes I miss the moment of really helping a leader that can come to a better revelation of themself in the difficult moment, because I'm too busy trying to patch it to get to tomorrow. And so as complimentary as you have been through the years, and this is not the first time I've heard you say, I'm one of the best at difficult one on one conversations.

I don't feel, I don't give myself that same report card. John's been very complimentary on to me on that. But what I will tell you, I've learned since John taught me, do you want to lead or love more? Which one figure it out because there's going to be days you're going to have to figure out, do you want to be a leader or do you want to be loved? When I began to apply that into dealing with difficult leaders, I began to do some of the things that John talks about in our lesson. Know their personality, know their temperament, know their heart, know their relational, bent, know their dreams. And I began to pay attention to that. And then I would walk into a meeting trying to move them toward their desired outcomes toward their bent, and then begin to take the opportunity to even have the difficult conversation right there on the spot rather than prepping them, prepping them, prepping them. Okay. Now let's have the difficult conversation. It caused me to be faster as a relational leader.

So one example that I can think of is a very strong leader, very difficult leader, a leader that, to be honest with you many years ago, was not necessarily liked by everybody in the organization, a pretty difficult leader. Well, I had an infrastructure, a silo organization that would allow them to lead pretty much insulated. So every once in a while they'd come and ruffled a few feathers, but pretty much insulated. But what I understood is that leader respected strong leadership. John never had a problem with that leader. Other people may not have had a problem with that leader, but when I would come in with my relational, how you doing? What's going on? Let's hug it out. I would leave. And no change was happening because that leader respected strong leadership.

And I'll never forget a very particularly difficult time in our leadership relationship to where I dropped three or four things that were, I was doing at the time, very important things. And I came back and I laid it on the line. And I said, let me tell you this, you keep going that direction. And this is the last day. You'll go that direction. So figure out another direction because we're not doing that. And I'll never forget when that leader that typically I didn't have many conversations like that. With that leader, that leader looked at me and went, this is the best meeting we've ever had. Let's go this way over here. And if you're watching by YouTube, which all of you should, some I'm pointing the other direction because, because this leader really appreciated strong leadership. And I'll never forget the moment, Chris, to where I realized that I actually had gained respect and relational equity by doing something that if I'd had done to 90% of my other leaders, they would have lost it, felt like I was dishonoring them, demeaning them, devaluing them. And it's because that leader needed that we to illustrate underlying the point, every leader needs to be understood. That's right by their leader on how to be effective with them. Now, let me, so I told you I was going to be a little candid here.

I'm working on this. So everybody in podcast lamb, when you come up and say, thank you, and you're listening to the podcast, mark. Thank you. Here's almost Chris. What I hear all the time. Thank you for your authenticity. What they're really saying is thank you for opening up the closet and letting all your junk fall out. And this is going to be one of those moments. And I'm not sure where to go on this, except I'm going to take one step in front of the other. I asked my wife Stephanie, a couple weeks ago. I said, do you think I love conflict.

And it was that quiet right here. And, and I would ask you that right here on the podcast. But I don't, because I think most people in our organization think that I like conflict. I'm a contrarian. I like to, I like to come at it. And she said, no, I don't think you like it. And she said, I think you hate it. And of course she was applying it to our relationship. And when we get into moments of conversation, speaking of leading difficult people, she's trying to lead me a difficult person. And she said, no, I don't think you do. She said, I think you like control, not conflict. Now, dude, that rocked me because I think the reason I come hard and conflict with people sometimes because I do love a good argument, but I love to win. And if I don't win and if it prolongs and we don't reach a conclusion, I don't like that because I want the situation to be controlled when I'm done with the argument.

And I'm working through that, Chris. But the reason I felt like that was employ imported as I reflected in your opening comments, right there. Is leaders need to understand what it is that drives one another. and I thought conflict, iron sharpens iron. I have a consulting firm, the Iron League, and iron sharpening iron. I was like that conflict statement with me. But I really think that conflict is a tool to control, not control a tool to conflict because some people conflict with one another because, and they do that with a spirit of control. I don't, I use conflict to get into control of a situation. And I'm not sure if that's bad or good, I'm just helping, you know, how to lead a difficult person right here as you try to co-lead with me and help me run this organization.

Chris Goede:     What do they call that? That's a mic drop right there. Matter of fact, can we have Stephanie [inaudible 00:21:46] That is brilliant. That is brilliant. And I think that's, I think that's spot on knowing you for so many years and you often say don't mistake my intensity, right? For my passion. Well, your passion's driven by what you want to do. You know, your purpose behind things, which is you want to control the situation. And so I think that's awesome that you were able to kind of share that. Now I want to take that example. And the one you gave previously with another team member and talk a little bit about this because I think what you're saying to everybody is that we need to lead people the way they need to be led. And so many of us just lead people. How either has been modeled for us in the past or how we like to be led you and I highly relational.

So what do we do? We go straight down the relational in order to get an outcome. And we just need to begin to understand our people, which I love where John's talking about this in that first point where he says, you got to know your people. John developed this methodology, the five levels of leadership, the foundation to successful influence with people is level two, where he talks about you have to connect with people. And the great thing about that is adversity connects obviously understanding how their wired connects, and then you go through their personalities, their temperament, everything he's laid out. You have to know that about your people in order to have conversations. You knew in that example, prior to the one Stephanie, you could come in and say, you could drop the bottom line. You knew you could do that. And you would gain credibility for that individual.

And I think what's your underlying statement here is that you've got to truly know people. And John has given us incredible tools here. Comments of beginning to understand people. Now, I want to shift you a little bit on this, because I think from a personal example, you're spot on and your, and you're really good at it in a one on one situation. I've also seen you do it in a team dynamic. And some of us are leading teams, leading organizations, where we have difficulty in different departments, different verticals. And I've seen John teach you this and model it to where he'll bring somebody onto the team in one way or another. And they're a difficult, difficult personality. And he's like, but just trust me. They need to be here. But just trust me if there's a values and a DNA match, John is totally open for that difficult personality. And so you have, you have been riding shotgun and I'm now seeing you do that. With bringing people onto our team with leading different team members, talk about the dynamics and how that affects the culture and how you go about that with diff difficult team members.

Mark Cole:       Well, and you are, co-leading, you know, what's interesting podcast land. You may not know this, but when I joined John 22 years ago, Chris Goede was actually already on the team. And he was leading about a third of the company at that time in event operations and fulfillment. And so, so you've led for a long time, the Maxwell way. But you're seeing a little bit different side of me now. And, and when we were listening to John, I began to reflect, and this is why I came out of his talk and just said my drop. I mean, that's so good is because we've grown about 35 to 40% in staff members in the last two years. Yes. Grasp your breath because I do every single day or every single pay period. I grasp my breath here. Here's what I'm discovering Chris, the bigger your organization, the more people you lead and we've got some people leading four or 500 people, plus that's listening to this podcast, the bigger the organization, the more tempted you are as a leader to allow the systems that you have created to become more important than the difficulty of the leaders on your team.

That's a problem guys. It's a problem. And I'm leading like that. Chris, I told you a little bit about this right before we were, we went live today is I'm realizing that I have opportunities and obstacles in our organization right now. And I'm expecting those opportunities or those obstacles to be dealt with, with a teammate in a system that we have created. And yet that system, that division or that solutions group may not be gifted with the greatest strengths to attack that opportunity or to solve that difficulty. And I realized during this lesson, listening to John, that you can become so caught up in your strategic plan or, or your organizational systems that you try to minimize the difficulty, the personality, the challenges of people on your train team, rather than expanding their ability to help the entire organization. Good. And it struck me, Chris, as we were listening to this today that you and I have a responsibility.

If we apply this lesson and you help me with business development stuff, you're helping me with the trajectory of our organization. It occurred to me, I'm going to quit telling, and I'm going to start showing you. And I, and the rest of y'all can listen in or watch in. It occurred to me that you and I can never allow systems to try to paralyze very gifted people and minimize their difficulty. Their difficulty is on your team as John laid all of his board members out. Their difficulty, their challenging aspects are on your team for the organization at large, not for the solution group or the little team that they leave. And I'm not exploiting the difficulty. And I said exploiting the difficulty of the difficulty of attribute that some of our leaders have, and I'm not allowing them to soar because it's not in their system. And I guarantee you, if I will get a return on this particular podcast, you and I are going to see that done differently in the coming days and weeks, because I am an organizational leader that started leading more from our systems that we've set up than engaging the people that are on our team, despite their difficulties.

Chris Goede:     What I'm hearing you talk about, and I agree with you and is that it's okay to allow leaders to have cross-functional impact, even though they're difficult across across the organization, across your team, whatever that might look like. And it's interesting when, when John talks about developing a game plan, he mentioned, and they're exactly what you're talking about, where he said, Hey, make sure you delegate or empower according to their strengths. That's not just for their vertical, their solutions group. It's for the good of the enterprise or the good of your team or the organization that you're leading. Is that easy? No, but as a leader, it's your job to be able to first, as we talked about just a minute ago, connect with them on a one on one level as mark gave you some great examples, and then secondly, be able to do that on their behalf for the team.

And, and so I think that's, I think that's absolutely gold. Now. I'm going to let you wrap up, but as I wrap up, I want to put you on the spot for just a second. John gives us four very powerful questions at the end of this lesson. And one of them kind of struck me and I want to get your feedback on this, because he said, Hey, if the individual that has a difficult personality, which by the way is probably just opposite of yours. So it's just a different, not a difficult, we should look at it that way. He says you got to have yeses, okay. To these in all four of these questions. One of them he says is will they change? And I was struck by this because I thought, do we want them to change? Or do we want to mold them? Do we want to shape them? When you bring people onto the team, and John has done this for so long and I'm beginning to see you do this. You don't necessarily want them to change. You want them to shift and to mold and to shape. Talk a little bit about your expectations of leaders that are different than you or difficult and your expectations of them on whether or not they change as you kind of wrap up for us today.

Mark Cole:       Yeah. So man, Chris, once again, I love this podcast. We could go on for a long time but Jake is throwing eggs at us and rolling. He's already wrap it up paper. Let me say this. Let me define change for a moment. Growth is change. Do I expect anybody? Everybody absolutely. Anybody potentially somebody, anybody will somebody change? Cause growth has changed. Yeah. Now do I expect change? But here is what you're asking me. Do we want to change the personality or the skill sets or the strengths of the people on our team or utilize them and set them free to live in their strengths. And the answer is absolutely. I don't want you to change. The one thing I want the world to see is I want them to see how good I see you as a leader.

So I don't want Chris, the methodical, the processor, the thinker on our team. I don't have many of you on my leadership team of 11. I don't want to change those attributes of you. Those strengths, those skill sets, those personality traits. But do I want you to change in that you know how to communicate those better? You know how when to step up and insert yourself. Absolutely. so knowing the things that you want to change and the things you don't want to change is part of the art of leadership, not the skillset of leadership, the art of leadership. And so there are things Chris, yes, that I want to change. There are things that I don't want to change. I want to explode into the world because it's your finest parts. And it's the things that the world will be better because of that.

Chris Goede:     Love it. Change equals growth.

Mark Cole:       You know, John did a book called, I love this book. Everyone Communicates, Few Connect, and I'm around communicators all of my life. I've been with some of the best of the world and I've been at some that thought they were the best in the world and they didn't connect with anybody, but they spoke a great Ted talk. They gave a great speech, but they didn't connect. There was no heart to it. And John has written a book called Everyone Communicates, Few Connect that I think would really help people that want to go to the next step that want to really take this podcast and say, how do I connect better with a difficult people on my life? And here's what I'd like you to do. If you'd like to take that next step and grab that content Everyone Communicates Few Connect, I want you to go in the show notes. I want you to click on that link, use the code PODCAST. And we're going to give you 15% discount on that book. And I can promise you, it will help you. I want to close as I always do with a podcast listener comment. And I, and I can't wait to get this, Chris, but just the other day I was in Atlanta. I mean, this is just since you and I have been together in the studio and was doing what sometimes you have to do when you drink too much water. And so I went to the restroom and taking care of business. And somebody walked by and went, are you Mark Cole? And I said, I am. And he said, I'm, I'm living in Atlanta now for the last two months. And it's because of you. And I go, oh Lord.

And he says, not only that, I brought all 18 families of my business from Texas to Atlanta because of you. And I said, now I've got some people really mad at me. He said, every Wednesday, we listen to the podcast. We take notes. And when I cast the vision that we needed to move to Atlanta, every one of our families said, yes, we want to go because we love what the organization is doing. And Chris, I'm going to tell you that was one of those moments where I just went, okay. I love what we get to do. Another podcast listener that we have, his name is Steve. And he was listening to the Building a Diverse Team podcast. He said a great podcast and really relevant, the barrier of fear of conflict, personally challenged my leadership and made me realize that this is an area of opportunity to become a better leader.

The closing quote by Edward Kennedy is also very powerful. Here's what it was, if you'll remember "What divides us pales in comparison with what unites us." Steve said, it makes me think that with every differing opinion or perspective, there is a uniting factor. In other words, common ground. And if that uniting factor becomes the driving force for accomplishment and achievement, it can be immensely impactful. And Steve, all I want to tell you is your comment was not only relevant for that podcast, building a diverse team. And we'll put the show notes. We'll put that in the show notes. If you want to go back and listen to it, Steve, your comments were relevant to today. And if Chris Goede was not so difficult and demanding that he had to be on here as a difficult person, Steve, I would've had you as the cohost today. That's all I can say, Hey, seriously, whether you're viewing today. And by the way, I hope more of you will go over to YouTube and check us out. But whether you're viewing or listening, I really do want to thank you for joining us today on the Maxwell Leadership Podcast. This is what we do at the Maxwell Leadership Podcast. We develop leaders who make powerful, positive change because everyone deserves to be led well.