Transcript
Mark Cole (0:00)
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John Maxwell (3:41)
If you're a leader, these are three questions you need to be asking yourself on a periodic and let me give you the background of what I'm about to teach you. When I was a freshman in college, we had a guest teacher come into our psychology class. It was just a Psych 101 class. And that guest lecturer, that guest teacher, looked at us that day and said, I would like to talk to you about three questions that you really need to ask yourself as young leaders. And so I'm in the class and I write these three questions down and I thought, boy, those were good. Never did I realize 50 years later, those three questions I would still be asking myself as a leader. These three questions will make you a better leader. It'll help you to lead people better. So let me give them to you. They were given to me as a freshman in a Psych 101 class. Let me give them to you today, and let's see if that doesn't help lift your leadership lid. Question number one, that Prof. That day looked at us and asked, what do you cry about? Wow. Now you have to understand, I'm a freshman in college. And when he asked me what I cried about, I didn't have a grasp, a leadership gravitas to understand where that question could really lead me and help me as a leader. You know, honestly, as a freshman in college, what I was crying about is the girl that I asked out for a date last week said no. And so that's the biggest thing in a college kid's life. Oh my gosh, she didn't go out with me. Well, when he asked the question, what do you cry about as a young leader, I didn't have a good answer. And many of you, by the way, are very young leaders and you just haven't grown and matured enough to perhaps, maybe even answer these questions to really help you reach your potential. So I'm going to ask you the question and then I'm going to give you my mature answer after not as a freshman in college, but after several years of leading, I can answer these questions really well today. Of course I can. I've had experience and I'm Passing them on to you honestly, so you could do the very, so you can do the very same thing. Okay, so you know, what do I cry about today? Oh, it's very simple. In my life, I cry about poor leadership. Because if we've ever needed good leadership in our world, it's right now. Because we're having a lot of troubles. And yet I've not seen good leaders step forth. I'm not seeing leaders step up and say, hey, let me help you, let me serve you, let me take you to another level. I suppose the expression that I have in my heart that best describes where I am today as a leader is honestly, I'm a little leadership sad. I just think, wow, we have such a grand moment to lead people well, and we seem to be in it for ourselves. We seem to have leaders that are very self serving, very immature in their lives. And so, you know, I ask myself the question all the time, you know, what makes me sad? Well, just leadership. It hasn't reached its potential. So when you ask yourself what do I cry about? Form the question like this, what's not right? And you would like to make it right. I mean, what do you look about in life and say, oh, that's not the way it should be. And I would like to do something about it. That's a terrific question for a young leader. You know, what do you cry about? Question number two is what do you sing about? In other words, the first question is what makes you sad? Well, this one is kind of what makes you glad? What thrills you as a young leader? What makes you happy? Now that's an easy question for me. In fact, very young, in my 20s, I got that answer. I got that answer quicker than what do I cry about When I ask myself what do I sing about? What really makes me happy is that I discovered in my 20s that people could learn to lead. And the moment I realized that people had capacity to learn to lead. In other words, you didn't have to be a born leader. I mean, think about it. If you were a born leader or you were born not a leader, you wouldn't need to train or develop any leaders. Think about it for a moment. I mean, you know, they either had it or they didn't have it. But my, it was a positive breakthrough moment for me when all of a sudden I understood that the people can learn to lead. And then it became even a happier moment for me. I mean, talk about singing. When I realized that not only I could learn to lead, but I could teach them how to Lead. When I wrote the book Developing the Leader within youn, that was a life changing book for people because that was the first book that basically said you can develop yourself as a leader. Up until that time, again, people thought leaders were born. And so there wasn't a lot of books written on leadership. And all of a sudden I said, no, no, you can develop yourself as a leader and more people. Of all the books I've written, when people come up and say the book that changed my life, the most, the most life changing book that I've written from the people's viewpoint is Developing the Leader within youn, what did I do? I began to show people how they can learn to lead, how they can develop as a leader, how they can grow as a leader. It became absolutely, absolutely beautiful. So just ask yourself the question, you know, what makes me sing? What is it that really, really brings fulfillment and joy? To me, it's a great question. Adding value to people, teaching, training, leaders. That's what makes me sing. So what do you cry about? What is it that you need to change because you're sad and you can make a change? What do you sing about? What is it that you're doing that really work? And then the third question that Prof. Gave us that day is what do you dream about? And that one was life changing for me because, you know, as I began to mature, I began to dream about making a difference. And so I became very intentional. The fact that I'm going to make a difference in people's lives and how am I going to make that difference? I one day settled the fact that probably the best difference I could make is in the area of leadership. Because I grew up believing everything rises and falls on leadership. And so I said, that's going to be my world. That's what I'm going to teach leaders. I want to teach them how to be competent. I'm going to teach them how to have good values. So now I just kind of wrap up our mentoring session by encouraging you for the next 30 days to ask those three questions. What do you cry about? What do you sing about? What do you dream about? And if you can identify the things that you want to change because they really bother you, and if you can identify the thing that you do well that really helps people succeed. And if you can identify what is that dream that you have of making a difference, if you can identify those three, ask those three questions and try to fill in the answers for those. I will promise you those three questions will make you a better leader. Fifty years ago, I heard them in a classroom. They still have brought improvement in my life.