Success Secrets and Stories
To share management leadership concepts that actually work.
You are responsible for your development as a leader. Don't expect the boss to invest the training budget in your career. Consider this podcast as an investment of time in your career, with a bit of management humor added at the same time.
Success Secrets and Stories
Promote from Within: The Leadership Secret You're Missing
What separates exceptional leaders from merely competent managers? The answer lies in how they approach the growth and development of those they lead. Join John and Greg as they explore the heart of leadership's responsibility, to lend the helping hand to those on your team.
Servant leadership flips traditional leadership models on their head by focusing not on the leader's advancement, but on nurturing the potential in every team member. As Sir Richard Branson wisely notes, "Train people well enough so they can leave. Treat them well enough so they don't want to." This philosophy forms the foundation of truly transformative leadership that builds strong organizations from within.
We explore practical strategies for investing in your team's growth, from providing meaningful leadership opportunities to communicating with radical transparency. Learn how to identify potential leaders, create personalized development plans, and build clear career paths that keep talented employees engaged and motivated. The HR perspective brings additional insights on mentorship programs, coaching initiatives, and succession planning that transform theoretical concepts into actionable workplace practices.
Through personal stories, we share both successes and learning moments from our own leadership journeys. From helping an overlooked employee finally complete their education and advance their career to creating a deliberate 90-day development program for a future executive, these real-world examples demonstrate how authentic investment in others creates lasting impact.
The greatest satisfaction in leadership doesn't come from personal achievements but from seeing others grow and succeed because of your influence. Whether you're a seasoned executive or an emerging leader, these insights will help you build stronger teams, reduce turnover, and create an organizational culture where everyone can thrive. Ready to transform your leadership approach? Listen now and discover how committing to your employees' growth benefits everyone – including you.
Presented by John Wandolowski and Greg Powell
Well, hello and welcome to our podcast Success Secrets and Stories. I'm your host, john Wondolowski, and I'm here with my co-host and friend, greg Powell. Greg, hey, everybody, yeah, when Greg and I were originally talking about this podcast concept, we wanted to do something to help others and give that hand up and take on that next step. So our concept is what does it take in order to be a leader? To that end, we have a story today that I think makes some interest in terms of what does that mean to be a leader, and it's from an interesting company called Psychology Compass I found on the internet and the CEO and founder, rochon Frard. He describes it as a place where technology and psychology combines and that the two worlds rarely meet. I'm not 100% sure if they're still in business, but it was a great article and we're going to talk about a little bit about it. There are different techniques that they describe in terms of servant leadership, and we're going to talk about committing to growth of your employees.
Speaker 2:Servant leaders don't always focus on being great leaders themselves. They are invested in helping their employees to grow and develop. Encouraging team members to participate in employee development programs may help expand their knowledge and skills. You can always encourage them to take on active leadership roles during certain projects. Team members who know that they are committed and they are professional are more likely to listen to suggestions to help improve their work. So whenever I thought about this subject, I thought about Sir Richard Branson, and he has a wonderful quote train people well enough so they can leave. Treat them well enough so they don't want to. And really, if you're in leadership, you're trying to find people that can take your place. That whole idea of succession planning, building your bench if any of those words mean anything, then you're dealing with an organization that understands that they have a future. So, to that point, what does it mean? In order to develop for growth, one provide opportunities to lead and develop. One way to do this is to regularly ask for input and demonstrate that you are open to diverse ideas. See who speaks up and offers thoughtful ideas on how they would improve the status quo and offers thoughtful ideas on how they would improve the status quo. You could also offer employees the opportunity to host a meeting to gain experience, or you could assign individuals to be a go-to expert on specific topics or skills Another way to prepare people to commit to the growth of the individual.
Speaker 2:Communicate with transparency. Communicate with transparency to share information freely. Only when they have the information can employees make sound decisions on how they can contribute and step up in your leadership roles. To identify potential enthusiasts, you can specifically ask them during one of the conversations, or maybe during performance evaluations in which the areas that they would like to develop themselves and whether they would potentially see themselves in a leadership position in the future. Employees feel empowered when time and resources have been invested in their growth. They start to feel themselves as an integral part of the organization, and this is where you can encourage them to lead from the front.
Speaker 2:The ever-famous quote that I think is important for any leader is to understand lead by example, leading by example and the model of desired behavior is critical. The model of desired behavior is critical. Modeling is believing in the foundation for the leader to influence and to be used to persuade employees to act in a certain way. So if you want your employees to invest in themselves and participate in development programs, you should openly promote this yourself and participate. Setting an example includes showing that you can take care of yourself.
Speaker 2:Engaging in daily servant leadership behavior can come at a cost for leaders. One study shows that the servant leadership can be mentally depleting, specifically for leaders who are low in perspective-taking or having a the ability to be self-aware. That is, that you really need to be able to step back and make an assessment of who you are and what you've done and the necessary steps that you need in order to recharge yourself. But all those things that are associated with leadership, the things that are serving leadership, is the healing and the awareness and the persuasion and stewardship, and really it comes down to how well can you communicate and are you giving an example to follow? Greg, I think you have a little bit more of a perspective. How does the HR world kind of apply this? Thanks, John.
Speaker 1:So we look at it as providing targeted development opportunities. Mentorship and coaching Not one or the other, but both. Pair potential leaders with experienced mentors who can offer guidance. They can offer insights and they can offer support. Implement coaching programs to address specific challenges, enhance leadership capabilities and promote self-awareness. Mentors can share knowledge, expand networks and advocate for mentees. Coaching focuses on enhancing current performance and addressing specific issues, and a combination of coaching and mentoring may be most beneficial for comprehensive leadership development.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about career pathing and planning and a little bit of an HR example here of HR career paths, so you can imagine the different things that you can do in human resources. It's not just hiring anymore. You can start off in employee compensation and benefits, work your way up into recruitment and training, go over to people and culture and diversity, compliance, employee relations lots of different things. If you're trying to become a leader in HR milestones and qualifications for advancements, regularly discuss career aspirations with employees and help them identify opportunities within the organization. Whether you're doing one performance review a year or two a year or three, make sure that every time you talk to the employee in what I call a serious discussion about their performance, talk to them about their career aspirations right. It shouldn't just be once a year when you think about it. Implement programs like job rotation or try promotions to provide employees with due experiences and responsibilities. John.
Speaker 2:You know, just to step back for a second. Whenever you're having those career discussions, I always found it, as you know, once a year is what they talk about is performance reviews, and I always change it to career discussions. But it should be something that you talk about quarterly. There's, there's the, the exchange and making sure what are you doing, how are we advancing, what do we know? What else do we need to do? That engagement needs to be. Often it's sort of like watering the plant. You want, you don't want to water the plant once a year. The more that you can bring it into the conversation, the more that you're going to get the results that you're hoping for. Anyway, I digress.
Speaker 1:So that's good, John. In fact, it reminds me of my last company. We actually met with employees four times a year.
Speaker 1:We encourage them to meet more often than that, but recently you said four times a year. And we talk about what they're doing well, what they can do better, what kind of support do they need? Then it's always kind of in the rotation and that's what you want. You're not trying to surprise anybody or catch somebody doing something wrong. Exactly, let's talk about promoting internal mobility. A lot of companies have job boards internally. They have processes for posting for jobs, whatever. But if you prioritize internal hiring and establish a transparent process promoting from within, people love it Again, back with retention, back with their own investment in your company, you can't beat it. John.
Speaker 2:And the word that's most important transparent.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, no bait and switch, no hide the plum job underneath the file cabinet right. Clearly communicate available opportunities and provide resources to help employees prepare for new roles. I have found that even if employees say you know, I wasn't really eligible for that job or maybe that's not my cup of tea, they got excited that the jobs were posted and they could see what was out there and they were excited for working for an organization that was doing that.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:And then the next one cultivating a culture of continuous learning and growth. Exactly, and then the next one. Cultivating a culture of continuous learning and growth. Encourage a growth mindset that values challenges and learning from experiences, meaning you can make some mistakes. You don't want to make the same mistake multiple times, but you learn a lot from mistakes. You want a company that's thinking about real seriously supporting work-life balance and offering wellness programs to prevent burnout and promote overall well-being, because this is a lot of work trying to get yourself promoted, trying to take on more responsibility, taking care of your current job Guess what? You've got life outside of this. You know what's the company doing to help make sure you can get that balance and make sure you can keep yourself fresh in that. And then promote diversity, equity and inclusion to create a workplace where all employees feel valued and have an equal opportunity to advance. And to create a workplace where all employees feel valued and have an equal opportunity to advance, and I can't say it any better than that.
Speaker 2:No, I mean, would you find some of these organizations that I worked for become such silos and that fixed mindset that they've lost the ability to see the creativity of bringing in people with diverse backgrounds in order to try to expand what they can do? That creativity from different perspectives is really what gives, I think, us products, us markets, the biggest areas of growth, because we're not in a single mind. We're always looking for something that's different. The entrepreneurial spirit is really what you're looking for. You're not looking for some other requirement, you're looking for people who want to be engaged. That's the key and I guess I'm trying to pull this all together the benefits of pulling someone up in terms of leadership development To improve employee engagement and retention. Employees feel valued in investment when they're investing in their growth and leading to higher morale and reduced turnover. Stronger leadership pipeline Organizations that develop a pool of capable internal candidates readily are able to be filling positions as they are needed. Which I find interesting is that organizations that do this other companies know that and they sometimes steal, but you're still developing people and they're still advancing. There's still that joy of helping them take that next step. Enhance succession planning Smooth leadership transitions are possible when people are prepared and there's a talent pool to pull from and there's a defined path on how to get that promotion. All these things are important in terms of communication that if you're not doing and those plans are happening in secret, you're not helping your internal candidates taking that next step. Increase organizational performance. Effective leaders drive productivity, innovation and strategic execution. The employees that you have that are actually accomplishing that are the ones that you should be looking for leadership, but making sure that they understand the soft skills as well as the business side of the equation. The last point is probably the most important point is creating a positive work environment or a positive company culture, a culture where growth, cooperation and learning is fostered, making the organization more attractive to new talent, more attractive to new talent. So I kind of like this whole article on how it pulls a lot of the things that are associated with what leadership means and leadership development and how to get somebody ready for their next opportunity, and sometimes it's been the part that has been hard to communicate from our podcast and we've been asked those kinds of questions.
Speaker 2:I have a really good example of my attempt at trying to help someone specifically In my first management role I was overseeing company expansion and design and development and was also responsible for facility management and coordinating with the architectural and contracting teams. For facility management and coordinating with the architectural and contracting teams, I had one supervisor reporting to me and quickly learned that he was respected, skilled and had been passed over for the position that I now held. That dynamic made for a very tense start, to put it mildly. The resentment was real and his frustration with me was directed personally. When he found out how open I was and communicative in terms of style, it was refreshing compared to what he had experienced before. Still, that discomfort lingered.
Speaker 2:So I did something that was unexpected as a new manager. I invited him to lunch and away from the usual workplace tension. I asked him candidly why was he so angry? He opened up about the years that he had missed promotions, the countless interviews and the unfinished education that was taking a toll. He was still working on trying to complete his bachelor's degree but had changed majors and therefore still needed another year or two to finish. After listening, I made up promise that I would help make his education path a priority and that within a year he will graduate. I believe he was ready for the advancement already and I couldn't believe why the company had passed him by. Unfortunately, I had the opportunity, but he was qualified for the position and if the organization wasn't ready to accept him that we would work on trying to find him another place to work. Well, he was stunned, but he took the leap. Well, he was stunned but he took the leap and at the end of the day he was able to finish his bachelor's degree within a matter of like six months.
Speaker 2:Since time had passed and we weren't able to advance him, he landed a managerial position with another company and thrived. I wish I could have kept him, but the growth within our department it wasn't possible at that time. The experience really revealed a deeper issue how siloed thinking and stifled talent in the industry, like manufacturing or facilities, is really towards organizations like the facility team or the housekeeping team or other kind of departments, and there are talented people that can move into those roles and cross-train. Supporting and developing people and fostering teams and seeing people grow beyond their current roles is really where the fun of leadership comes in. Greg, you have an example of applying and helping somebody, pulling them up through the ranks. I do.
Speaker 1:John, I have a couple, but I'm going to say the second one because the first one I was still learning. I was a younger manager and I definitely made some mistakes. Unfortunately, the person who was being promoted filled in the gaps, and that's okay. Learning that I applied later in life. So my last couple of jobs companies worked for were looking at a pretty senior HR position reporting to me. But we knew that I was probably going to be doing something different and not too far down the line, and so we brought a person in, qualified for the role that they were in, and I sat down as I started thinking about their aspirations and what they could do, what my boss also thought they could do, and I put together a plan to help close the gap. So here's your regular job. You've got to make that happen, but on the side we're going to do these things. And so I put together a 90-day program of activities whether there were board meetings to go to or staff meetings and how I ran them and what I was trying to accomplish, and check-ins and checkpoints and that sort of me.
Speaker 1:The company was growing and going and needed some personality. This individual didn't have to have my sense of humor, right, it wasn't required. It just probably wasn't necessary. It wasn't desired either. But, having said that, they needed to be their own person, but they needed to know what they needed to know to be successful. So, for instance, one thing I created was a list of unwritten rules. Here's some things that you're not going to find in a manual or the employee handbook, but I'm here to tell you, in the role you're probably going to go into, these are things you need to be on the lookout for. I'm going to tell you before somebody else tells you, and I thought that was really, really important to do.
Speaker 1:I remember taking this person to a business dinner and I was tired and we were kind of done and people were starting to leave and I said, oh, you know, go ahead and sit. She goes. Nope, I'm not going to stay. If you're not going to stay, and I thought about it. I said, yeah, great, that was. You know, you should stick around a little more, right?
Speaker 1:Part of this experience isn't just dumping the person off and hoping they figure it out right or maybe embarrass themselves or be in a disadvantage situation.
Speaker 1:So I'm glad I stayed and threw that dinner and made sure we walked out to the car together, whatever to the cars, but it's really a lot of imparting on them things to help them be successful. And if you take that attitude, saying I want you to be not as good as me, probably better than me, and I want to leave the future of my department in the hands of someone that is going to do a great job and can take them to the next level, and that was the attitude I had. So I poured that into the plan I had for them to be successful in the job. And for the last thing, I heard person's doing very well in the role and has really made some advancements and I couldn't be happier. But that first experience, when I kind of went through the motions, taught me a lot about don't go through the motions, be deliberate. Lot about don't go through the motions, be deliberate, put a plan together, check, trust and verify, observe, offer candid feedback and it worked out to be a successful situation.
Speaker 2:I think helping others to grow in their positions and grow in their careers is where you really find the satisfaction. That I found when I was working. I think you've said the same thing. That's why we wanted to do this podcast and it's the part that we really enjoy the most is, hopefully these hints and these ideas strike a bell and will help you in terms of your job and I hope you find the pleasure of helping people and seeing their career grow because of your influence. So, if you like what you've heard, yeah, I wrote a book called Building your Leadership Toolbox and it talks about a lot of the things that we're talking about in terms of communication and helping others. You're listening to our podcast and I appreciate it, whatever format it is. We're also available on Apple and Spotify and others. Greg and I often reference Management by Responsibility by Dr Durst. His information and his program is available on successgrowthacademycom. Program is available on successgrowthacademycom. If you'd like to contact us, my email address is wando75.jw at gmailcom and, greg, I can be reached at gpowell374 at gmailcom.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the music is brought to you by my grandson, so we want to hear from you. We appreciate your, your input. It has helped us with our program and it's actually kind of fun to hear what we've actually come across and people like.
Speaker 1:so thanks, greg thanks, john, as always next time yeah.