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Mark, thanks for joining us today.
Oh, it's my pleasure.
Thanks for the opportunity.
Yeah, absolutely, my friend.
So how would you get us started by telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do?
Well, I spent about 100 years selling chicken.
I used to work for Chick -fil -A Incorporated.
I started as an hourly team member.
I was awful. We won't get into that.
I made my way to the corporate headquarters and I became the 16th corporate employee for Chick -fil -A.
I started working in their warehouse, in their mailroom.
And that was about 45 years ago.
I had trouble holding down a job all those years within the business.
I worked all over the business.
I got to start some things, not because I was talented.
I don't think it was like, let the kid do it, let the kid do it.
And so I started our corporate communications group and I started our quality and customer satisfaction group, so forth and so on.
Ended up doing a stint leading in field operations, led our training group, started our leadership development group, so forth and so on.
Took an early retirement almost a year ago after forty four and a half years.
I asked him, how long do you have to stay to get a full retirement?
But that's another story for another day.
so I took my early retirement and I have co -founded an organization called Lead Every Day and basically I'm doing the same work I've been doing at Chick -fil -A we're just trying to help leaders grow their capacity and change their world and I tell folks all the time you can retire from a job but I don't think you can retire from a calling and my calling is to serve leaders and so So I just get to find new ways, different ways, new formats, new avenues to do that.
And so that's the journey I'm on. Incredible.
So listeners, next time you go to Chick -fil -A, I want you to think about Mark Miller and say, thank you in your head.
This is incredible.
I appreciate you being here today, my friend.
And today I'd like to just talk about some of the tough conversations that leaders have to have. have. And I think we can take some insights too from your new book.
So let's start off by talking a little bit about your new book in general, and then let's shift to the conversations that leaders have to have, and then some tips that they can keep in mind to make those conversations a bit easier.
Great. The new book is called Uncommon Greatness.
And the core premise is, I think, at some level, everyone really wants to be great.
And I actually believe everyone can be great.
Now, there's some work to be done along the way.
And we decided to write this book for leaders because I've spent my lifetime around leaders who are pursuing greatness, chasing greatness.
Again, nothing fundamentally wrong with that, but most all of them ultimately find, assuming they achieve some level of greatness, that it's not fulfilling, it's not life -giving, it's not soul -enriching, it doesn't last. And many of them regret what they paid to end up where they are.
And so we have been encouraging leaders for decades to pursue uncommon greatness.
It's a greatness that actually focuses on eliciting greatness from others.
It's the leader's heart is to serve.
And yes, you need to pursue personal excellence to give you the moral authority to encourage and challenge and equip others.
But don't settle for common greatness.
And so if you buy that premise or not, even for those that may be saying, I'm not sure about that, some are going to say, yeah, but how do you shift?
How do you change the ladder?
It's leaning on one wall, and you need it to lean on another wall, right?
How do do you make that transition?
How do you make that shift?
And we would argue that it's about uncommon leadership.
Uncommon leadership leads to uncommon greatness.
And so I don't know how much of the book you want to get into, but we outlined five fundamentals.
I'll give you a quick backstory.
Some might find this interesting.
We started this work over 25 years ago at Chick -fil -A.
And this is not studying Chick -fil -A.
This is studying leadership.
All the books we've done, We've now done 12 over the last 25 years.
And we always begin with the question, what is universally true about a particular topic?
The books were never about Chick -fil -A because Chick -fil -A commissioned these so we could get better.
So we don't want to look in the mirror to try to get better.
We want to go out and study the very best in the world.
And so 25 years ago, we assembled a team who began to ask, how do you accelerate leadership development and along the way create what we might at the time have called extraordinary leaders?
Today, we call them uncommon leaders.
And again, I'll spare you the details, but we worked a couple of years and we didn't know any better because we're in the chicken business.
We had no concept here.
This is the first time we'd ever really tried to strategically and purposefully focus on leadership development, because what we found is that we didn't have a leadership bench that we needed.
And I don't believe you can outgrow your leadership.
And so our senior leaders actually asked me to figure this out.
How do we accelerate leadership development?
So we began this project and we spent a couple of years doing what today I would call qualitative research. Now, there was a lot of desk research, but we interviewed a lot of people.
We did a lot of desk research, read a couple hundred books on leadership, studied global best practices, and we began to form a point of view.
Well, here we are 25 years later, and we decided that we needed to update that work.
That very first work, I had the privilege of co -authoring that first book with Ken Blanchard. Some of your audience knows that name.
His most famous work is the one minute manager.
But at the time, he had three books on the bestseller list at one time, and I'm still not sure anybody else has ever done that.
And so I had the honor of partnering with him to do that very first book.
And for those not familiar with Ken, he really popularized the fable, the parable.
And so we did that first book a long time ago as a business fable.
And so when we decided to refresh this work, we said, OK, let's do a traditional book like somebody called it an adult book, like a real book.
By the way, I've written nine parables, so I'm a big fan of parables.
But I was challenged, let's give case studies and let's give data and let's give facts and let's make it for those folks that won't read a parable.
And so we went out and conducted global research, which we've done for several of our projects.
On this one, we ended up interviewing or surveying over 4 ,000 leaders in six countries.
And we were attempting to, A, we hoped that we would validate what we had discovered 25 years ago.
But if not, we wanted to know that.
And at the same time, we hoped that we would find new insights and new perspective that would help us kind of modernize the work we did 25 years ago.
And so this book is a fresh take at some timeless truth that we began writing about, thinking about and talking about 25 years ago.
Wow. A lot of work went into this.
And again, to be able to synthesize that into the key takeaways is powerful.
Powerful. And while we're on the topic, let's talk about those five key takeaways and then we'll transition.
I'll give them to you really quick.
I'll give them to you really quick.
There are five fundamentals.
The first is to see the future.
Leadership always begins with a picture of the future.
What are you trying to accomplish?
What are you trying to become?
What are you trying to achieve?
achieve. If you're not actually trying to move people and organizations to a preferred future, I think by definition you're not leading.
I mean, we can debate what you're doing.
You might be managing, but I'm not sure you're doing anything that's adding real value, right?
Leaders are supposed to pursue a preferred future, and you've got to articulate that.
And hopefully, it's bigger than something you can do by yourself.
Because I would argue if you can do it by yourself, it's not that much well let's assume you can't do it by yourself that's when the second fundamental comes into play and that's when you engage and develop others this is when you begin to to rally people to help you make that preferred future a reality and we've tried we try to simplify everything like i said we're in the chicken business or i was in the chicken business for all these years and so there's a lot out there on engagement and some of my friends have written that stuff and i I want to honor all of that.
But we wanted to simplify it.
And we said, we think engagement is really about how much someone cares.
How much they care about their work, how much they care about their coworkers, how much they care about the customers and how much they care about the organization.
And leaders determine how much people care.
So we wrote about what do leaders do to help people care more?
more. So see the future, engage and develop others.
The third fundamental is to reinvent continuously.
And obviously it's a big idea, but it was central and core 25 years ago.
I think it's even more relevant today.
I meet far too many leaders that think change is a burden or change is a nuisance or change is an inconvenience.
I'm going, they don't understand leadership.
Our fundamental role is to create and sustain positive change in pursuit of the vision.
If you're not changing, you're not gaining ground.
Your current systems, processes, habits, and beliefs are perfectly aligned for the outcomes you're now achieving.
So if you want different outcomes, you got to change something.
And leaders understand that.
Progress is always preceded by change.
And so leaders get that.
It is core to what we have to learn to do and equip others to do in pursuit of that preferred future.
future. Two more. The fourth fundamental is to value results and relationships.
And I'm going to go out on a limb here, and I don't know your listeners personally, but here's what I'm going to tell them.
This is probably the most challenging of the five fundamentals we're going to talk about.
You say, well, what would I base that on?
Well, I've been talking to leaders all over the world about this for 25 years.
In fact, that first book's in 25 languages.
I mean, we've been talking to leaders everywhere and leaders tell us this is hard well i won't make you try to guess why it's hard i'm going to tell you why it's hard most leaders have a natural bias you're either more results oriented or you're more relationship oriented now i would guess there's about five percent of leaders who have an equal measure of both and i always tell those leaders i don't like them any way because leadership's easier for them right for the rest of us it's hard because you you show up, either I'm a relationship guy or I'm a results guy.
And what we've learned over time is the best leaders value both.
You may not change who you are, and I wouldn't even suggest that, but you've got to learn to compensate so that you can actually value both.
Jim Collins talked about a concept, the genius of the end.
We think this is a perfect example of that.
If you want to maximize performance, you've got to value both.
And that's going to feel counterintuitive to these results.
Men and women who say, no, no, no, I'll just focus on results.
You will sub -optimize results if you focus exclusively on results.
And oh, by the way, this could be obvious.
If you focus exclusively on relationships, you will sub -optimize results.
If you want both, if you want performance, you need to focus on both.
And that's that fourth fundamental.
You ready for one more?
I'm ready. The last one, embody a leader's heart.
Embody a leader's heart.
Here's the context for this.
We believe that leadership looks a lot like an iceberg.
10 % above the waterline and 90 % below.
Those first four fundamentals are above the waterline and the leader's heart is the 90 below if your heart is not right nobody cares about your skills and i think i can prove this to your listeners think about a leader you know who has the skills and you wouldn't choose to follow them well why wouldn't you follow them they got the skills because you don't you don't trust their heart peter drucker the late management and leadership Thinker.
Many of your audience probably know that name.
I think the best leadership thinker of the last 2 ,000 years.
He said the quality of character doesn't make the leader, but the absence flaws the entire process.
Leadership is about skills and heart.
And you've got to work on both.
And so So we've come up with some heart habits that we encourage leaders to focus on so that they can become that leader that people want to follow.
And so that's the fifth and final fundamental.
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seed. Well, Mark, selfishly here, I'm saying to myself, this is great.
I mean, as a leader, it's so easy to forget the fundamentals sometimes, and it's great to revisit this.
And I'm sure you see it, and a lot of listeners see it too.
There are a lot of elements of negotiation, conflict resolution, influence, and persuasion that go into what it takes to be a good leader.
And going straight to what you said about number five, we have the skills, the conflict resolution, communication, negotiation skills are going to be part of it.
But as a leader, and also as a negotiator, you have to be able to have that heart, you have to genuinely care.
And there are a lot of people who are very tactical thinkers, very strategic, and they might be very technical, but people can feel that you don't truly care about the other side.
And if you can't, if you can't convey that you care probably because you don't care it's it's going to be very very challenging to be persuasive regardless of how tight your skills are yeah it's hard to care about people if you don't care exactly exactly yeah yeah now let me say this real quickly i don't i don't know if you want to chase this or not but i mentioned that um the fourth fundamental mental to value results and relationships might be the most challenging for many of the listeners.
There are people in the world who are more challenged by the leader's heart.
They just don't have that.
They are a self -serving as opposed to a serving leader.
And a self -serving leader does not have a leader's heart.
And so that is where I encourage, particularly young leaders particularly men and women who aspire for positions of leadership i say start with your heart and you're gonna work on skills forever but if your heart's right then then the skills actually matter uh here's the way another way to think about it the heart multiplies the skills there's no replacement for them you know you know the story of secretariat the great racehorse.
Many may know this story.
When the horse died, they did the autopsy, which was standard procedure when you've got a horse that's worth that kind of money to be sure there was no foul play.
And they discovered that Secretariat's heart was twice the size of all the other horses.
Now, if you'd put that big heart in a mule, it probably wouldn't have won the Kentucky turkey derby but because the horse had skills and then it was multiplied by that heart it became the greatest horse i mean its records still stand their records still stand today what is 40 50 years later because the heart multiplied the skills and so for some of your leaders they need to start with the heart and they need to say hey am i a leader people want to follow Do I hunger for wisdom?
Do I expect the best?
Do I accept responsibility?
Some of these heart habits that really can make all the difference in the world.
Mark, I think this is a great place for us to start, too, because there's the temptation to just jump straight to the skills.
What should I say in these conversations?
But what we're recognizing here is that if your heart is in the right place, it doesn't matter what you say or the skills because they will not have the same efficacy because because people can sense that.
And when you think about negotiation, we can negotiate externally with other people, but we can also negotiate internally with ourselves.
And it sounds like when it comes to exploring that concept of the leader's heart, we have to have a sit down conversations with ourselves to fully understand what it is that we're doing and why.
And so let's say there are some leaders out here who are listening to this and saying, okay, I want to to go through this introspective process.
I want to negotiate with myself.
Where would you suggest that they start?
All right. Well, let me give these to you real quick.
And then we'll, you can stop me along the way, or we can circle back.
We've identified five heart habits.
The first is hunger for wisdom.
We believe that's a heart issue because it represents humility.
It represents represents a vulnerability.
You know you don't know it all, and you said, I'm going to be a lifelong learner, and it positions you to add more value to others.
The first heart habit is hunger for wisdom.
I would ask your listeners, have you committed to lifelong learning, and then could I follow you around all day and know that?
Well, how would you know that?
Well, are you listening to podcasts?
Are you reading? Are you asking questions in conversations?
Not when you're negotiating, just when you're going through life.
Are you a learner? That says a lot about your heart.
It says a lot about your heart.
Second, do you expect the best?
Are you an optimistic person?
Now, there are people who have a natural bent toward pessimism.
I'd say a couple things.
One One is you got to work on that or you don't need to lead anything because leaders are, as Napoleon said, dealers in hope.
If you're a pessimist, how are you going to get anybody to follow you?
I mean, really follow you.
They might be on your payroll, but there's a difference between commitment and compliance.
And it's real hard for pessimistic leaders to get commitment.
It's hard for them to rally people to a preferred future.
so again you can you can work on developing an optimistic spirit not that you're not grounded in reality the best leaders always are but they believe in their own agency and they believe in the agency of the people that they have around them to actually change the future that's why their optimism is so powerful because it's rooted in their beliefs it's rooted in their heart So, hunger for wisdom, expect the best, accept responsibility.
The best leaders don't place blame.
Now, if something goes right, they're quick to give praise.
he's. And you can see this.
It's so fun after an NFL football game.
I can tell you who the successful quarterbacks are and who will be successful.
Because if at the end of the game they're talking about how well they played or if they're blaming everybody else, that's all you need to know, right?
If they're team one, they're going to be talking, the best ones are going to be talking about the linemen and the receivers and the coaching staff.
And if it didn't go well, You look at some of these great quarterbacks who lose, and they'll be in that press conference saying, I've got to play better.
I've got to lead better.
The best leaders, they have this heart that enables them to accept responsibility.
Number four, the best leaders, the heart habit that they cultivate, today, these uncommon leaders is to respond with courage.
People want to follow men and women who are courageous.
If you don't want to have that hard conversation.
You think your team knows that you're not wanting to have that hard conversation?
And they're wondering, are you clueless?
Are you a coward? Do you lack competence?
Are you engaged or or disengaged, and when, as leaders, when we don't have hard conversations, we are, we are allowing our leadership to evaporate right before our eyes.
People want to follow courageous leaders.
And then the fifth and final heart habit, I would, I would offer, if you're only going to attack one of these first, like if you say, okay, where would I start with the heart habits?
I would say it's with this one.
Think others first. Now, that is not our natural instinct.
And I would guess in a negotiation, it's almost never our first instinct.
And I'm not judging how people negotiate, but I'm just telling you the best leaders think others first. And what I mean by that is they're trying to add value to others.
They're trying to add value to others.
And I would encourage your listeners to try something.
Call it an experiment.
take the next 24 hours.
I want you to see what would happen to your life and your leadership if you tried to add value to every person you encounter.
Now, there are people listening going, well, that's impossible.
Hold on. Listen to what I said.
I said, try. It's the trying that transforms you.
I mean, there's so many ways to add value to people.
You can encourage people.
You can challenge people.
You can resource people.
You can compliment them.
And you make your own list. There are probably infinite ways you could add value to another human being, but here's the magic of it.
If I'm trying to add value to you, who am I thinking about?
I'm thinking about you, not me.
So I've shifted my focus.
So I'm wondering, I don't profess to know anything about negotiating, particularly at a professional level, but I wonder how that would change if you're thinking, I'm trying to add value.
to this person in this process.
I wonder what that would look like.
I wonder how that would change things.
I know it'll change your life.
Here's my bet. If you have listeners, it'll spend 24 hours trying to add value to everybody they meet.
And I'm talking about the person at the gas station.
I'm talking about everybody you meet for 24 hours.
How can I add value for this person or that person to this person?
I think they'll try it a second day.
And I think they'll try it a third day and i think it'll change their life now it's no substitute for these skills but it'll get it'll it'll start getting your heart right i had i had a coach one time tell me he said he said i don't i don't know what to do with you i'm paraphrasing he said when you walk in a room you're not trying to take charge i said well you're right thanks for noticing that he said well that's what leaders do i said no that that might be what those chasing in common greatness do?
I said, what I'm trying to do when I walk in a room is figure out how I can add the most value.
And maybe it's to take charge and maybe it's to take out the trash.
My wife will love this episode.
So you're going to go home and need to take out the trash, brother.
Take out the trash.
Oh, man. And Mark, what I love about this is that you can take these exact same principles and apply Apply it directly to negotiation and difficult conversations for leaders and anybody who is out there having these tough conversations.
The hunger for wisdom.
Like I mentioned to you before, we have over a thousand episodes and I learn something new in every single episode.
And I'm just excited to learn something new.
And when you surround yourself with information and knowledge and constantly feed yourself, your body and mind have no choice but to improve.
And so that's going going to be a key to becoming a better conversationalist and negotiator too.
And if you're in a negotiation, again, I'm speculating, correct me here.
If I go into a negotiation, let's say you and I are negotiating, which I would not want to negotiate with you, but let's pretend we were.
And I go in with a mindset, I'm going to see what I can learn about you, about your perspective, about what a win looks like for you, about your history, about your bias, about your passions.
If I have wisdom, if I'm hungry for wisdom in this negotiation, I think that helps me negotiate better.
Absolutely. Negotiation is an information game.
And I'm not gaining information if I'm just talking over people all the time.
It goes back to your example there, too, taking control of the room.
I think it's a very old school and limited perspective there too.
That's okay. If I'm negotiating with somebody, or if I'm on somebody's team, do I want to negotiate or be led by somebody who takes control of me once I enter the room?
That's unpleasant. Nobody wants that.
And so it really, again, these mindsets will change the way that you behave. And then expecting the best. If you go into these negotiations expecting that it it's not going to work, then it's, it's not going to work.
It's what is it? Henry Ford?
Yeah, Ford, who said, whether you believe you can or you can't, you're right.
You know, if you have that mindset, you're not going to be successful.
Accepting responsibility.
I have this concept called conversational leadership, where a lot of times I realize that other people blame the other side or the other person for the conversation going poorly.
But as negotiators and leaders, we have to take responsibility for the conversation going well.
If somebody's not performing well or they're being disrespectful or mean or rude, it's my responsibility to show them how to negotiate in the process of negotiation.
And then lastly, think about others first. That goes straight to empathy.
I have to understand the other side.
I have to think about how I can help you find your victory.
I have to understand your victory and then try to help help facilitate that victory.
And then I know that if I do a good job of doing that, you will be more willing to work with me as well.
So this tracks perfectly with negotiation.
There you go. Well, good.
I was hoping we could add value today.
There we go. I knew it.
I knew it. Mark, this has been an absolute masterclass, my friend.
And before you go, I want to give you an opportunity again to let the listeners know about you, your work, and the book again, and how they can get in touch. Okay.
Thanks for that. So my cell number is 678 -612 -8441.
And I would encourage you, if you can, to put that in the show notes, because some people are driving 678 -612 -8441.
So I'd love to hear from you if you've got a question or if I can serve you.
My email is It is mark at leadeveryday .com and the website is leadeveryday .com and the books are available.
All the books are available anywhere you buy books.
Oh, okay. Yes, Mark, I will let you go.
But listeners, I hope you recognize what just happened.
That's never occurred on this show.
I thought you were joking.
You're not joking. Okay, so going back to caring, listeners, when you care, you really care.
When you want to add value, you really add value.
And this is you showing it.
Mark, this is exceptional.
Expect the text from me later today.
I look forward, let's stay in touch. If I can serve you or anyone that's listening, let me know.
Appreciate you, brother.
Thank you so much for coming on the show.
Thanks for the time.
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The best things in life lie on the other side of difficult conversations.
Keep learning, keep practicing, and keep getting better.
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