Relationships as a Learning Network

Not long ago, I had the opportunity to interview Mark Cole (CEO of Maxwell Leadership) for our Leading At The Next Level podcast and to promote him as the wrap up keynote speaker at our 2025 LeadershipLegacy Experience. Cindy and I have received some amazing mentorship from Mark over the last decade, but we’ve developed a solid friendship with him as well; he even wrote the foreword to my first book, What’s KILLING Your Profitability? (It ALL Boils Down to Leadership!). During that interview, Mark mentioned the time he had just spent with the President of Argentina, developing a plan to train leaders across all sectors of that country. Having someone of Mark’s caliber do that interview, join us for our first event its kind in Harrisonburg, VA, and agree to come back a year later for the sequel blows my mind. That said, the fifteen leaders who joined us as executive panelists for that event were all rock stars, too. Along these lines, the last in-person meeting Cindy and I before the world shut down for Covid was with Carly Fiorina, former CEO of HP and 2016 Presidential candidate, discussing some speaking engagements she invited us to do for her non-profit.

I don’t mention any of this out of arrogance, but to emphasize the role so many mentors have played in helping me close huge gaps. A strong work ethic certainly served me well early in my career but I can’t image any of the opportunities Cindy and I have experienced over the last decade had I not developed a healthy self-worth and the confidence to connect with more experienced leaders I could look to for mentorship. The progression from being a carpenter and machine operator in my early twenties to having the opportunity to serve people the way we do today is the direct result of the relationships we’ve built serving as a learning network.

Just a few weeks into the position where I was responsible for rolling out that new lean manufacturing initiative, I remember a process engineer (who was my direct supervisor at the time) going on a tirade because some folks on an assembly line were up in arms about a change he had made. They were livid because they felt like their way of implementing a necessary change would have been far more effective than his - and they were right. He wasn’t frustrated because they were pushing back or because their way was better, his frustration was because he had asked each of them for input before he even started the process and no one offered any. The lesson he wanted me to learn from his rant was that the folks I’d be working with were the experts in their respective areas. Getting their input and involvement would be critical to any success I could ever hope to achieve.

Interestingly enough, Carly Fiorina shared a similar lesson with me and Cindy twenty years after this when she emphasized that “the closest person to the problem always has the best solution.” The example she used was also from a manufacturing process improvement scenario, but the principle is universal. Whether it’s with coworkers or a team we’re responsible for leading, we will never have all the best answers. Hell, it’s ridiculous to think we need to. 

Building effective relationships so we can play off one another’s strengths allows everyone involved to perform at a higher level; I’ve certainly benefited from this more than I can even explain over the last twenty-five years - and we’ll dig into how in detail later on. When care more about serving everyone involved and getting great results than we do about who gets credit for an idea, we’ll be able to leverage our relationships as a true learning network. That will eventually have a ripple effect on everything we do so we’ll look at that next.