The Power of Positive Leadership, with Jon Gordon – Episode 192 of The Action Catalyst Podcast

Leadership speaker, best-selling author, and global influencer Jon Gordon explains why when it comes to employees, you’ve got to love ‘em up but hold them accountable, why to be demanding not demeaning and to start with the believers, how there IS such a thing as healthy delusion, and shares a story involving fellow Action Catalyst alum Donna Orender.

About Jon:

Jon Gordon’s best-selling books and talks have inspired readers and audiences around the world.

Jon Gordon is one of the most influential and sought after leadership authors and speakers today. He’s a consultant to numerous leaders, CEO’s, NFL, NBA, and MLB Coaches, championship teams and high performers and an inspirational teacher who has helped millions of people have a more positive mindset.

He is the author of 28 books including 15 best sellers and 5 children’s books. His books include the timeless classic The Energy Bus which has sold over 3 million copies, The Carpenter which was a top 5 business book of the year, Training Camp, The Power of Positive Leadership, and The Power of a Positive Team.

Jon and his tips have been featured on The Today Show, CNN, CNBC, The Golf Channel, Fox and Friends and in numerous magazines and newspapers.

His clients include The Los Angeles Dodgers, Campbell’s Soup, Dell, Publix, Southwest Airlines, Miami Heat, The Los Angeles Rams, Snapchat, Truist Bank, Clemson Football, Northwestern Mutual, West Point Academy and more.

Jon is a graduate of Cornell University and holds a Masters in Teaching from Emory University. He and his training/consulting company are passionate about developing positive leaders, organizations and teams.

Learn more at JonGordon.com.

The Action Catalyst is presented by the Southwestern Family of Companies. With each episode, the podcast features some of the nation’s top thought leaders and experts, sharing meaningful tips and advice. Learn more at TheActionCatalyst.com, subscribe below or wherever you listen to podcasts, and be sure to leave a rating and review!

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(Transcribed using A.I. / May include errors):

Host
Great episode for you today, Jon Gordon, he is just one of the most genuine like down to earth coolest guys ever. I’m sure you’ve probably heard of The Energy Bus, continues to stay on the bestseller list week after week after week. But he also wrote The Carpenter, he wrote The Seed he wrote You Win In The Locker Room First, he works with a number of the NFL NBA and Major League Baseball teams fortune 500, just an awesome, awesome guy. And he has a book that is out called The Power of Positive Leadership. And so that’s why we brought him back on the show. Jon, welcome back, brother.

Jon Gordon
Great to be back with you. Thanks for having me back.

Host
So what’s this all about? Like the power positive leadership? Where did the inspiration come from?

Jon Gordon
So I wrote the energy bus in 2006. It came out in 2007. And I’ve been speaking on, you know, the power of positive leadership. I’ve actually been given these talks on the energy bus and leading with more optimism and belief and positivity and loving your passengers and building a great positive culture. And this book was really the culmination of all that I’ve learned working with businesses, working with sports teams working with all these great leaders, like I’ve had the opportunity to work with so many great leaders like Dabo Sweeney, or Doug Conan at Campbell Soup and Southwest Airlines and Dell and you get the opportunity to work with these great leaders that I started to think about positive leaders are the ones who change the world. They’re the ones who transform teams and organizations.

Host
What exactly is positive leadership?

Jon Gordon
Naysayers talk about problems, but they don’t solve them. It’s the positive leaders who changed the world. It’s the positive leaders who transform their teams and their organizations. So you know, when people hear the words positive, they often roll their eyes, right, they think we’re talking about Pollyanna positive, where life is full of unicorns and rainbows. But, you know, when I wrote this book, I really want to make it clear that we are positive not because life is easy, we’re positive, because life is hard, were positive, because you will face all sorts of adversity, all sorts of adversity, challenges, obstacles and setbacks. And as a leader, you need to maintain optimistic in order to lead your team forward, you have to have a vision of where you want to go, you have to have a bigger purpose that ultimately drives you. So this is a book that includes a framework of nine characteristics, nine things that positive leaders do. And then each chapter is one of those nine things broken down into smaller parts. This is what makes great leaders great. My favorite feedback from this book so far is that almost everyone who’s read it said, you know, I thought it was gonna be one thing, but it turned out to be another and what it turned out to be was very real, very grounded a lot of great examples of leaders and how they’ve led how they’ve changed the world how they’ve won national championships. Dabo Swinney, for instance, incredible positive leader Alan Mulally turned around Ford in 2006. They were losing $14 billion, had them profitable in a few years, one of the greatest leadership feats in history, people talk about how he did it, it was unbelievable. I interviewed him for this book, this book would not have been great without Alan’s information, because he defines his leadership as positive leadership. He’s like, You gotta love him up, John, you gotta love him up. But you got to hold them accountable to the process, a lot of love and a lot of accountability. He centralized Ford Ford was very regionalised. He centralized them to become one team, one Ford with one goal. And one plan. He said everyone had to know the plan, embrace the plan, and relentlessly work towards the plan. And that’s another key. It’s about being demanding, but not being demeaning. Positive leaders pursue excellence. They want to achieve greatness because they believe in a brighter and better future, like okay, hey, let’s create it. And that often includes innovation. It includes a focus on excellence, a passionate desire to be your best because you can’t create a great future if you’re not working hard for it. But you also have to be optimistic and positive as you work hard. So that’s what I love about this. People are saying, you know, the research in it the examples and really dealing with the negativity that exists in a very practical way. This makes this a book that’s not pie in the sky, not theory, not Pollyanna. This is real stuff.

Host
So what about realism? So how do you reconcile those two dynamics?

Jon Gordon
Well, you don’t have to be an extrovert to be a positive leader. You can be an introvert First off, and I think it’s important that we address that because people think positive leadership means you’re bouncing off the walls, you’re high energy. No, it’s really from your essence of how you lead the love you have the passion you have from inside you. So it’s not anything that you necessarily do, you know, on the outside in a in an energetic or frenetic way. But there’s something about positive leadership that says, I believe in a brighter and better future. So yes, these are challenges. We do address them in a realistic way we confront the reality that exists but because we’re optimistic because we’re positive, we’re finding ways and we’re finding solutions to help be successful in the future. It’s not pessimistic, it’s not a complainer if you’re complaining you’re not lead thing complainers focus on problems, positive leaders focus on solutions. So we have to understand too, that it’s all about, you know, it’s subjective. It’s never objective. You talking about realism, you know, people say, I’m just being a realist. You know, I’m just being a realist. Well, yeah, you’re being a realist. But guess what time and time again, Steve Jobs as team would say it was impossible to create the software, the hardware that he wanted created, they talked about this in his biography, they call it as they call it, his reality distortion field. And time and time again, he would actually convince them they could do it. They said he distorted their reality from pessimism, or some would say realism to optimism. And then time and time again, they accomplished the very thing that they thought was impossible because of his optimism. So leaders lead with this faith, they lead with belief, they lead with what’s possible. So I think it’s often dangerous to say, I’m just being a realist. I think it’s okay to confront the reality. But why not say we could find a way to make it happen. You know, when you look at Ford, for instance, during the Great Recession, they had done everything, right. They had done the restructuring, they were making great products. Now, they had a great platform for the Ford vehicles. Alan did everything right. And yet the great recession hit, and it looked like it was all for naught. But did they wallow? Did they complain? Alan? Well, he said wallowing is not an option. Complaining is not a plan, we have a plan. And we will continue to work towards it. If we have to adjust we will but positive leaders find a way forward and without him for doesn’t turn it around without him for doesn’t save hundreds of 1000s of jobs for doesn’t make it back. So it’s incredible of what they’re doing and how and how they’re accomplishing great things. What happens if a realist was in in his role? What happened if that was the case? I told my dad I want to be a writer and speaker, his response was what the heck you want to do that for? That’s a load of junk that would amount to anything. My dad was in New York City police officer in his mind, like, No, you focus on your restaurant at the time and I owned a restaurant. That’s something that’s real, that’s something you can make money at writing and speaking, doing that for a living. For him. He was being a realist. He wasn’t even trying to be negative. He was just being a realist of how he saw the world. But I didn’t see the world as he saw it. I saw it through an optimistic lens. And I pursued my passion with a vision. I think that’s a very real example that we confront all the time. Now, will I ever play in the NBA, I could say I’m gonna go play in the NBA right now, that is not being realistic. And that is not even optimistic. That is a pipe dream. It’s so hard to identify what the difference is. The difference is when my son is growing up, and he’s a tennis player, and he says, I want to play professional tennis. And I say to him, You know what, if you have a dream work towards it, let’s see what God has in store. Let’s see what the plan is. But should I ever crushes Jim and said, That’s not realistic? No. So I believe you have a dream, you go for it. As he gets older, you’ll start to see if that’s now possible. If that’s realistic, now he’s a junior, right? In high school, we’re starting to see is it possible still too early to tell? Because he’s good, but he’s not great. But they say he has a lot of potential. So he could become great over the next couple of years. So I’m never going to shoot it down. I’m never gonna say that’s not a possibility. You see what happens? And then you trust that God has a plan? Being positive doesn’t guarantee you’ll succeed, but being negative will guarantee you won’t. So we’re not saying hey, just be positive and anything can happen. No, I like what Maxwell Kato said. He said, You know, you can’t be everything or anything you want to be because you really can’t. But you could be everything that ultimately God created you to be you trust that there’s a plan, you work hard towards it, you believe you put it out there, and then you see what happens. But you shouldn’t ever not go after your goals. Because you’re being a realist. Like, you know what people from our family don’t achieve success like that people from our part of the neighborhood in our part of the town, don’t go after dreams like that people in our family, don’t go to college, you know, over and over again, you’ll hear things like that from people and I that’s why I say it’s dangerous to tell people what they can’t do. The world needs more encouragers believers inspires to inspire people to encourage them to what they can do. But then someone say you it’s dangerous to tell someone to go out to California and pursue their dream of acting, they could fail and come back and be miserable only if they allow that failure to define them. And so if it’s an experience that you get pursuing something and you don’t succeed, then you don’t succeed. My brother was an actor right out of college, he pursued acting, he worked in New York City, he bartender for years while he pursued acting, he never made it. It was never a huge success with acting. He never really also committed to being great. That’s part of the journey. But He then got into sales became very successful in sales. Then he actually went to consulting and now he’s the Chief Marketing Officer. serve a company. You know, it’s unbelievable how his path has moved forward, but I would have never told him don’t pursue acting because the odds of being a successful actor is minuscule when Dabo Swinney, for instance, was fired as a coach, you know, Alabama, the whole coaching staff was fired. He went into real estate, you know, for a couple of years, and then went back to pursue coaching. Now, if he was a pessimist, he would, he would say, You know what, that coaching thing, I don’t want to lose my job again, I’m not gonna go after it. He said, Now, the best is yet to come. I’m going for it. So now he’s a wide receivers coach and a recruiting coordinator at Clemson, then he gets the job as the head coach, because Tommy Bowden was was let go. And so now he steps into this opportunity. He meets with the Board of Trustees, and the Board of Trustees says, We want to create a program, a football program, that’s like Florida. That’s like Michigan, we want to be like them and dabbles in that meeting. And he says, Sir, I respectfully disagree. But my vision is so much bigger than that. I want to create a program where they want to be like us. That’s my vision. And so he was now saying that they probably thought this guy is crazy. Right? This guy is full of pipe dreams. He’s got a lot of words. But let’s see what happens. Yeah, sure. Dabo. Thanks. We’ll see you in a couple of years when you’re not coaching anymore. But he believed and then he walks into the room with a sign that said, I can’t with a T crossed out another sign that said Believe and he starts to instill that program with belief that they can be great believe that they can be the best. Now they had some couple couple good seasons, but they go six and seven in 2010 was almost fired, but wasn’t ad still believed in him. After that 10 OR MORE WINS every year with a run up to the national championship and winning the national championship. People outside the program never thought this was possible. Many inside ERP I never thought this was possible. But there’s one belief is one man’s positive leadership changed everything.

Host
What about when people internally don’t believe?

Jon Gordon
I’m glad you asked that. Key story, Donna Orender takes over the WNBA, she had left the PGA Tour to take over the WNBA to become the commissioner, there was so much negativity in the WNBA, there was a lack of belief that people cared about women’s basketball, there was a belief that they didn’t care, there was a lack of optimism of what it could be. But Donna saw the passion in the players and the coaches. And she believed that the WNBA could be something special. So she said you start with the believers, there are those core group of people that believe and you get them on your bus first and foremost, and you really energize and inspire them to move forward, then you have some wins, you actually create a few wins here in there, then you have to reach the next level of believers. And that happens when you show proof of concept, you show that success, you show what is being accomplished. And that might be in a football season, you know, you have some more wins every year. And so people start to see that success. So now you get the next level of believers on your bus. And now they’re believing. And then the next level are the people that don’t believe that no matter what you show will not be successful, you have to get those people off the bus. So you’re letting the people who have no belief who will never believe in you and what you’re doing, you have the next level that you have to see proof of concept. And you have your early adopters, you have your core believers. So she said you create a system of collective belief going through one group at a time. And that’s how she did it. And I share that in the book. It’s some great advice.

Host
What a practical way, like a systematic way to go about creating transformation from the inside.

Jon Gordon
Right. And that’s your A lot of times they talk about painting the building just by painting the building by painting the shed by painting the bar and people start to see improvements. So they actually start to get excited about what’s happening. And you’ll see that with businesses, hey, we got this win here, hey, we got this sale, things are looking up. And so you do want to highlight the successes. You want to showcase the real successes, but it’s really important that you address the negativity that exists the lack of belief when William Bratton was the police chief under Rudy Giuliani and I wrote about this in the book as well. They said that crime couldn’t be reduced in New York. Well, we know years later that he reduced it. He was asked how he did it. He said well, I met with my five bureau chiefs one on one and I asked him one question, do you believe that crime can be reduced in your area? Three said no. Wow. Two said yes. He said unfortunately, I had to fire three people that day. Why play the game if you don’t believe you can win. So he hired the optimist people who believed and then set out on their plan. Now you have to have a plan. Alan Mulally says everyone has to know the plan, embrace the plan and relentlessly work towards the plants he that’s the thing. It’s relentless optimism relentless work towards a goal and plan that brings it to fruition. Duke University did research and they studied opt in Next and they found it, they worked harder, got paid more and more more likely to succeed in business, sports and also politics, which is interesting. And with the research, what the researchers found was that the optimist because they believed in a brighter and better future, they then actually worked harder to create it, it became a self fulfilling prophecy. The researchers called it deluding that they will deluded themselves to working harder. I’m not a fan of that term, but because they worked harder, they then took the actions necessary and then created it and so much of life is belief leads to action.

Host
Jon Gordon is who you’re listening to JonGordon.com. J. O. N. Gordon. No. H. Man, Jon, just thanks for being a catalyst of this light in the world.

Jon Gordon
Well thanks, appreciate it.