Building the Best: 8 Proven Leadership Principles to Elevate Others to Success: 8 Proven Leadership Principles to Elevate Others to Success

PRAISE FOR

BUILDING THE BEST

"In Building the Best, John Eades has put together a thorough and thoughtful guide to leading. It is a treasure trove of practical wisdom."

—Patrick Lencioni, CEO, The Table Group, and bestselling author of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team and The Advantage

You will find John Eades has much to share about leadership and life. Readers won’t just walk away thinking about how to be a better leader but will have practical tools to help them make it a reality.

—Jon Gordon, bestselling author of The Energy Bus and The Power of Positive Leadership

"John Eades is a student of leadership. His relentless pursuit of the truth over many years has led him to discover the secrets of the most effective leaders. Building the Best is an awesome tool to empower you—not only with what he’s learned but how you can apply those learnings along your leadership journey."

—John O’Leary, #1 national bestselling author of On Fire

"Building the Best is smart, interesting, and a fantastic read! I recommend it to any person in management ready to take their leadership to the next level!"

—Bob Beaudine, president and CEO, Eastman & Beaudine, and bestselling author of The Power of WHO! and 2 Chairs

Copyright © 2020 by LearnLoft LLC. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

ISBN: 978-1-26-045817-6

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To the leaders who get up every morning and reject the notion of making their life all about themselves. This world needs you more than ever.

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

PART I     Change Your Heart

1      Point to the Benefits

2      Mirror What They Do

3      Practice Love and Discipline

PART II    Start with the Fundamentals

4      Build Real Bonds

5      Encourage the Culture

6      Clarify the Purpose

PART III    Balance People and Performance

7      Execute Every Day

8      Align the Behaviors

9      Have Direct Dialogues

10     Develop the People

PART IV     Never Forget These

11     Use the Cs

12     Keep the Door Moving

References

Index

Acknowledgments

Books aren’t written by one person, and careers aren’t built by one person either. There are so many people to acknowledge it would take up every page of this book. So if I left you out, thank you.

Thank you to my wife, Amy. When you start to think about how many people there are in the world and how I got so lucky to end up with you as my wife, it’s scary. These pages would never have been written without your belief in me and my professional mission. I can’t wait for the world to read the work of the real writer in our family.

Thank you to my kids, John Ellis and Lucy. The day you came into my life a purpose was born where words wouldn’t do it justice. Don’t ever forget, you are going to do great and mighty things—go change the world.

Thank you to Keith and Margie, my parents. While life hasn’t always been perfect, I couldn’t have asked for a better childhood and environment to grow up in. I learned the value of hard work, professionalism, and grit from you, Dad, and I learned service and community from you, Mom—something I couldn’t ever thank you both enough for.

Thank you to Michael and David, my brothers. While we will never be as close as we once were because of age and distance, I learned how to compete and persevere from taking it to both of you my whole life. I am proud to share last name Eades with you both.

To Jim, Lisa, Eric and Laura Beth. I have learned incredible lessons from each of you. I am grateful to be a part of your family and honored to be your friends.

• • •

Thank you to Christina Wilder. Without you there is no way this book would have been written. The daily banter and whiteboard sessions to bring the concepts in this book to life are moments I will never forget. Your sense of humor makes me a better human being, and your willingness to challenge my ideas makes me a better professional. From the very beginning, you saw something in me and took a big leap of faith to join me on this journey. For that, I am forever grateful.

Thank you to Mark Houston. Your development as a professional is something I am so proud of, but what I value the most is your character. I appreciate everything you did as a member of the team and can’t thank you enough for the sacrifices you made to get where we are trying to go.

Thank you to Gordon Shuford. Because of your tenacity and effort, this book is going to touch the lives of so many people. You’re a great man, and I am so happy to have played a small part in your development as a professional.

To all our clients at LearnLoft: Thank you for the trust and belief in us, it means the world.

Thank you to those who were instrumental in helping me write this book:

   Roderic Yapp: You were the seed many years ago, and I respect you more than you know.

   Bryan Wish: You challenged the writing of someone you didn’t know well, and for that I am grateful.

   Connie Hawkins: Only God could have brought you in my life, and I can’t thank you enough for the constant encouragement.

   Steve Smith: You are an excellent leader, and the lessons you taught me early in my career I have never forgotten.

   Jacquilyn Lavalle: You have a gift with words, and I hope you continue to use it.

   Trevor Byrd: You are one of the smartest people I have ever met, and I couldn’t respect you more. Thank you for your help in bringing our research to life.

   To all the guests who have been on the Follow My Lead podcast: Your example of leadership and your willingness to share your stories with me have no doubt shaped my life and thinking.

   To Ludovico Einaudi and NEEDTOBREATHE: Without your music, there is no way this book would have been written. I am pretty sure I know your music better than you do at this point.

Thank you to Taylor Mokris, Doug LaBrosse, Devin Drobbin, and Nick Maslanka. Your friendship and constant belief in me has helped more than you will ever know.

Thank you to Armand Brown and Corey Richard. I do my best daily to be a good example for you and not let you down. You are ready—go do big things that go beyond your own glory.

Above all, thank you to God. None of this is possible without you, and I am constantly amazed at how you are using me.

Introduction

They were words I would never forget: John, I didn’t know what I was supposed to be doing, I didn’t know where we were going, and I certainly didn’t know how I was helping us get there. Years later, I still replay this moment often. It serves as a poignant reminder from a former team member that leadership is not a blind pursuit. This is precisely where the idea for this book began.

The opportunity to transition from a sales role to running a division within the company presented itself to me in 2014. The new role came with the added responsibility of managing other people. After just one year, frustration set in. Like all young, hungry, and eager professionals, I had grandiose ideas and expectations, most of them revolving around my impact on the people I worked with. Much to my surprise, these expectations for my direct reports were not being met, and my influence on these individuals was minimal. I was stuck in quicksand with no immediate relief in sight. So, I did what an inexperienced leader would do: I made changes to the team.

As I prepared to deliver the unfortunate news, I was far from confident. I wondered, was this the quick fix that would catapult my team to success? Was there more to leadership than hiring, firing, and barking out orders? One of the hardest things I have ever done, I delivered the news to my now ex–team member without much confidence. I was utterly crushed by her aforementioned response.

As she left my office, her words made it clear that the problem was not my team, their drive, skills, or even personalities. It was in me and how I was leading.

Be it fate or divine intervention, I have zero doubt that this moment in my life was predetermined; in it evolved my mission to develop myself as a leader, and from then on I kept the words of author and Navy SEAL Jocko Willink close to my head and my heart: There are no bad teams, only bad leaders.

Soon after this moment in 2014, I founded the company LearnLoft, a business whose mission would be to turn professionals into leaders and create healthier places to work. It started with a few blogs on LinkedIn to share my leadership struggles, which quickly became a weekly routine and began to garner the interest and attention of thousands of readers.

In those early blogs, I felt like a real imposter helping other people become better leaders when I had barely done it successfully myself. To help grow my own knowledge around the topic of leadership, I started a podcast called Follow My Lead. The podcast’s purpose was to transfer stories and best practices of today’s leaders to the leaders of tomorrow, and that’s exactly what it did. Much like the blog, the podcast gained a fast following because of the incredible leaders who agreed to come on the show and share their experiences. The weekly practice of interviewing, editing, and pulling out the best lessons for the weekly blog not only caused my confidence as a leader of my own team to skyrocket but laid the foundation for the book you are about to read.

Since the beginning of that journey, my writing has been read by more than 7 million people on LinkedIn, Inc.com, Thrive Global, Training Industry Magazine, Ragan, and CNBC Money. Because of this traction, I was fortunate to be named a Top Voice in Management & Workplace by LinkedIn in 2017. The Follow My Lead podcast has been downloaded by more than 500,000 listeners, and 40,000 readers subscribe to my weekly leadership newsletter. The writing and the podcast led to thousands of opportunities to help individual managers become leaders through a virtual instructor-led training program called the Ultimate Leadership Academy, as well as partnering directly with organizations to help improve their employees’ leadership skills at every level of their company. I share this with you not to impress you, but to impress upon you that I have always felt as if I was learning and applying right along with my readers, listeners, and students. I have always been on the front lines leading my own team, trying to help others do the same. I was able to take what I learned from the best leaders in the country and put it into action.

An organization I’ll call Arlington Gas Co. reached out to LearnLoft after realizing there was a dire need in the company for formal leadership training. The organization’s current practice was to promote top performers to positions of leadership as a mechanism to retain talented team members. While this practice isn’t unlike what most companies do, it was not producing quality leaders; on the contrary, these newly elevated managers found themselves inept at leading others. Arlington Gas Co. was drawn to the simple idea exposed by our research of more than 40,000 organizational leaders and hundreds of interviews. The most important job of a leader today is to elevate others. In order to elevate others, leaders need to use high levels of love and discipline.

My first coaching call was with a leader named Chris. Chris spoke very highly of his leadership skills and ability to manage his team. In fact, he let me know immediately that our services were most likely going to be a waste of time, something he had told his supervisors at Arlington Gas when they hired us. But because it was a companywide initiative, Chris had no choice but to participate.

Through our Building the Best (BTB) Leader Assessment, Chris’s team provided feedback about how he was leading. The results clearly showed that Chris’s opinion of himself was vastly different from the opinion his team members had of him. The feedback showed that he was falling short in a number of areas vitally important in leadership. Seeing the forthright commentary from his team was a sobering moment for Chris, and his response foreshadowed the incredible future that he had as a leader. He immediately engaged in our program, making himself vulnerable to the process and the opinions of his team. His willingness to accept criticism allowed him to become one of