Lessons on Leadership

Episode 938: Lessons on Leadership, with General Robert Mixon

Lessons on leadership, with our guest, General Robert Mixon. Learn the secrets to unlocking your potential by listening to lessons on leadership.

Robert W. Mixon, Jr. is a retired U.S. Army Major General, former President of a manufacturing company, EVP of a diverse, innovative not for profit company, and Leadership Consultant. He serves as a faculty member at the Thayer Leader Development Group at West Point and various premier business schools including The Simon School of Business at the University of Rochester, The Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis, and the Cox Business School at Southern Methodist University.

Robert served his country for over three decades in various military leadership roles before deciding to bring his high-caliber lessons on leadership style and values to the corporate world in 2007. Robert is an expert in the field of Change Management and has made it his mission to develop cultures defined by trust and empowerment.

He co-authored the best-selling book, Cows in the Living Room: Developing an Effective Strategic Plan and Sustaining It, and founded Level Five Associates, a change management consulting company which helps organizations develop strong leaders and unique cultures through the use of their trademarked “Big 6” Leadership Principles. He’s a recent recipient of a Business Leadership Teaching Excellence Award from SMU Cox School of Business.

What you will learn from this episode about lessons on leadership:

• General Mixon shares how a football scholarship led to attending West Point and finding his military calling and a sense of belonging
• How General Mixon left his career in military service and reentered the private sector, first with a nonprofit organization and then as an entrepreneur
• Why General Mixon considers leadership to be a privilege, not a right, and why he believes in leading by example
• How General Mixon and the team at Level Five Associates work with their clients to customize lessons on leadership programs and workshops
• General Mixon shares his “Big 6” Leadership Principles and defines each, explaining why they matter
• How the team at Level Five Associates helps leaders evaluate, score, and adjust their Big 6, and how doing so improves their leadership abilities
• Why success requires the ability to have frank discussions and the willingness to work toward sustaining your progress
• Why believing in your culture and “walking the talk” in a transparent and authentic way is vital
• Why the most important lesson General Mixon learned was that “it isn’t about me, it is about us”
• Why, to achieve your full potential as a leader, you must commit to the lessons on leadership journey

Resources:

• We’re All In: The Journey to a World-Class Culture by General Robert Mixon: https://amzn.to/3dtzPfs
• Email: [email protected]
• Website: www.levelfiveassociates.com/
• LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/robertmixon/
• Continue your lessons on leadership journey by downloading this free ebook

Additional Resources:

• Sell With Authority by Drew McLellan and Stephen Woessner: https://amzn.to/39y7x13
• Predictive ROI Free Resource Library: https://predictiveroi.com/resources/
• Stephen Woessner’s LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/stephenwoessner/
• Listen to more lessons on leadership and build the right skills with our guest, Raphael Bender

 

 

Lessons on Leadership: Full Episode Transcript

 

Get ready to find your recipe for success and start learning lessons on leadership from America’s top business owners here at Onward Nation with your host, Stephen Woessner.

 

Good morning. I am Stephen Woessner, CEO of Predictive ROI and your host for Onward Nation, where I interview today’s top business owners so we can learn their recipe for success, how they built and how they scaled their business. And I know that I’ve been mentioning this now for the last several weeks, several months, maybe about how our Predictive ROI team has been rebuilding and scaling our free resources section.

 

In fact, it’s turned into Onward Nation. It’s turned into a resource library. We’ve been adding so many more ebooks and checklists and guides also, that you can download these resources to be helpful to you and your team. We’re looking to double down on being helpful. And so if you haven’t visited our resources library recently, I would strongly encourage you to do so.

 

It’s PredictiveROI.com/Resources. We’ve compiled all of these insights from our very brilliant guests and from their generosity of sharing and teaching and so forth, and wanting to help you move Onward to that next level. So just go to PredictiveROI.com/Resources is whatever you request. We will send it right to your inbox. 

 

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Lessons on Leadership: General Robert Mixon’s Introduction

 

Before we welcome today’s very special guest, Robert Mixon Onward Nation, I want to share some additional context about why, when Coach Jim Johnson and Coach, if you’re listening, thank you very much for making the introduction so that Robert and I can have this conversation and be able to learn, from Robert in his experience. 

 

Why, when Robert said yes on our why I was so excited that we could have this conversation. So Robert comes to us now. He is the owner of level five associates, but prior to being in the private sector, Robert served this country for 33 years and retired as a major general from the United States Army. So we have this really unique opportunity to have a conversation with obviously somebody who is a proven leader, a proven leader, and let’s say some very dynamic situations, a proven leader who’s had the opportunity to learn from some of the best in the business.

 

If we’re talking about the private sector or if we’re talking about throughout his military service, and somebody who has been able to not only learn, but then also apply and then also learn some of the best in the leads excuse me, some of the best in the business as well. We’re going to be able to learn from Robert about his six big principles.

 

Be able to slice those apart so that you can then take those and apply those into your business right away. Robert is also the author of We Are All in the Journey to a World Class Culture Onward Nation. This is going to be one of those conversations. You want to buckle in and take a ton of notes, just like I’m going to be to Robert.

 

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Lessons on Leadership: General Mixon’s Career Journey

 

Thank you so much for joining us on Onward Nation, sir. Yeah. Thanks, Stephen. It’s great to be here. And I wish all the best to the Onward Nation audience here today. as we have the opportunity to chat a little bit. Well, thank you, sir, for again saying yes. And before we dive into the litany of questions, I’m so excited that I actually lost my place to the notes.

 

I said the six big and I meant to say your big six principles. I mean, even getting tongue twisted, I can’t wait to have this conversation. So but before we do that, actually take us behind the curtain here, because 33 years of decorated military service is only a portion of the story, the fact that you’re an owner and an author today in the private sector, only a portion of the story take us behind the curtain and tell us more about you, your path, your journey, and then we’ll dive in.

 

Okay. Stephen, I came from, you know, relatively humble beginnings. Born in Atlanta, Georgia, grew up the oldest of six kids. My father served the nation as a marine, during the timeframe of the Korean War. we didn’t have a lot of, you know, money or or other trappings of wealth, if you will, as a young person.

 

But, we had a lot of love and I was fortunate to be in a loving family with five brothers and sisters that I still love very much. And we stay in touch. At 17 years old, I had the opportunity to go to West Point, and it was an incredible opportunity coming from the family that I had grown up with there in Georgia, North Carolina and back back to Atlanta.

 

I wanted to be a college football player. The Army gave me the opportunity to at least step out there in the field. I turned out to be a very mediocre football player. at West Point. But they didn’t end my scholarship when my football playing days were over, so that was a good thing. I was commissioned in 1974, at a time when the Vietnam War and its aftermath were scaring the nation in many ways.

 

And the military was certainly scarred, by the, by the war in many ways. But I went into the Army not really expecting to have a career in the military. I expected to survive for five years and then go on and do something, you know, have some real work. I found out that the military was far more than real work, and it was a way of life.

 

And I had a chance to be with men and women who modeled what right looks like. I also saw some who model what wrong looks like. But I felt as though I belonged, and that sense of belonging was one of the most powerful elements in my young life. And then I was privileged to be promoted and given other opportunities to serve soldiers that I could lead.

 

I had the ability to work with just magnificent people who took the time to underwrite my mistakes and call me aside and help me learn. And at some point in time, I became a general officer, which I never expected. Because that’s truly what, through the eye of a needle in the military is his career. And I spent several years as a general officer and then I felt as though, you know, I had been all I could be and it was time to let someone else step in.

 

And, you know, the military is kind of an up or out culture anyway. So in 2007, I left, walked off the parade field there of course, to Colorado, and two weeks later went into a manufacturing company right in the Great Depression, you know, family owned business and, and 100 plus people that were all well beating and well intentioned.

 

But the manufacturing marketplace was collapsing around us. We had to fight our way through that. Then I was fortunate enough to go into a not for profit company as an executive there, worked for a great CEO and learned that, not for profit is somewhat of a misnomer in that context. But the biggest thing we did was we served people, to help them fulfill their dreams, which for me was part of what I had left with the military.

 

And now I could recapture some of that. And we started a program called Warrior Salute for men and women who were challenged with post-traumatic stress and traumatic brain injury. And today, that program is still very, very much alive and well here in Western New York. And we’re very proud of that. And then several years ago, I started level five associates because I wanted to give back.

 

I want to have my own part of the business landscape, if you will, and initially had a great partner and then, went on my own here three years ago. And so I’ve been very privileged to have a journey that has been very successful in terms of people underwriting me and giving me the opportunity to learn and grow.

 

And now I want to give that back. Thank you for that additional context and really setting a solid foundation. And as I was taking notes, listening to you just now, I was comparing the notes to our chat in the green room before we started recording and our notes. Some parallels here. Some really powerful ones are standing out to me even early on in this conversation.

 

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Lessons on Leadership: The Opportunity to Learn from Others

 

And that is and that is around leadership by example, like you specifically said to me, you know, before we started the interview, that some of the highlights of your military service was this opportunity to to learn from others, but then also lead others by leading by example. And then one of the things you just mentioned is modeling what right looks like.

 

So that’s really powerful I’m guessing or I’m guessing here that that is a really powerful thing, almost a privilege for you to be able to lead by example, learn from others and lead by example. Am I tracking you? Yeah, I think so, Steve. And, you know, it’s a privilege to lead. You know, leadership is a privilege and not a right.

 

And that was an important lesson I learned very early on, in my journey. And today I try to reinforce that in any way I can. so, you know, the challenge of leadership is to be the standard. Now, we’re not always going to be the standard, but I think if we’re authentic, if you’re genuine as a leader and you’re working and trying hard to lead by example, other people are going to underwrite that effort.

 

They’re going to be with you on the journey. Yeah. Okay. So that that’s really super powerful because, when, when, when you and I were talking about some of the, the key challenges that you see companies facing today, you know, when you’re in the trenches with level five and we were talking about, you know, that they don’t have the internal resources to develop their leaders and or being able to push past the status quo, right? To get past that next level. That’s really, like ringing true for me here.

 

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Lessons on Leadership: Start an Informal Conversation

 

So how does a company show how or maybe I should say, how did the leaders in that company set that program up? How do they become cognizant of investing in those next level leaders? Well, typically, and what will happen is, one of the members of a C-suite team leadership team will contact me, through my website or my contact information is [email protected].

 

Not so, we’d like to have a conversation about how we can raise the bar in our culture, in our leadership, in our strategic planning process. So we begin with an informal conversation on okay, what are you trying to achieve here? And then based on what they say, they tell me what they’re looking for, then we customize a program for them.

 

Usually it’s a series of workshops starting at the C-suite level, based around the big six principles, where we help them as executives bring those six principles to life and then over a period of 6 or 8 months in that first workshop series, and we begin to cascade that toolbox, towards the organizational level of leaders, the next levels, you know, they’re really three levels of leaders in an organization.

 

The frontline leaders are people who are getting others to do what I call real work. Organizational level leaders are those who are leading leaders, enabling them to get that work done. And the executive level leaders are guiding the enterprise. They are enabling the organization to be viable so that the leaders can be successful. So that’s how it starts.

 

We are really in a crawl, walk, run type of approach with an organization. At the same time, we’ll talk about, okay, where do you want to go. You know, and then we’ll as we bring in the big six, the principles, the strategic planning usually evolves from that conversation as well. 

 

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Lessons on Leadership: The Big 6 Principles

 

Okay. So this is probably an ideal time to add some additional context here for Onward Nation business owners.

 

You know, I’ve had the privilege of you taking me behind the curtain and sharing more about the big six. So let’s do that here. Walk us through the big six principles, if you would, please. Okay. So, the first principle is called set the azimuth. Most people are not familiar with one. Azimuth is alerted. The military so scouts do some of that as well.

 

The azimuth is the cardinal direction of your team or organization. It has four components to the azimuth. First, the mission. Who are we? What do we do? Why do we do it? Second, the intent, another element or concept. Like for the military, the intent has components of starting with the end state. You take the mission and you distill it into its critical components.

 

One of them is an end state, usually time driven, that says okay by the state, this is what our success will look like. Then you have the key tasks that must be done for that end state to be doable. And then the purpose is the why. Why are we doing all this? What does it mean to accomplish these key tasks towards that end state?

 

So you have a mission and intent. The third component of set the azimuth is values. What are our values? What do we believe in as an organization, as a team? And you got to write those down. Everybody just doesn’t get it. And then the fourth component is what is our culture? What are the behaviors that we expect people to represent that demonstrate that those beliefs are coming to life so that those four components of the azimuth constitute the first principle?

 

Set the assignment. The second principle is listen, as I mentioned to you, Steven, you know, my mom told me many times during my young life where God gave you two ears and one mouth for a reason. I don’t think I listened well at all for many years in my leadership journey. Over time, I was fortunate to have people help me understand the value of listening.

 

But as a listening leader, you have to be focused on your personal listening skills and those of your team and your organization, and understand how to listen to your organization and the environment that you’re in. So that’s the second principle that we work on in these workshops with tools for your toolbox that you can put to use right now.

 

The third is trust and empowerment. Empowerment is the embodiment of trust. And most of us want what we want if you ask for it, but we really don’t know how to bring it to life either. So there are methods where you create an environment of trust. I think what Amy Ibbotson called it Harvard professor, an environment of psychological safety.

 

So you create that environment deliberately, and then you employ some tools of our empowerment to give people the opportunity to do what they’re capable of doing. The fourth principle is do the right thing when no one’s looking much harder than it seems. And we show, you know, our groups of people that we work with, our individual leaders.

 

You know, I’m doing some executive coaching as well. We talk about some case studies where doing the right thing was not as obvious or simple as it seems. And then how do we overcome those tendencies to drift from the should world to the one world where I should do this ethically and do it correctly? But when the time comes, I sometimes make decisions that aren’t within that framework.

 

And how do I see that coming? And then the fifth principle is when in charge, take charge, not just being the loudest, the proudest. It’s having the presence and the understanding to understand your environment, to know the difference between command and control, to be able to employ those tools when you need them, to help guide the organization or have your leadership team perform under difficult circumstances.

 

And then the sixth principle is balance. The personal and professional balance is not about time. Time is finite. You can’t manage time. It’s about taking more ownership of the time that you have. By learning to manage your energy levels. You have four batteries inside you: the physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional. How do you manage those energy levels in yourself and those in your team so that it’s not about how many hours of work and how many hours at home.

 

It’s about how do you manage and sustain your energy so that you can serve those who lead in the manner that they deserve to be lit? And that’s the big six there, Steve. Okay, thanks very much for taking us on a walk through the big six. When I think about that from a skills perspective.

 

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Lessons on Leadership: The Leadership Assessment Survey

 

So me as a business owner thinking, okay, and maybe this is me just getting way too tactical, way too quickly. But based on your experience, Robert, is there a skill? Is there an aptitude? Is there something that enables a business owner to be great at the big six? So how can I like recognizing the list?

 

I think that’s a great list of principles. How do I get better than at that list? How do I do that? Well, typically we measure your tendencies early on in our journey. We’re developing a level five leadership assessment survey, for example, that examines your tendencies to employ the big six right now. And then we will take another waypoint assessment, after we go through some months of our journey and see where you are now in terms of what are you starting to incorporate into your leadership model, the tendencies to employ the big six more often than not?

 

Let me give you an example of behavior that demonstrates employment of the big six. So let’s take one of the classic indicators of not listening. Or as Stephen Covey says, you know, listening with the intent to reply and not listening with intent to understand. You know, one of those tendencies that is really obvious is when interrupting people demonstrates a lack of respect, and it demonstrates a lack of listening with the intent to understand you’re listening with the intent to reply.

 

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Lessons on Leadership: Qualities of an Effective Leader

 

You’ve got some brilliant idea that’s going to change the scope of mankind as we know it. And you’re not about to listen to anything else. Anybody say because you want to share this right now, that when you start to see behaviors that indicate much more listening with the intent to understand, then you are moving the needle in your leadership model as a, as a person, your yourself.

 

And you’re witnessing it in the part of your team and your organization. So this journey has some metrics associated with it that we’ll bring into the organization of the team and help you employ them and say, okay, how are we doing here? You know, are we making the progress we want to? If not, where do we need to press harder in our employment of the tools of the big six?

 

So my guess is that when you see those instances where somebody is not applying habit number five, seek first to understand then to be understood, and that behavior is interrupting and so forth, as you just, described, so that can lead to a coaching moment that can lead to a mentorship moment right then and there, right?

 

Absolutely. And the most effective leaders I have seen, Stephen, are the ones who are willing to say, okay, let’s take a tactical posture, you know, talk about what kind of behaviors are we witnessing here? And, you know, we have to be willing to call each other out. Now, you know, this can’t be an environment where we can’t have frank discussions with each other.

 

That’s part of the ground rules we establish upfront in this journey towards developing the big six, principle skill set as a leader. And those moments, those teachable moments, we’ve got to practice that more often than not. Because the key challenge here, frankly, Stephen, is persistence. You know, many times people get fired up and, you know, for the next three days, they’re just wonderful world class leaders.

 

And then they just fall off the wagon and we go back to revert to the habits of your times before. And, it doesn’t take long before, and we’ve lost all the goodness that we’ve, you know, we’ve taken in. So you have to sustain this. And that’s one of the reasons our workshops are done at intervals of about 4 to 6 weeks apart, because if you have surged it all into one and have this 2 or 3 day, you know, hiatus or adventure together, everybody gets all fired up, but it quickly dissipates unless you have a sustainment element to the program.

 

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Lessons on Leadership: Keeping the Momentum Going 

 

Okay. So let’s talk about that a little bit, because I’m sure that most Onward Nation business owners can probably nod their head in agreement right there. Is that the next big program? Or maybe it was a team meeting or maybe it was some sort of other corporate event or or something where, you know, there’s that campfire effect where everybody’s feeling really, really good for two days when they’re hanging out with each other, there’s that camaraderie and so forth, and then it starts to dissipate.

 

So how does a business owner create that sustaining effect and not slip back into the bad habits? I know that that’s not how we’ll do these three things, but let’s have a conversation around that, because I’m sure you can share some helpful tips with business owners in their teams. Yeah. I think the, you know, Stephen, from a standpoint of sustainment, not only do you have to have a sustainment in the interval of the workshops that we’re talking about, the big six workshops and then what we have a follow on program called the Next Six to keep that momentum going is you have to have conversations on a daily and weekly basis where you’re examining the your employment of the principles and the tools or lack thereof. 

 

So the conversation changes over time, and the Big six becomes part of the language of the organization. That’s how you really achieve sustainment. Otherwise, that 2 or 3 day event where buy feels good and you know, the wine wears off after that. You know, you’ve come back to the tactical world of the bad habits you had before.

 

So really a senior leader’s commitment is fundamental to sustaining this journey and changing your culture. It takes 2 to 3 years, typically to change a culture to an organization regardless of your industry. so this is not something you can do next quarter and declare victory if that’s not going to work. Interesting. Okay. I’m so glad that you framed it up that way, because I think that that’s what we as business owners were super achievers, were highly ambitious and and and likely unrealistic when it comes to setting goals.

 

And so when you mentioned that as a quarterly thing that’s an unrealistic expectation. But then when you mentioned culture, I went back to my notes when you mentioned the first big principle or the first in the big six was the azimuth, the fourth sub point of that was culture. And so it’s like right up front.

 

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Lessons on Leadership: Take Action on the Surveys

 

So if we’re not dealing with that and if we’re not being proactive, well let’s just use habit number one from Stephen Covey. If we’re not being proactive there and being consistent, then we’re going to get off course again almost immediately. Right? Absolutely. You know, one of the things about surveys that I hear from every audience I deal with is that, you know, we all survey our health and wellness as an organization in terms of culture at a point in time.

 

And I actually have a culture survey in my book. we’re all in that I think is very useful. I mean, I wish I put in there, but, you know, there is a value there to surveys, but the typically the value is not we don’t see the value because we have the survey and then we don’t do a thing about it.

 

So there’s no action plan behind it. And many teams and organizations feel like that. We’re not really not walking the talk when we conduct surveys of the health of our organization, how we see ourselves as individuals and as teams. And I would say that part of that sustainment effort is if you go to employ a survey as part of the tools Group toolbox, you kind of put that action plan together to say, okay, so what we did the survey and what are we going to do about it?

 

Here’s what we’re doing about it. Let’s measure our progress across the organization. And that transparency is what separates the great from the good. Yeah. If we’ve taken the time to listen, the second of your big six, then we actually have to do something with it. We have to execute on that data. We collected the survey results, whatever we have to execute on that.

 

Right. Or we really haven’t listened at all. That’s right. So you can see how the big six are all interconnected. Stephen, you can’t cherry pick them. You’ve got to take all six of them in and begin to employ them and bring them to life in your. When you look in the mirror as a leader and then as you were at the table as a team or out on the floor or in the field, you know, you’ve got to have accountability for all six of those in yourself and in those that you’re privileged to serve with and lead.

 

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Lessons on Leadership: Most Influential Lesson From a Mentor

 

Amen to that. So you’ve been a great mentor here. And in this conversation, let me flip this. Let me turn the tables on you and ask you, Robert, to share with us what you consider to be the most influential lesson that you ever learned from one of your mentors. And then how that lesson helped you become not only a major general in the United States Army, but how now that is still serving you well today as a business owner, I think, Stephen, for me, the biggest leadership lesson I learned, in my journey was that it’s not about me, it’s about us.

 

And that’s not an easy lesson to learn, because most leaders have pretty big egos. we wouldn’t we wouldn’t seek responsibility for the welfare of others, which really emerges, as you know, in youth and most people, as promised, foreign. And the quality. We wouldn’t seek out that responsibility if we didn’t have some ego behind it. And quite frankly, I want to be around leaders who have confidence and who are competent and that kind of thing.

 

But it’s got to be a focus on we and us and how we can enable how we as leaders can enable we and us for me, that was the most important lesson I had to learn. it was part of, you know, initially I was an over controlling leader who had to have my fingers on everything. You know, I didn’t have iPhones in those days.

 

We actually had to talk to people. But, you know, we did, we had to talk to people, and, we had to, you know, have conversations and things like that. But, you know, I was very much an over controlling leader. And so the more I learned to think in terms of we and us, the more capable I think I was, I became a leader.

 

I think I would have reached the glass ceiling in my potential years ago had I not had some help understanding that, you know, this isn’t about you and the fact that, you know, you have this rank or this title. That only means you have more opportunity to serve others. That doesn’t mean you have to. You get to write a longer bio so you know those kinds of, that resonated with me at each stage of my career as I began to see that repeated by the behaviors of those I admired, respected, you know, they modeled the behavior of serving service.

 

They bottle the behavior of we in us. one of the tools I tell leaders today, you know, in your communications, process, you know, take I and me out of your texts and emails start today. Check it out. Use we in us. Even though you think that’s a very subtle step. It has a tremendous impact.

 

Now there is a condition where you put it back in, and that condition is when things are screwed up. Then I got this right. This. This is about me. No, this isn’t going right, I got this. I’m, you know, 90% of the problems we have as leaders you can find in the mirror. So, you know, that’s when you can put it back.

 

But you’ve got to develop and nurture behaviors in your own part of yourself. You know, first person you have to lead is you and those that you’re with so that we and us becomes the dominant theme of every conversation that you have and all the efforts that you’re making as, someone who’s privileged to lead a team or an organization, you just gave us two really powerful lessons there, the we and us, obviously.

 

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Lessons on Leadership: An Opportunity to Serve More People

 

Great lesson. And then you said that the bigger your title gets is an opportunity to serve more, to serve more people, to serve deeper and as that title, you know, equals more influence and so forth is a greater opportunity to serve. That was powerful, Robert. Yeah. I just said I was privileged to know that, as you know, I had the privilege of being with people like General Colin Powell.

 

He was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. You know, he was a level five leader. he, he walked the talk and he was as humble, a leader as I’ve ever been around who embodied us. And I think that for me, the level five leadership journey which caused the title a company to to come about as as I read the works of John C Maxwell and Jim Collins and others who talked about the journey of levels of leadership, you know, level five leadership in the Maxwell’s terms, it was about personhood, what he calls personhood and respect.

 

People follow you because they want to because they want to be part of the environment that you’ve created. And I think that’s a tremendous testimony to thinking about we and us more than I and me in, in the way that you serve those you lead. Great conversation, my friend. Again, I’m grateful that Coach Johnson put us together.

 

And I made the introductions so that we can have this, you know, great discussion and this opportunity to learn from you and your insights and wisdom. over several decades. It’s just been awesome. Before we go, I know we covered a lot, sir, but before we go, before we close out and say goodbye, any final advice that you’d like to share? Anything you think we might have missed. And then? And then please do tell. Onward Nation business owners the best way to connect with you. 

 

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Lessons on Leadership: Final Advice from General Mixon

 

Well thanks, David. I think I would only add to the conversation we’ve had today that, you know, leadership is a journey and not a destination. It’s a commitment. And if you really want to become the leader you’re capable of being, then you’ve got to make that commitment.

 

You gotta look in the mirror and say, okay, I’m in. You know, I’m in and I’m going to stay here. I’m going to commit to a journey of learning, being a lifelong learner, a lifelong listener. And I’m going to really establish the framework of my success in the success of others. And if you can do that, as a leader, that’s a heck of a legacy.

 

You know, I don’t know how many of us they’re going to put statues up out in front of the building. There’s not much room here in my little headquarters to put on if it’s made, but it’s going to start. Not so. You know, the legacy should be in those that you lead, that they become better leaders than you are.

 

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Lessons on Leadership: How to Connect with General Mixon

 

That’s the kind of legacy, I think, that we could all find peace with, you know, in our lives, in our journey. And if you want to talk some more about, enabling your journey, you can reach me. My website is, www.LevelFiveAssociates.com spell out the five. My email address is [email protected].

 

And if you contact me through my website, there’s my blogs there that I publish every other week. I’m now starting to do a series of podcasts. Even so, I’m venturing out into terrain. That you bastard. Awesome. But, you know, I’m just starting that journey. I’ll be happy to connect with you, talk about what you’d like to do as an individual leader or as a leader of a team and an organization.

 

And if I could be of service, I’d be glad to do that, Steve. And so thanks for the opportunity to chat with you today. You’re welcome sir. Thank you for saying yes and talk about lessons on leadership. And Onward Nation, no matter how many notes you took or how often you go back and listen to Robert’s words of wisdom, which I sure hope that you do.

 

The key is to take the Big Six principles, to take everything that Robert shared with you and break it down and slice it apart into strategy and tactics. Take all of that with you and apply it in. Accelerate your results. And Robert, we all have the same 86,400 seconds today. And again, I am grateful that you said yes. He came on to the show to be our mentor and our guide to lead by example so that we could move our businesses onward to that next level.

 

Thank you so much, sir. It was great, Steven, and I wish all of you on the Onward Nation success in your business and your journey and grow and world class cultures, and those are privileged to serve. Thanks a lot. This episode is complete, so head over to OnwardNation.com for show notes and more food to fuel your ambition.

 

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