Developing Your Mission-Critical Leadership with Jon Lokhorst, Keynote Speaker and Leadership Coach

Cindra Kamphoff: I’m so excited to have Jon Lokhorst today on the high-performance mindset podcast Jon how are you doing.

Jon Lokhorst: I am doing great; it is a beautiful day, and it would be a great day to be out playing hooky, but the next best thing is to be here together with you.

Cindra Kamphoff: that’s perfect. I completely agree it’s gorgeous. It’s a gorgeous day out today here in Minnesota and John as we get started, I’d love to hear just tell us a bit about your passion and what you’re doing right now.

Jon Lokhorst: Sure, interestingly enough, I come from an accounting background, which people don’t always associate with leadership development and all of that, but I spent 18 years in public accounting shifted into about 15 years in the nonprofit sector and so I’ve seen a lot of different views of leadership and. All throughout that have had this passion and interest about leadership and what is it that makes some leaders really thrive. And are effective, what is it that makes them, you know, create these teams that no one wants to leave everyone wants to be a part of. So, I traced, a lot of that back even back to when I was in middle school and high school just having that mindset about leadership and so. That passion that interest has really followed me through my entire career. And about I suppose it’s six or seven years ago, decided to make that the last season of my career as I like to call it, and to shift into working full time with leaders and organizations to develop better leaders and better teams.

Cindra Kamphoff: yeah, and that’s how we know each other is through this the speaking circuit and as keynote speakers and trainers so I’m curious like what made you decide to make the shift of all right full time into helping organizations and leaders be their best.

Jon Lokhorst: I think part of it, is what I was seeing coming from a finance background myself recognizing that oftentimes people who have that highly technical background they get promoted and they advance, and they build businesses often based on those technical skills. In yet often lack the soft skills, if you want to call them that, or as though one of my colleagues likes to say, since the soft skills tends to draw the eye roll let’s call them power skills instead. Because that’s really what makes you effective as a leader as a business owner and as an entrepreneur it’s those power skills, the people skills, the communication, the leadership. That goes along with that, and so, as I recognize that I saw an opportunity from my finance background understanding that mindset and that perspective. To jump into that area, and so you know today that’s one of the areas that I do a lot of work in is with the people in the financial services world. And then healthcare’s the other area and similarities there because those are individuals who also come from highly technical backgrounds don’t always understand the leadership side or the business side of what they’re doing.

Cindra Kamphoff: yeah, and Jon very few people you know get intensive training on leadership and I’m thinking about when we’re in college were maybe studying the industry that we’re working in right like finance and very few opportunities to really learn about these principles and I like what you said about power skills, you know soft skills they give you power. Um, you know as we kind of dive into your book mission critical leadership I’m just curious about what do you kind of see the best leaders do if you can give us kind of like a high-level picture there first.

Jon Lokhorst: yeah, and I think this is very pertinent in the environment that we’re in today syndrome, because you know there’s this tremendous Labor shortage out there. And you can see that in virtually every industry, you know there’s help wanted signs out when it comes to retail and restaurants. But even in the professional world there are a lot of job openings in so. If you really want to retain your best people and develop your best people, I think the first place, is to think about how do you really engage your people. And when I say your people, this will tie into some of the paradigm of leadership that comes out of the book but it’s not just the people you supervise it’s also your colleagues and your superiors the entire Community or network that you work within doesn’t even have to be people within the same organization, I think that ability to engage others in the pursuit of whatever that mission is going to be the differentiator in terms of successful leadership.

Cindra Kamphoff: Absolutely, so tell us about mission critical leadership and what makes that different than maybe other concepts of leadership or perspectives on leadership.

Jon Lokhorst: There are a lot of definitions out there for leadership and there’s so many books so many resources, I think, at one point I did a search on Amazon with the word leadership, and it was like 60,000 – 70,000 different resources that popped up, so there are just tons of definitions 10 tons of models for leadership. What I found is that most of them focus on leadership in a singular direction in the in the organizational hierarchy they’re really about downstream on the organizational chart it’s how to be a good boss, to the people that you supervisor that you lead and don’t get me wrong that’s very important it’s crucial to be a good boss. But if that’s all you see in terms of your perspective on leadership, I think you really have an incomplete view because the book as the subtitle would indicate the best leaders know how to not just lead downstream to their direct reports or their TEAM members, they’re also able to lead up to their superiors they lead a cross among their peers and, of course, all leadership really starts with self-leadership. If you can’t lead yourself well it’s going to be really hard for you to lead others well and, in fact, in terms of derailment leaders that get off the tracks and lose their credibility lose their ability to lead often the failure is a self-leadership failure at the core.

Cindra Kamphoff: hmm so the four sorts of house of mission critical leadership is leading yourself first leading up leading across leading down I, I completely agree with that Jon when I think about leading many times we’re thinking about leading down. And we’re not thinking about leading our peers or leading up and influencing up. When you say you will be leading yourself, first because I completely agree with that, as well if you’re not you’re not. Leading yourself it’s really hard and difficult to lead others when you see you know the strongest leaders that you worked with who are our mission critical leaders, how do they lead themselves.

Jon Lokhorst: I think you can go back it was, I believe the philosopher Aristotle that said, above all, know thyself. And so, it comes with self-awareness and it’s not just self-awareness, in the way that we associated with emotional intelligence, I think it’s an awareness of who you are and how you are made, you know you how you’re hardwired your natural strengths your natural behavior tendencies. When it comes to a from a leadership perspective, you know your leadership style and how you approach you know people and how you approach work. The part of the paradigm for leadership and it’s part of my definition of mission critical leadership you’ve got to be able to build relationships and deliver results. Virtually every person is oriented a little more in one of those directions than the others, there are very few people who are dead center and evenly balanced between the two and that’s just an example of part of how you need to know you know your own hard wiring and your own default because, once you know that it gives you the ability to flex your approach, so I think it’s that self-knowledge and then part of that also is having a really solid personal foundation. I like to say you can’t build a site a skyscraper on a foundation that’s meant for a garage eventually that building is going to crack and crumble and collapse. And the same thing happens to leaders who don’t have that solid personal foundation, and you know that gets into you know what is your vision, what is your purpose, what are your values what’s the mission that that you’re after. And so, when you have that strong self-sense of self it gives you the ability, then, to lead yourself, so you know the direction that you need to go moving toward your vision and mission and then from that you can lead others at the same time.

Cindra Kamphoff: yeah, excellent, my husband and I who’s a school principal elementary school principal we were talking last week, and you know we’re like you know. The older we get the more we realize, we have so much more to learn about ourselves, you know and it’s like we’re still learning and growing, and you think that um. I don’t know that stops, but I think if that stops then you’re really are growing into who you could become, and I just think there’s always more like peeling back the layers the onions of like who you are at your core.

Jon Lokhorst: yeah absolutely I think that’s a perfect example peeling back the layers of the onion because you can continue to go deeper and deeper and it’s been really interesting in my coaching work I use an assessment tool that provides some of those insights you know we don’t often step back as leaders, especially you know leaders and high performers are used to go and you know there’s that that goal to achieve there’s that bar to climb over. And so the assessment tools that are out there are great I call them guided self-discovery, it’s like a guided tour of who you are and it’s always fun, for me, as a coach in in that coaching work and that training, work to see people realize they get those insights and there oh now I see why sometimes my I get in my own way, my biggest barrier to my success is me. And now that I understand this about myself, I’ve got some better ways to navigate that and to be a better leader.

Cindra Kamphoff: yeah, and I think coaching is one of the best ways to learn more about yourself. I’ve had my own coach for seven or eight years, and continue to grow in my self-awareness, but also feel like I know myself a lot better than they when I started before starting with her so have your definition of mission critical leadership building relationships and delivering results, why do you think both of those are really important.

Jon Lokhorst: Like I said Cindra before I think that most people lean more in one direction or the other, and some people lean very heavily and I’ll just use myself as an example, because the assessment that I referred to which comes from a group called right path resources they that’s one of the aspects that they measure. And so, I wasn’t surprised by this, but when the results came out and I looked at it what it says is that I am heavily results oriented I don’t just lean a little bit in that direction, I lean a lot in that direction. And I think when I was younger earlier in my career, I didn’t recognize that, at times, that was not the right approach that I needed to lean more into that building of relationships now. Fortunately, we’ve got a lot of flexibility so even though by nature I’m heavily results oriented. I can act in a way; I can behave in a way that brings about that building of relationships and so there’s a difference there between natural behavior and learned behavior. Over time, the more you practice that learned behavior the more natural it becomes so. You know if I take my career over the last 30 years into account, I can see how I’ve learned how to build those relationships to where it becomes more natural, but you know if there’s a time pressure if there’s stress. You tend to go into that default mode much more quickly, and so you know if you’re heavily leaning toward the results, you might accomplish the goal. But you look around and where’s your people where’s your team, the people that you work with. They may still be there physically, but they’ve checked out some along somewhere along the way, and right now burnout is a huge factor, and so you got to be careful that you’re not burning out your team because they’re going to they’re going to jump ship on you, so you know there’s some dangers and being too heavily you know oriented toward the result side. On the flip side you know if you’re too heavily leaning toward relationships and you lose that side of the results well. Number one you don’t accomplish those goals which, if you’re leading an organizational setting or if you’re part of a team where winning is a part of the goal you got to post those points on the scoreboard you’re not going to get there, and so you’re going to run aground as far as your leadership goes there, so you know there’s a dance that you have to do between the two and. You know oftentimes I described leadership as you’re playing a role it’s like being an actor in a play or an actor in a movie and. I like to use Tom Hanks as an example because he’s one of my favorites of all time you know just think about the diversity of movies he’s been in and yeah you know send her the one that comes to mind is I’m losing the title of it but it’s the one where he’s got the volleyball.

Cindra Kamphoff: Yes, yes.

Jon Lokhorst: Was the movie now it comes to mind you think about a movie like that, as compared to some of the very serious roles like one recently where I saw he was the commander of a submarine during wartime and. You know he’s learned how to play the role he sees the environment; he sees who is working with and what the script is and he adapts. And so, even though we’ve got these natural strengths, we also have that ability to adapt and to play that role well and. I think so much of leadership is about that, and you know even going back to that concern for engagement and this season that we’re in right now, you know you can play that role, you can learn those skills to help really engage the people around you.

Cindra Kamphoff: yeah, love it, I really appreciate the emphasis on building relationships and results because I’m thinking about people that I know that maybe are really great at building relationships, but then not necessarily produce the results right. They might quickly get fired right or the opposite so results oriented that they’re not connecting with their people and then right burnout or a lot of pressure, you know his experiences in the organization or team, when you think Jon about these four houses right leading yourself leading up leading across reading down. Which one do you feel like was the most difficult for you or the one that’s you know the most difficult for you now?

Jon Lokhorst: it’s probably about the hardest question that you could ask Cindra because now it puts the load of having to be it’ll open and honest, not just with the listeners, but also with myself. Yes, I you know and it’s interesting because the seeds for the book were planted during a graduate school program I went and got a master’s in organizational leadership and as part of that one of the projects that I did was a composite 360-degree evaluation. Yeah, and for listeners that may not be familiar with that that’s basically where you go to people who you’ve worked with in all those directions that we described earlier it’s the teams that you’ve supervised, as well as the bosses that you’ve served under and then peers that you’ve worked with as well, and you get feedback on what was their experience of your leadership. And there are a number of tools out there for that and I love those tools, because you can segment the ratings, based on the category that you’re getting those ratings from. And, of course, you know best practice in all of those is that you do your self-evaluation first so you’ve got a benchmark on how you viewed yourself and your own leadership, and now you get to compare. Well, when I did that, as part of this class project, I was very surprised it wasn’t a huge drop off, but it was enough to be noticeable. My peers overall rated my leadership performance lower than the ratings that came from my direct reports, the teams that I supervised, as well as the bosses who I served under and it was one of those moments, where I went ha. I wonder why that is, and so I thought back to those different roles, the different organizations that I was in and even the people that I worked with and I tried to reflect on Okay, how is it that I ended up with you know less you know favorable results from those peer groups, and it really required a lot of reflection and even recently, one of my coaches asked me a question that brought another incident to mind when I failed to lead well peer to peer and I’ll just share a quick example of that; so I was working in the nonprofit world and in fundraising and we were launching a big campaign, and it was a it was a huge priority of our CEO or executive director. And it was going to require a lot of collaboratively collaboration, a lot of cooperation among different departments among different team leaders. And because it was a fundraising campaign, I was really one of the key players in all of that, so I was dependent on all these other departments to get what I needed from them so that my team, we could do our work. Well, I remember really well that I was going into a meeting with one of these other department leaders to get an update on their part of the project and find out where they were and Imagine my surprise when I walked into that meeting and I found out that they had done virtually nothing. To move their part of the project forward, which, of course, then was going to mean my part of the project was stalling out as well. Similar and quite honestly, I almost lost it in that meeting, because I was so frustrated and so upset and now in retrospect, I realized that I very quickly went into role power mode. Now I didn’t have any role power over my peers, which makes that peer-to-peer leadership the most complex form of leadership, if you and I are peers. You know I can’t come in and just bark orders at you, because you can turn around and looked at me and say well John, you’re not the boss of me. You know, one of those phrases that got used, often in our family growing up with my siblings. And so, I couldn’t just bark orders at this other department leader, but what I did rely on I brought the role power of ours. Common boss our shared boss our executive director CEO in and started, you know kind of barking with that. And that really wasn’t that effective that wasn’t going to get us very far and it’s only been recently in retrospect that I realized. I did not bring the influence; I did not build the trust that I needed with that peer leader to help move this project forward to bring about that collaboration. And so that was just a classic example I think of why my ratings from my peers came in, you know so much different from the other groups that I got those ratings from. What what’s been interesting Cindra is that in my coaching and training, work and even when I’m doing speaking for groups, and I have conversations afterwards. I find that that’s pretty common it’s not unusual all use a polling question, for example, you know which of the directions is hardest for you to lead in and quite often. Leading peers comes up first, and you know when it comes in second it’s usually second to self-leadership, you know, like we said earlier. I’ve also found that the research bears that out there’s a leadership development group out on the west coast called Zinger Folkman and. They do a ton of work with 360s and they’ve got thousands of them in their database, and I heard recently that when you take those average scores, and you break them down by those raider categories. On the whole, leaders get rated below from their peers as comparison to the ratings from their TEAM members or their superiors, so you know that told me that I was on the right track, you know both my own experience and the experience of other leaders.

Cindra Kamphoff: yeah, that’s great as I was listening Jon I really appreciate this your vulnerability there and sharing what’s most difficult for you when I think about it, you know leading up is the most difficult for me and, as I say that there have been times, where I do great leading up, but then the moments where I’ve struggled the most with my leadership are leading up and maybe times, where maybe I don’t. Maybe I lead differently than a leader above me or there’s maybe that trust and rapport or something’s kind of missing there that’s what I find really difficult and maybe a lot of people don’t think of leading up right that it’s let’s say your boss you think about your boss leading you not you leading your eyes.

Jon Lokhorst: yeah, the role of power gets reversed there and in one of the reasons leading up as challenging is because you’re going against the current of that role power. And yet, when you think about the importance of leading up to your boss, you know who else other than yourself has the most impact on you. Your career your performance as an as an individual, you know, whatever that that role, might be, and it doesn’t matter it doesn’t have to be in the workplace, even but. You know it’s so critical to lead up, and I think part of what makes it challenging is that you know with that rule power, you can shrink back and go I don’t know and so. You know I often say that when you’re going to lead upward you know the trust factor is huge and then you have to be able to communicate and be candidly respectful. And there’s a tendency to air in one direction or the other, you can err on the side of being respectful where you’re two different deferential. And you might hold back and then there’s the other side, where if you’re not careful you’re going in with guns blazing and you’ve got your opinion and your ramped up. And that doesn’t always land well either if you’re just flat out candid without bringing the respect into it, so I think when you bring those together in approach with that kind of mentality you’ve got a much better chance of that upward leadership.

Cindra Kamphoff: that’s great I think some people that I coach right now, who are kind of struggling with giving candid feedback or giving feedback in the moment. Maybe their empathy score is really high, so I like to give the Strength Finder assessment people learn about what their strengths are and. Sometimes when I find when someone has a really high empathy that they don’t really want to give that tough feedback so. And you have you talked about this in the book the mission critical mission critical leadership is what would you say you know for people who do struggle with giving that candid feedback.

Jon Lokhorst: I think part of it is just recognizing the cost of not giving it, you know what are the consequences if you hold that back. And I think that feedback, you know just like this paradigm can go in all directions, you know the example that I gave earlier, I needed to give feedback to my peer leader that other department director. And by failing to give meaningful and timely feedback in that situation, it just really led to that. That project stalling out and not getting the traction that we needed, and so in all those directions, I think, if you don’t provide that feedback, there are some consequences to that, and when you come to grips with Okay, if I don’t do this, what am I going to lose what is my team going to lose. What is my boss or my coach going to lose in this? And then you know ultimately going all right now that should help me to take that risk and see this is for the best of everybody, and as long as I have the best interest in mind I’m not using this. As a tool for punishment or I’m not using feedback as a you know vindictive victim and Bendik a vindictive way I can make this really productive and for the good of everybody.

Cindra Kamphoff: yeah, I’m you know we’re motivated by both pain and pleasure and so it’s like the pleasure of when I do this, how to make me feel when I accomplish this goal. How great it will be, but also what’s the consequences if I don’t go for it right, so I really appreciate it what you said is like what’s the consequences if you do hold back. And maybe the consequences on the person’s development or the organization as a whole or culture, you know all of those things are really powerful. When you think about all of these for House like leading yourself leading up being across meeting down, what do you think Jon are the really crucial behaviors that help someone lead and all of these directions.

Jon Lokhorst: I like to use an acronym as I pull it all together and it’s just so happens that the acronym is ties, so what ties it all together and their words. That start with the letters T I E and S and it’s a little different order than what it shows up in the book but. In each of them associates with one of the four directions. Now they all overlap, they all have an impact and they’re all important for all of the directions, but I highlight them a little differently, for each of those so. When it comes to leading upward, as you mentioned earlier Cindra it’s about building trust, so that trust word the T. How do you build unwavering trust with your boss, what does it take to do that and that’s often a question that I raised in training and coaching with the with people when it comes to leading across leading among your peers, I find that the key behavior starts with the letter I influence because you don’t have the role power to lay to rely on you’ve got to rely on influence and how do I build those relationships of influence, where you know let’s say it’s you and I, working together, and you want to collaborate with me or you want to cooperate, you want to support me. And I want to support you, because ultimately, it’s us working together for the good of the team, the good of the organization so. The I is for influence that E is the word that I used earlier engagement and I think that’s critical in all directions, but it’s especially true when you’re leading your team. How can you engage them in a meaningful way in their work to where they want to be there, they want to contribute they’ll go the extra mile they’ll speak well of you, your team your organization. And they’re really plugged in then at that point you’ve got a much better chance of retaining those people and develop them developing them if they’re highly engaged and then the asset, the end S, is self-awareness is that self-awareness about your own strengths your own struggles, the leadership style that you bring to the table.

Cindra Kamphoff: awesome love the acronym so ties to its trust influence engagement and self-awareness let’s take the first one Jon and I’m curious when you think about developing this kind of unwavering trust like you said with your peers, but you said, especially when you’re leading up tell us how we do that.

Jon Lokhorst: there’s a little bit of a contrast in there, if you will, or maybe a juxtaposition and I think high achiever’s high performers. You want to set that bar high you’ve got these big goals you’ll want to hit the home run you know, since we’re in baseball season, we can use that as the analogy, because if we hit the home run, we’re going to impress our boss. And we’re going to impress our superiors and you know that’s true that’s good, but what we know from baseball is that the players that hit the most home runs also tend to do what the most they strike out a lot yeah and they often strikeout far more than they hit the home runs and so there’s a tension there, and so I like to say that you know yeah it’s great to hit a home run it’s great to hit a triple once in a while. But just consistently hitting those singles and doubles that faithful performance over time, showing up putting in the effort, making things happen, bringing in good attitude. I think that’s going to get you noticed, I think, taking initiative is another part of that where your boss or your coach can see that you’re not just relying on somebody else to drive you to do what you need to do you’ve got that self-motivation that self-discipline you’re taking that initiative to make things happen, and I think when you start to develop that trust and your boss feels like okay it doesn’t matter what I throw at John he’s gonna follow through and if he can’t do it he’s going to be honest with me and we can renegotiate and all that but it’s really what puts you in the position of being that go to player.

Cindra Kamphoff: yeah, love it what else would you tell us about influence or engagement or self-awareness and how we can develop those that maybe we haven’t talked about.

Jon Lokhorst: yeah, I think engagement and influence are both built by relationship and developing that relationship at a more personal level and I think, fortunately, in the workplace, now we understand that it does not have to be completely arm’s length, I think you know for years in the workplace, it was much more transactional is much more arm’s length. And, and yet we spend so much time in the workplace, and you know I know recently it’s been more via you know this kind of mode by zoom than it has been in person, but still that you spend a lot of time with your colleagues and with your coworkers and when you can get to know people at a personal level in an appropriate way they start to see that you’ve got an interest in them beyond just the work that they perform beyond just the production. And so, I think that’s really important, no one wants to just be seen as a cog in the wheel, you know part of the machinery. They want to be known as people who have you know real dreams and struggles and challenges of their own, and so, as you get to know people at a more personal level. You know they start to see that you’ve got their best interests in mind and I think of a training session that I was in yesterday, where you know that came up, you know how do you build those relationships, how do you get to know people and. You know, one of the great ways is, if you know that colleague, if you know that TEAM members apparent will virtually everybody enjoys talking about their kids right yeah, I guess that’s true of you too Cindra you you’re happy to talk about him even when they’re getting in trouble. Even when you’re frustrated with him, you know parents love to talk about their kids and just a little hint for the listeners. I happen to be a grandparent and I love talking about my grandkids even more so. You know you find things like that that you can relate to. And you know just think about how much it means, if you have a colleague that knows that one of your kids is you know we’ll just say soccer playing soccer. And you know they check in you know there’s a conversation, and they say you know hey Cindra I know one of your kids is playing soccer right now how’s the season going. And how much even better yet if they know you know your kid’s name and they use their name and that you get this sense that ha. You know whether it’s my boss or a colleague, one of my team Members, you know there’s a connection that develops there that helps you to build that that influence and engagement.

Cindra Kamphoff: that’s so true Jon and I, a few years ago, I went to interview for an NFL job as working with this team doing mental training. And I you know, during a normal day interview all these different meetings and I sat down with the head coach and I had 45 minutes with him and for 30 minutes he asked me about my family. And about me as a person, and I left there thinking, I want to work for him.

Jon Lokhorst: yeah, you’d run through a brick wall for somebody like that.

Cindra Kamphoff: And you know, and then it was 15 minutes about what I could do, and the results, I could deliver, but it was really fascinating how I never experienced that before in my life you think about a traditional interview it’s more like kind of what can you do for us, but it was more like tell me about your kids and you know and what do you enjoy and I instantly felt this connection. And it made me think a lot about kind of this. This relationship orientation or relationship focused leadership and how yeah, you’re right I would run through a brick wall for that guy.

Jon Lokhorst: And you’ll never forget that. You know, and so true you know people you know they don’t forget how you made them feel. Yes, their leader, as their teammate they may forget a lot of the conversations or the work that got done, you know the. The winds on the scoreboard, they may forget a lot of that, and they’ll be trophies on the trophy case or plaques on the wall to remind you of that but. Right, you remember those people who made you feel like you were really important that you were really significant and that you know your contribution to the team was significant.

Cindra Kamphoff: yeah, and even those people who you maybe start a conversation with how’s your family, you know, instead of. Did you meet that deadline? Well Jon I really enjoyed talking with you, you should grab John’s book I got it right here mission critical leadership how smart managers need well in all directions tell us where we can find this young.

Jon Lokhorst: yeah, I think the best approach you can certainly go to Amazon and other online booksellers to get the book, if you want to learn more if you go to the website mission critical leadership.com. Now that’s a long word no punctuation or anything you know, but other than the.com so mission critical leadership.com and Cindra I think that’ll be in the show notes as well. The you can go to that page go down a third of the way down the page and you’ll see an orange button, where you can download a sample chapter from the book. You don’t have to put in your email address no strings attached it’s just a way for you to check it out and, if you like it, you can follow up on that and. Then, if you go down a little further on that page, you’ll see a second orange button and that’s the button, where you can contact me so. If you are interested in exploring the companion training experience that goes along with the book, I do a private label leadership Academy. Or you just want to talk about leadership I love conversations about leadership, I invite them all the time, and you know whether that leads to anything formal or not, you know, even those informal conversations I think are a great way for us to have that mutual learning.

Cindra Kamphoff: that’s wonderful and so mission critical leadership.COM where else can we follow you on social media or anything like that, so we can keep up on what you’re doing Jon.

Jon Lokhorst: yeah, I’ve tried to maintain a fairly active presence on LinkedIn and that’s my social media platform of choice, and so you can just look me up by name and it’s John Lokhorst happen to have two names that are easily misspelled so, if you find me on LinkedIn I’ll accept your gladly accept your connection and I curate a lot of contact con 10 rather from others in the field but publish some of my own content there as well.

Cindra Kamphoff: Well, wonderful so here’s what I took from our interview today as we kind of said I can summarize and then we’ll wrap up I live at the beginning, and you talked about leadership is like a power skill. Not necessarily a soft skill, I thought that was really awesome. Mission critical leadership is about two things building relationships, but also delivering results, we talked about for house of mission critical leadership leading yourself leading up meeting across and leading down. And really like your acronym of ties, you know these commonalities that that people have behaviors in all four of these house right ties, trust influence engagement and self-awareness so John thanks so much for gifting us with your gifts today.

Jon Lokhorst: thanks for the chance to have this conversation with you and you, you picked up those points really well Cindra.

Cindra Kamphoff: awesome what final thoughts about leadership or final advice, do you have, as we wrap up.

Jon Lokhorst: I think that a big part of leadership development and whatever context you’re leading and whether it’s in the workplace or not it doesn’t matter which fear we’re talking about it’s about continuous improvement it’s that opportunity to continually get better and either you just get better by a degree, you know every day over time you’re going to develop that, and so I think. You know, creating a development plan for yourself and there’s some guidance in the book on how you can do that, but. Just you know, identifying where do you want to learn and grow, where do you want to get exposure to new opportunities and. In leadership, and you know if you continually ask yourself that question, and now I know this is part of that high performance mindset that you do a lot of work with Cindra it’s like. You know it’s continually moving that bar up and you establish new benchmarks for your performance and that’s true of leadership as well, you get better and better and eventually you’ll become that leader that everyone wants to follow and you’ll build the team that no one wants to leave and, in the process, you and your team are going to deliver those exceptional results.

Cindra Kamphoff: awesome Jon, thank you so much for joining us today.

Jon Lokhorst: Absolutely, thank you.