The Secret: What Great Leaders Know and Do with Mark Miller

What separates organizations that occasionally succeed from those that consistently achieve elite performance? In this episode of The Champion Forum Podcast, Jeff Hancher welcomes leadership expert and bestselling author Mark Miller back to the show to discuss the newly revised fourth edition of The Secret, coauthored with Ken Blanchard. Jeff and Mark explore the difference between serving someone and leading them, the importance of examining a leader’s true motivation, and why results produced by a self-serving leader are often unsustainable. They also discuss lifelong learning, developing leadership strengths, addressing performance gaps, and helping people find roles where they can thrive. You’ll discover why servant leadership remains a superior leadership model and how leaders can create performance that lasts.

About Mark Miller

Mark Miller is the Vice President of High Performance Leadership at Chick-fil-A, where his career began more than 40 years ago as an hourly team member. Since then, he has served in roles across the organization, including operations, communications, training, customer satisfaction, and leadership development.

For the past two decades, Mark has focused on equipping leaders to grow themselves, strengthen their teams, and build high-performing organizations. He is also a bestselling author and coauthor whose leadership books have reached more than one million readers in over 25 languages. His work is grounded in a simple goal: uncover timeless leadership principles and make them practical for leaders in the real world.

A High-Performance Organization (noun): an organization that is capable of achieving and sustaining elite levels of performance. Not a good month, not a good quarter, not a good year, but those that consistently lead their industry.

What are healthy organizations doing today that average organizations or unhealthy organizations are not?

My team at Chick-fil-A asked that question several years ago because we were trying to help all three thousand restaurants, or however many we had at the time, take their performance to the next level. We did a multi-year study of high-performance organizations. We asked this question: What is universally true about high-performance organizations? High-performance organizations fundamentally do four things that keep them at the top of their game. 

1. They bet on leadership.

2. They act as one. They work tirelessly on aligning people and creating a culture that will move them toward their aspiration.

3. They win the heart. They create engaged teams that care about their work, co-workers, company, and organization. They help people care more.

4. They excel at execution.

A lot of people lose the storyline. They think leadership is the goal. No, leadership's not the goal. Culture is not the goal. Engagement is not the goal. Those are the enablers for performance. We can't find a high-performance organization in the world that focuses only on execution. Leadership, alignment, and engagement- that's the routine that precedes the dismount. Yes, everybody notices, everybody pays attention, everybody sees whether you stick the landing or not, but you don't stick the landing if you don't do the things that are prerequisites, that are requirements to stick the landing. And so I see that everywhere I go, even to this day. And you think of an organization you know that consistently achieves elite levels of performance, and you're going to find those four things.

Q: Which of the four high-performance disciplines is strongest in our organization, and which one are we most likely to neglect? Where might we be expecting stronger execution without first creating leadership, alignment, and engagement?

How do you keep yourself, Mark Miller, from becoming stale after all your success? How do you keep sharpening the axe?

I chose to become a lifelong learner, even though I’m not one by nature. I read books and listen to podcasts. I have an annual development plan that I update every year. I have a 30-year life plan that I align my annual plans with. I have coaches and mentors. I go to conferences and all that stuff, because those are the things that you do to keep learning and keep growing. So again, that answer is probably not revolutionary. But what's most important is for somebody to decide, I'm going to be a lifelong learner. I'm not trying to learn for knowledge's sake. I'm trying to learn to enable me to serve others better and at a larger scale.

Why is your book, The Secret, still resonating with people?

It was the first book that I had the privilege to publish. But we were looking for what is universally true 25 years ago, and that is the question that we've now repeated 13 times over the last 25 years. I think one of the reasons it has had such staying power is that it is built on universal truth. And when you find universal truth, it crosses cultures. That book, I think, is now in 34 languages, and we're expecting to get more with the fourth edition. Why? Well, because it it works. It actually works. It's not a trend. It's not a fad. It's not just a shiny new thing. We have always tried to be purveyors of truth, truth that works. And that's the business I'm going to try to stay in the rest of my life. No question about it.

What are some misconceptions that you think people have about servant leadership? 

People think that it's soft, and some would even say it's an inferior form of leadership. That's right. I would say we need to flip that on its head. It is a superior form of leadership. Traditional leadership is like the crop duster, and this is like the stealth fighter. Now, the question that we have spent some time trying to sort through is why do those misperceptions persist? I think there are a couple of big reasons that come to mind. One is that it is actually a tarnished brand. There are far too few role models for people to follow.

People conflate servant leadership with service. And they shouldn't, because if I walk your dog, wash your car, and buy you donuts, I'm serving you. Or if I do that for my team, I'm serving my team. And it has absolutely nothing to do with leadership. It's like leaders lead, which is why in this book we set out the fundamentals, these strategic ways that great leaders lead. Think about the term relief pitcher. You have to be a pitcher before you can be a relief pitcher. In the same way, you need to be a leader before you can be a servant leader. And you've got too many people out there who are using the term broadly.

Unfortunately, many of them who profess to be servant leaders have never figured out the leadership part. And they're washing cars and walking dogs and saying, I'm a servant leader. And people go, you're awful. I don't want any part of that. 

What has evolved about servant leadership since the first edition of the book?

I think it's needed now more than ever. According to Gallup, engagement is still hovering around 17%. That means only 17% of the global workforce cares at work. Now, you think, wow, that's awful for the rest of the world. Well, it's only 30% in the US. So that means seven out of 10 people where you work don't care. So how do you achieve and sustain excellence with people that don't care? You don't. The numbers are not getting better. Frontline leaders don't feel equipped to lead; organizations say they don't have enough leaders. The statistics are just overwhelming.

The state of leadership is not a pretty picture. I think it's far worse than it was 20 years ago. So what I would say is the need for this superior form of leadership, behaviorally based fundamentals, it's never been greater. What an opportunity. And so for those of you listening, that look at the state of your team, or your department or your division or your organization, and you say it's a mess. I say fantastic. What an opportunity for leadership.

What changes did you make in the fourth edition of The Secret?

We rewrote about 30% of the book, but the significant content change we added was to embody a leader's heart. Here's why we did that. When we wrote the first edition, we included a picture of the iceberg in the first or second chapter, and that's still our picture of leadership. You’ve got the part above the waterline, about 10%. If you look at icebergs generically, it's the part that's easy to see, and we call that the skills of the leader. We said 90% below the waterline represents the heart or the character of the leader. I went on to write a separate book about the part below the waterline called The Heart of Leadership, and it's all about the heart habits. When we had the opportunity to add to the book for the fourth edition, we decided to align the two books. So we brought in the heart habits so that you're still talking about the iceberg, but you're talking about above the waterline and below in one book.

How can you determine what your true motivation is?

It may take a little bit of solitude for you to actually reflect on your motivation. You may have to ask yourself those hard questions about your heart. Now, that may not be the path for everyone. You can use engagement surveys. You can get coaches. You can get mentors. You can even have a boss. Maybe your boss is courageous like Jeff’s, but maybe you can’t talk to your boss about it. Maybe you can talk to some trusted members of your team. If you're seeking diligently, you might even have people on your team who are willing to tell you. Maybe you have a personal board of directors. I mean, there's a long list of ways that you can remain grounded in reality, but there are things you're going to have to do. 

You're going to have to initiate. Nobody's going to give you a coach, probably. They're probably not going to assign you a mentor. You may or may not have an engagement survey that would actually allow your team to rate you.

Results from a leader whose heart is not right is fool's gold. It's not sustainable. It's never going to create elite levels of performance that are sustained over time. Because all of those men and women are flight risk. Again, set aside their level of engagement, particularly the brightest and best. A-players have options, and they typically won't hang around a self-serving leader.

What does it look like in practice when we're focusing on weaknesses and need to shift to focusing on strengths? 

One is you've got to be crystal clear on the baseline competencies required for a role. Let's assume that you've identified four to five key competencies for a role and you feel like this man or woman is at baseline. Well, then I think you have the opportunity to help them excel by figuring out what their strength is and then putting them in positions as often as possible to leverage that strength. But leveraging strength is not going to save your job if you can't do the basics.

I've released people over the years. It's not that I feel like they're a bad human being. It's not that I don't think they're a lost cause. It's that they cannot be successful in the job that we have for them. If they can't catch ground balls and you work on that until you decide we've done all we can, they actually have to go somewhere else. Now, I've also moved people to different teams for different roles. So it's a process, and it's time-consuming. But at some point, we're doing a disservice to people if we keep them in a role where they can't thrive.

Q: What signs might reveal that a leader’s motivation has become self-serving? When does helping someone improve become less responsible than helping them find a role where they can thrive? Have you ever been stuck in an organization where you could not thrive? What was your experience like? What happened when you finally left?

Application Activities:

1. Choose one role on your team and identify four or five baseline competencies required to succeed in it. Then evaluate for each member of your team:

   • Which competencies are being met?

   • Which competency gaps are limiting performance?

   • What natural strengths could help this person excel?

   • Would the individual thrive more in a different role?

This activity can help you distinguish between coaching a weakness and keeping someone in a position where they cannot succeed. If you find that someone is not in a strong position, help them come up with a plan to improve or grow in a skill that could allow them to get a different role.

2. Rate your team from one to five in each of the four characteristics of high-performance organizations. 

   • Bet on leadership

   • Act as one

   • Win the heart

   • Excel at execution

For each category, require one specific example supporting the rating. Then have the group identify the lowest-scoring area and choose one action to address it over the next 30 days. Make sure you put a clear action to it and consider ways to get people involved at all levels of the company. Also consider what metrics will help you see if your actions are leading to improvement.

Connect with Mark

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