Episode 199 - Jevon Gondwe - Leaders On Leadership
On this episode of Leaders on Leadership, Dr. Tracy Jones welcomes Jevon Gondwe to explore the real price of leadership, from overcoming loneliness to embracing vision with clarity. With years of experience in leadership communication and team development, Jevon shares his insights on personal growth, resilience, and the power of influence. They discuss why true leadership requires abandoning distractions, staying focused on purpose, and continuously evolving to bring out the best in others. Whether you're an aspiring leader or a seasoned professional, this conversation will challenge you to rethink how you lead and connect with your team.
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Jevon Gondwe - Leaders On Leadership
Welcome to the show where we pull back the curtain on leadership and talk with leaders of all ages and stages about what it takes to pay the price of leadership. I have a very special guest to introduce you to. His name is Jevon. Jevon, welcome.
I'm excited to be on here and definitely a highlight for me big time. Thank you, Dr. Jones.
Thank you, Jevon. Let me tell you a little bit about this gentleman. Jevon Gondwe has a unique combination of leadership experience and he spans three NCAA national championships, thirteen years as an entrepreneur building teams, and over a decade of experience designing and delivering leadership communication resources in corporate America across seven different industries and directly impacting over 30,000 people.
His passion is now centered around principles-centered leadership communications to help leaders more effectively connect, inspire, and win the hearts of their teams. A father, husband, and believer in people, Jevon aims to have an unspeakable impact on the lives of others. Jevon, I'm just so honored to hear your perspective for many different reasons as we'll unpack.
I've learned so much. I know we talked about this and you may touch on this a little bit, but even just from your father and the lineage that you come from and how we met, the books you read, the people you associate with, that is what my mentor has told me for almost fifteen years now and I live that, I speak that. When I coach people, it's one of the foundational pillars for where I am today. Thank you for opening the door and really excited to learn from you. As I already have, and I'm sure that'll come out in our conversation today as well.
Thanks, Jevon. I like to tell people how we connected because people are like, how do you connect with these tremendous people? It was in December 2024 at an HRP, Human Resource Professional Central PA end-of-the-year lunch or breakfast. I did my leadership event, and I think it was employee retention and getting people really integrated into your values. In the end, I was walking around and seeing people, and Jevon was at the back. Right away, if it seems like we've known each other our entire lives, it's because there was such a strong value congruence right there. He talked about his mentor, who is a voracious reader.
He comes from different industries and has been a strong supporter of tremendous leadership throughout the decades, even my father. What I love, too, is that Jevon has a sports experience. That collaborative, that team leadership, gives a whole different dynamic. I have military leadership and corporate experience, but the team and the coaching leadership are so unique. The new emerging lead study in leadership, I'm just really excited that we met then and had coffee and even found out more that we had in common. I'm just delighted to introduce our readers to you, Jevon.
I know we're going to have a great conversation and I know we connected right away. I really appreciate it if I could share this. Even as we're getting started, I learned from you about followership because I think so many times we think about it, and a lot of times we can be ego-driven. We want to be the person out in front, and that can get in the way of our own personal journey of growth a lot of times. I didn't realize that to be a great leader is also to be a great follower first if we want to move to that level. Thank you for that framework and the questionnaire. I know that was helpful for my personal growth and my ultimate leadership. Just really connected easily. Looking forward to collaborating not only today but certainly in the future as well.
Let's get to it. My father gave a speech many years ago, but one of the speeches that we still have downloaded the most and that people read the most is one that talks about leadership and the price of leadership. Charles was very exuberant to anyone who met him, but he was unbelievably pragmatic. You had this joys of leadership, but he also was like, but there's a price you're going to have to pay. He was very stoic in a way but very pragmatic because he did pay the price.
The first price he talks about is loneliness. Loneliness means different things to different people. We've here, it's lonely at the top. We know there are certain elements of loneliness that a leader has to go through. In your leadership journey, can you share your personal journey? A time when you went through a season of loneliness, what you learned from it, and perhaps a thought or a resource or tool for any of our readers that are in that season right now to build them up and exhort them as they go through this.
Sharing A Personal Story Of Loneliness And Seeking Support From Others
First, I love the concept. I think it's so important to talk about this. The whole concept of this show, what your dad started with The Price of Leadership, because it's not talked about very often. We oftentimes talk about the rewards of leadership, like you said, and what you get from it or what you can impact, but there is a price to pay. I'll do a quick story to illustrate some thoughts for me. I remember when I was first coming out of college, 22 years old, I didn't know what I want to do, but I ultimately got a job offer to run a soccer program at 22.
Five hundred players, 1000 coaches, to me, it’s very intimidating. At 22, do I have the ability to do this? In a moment, I felt lonely. I've got to make this decision like it's impacting in my mind my whole life. I think sometimes, when we are navigating things alone and feeling like it's all on us, that's where we start to be like, “It's just me.” If we really think about it, there are people in our lives that have come before us.
The idea of mentorship, the idea of coaching, the idea of seeking support, I'll share where the story goes in a moment, but I think so many times we get caught in these moments where we feel like the decision's on us. I get it, as a leader, we're responsible. We have this extreme ownership mentality of what the outcomes are, and we need to take responsibility for the consequences. Ultimately, we do have support, and I think it can be quick to forget about that.
At that time in life, I reached out to my brother, ten years my senior and he just gave me some wisdom. He said this, “Two things will happen. You're either going to grow into the person that you need to become, or you're going to quit, you're going to fail, they'll fire you, and you'll learn either way.” You may have heard this before. You're either winning or you're learning.
You're either going to grow into the person that you need to become, or you're going to quit or fail or they'll fire you. You'll learn either way.
The key message there is that there's always somebody else that you can reach out to if you're willing. I'll just give a quick little backstory to that, too. Now, take me fast forward years later, our business was booming, we were having a lot of success, we were moving forward. At the same time, I was going through a season of, not to get too deep here, nothing crazy diagnostic or anything, but I was going through some mental health challenges at the time.
Even though on the paper, on the surface, you would have said, “Jevon and his family are crushing it,” it was actually one of the lowest points for me personally, outside of tragedies happening. It was one of the lowest points in my life. This was not that long ago. What I did was I reached out to my mentor. He's one of the primary influencers in my life. I hope everyone has a few of those people. I just shared in my heart. I was very vulnerable. I took the armor off.
I said, “This is what I'm going through. It may not seem like it, but this is what I'm going through.” Wouldn't you know it, he goes, “I've gone through a similar battle.” It's amazing how many people have gone through stuff. If you're willing to be vulnerable and open yourself up and lower our ego, that's when we can start to grow.
The last thing I'll share, this will tie into every single component of the price of leadership. In these moments where we're really feeling challenged, we're really feeling stretched, if we can lean into the fact that we are building our story, that's going to be something you can share to help the next person. To me, that's what leadership is all about. It's bringing on the next wave, the next generation of things that we've gone through and that we can teach it. Just keep that in mind as you're going through some of these challenges, as I speak directly to the audience is that you're building your story and this is an opportunity to grow and stretch at those most challenging moments. Hopefully, that helps.
Leadership: If we can lean into the fact that we are building our story, it becomes something we can share to help the next person.
It does. That is so beautifully said. I love that you talked about battle. People call them battle buddies. You're the chairman of your own board of your life. You're your own agent, personal agency, but you have to have people in all the different areas that are there for you to really lean on. I love that you said there's loneliness in making the decision. I encountered that, but I did get counsel, which I knew I wasn't alone in making it, but then I had to make the decision.
I think that you saying that explained to me the weight of the decision still does fall on us, even though I know God is in control. Other than the decision of where you're going to spend eternity, we can always readjust decisions. If you wouldn't have taken that job, somebody else would have taken it, and you would have gone and lived a great life. I think sometimes we think, well, this is it. Like I said, there's only one decision like that. It's still sometimes lonely to make the decision because it's not a joint decision.
You're the one that signs the agreement, you're the one that signs the paper, you're the one that signs the taxes. I really appreciate you saying that because as much as we get from our mentor group, it's still up to us in the end. My father used to say that for decisions. He goes, “Tracey, make it yours, and die by it.” You alter it. I love that your brother said that if it didn't work out, you don't die by it, but you move on to something else. That season dies and you go to something else. It's a beautiful take on loneliness.
Thank you for sharing and being transparent about some of the things you went through. I know even Charles experienced some chronic fatigue. I was in high school watching him and I was like, “What's going on?” He was very forthright with me about it. I experienced an exhaustion-type thing. It ended up my adrenal gland was shot, but I was in a bad way. The more you share that with people, the more you can get help and not have to suffer in silence.
There's a quote I've heard. You may have heard this. I don't know how popular it is but, “Your mess is your message.” It’s that strength of knowing who you are and knowing the value that you have and knowing that we're not perfect. When we know our strengths, we can openly speak in the areas that we need to grow because that doesn't ultimately define us. It's the whole package.
Everybody goes through this. I'm so thankful that I think when we're younger, I don't know, maybe even midlife, “I don't want to tell anybody that my kids are going through this,” or, “I messed up the business,” or, “I got involved with the wrong person,” or, “I have something on my record,” or, “I'm burned out.” Stop. You're no different than every other human being that God has created since the dawn of civilization. I think that loneliness gets you alone, but then you realize everybody's been through this. Guess what? They made it through. I love that you said that your mess becomes your message. I also heard your test becomes your testimony.
The next thing he talked about after loneliness was weariness and you are an entrepreneur, you're rolling out your website, you're a father, you're a husband, you're helping other people, you're pouring into others, and with that pouring out into others, how do you stay poured into and at the top of your game?
The Importance Of Gratitude In Overcoming Leadership Challenges
A couple of things for me. One, and this again, this will probably apply to a lot of this here, but we have to just embrace the journey. A lot of times, we want to fight it. We want to pretend that it's not there. We want to resist it versus just accepting the reality that it's part of the price. This is an old analogy here, but if you want to get a soda machine, no one does this anymore, but you need to put $1 in and you put in $0.90, you don't get the soda. You know the price is $1. I think just knowing that there's a price to pay and knowing that being weary is part of the journey, accept it.
Accept the reality that weariness is part of the price of leadership.
What happens is, I think a lot of people start to complain about it and then it makes it worse and it drags. For me, part of that price, and then I'll share maybe some helpful perspective on it, comes from when you're a leader, everyone who's reading this, like you are, you usually have a high standard. You're going to coach people. You're going to work with people that don't always meet up to that, reach up to that standard. On the side of that, when you're a leader, the more people you lead, they're people. The greatest thing about leadership, people are involved.
The most challenging part about leadership, people are involved. For every amazing person, they also has their challenges. In my opinion, if you're a great leader and you're coaching people because I believe leadership, a big part of it is developing your people. It’s my personal belief. You're going to take on some of their challenges. I'm not saying you gotta get into all of their life challenge, it's not my point, but if you're going to help them overcome, then you have to understand their challenge.
What happens is you start to hear all of these challenges, and that usually weighs you down more than maybe the victories. For me, one of the things that's helped keep me grounded is gratitude. Gratitude that this person is giving me permission to lead them. Gratitude that I'm in this situation to be able to help this person. One of the last things, and I heard this, I was at a conference a couple of years ago, and this guy who's a pastor, leader, entrepreneur, a combo, and he said this, and I'll share this, he said, “People that create the right kind of mindset and the right kind of success, they know how to handle adversity with this line. ‘That's for me.’”
When you have a major speech to give and the microphone goes out in the middle of the speech, that's for me. When you have to host someone or drive someone or do something and you got to run and you get a flat tire, that's for me. When things happen, adversity happens, you didn't hit the budget, that's for me. It's not just a silver lining. It's looking for the areas that this is going to make you better because if you look for it, you will find it.
I'm a big believer in positive thinking and that comes out if anyone talks to me at all. I think sometimes we fake it too. We make it and it's not real. We're trying to be positive, but we're just talking out loud just to make it. I get that, too. This is a very real thought to really look for an opportunity to grow. Going back to the most challenging seasons of people, I go, “That's for me,” and I find a way to be grateful for the opportunity.
I heard this a while ago, and hopefully, this comes out right. Everyone reading this, you've overcome things. You've accomplished stuff. You've impacted people. Where you are right now is somebody else's dream. I heard that a little while ago. I used to quote the person, but now I don't remember. It's mine now, but I stole it. Most of the stuff I share, if it sounds really good, I probably got it from somewhere else.
Amen, brother, me too.
I think that's a core part of great leadership, too. You start to understand things so well that you can make it your own because you’re living it. Keeping that gratefulness in mind, and that's for me, mindset, helps you get through some of those things.
You said, “That's for me.” When you alluded in loneliness, you hit on this and this is the thread I'm hearing. I listen to a podcast on a young lady in an advertising firm talking about your mission statement. As a speaker, as a coach, people identify with stories. They love stories and we're all part of that story. If you don't love your story, that's when you experience disease, anxiety, depression, and into each life, some rain must fall.
If you can’t grab the bad with the good, it's going to be a long journey in this mortal coil of sadness and anger. I love that you talked about weariness a lot of times is because you don't live in gratitude. I noticed most people that either are upset, angry with their families, with their boss, hate the country, or hate the government. This is your story. The more you hate on it, the more you look at all the anxiety and stuff going on. If you hate everything, you are crushing your own self-identity. It doesn't mean things aren't perfect, but like you said, you have to look at it for what it is.
If Viktor Frankl can be in a concentration camp in Nazi Germany and find the joy in it, why can you not find joy in getting up, especially living in this country every day with the freedoms we have? This story is so important, own it and embrace it. Even it's a bad story because I think people look at us, Jevon, and go, “You guys,” no. I would never poo-poo somebody else's story because they had good people in their life. That's the ultimate hating of your own story. Some of the greatest people have come from the most adversarial or contentious upbringings. I digress. I'm sorry, Jevon, go ahead.
The Power Of Narrative And The Three Common Narrative Buckets
No, that's great. I love this dialogue because it prompts. I heard this and rings true to me that we all have our narrative and it usually falls into 1 or 3 buckets. It’s usually the hero narrative. “I feel like I’ve accomplished things and we’ve overcome things.” You may even feel lucky to a degree even though we’ve worked hard. You’ve got the helper-healer narrative, like, “I’ve helped people, but I maybe always taking on the weight of others,” and then the victim narrative.
These are things that, “It's always happened to me.” That's not the that's for me person. We have a way and I'm sure you've heard of the concept of soundtracks and the things that we're telling ourselves and neuroplasticity. In my mind, that is the new advantage in today's culture to program your brain for success. If people hear that and they go hocus pocus, this is scientifically based.
If you want to go Bible, it's biblical, the spoken word. What you say you are giving life to, you're literally programming how you are wired. I can maybe come back to that towards the end if it makes sense, but I think that's so important. It's not just the thoughts we have because we can control our thoughts so much, but our thoughts can wander. When we start to communicate what we believe to be true and what we want to be true, our lives start to move in that direction. It's powerful. It's that concept that changed my whole life.
Leadership: When we start to communicate what we believe to be true and what we want to be true, our lives start to move in that direction.
It is and it'll change every person's life. The power of thought. One of the books we published about was by a very recognized sports, high school, and college sports coach, Jeff Butorac, and it's called Inner Rival: Silencing the Negativity Within. One of the things he talked about is that out of the words we say to ourselves, out of the 30,000 words we say to ourselves a day, 87% are negative.
Forget the rest of the world. Stop blaming the rest of the world. We are our own worst enemy. He also said, that when you think your body's tired, as an athlete, you probably know this, “I can’t do another rep, I can’t run another mile. I can’t book another event,” he says you're really only at about the 40% mark. I do that too. “I'm too tired,” and then I'm like, “No, I know my mind is saying this, but in reality, I'm only at 40%.”
I press on and guess what? It comes up. What you say is what you get. Loneliness, weariness. The next thing my dad talked about was abandonment. Of course, abandonment has that negative connotation, abandoning your wife, your kids, and your pets, but Charles used it in a way that it's almost a hyper-focus.
It's that good to great, pruning away what you want to do and like to do in favor of what you ought to do and need to do. It's really that highest, purest calling. Jevon, have you gone through different things and you deal with different people and you, like me, we're constantly re-honing our focus and clarifying our mission statement. What are some things that you use to stay really on point? Just because we get the call doesn't mean it's our mission.
The Value Of Mentors And Hearing Their Voices For Guidance
I appreciate this thought because it gets you to challenge where you are in life, where you've been, and where you want to go. I think for me, it's about knowing and embracing that we're always needing to be in a state of change. I think we oftentimes where our identity gets caught up in a sports team or a job that we have or like what we do. How often do we ask the question like, “What do you do?”
People always go, “What do they do for work?” I'm more of a husband and a father than I'm even an entrepreneur or a speaker or a communicator. I think understanding is like there's a path that you need to shift towards, and recognizing that the only way that you're going to identify your best path is to be constantly open to change. There's a concept I'll share here that may be helpful for people who are reading.
You may have heard this. There are different window panes of life. There's the first window pane, which are the things that everybody knows about you. Everybody knows this. People know I'm a Marvel movie fan or they know that I played soccer. That's what they know about me. That's the window pane that they're all looking through. The second window pane is the things that only I know about me.
These are my deep thoughts, the things that I'm thinking about all the time that are almost impossible for me to communicate to you because it's internal. The third window pane is the things that other people know about us that we don't know. These are the things that maybe bother people about you. It could be some of the things that are strengths that you don't see in yourself. How often do we have greatness within us that we don't see because we just think everybody's that way? It's actually what makes us special. It’s what makes us unique.
I think the more that we're reading books, the more that we're associating, and the more that we're asking ourselves the great questions of, “Are we on the right path? What gives me energy? What matters to me?” As you start doing that, you start to learn to say no. You start to learn to say, “This doesn't line up with what matters to me.” Just embracing that concept of the fact that we've got to change and we need to look for opportunities to change.
I'll give you just one silly example. When I first started reading books, like your father's work, like the books that you guys publish. This personal growth, I was super sarcastic. I think that’s become a part of our American culture, to be sarcastic. Especially for me, growing up with my friends, it was just like, you put people down and you do it with a smile and everyone would laugh and it got attention.
I read a book like How to Win Friends and Influence People, and some people just throw that out. They go, “Whatever.” The reality was there's truth in it. People were feeling bad at my expense. That was part of my identity. I would always tell people, “I'm sarcastic. That's just how I am and that's how I'm funny.” I realized that as I shredded that part of my identity, and my identity became more in adding value and helping other people, I let go of that.
Whereas a lot of people don't let go of things because of their ego. It's just that simple. That's why I think it's so important to have mentors who you trust so that you can hear their voice and it can move you. Anyway, hopefully, some of that in there is helpful in terms of helping people level up and embracing the fact that we've got to continually change.
The last thing I'll share on this is I talk to executives all the time. I've worked under executives. I love coaching people at a high level, managers and leadership. I asked so many people, directly or indirectly, “What do you do for personal growth?” Readers here, you're someone who's pursuing it, but is there an intentional strategic plan? Is there a system in your life or is it the last thing that you think about? For my family, our focus is how do we get the most out of every day.
I'm just going to give this one thing because I think this is talked about all the time, but my challenge to anyone reading this is, are you living it? Don't let it be, “I've heard that before.” Are you living it? That's my challenge to you. What does the first hour of your day look like? Whatever it is for you, but are you getting the most important thing so that in the first hour of your day, you are on fire for life?
If you're not, and in your first hour of your day, if you're not fired up, in my opinion, there's something off and you got to figure that part out so you can grow and stretch yourself so that you can be the best leader that you can be. If you're a parent, if you're an influencer in your community, whether you have family or not, you've got people as a leader that you're influencing, how can you show up and be your best self if we don't start our day right and be the example?
Leadership: If, in the first hour of your day, you're not fired up, there's something off and you have to figure that part out so you can grow and stretch yourself and become the best leader that you can be.
That's not something I'm perfect at over the years, but it's something that I've gotten good at. That one thing helps me multiply my health, my spiritual journey, my leadership, my communication, the things that matter to me. I don't want to share what I do because it may be different, but everyone's got their thing. Those are just a couple of things that I think are crucial to having a systematic plan for your personal growth.
I know that the two or three that I use keep me on track. If I deviate, it is bad. There's a diagnostic. Do you employ these like the night before? Are you one of those people who plans for that first hour the night before or the weekend before?
I have my system set up so I know exactly how my morning's going to start. I know exactly how I'm going to wake up. I know exactly what I'm going to do in that first hour. Within that time, I have at least fifteen minutes that's reserved for planning out. That's usually towards the end of the hour. That's how I do it. My wife is way more organized than I am. She makes me better. She has her phenomenal mentality with her leadership. She was a senior director for a long time in the nonprofit world. She's done amazing things in there. Now she's an entrepreneur and we do work from home and stuff together. She's got her 50 lists that she's always tackling. I have my tiny list. I know this about myself. There are only so many things that my mind can be focused on at any one moment.
I love that, but isn't that funny? I think women are made to be just exquisite project managers. We just do it. I love hearing that. I love that you talked about others see it, the third window pane, but you don't. I don't care how evolved we are as leaders. I don't care how many books we read, how many podcasts, how many gurus we sit under, there are certain things that we can’t see. We can’t read our own labels.
I love that you talked about there are other people because I think there's a lot of pressure, Jevon, about as a leader, “What are you doing, Tracey? What are your goals? What do you do?” I can remember as a little girl feeling stressed about that. Even now, coming up on 62, I'm just like, “What are you going to do?” I'm like, “Ah.” I think we put the pressure on ourselves, so we have to figure it all out.
There are some things, no matter what, I'm not going to see because there are going to be people or books in my life that come into me and pour into me. Iron sharpens iron. I can’t just sharp on my own self, Tracey sharpens Tracey. Although I do that, as you said, by getting up and having that first hour and taking care of my body and having great mentors. Still, life is meant to be done in collaboration. I love that you really talked about what the others see and that's why you need to seek them out.
Creating A Space For Quality Feedback And Accountability In Leadership
I'll share one quick thought because this changed the game for me. It helped me set my ego aside. I went to someone that I trust, a primary influencer in my life, that I trusted, I wouldn't say this to anybody. I said, “I trust where you are in life, professionally, where you're at with your marriage, I trust where you're at in your career, business-wise, I trust your financial situation. I trust you.”
“If you ever see anything that I do or say, or I don't do something that's out of line with the values that I've talked about, with my commitments that I've made to my family, I give you permission to call me out.” I think that's tough for a lot of people. It was easy for me because I knew I needed a higher level of accountability than people who were in my sphere of influence. I think if we can do that, it creates a space for that quality feedback.
When you look at the falls from grace of leaders, even biblical, it's always done in secrecy or aloneness. Some people are like, “How did that happen?” I don't look at what the CEO did. I'm like, “Where was the network?” No failure is ever a one-and-done unless you have incredibly bad followers following a toxic leader, but that's not our audience and stuff like that.
Somebody, if you start to see as a leader, I just start closing off, or you look at friends and they start to go radio silence on you, reach out because a lone sheep is a dead sheep and we need to hold each other accountable to being open and transparent in all things. Thank you for sharing that, too. Last, vision. Vision isn't reserved for the people who have gone up like Moses. Although he certainly is a great visionary. Vision is for each one of us.
My dad would always tell me because I'm like, “There's vision, Dad.” I'm sitting under the tutelage of these people and I respect that they got it, but I just never thought of myself as a person that possesses vision.” He said, “Tracey, vision is seeing what needs to be done and then doing it.” I'm like, “I thought you would see what wasn't there.”
There's the innocence of that, but there's also this action piece to it. How do you craft, Jevon, your vision? You're talking about redoing your website and what's next. Vision is a living, breathing thing. How do you make sure that what you're pivoting to or embracing as far as change is in keeping with your overall vision?
The vision is such an important piece. I’ll share a story or analogy to connect it back to my journey. I think people can relate to this. For anyone who's in the sports world, you've heard of Messiah University and the soccer program there. The coach that I played under for three years, Dave Brandt, is known nationally, as one of the top coaches in the history of college sports. I listened to a podcast of his, he was a guest speaker, and it just refreshed my memory on a lot of things.
The way he defines it, vision is this idea of the way things ought to be. When you think about that, it's like, “What's the best version?” If I had all the money I needed, if I had all the time in the world, and the question that I ask people a lot of times is this, to help them think through their vision, I think the same for me. You can talk about this from a life perspective or from a business team's perspective.
On a life perspective, it's how you want to live. Don't look at any of your current circumstances. How do you want to live? If you look at it from a business level, like if you're leading teams, what kind of team would you want to perform it as a part of? What would you want that to look like? Do you want people to be actively engaged? Do you want them to be coming to you with solutions? What specifically do you want it to look like?
You go back to the soccer program, when I walked into that program, they'd already won multiple national championships. I walked into the vision that had already been created, but then it was like, how do we go to another standard? This was an environment where you were talking about winning. You were talking about being the best team in the country. That was essentially the best place in the country to play college soccer. That was the overwhelming vision.
Everything else was to move it in that direction. How do we now create that? What's the ideal outcome? It's aspirational. That's a big claim to say, “I want to be in the best place.” It is not necessarily the best team; other teams may be better teams and maybe have more qualified talent. However, what environment do we want to create? Now, let's go create that. I'm really big on this because my strongest skill set is communication, interpersonal communication, and speaking, not just speaking but connecting.
How clear are we with knowing our vision? I think a lot of people, because it's such a corporate thing, “I got my mission like I got to do it.” How much are you speaking that vision into people? How much are you sitting them down one-on-one and saying, “Here's the vision, and here's where I see you in that vision. Here's why I believe we're going to accomplish that vision because you're a major part of that.”
You're seeing this. People are so disengaged in Corporate America right now. I think a huge part of it is they don't feel connected to the vision. They don't feel like they have a role in it. They're just a cog in the wheel. I think it's up to us as leaders to have real conversations with people to help them get connected to that vision.
In summary, what's the ideal state? What's the ideal outcome of what things look like and feel like? I'm so big on the culture side and the people side. That's what I focus on. A lot of people are on the process side, all that stuff's important as well. The day your business moves is based on the people and the way you create the environment for them. It's up to us to speak that. I don't know if I answered everything in there.
You did. That's for followership. They smell it and they want it. They get infused by it. Leaders, we see where we need to go, but if you don't have a team following you, you're not leading and you can’t get it right without the right people aligned to the right North Star.
One thing I'll say on that, too, like when you have a clear vision, and I don't know this person, but there's a TED Talk out there about Your Vision Statement Sucks. That's what it's called. He talks about how to break down vision in a lot of different ways and is very specific. One of the things that having a clear vision does, you alluded to this, is it starts to attract the right people into the organization, and it starts to repel the people that you don't want.
That's okay. You're not the leader for everybody, nor do you want to be. The more clearly we can communicate that vision, the more we can attract the highest quality people who want to help you and fulfill that vision because they have their vision for their life, which may be outside of what you're doing. The more you can understand their vision for their life, the more you can help them get their vision through our vision. That's where magic happens. We can collaborate that way.
You're not the leader for everybody, nor do you want to be. The more clearly we can communicate that vision, the more we can attract the highest quality people who want to help you and fulfill that vision
Such an important point that you said, because a vision is a vision. That's the immutable truth. I think a lot of times as leaders say, “I have to modify it or I have to make it more palatable.” No. You have to attract the right. When people are like, “We lost this person.” What did you lose them for? If it was a value incongruence or they weren't feeling the vision, that's a good farewell. It's like saying you could marry anybody on the planet.
I guess you could, but you could not have a healthy, viable, covenantal marriage like that. It takes people going all in, which is why I love followership. You really hit on it. You want the best version of the vision to resonate with the right followers that come in there. Growing up, I was always like, “As a leader, I've lost somebody.” I didn't lose somebody, the vision did. Now, is there always a way I can be better at communication? Absolutely, but until I realized I can cast a wide net, but my vision is going to be very exclusive to a certain group.
As you said, personal development. We can’t imagine life without it, but a huge swath of the population could care less. That's different strokes for different folks. When we know who we are, we know who we want to attract to the team. Jevon, thank you for the great stories, the great resources, the information, and the inspiration on loneliness, weariness, abandonment, and vision. Is there anything else about the price of leadership that you would like to share with us before I want to get into what you're doing with your new website?
The Importance Of Value In Leadership And The Go-Giver Philosophy
The only thing I would share, we've talked about it in different ways, but on the set on the idea of vision, what leader do you want to be? What's your people philosophy? I know we've talked about The Go-Giver and Bob Burg, which influence a lot of how I think about business when it comes to people and life. Looking to add more in value than we receive in payment. That's one of my people's philosophies.
When I'm interacting with people, I hope to be able to add more value than I receive in payment. It doesn't always work out that way because sometimes I'm a burden. Sometimes, I'm going to be a burden to people. That's how I think about people. That's my lens. Everything that I do revolves around that.
That's one of my encouragement challenges for people as like an action item, a takeaway, is can you answer that question for yourself? I'm sure you can, but I think it's an important one because then as we're building out our programs, as we're building out our policies, whatever, like influences what's our personal people philosophy and a lot of people listening to this, I know you can influence organizations at scale. How you think about people goes a long way.
you can influence organizations at scale. How you think about people goes a long way.
I think people in the back of their mind, it's there, but they don't realize how much that affects how they interact in the workplace at all levels. What a great tool to help people sit down and think about it. Are you theory X? Are you theory Y? Do you think people are intrinsically good? All these things, believe me, you already think. You have a certain preconceived notion based on what you were taught or what you've experienced. It's neither right nor wrong. That's why I tell people, it's just about knowing who you are because it is going to come out in everything you do and your communication. Talk to us about your new website and these leadership communication training programs you're doing.
I've been very fortunate to work under and with some top leaders and entrepreneurs in the corporate space, and through that journey, I learned a lot about myself. The gift that I really want to be able to give the world at scale is developing leaders and developing their communication skills. When I say communication, what I mean by that, just to be clear, communication is connection.
You have this little tagline. How do you connect, inspire, and then lead? What I'm building out is a platform so that I can build out programming for ongoing learning and development through five-week increments. If you can imagine, coming through a lot of learning programs, kind of once and done, and there's not been a lot of maybe personal connection. I've done this already in a lot of different spaces and environments, now I'm just going to make it open to private employers and then also individuals who want to enroll.
What I want to do is a hybrid model where you're coming into live, interactive, engaging sessions and workshops that you lead with applicable skills to connect with your team and then lead them at a higher level. You think about active listening, you think about casting a vision. Communicating that vision. You think about, how do I help raise people's belief and confidence in themselves, they feel like I'm a part of everything, and then how do we give inspirational feedback? How do we give inspirational feedback? These are just some of the different skill sets that you put those things together.
It's going to be a hybrid model of live interactive training and coaching that I'm going to drive, combined with coaching and toolkits that people can take with them that they're going to directly apply the exercises to the work they're doing. This gives people a holistic journey and experience combined with a little bit of a community aspect as well. That way, as they're going through the program over a five-week period of time, the only time commitment in only 6 or 7 hours is a premium program, but you're going to have all these touch points, all these touch points.
You have a clear roadmap to apply it. You talk about vision. My vision for 2025 is really to equip 100 leaders with the communication skills to connect, inspire, and lead. I feel like that's what I would call to do. I love coaching leaders. I also love coaching entrepreneurs, people who are trying to put their name out there, network more, add value, that principle-centered mindset of really servant leadership at its core. It's a little bit of what I've done and what I'm excited about launching. Essentially influential skills. It's skills that influence people, not just talking at people but connecting so you can make an impact.
The Vision To Equip 100 Leaders With Communication Skills
For readers out there, you guys know how I feel. If you don't apply, it's gone. It’s the 72-hour rule. Apply or die. I love that you have that heavy communication, that collaboration, and that connection, and then the application. That's how you learn. You talked about neuroplasticity. That's how you retrain your brain. Not just hearing, but you have to create a new synapse, connection, visualization, and application. Jevon, what's the best way for people to get in touch with you?
There are two ways, I would say. If you see my name here, it's easy. I'm easy to find on LinkedIn. That's an easy way to find me. Just search my name, and I'll come up. The other way is I'm literally launching a website as we speak, so it'll be www.InfluentialSkills.com. We want to build skills that influence. I'll have my programming on there and my personal contact information.
I love networking with people who think this way. Even if people are interested in these services, if you just want to talk about books, thought processes, or collaborate, I love having these types of conversations, whether it's public or private. People can always reach out to me. I'm always open to networking from that mentality thought process.
I love the domain name, Influential Skills. That's perfect. That makes it very clear. Jevon, thank you again for taking the time to share with our readers.
This was fantastic. I’m really excited about it. I’m looking forward to future collaboration as well.
Me, as well. To our readers out there, if you like what you read, please be sure and hit the like or the subscribe button. If you would do us the honor of a five-star review, we would be so thankful that it helps other readers find out what people like you think about the content that we share. Never forget, as Charlie “Tremendous” Jones said, “You'll be the same person five years from now that you are today, except for two things. The people you meet and the books you read so make them both tremendous.” Thanks so much, everybody. Have a tremendous rest of your day.
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About Jevon Gondwe
Jevon Gondwe has a unique combination of leadership experiences spanning three NCAA National Championships, 13 years as an entrepreneur building teams, and over a decade of experience designing and delivering leadership communications resources in corporate America across seven industries and directly impacting over 30,000 people. His passion today is centered around principle-centered leadership communications to help leaders more effectively connect, inspire, and win the hearts of their teams. A father, husband, and believer in people, Jevon aims to have an unspeakable impact on the lives of others.