The Learning To Lead Show with Mark J. Cundiff

#25 Servant Leadership with a Backbone: My Insights from my conversation with Rick Rando

• Mark Cundiff

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Core Principles of Effective Leadership: Insights from Rick Rando


In this episode of The Learning to Lead Show, host Mark Cundiff reflects on his conversation with Rick Rando, an eighth-degree black belt, discussing his key leadership lessons. 

The episode is anchored by the idea 'What You Condone, You Endorse' and dives into five crucial takeaways: the importance of maintaining high standards, the essence of servant leadership with a backbone, establishing effective systems, and transitioning focus from individual to team success. 

Mark underscores the need for leaders to provide candid feedback, create consistent systems, and foster a culture of trust and fairness, all while shifting from 'me' to 'we'. The episode is rich in practical advice and wisdom for aspiring leaders.


00:00 Introduction to the Learning to Lead Show

00:34 Key Takeaway 1: What You Condone, You Endorse

01:45 Key Takeaway 2: The Standard is the Standard

03:47 Key Takeaway 3: Servant Leadership Requires a Backbone

05:26 Key Takeaway 4: Systems Liberate, Not Limit

07:02 Key Takeaway 5: From Me to We

09:10 Conclusion and Final Thoughts


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🔎 About LeaderNotes

LeaderNotes is a quick-hit companion to each episode of The Learning to Lead Show. In just 5–10 minutes, Mark Cundiff recaps the top leadership insights, frameworks, and action steps from each interview, designed for busy, growth-minded leaders who want to review and apply the episode’s biggest takeaways on the go. It’s like the highlight reel + playbook—all in one.


Contact Mark at: mark@markjcundiff.com

Hello, welcome to The Learning to Lead Show. I'm your host, mark Cundiff today we're gonna talk a little bit about my reflections on my conversation with Rick Rando. He is an eighth-degree black belt. The name of that episode was what You Condone, you Endorse, and I think that summarizes the content that he has learned during his leadership journey. So we're gonna dive into that and share five key takeaways that I got from that conversation. One of the things that he started out with that comment that really resonated with me. What you condone, you endorse. In other words, what you tolerate becomes your culture, what you. Allow in behaviors and the way people interact with one another, the way they work through your systems, that becomes your culture. One of his biggest mistakes that he candidly admitted during our conversation was that for a while he would keep toxic people around longer than he should have because he thought he needed him. They were high performers. They were critical to operations. They were hard to replace. How often do we see this in organizations, a great salesman who treats coworkers and other people, support staff on the team in a unacceptable way, but they are kept on because they're hitting the numbers and bringing in revenue. Those are the kind of things that. Make your culture weak and cause really good people to leave your organization to leave your team. So he ignored that early on. But then. He learned that he had to put some standards into place, and that's what came up with his second main point that I want to talk about is that he finally came to the determination that the standard is the standard, and that consistency to that standard builds trust. This is one of the key things, I think is a foundation to leadership is that you have to have clear expectations set in place, and you have to give good feedback, both positive and negative about whether those expectations, those standards are being met. Then there has to be a culture of accountability. When you do that, you build trust. Early in his leadership journey, Rick admits that he avoided being definitive. He wanted to be liked. He didn't want to offend anyone, so he blurred the line over time. That approach created confusion, not loyalty. When you confuse your people, you lose as he matured. This is one of the things that he made a benchmark for himself. As a leader, the standard is the standard. You either level up or there's the door. He made that a practice that raised the level of performance across his organization. That mindset didn't make him get rigid or cold. It made him trustworthy because the A players on his team saw that the poor players are being held accountable and that made them want to perform at a higher level. When people know the standard, they don't have to guess. They don't feel favoritism. They don't waste emotional energy navigating ambiguity. Strong cultures aren't built on flexibility. They're built on fairness and followed through. That leads us into his third. Key point that he made during our conversation, he talks a lot about servant leadership, servant leadership requires a backbone, not avoidance. Rick's view of servant leadership is refreshingly grounded. Serving doesn't mean lowering expectations. Serving doesn't mean avoiding hard conversations. Serving doesn't mean being passive. True servant leadership means protecting the mission, guarding the culture, equipping the people to succeed. Even when it's uncomfortable. Rick centered up simply find the need, fill the need. Find the need. Fill the need. Sometimes the need is encouragement. Sometimes it's systems, and sometimes the greatest service you can offer is holding the line. Leaders who avoid conflict in the name of kindness end up being unkind to everyone else. The great leader of ge, Jack Welsh, he said the most compassionate thing. That you can do for a team member is provide them with candid feedback. The most compassionate thing you can do is provide a team member with candid feedback.'cause that's the only way that they know where they stand. That's the only way that they can learn and grow. That's the only way that they can meet The expectations you have with them is if you give them candid feedback. Number four, he talked about systems. He says systems don't limit people. They liberate them. Rick shared a powerful lesson from early failure, attracting a large group of students without having the systems to support or retain them. He went out and did all this. Gorilla marketing, got a ton of people coming into the studio. I think it was somewhere around a hundred people, and only one or two stuck because they didn't have a system for keeping those people in the program, for keeping those people engaged in their content and coming back time and time again. So they lost them. So the result was that he had a lot of momentum, but there was no sustainability. So over time, and especially during COVID, Rick learned that systems are not bureaucracies. They are protections. These are four things that systems do for your organization. They create consistency. They build trust, they remove chaos. They allow people to focus on serving instead of scrambling. When COVID hit and nearly 50% of martial arts studios shut down. Think about that. 50% never reopened their doors after COVID. Rick's organization not only survived, but it thrived. He has a 8,000 square foot facility with over 70 team members on his team with a thriving business after COVID. You don't rise to the level of your passion. You fall to the level of your systems. So these are some of the key lessons that he learned and really got it tested out during the time of COVID. The fifth and last one is great leadership is the shift from me to we, Rick's journey from white belt. To eighth degree black belt mirrors the leadership journey many never complete. Early leadership is all about proving yourself. Mature leadership is about developing others. Rick described a defining moment when he realized success wasn't measured by how many gifts he received, but by how many his team received early in his career when he was starting the studio. At Christmas, he would get tons and tons of gifts, and there was a pivotal moment about 10 or so years ago that he realized that he was getting a few gifts and that his team members were getting plentiful gifts, getting more gifts than he was. He said, that's what it's all about. I have made the shift from the leadership being all about me to it all being about us as a team, and that leadership had been transferred down through his organization and those connections from his team members. We're being made with the clients that were coming in week after. Wait, so that shift was from recognition to replication. In other words, from him being put on the pedestal to replication to where he was putting others on the pedestal and letting them lead and letting them shine. From control to trust. Instead of trying to control and manage and even manipulate situations, he was learning how to put people in place that he could trust to run the organization the way he had set it up. Then from spotlight to stewardship, meaning that his leadership was a gift that he was passing down to others so that they could become better leaders and exhibit the talents and gifts that they had. As you grow as a leader, it becomes less about you. And more about your people. The highest level of leadership isn't being needed. It's being multiplied. So I would like you to think about that this week. Think about how your leadership journey has been growing. Where are you on that spectrum? Is it about me? Is it about your success or is it about we and your team's success and how you're developing others? I think there's a lot to learn from Rick and the things that he shared with us. If you haven't listened to that episode. Go back and listen to the things that teaches us. It's a lot of wisdom, a lot of golden nuggets. If you haven't done so, grab the leader notes that gives you some outline of the different things that we discussed during that episode. It also provides you with the list of books that he mentions and recommends for leaders to read that have impacted his life, and also make sure you subscribe and if you would go give us a rating. Those ratings help us. Spread the word about the learning the lead show, and let others know what we're doing here to help other leaders grow. Now go out and learn, grow, and lead, and take your organization to the next level. I.