The Learning To Lead Show with Mark J. Cundiff
The Learning to Lead Show with Mark J. Cundiff
Helping Good Leaders Become Great—One Practical Insight at a Time
You’re busy. The demands are real. But your desire to grow as a leader hasn’t gone anywhere.
That’s why The Learning to Lead Show is designed for leaders like you—driven, growth-minded, and always on the go. Hosted by Executive Leadership Coach Mark J. Cundiff, this podcast delivers practical leadership insights you can use today, not someday.
Each week, you’ll get:
- Short, focused teaching episodes packed with real-world lessons from decades of leadership experience, bestselling books, and proven frameworks.
- Authentic interviews with front-line leaders who share how they’re navigating challenges, building teams, and leading with purpose, right where they are.
Whether you’re commuting, working out, or grabbing a few quiet minutes between meetings, this show helps you invest in your leadership without adding to your already busy schedule.
Because great leadership isn’t about having more time—it’s about using the time you have to lead on purpose.
This show is for growth-minded professionals who want more than titles and tactics. It’s for those who want to lead with purpose, develop a legacy, and make their future bigger than their past.
So whether you're leading a team, a business, or yourself—tune in, take notes, and let’s grow together.
The Learning To Lead Show with Mark J. Cundiff
#49 Leadership Insights from my Conversation with Trent McJunkin
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Host Mark Cundiff opens Episode 49 of the Learning to Lead Show with an update on a brief publishing gap due to attending his son Elijah Cundiff’s wedding, previews Episode 50 featuring Jeff Brown of the Read to Lead Show, and thanks listeners for helping the podcast reach 53 countries and 326 cities.
He reflects on his conversation with frontline leader Trent McJunkin, who rose from technician to senior leadership, sharing hard lessons about shifting from driving results and fixing problems to developing people.
Cundiff highlights five takeaways:
- Leadership starts before a title
- Being the hero creates dependency
- A leader’s role is to develop others
- Clarity reduces frustration by defining “good” and “done.”
- Communication multiplies influence because reception matters as much as intent.
He directs listeners to download leader notes, subscribe, share, and rate the show.
Free Learning To Lead Resources
🔎 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. This is the place where we strive to encourage, equip, and inspire leaders to take their leadership to the next level. Today is episode 49 where I provide. Some reflections on my conversation with Trent McJunkin. We've had a little bit of a gap here between the last episode when I had a conversation with him. My wife and I were out of town to help celebrate my oldest son, Elijah Cundiff's wedding last week. It was a marvelous event and I am of course biased and thought it was. By far the best wedding that I've ever been to. It was truly a beautiful service, and so we had that going on just wanted to let you know why we had a little bit of a gap Coming up. Our next episode 50, will be with what I considered the Godfather. Of leadership, podcasting, and that being Jeff Brown, who has had the Read to Lead Show for more than a decade, and it is a powerful show if you've never listened to that podcast. He is my guest for the next episode number 50 that will be coming out in a day or so. In the meantime, I just want to continue to thank all of you who are sharing learning to lead show. Podcast with your friends and your family and your coworkers, those type of things. It's been truly amazing to see the global reach that this podcast has had. We are now being listened to in 53 different countries and 326 cities around the world, and that's because you're helping spread on social media and to your network. What's going on here? On the Learning to Lead show, we have some great guests lined up for the future. It's amazing. Some of the people that we're gonna get talk to a number of people that work with John Maxwell, a number of leaders who have written books and some really great frontline leaders. But today we wanna talk about our conversation with Trent McJunkin. He is truly a frontline leader, a guy who started out as a technician and worked his way up through the ranks from a lead man to a supervisor to being a maintenance manager. And now he works in a senior role in his organization, he's talking about the hard lessons that shaped his leadership along the way. Like many leaders early in their career, Trent found success by pushing hard driving results and stepping in to fix problems. It worked. At first, but over time he realized something critical. Getting results and building people are not the same thing. This episode centers around the leadership shift that separates good leaders from great ones. Moving from being the hero to developing people who don't need one. At the core of this conversation is a leadership truth. Every growth-minded leader needs to wrestle with your leadership is not measured by what you accomplish, but by what your team can accomplish without you. This episode is for leaders who want to, number one, build real influence, not just authority. Number two, develop people who can execute consistently. Number three, create clarity instead of chaos. And number four, lead with intention, not reaction. I had five key takeaways for growth-minded leaders in our conversation. The first one being leadership starts before the title trent didn't pursue leadership. Others saw it in him first, if you go through the conversation that we had, it was an interesting discussion around how he was very reluctant to step even into a team lead role, but those around him saw his potential, saw his ability to impact the organization in a positive way. So they tapped him on his shoulder and basically insisted that he apply for a team lead role. That led him into becoming a supervisor. Then it led him into becoming a maintenance manager. Then he became one who runs, continuous improvement programs for different organizations, and now he's even doing consult. And coaching from his experience in those situations. The key leadership lesson there is if you're waiting for a title to start leading, you're already behind. Number two, being the hero is not leadership. Many organizations reward the person who jumps in and saves the day, but that creates dependency, not growth. Heroes, fix problems. Leaders prevent them. And this all goes to focusing on developing your people, not having them become reliant on you to solve all their problems. The leadership insight there was if your team always needs you, you're not leading, you're rescuing. Key takeaway number three, your role has shifted whether you realize it or not, as a leader, your job is no longer to do the work. Your job is to develop people who can do the work. This is where many leaders struggle. They keep operating like high performing individuals instead of leaders. The key leadership lesson there is stop measuring your value by what you do. Start measuring it by what your team can do. Are you developing people? Are you creating a team of leaders? Are you just leading followers? There's a big distinction there, and that's what Trent got into during our conversation and the clear distinction that he's learned. Number four, clarity eliminates frustration. Most leadership frustration isn't about effort. It's about unclear expectations. Trent emphasizes too simple, but powerful questions. What does good look like and what does done look like? In other words, you have to know what you're shooting for. It's really the same thing that Stephen Covey taught us in the seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Begin with the end in mind. What does your objective look like and does your team understand that? Does the people on the front lines understand what it looks like to have success? So many times we find out that there's not good clarity. There's not good alignment from the leadership down through the front lines. And this causes frustration, confusion, mistakes, it cause quality issues, it causes a lot of different challenges. When clarity is not present, so leadership, insight, confusion creates chaos. Clarity creates performance. How are you doing in that measure? Number five, communication is the multiplier of influence. Leaders often think they're being clear, but the message gets filtered through how others receive it. The issue isn't always what you said. It is how it is received. Get that again. The issue isn't always what you said. It's how it is received. In other words, is your message being understood in a way that it can be processed the way you want it to be processed, to execute the mission, the vision effectively, the leadership lesson here is great leaders don't just communicate more. They can communicate better. So that is some of the key highlights I had with my conversation with Trent McJunkin. Make sure you go and download the leader notes. That will be a link in the show notes for you to be able to do that. Make sure you subscribe to the Learning to Lead Show so that each new episode shows up in your favorite podcast app, and we would love it if you got value out of today's episode to do two things. One, share it with a friend, coworker, someone who you think can. And we'll benefit from growing through these leadership conversations. And then secondly, make sure that you go and give us a rating. Those help us show up on the podcast feeds so that others can learn about the Learning to Lead show. Thank you for your time, and make sure that you go out and learn, grow and lead, and take your organization. Take your team, take your company to the next level.