#53 Leadership Insights from my Conversation with Patrick Erwin

In episode 53 of Learning to Lead, host Mark Cundiff recaps his conversation with Patrick Erwin, author of I Love This Place, Director of Content and Training at the Maxwell Leadership Foundation, and a former Hillgrove High School band director who built a nationally respected program. 

🔑 5 Key Takeaways for Growth-Minded Leaders

1. Leadership Is More Than Skills

2. Your Response Shapes Your Culture

3. The Best Leaders Are Both Tough and Tender

4. Younger Generations Need Filters More Than Funnels

5. Culture Is Built Through Small Moments

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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

Transcript

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Hello, welcome to the Learning to Lead show. I'm your host, Mark Cundiff, and today is episode number 53, where we talk about my conversation with Patrick Erwin, the author of I Love This Place. It was a great conversation where we discussed his book and his powerful leadership journey. Patrick is the Director of Content and Training at the Maxwell Leadership Foundation, and he's also a former high school band director at Hillgrove High School in Georgia, where he helped build a nationally respected program from the ground up. There are five key takeaways that I got out of that conversation with Patrick Erwin. Number one, leadership is more than skills. Patrick shared how early in his career he thought it was about techniques, strategies, better technology, that this would solve all his leadership problems. As he grew as a leader, he realized that leadership growth required four things. Character, relationships, influence, and self-awareness. The leadership lesson that he learned there was skills may get you the opportunity, but character determines your long-term influence. One of the most practical ideas that came from this episode was my response is my responsibility. He talks about that great leaders cannot control every challenge, personality, or circumstance, but they can control their attitude, their reactions, their emotional response, their influence on the room. The key leadership insight there are leaders are emotional thermostats. I want to read to you something that hangs on my wall that is very closely aligned with his my response is my responsibility. This is from Charles Swindle. He said, the longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude to me is more important than facts. It's more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness, or skill it will make or break a company, a church, a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we embrace for that day. We cannot change our past. We cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it, and so it is with you. We are in charge of our attitudes. And I think that perfectly aligns with Patrick's core idea around my response is my responsibility. And if you can take nothing else from the episode, the conversation I had with Patrick, is if it did... you can embrace that and make that a mantra for your life, it will change not only your leadership, it'll change everything about your life. Number three: the best leaders are both tough and tender. I really love the way he illustrated this about the two extremes of the leadership styles that many of us have. Patrick explained how that there needs to be a balance between tough and tender leadership, and that if you have too much on the tough side, you're like a drill sergeant, but if you have too much on the tender side, you're more like cotton candy. So these are some of the characteristics of tough leaders. Tough leaders hold high standards, they push for excellence, and they drive for accountability. Tender leaders build relationships, show empathy, and care deeply about people. Too much toughness creates rebellion, but too much tenderness creates entitlement. The leadership lesson here is people want leaders who challenge them and care about them as well. Make sure that you listen to that part of our conversation. He gives in some good details, a great example of a principle of his that showed this type of leadership and the impact that it had on the school. Big takeaway number four: younger generations need filters more than funnels. This was one of the most eye-opening concepts in the episode. I had never heard it described like this, and about how many of us that grew up born in the '60s and '70s and maybe even '80s, we were taught through funnels. People would pour information into us. Previous generations needed leaders primarily for information. But there's so much information available today with the World Wide Web and AI, YouTube, and so many other sources for information. Today's younger leaders already have unlimited information. This is what they need now. They need interpretation, they need perspective, they need wisdom, and they need application Patrick explained that modern leaders must become filters instead of funnels. Key leadership insight there is leadership today is less about controlling information and more about helping people navigate it wisely. Lastly, culture is built through small moments. Patrick emphasized that culture is rarely built in huge moments. It is built in hallways, in conversations, in visibility, in encouragement, in accountability, and in daily interactions. He broke this up into two things. He talked about minutes and moments. There he talked about how minutes are when you're getting the work done, when you're getting production, you're teaching the band how to make the music and it's practice and it's getting the results. In a business, it may be you're out there on the production line and you're producing X, Y, Z product, or in your service business, you're delivering X, Y, Z service effectively. The moments are those moments that you're off stage, that you're in a break room or that you're having lunch or you're having some kind of social interaction to build relationships. That's where culture is built. And the leadership lesson there is that small moments repeated consistently create a powerful culture over time. If you haven't listened to episode number 52 with my conversation with Patrick Irwin, the author of I Love This Place, you need to go and listen to it just to listen how he came up with the title of that book, because it really sets out a mantra for if you have a culture that is so good that people will say, I love this place, it will change the productivity. It will change your retention rates. It will change the effectiveness of your organization from top to bottom. Thank you for joining us on today's Learning to Lead show., If you got value out of today's show, make sure you go share it with a friend. Make sure you subscribe so that each episode comes into your podcast app automatically. We would love for you to go give us a rating of five so you can help us spread the word about the Learning to Lead show. Go to the show notes and click on Leader Notes to download your free copy of a summary of this episode Make sure that you go out this week and learn, grow, and lead, and take your organization to the next level