#61 Leadership Insights from my Conversation with Jon Dario

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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.

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Hello, welcome to the Learning to Lead show. I'm your host, Mark Cundiff, and this is episode number 61, where I provide some key takeaways and leadership insights from my conversation with John Dario. That was episode number 60, Execution Beats Intention: How Great Leaders Turn Plans into Results with John Dario. First of all, I wanna take a few minutes and just talk about how this podcast has been broadcast around the world. It is now listened to in three hundred and eighty-one cities across the world, fifty-seven countries, and forty-one states of the United States. I need some help getting the word out to places like Alaska, Delaware, Idaho, Montana, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, and South Dakota. If you know someone in one of those states, please make sure that you share a link to the Learning to Lead show and give them an opportunity to hear the great conversations that we're having with great leaders from across the country I'd love to spread the word throughout the rest of the country and get a hundred percent before too long. Make sure if you haven't done so, go and download Leader Notes. That'll give you a great outline of the key takeaways, quick action items that you can take with your team, and then also the resources that were discussed during the podcast. This is a great resource for you to continue to learn, grow, and lead in your organization with the content that we share here on the Learning to Lead show. So now we're gonna turn our attention to key takeaways from episode number sixty, Execution Beats Intention: How Great Leaders Turn Plans into Results with John Dario. John is the CEO of a company in New York that manages real estate, and he has a number of different roles, including he's an author, speaker, a management trainer. He created the AIM, Action Item Management framework that he has put into a book called AIM. He has spent many decades helping organizations improve execution by creating systems that drive consistent results. His leadership experience spans organizations including Macy's, The Gap, Bank of America, Travelx, and his current role leading a real estate organization managing real estate in the New York, New Jersey area. He serves as the CEO for this company. Throughout my conversation with John, he shares how one simple conversation with an employee completely changed his understanding of leadership. That moment taught him that leadership isn't just about having authority, it's about earning influence through consistent actions. John and I explored how strategy alone isn't enough, How leaders can create a culture of accountability, and why follow-up may be one of the most underutilized leadership habits. At the heart of our conversation was one powerful leadership principle: execution beats intention. Many times we judge others by their actions or behaviors or the results, but we very seldom do the same with ourselves. Many times we judge ourselves by our intentions instead of what we actually get done. Great leaders don't simply create plans, they execute They create habits, systems and behaviors that consistently turn plans into results. Here are five key takeaways I have for growth-minded leaders that came out during our conversation. Key takeaway number one: Leadership is earned through influence titles give leaders authority. Behavior earns influence. John learned this lesson when he had an employee tell him, "Your actions are what drive my behavior, not your words." That moment reshaped his leadership philosophy. People watch leaders far more closely than they listen to them. The key leadership lesson here is if you want to change your team's behavior, start by examining your own. Key takeaway number two: Consistency builds credibility. Many organizations chase the next exciting initiative. The shiny new object syndrome, we call it. Great organizations master the fundamentals. John explains that sustainable success rarely comes from one spectacular moment. It comes from doing ordinary things extraordinarily well over and over again. Leadership insight. Consistency builds trust. Trust builds engagement. Engagement produces results. Key takeaway number three: Follow-up is a leadership superpower. Many leaders communicate once and assume execution will happen. John believes something different. The frequency and quality of a leader's follow-up directly affects the quality of the team's execution. Follow-up isn't micromanagement, it's leadership. Leadership lesson here is if something really matters to you, schedule time to follow up. And I really found this to be one of the most significant takeaways I got from him is I've never heard a person, a leader discuss about scheduling follow-up the way he did and how important it is to a leader's success. Make sure that you put it on your calendar so that it gets it done, and it helps your team become more effective Key takeaway number four: Great leaders focus on what they can control. Unexpected events will happen. Economic shifts, supply chain disruptions, personnel changes, even pandemics. John's AIM framework reminds leaders to acknowledge external influences but never become controlled by them. Instead, focus on the actions within your control. Leadership insight, you can't always control your circumstances, But you can always control your response. One exercise that I have shared with a number of teammates and that I've practiced myself over the years is when you feel overwhelmed, when you have a lot of things going on, is to take a sheet of paper, draw a line down through the middle of the paper. On the left side, write down all the things that you can control of the situation, and then on right-hand side, write down all the things that you can't control. Make a list, an exhaustive list. Then look at that list, fold it where the line is, and just concentrate on the side of the list on the things that you can control. If you will do that, that will change your focus, it will change what you're working on, and it will, at the end of the day, many times you'll go over and look back at that list and what's on the other side that you're not focused on anymore. And most of those things will end up taking care of themselves over time. But even if they don't, if you're focusing on what you can control, you're gonna move the needle, you're gonna get results, and you're gonna do things that make a difference in your organization. So teach your team to focus on what they can control, not focus on the things that they can't. Key takeaway number five: accountability helps people win. Too many leaders avoid accountability because they fear damaging relationships. John sees accountability differently. When expectations are clear, when coaching is consistent, when follow-up is intentional, accountability becomes one of the greatest gifts a leader can provide. When you do not hold people accountable, the A players see that those who are not performing and not doing well are not being held accountable. They're gonna hold themselves accountable, and they're gonna take their efforts to the next level. But what will happen over time is many of those A and even B players will leave the organization. I have seen this recently in an organization that I was part of where there was not a good culture of accountability. There was not clear expectations set. There was not good coaching and a consistent framework and method. There was not good follow-up that was intentional. Just about the entire A team of that organization has since left that organization. So the leadership lesson here is accountability isn't always about catching people doing something wrong. It's about helping people succeed. Sometimes, yes, we do have to correct and redirect folks, but catch people doing things right. Celebrate the things that they're doing right, and help them succeed. Help put them in a position to succeed. I hope you enjoyed those insights from my conversation with CEO John Dario. If you have not listened to that conversation, please go back to episode sixty, download it. Make sure that you subscribe so that when we publish a new episode, a new conversation with a leader, that it shows up in your podcast app as it's produced and published. Also, if you would, do me a huge favor, go give us a rating, share with your friends about what's going on the Learning to Lead show, and help us grow our audience to help more people learn, grow, and lead, taking their organizations to the next level