The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk

Episode #308: Alex Hutchinson

TEXT LEARNERS to 44222

Full shownotes can be found at www.LearningLeader.com 

• Leaders who sustain excellence =
  • They show up... Willing to take a shot when they might not be successful
  • People over-estimate short term and under-estimate long term.  Be ambitious about long term
  • Consistency - Secret to success: "When an editor gives me an assignment, they will receive it back on time with the right words."  You have to always get it done and be known as someone who does this.
  • To rise above a certain level, you must do more than what is expected.  "Dream big while not neglecting daily responsibility."
• Eliud Kipchoge - spiritual leader of self-disciplined people around the world.
• "Only the disciplined in life are free."
• Getting there earlier than his coach...
  • "As hard as I was willing to work, he was willing to support me." -- Alex describing his great basketball coach
• "Discipline is a muscle.  You get better as you use it more."
• Model of achievement -- Work hard, support others
• "Sweat more than you watch other people sweat."  -- Every leader should get some sort of activity.  It's indefensible to have a healthy body and mind.
• "We are cognitively better when we are fit."
• "Pushing yourself physically reveals what you're made of mentally."
• How to raise your threshold of pain:
  • It's expectation based
  • Pain perception is the same for all... It's all about how you respond
  • Learn to tolerate it it by going through it regularly.  Develop psychological coping system.
  • Pain is just a signal -- Understand it's how you choose to respond
• Navy SEALs, Olympians did an experiment with brain scanners where oxygen was restricted:
  • They have a 'higher level of self-monitoring'
  • Elite athletes get better when stress hits.  Normal people get worse
• Take a mindfulness based course:
  • Cultivate "non-judgmental self-awareness"
  • When you make a pancake for your 5 year old and they don't like it, "try not to respond with frustration in the moment.  Think about how you'll feel in 30 minutes."
• Change in training?  "Training will be the same, but my mind will be different."
• The importance of self-talk -- Inner monologue -- "I've trained for this, I can do it."
• "When you've reached a point that you think you've hit a wall, in fact in almost every case, those limits are perceptions of effort."
• Handle fear with preparation -- You must show yourself you have reason to believe you can do it.
• Delayed gratification -- Sports is the clearest venues to see benefit of delayed gratification
  • "Champions in November are made in July."
• Alain de Botton quote -- "Of many books, one feels, it could have been truly good, if the author's appetite for suffering had been greater."
• Advice:
  • Read a lot of books... On topics that have nothing to do with your topic
  • Give self space to think
  • Give self time to be bored

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk

Text: LEARNERS to 44222 to be part of 'Mindful Monday'

Episode #397: Carly Fiorina

• Leaders who sustain excellence =
  • Unlock the potential in others
  • Courageous
  • High character -- "How" matters more than what
  • Collaborate well
  • Humble/Empathetic
  • They see possibilities in other people... They don't judge them
  • Optimism combined with realism -- "Seeing people do more than they thought they can is fuel for me."
    • "You need an equal measure of optimism with realism.  You must see the current state as it is.  It's important to believe things will get better (optimism), but also be clear eyed and realistic.  Be honest.  See truth, and act on it."
• From secretary to CEO -- "People wouldn't look at em and say that's a leader."
• "Work hard and do excellent work in your current role."
• "What I saw were problems and we fixed problems.  I learned that solving problems is what leadership is all about."
  • "Run towards the problems, work to solve them.  Don't fixate on getting promoted, focus your attention on doing great at your current job."  And then doors will open...
• Choose a path over a plan
  • How you get things done matters more than what you get done... The manner in which you do it.  Think long term.
• Focus on where you can make a difference
• A manager versus a leader:
  • Manager -- Works within current constraints of the role.  They do the best they can with what they have.
  • Leader -- Changes things.  They create new ways of doing things.
• Leaders are made, not born.  Focus on building character and working to be excellent
• Carly was recruited to be the CEO of HP.  She was the first outside hire to be CEO ever.  And the first female CEO of a Fortune 50 company.
• She was named the Fortune magazine most powerful woman in American business for 6 years in a row
  • "When your team is diverse, the team is stronger."
• Competitive nature: "I've always been focused on excellence.  But, I've never been a win at all cost person."
  • "It's easy to make a quarter (in the business world, hit your mark for that particular quarter), but you need to get there the right way."
• Criticism as CEO of HP
  • "When you try to change things, you will get criticized."
  • "Criticism is the price of leadership."
• How to handle a board?
  • "A good board considers themselves a team, not a collection of individuals."  The HP board was a set of individuals and two of them leaked sensitive information to the press.  "Eventually, after I was gone, they got fired."
• Debating with President Trump on stage at the Republican debates... How to be prepared?
  • "Every woman in the world heard what he said."
  • "You need to be prepared, but also be present.  Be able to use experience and instinct in the moment."
  • "I didn't prepare for the comment about my appearance, but being present in the room, and having good instincts helped me respond properly."
• "Right now, we are confused what leadership is.  We see leaders who promote conflict, criticize, castigate others.  That is wrong."
  • "We need to be reminded who leaders are and what they do.  Leaders lift others up, they have courage.  Everyone can choose to be a leader."
• The idea of privilege:
  • "We cannot judge someone by they circumstances.  Whether they come from privilege or they are poor.  We should judge them based on their character and their contribution."
  • "If we want to achieve more, if we want to be excellent, it requires people who are different to work together towards a common goal."  Shane Show's Dream Teams model for building teams.
• Use the "Get To Know You Document"
• Why joining The Learning Leader Circle is a good idea

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk
Episode #306: Brian Koppelman - Follow Your Curiosity And Obsessions With Rigor

Full show notes can be found at www.LearningLeader.com

• Sustaining excellence:
  • Ability to focus on the work
  • Preparedness
  • Ability to collaborate
  • "Being responsible enough to show up on time is surprisingly effective and important"
  • "People that follow their curiosity, obsessions, and passions" -- They truly love what they're doing and work with incredible rigor.  If you love what you're doing, it doesn't feel like a job.  It's work that's enriching you at the same time.
• "What we're really trying to do as leaders is get people to perform at their highest level and to do it together, because what we do is highly collaborative."
•  "I was the kind of person that would read a book and if I liked it, I would stay up all night reading it.  And I would learn the words from that book.  I would look them up.  I loved the way words sounded and I loved the idea of communicating with great efficiency and humor."
• "Where this passion really landed for me, it made sense to do this work.  Working with great rigor is a lot easier when you're borderline obsessed with something and when you're curious."
• "Curiosity keeps you diving deeper."
• "I was a frustrated and blocked writer and I was starting to feel that I had made mistakes.  But those two hours every morning... Writing. Made me feel alive."
• "And he (my boss) said to me, 'Look, you know you're a writer and that's what you want to do.'"
• "Dude.  You do have a half hour a day."  You have to make time to do the work.
• "We finished the screenplay.  We sent it out and it got rejected by every single agency in Hollywood.  I'm not exaggerating."
  • "I  wrote down what every person said... And then it sold the next week, and every agency called us back trying to sign us.  Nothing was different on the page.  I read them all back what they had said and they would all lie back to me.  I had them written down on a big yellow legal pad.  I read them out loud on a speaker phone.  These guys all lied back to us. Nobody just said, 'well I guess I was wrong,' but then they all wanted to sign us.  It taught me a great lesson about gatekeepers in the world.  They don't always know."
  • "It means don't blindly accept negative feedback from gatekeepers."
• Feedback -- "We have friends/peers in place to give feedback to each other."  John Hamburg (Meet The Fockers; I Love You, Man; Along Came Polly). "You want feedback, you need feedback. But you don't want feedback from that jealous old friend who you know secretly doesn't want you to be successful."
• "I don't have people in my life who don't want the best for me.  We root for each other... Hard."
• Comfort in your own skin:
  • "It's a lifetime pursuit.  It's so hard."
  • "The battle is to accept who you are while not giving up on improving yourself.  To continue to try to become the perfected version of you which you can never be.  And to accept your own frailties and faults."
  • "One simple place this comes from is to avoid lying.  My wife and I don't lie to each other.  We've never lied to each other. When you have that to start, it helps with the rest because you're not fronting."
  • "I do morning pages every day, I meditate, I take long walks and think."
  • "When you do all of those things and you live with intention, you start to become more comfortable with who you are."
  • "But each time you stretch and grow and you're rewarded, it encourages you to stretch and grow."
• "Never Fake The Funk" -- "It's about pretending.  It's about lying to yourself.  Don't pretend, don't lie to yourself.  It's really easy to get swept along by other peoples conception of who you are. And by other people's ideas of what success is.  Defining success for yourself is crucial."
• "Any interaction I have, I view as an opportunity for growth. For me and the other person."
• Feedback is fuel... Hearing that you've helped someone is the fuel that drives this machine
• Having successful parents and the expectations that come from that...
  • "My dad was very good at showing me what it took to be successful."
  • "For some reason, my dad would always point out, 'there's nothing worse than the son of a rich kid.'"
  • "I never wanted to be looked at as just the son of somebody and just skate.  I wanted my parents and sisters to be proud of me.  I wanted my kids to be proud of me."
  • "I learned at a young age how to talk to powerful people.  To find a way to make them laugh, to not be intimidated by them.  Because I grew up around those people, I knew exactly what they're like.  That's a gigantic advantage that I had because my father took me to meetings.  I watched people sell to him, and I watched him sell to others, so I learned what worked."
  • "My dad was a workaholic, but he really cared about us.  He never missed a ballgame.  He would go to New York City, work a full day, come home to Long Island, watch me play a decent third base, and then drive back to the city for a meeting.  I never wondered 'Is my Dad going to show up for the game, my dad always showed up for the game."
  • "I would never eat dinner until my dad got home.  If he was going to be home at 9:00, I would wait up, my dad would come home and we would talk about his day and about business.  And just hearing the stories enabled me now to be able to understand aspects of business."
• "Whenever my son asked me to play catch, I would say yes."
• "I always walked my daughter to school.  Those little things, kids knowing that, it gives you a kind of closeness. It's having the connection..."
  • "You don't have to start over, you're in the flow.  You always have this time."
• Tell your kids, "You did well because you worked hard."  Don't say, "You did well because you're smart."  Compliment the work ethic.
• Writing Billions on spec... You write it for free, you don't have a deal in place.
  • "We wrote it for us."
  • Showrunner = Responsible for everything you see on the television show.  Writing it, overseeing shooting of it, the editing, the design, all of it.  Leading 150 people on the show.
• How to make hiring decisions?
  • "No assholes"
  • "We really check references"
  • The work has to be excellent
  • "We hire keys to run departments and trust the keys to hire their departments.  Hiring the keys is a lot of time and effort, a lot of meetings."
  • "I want to know that they're really going to kill for it.  I want to know that they're a good person.  That they'll get along with everyone.  We're all there lifting everyone else up.  So you need to know that everyone is there for the same reason.  'I love this show and I want it to be great.'"
  • How they hired Damian Lewis -- "We had three long meetings.  We each checked with people who had worked with each other.  We knew people loved working with him.  We knew he showed up prepared."
• How to be creative and innovative... A collaborative process:
  • Recognize people when they do great
  • "The truth is 'hire people that are smarter than you.  You never pay a bad price when you hire people that are better than you.'"
  • "Part of not fronting, of not faking the funk, is admitting when you don't know the answer."
  •  "Let's get the best idea.  Let's source the best idea that we can."
• Career advice:
  • "Do the work."
  • "Think about the story you want to tell and start telling it."
• At thanksgiving, why should you not talk about your new creative endeavor:
  • "It's a lot easier to say I don't have the time than to say I'm scared to do it."
  • "Say what your dream is too soon and someone will shoot it down.  Train yourself not to do that."
• Create a whole family (extended family) group chat
• Use the "Get To Know You Document"
• Why joining The Learning Leader Circle is a good idea

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk

Episode #305: Marcus Buckingham & Ashley Goodall - A Leader's Guide To The Real World (Break All The Rules)

Full show notes can be found at www.LearningLeader.com

Marcus Buckingham holds a master's degree in social and political science from Cambridge University and is a member of the Secretary of State's Advisory Committee on Leadership and Management.  He's the author of the international best-seller, First, Break All The Rules.

Ashley Goodall is the co-author, with Marcus Buckingham, of Nine Lies About Work: A Freethinking Leader’s Guide to the Real World.  He is an executive, leadership expert, and author, and has spent his career exploring large organizations from the inside.

Notes from this talk:

• Sustaining excellence:
  • Optimism -- An innate predisposition that things will get better
  • Individualization -- Ability to attract great talent.  Knowing that each person has something unique to bring
• "You follow somebody if they give you confidence in the future."
  • "The world will be better if I hitch my wagon to you."
• Great managers/leaders =
  • They know how to surround themselves with the right people -- "If you want a great party, invite great people."
  • They focus on people first
  • They help them.  They coach them.  They find a path and set expectations.
  • They grow.  They make the next step and help others do the same.
• "Talent is more important than experience."
  • Talent = a recurring pattern of thought.  Enduring patterns in a person.  Hire for those, then train for skills.
• How to find talented people?
  • Ask open ended questions, stay quiet, believe what they say.
  • Ask appetite questions:  "What did you love most about that?"
  • Talents are far more about natural appetite
• Feedback:
  • "People need feedback to grow and excel.  It grows best not with feedback, but with help."
  • People grown when attention is given to them.  "Pay attention to me.  My talents."  People need attention to what really works in them
• Leaders must look at the real world
  • Idiosyncratic -- The best are...
  • There is a difference between theory world and the real world
• "Learning is an emergent experience."  It's inside out... How you do your version...
• How do you measure things that are hard to measure?
  • "Must make a distinction between traits and states."
    • Example of a trait = extroversion
    • Example of a state = mood, skills (can change)
    • Competencies are a combination of both
• Being labeled a "Hi-Po" (high potential) in an organization:  "It's made up, not a thing.  Toxic because it presumes that some human brains can't/won't grow."
  • "There is no point in having the 'hi-po' conversation.  In talent reviews, ask for each person... How will they grow best?  Don't use a 9 box grid."
  • "Replace potential for momentum."
• "Work life balance is a very weird aspiration.  It's very hard to do it perfectly."
  • "Balance is a way of being stationary.  It's not a good way to move through life."
  • "We shouldn't tell people to do this.  Health is motion, finding love, finding red threads."
  • "It draws you in.  You should move through life.  Draw strength from the movement."
• "If a leader has no followers, they're not a leader." -- "Follow-ship is the thing."
• "We all have fears for the future.  Find a leader that can see around the corner, we're drawn to that."
• "Be a free thinking leader."

• Use the "Get To Know You Document"
• Why joining The Learning Leader Circle is a good idea

Social Media:

• Read: Nine Lies: A Freethinking Leader's Guide To The Real World
• Follow Marcus on Twitter: @mwbuckingham
• Connect with me on LinkedIn
• Join our Facebook Group: The Learning Leader Community
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