The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk

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Episode #362: Chris McChesney - How to Achieve Your Wildly Important Goals

Chris McChesney is a Wall Street Journal #1 Best-Selling Author – The 4 Disciplines of Execution. In his current role of Global Practice Leader of Execution for FranklinCovey, Chris is one of the primary developers of The 4 Disciplines of Execution. For more than a decade, he has led FranklinCovey’s design and development of these principles, as well as the consulting organization that has become the fastest growing area of the company.

Notes:

• Sustaining excellence = They execute on the strategy that's been launched...
  • They have amazing drive
  • High expectations - They expect a lot of everyone and do it in a positive way
  • They "radiate love." Warmth...
• Strategy to execution -- It's an art and a science
• "Execution doesn't like complexity..."
  • Great leaders develop pattern recognition over time. An experienced quarterback has more repetitions and the game "slows down" which creates a situation he recognizes
• Three components to any strategy to execution process:
  • Lower the blood pressure -- "Stroke of the pen."
  • Take life support measurements
  • Break through
• What is a 'stroke of the pen' action as a mid level manager?
  • Modify the portfolio, work within the limited budget, figure out incentives, hiring decisions, combining territories
• "Sometimes in life our challenges are really hidden opportunities."
  • Chris did an unpaid internship.  He warned that with Stephen Covey by continuing to show up and add value to the lives of the people at the company.
• Advice: "Work outside of your job description but within your influence."
  • "Don't fall in love with a solution, fall in love with a problem."
• "I have never gotten a job from a standard interview process... I've gotten seduced by a problem... And then worked to solve it."
  • This is how Chris created a company within a company. He identified that execution was a problem, and worked to solve it.
• Useful feedback Chris received earlier in his career from a mentor: "Chris, when you come to headquarters, people like you, but you aren't fun to work with."
  • The power of honest, specific, feedback.  Paul Walker (President) - "It's never about him. He's always interested in understanding what's going on around him and with others."
• Pat Lencioni - Not everyone should be a leader... "I don't like the term 'servant leadership.' It makes it sound like there's any other way."
• The 4 Disciplines of Execution:
  • Focus on the Wildly Important -- Exceptional execution starts with narrowing the focus— clearly identifying what must be done, or nothing else you achieve really matters much.
  • Act on the Lead Measures -- Twenty percent of activities produce eighty percent of results. The highest predictors of goal achievement are the 80/20 activities that are identified and codified into individual actions and tracked fanatically.
  • Keep a Compelling Scoreboard -- People and teams play differently when they are keeping score, and the right kind of scoreboards motivate the players to win.
  • Create a Cadence of Accountability -- Great performers thrive in a culture of accountability that is frequent, positive, and self-directed. Each team engages in a simple weekly process that highlights successes, analyzes failures, and course-corrects as necessary, creating the ultimate performance-management system.
• “As legendary Harvard marketing professor Theodore Levitt put it, “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole.”
• “People who try to push many goals at once usually wind up doing a mediocre job on all of them. You can ignore the principle of focus, but it won’t ignore you.”
• “If you ignore the urgent, it can kill you today. It’s also true, however, that if you ignore the important, it can kill you tomorrow”
• “Managing a company by looking at financial data (lag measures) is the equivalent of “driving a car by looking in the rearview mirror.”
• Optimization - Consistency is wildly important. Lock down elements of the process. Anchor the process at two points. Rule - "If we can meet the lead measure for 14 weeks, we're calling it a habit."

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk

Text LEARNERS to 44222

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

Episode #361: John C. Maxwell - The Essential Changes Every Leader Must Embrace

Notes:

• Adaptability: “Good leaders adapt. They shift. They don’t remain static because they know the world around them does not remain static.”
• 3 questions to ask yourself every day:
  • How will this crisis make me better?
  • How will I use this crisis to help others?
  • What action will I take to improve my situation?
• Leaders get paid to deal with uncertainty. They must relish it because it comes with the territory. Betty Bender, former president of the Library Administration and Management Association, explains, “Anything I’ve ever done that ultimately was worthwhile initially scared me to death.”
• "Success in life comes not from holding a good hand, but from playing a bad hand well." - Warren Lester
• Leaders become invigorated with problems.
• “Doing the right thing daily, compounds over time.”
• Ask what you can do to add value to others during this time.
• “Leaders don’t rise to the pinnacle of success without developing the right set of attitudes and habits; they make every day a masterpiece.”
• It’s okay to be uncertain but it’s not okay for a leader to be unclear.
• If you prepare today you don’t have to repair tomorrow.
• The opposite of distraction is traction.
  • Crisis moves us
  • You help people gain traction by helping them gain perspective.
• Fear is a negative emotion, feeding fear is like putting fertilizer on weeds.
• The question is what is going to dominate between fear an faith and the dominant emotion will win the day.
• What gains your attention and focus only grows whether that's fear or faith.
• “A difficult time can be more readily endured if we retain the conviction that our existence holds a purpose, a cause to pursue, a person to love, a goal to achieve.”
• Great coaches make adjustments during a game.
• Action is where all transformation takes place.
• The most overrated English phrase is good intentions.
• “Change is inevitable. Growth is optional.” 
• A crisis doesn’t make a person, a crisis reveals a person.
• “The difference between average people and achieving people is their perception of and response to failure.”
• "Decision making is easy when you know what your values are."
• Right now the people come first, the company second, yourself last.
• Respect is learned and earned on difficult ground.
• "No one ever coasted their way to greatness."
• People don’t want perfect leaders, they want authentic leaders.
• Experience is not the best teacher. Evaluated learning from experience is the best teacher.
• The first step to great communication is to get over yourself. It’s not about you. Focus on others and adding value.

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk

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Full show notes found at www.LearningLeader.com

Episode #360: Kirk Herbstreit - How To Prepare Like The Best Broadcaster In The Business

Notes:

• "Because of what you have to do to be part of that program... You do things you didn't think you would ever fathom you could get through. It develops you as a person." -- Kirk on what it's like to play football at Centerville High School.
  • "Nothing has impacted me more than the time and what I learned from Bob Gregg and Ron Ullery. It's with me every single day. That's why we take so much pride in it. Because of the impact it has on our entire life."
• Learning resilience and how to persevere, and how to prepare for big moments.
• Kirk's preparation process: There's nobody more prepared than Kirk each week.
  • "It's the only thing I know. It's not an option for me to not be prepared."
  • "Nobody knew who I was back in 1996 when I first started. Instead of hiding from that, I said 'I'm going to be the hardest working analyst in sports. That became my calling card. I had to earn people's respect. The only way I knew how to do that was through my work ethic and preparation. It's the only way I know how."
• The importance of relationships - "I've never in 25 years burned a coach. I never will. They are a lifeline for me. It's one thing to read an article. For you to really get information, you have to go directly to the sources... The coaches."
• "I feel I'm the most prepared person covering the sport every week when I do Gameday and when I go into the booth Saturday night."
  • "If I'm awake I'm either with my kids or I'm preparing for the games."
• Building relationships with powerful people... How?
  • "Trust. That's the most important thing. In my job, you sometimes have to be critical. What I've always said to myself is, if this person was sitting next to me, he might disagree, but he's not going to be offended."
  • "I'll call them the next week to make sure they understood what I said. I go out of my way to promote people."
• Sustaining Excellence -- "I look at it like... I don't do this for money, I don't do this for fame, I do this for love, for passion. There's nothing that makes me more happy than watching football. I love it. It never gets old, I'm constantly trying to improve, to get better. I feel like here I am 25 years into this business and I'm just scratching the surface..."
  • "You gotta keep working, you gotta keep learning."
• "It's such a fun challenge to broadcast games now with how much has changed..."
• Working with a partner (for him it is Chris Fowler)... The keys to working well with a partner:
  • Developing a relationship with that person - Make sure you go to dinners, do things away from work. Get to know that person. Become friends. Then earn your stripe through your preparation and your work.
• Working with a broadcasting team - It takes amazing, constant, communication.
• Keys to great quarterback play and how that translate to being a great leader in the business world:
  • The ability to process a lot of information and make sense of it quickly (Joe Burrow is the best he's seen)
  • Accuracy - Throw the ball where you want it to go
  • Make great decisions
  • Mental toughness
• Being the type of person that others want to follow... How to do that?
  • Play-making ability is a must - people are drawn to you because they believe in you
  • You can do it differently, but "it's very hard to think of successful quarterbacks that aren't well liked by all members of the team."
    • People are drawn to them.  -- Cannot be selfish. The quarterback gets a lot of attention. Need to deflect that and talk about the linemen, the defense, your teammates.
• Would Kirk take the Monday Night Football broadcasting job?
  • "I've talked with my agent about it. That's in play. It's being talked about. It would have to be in addition. I'll never leave college."
    • "I love watching the NFL... Watching guys that I've covered. The college game is leaking more and more into the NFL. The prep would be pretty extreme, but I could do it."
• Life advice: "I was raised to be an unselfish person. I've never felt like I was more important than anyone else. I'll never put myself above anybody in any regard." -- Be the hardest working person, have an awareness about you to help others, never think you're more important than others."

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk

Text LEARNERS to 44222

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

Episode #359: Pat Lencioni

This was recorded with hundreds of fans/friends on Zoom on April 2, 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Notes:

• Three actions for leaders in a perilous time:
  • be exceedingly human. By that, I mean that you should demonstrate your concern for the very real fears and anxieties that your people are experiencing, not only professionally and economically, but socially and personally. Even though you don’t have definitive answers to all of their questions, don’t let that keep you from listening to them and empathizing with their fears. And, contrary to conventional wisdom, you should not be hesitant to share your own concerns with your people. They want to know that they can relate to you and that they are not alone in their concerns.
  • be persistent. This is not a time to hold back. Send people updates and regular communication, even if there is not a lot of new information and the message is largely personal. No one will look back at this time and say, “my manager was so annoying with all the encouraging emails checking in on me.” When people are isolated, over-communication is more important than ever.
  • be creative. Try new things. Call semi-regular video-conference meetings that allow employees to not only talk about work, but to share their experiences dealing with this situation. Have them share movies and games and other tools that they are finding to be helpful with their families and invite them to tell stories about what is going on in their worlds. Crises provide an opportunity for people to come to know one another and establish bonds that will endure long after the crisis is over.
• This is not a time to be efficient. It’s a time to be present with people.  Once they get that new sense of trust, then you can move on.
• Every company/family needs to be intentional about their thematic goal/rallying cry.
  • Cohesiveness and innovation are the themes for The Table Group
• What we do during this time is going to be what people remember.  This is the window of opportunity.
• People would rather be criticized than ignored.
  • The opposite of love is not hate. It's indifference.
• Pat is looking for that sense of “peace” that no matter what happens, we will be okay. (He tells a story about an NYC priest the night before he died “I”m not afraid.")
• When you help others, your fears go down.
• Idle time and worry is what makes fear rise.
• Advice for parenting teenagers right now -- "It's a time for grace, not discipline."
• How to establish a safe environment?
  • Empower people to take risks.  When they stumble, it's okay. Failure = learning moment
• 2 biggest red flags of a bad teammate - what are the symptoms/ hardest things to overcome?
  • Insecurity and selfishness
• Good teammates?
  • "They take ownership of their mistakes and work to correct them." Must take ownership of it to improve.
• The Ideal Team Player -- Humble, Hungry, Smart.
• Download for free: “The three questions to ask your family" on Pat's website The Table Group
• Does Love have a place in leadership?  You need to love your players even if you don’t like them. You have to do what is in their best interest.
• Pat's next book?
  • "The Heroic Manager"
• The Five Dysfunctions Of A Team:
  • Absence of trust - unwilling to be vulnerable within the group
  • Fear of conflict - seeking artificial harmony over constructive passionate debate
  • Lack of commitment - feigning buy-in for group decisions creates ambiguity throughout the organization
  • Avoidance of accountability - ducking the responsibility to call peers on counterproductive behavior which sets low standards
  • Inattention to results - focusing on personal success, status and ego before team success