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The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk

As Kobe Bryant once said, “There is power in understanding the journey of others to help create your own.” That’s why the Learning Leader Show exists—to understand the journeys of other leaders so that we can better understand our own. This show is full of learnings taught by world-class leaders—personal stories of successes, failures, and lessons learned along the way. Our guests come from diverse backgrounds—CEOs of multi-billion dollar companies, best-selling authors, Navy SEALs, and professional athletes. My role in this endeavor is to talk to the most thoughtful, accomplished, and intentional leaders in the world so that we can learn from them as we each create our own journeys.
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Now displaying: November, 2023
Nov 27, 2023

Text Hawk to 66866 to become part of "Mindful Monday." Join 10's of thousands of your fellow learning leaders and receive a carefully curated email from me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right...

Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com

Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12   https://twitter.com/RyanHawk12

  • The power of believing in someone. Mr. Duncan, Shane’s high school English teacher was the first person to tell him that he believed in him. He changed the trajectory of Shane’s life. We, as leaders, can do that for others. Let’s proactively look for opportunities to tell the people we’re leading that we believe in them.
  • The difference between Nice and Kind feedback. Too often, the people we ask for feedback are nice but not kind. Kind people will tell you things a nice person will not. A kind person will tell you that you have spinach on your teeth. A nice person won’t because it’s uncomfortable. A kind person will tell us what holds us back, even when it’s uncomfortable. A nice person avoids giving us critical feedback because they’re worried about hurting our feelings.
  • Champions: “Champions don’t create the standards of excellence. The standards of excellence create champions.” “Expecting high performance is a prerequisite to its achievement among those who work with you.  Your high standards and optimistic anticipations will not guarantee a favorable outcome, but their absence will assuredly create the opposite.”
  • The USS Benfold — was one of the worst-performing warships in the US Navy in 1996. The destiny of the USS Benfold changed the day Michael Abrashoff was named commander.
  • Shane was 13 years old. Shane was standing with a group of his friends after school and they were teasing one of his classmates and he was watching. Teachers intervened and it ended quickly. He didn’t realize that your dad was parked nearby and was watching. You have to stand up for people who don't have a voice.
  • Warren Buffett: “The big question about how people behave is whether they’ve got an Inner Scorecard or an Outer Scorecard. It helps if you can be satisfied with an Inner Scorecard.”
  • Brent Beshore: “My favorite part of the book was the section on habits, rules, and safeguards (page 101). A principle that Shane and I discussed in January changed my life and was expounded on in the book. Shane said, “It’s impossible to work out very often if you have to decide every day whether or not you’ll do it. That’s why I just do something active every day, no matter what.”
  • Solutions/Ego: “Solutions appear when you stop bargaining and start accepting the reality of the situation. That’s because focusing on the next move, rather than how you got here in the first place, opens you up to a lot of possibilities. When you put outcome over ego, you get better results.”
  • Small plans don’t inspire, but consistently small actions create incredible results.”
  • Knowing Your Defaults:
    • The emotion default - We tend to respond to feelings rather than reasons and facts
    • The ego default - We tend to react to anything that threatens our sense of self-worth or our position in a group hierarchy
    • The social default - We tend to conform to the norms of our larger social group.
    • The Inertia default - We’re habit-forming and comfort-seeking. We tend to resist change, and to prefer ideas, processes, and environments that are familiar.
  • Ancient Greek word — Phronesis— the wisdom of knowing how to order your life to achieve the best results.
  • Life/Career advice: "I'd give the same advice to someone who's trying to find someone to marry. Go on lots of dates. Experiment. Do stuff. Get out in the world. You can only connect the dots looking backward."
  • If you want to develop good judgment, start by asking two questions:
    • What do I want in life?
    • And is what I want actually worth wanting?
Nov 20, 2023

Text Hawk to 66866 to become part of "Mindful Monday." Join 10's of thousands of your fellow learning leaders and receive a carefully curated email from me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right...

Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com

Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12   https://twitter.com/RyanHawk12

  • How can I become a high-rung thinker?
    • High-rung thinking is independent thinking, leaving you free to revise your ideas or even discard them altogether. On the low rungs, it means you’re working to dutifully serve your ideas, not the other way around.
  • How can I be the boss of the ideas in my own head?
    • When you’re the boss of the ideas in your head, you’re always willing to revise them. When there’s no amount of evidence that will change your mind about something, it means that idea is your boss. Humility is the awareness that no idea is worthy of being your boss.
  • Best advice Tim has ever received:
    • "I met Chris Anderson, the head of TED, in 2015. He had read a few WBW posts and offered me the opportunity to give a TED Talk at the 2016 conference (which was six months away). Immediately full of both gratitude/excitement and dread/anxiety, I asked him if it might be better to wait a couple years until I had some more speaking experience. He paused thoughtfully for a few seconds before saying, “There’s no time like the present.” I took his advice. Since then, his voice saying those words has popped into my head again and again during hard decisions, and I’m yet to regret following them."
      • Great advice is sometimes great because it’s totally original or framed in an original way. But, as in my story, a well-known platitude, at the perfect moment, can also make a huge impact. What makes Chris’s advice so valuable to me wasn’t that it was something new—it was that the lesson I learned from taking the advice in that particular moment turned a cliché into a mantra.
  • No one “builds a house.” They lay one brick again and again and again and the end result is a house. A remarkable, glorious achievement is just what a long series of unremarkable, unglorious tasks looks like from far away.
  • “If I aired a highlight reel of your most selfish life moments and most shameful thoughts, you'd seem like an awful person. If I aired a reel of your best, kindest moments, you'd seem like a saint. But people aren't highlight reels, and the unedited cut is always a messy mix!”
  • Kids Asking WHY? When kids repeatedly ask “why?” they’re trying to see the underlying reasoning behind what they’re told by authorities. “Because I said so” rejects that instinct and says “stop reasoning and obey.” We then become adults who only know how to trust authorities other than ourselves.
  • High Rung Thinking:
    • Rung 1 - Thinking like a Scientist. When you’re thinking like a scientist, you start at point A and follow evidence wherever it takes you.
    • Rung 2 - Thinking like a sports fan. They want the game played fairly, but they really want the process to yield a certain outcome. 
    • Rung 3 - Thinking like an attorney. When you think like an attorney, you start from point B. The client is not guilty. Now let’s figure out why. They cherry-pick evidence and piece it together to make an argument that leads where you want it to.
    • Rung 4 - Thinking like a zealot. Their ideas aren’t rugged experiments to be kicked around, they’re fragile, precious babies to be adored and protected. The zealot doesn’t have to go from A to B to know their viewpoints are correct– they just know they are. With 100% conviction.
  • Life/Career advice: "I'd give the same advice to someone who's trying to find someone to marry. Go on lots of dates. Experiment. Do stuff. Get out in the world. You can only connect the dots looking backward."
Nov 13, 2023

Text Hawk to 66866 to become part of "Mindful Monday." Join 10's of thousands of your fellow learning leaders and receive a carefully curated email from me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right...

Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com

Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12   https://twitter.com/RyanHawk12

  • “Amateurs focus on outcome. Professionals focus on process.” And if you want to change the process, focus on just one change at a time. He used the fly fishing analogy. You don’t change all three at once. Try one change and re-evaluate.
  • I love the idea of creating a personal checklist for yourself much like pilots fill out every time before they fly a plane. We should all create our checklist and fill it out consistently. This is a great tool to become more self-aware.
  • Top performers have a thirst for feedback in victory and defeat. The leaders who sustain excellence over time are intentional about surrounding themselves with a kitchen cabinet who is there to regularly provide feedback so that they can iterate and improve. That’s one of the biggest differences between those who sustain excellence over time and those who don’t.
  • Goal Setting
    • 34%-42% chance of hitting a goal if you ideate it
    • 62% chance of hitting a goal if you write it down
    • 75% chance of hitting a goal if you verbally share it with others
  • Eric developed a psychological “resilience” test that when combined with data on the candidate's physical characteristics became a very good predictor of who would fail BUD/S (97%).
  • While working with the Navy SEALs in San Diego, Eric frequently had guests come to observe the SEALs and how they worked. A lot of them were professional athletes like Tiger Woods, Lance Armstrong, Michael Phelps, and many more… While there, Eric asked to interview them. Over time he was able to build an extensive knowledge base of the mental approaches of the world’s top performers.
  • “If your brain is firing, it’s wiring.” Learned from downhill skiers...
  • Commonalities of leaders who sustain excellence:
    • They accelerate what they value. They move from reputation to identity. They worry less about what others think.
      • One of the biggest regrets of people on their deathbed is that they regret what they didn't do.
      • Capitlize now to have no regrets later.
      • Create a credo (your identity)
    • Mindset
      • They have a growth mindset (instead of a fixed mindset)
      • They are thirsty for feedback (they want feedback in victory and defeat)
      • Eric is agnostic about motivations - Clean fuel vs Dirty fuel
      • They have different mindsets for the roles they play
      • Think of yourself as a dimmer switch -- Sometimes you're white hot, sometimes you need to dim down
    • Efficient and Consistent
      • They manage their time well
      • They sleep 8 hours
      • They don't let life dictate what's important to them.
      • Time = Currency. Block time for what's most important. Color code your calendar.
    • Adversity Tolerance
      • They control their human stress response
      • They have a pre and post-performance routine
      • They set goals
      • They use visualization tools
      • They compartmentalize well
      • They use positive self-talk (they believe)
      • They are good contingency planners
      • They have high levels of self-awareness
      • Like a pilot, they have checklists for themselves
    • Balance and Recovery
      • The more balanced, the more productive
      • Feed all of your pillars
        • Work
        • Health
        • Relationships
        • Hobbies
        • Spirituality
        • Legacy
  • Leadership role "Must-Haves"
    • Emotional Intelligence - "Feel for a room"
    • Empathy - Put our own perspective aside to understand others
    • Curiosity - A desire to learn, to know more
Nov 6, 2023

Text Hawk to 66866 to become part of "Mindful Monday." Join 10's of thousands of your fellow learning leaders and receive a carefully curated email from me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right...

Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com

Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12   https://twitter.com/RyanHawk12

  • Charisma: Presence, Power, and Warmth - Show up, be fully there. In that moment with the person in front of you. Flip the switch. Understand your power. And deeply care for others. Be warm, not cold. And it’s important that each of these is expressed with authenticity. That’s how to develop more charisma.
  • How to develop our protocol - A simple exercise. Get a sheet of paper. On one side write “DO.” On the other side, write “DON’T.” Think of yourself at your best, what do you do? That’s your protocol. And remember that the worse you feel, the more committed you need to be to your protocol
  • It’s always day one. Brian thinks of his time spent with the Navy SEALs. They work to earn their trident every single day. Today is the day. It’s always the right day to earn it. It’s always day 1.
  • Arete – An ancient Greek word. We translate it into English as ‘virtue’ or ‘excellence,’ but it has a deeper meaning. Something closer to ‘expressing the best version of yourself moment to moment to moment.’
  • Inter-leaving - The basic idea is simple: If you want to learn something, you’re better off varying your practice rather than grooving one identical rep after another.
  • Epictetus - One of his students took great lecture notes and captured his wisdom in a manual called the Enchiridion. The Greek word for Enchiridion is translated as “handbook,” and it’s important to note that the word literally means “within” + “hand.”
  • Intrinsic versus Extrinsic motivation – Which motivation leads to greater levels of happiness and flourishing? Why? It’s why people who get to the peak of what David Brooks calls the “First Mountain” look around and wonder why they don’t feel fulfilled. They got all the stuff they were told would make them happy and… they’re not.
  • Phil Stutz wrote the Foreword – Practice comprised of unusual people. “They refuse to be defined by any single accomplishment. Their Identity is based on a process of endless possibility. They don’t stop creating.”
    • Two primary obstacles getting in our way are fear and laziness. This comes from Phil Stutz...
  • AM and PM Bookends – “Get these right and you’re 80% there.”
  • Targeted thinking - What do I want? What's needed to get that done?
  • Consistency - "Who you are speaks so loudly I cannot hear what you say."
  • Unshakeable confidence -- Anti-fragile confidence. You have intense trust that you have what it takes to respond.
  • Anti-Fragility - The more life kicks you around, the better you get.
  • Emotional stamina - The worse you feel, the more committed you are to your protocol.
  • Protocol - Think of yourself at your best... What are you doing?
  • Hero - An ancient Greek word for protector
    • Get clear on your identity
    • Sleep, meditate, work out, work, love
  • Pilots have checklists before they fly a plane... We should use one too each day.
  • Create your "Do" and "Don't" list
  • Intrinsic vs Extrinsic motivation -- Deepend relationships, help in your community, focus on your eulogy virtues today...
  • Hire a coach... We all need a coach
    • A great coach has believable hope, they see your potential
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