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

Suneel Gupta is on faculty at Harvard University. He's the author of Backable - The Surprising Truth Behind What Makes People Take A Chance On You

Notes:

• Let’s start with the obvious -- when lots of people are applying for the same spot, you have to find a way to stand out. You can’t just check a box, you have to leave an impression.  (But backable people “go beyond Google” and dig for insights that other people interviewing for the job may not find. They talk to customers, they attend shareholder meetings, they test-drive the product. (But backable people “go beyond Google” and dig for insights that other people interviewing for the job may not find. They talk to customers, they attend shareholder meetings, they test-drive the product. )
• Suneel comes from a family of highly backable people—including his mother, Damyanti Hingorani, the first woman engineer for Ford Motor Company, and his brother Sanjay Gupta, chief medical correspondent for CNN.
• Reid Hoffman recruited Suneel to Mozilla...
  • Name someone early in your life who backed you. Call them and say 'thank you.'
• Hire "high ceiling" leaders:
  • Suneel was a speechwriter in 2004. He was backstage at the Democratic National Convention. There was a State Senator from Illinois. Suneel watched him speak from behind the curtain. "He created an electric wave of energy when he spoke." It was President Barack Obama.
    • After that, Suneel became obsessed with following the work of the State Senator.
    • He studied President Obama's history and learned that he went from a dry speaker to inspiring through preparation and practice. He worked on his skill to communicate and got better.
• The "It" quality -- People get a job because others want to take a chance on them. They're backable.
• Specifics to make this happen:
  • Play exhibition matches -- Prepare, practice, rehearse
  • They develop a level of mastery so that they don't have to think when it's time to perform. Their preparation allows them to flow
  • Ella Fitzgerald performed in Berlin... She forgot the lyrics and improvised the words for the next half of the song. She rehearsed a lot. That allowed her to perform even when she forgot the words.
• Confidence comes from believing something will go wrong and that you've practiced enough to be able to handle it. "Build your recovery muscle."
• Surround yourself with great people - Early adopters need to feel part of the build.
•  Steer Into Objections. Anticipate three key objections to your idea. When pitching, don’t avoid those objections; steer into them.
• Don’t Pitch Prematurely. Instead of sharing an idea before it’s ready, nurture it until you’re ready. It’s not charisma that convinces people, it’s conviction.
• Don’t Overshare. Share what it could be, not how it has to be. Share just enough to get the essence of your idea across, then open up the conversation.
• Build Your Backable Circle. Don’t rely on just one person to help you with your pitch. Surround yourself with a trusted group of people who bring different perspectives.
• Humans are not risk takers - We do whatever we can to avoid a loss. You need to neutralize that fear.
  • "Don't just talk about why it's new, but why it's inevitable."
• "Backable people convince themselves first. It's not charisma that convinces people, it's conviction."
• "Most new ideas are killed inside hallways. We share too early. Before they're ready. Nurture your ideas behind the scenes. They need an incubation time. Write it out. Draw..."
• Quiet time is so important to hone ideas. It's critical to the creative process
• "Ken Robinson was not that charismatic, but you believed everything he was saying." He believed it first. He had conviction.
• Storytelling - "You need to cast a central character."
  • "Re-write the book for on person as the reader... 'I'm writing this book for my daughter to read.'"
  • "Don't talk about the market, talk about one person."
• Life advice:
  • "Figure out what makes you come alive. I left Groupon and created a list of ideas."

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

Erin Meyer is a professor at INSEAD, one of the leading international business schools. Erin conducted an in-depth study with Reed Hastings, Co-Founder and CEO of Netflix, investigating the underlying principles necessary for building a corporate culture that is inventive, fast, and flexible. The results of that research were published in their book No Rules Rules. In 2019, Erin was listed by the Thinkers50, for the second time, as one of the fifty most impactful business writers in the world and in 2018 she was selected by HR magazine as one of the top 30 most influential HR thinkers of the year. 

Notes:

• “Corporate culture can be a mushy marshland of vague language and incomplete, ambiguous definitions. What’s worse, company values — as articulated — rarely match the way people behave in reality.”
• The Netflix culture deck. 127 slides originally intended for internal use but one that Reed Hastings (CEO) shared online in 2009. Sheryl Sandberg called it “the most important document ever to come out of Silicon Valley.” Erin said "I loved the deck for its honesty. And loathed it for its content.”
• "If you want your culture to come alive, you need to avoid speaking in absolutes."
• Instead, use either or…
  • Security or High Performance?
  • Candor or Comfort?
• Why did the Netflix culture deck go viral?
  • "This is a company that tells the truth. It said what it believed. That is rare."
• On May 31, 2015 you got a cold email from Reed Hastings (CEO of Netflix)… Reed told her that he read her book, The Culture Map, loved it, and was having his leadership team at Netflix read it.
• Erin's biggest surprise during her time researching Netflix and writing with Reed?
  • "That management paradigms are hangovers from the industrial era. Previously, the #1 goal was error elimination. That isn't the #1 goal at Netflix. It's innovation."
• Reed Hastings had a company before Netflix called Pure Software. He put in a lot of rules and processes. He realized that "if you dummy proof the system only dummies want to work there." Too many processes can kill flexibility and innovation.
• This is "applicable to any environment where innovation is more important than error prevention."
• "Most rules are put in place to deal with low performers."
• "Instead, create an environment with 'talent density.' Only high performers..."
• Performance is Contagious: Professor Will Felps, of the University of New South Wales in Australia, conducted a study demonstrating contagious behavior in the work environment. He created several teams of 4 college students and asked each to complete a management task in 45 minutes. The teams who did the best work would receive a financial reward of $100. (Bezos: "People are pretty good at learning high standards simply through exposure," writes Bezos. "High standards are contagious. Bring a new person onto a high standards team, and they'll quickly adapt. The opposite is also true)
• The two different types of jobs:
  • Operational - Ice cream scoopers
  • Creative - Rely on your brain
• Pay Top of Market for talent - Matt Thunell (Manager of Original Content) said about Netflix, “We live in a walled-garden of excellence, where everyone is a high performer. You go into these meetings and it’s like the talent and brain power in the room could generate the office electricity. People are challenging one another, building up arguments. That’s why we get so much done at such incredible speed here. It’s because of the crazy high talent density.” With that said, Netflix doesn’t believe in “Pay-Per-Performance” bonuses.
• When you first began to collaborate with Reed to write this book, Erin asked him how he would find the time to collaborate. He said, “Oh, I can give this pretty much whatever time you think it will need.” That surprised Erin... In Reed's mind, the leaders should create a system so that they don't have to be busy, packed with back to back to back meetings...
• Candor -- Giving and receiving feedback
  • Top performers regularly help other top performers get better by giving feedback
  • At Netflix, they do live 360 feedback dinners -- Go around the table giving feedback for each person.
• The 4 A method of feedback:
  • Aim to assist
  • Actionable - It must be clear what could be done
  • Receive the feedback with gratitude
  • Accept it or decline it... It's not always right. Be grateful for it regardless
• Sustain Excellence:
  • Humility
  • Curiosity to Learn - Never stop learning, never feel like you've mastered it
• Life/Career Advice:
  • Get the talent right
  • Create Candor
  • Eat the cake -- Remove rules and processes
• If you create an open vacation policy (meaning that vacation days are not tracked), it is imperative that the senior leaders lead from the front and go on a lot of vacations. The rest of the team will follow... If you never go on vacation, then your team will feel like they have to do the same.

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

Brook Cupps is a leadership teacher and the coach of the Centerville High School basketball team. In 2021, he led his team to the first state championship in school history. He is best known as a leader who truly lives his core values. They are: Tough, Passionate, Unified, & Thankful.

Notes:

• Brook's personal mantras:
  • Wolf - Wolves travel in packs. They are not good by themselves. They need the pack. BC needs people around him. Loves teams. "Wolves are more badass than lions or tigers. You don't see a wolf in a circus."
  • Chop Wood - "I've never viewed myself as talented, but I'm willing to work. We say chop chop. When things are going well, get to work. When things are bad, get to work. The connection is always back to work."
  • The Man In The Arena - "I had to develop this over time. The critics used to bother me and I would listen to them. It affected my confidence. I learned that the most important opinions are the people in the arena with me." Brene Brown - “A lot of cheap seats in the arena are filled with people who never venture onto the floor. They just hurl mean-spirited criticisms and put-downs from a safe distance. The problem is, when we stop caring what people think and stop feeling hurt by cruelty, we lose our ability to connect. But when we’re defined by what people think, we lose the courage to be vulnerable. Therefore, we need to be selective about the feedback we let into our lives. For me, if you’re not in the arena also getting your ass kicked, I’m not interested in your feedback.”
• Purpose - "My purpose is to inspire others to strive for excellence over success."
• Self awareness leads to self confidence - Know who you are. Be comfortable with who you are. "You can't be tough alone. You need others."
• Foxhole Friends - It takes time to build foxhole friend relationships. "With my foxhole friends, I can be completely open. They tell me the truth. They have the freedom to criticize me."
• Coach Z -- Dave Zeller. “He never won a District. He’s the best coach I’ve ever been around. A state championship isn’t success. It’s the impact you have on the kids because nobody’s going to tell me that those guys that won state championships are better coaches than Z was.”
• Core Values: Values become real when you define the behaviors that exemplify the value...
  • Tough - Positive body language leads you to be fight ready
  • Passionate - Choosing extra work leads you to steal inches
  • Unified - Speaking and acting with urgency leads you to not flinching in big moments
  • Thankful - Showing love for one another through touches (help someone off the floor, give them a five after they make a mistake)
• Unified --  You must speak and act with urgency. "If you choose to remain silent when someone has done something wrong, then that is selfish." Choosing the easier path of not saying anything is selfish. The selfless act is having the guts to speak up when it's needed.
• Patch Adams - "Indifference is the greatest disease of all."
• You need to stand for something or you stand for nothing...
• "Your behaviors are the crux to your values." Do your behaviors match the values you claim to be yours?
• Gabe Cupps (Brook's son) entered the conversation for a few minutes...
  • Gabe sent a text to each player on the team before tournament games that simply said, "We're gonna win."
  • Where does that confidence come from? "It's the work put in leading up to the big moments."
  • Gabe originally tried out for the North Coast Blue Chips AAU team... The same team that Bronny James (LeBron James Jr) played on... During a break in the action, he asked Bronny to play 1 on 1... "I didn't know how good I was. I wanted to see."
  • Gabe earned their respect and made the team... Later LeBron noticed Brook's coaching ability when he was helping out at practice and determined he was the best coach to lead the team moving forward.
  • LeBron's superpower as a leader is "gassing up his guys." He has the ability to create more belief in others through his belief in them. A critical leadership action where LeBron excels...
• What did Brook and Gabe say to each other during their long embrace after winning the state championship? "I just told him how much I loved him."
• Goal setting process -- Brook does not set results oriented goals. He sets process oriented goals. They had no goals to win their conference, or regionals, or the state championship (they won all of those this year). Their goal for this season was:
  • Attack every opportunity with purpose
  • Process based versus Results based? In the world of coaching basketball, there is a clear scoreboard. You have a record. If you lose too many games, you get fired. How does Brook manage that? "If I have a group of guys that are tough, passionate, unified, and thankful... And they attack every opportunity with purpose, we'll probably be pretty good and win a lot. The results usually take care of themselves."
• Honoring those who have come before you: "Drink the water, but remember who dug the well."
• Will you take a charge?
  • This is what he looks for in a teammate. Someone who looks for opportunities to sacrifice for the team.
  • There is a physical sacrifice. "It's gonna hurt. It's an unselfish act to take a charge."
  • "To be all in, you need to take charges."
• High Standards - There was a moment in a game earlier in the season when Centerville was winning 60-24 in the third quarter. Brook's team started playing a little sloppy. Turned the ball over a few times. It was uncharacteristic of their usual play. Brook called a time out and yelled at his team. It was obvious they were going to win (by a lot), but that moment showed me that Brook holds his team to higher standards and won’t allow them to lower even when the opponent isn’t posing a challenge...
  • "You get what you accept. That's my standard. If I ignore that, then I'm not living to my values, and that's not ok with me."
• Creating your values -- "I think as the leader, they need to be your values."
  • "If you go to work for someone else, you need to be bought into their values. If you're not, then you probably shouldn't work there."
  • When interviewing for a job to work for a leader, ask them: "What are your values and how do you live them?
• I noticed after big wins that Brook doesn't join in the pictures with his players... Why?
  • "That's their moment. It's about them. I love watching them enjoy those moments."
• Common traits of foxhole friends: "They may not communicate them the same way I do, but we have a shared appreciation for our values."
• “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.” -- Teddy Roosevelt

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Kevin Sharer has a distinguished career as a successful CEO and Board Member. He is currently a senior lecturer at Harvard University Business School and continues to mentor a select number of senior executives. Either as a Chairman, independent director, or mentor, Sharer has been a part of more than 20 successful CEO-successor transitions. Kevin led Amgen for 20 years, first as President and then as CEO for 12 years. Under Sharer’s leadership, the company achieved annual revenue of $16 billion with operations in 55 countries. 

Notes:

• "What Operational Excellence Looks Like"
  • Must know the details
  • Must have a listening system to know where problems brew
  • The leaders have a clear agreement with the team on what success is
  • A cadence of clear communication
  • The leader must embody the behavior... They are the model
  • Must have real empathy for people and care about them
• The leader needs to assess when things go wrong so that they don't make the same mistake twice...
• Kevin spent 110 days underwater in a submarine...
• When he left the Navy, he knew he wanted to be a manager. He joined a program at AT&T to become one...
  • He had an ambition to rise high in an organization
• Kevin's dad - A military aviator. His hero and role model. his dad cared a lot about leadership...
• How did Kevin earn the CEO role at Amgen?
  • Spent 8 years as the President of the company. And "made it pretty obvious" to hire him for the CEO role
  • He consistently delivered results and formed a strong partnership with the CEO
• How to sustain what's special about a company as it grows?
  • The book Built to Last by Jim Collins was very helpful....
• How to create and live your values?
  • They are not defined by what's written down, it's the behavior of the people. And that starts at the top...
  • Understand what your real values are. If you don't believe in the values, you shouldn't work there...
  • You "have to have social data to know that the values are real." Ask others in the organization: "Are the values you experience consistent with the values stated by the company?"
• How he got hired as the President at Amgen?
  • "I first decided that I wanted to be a General Manager and not a functional specialists." Kevin pursued that through General Electric and got great experience...They hired him in part because of his broad range of experience.
  • It was a multi-step interview process. Kevin interviewed with 20 people at the company before getting the offer...
• Listening ability: Kevin went from bad to great... "On the way up in my career, I had the view that I was so fast, so smart... It was working. I thought I was being helpful by telling others what I thought, but I was cutting off the full picture."
• Kevin had an eye opening moment when he asked the CEO of IBM to talk about leadership with his team...
  • "I learned to listen for comprehension. Listen to understand first."
  • "You need to listen to the entire eco-system."
• Big idea: Pick 10 CEOs who didn't make it: "Seven of them weren't situationally aware."
• What are some "must-have" hiring qualities?
  • A record of good knowledge
  • Great communication skill
  • Comfort in their own skin
  • Curious - they must ask questions
  • Answer the question, "what are your goals?"
  • Answer the question, "what have you learned from failure?"
  • "If five people were asked about you, what would they say?"
  • Their accomplishments speak for themselves. They don't have to overly sell themselves
  • They need to "clearly want the job."
  • A good sense of humor
• Hiring trap: "There is a bias for us to hire people like us. It's overwhelming. We're wired to think, "other is dangerous." We must be aware of that."

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

Ryan Petersen is the CEO and Founder of Flexport. Prior to starting Flexport to fix the user experience in global trade, Ryan was co-founder and CEO of ImportGenius.com, a data-as-a-service business for global shipping. Flexport hit a $3.2 Billion valuation after $1 billion investment led by SoftBank.

Notes:

• Excellence =
  • Curiosity - "It's a more fun way to live."
  • Learners
  • Appreciative
  • Have fun
  • "It doesn't have to be boring."
• The importance of writing as a leader:
  • "I write a lot of essays. Some are published. Some aren't."
• Communication:
  • "It's a huge part of the job of a leader."
  • For investor updates... "It's good practice."
    • Try to use humor, learn something new, don't be boring, get people "pumped up"
• Raising money from investors:
  • "It's like your love life. You have to earn it. There are no shortcuts. You need to have a business that doesn't need them."
    • "We built a track record over the 15 years prior to raising money."
  • Masayoshi Son is the CEO of Softbank. He is a Japanese billionaire technology entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist. Ryan met with him and earned a $1 Billion investment... Making Flexport worth $3.2 Billion.
  • Flexport became the fastest growing company in Silicon Valley.
  • Ryan wrote an essay about raising a lot of money so that they could ride out a "100 year storm."
  • How was he able to raise so much?
    • "Don't do an auction. I said, 'I'm only talking to you.' Create a win-win. See the world through their eyes."
  • Masa had written a 300 year vision. Ryan said, "The audacity to have a 300 year vision, it just resonated with me."
    • "One of our core values is to play the long game."
• Flexport enables all parties to move large product around the world. It was born out of Ryan discovering the pain of shipping.
• There is a lack of technology with freight forwarders. There was no culture of customer satisfaction.
  • There was high friction - "We counted 984 steps to get a product shipped."
• Paul Graham, one of the greatest investors of all time and founder of Y-Combinator said this about Ryan Petersen:
  • Ryan is what I call an armor-piercing shell: a founder who keeps going through obstacles that would make other people give up. But he's not just determined. He sees things other people don't see. The freight business is both huge and very backward, and yet who of all the thousands of people starting startups noticed? Ryan Petersen."
• By 2016, Flexport was serving 700 clients across 64 countries. Tech Crunch described it as the unsexiest trillion-dollar startup.
  • Flexport has grown to 1,800 employees across 14 offices and 6 warehouses, and 10,000 clients.
• His goal:
  • "Drive velocity: You need speed in the right direction. Velocity is the key to success. That's culture ultimately."
• The two forms of bureaucracy:
  • Too many rules, order
  • No rules, no process, chaos
• Need to find the balance between the two
• "Transparency helps get people aligned."
• Doing an open Slack Q&A with all employees -- Helps with transparency.
• What Ryan looks for when hiring a leader? And why Ryan admires Parker Conrad from Zenefits:
  • He's "hungry, curious, has a chip on his shoulder, determined, ambitious, and solves complex problems."
• The profession of sales:
  • It's "one of the most misunderstood professions. It's part of all jobs. You have to persuade, create value."
  • "Sales is about creating value for others. Create win-wins. So much is repeat games. Almost nothing is a one time transaction."
• Obsession with company culture:
  • "When I reach out to top execs, they always take the call if I'm asking about culture."
• The secret to the tech industry:
  • Everyone is willing to share tools, mindset, and lessons learned with one another. It's "normal to pick up the phone and ask."
• How did becoming a dad change him?
  • "It's exhausting. Babies are fragile."
• Generalists vs. Specialists?
  • The world needs more generalists. "Generalists are under-valued. Leaders need to be well-rounded and cross over into multiple disciplines."
• Has has Ryan learned to speak 6 languages?
  • Read books, make flash cards, read the newspaper, hire a tutor... "You have to experience pain to learn. You have to like the pain."
• Life/Career Advice:
  • Get out of student debt
  • Read books. Your life will be different in 5 years based on the books you read. "Most people don't read books."
  • Success compounds - Add up a lot of little wins

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Dustyn Kim is the Chief Revenue Officer at Artsy. Artsy is used by art lovers and collectors to discover, learn about, and buy art. Prior to working at Artsy, Dustyn was a senior executive at LexisNexis. While at LexisNexis, she was my boss! She is a rare combination of highly respected, extremely well-liked, and typically the smartest person of every room she walks in. I loved working for her.

Notes:

• Excellence = Authenticity and team building. "A leader should be focused on building great teams."
• What Dustyn learned from one of her favorite bosses, Kumsal Bayazit (the CEO of Elsevier)
  • "She was inspiring and very human. Work and life go hand in hand."
• "When I got a senior leadership role, I didn't want a command and control organization."
• What she learned from Sebastian at Artsy:
  • "He said to me, 'I advise, you decide.' That empowered me and gave me ownership of my decisions."
  • It's critical to empower others
• What are must-have qualities in a leader?
  • Empathy - EQ + IQ
  • Communication skill - Set the vision and communicate that effectively to you team
  • Collaboration - Lead through influence. Cross team collaboration is key to getting things done.
• How to collaborate better?
  • "Map out the key people you need to know and understand their goals."
• Starting early:
  • "When I was 15, my dad woke me up and told me he was taking me to Wall Street for my first internship."
• How to lead as a parent for you children?
  • "I try to introduce them to as much as possible."
  • "My job is to help you figure out what you love doing, but you have to show up and do the work."
• Advice for women leaders?
  • "I don't love the advice from Sheryl Sandberg's "Lean In." It's really hard to have a full time job and travel a lot if you want to build a family. It's okay to slow down at times for your family.
  • "Kumsal wanted me to go for a big promotion when I had just given birth to Mason. I didn't want to travel the world and be gone all the time. It's okay to not go for the big job all the time."
• Advice for new managers:
  • Avoid the desire to micro manage
  • Know that there are lots of different paths to success
  • Don't expect to know everything
  • A lot of new managers are too nice
    • You need to give feedback
• How to be both respected and liked?
  • Focus on the challenge at hand - "What's the plan? What's the goal?"
  • "Then build the narrative and ask the team, what do you think?"
• "It didn't work for me to try and act like a guy. I had to be myself."
• Confidence is very important. That comes from being prepared and knowing your stuff.
• A tangible takeaway for how to find your voice in a meeting:
  • "In meetings, when I was younger, I would turn bright red when speaking. A trick I had to implement was, 'say something very early in the meeting.' Just so that too much time passes without me saying anything."
• Career/Life Advice:
  • Stand out -- Be excellent at your current role. Make sure others know they can count on you to do great work.
  • Speak up -- Don't expect others to read your mind. TELL THEM what you want in your career. Make sure people know what you want to do. Give them the opportunity to help you get there...
  • Have a goal, but be flexible on your path to achieving it

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Adam Bryant interviewed more than 500 CEOs for “Corner Office,” a series on leadership that he created in 2009. Adam is the author of three books based on the themes that have emerged from his interviews and consulting work. His new book is THE CEO Test: Master the Challenges that Make or Break All Leaders.

Notes:

• Interview style - Instead of asking them about strategies and industry trends, Adam focuses on timeless questions (how they were influenced by parents, lessons from early years in their careers, what they look for when making bets on people to invest in) about the important leadership lessons that CEOs had learned…
• Some questions he likes to ask:
  • How do you hire? What questions do you ask?
  • Describe yourself in one word...
  • Work to get around the polished façade
  • What animal would you be and why?
  • Tony Hsieh would ask, "On a scale of 1-10, how weird are you?"
• Some additional interviewing tactics:
  • The CEO has the interviewee drive his or her car. Monitors how they react in a different vehicle, in a new city
  • Sharing meals
  • "Put the mosaic of what a person is like as a human being" -- not just interviewing for a job
• The Dinner Party game:
  • "If you could only ask a job candidate one question, what would you ask?"
• Learn about failure - Id you desire humility, learn about their failures, learnings, and lessons of life
• Ownership - The 3 most beautiful words: "I'm on it."
• Every employee needs to write a playbook to how they'd do the job... They need to take ownership.
• If you were an animal, what would you be?
  • Adam: "A Hawk. Hover at high altitude, when they figure out what they want, they go get it."
• Question: What qualities of your parents do you like the most and the least?
  • Ask that if you really want to go deep -- This forces the candidate to get real. "We're fooling ourselves if we think we can escape our parents."
• Process to ask questions:
  • Think, "I want to cut a record with you." -- Have the desire to make something new with the person.
• His premise at the New York Times: "What if I sat down with CEOs and never asked them about their companies?"
• Questions: What were you like as a kid? What were your parents like? How have your parents impacted your leadership style? What drives you?
  • "I like to see them in the moment of learning about themselves."
  • "Eye contact is the 5 G of communication."
• Two tracking - Know where to go next AND listen intently
• Sustaining Excellence:
  • Feedback look must be strong - They must be open to it
  • Recognize patterns
  • Take action
  • Learn new things
  • Be self-aware
  • Be humble
  • Need to ask, "What does this moment need?"
• "What is the gooey center of that candy?" A leader needs to know that about their business.
• Life advice:
  • "Play in traffic." You have to get out there and meet people and do things. Build relationships. Those help with the pivot points of your career and life.
  • Always be prepared to learn the most important lesson of your life...

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Jeff Immelt served as CEO of GE for 16 years. He has been named one of the “World’s Best CEOs” three times by Barron’s. During his tenure as CEO, GE was named “America’s Most Admired Company” by Fortune magazine and one of “The World’s Most Respected Companies” in polls by Barron’s and the Financial Times. 

Notes:

• Raised in Cincinnati, OH by his father Joe and mother Donna. Both of his parents grew up in the depression. Growing up Jeff said, “I remember when my dad had a great boss, he was motivated, and when he had a lousy boss, he was neither challenged nor happy. The worst kind of boss he always used to say, was one who criticized all day long but never offered solutions.”
• GE was founded on April 15, 1892, by one of the greatest inventors in history, Thomas Edison. For most of the 20th century, GE had more patents than any other corporation.
• Jack Welch, deemphasized technology and innovation, and instead focused on management techniques like six sigma. Six Sigma is a data-driven methodology invented by a Motorola engineer named Bill Smith in 1980. It trains managers to be experts (called Black Belts) in improving business processes to reduce product defects.
• Jeff's first day as CEO of GE was September 10, 2001. On his first day, he introduced himself, via simulcast, to GE’s 300,000 employees.
• His second day as CEO was 9/11/2001. "Good leaders absorb fear. They give people a plan. You have to hold two thoughts at the same time."
• By the end of his first week as CEO, GE’s shares had dropped 20%, decreasing the company’s market capitalization by $80 billion.
• Leaders learn everyday — “I’ve always believed an important determinant of success could be found in how one answered 3 questions:
  • How fast can you learn?
  • How much can you take?
  • What will you give to those around to you?”
• The trifecta: “In your career, you meet only a handful of leaders who have the trifecta of being able to innovate, execute, and develop talent. Omar Ishrak had that."
• Jeff was the ultimate grinder, a true believer of GE, he got the “meatball” (the GE logo) tattooed on the left hip. The GE story is extremely personal for Jeff. 
• Why the "Success Theater" story about Jeff is wrong. "For seven years, 10 times per year, I had a leader from GE flown to my house with their spouse. We'd serve them dinner and then I'd spend 6+ hours with the leader asking them questions, learning about them, and saying, 'Tell me something I don't know.'"
• What Jeff learned from playing football in college at Dartmouth:
  • "When the best player is not caring about the team, nobody will get in line." The story of Harry Wilson (Russell Wilson's father, Jeff's teammate in college) and Reggie Williams.
  • "Football teams are self policing. It's a series of peer relationships. Failure is not definitive. You have to always think about the next play."
• "The best people get 100% of the work done in 80% of the time. That leaves them more time to push boundaries."
• How did Jeff get picked to be Jack Welch's successor?
  • "I was a good peer. Your peers are who promote you. Those relationships have to be earned."
• What was a Jack Welch Quarterly Business Review like?
  • "Jack was a screamer. He was spontaneous. He would like at page 7 and then jump to page 17 and ask questions."
• Front line obsession - "You have to have a passion for understanding how people work."
• Front line managers - "I told them they are more important than me. That have direct access to the customer."
• The profession of sales: why it's noble
  • Amazing sense of urgency - Never waste a minute or let it pass
  • See the company through the customers eyes - "The salesforce sets the culture... I was persistent, dogged..."
• Good leaders are systems thinkers:
  • Keep your head up and stay engaged at the same time
  • Read books, ask question... "You must be curious."
• Sustain excellence: Must be a learner. "Fred Smith (CEO of FedEX) is my leadership hero."
• Heart broken over GE: "You can still progress as a human being even when you have a broken heart. You have to keep trying. Even when the efforts don't seem to be working for you."
  • "There's value in a human being in just keep moving. Don't hide. Don't disappear."
• When you are on top, it is easy to be long on friends. When you hit bottom, there are a select few who reach out. For me, those standouts included American Express’s Ken Chenault, Delta Airlines' Richard Anderson, and especially Cisco’s John Chambers.
• Apply to be part of my Leadership Circle

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

Ryan Serhant is a real estate broker, CEO, and founder of SERHANT. He's a bestselling author, producer, and star of Bravo's Million Dollar Listing New York and Sell It Like Serhant. He led the #1 ranked (in sales volume) real estate team in New York City in 2019 with just under $1.45 Billion in sales.

Notes:

• His mantra is: "Expansion. Always in all ways."
  • It's about growth.
• Work to find your own brand and mantra -- It must be honest and genuine for you.
• A learning exercise for you to do: A "self-audit." Ask your friends and colleagues, "When I'm not around and you're describing me to others, what do you say?"
  • Find friends who are willing to be honest with you to better understand what you're known for... If you don't like it, work to change it.
  • Ryan Serhant was known as the guy who kept his hands in his pockets and couldn't look you in the eye. He needed to change that.
• "Your perception to others is your reputation and your brand."
• "Fake it til you make it" is not useful...
  • Instead, Ryan sold the TV producers at Bravo the person and the real estate broker he would become...
  • "When Tom Brady got drafted in the 6th round, he told the owner, 'That's the best decision you've ever made.' Tom Brady truly believed that. I believed I would become the best real estate agent in the world."
  • "I didn't show them who I was in the moment, I showed them who I could become."
• Pivotal moment - Ryan went to the top selling agent in his office and said, "Man, how are you doing this, can you teach me?" And the agent said to Ryan, "Na man, I ain't telling you shit." Ryan thought, "Wow. I'm going to have to figure this out on my own. This guy is threatened by me."
• The New York City market - "It's cut throat. I went there for theater school, and stayed because, 'I would rather regret the things I did, than what I thought about doing and didn't do."
• Ryan depends on a routine to be productive. It is:
  • "I wake up at 4:00am. In the gym by 5:00. 6:00 shower. Baby time at 7:00. First meeting at 7:30. I figure I wake up three hours earlier than most people. If you multiple that 3 hours times 365 days, I get on average 30 more days per year than others. I like my odds with 30 extra days."
• Discipline is critical - "Of course I'm tired in the morning, but I get up and do it anyway. People need to do more things that could better their lives. Do the things within your control." It's harder, but worth it.
• How has becoming a dad changed Ryan?
  • "My wife says it's being a male nester. I worked harder and worked more while she was pregnant. I want to be the provider for my family. My daughter has made everything bigger."
  • What about balance? "I have no balance. I'm lucky I found a partner who understands my drive and work ethic."
• What to say to those who don't like him because of the self-promotion?
  • "I'm a real estate broker. I'm a salesman. The difference with me is I don't hide it. Our job is to promote our success so that we can get the next listing."
• Building confidence:
  • "People who spend millions on real estate don't lack confidence. They want a broker who is confident too."
• Big Money Energy:
  • "It's a unique set of qualities that every successful, confident person has..."
  • Code #1: "When you can't change your circumstance, there's one thing you can change. Your energy. I sell a transfer of energy. Of excitement."
• Energy
  • "Develop magnetism so others want to be around you. How? Ask questions, be interested in them, listen to their responses, create friendships instead of clients."
  • "Shift your mindset -- What is your why? What's the wall you're fighting against? -- "I had no money and no connections in NYC. I rode the Subway crying that I couldn't even get a rental listing... That's my why."
• Commonality among excellence real estate brokers:
  • Must be very organized
  • Follow up is critical
  • Disciplined
  • Relentless work ethic
  • Empathetic - The ability to be excited or sad with a client.
• There are 3 types of sales people:
  • Car sales - pushes, thinks short term
  • Tour guide - Just points to stuff, never closes deals
  • Push & Pull - They work to get the deal done

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John Chambers served as Cisco’s CEO from 1995-2015 and Executive Chairman from 2015-2017. Cisco went from $70 million to $40 billion in annual revenue during his time.

Notes:

• When John was six years old, he went fishing with his Dad in Elk River, WV. He was told, "Don't get too close to the water, the current is strong and could pull you under."
  • John's curiosity got the best of him. He went too close and slipped, falling into the water. His dad ran towards the current as it was pulling John and yelled, "Just hold on to the fishing pole."
• Fortunately, John survived and was eventually pulled out of the water by his dad. His dad said, "Do you know why I told you to hold on to the fishing pole?
  • "Don't let panic set in. Focus on what you can control. Work your way to calmer waters." It's a great metaphor for life.
• When dealing with stress, hold on to the fishing pole.
• How to deal with fear and uncertainty?
  • "I had two parents that were doctors. They helped me a lot."
  • "They taught me not to waste cycles on things you cannot change. Focus on the future, deal with the world as it is, not as you wish it was."
• This is why John deliberately puts the leaders he leads in stressful situations.
  • "Under stress you learn who people are."
  • "With that said, I only coach leaders that want to be coached." -- If you don't want to be coached, you probably won't work with John Chambers.
• How did he earn the job as CEO of Cisco?
  • "My parents taught me that education is the equalizer in life. I was a professional student. I got three degrees. And was trained very well at IBM, even as an entry level employee."
  • "I decided to leave my job at Wang for the same reason that most people leave their jobs. My manager."
  • "I left prior to even discussing another job with someone else. I didn't feel it was right to be laying people off while looking for another job."
  • "I thought the job offers would roll in. They didn't. I initially had no job offers... And then I reached out to my friends and network and asked for help... I had 22 offers in 90 days. 21 of them from friends of mine. I learned that the golden rule is true. Treat others how you'd like to be treated and it will come back to you when you need it."
  • "How you treat people determines your brand."
• Relationships -- "I'm usually the best prepared for every meeting I'm in. That way, I can move with speed."
  • "The emotional part of relationships comes from my mom. She taught me how to connect with people."
  • "I love building extended family teams. My team at Cisco was my family. We had only 5% turnover while the market rate was 15%.
• How is John different from Jack Welch?
  • "I learned a lot of lessons from Jack. He sent his team from GE to benchmark us at Cisco. They took 22 ideas from us."
  • "Jack was great at quarterly business reviews, but he was very tough on his people."
  • "I tried not to embarrass the people on my team in front of one another. I like to praise in public and criticize in private. That was different from Jack."
• How did they successfully acquire 180 companies?
  • They developed great playbooks and implemented them.
• What John looks for in a company:
  • Do they have an excellent CEO who wants to be coached?
  • Can the company be #1 or #2 in their market?
  • Talk with customers and get a feel for the company from that vantage point
  • What is their culture?
• What John looks for in a leader:
  • A track record of overachieving
  • "I look at their leadership team. Can they build a great team? That speaks volumes about them."
  • Cultural match - "Our values need to match."
  • They understand the industry they're in
• Culture must be owned at the top:
  • "The CEO must own the culture. In every meeting, the CEO should point out an example of how someone is living their values."
• Why are off site leadership retreats so important?
  • "It allows you to develop relationships outside of the office environment. You can build in depth relationships, built on trust."
  • "The off sites helped us learn much more about one another."
  • Gustavo (a leader John works with) saw a grizzly bear. Later he said, "I've never been more scared or more alive."
  • "In the evenings, I ask for each person to give a toast and share a key learning."
    • "I look for teaching moments."
• Sales - A noble profession:
  • "We are all in sales. It's about connecting with people. I was with the King of Jordan and his wife (the Queen) was pregnant, I asked, "So King will you be in the room while your wife gives birth?" This was not something that was typically asked of the King. John did it as a way to connect and offer advice. "You need to be in that room. It's the most amazing moment." This is how John connects with others.
  • Sales is part of everything we do. You get rejected, have to bounce back, and keep going. "I once asked Steph Curry, 'do you think you're going to make every shot? Even if you've missed your last five?' 'Yes, he said.' Sales is like that, you have to believe in yourself to make the next one."
• Advice:
  • Never compromise your values
  • How you handle your setbacks with determine your life
  • Treat people like you want to be treated. Be kind.
  • Focus, but also relax. Don't be so uptight.

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Ryan Deiss is a best selling author, founder of multiple companies collectively employing hundreds around the globe. He is the founder and CEO of DigitalMarketer.com and Founder and Managing Partner of RivalBrands.com and plattr.com. Ryan is the creator of the “Customer Value Optimization” methodology and have introduced and popularized many of the digital selling strategies. He is also the founder and host of the Traffic & Conversion Summit, the largest digital marketing conversion conference in North America.

Notes:

• Commonalities of excellence:
  • They understand why they've made mistakes - they learn why they've failed.
  • They are purposeful about their decision making
• Appetite for risk:
  • "I have a very low appetite for risk."
  • "I value security."
• Must have qualities in a leader to hire on his team?
  • "I want them to not be like me." Need to have skills that compliment his...
    • Early on he hired people just like him. It was a mistake.
  • Consistency - Must show up.
  • A big heart - People who care about others and their work.
• Why writing is so important as a leader:
  • Like academics being peer reviewed. "It forces you to crystalize your own ideas."
    • "You need to say something new that hasn't been said before. And be willing to be criticized."
• Eugene Schwartz
  • Breakthrough Advertising =  one of the best books ever written on marketing
• The Awareness Levels:
  • Completely Unaware - They don't know they have a problem worth solving
  • Problem Aware - They sense they have a problem, but don't know there's a solution
  • Solution Aware - Know the results they want, but don't know your product provides it
  • Product Aware - Know what you sell, but aren't sure it's right for them
  • Most Aware - Repeat buyers and loyal customers who refer you to their friends
• How to make your leadership training better?
  • Acknowledge their problem is real. Make them feel heard...
  • Sell the soft. Speak into someone's reality.
  • Acknowledge the pain, offer a solution... "Outsourced Leadership Development"
• "Your service is a vehicle to a more desired result."
• Be the "transportation to transformation."
• Scaling beyond a personality driven business:
  • Get off the field, get in the owner's box. Productize yourself.
  • Build an asset.
  • Create ideas that travel - Have your version of 10 commandments on one single piece of paper
• Ryan has his "customer value journey" - The Customer Value Journey is about turning strangers into super-fans.
  • Redirect it into the artifact
  • Say "We" instead of "I"
  • Give it a name - The genius is in the artifact
• The Goal is a book on manufacturing about assembly lines. They identified weakest link and fixed it.
• The value of creating of having a big event like Traffic & Conversion Summit:
  • Create the place for others to go - It helps with branding, earning media, and the gathering spot for great people. It draws others to it.
  • You become the connector. The host of the party.
• Story is the leverage of persuasion:
  • Don't talk about yourself
  • Help others change the story they tell about themselves
• Marketing shouldn't stop at the order - Marketing should own the entirety of the customer journey.
  • Career wise - Get as close to the revenue as possible.
• Advice: Study old, rich, happy people.

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Wendy Kopp is CEO and Co-founder of Teach For All, a global network of independent organizations that are developing collective leadership to ensure all children have the opportunity to fulfill their potential. Today, more than 6,000 Teach For America corps members—outstanding recent college graduates and professionals of all academic disciplines—are in the midst of two-year teaching commitments in over 50 urban and rural regions.

Notes:

• Jim Collins called Wendy “my entrepreneur for this decade.” He continued, “Her organization is truly an entrepreneurial creation that is out to utterly transform education. It’s taking an entrepreneurial, let’s-do-something approach to tackling a massive social problem.”
• Goal setting: It’s all about setting a goal that’s at the right intersection of ambitious and feasible.
• The #1 responsibility of a leader is to catalyze a clear and shared vision for the company and secure commitment to and vigorous pursuit of that vision.
• The differentiator is the “first WHO” principle. It’s what she’s learned. What is it that drives system change in education? “Jim thinks it’s the answer in corporate America, I think it is the difference in social change.”
• Wendy grew up in a bubble in Texas. She didn't realize the inequity and disadvantages to children born in different situations.
• At the end of her college years at Princeton, she wrote a 100+ page thesis. She narrowed down to 30 pages... And created a four page plan.
• She mailed her thesis to 30 executives in an effort to spread awareness and raise money
•  Everywhere she went, people said, "This is a great idea but college kids won't do this." Wendy was steadfast in her belief that they would...
• After the first year, Wendy found herself on stage speaking to 500 "Teach For America" teachers...
• The benefit of naivete:
  • "The world needs you before you become jaded by your experience."
•  "We need leaders to channel their energy in marginalized communities."
• What was the key to the first year growth? "It helped writing a plan. I sent 100 letters to potential donors and got rejected or ignored by 98 of them."
• You have to persevere and have conviction for the idea.
• Leadership - An idea that magnetizes people. People were drawn to Wendy's mission and purpose.
• Strategic Framework - What is your core purpose? The core values are what brings people together.
• Create a sense of mission - "You need to enable a diverse group of people. Articulate it and make it possible for others to engage."
  • Recruit people from a wide variety of backgrounds. Diversity is very important.
• Why did Wendy do this instead of take a job that would pay well?
  • "I knew myself well. I knew that whatever I did, I would throw myself at it 24/7. I wanted to have a bigger impact on the world."
• "What keeps me at it? I started gaining the sense of responsibility for so many others."
• How Teach For America helped Washington D.C.
  • "I met with so many civic leaders who said, 'We've tried everything and it won't work.' DC was 2 years behind Harlem from an educational perspective with their public schools." Washington DC was completely transformed by Teach For America and now has one of the better public school districts in America.
• How is she so humble?
  • "I realize we're going to get so much wrong."
  • Must learn from what goes wrong and improve moving forward
• What are some "must-have" leadership qualities?
  • Look at what people have accomplished
  • How have you managed through challenges?
  • People who are passionate about the purpose
  • People who live into the values
  • Optimism
  • Commitment to diversity and inclusiveness
• What's currently exciting?
  • Seeing the leadership effects in others from Pakistan to Peru
  • The power of locally rooted leadership
• Commonalities of leader who sustain excellence:
  • Put impact first... Ahead of career ambitions
  • Solve problems
  • Perseverance
  • Optimism
  • Humility - Constantly learning
  • Act on conviction
• What does Wendy do for fun?
  • Runs and listens to books while running. Which books?
    • Human Kind by Rutger Bregman
    • Reinventing Organizations by Frederic Laloux
• Life advice:
  • "Solve as early as possible."
  • "Do not put off your passion until after you've had a job for a few years."
  • "Don't think you have to start something new." Look for others who are doing it and join them...

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Rich Diviney Rich Diviney draws upon 20+ years of experience as a Navy SEAL Officer – with 11 deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. He was the Commanding Officer of a Navy SEAL Command. Rich is is the author of The Attributes - 25 Hidden Drivers of Optimal Performance.

Notes:

• The process to select Navy SEALs:
  • Rich created a program to effectively articulate why someone made it through SEAL training.
  • "It's not about training to be a Navy SEAL, it's about proving if you can be one."
  • "Skills are not inherent to our nature. They are learned."
• Attributes are wired into our internal circuitry, always running in the background, dictating how we behave and react and perform. Attributes should not be confused with personality traits. A personality is built from patterns of behavior that emerge over an extended period of time. It’s an outward expression of all the things that make you you - your skills, habits, emotions, perspectives, and attributes all blended together.
• What is optimal performance? "It's not a peak. It's doing the best you can, with what you have, in the moment."
• What are some of the surprising attributes that helped or didn't?
  • Drive - Some of the most driven people weren't necessarily cut out to be a SEAL
  • The difference between Self-Discipline and Discipline:
    • Self-discipline is about controlling those things that the outside world has no say in.
    • Discipline is the ability to move through the challenges of the world.
  • Narcissism - Some of the benefits of it? From Rich: "Why did I want to be a Navy SEAL? I wanted to see if I could be a badass. I desired to standout and be admired. That's a little narcissism."
    • "However, extreme narcissism is awful. Excessive narcissists are rarely loyal-- loyalty requires trust and a sense of safety-- so their tribes are inherently unstable: Healthy members tend not to stay long, and new ones are let in only when they show the requisite deference. Those who do leave usually suffer a disproportionate amount of wrath from the person to whom they once deferred-- because defectors are considered enemies. The energy and effort of the highly narcissistic person will be used to prop up their fragile egos rather than to achieve shared objectives or serve a common purpose.”
• Did he ever think about quitting during Hell week? "The training trains you to compartmentalize. You can't ever entertain that thought. You have to chunk things down to the moment. You're running around and saying, 'this sucks!' But you have to focus on just getting to the next berm. And then the next one. Think, 'what can I control right now?' And focus on your three foot world."
• The highest performing people ask better questions:
  • Think: "What's the better question to ask right now?"
  • "What can I control right now?"
• Introspection is vital. Why aren't we better at being introspective?
  • "Because we escape too much." We have devices to ensure we're never bored. Never lost in thought. On long car rides, children never have to look out the window anymore to pass the time. They have a device or a screen to watch.
    • You need to allow your brain space... Need to spend more time in our heads.
• "Knowledge is not power. Applied knowledge is power."
• Be decisive. Take action. "Decisions are final, but not permanent."
• Be adaptable like a frog. Frogs have survived five extinction level events. "If you don't adapt you will become a dinosaur."
• Rich has narrowed it down to 5 segments of attributes. They are: Grit, Mental Acuity, Drive, Leadership, and Teamability.
  • Grit - Beware of the fearless leader (Courage), Fall 7 times get up 8 (Perseverance), Be Like the frog (Adaptability), The Benefits of Little Tragedies (Resilience)
  • Mental Acuity -- The art of Vigilance (Situational Awareness), Wired for Efficiency (Compartmentalization), The Multitasking Myth (Task Switching), Forged in Plastic (Learnability)
  • Drive -- Mastering the Pivot (Self-Efficacy), The Self-Disciplined Loser (Discipline), A Fish Is the Last to Discover Water (Open-Mindedness), The Princess and the Dragon (Cunning), It’s All about Me (Narcissism)
  • Leadership -- No One Cares How You Feel (Empathy), If it Doesn’t Hurt, You’re Doing it Wrong (Selflessness), You Can’t Hide You (Authenticity), Many A False Step Is Made by Standing Still (Decisiveness), Don’t Be A Mediator (Accountability)
  • Teamability -- The Subjectivity of Right and Wrong (Integrity), There’s Always Something to Do (Conscientiousness), Play Black, Not Red (Humility), Honor The Class Clown (Humor)

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#402: Donald Miller - CEO of Business Made Simple

Notes:

• The Characteristics of a Value Driven Professional:
  • “Value driven successful people see themselves as an economic product on the open market. They are obsessed with getting people a strong return on the investment made in them. People who are obsessed with being a good investment attract further investment and get to enjoy more personal economic value. When you offer greater economic value within the economic ecosystem, you are paid more, given more responsibility and promotions, and are sought after by customers looking for value. In business, your boss may really like you, but in large part, they see you as an economic investment. There is nothing wrong with that. So how do we become ridiculously successful? By making other people absurdly successful.”
    • "If you know how to make people money, you will make a lot of money."
  • They have a bias towards action - “There is one thing every successful person has in common: They have a bias towards action.” They don’t let ideas die on the vine. They take action to make those ideas happen. While others may have terrific ideas or be able to see an important issue from many angles, action-oriented people are good at getting things done.”
  • They see themselves as a hero, not a victim. Ask, “How often do you position yourself as a victim?” How often do you talk about yourself as though you are not in control of your life? Do you believe other people are responsible for your failures? Don was born in Texas and grew up poor. His dad left and never came back. His mom had to work long hours just to keep him and his sister alive. He told me, “The biggest transformation in my life happened when I stopped thinking of myself as a victim and started thinking of myself as the hero. I lost 150 pounds and became more in control of my life. If you’re always the victim, you’ll find that people get tired of carrying your load.”
  • They know feedback is a gift. They create an established routine in which they get feedback from their peers.
  • They are relentlessly optimistic - Staying optimistic, you dramatically increase the chances that at some point you will succeed. The more optimistic you are, the more willing you will be willing to try. Successful people fail all the time. The difference is their willingness to keep trying.
• A story has four characters:
  • Victim - The victim is rescued by the hero. The victim makes the hero look good. It's a bit part.
  • Villian - A backstory of pain. The villian seeks vengeance.
  • Hero - Faces challenges, is focused, overcomes obstacles.
  • Guide - Older, sage, wise. Helps others win
• "I remember when my biggest transformation happened. I realized that girls wanted to be with the hero, not the victim. I lost 150 pounds."
• Taking action: "The magic is not in the thinking, it's in the doing."
• Be a "delusional optimist." It's scientifically proven that people who believe they can do something accomplish more than those who don't.
• What is a story?
  • "A character that overcomes conflict to try to accomplish something."
  • "Invite people to overcome an obstacle and solve a problem."
• One piece of advice: "Be known for solving a problem." One problem.
• We are all in sales. What is sales? "Clear articulation of how you can solve someone's problem."
• How To Create a Mission Statement and Guiding Principles:
  • “The #1 job of a leader is to wake up every morning, point to the horizon, and let everybody on the team know where the organization is going.”
  • “The #2 job of a leader is to explain, in clear and simple terms, why the story of going to and arriving at that specific destination matters.”
  • "The #3 job of a leader is to analyze the skills and abilities of each team member and find them an important role to play in that story.”
• In Don's personal guiding principles, his repeatable critical actions are: "get up early, you write, and you say, “after you.”  -- Those 3 critical actions establish a way of life that if repeated day in and day out ensures success.
• Know how to attract people to your mission by telling your story. How do we do this? What’s the biggest mistake made? (Biggest mistake is telling their history, complete with bullet points and boring asides). Your history is not your story.
• Here is a formula for a good, short mission statement: “We will accomplish ____________ by ___________ because of _________.
• How To Be Productive -- Make Wise Daily Decisions - Every morning you ask yourself a simple question: “If this were the second time I were living this day, what would I do differently?”
• Bill Gates is never late to a meeting. How does he ensure he’s always on time? He blocks his time
• The StoryBrand methodology:
  • A character that wants something
  • The character encounters a problem
  • The character meets the guide
  • The guide gives the hero a plan
  • The guide calls the hero to action
• When clarifying your marketing message, never position yourself as the hero. Always position yourself as the guide.
• The Core Competencies that will immediately make or save the company money:
  • They are a clear and compelling leader - Align & inspire a team. Create a mission statement & guiding principles
  • They are personally productive - Mastered a specific system
  • They know how to clarify a message
  • They can sell - introduce products to qualified leads
  • They are great communicators - Give a speech that informs & inspires a team
  • They know how to run an execution system

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For full show notes go to www.LearningLeader.com

Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12

David M. Rubenstein is a Co-Founder and Co-Executive Chairman of The Carlyle Group, one of the world’s largest and most successful private investment firms. Mr. Rubenstein co-founded the firm in 1987. Since then, Carlyle has grown into a firm managing $217 billion from 32 offices around the world.

Notes:

• David is most interested in continuing to learn... He reads six newspapers per day and 100 books per year.
• Your commencement is the beginning, not the end. "Keep your brain active, it's a muscle. It will atrophy without use."
• David would give all of his money away to be one year younger...
• Keys to happiness:
  • Thomas Jefferson said we all have the right to be in pursuit of happiness
  • "It's the most elusive thing in life."
  • Happiness is all about building meaningful relationships
• The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis -- "JFK showed tremendous leadership to avert disaster. He strategically ignored Khrushchev's second letter and responded to the first one when making a deal to avoid nuclear war. David was in 9th grade at the time and that moment of leadership impacted him in a big way.
• He worked in the White House for Jimmy Carter. "When I worked in the White House, everyone thought I was the smartest person in the world. When we lost and I didn't have a job anymore, nobody called, and nobody offered me a job."
• Why leave his job as part of a big law firm?
  • "If you don't love what you do you can't be great at it."
• Launching The Carlyle Group:
  • Raised $5m
  • Hired incredibly competent people
  • New idea: "I wanted to create a private equity one stop shop."
• How did he hire well?
  • "I went after the best people I knew and sold them on why they should join me." What was said?
    • Convince them they will have responsibility
    • They will learn a lot
    • They will make more money
    • It will be enjoyable
• What does David ask in interviews with candidates to hire?
  • "I want to learn mostly about what motivates them."
• Must have qualities to work at The Carlyle Group:
  • Intelligent
  • Hard working
  • Get along well with others
  • Share credit
  • Effective communicator (both written and the spoken word)
  • Help others
  • Honest/High Integrity
• Why start The Carlyle Group?
  • "I wanted to prove that my idea could work."
• What created the success of the company?
  • "It was the luck of meeting great people... Like Bill Conway."
  • "Prior preparation prevents poor performance."
• What are the keys to being a great interviewer?
  • Good listener
  • Enjoy it
  • Sublimate your ego - It's about the guest, not the interviewer proving how smart they are
• Why does David like to interview so many people?
  • "My mother said it's because I'm a 'yenta.' I want to know everything."
• Why own so many of our countries historical documents? (Magna Carta, Declaration of Independence)
  • "I want to remind people of our history."
• He's one of the first 40 members of the giving pledge and plans to give ALL of his money away to charity.
• Advice to a young college graduate:
  • Experiment, find things you enjoy
  • Share credit
  • Read a lot... Learn to speak in public
  • Become a skilled writer
  • Retain humility
• What do most people say on their deathbed? They don't say, 'I wish I'd made more money.' What they say is, 'I wish I'd spent more time with my family and done more for society or my community.'
• "Anybody who gives away money is mostly looking at things where they think they can make a difference. I'm trying to help people who helped me, educational institutions that helped me with scholarships, or organizations that were very useful to me in growing up."

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Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com

Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk

Episode #400 with Keith Hawk & AJ Hawk

Notes:

• I sourced questions from members of my Leadership Circle, friends, listeners, and colleagues for this episode...
• How does Keith continue to feel impactful after retirement?
  • KH: "It's like I have a paper route. I work a little bit in the mornings, get my work done, and then I can go have fun with my friends. I work on a few boards, do voice over work, and know how to hit the post."
• What has AJ learned from working with Pat McAfee?
  • "I learned to trust my instincts and not try to be somebody I'm not."
• What's the best way to make introductions? AJ: "Text (message) intros are so much better. They are more personal."
• From Leadership Circle member, Amanda Wilson: "What habit do you admire the most in each other/best attribute?"
  • Pistol about AJ: "He's an unbelievable teammate. He has earned the respect of all his peers. I respect his intensity to prepare."
  • Pistol about Ryan: "A huge preparation guy. His focus on other people. He has more of an outer focus now. And a huge intensity around growth." "Gotta change, Gotta grow."
  • AJ about Pistol: Consistency. He wakes up early. I never saw him asleep. He never made us do anything. I want to live up to that standard. I don't want my kids to see me asleep. And universally, everyone loves him."
  • AJ about Ryan: "You're a mini-version of Pistol with your consistency. So detail oriented. Such a leader and not afraid to hold people accountable. People have confidence that you'll take them where they want to go."
  • Ryan about Pistol: Absolute selflessness. Reminds me of my wife, Miranda. A willingness to always help others succeed and will do anything for them.
  • Ryan about AJ: A relentless work ethic. A drive to be there for the people who depend on him. Whenever I talk with teammates of AJ, they all say the same thing, "That's my guy. I know he'll be where he's supposed to be when he's supposed to be there. I can depend on him." He shows up to work everyday and gets it done.
• Being selfless: Pistol - "My success is better and richer if it follows other people's success."
• From Jeff Leung (Sr. Engineer at Facebook): "As the father of two young boys, I would love to hear how you and your brother AJ grew up in a way that you cheer for each other more than compete?"
  • A mutual love and respect for each others work. An appreciation for what the other does.
• From Doug Meyer, Co-Founder/CEO of Brixey & Meyer: "What was your reaction when you heard Ryan was  leaving a high paying job at a large company to take a substantial pay cut to start a Leadership Advisory practice at Brixey & Meyer?"
  • Pistol: "Joy, fun, fulfillment. I was so excited for him."
  • AJ: "Of course. He's gonna kill it."
• Give an example how you handled when one of your kids wanted to do something but you thought it was a mistake?
  • "When Ryan was at Miami, I probably pushed him too hard to transfer so that he would get another shot to be a starting QB after losing the job to Ben Roethlisberger. I sometimes have thoughts that he could have moved positions and become Julian Edelman."
• From Nate DeMars (Founder/Owner of Pursuit) - "You guys have all moved onto what I guess you could consider second careers recently… How do you approach starting over as a novice in a new field?"
  • "There is no excuse to not learn everything about what you want to do. There is so much out there to read and watch and people to talk to. If you don't learn it, it's your fault."
  • Find something you care about, that you're passionate about, and pursue that.
  • "Deal with imposter syndrome when you're new. There's never been a better time to learn something new."
• Life experiences that have shaped you. Pistol, what experiences shaped AJ/Ryan?
  • Playing for the legendary Bob Gregg and Ron Ullery. They molded you and helped you:
    • Faced the requirement to prepare a lot
    • Learned how to be a great teammate
    • Learned to compete hard
    • Learned to take tough, critical feedback, became coachable
    • Learned how to be a leader
• How to deal with great teammates, but bad coaches?
  • AJ: "It doesn't help to complain and be negative. Be quiet. Do your job."
  • And strive to learn from those who aren't good at their job so that you don't repeat what they do.
  • The Rex Caswell exercise: When you're new, write in a journal in two columns. One is for the great actions of your boss and the other is for the not helpful behaviors. Keep it with you and review it as you continue to get promoted.
  • Pistol: "Wrap yourself in the mission. Don't wrap yourself in negativity."
    • "It's the duty of the leader to be in a good mood."
• We conducted our first draft. The topic: Our favorite sports movies (listen to hear who we picked).

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Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com

IG/Twitter: @RyanHawk12

Notes:

• Sustaining Excellence =
  • Learn constantly
  • Experiment constantly
  • Obsessive about learning the details, not a cookie cutter approach
• Rapid Skill Acquisition:
  • Must be specific
  • Break it down: don't try to do it all at once
  • Do research
  • Practice
  • Deconstruct the skill to its smallest parts
  • Make a pre-commitment - "I'm going to practice this skill for 20 hours no matter what."
• Create fast feedback loops for yourself:
  • Keep a daily log of what you do... Meetings, interactions, what was discussed, how you feel, etc.
• This helps reinforce the importance of paying attention to the small details of what you're trying to learn
• If something happens, you can review your notes later
• Josh has always had "a desire to understand the world around me"
• Teaching is one of the greatest tools in the world for learning
• "Management is the act of coordinating a group of people to achieve a goal. Management is not business. Management is not leadership. Management is a supporting function, not a decision making function."
  • "Leadership = define the goal, account for change."
• "Good management =
  • Recruiting - must get good people
  • Communicating well between teams and decision making parts of the business
  • Must create environment of psychological safety
    • Create a productive working environment
  • Planning - Estimating time lines and schedules
  • Measurement
• Commander's Intent - "When you are a leader, decision making authority, the least effective thing is for you to make all the ground level decisions." Push decision making power to the people closest to the action.
• More quotes from Josh's work:
• “You can't make positive discoveries that make your life better if you never try anything new.”
• “Every successful business (1) creates or provides something of value that (2) other people want or need (3) at a price they're willing to pay, in a way that (4) satisfies the purchaser's needs and expectations and (5) provides the business sufficient revenue to make it worthwhile for the owners to continue operation.
• “If you rely on finding time to do something, it will never be done. If you want to find time, you must make time.”
• “The best thing that can happen to a human being is to find a problem, to fall in love with that problem, and to live trying to solve that problem, unless another problem even more lovable appears.”
• “Every time your customers purchase from you, they’re deciding that they value what you have to offer more than they value anything else their money could buy at that moment.”
• “The trouble comes when we confuse learning with skill acquisition. If you want to acquire a new skill, you must practice it in context. Learning enhances practice, but it doesn’t replace it. If performance matters, learning alone is never enough.”
• "Be positive, force yourself to smile."
• “Improve by 1% a day, and in just 70 days, you’re twice as good.”
• “Ideas are cheap—what counts is the ability to translate an idea into reality, which is much more difficult than recognizing a good idea.”
• “Fear of the unknown will always be with you, no matter what you do. That’s comforting in a way: if there’s nothing you can do to change it, there’s no reason to let it stop you.”

Text LEARNERS to 44222 for more details...

Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com

Jim Collins books include Good to Great, the #1 bestseller, which examines why some companies make the leap and others don’t; the enduring classic Built to Last, which discovers why some companies remain visionary for generations; How the Mighty Fall, which delves into how once-great companies can self-destruct; and Great by Choice, which uncovers the leadership behaviors for thriving in chaos and uncertainty. Jim has also published two monographs that extend the ideas in his primary books: Good to Great and the Social Sectors and Turning the Flywheel. His most recent publication is BE 2.0 (Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0), an ambitious upgrade of his very first book; it returns Jim to his original focus on small, entrepreneurial companies and honors his coauthor and mentor Bill Lazier.

Notes:

• What Exactly is Leadership?” “True leadership only exists if people follow when they would otherwise have the freedom to not follow.” Many business leaders think they are leading when in fact they’re simply exercising power, and they might discover to their horror that no one would follow them if they had no power. General Colin Powell said, “In my 35 years of service, I don’t ever recall telling anyone, ‘That’s an order.” “Leadership is the art of getting people to want to do what must be done.”
• When Steve Jobs returned to Apple, one of the first people he called was Jim Collins. Jim asked Steve,“what did you first build upon to emerge from the darkness? What gave you hope?” Steve was talking with perhaps the greatest product visionary of our time.. so he expected him to talk about operating systems or the Macintosh computer or other product ideas.  But he didn’t. What did he talk about? People. "It was all about the WHO."
• History is the “study of surprises.” There will be no “new normal,” there will only be a continuous series of “not normal” episodes, defying predictions and unforeseen by most of us until they happen. This is why we double down on the “first who” principle.
• Track the number 1 metric: some say sales or profitability or cash flow or something about products. But there’s one metric that towers above them all that’s rarely spoken about in meetings. And that is: The percentage of key seats on the bus filled with the right people  for those seats.
• How to know when to shift from “develop” to “replace?” Jim has distilled years of reflection down to 7 questions that he offers to stimulate your thinking when you face the “develop or replace” conundrum. 
  • Are you beginning to lose other people by keeping this person in the seat? Do you have a values problem, a will problem, or a skills problem? What’s the person's relationship to the window and the mirror? Does the person see the work as a job or a responsibility? Has your confidence in the person gone up or down in the last year? Do you have a bus problem or a seat problem? How would you feel if the person quit?
• Jim spent time at West Point as the Chair for the Study of Leadership… One of they key things he learned from that time was the importance of focusing on your unit and taking care of your people, not your career…
• “The key to a leader’s impact is sincerity. Before he can inspire with emotion he must be swayed by it himself. Before he can move their tears his own must flow. To convince them he must himself believe.” - Winston Churchill
• Kroger made the leap because they became fanatical about getting the right people in the right seats
• A key position at your company does the following:
  • Has hiring responsibility
  • A failure by them could expose the company to disaster
  • Their performance has an outsized impact on the business as a whole
• The Personal Hedgehog Concept
  • You love to do the work
  • You're doing something you're wired for
  • The market will pay you for it
• Great success in life is when you have people in key seats that fit their hedgehog
• When analyzing if a person should remain on the team, ask, "What is the person's relationship with the window or the mirror?"
• We want people who have a tremendous capacity to grow. Be a growth machine.
• An example of a world-class leader? Wendy Kopp, CEO and Co-Founder of Teach For All, a global network of independent nonprofit organizations working to expand educational opportunity in their own countries and the Founder of Teach For America.
  • "Wendy had no power and not much charisma, and yet she got hundreds of thousands of people to sign up and do work that is not fun." That's leadership.
• "Leadership is the art of getting people to want to do what must be done."
• The #1 responsibility of a leader is to catalyze a clear and shared vision for the company and secure commitment to and vigorous pursuit of that vision.
• From Jim, "I'm more of a teacher than a leader. What's my leadership artistry? Trust."
• Ann Mulcahy saved Xerox. She kept getting promoted... When asked how she earned those promotions, Anne said, "I tried to make my mini-bus a sparkling pocket of greatness." They came to her and said, "We want you to drive the whole bus."

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Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com

Jim Collins is a student and teacher of what makes great companies tick, and a Socratic advisor to leaders in the business and social sectors. He has written a series of books that have sold more than 10 million copies worldwide. They include Good to Great, the #1 bestseller, which examines why some companies make the leap and others don’t; the enduring classic Built to Last, which discovers why some companies remain visionary for generations; How the Mighty Fall, which delves into how once-great companies can self-destruct; and Great by Choice, which uncovers the leadership behaviors for thriving in chaos and uncertainty. 

Notes:

• Shortly before Jim's 25th birthday, during his second year at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, he got hit with a lightning bolt of WHO luck. The type of luck that comes as a chance meeting with a person who changes your life. That person was Bill Lazier...
• Bill Lazier was the closest thing to a father Jim ever had. Jim's dad died when he was 23.
• Creating a Generosity Flywheel -- “One day, two large wooden crates appeared on your front porch, the address labels indicating they’d be shipped by Bill. He sent you a few dozen bottles of spectacularly good wine. You called and asked him what prompted him to send to you and he said, “Dorothy and I had an inventory problem in our wine cellar, and we needed to make room for some new bottles. We thought you could help us out by taking some of it off our hands.” Bill mastered the art of getting people to accept his generosity, somehow framing it as if you were doing him a favor.
• Jim's question to me: How is quarterbacking a football team similar to quarterbacking a conversation for a podcast?
• Make the Trust Wager - “I choose to assume the best in people and accept that they sometimes disappoint.” (Lead With Trust)
• Build a Meaningful Life by Building Relationships — Life can be a series of transactions or you can build relationships. Transactions can give you success, but inky relationships make for a great life.” —- How do you know if you have a great relationship? “If you were to ask each person in the relationship who benefits more from it, both would answer “I do.” Both feel like they’re getting the better end of the deal.
• Start with Values, Always Values — values aren’t the “soft stuff.” Living to core values is the hard stuff.
• "Prep prep prep so that you don't have to be rote." -- "For me the opening plays are questions. And I know the opening two or three questions to get the session started."
  • "Then the game starts. I have this set up things, but then something really surprising happens. What I found interesting about it, is that you'd think high levels of prep, it's actually being so well prepared that you can adapt. That's the critical thing. It's only because you're super prepared that you can do something surprising."
• The opening question to a company he works with is always the same:
  • "It starts at exactly 8:00am. I have an atomic clock and it's set to the exact atomic time. At 8:00, I open the doors. I walk in and say, "Good morning, I feel a tremendous responsibility to make the most of our time. Everybody take out a blank sheet of paper. I want you to write down the top 5 most brutal facts that face the company today. Go!" -- "We're 12 seconds into the meeting. There are no pleasantries, they're not going to talk about how the flight was, or dinner last night. We are here to make the most of our time. I'm trying to set the tone that we don't have time to waste. I can't waste your time. You're here to have your brain challenged."
  • And then Jim has them allocate 100 points for the 5 most brutal facts.
    • You need to start with an honest account of the brutal facts. This gets the group talking immediately. "The entire thing opens up."
• "Preparation is respect."
• "That previous podcast we did (episode #216) was masterfully done by Ryan. There's some wonderful things he pulled out." How has your style evolved?
  • I'm less robotic, less formulaic, more agile, and able to go with the conversation.
• Bill Lazier -- "Bill went to the Dean at Stanford and put himself on the line for me. He believed in me. He bet big on me. Nothing I've accomplished happens without Bill Lazier."
• Here is WHY joining a Learning Leader Circle is a good idea...

Text LEARNERS to 44222 for more...

Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com

Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12

Episode #396 - Scott Galloway: Professor at NYU Stern, best-selling author, entrepreneur (started 9 firms)

Notes:

• Scott and I have the same book agent, Jim Levine. It's the first person Scott thanks in the Acknowledgement section of his latest book... "Jim is someone I can go to for help with any aspect of life. He's much more than just a book agent. You need people in your kitchen cabinet that you can go to."
• Sharing admiration for others? Why did Scott struggle with this when he was younger?
  • "We should do this. It doesn't make you less impressive because you shared your admiration for someone else."
  • "The greatest untapped resource = good intentions, good thoughts. Express them. Verbalize them. Don't let that resource go to waste."
• Leaders should be constantly giving praise to the people on their team. Send the quick email, give the shout out. "People need watering. Give them recognition. Notice others, let them know when they do good work. That's how you recruit and retain great people. That's how you build loyalty."
  • Action step: Call the parents of the young people on your team. Tell them their daughter or son is doing excellent work and are a joy to work with...
• "Be the man your kids think you are." It's motivating to try to live up to those standards. Life is about those moments with your kids.
• The key to excellence?
  • "Success is not my fault. I grew up as a heterosexual white male, born in 1964. We have this problem of conflating luck with talent."
• Commonalities of leaders who sustain excellence?
  • Competence - Must be highly competent in one area. "You must demonstrate excellence. Be outstanding at it."
  • Grit - "As the leader, I wanted to show my team I was willing to pull all nighters when needed. I would never ask my team to do something I wasn't willing to do."
  • Empathy - "You have to want others to win. You have to leverage all your talents to help others be successful. That creates loyalty."
• "People's loyalties are misplaced. Don't be loyal to companies, be loyal to people."
• Why make predictions? "It's not about being right. It's about catalyzing a conversation. I want ideas to have sex."
  • "Plans are useless but planning is invaluable."
  • "Once a prediction happens, it seems obvious."
• When I go to keynote speaking engagements, I'm often asked about Scott Galloway. He's become the person so many men follow? Why?
  • "Most business news is PG13. I'm the rated R version and I speak my mind. There aren't enough people doing that."
  • "Most guys have trouble talking openly about their feelings. We have trouble expressing our emotions. Men want to do it, but don't. That's what I do."
    • "Write as if your kids will read it in 30 years."
• In Chinese the word for crisis… the first character means danger, and the second is translated as a critical juncture
• A Scottish MP George Galloway said “nothing can happen for decades and then decades can happen in weeks”

Text LEARNERS to 44222 for more...

Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com

Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12

Ep #395: Dr. Marisa Porges

Notes:

• Keys to a good coffee meeting with someone:
  • Be early
  • Find a quiet spot
  • Know your order before you get there. Don't make it too complex
  • Have a goal for the meeting. Know what you want to get out of it
• "You don’t have to be a feminist to care about these lessons, nor do you need a daughter or a sister. You just have to know a girl or young woman and care about her future."
• The differences for a woman vs. a man in business:
  • Women have fewer mentors and sponsors
    • "You need to seek mentors on a regular basis"
    • "Men need to mentor women" -- "Make room for women mentees"
    • What should the man who is nervous to mentor a woman do?
      • Meet in a public place
      • Talk about business
• Key to excellence: The ability to adapt
  • Marisa joined the Navy after High School. She was inspired by the movie Top Gun
  • She got in a bad car accident and had to be rescued by the jaws of life
  • She had to shave her head in the Navy
  • "Our reality forces us to adapt. We change jobs 4x more than our parents did."
• How to be adaptable?
  • Be open to pushing yourself to new environments
    • Test yourself in a new environment. Don't always set up for the perfect environment
    • Do something differently -- Test your boundaries
• How to be authentically empathetic?
  • The platinum rule -- Treat others as they want to be treated (not how you want to be treated)
  • Be vulnerable, open, and real
  • While interviewing terrorists in Yemen, Marisa got them to open up by authentically opening up first
    • "Be conscious about when and how you're vulnerable. It can't be too often. Monitor your emotions."
• Look for go for it moments... Learn to rebound from failure and understand the key takeaways from them. Be able to deal with uncertainty.
• Marisa shares a story about a parent of one of her students. Marc. His daughter was going through an issue at school. Marc said, “I went into Dad mode and said should I call the school? Talk to a teacher? —- This is a terrible way to respond as the dad of a daughter. A dad needs to "coach from the sideline." Help your daughter practice self advocacy. Ask them questions, be curious. Help your daughter find her voice and speak up. One easy example to practice -- "When you go out to eat, always have your daughter order her food. When you call to order a pizza, have your daughter do it."
• Marisa worked in the White House and needed to become an excellent communicator to prepare for her conversations with The President. How did she do this? "Practice, practice practice."
• Excellence:
  • How we learn from failure and bounce back... What happens next?
  • It's always about the others in your life. Who are you surrounding yourself with?
  • Small things make a big difference

Text LEARNERS to 44222 for more details about The Learning Leader Circle

Full notes at www.LearningLeader.com

Twitter: @RyanHawk12

#394: Todd Henry - The Hidden Forces That Drive Your Best Work

Show notes:

• What is the most valuable land in the world?
  • "The graveyard... All of the stuff we carry with us for our life and never put out into the world... All of that valued is buried in the ground."
• The two words that Todd wrote down after coming to this realization? "Die Empty."
  • “The rough edges they decry you for now… Are the very rough edges they will celebrate you for later.”
• What drives us to unleash our best work?
• Drawing on interviews with over 100,000 working professionals, the answer is no one size fits all. Todd Henry shows, in fact, that there are six unique "motivational archetypes"...
• They are:
  • The Visionary strives to make her mark on the world by building an ideal future, even when others may not see as far ahead.
  • The Achiever relishes a finished product and must conquer whatever obstacle comes his way, no matter how difficult or time-consuming.
  • The Team Player values being part of a group and will go to great lengths to achieve unity and enhance collaboration.
  • The Learner is obsessed with mastering new skills and showing off what she knows--which is often a lot.
  • The Optimizer thrives when systems are running smoothly and finds great satisfaction when things are done the "right way."
  • The Key Contributor shines at the center of the action, especially when others can recognize the value of his work.
• Todd's work teaches us to decode our motivational type so we can structure projects, have conversations, make decisions, and even choose career paths to amp up engagement and achieve fulfillment. Once we know how to activate our inner drivers, we can transform the work we do into the work we love.
• Why should you write?
  • "If you can learn to write, you'll be invited into rooms."
  • "Turn the ineffable into something."
  • Read, comprehend, synthesize, write...
  • "People won't follow you because of your position or title. You have to persuade them. You have to cut through the noise, hone your skills. It's a craft you must work on."
  • Have empathy, uniqueness, precisions. Have empathy for the end user. 
  • Have an intended audience: one person in mind. Ramp up your empathy for the end user...
• "We wait for tasks to motivate us and that's exactly backwards. We need to bring our motivation to what we do. We have to train ourselves to bring our motivation to our work instead of waiting for our tasks to motivate us."
• Because of the motivation code, "I have a language now that I never had a language for previously"
  • A new framework for understanding people. It's created "aha" moments
  • "Self-awareness is the first step to maturity."
    • "It helps use discern areas where we're insecure." 
• What was Todd thinking five minutes prior to going on stage at the Global Leadership Summit? 10,000 in the audience and hundreds of thousands watching worldwide...
  • "I reminded myself how grateful I was to be there..." It was calming.

Text LEARNERS to 44222 for leadership development resources

Full show-notes at www.LearningLeader.com

Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12

393: Chris Holtmann - Head Basketball Coach of Ohio State University Buckeyes

Notes:

• Chris played his college basketball at a small Christian school called Taylor University in Upland, Indiana. For a coach named Paul Patterson. Chris said, “I think the core of who I am as a coach comes from him.” 
• Don’t Be Afraid To Pursue Growth -  "As I debated, I realized that I couldn’t blame myself for craving stability – it was only human nature after all. We are drawn by the soft voice of consistency, the allure of a warm blanket of security in our jobs and lives. And while many of us willingly happily give in to living within the status quo, the reality is that the world around us rarely remains motionless. The sun rises and sets, the seasons pass and the world keeps moving and changing. It is only as we grow older and look back at life that we realize all that we have missed, all that we could have accomplished, had we simply pushed ourselves to break free of our fears."
• "As I found myself deliberating once again, I began to think back to the work of Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck on motivation and failure. Dweck drew a distinction between performance orientation and learning orientation. Children that believe that their intelligence is fixed almost always give up on problems quickly, whereas those that believe their intelligence is malleable, conversely, stick with problems longer. Adults are no different. Those who are performance oriented are dissuaded by failure - they favor stability. Whereas those of who are learning oriented embrace opportunity and eschew the status quo."
• Head Coaches To Lead Their Teams To 5 Straight 1st Round Tourney Wins: Chris Holtmann, Mike Krzyzewski, Jay Wright, Mark Few, Bill Self, Roy Williams, John Calipari
• Article: David Brooks - Thick versus Think organizations -- "How To Leave A Mark On People"
• Focus on the process... "Do today well."
  • "Don't compare yourself to others."
• Why is Brad Stevens one of the most effective coaches in the world?
  • "He's an extremely curious learner. He has tremendous EQ and understands how to connect with people."
• Chris got promoted to be the interim head coach at Butler shortly after accepting the job to be an assistant...
  • His boss (athletic director) told him, "You'll be evaluated daily." He came to every practice to watch Chris coach.
    • "It was hard to hear, but it was the reality. I couldn't listen to critiques. I had to coach to my convictions."
• Living your values: You must make a commitment to your values and live them daily.
  • The values of the Ohio State basketball team:
    • Truth
    • Humility
    • Respect
    • Toughness - "Grit is imperative in successful people. Your response to challenging moments says everything to success." Coach Tony Bennett is tremendously tough. "Calm is contagious."
      • Your response to difficult circumstances is what toughness is all about.
    • Accountability
    • Thankful
• "He who would be calm must first put on the appearance of being calm."
• How does one develop composure?
  • "You need people around you to give you honest feedback. We don't realize how reactionary we can be."
  • "Any time you feel upset with a player, wait to talk about it until you can process it. Think it through..."
• Excellence =
  • Consistency
  • Discipline
  • "Your habits need to match your dreams."
  • Be convicted in what you believe
• What Chris looks for in a player:
  • Toughness -- "What's the most challenging thing you've been through? How did you respond?"
  • Selfless
    • "What's your body language on the bench when you aren't playing?"
    • "What's your response to a teammates success?"
  • Honesty
• Advice to leaders:
  • You can't skip steps in the process of being a leader
    • Value the beginning stages
  • Eliminate comparison to others as much as possible
  • Be committed to growing professionally and personally. It's about your daily habits. Your character is put on display.
    • "We write our stories one decision at a time."

Text LEARNERS to 44222

Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com

Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12

Notes:

• Sustaining Excellence =
  • Passion for what they do
  • Persistence - "Life is lumpy." People fall and have to dust themselves off.
  • Character - Must be trustworthy, caring, and sensitive to others
  • Values driven - "When things go wrong, take the pain"
• Bill Gates is an example of sustained excellence - "His persistence, his relationship with his wife Melinda. He's a great example of sustained excellence."
• Bob describes the time early in his career when he made big mistakes and the board fired him.
  • He said, "I needed to learn strategy. You can't blame your followers. You must take 100% ownership."
• Read the book, The Best and The Brightest by David Halberstam
  • "You need humility, you need to learn, you need emotional intelligence."
• How he felt when he got fired?
  • "Unbelievably sad. It hung heavy on my shoulders."
• There are two ways to respond:
  • Be a victim
  • Be introspective
    • "I remember the moment vividly. I was reading The Best and The Brightest. Hubris was the problem. They weren't going to the front lines to understand what was happening. I thought, Oh my God, Halberstam could be talking about me."
    • "Our job is to LISTEN, get feedback, and fix it."
• As a leader, you must have the willingness and ability to define reality, not what you want it to be.
  • Read Max Dupree - The Art of Leadership
• Understand The Stockdale Paradox - “You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose —with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.” ~ James Stockdale
• Building trust in a crisis:
  • The 4 elements to be trustworthy:
    • Sincerity - "Your public and private conversations should be the same"
    • Competence - It's not the same as never making a mistake.
    • Reliability - "Make promises. Deliver on those promises"
    • Care - "Treat people well. Care for their well being. It's not transactional. Treat them with dignity and respect."
• How Bob stays so sharp at age 82:
  • Lots of exercise - He trains 5 days a week
  • Time with grandchildren
  • Planning - "I still have a lot of gas left in the tank"
• Have a dream -- "Happiness is a mood. You can design a mood."
  • Satisfaction
  • Peace
  • Fulfillment
• The four primary functions of a leader:
  • Strategy - The CEO must shepherd the strategy
  • People - Get the right people in the right jobs
  • Communication - Align all constituencies behind the business. People must understand the mission
  • Evolve - The world changes. Find a small team of experts to identify the issue, and leave the rest of the team alone to do their work
• "You need thrill customers continuously."
• "People will always be evaluating you as a leader. They look at your body language, and see how you respond."
• Hiring qualities Bob looks for in a leader:
  • Crisp thorough about the job assignment.
  • Complementarity - The use Gallup's strengths. Focus on strengths and them filling a gap on the current team.
  • Fit the culture. Need to be able to work with a team and collaborate.

Text LEARNERS TO 44222

Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com

Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12

Episode #391: Jake Wood - CEO of Team Rubicon

Notes:

• Sustaining Excellence =
  • Integrity - "I've been honored to serve with leaders who have high integrity."
  • Initiative - Be proactive, take action
  • Tenacity - The ability to overcome
  • Enthusiasm - Bring energy to your environment
• What Jake learned from his Dad:
  • "I feel lucky. He worked his way up with an untraditional resume. He worked his ass off."
  • "He had this industrious nature and worked so hard."
• Giving the commencement speech at the University of Wisconsin
  • "Our words (as leaders) matter."
  • "None of life experiences went according to plan. And that's okay..."
• Being the point man -- It means, “When you walked a patrol, you walked first. If there was a landmine or booby trap in the road, you would be the first man to step on it. Initially, you walked in perpetual fear… There were intersections you had to cross where you would close your eyes and clench your teeth, but you never stopped pressing on.”
  • "Leadership is about love. You need to have a deep understanding of WHO your team is as people. Always think, 'how can I help them?' When they know they're loved by you, they'll feel safe. When they feel safe, that leads to courage."
• Clay Hunt -- "We went to sniper school together... He was a good Marine. When I got paired up with him, I was told, 'you are nothing without this partner.'" He didn’t kill himself because of what happened to him in Iraq and Afghanistan. He killed himself because of what he lost when he came home: Purpose, Self-Worth, and Community. Since 2012, more service members have died by suicide than in combat. "Purpose is a universal human need."
• The Acceptance of Risk: In Blackjack, there is a correct move for every interaction. When you have 16 and the dealer has a face card, you should hit. There is a 32% chance you win if you hit. There is a 26% chance you win if you stay. And yet, people stay. They haven't come to grips with the risk. They'd rather sit back and try not to lose instead of taking the correct step. As a leader, you have to accept the risk, understand it, and press on.
• The WHO -- "Surround yourself with realists who offer you candid feedback."
  • What does Jake look for when hiring a leader?
    • They must demonstrate they can overcome hardship
    • Ability to persevere
    • Industrious
    • "I'll take passion over talent any day."
• The Haiti Earthquake in 2010. 100,000 people instantly died. 100,000 more died within the next 25 days. Jake felt compelled to go there to help.
  • Thus the beginning of Team Rubicon
• Winning the Pat Tillman award. "It was a huge honor. Pat was why I joined the Marine Corps."
  • His process to deliver the speech... "The producers wanted to take out the part of the speech that resonated most with people... The ending: Know your neighbor, love your neighbor, help you neighbor."
• Speechwriting/Communication skill:
  • "A company is nothing more than a story."
  • Treat your people like characters in the story.
  • READ a lot of books. General Jim Mattis said, "There is a moral responsibility for leaders to read. If you have not read 100's of books, you're functionally illiterate."
  • Vision - You need to convince your team you can take them to places they didn't know they could go.
• Book: ONCE A WARRIOR
  • It's the 10 year anniversary for Team Rubicon... It's time to memorialize it.
  • "America needs to find inspiration. The book finishes with hope. It's life's most essential virtue."