The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk

Notes from my conversation with Marshall Goldsmith:

• Attributes of the best leaders he’s worked with:
  • They are courageous, they have humility, and they are disciplined.
• Do we all need a coach?
  • "I don’t know, but if we’re honest with ourselves, we all need help. And a coach can be someone to help..."
• Happiness and achievement are independent variables.
  • I felt we kept going around in circles because I’m a prescriptive thinker and like actionable takeaways. And I feel like Marshall was helping me understand it’s more of a mindset.
• With a PhD from UCLA, Marshall is a pioneer of 360-degree feedback as a leadership development tool. His early efforts in providing feedback and then following-up with executives to measure changes in behavior were precursors to what eventually evolved as the field of executive coaching.
• “Fate is the hand of cards we’ve been dealt. The choice is how we play the hand.”
• “Getting mad at people for being who they are makes as much sense as getting mad at a chair for being a chair.”
• “Successful people become great leaders when they learn to shift the focus from themselves to others.”
• “People who believe they can succeed see opportunities where others see threats.”
• “If we do not create and control our environment, our environment creates and controls us.”
• “A leader who cannot shoulder the blame is not someone we will follow blindly into battle. We instinctively question that individual’s character, dependability, and loyalty to us. And so we hold back on our loyalty to him or her.”
• “Peter Drucker, who said, “Our mission in life should be to make a positive difference, not to prove how smart or right we are.”
• “People will do something—including changing their behavior—only if it can be demonstrated that doing so is in their own best interests as defined by their own values.”

Lawrence Yeo is a storytelling teacher and the founder and writer at MoreToThat.com. He writes stories about the nuances of the human condition. He’s become one of my favorite writers over the past few years and regularly makes me rethink what I believe.

Notes

• Envy: Envy is inversely correlated with self-examination. The less you know yourself, the more you look to others to get an idea of your worth. But the more you delve into who you are, the less you seek from others, and the dissolution of envy begins.
• Curiosity is gratitude for the unknown – “The key to cultivating curiosity is to have a healthy relationship with uncertainty.”
  • Lawrence is called the L.S.E. by his wife. The Life Story Extractor.
• Ask More Questions to Those You Love - It’s quite shocking how few questions you ask when you’re with people you’re comfortable with. If you’re no longer curious to know about the person in front of you (friend, wife, parent), then that relationship is devoid of life.
• Your Values: Your values are as unique as your genes because no one shares the exact set of experiences and insights that were required to form them. They are the fingerprints of your being, and they are the invisible forces that guide everything you touch. Integrity is the ability to navigate the outer world without discounting your inner values. There is an anchor of authenticity that you’re unwilling to budge, no matter how fervently people want you to.”
• Confidence is a commitment to trusting your inner compass, despite how strong the outer winds are. If you do the work to know yourself, then you’ll realize that no external voice can convey the inner complexities you embody. And through that awareness, you’ll reliably choose your intuition above all else.
• The Problem with Following Your Passion - Ultimately, you can’t live off your love for something. It doesn’t matter how powerful your inner engine of expression is; without the fuel of money, you will stall out and be left on the side of the road. And like it or not, the only way for this fuel to be provided to you is to create something valuable enough to warrant that exchange.
• Ambition - Ambition is critical to the development of a healthy mind. Not only does it allow you to know who you truly are, but it also acts as a gateway to humility. Since ambition is about putting the bar ahead of you, you’ll understand your shortcomings in a visceral way."
  • Ambition breeds humility. Always setting the bar ahead of where you are. "I'm not quite there yet."
• “This email brought me to tears.” -"Hi Lawrence, I just came across your site and love what I am reading. Great insights and reflects a lot of my thoughts lately, like the last 20 years. I'm 72, stage four cancer, and the happiest I've ever been because I have the luxury of being able to examine my life. Best self-help ever. I'm looking forward to reading more of your writing."
• Writing:
  • 2 types of writing:
    • Writing to think.
    • Writing to present.
  • Journal vs. Diary. Journal is asking why you feel the way you do. A diary is a catalog of what happened.
• Have a job that acts as a patron for your creative work.
• Moretothat.com -- There's always something deeper.
• Advice - Learn storytelling. Consistency is the driving force of your curiosity.

Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com

Michael Easter’s investigations have taken him to meet with monks in ancient monasteries in Bhutan, lost tribes in the jungles of Bolivia, US Special Forces soldiers in undisclosed locations, gene scientists in Iceland, CEOs in Fortune-500 boardrooms, and more. He’s a professor at UNLV and he’s the best-selling author of The Comfort Crisis and Scarcity Brain.

• “The modern world is designed for short-term survival and pleasure. It is not set up to help us thrive in the long term.” “Have fun, don’t die, read books, and do strange things.”
• Be a 2 percenter. 98% of people do the easy thing. We are programmed to do the easy thing.
• The world was uncomfortable a while ago...
• It makes sense to do the easy thing. You get the short-term reward for it.
• Handle adversity, adapt, do the slightly harder thing
• Some ideas: do walking meetings, work in silence, embrace hunger, don't cut corners, pick up the trash, call people on the phone. Ruck the airport. Don't sit down, walk. Read while exercising. Workout outside. Sprint. Lift weights. The ability to move a limb quickly is what helps old people not fall. Need to be powerful and springy to move quickly (and not fall).
• Diet - One ingredient foods. Tribe in Bolivia with the healthiest hearts in the world. Be outside, eat one ingredient foods.
• Scarcity brain - We all suck at moderation. We overconsume... Casinos, slot machines. Quick, repeatable, predictable. The speed makes it powerful.
• Silicon Valley learned this from casinos and it's how they build their apps.
• The smartphone withdrawal effect. Worse in short term. Better in the long term.
• Break bad habits - Slow down. Respond, don't react. Wait 72 hours to buy the thing in your online cart.
• Junk food is super easy to eat fast. It was designed that way. Your body doesn't know it's full because of the speed.
• What did Michael learn from a tribe in a Bolivian jungle?
  • They seemed very happy. What did they do? They ate single-ingredient food. They spent a lot of time outside. And they spent a lot of time together. What can we learn from that? Eat healthy, go outside, and spend time with people you love.
• “A lot of problems are not our fault, but they are our problems to solve.” Remember, we are wired to choose the escalator, fast food or to cut the corner. We need to be intentional in taking the stairs, slowing down, and responding instead of reacting.
• How the scarcity loop works: It has three parts: opportunity, unpredictable rewards, and quick repeatability. Becoming aware of it can help you fall into it less often.
• Michael has been sober for 9 years. His drinking addiction stemmed from having a boring life (job he didn't like). Needed to explore the edges. Booze did that for him.
• Iraq - Sandstorm. We don't read books here. We don't have that luxury. We have too many problems to deal with .
  • In America, we live in a country where we can read books.

Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com

• Never Miss a Day – In the summer, going into Paul's freshman year of high school, he was at a lacrosse camp at Loyola University... At the end of the morning session, an all-time coaching legend, Tony Seaman spoke to the group. He told them he could guarantee that they could earn a college scholarship. All they had to do? "Take 100 shots per day. Here's the catch. You can never miss a day. No excuses." What are your 100 shots a day?
• Goal Setting – Most people don’t set goals because the act alone is both a major and personal step in the direction of commitment, and it invites hope, fear, and the possibility of regret.
  • Focus on what you can control – John Wooden was 5’10. Below average for a basketball player. He was really good at “understanding the things at which he had no control and things over which I had some control.”
  • Let Go of Outcomes – Archery master Awa Kenzo told his students to pay no attention to the target. Success and failure come from the same place, so that’s where the archer should point all of their attention: not on the outcome, but the effort.
• Therapy– Dr. Lindsey Hoskins once said that when we hurt someone we love, it’s because we fear disconnection from that someone. We hope that by lashing out, they’ll show us love, and as a result, we’ll feel safer in the relationship.”
• The Difference Between Self-Promotion and Passion - "I’m not going to convince you to like what I do. I’m going to show you how much I love what I do.”
• You won't achieve ambitious goals if you don’t set ambitious goals.
• The legendary Michael Ovitz shotgun pitch to Coca-Cola. He and his team outworked the competition, flew in a day early, practiced in the actual room the pitch would take place, bought new suits, and over-delivered during the pitch meeting. Their competitors took the meeting for granted, flew in the morning of, and didn't perform. Michael and his team won the $300m contract and earned the business for years to come.
• A true champion is intensely focused on the things they can control.
• Being coachable is rare—it’s being curious, eager, self-aware, and ambitious.
• Discover and harness your unique learning style. What might appear as an inability or perceived disadvantage could be your greatest asset in mastering your chosen field. For example, Paul grew up with a learning difference called Auditory Processing Disorder.
• The only way to learn from failures is to feel it, study them, make adjustments, a new commitment, and put it behind you.
• The Voice No One Else Hears – Performance psychologist Jim Loehr has worked with some of the top athletes in the world. He has them wear a microphone during a competition, and he asks them to honestly articulate what the voice in their head says and thinks. Whatever the circumstances, Loehr said he asks, “Is this how I would speak to someone I deeply care about? Or, if I were speaking to someone I deeply cared about, what would I say?”
  • "I've been here before."
  • "I've taken 35,000 shots."
  • Rebound... Bounce back.
• Paul loves the "up and down" statistic in golf. It refers to a golfer recovering from a bad shot and still making a par on the hole. In life, it's all about how you choose to respond.
• Paul’s Brother, Mike - “One of my favorite chapters in this book is about planting “little acorns.” (p.174) Had it not been for the biggest acorn in the family, who left his job to build the PLL with me... well, I’d just be a retired athlete, continuing the pursuit of my next professional life. Thank you for everything, Mike.”

Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com

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

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