528 episodes

Leaders are learners. The best leaders never stop working to make themselves better. The Learning Leader Show Is series of conversations with the world's most thoughtful leaders. Entrepreneurs, CEO's, World-Class Athletes, Coaches, Best-Selling Authors, and much more.

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk Ryan Hawk

    • Education
    • 4.9 • 1.2K Ratings

Leaders are learners. The best leaders never stop working to make themselves better. The Learning Leader Show Is series of conversations with the world's most thoughtful leaders. Entrepreneurs, CEO's, World-Class Athletes, Coaches, Best-Selling Authors, and much more.

    528: Seth Godin - A New Manifesto For Teams: Innovation, Creativity, Hiring, Firing, & The Power of Speed (The Song of Significance)

    528: Seth Godin - A New Manifesto For Teams: Innovation, Creativity, Hiring, Firing, & The Power of Speed (The Song of Significance)

    Text Hawk to 66866 to become part of "Mindful Monday." Join 10's of thousands of your fellow learning leaders and receive a carefully curated email from me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right...
    Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com
    Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12   https://twitter.com/RyanHawk12
    Seth Godin is the author of 20 international bestsellers that have changed the way people think about marketing, leadership, and work. His blog (which you can find by typing "seth" into Google) is the most viewed marketing blog in the world. Some of my favorite books of his are… Tribes, Linchpin, Purple Cow, and most recently The Song of Significance.
    Notes:
    Hiring Leaders — when deciding who to hire for a leadership role: look at the careers of the people who have worked for them. And look at the careers of the people they’ve led. Leaders aren’t managers with fancy titles. Leaders are planting the seeds for generations of impact to come. Let's get real or let's not play. Tension is what we seek. It's important to show up early. Frederick Taylor met Henry Ford and management was created. Study bees - They leave their home and have 72 hours to find their next one. Matt Mullenweg (Automatic CEO) - "Create the conditions for forward motion." To create the environment for the people they’re leading to flourish. How are you intentionally creating the environment for the people you’re leading to do their best work? Management doesn’t just exist. It was invented. When you race to the bottom, You see people as resources, not as people. (I don't like the term human capital management) When Paul Orfalea was building kinkos (which he later sold to fed ex for $2B), he said his best technique for growing the business was simple. He would walk into their stores and ask someone there to tell him about an innovation they’ve recently made. And then he’d tell all the other stores about it… “Real value is no longer created by traditional measures of productivity. It’s created by personal interactions, innovation, creative solutions, resilience, and the power of speed.”

    • 52 min
    527: Sally Jenkins - What Sports Can Teach Us About Leadership, Excellence, & Life (How To Make The Right Call)

    527: Sally Jenkins - What Sports Can Teach Us About Leadership, Excellence, & Life (How To Make The Right Call)

    Text Hawk to 66866 to become part of "Mindful Monday." Join 10's of thousands of your fellow learning leaders and receive a carefully curated email from me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right...
    Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com
    Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12   https://twitter.com/RyanHawk12
    Notes:
    Tony Dungy’s quiet strength - He never criticized without an adequate solution. As leaders, it’s on us to be thoughtful about how we help our people get better. Just yelling that someone messed up is not helpful. We need to provide an adequate solution. Dianna Nyad – She swam for 53 hours from Cuba to Florida. It looked like a solo mission. It was anything but. She needed a full team to make it happen. We need other people to help us accomplish big missions. A lot of people are afraid to win. They are afraid to put it all on the line and risk not being enough. Too many of us want to look cool and play it safe in case we lose. The people who sustain excellence over time commit 100% to what they’re doing even though they might lose. It’s worth it. It is “kind of a sin” to waste potential and the real champions never committed it. - Dan Jenkins Advice from her dad (legendary sports writer, Dan Jenkins): "Never let a thing go until it's as good as you can make it." "Interest yourself first before you'll interest anyone else." Key learning from Brian Daboll - Winning organizations are made up of people who've been doubted in the past. The "greats are a result of construction." We must be intentional. Go all in. Preparation. Practice. There must be a dept of preparation. "Never leave the field wishing you'd prepared more." "Pressure is what you feel when don't know what the hell to do." Michael Phelps was not born with an innate sense to swim fast. His body was well suited to swim but not much more than any other Olympian. "The work is what made him great." Day-to-day consistency leads to excellence. Derek Jeter built his schedule around being consistent every single day. Laird Hamilton built his resilience through doing hard things like cold plunges, saunas, and surfing tough waves. Activate your body to stress: Stress has two sides. We're meant to experience stress. Stress + Rest = Growth. We need stress to grow. Life is born without it. Pat Riley - What happens when people don't believe in their leader? They gear down their effort. Life/Career Advice: Shoe leather hard work. You can't substitute hard work. Find the thing you'd do for fun and see if you can build a career from it.  
    Sally Jenkins has been a columnist and feature writer for The Washington Post for more than twenty years. She was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2020 and in 2021 was named the winner of the Associated Press Red Smith Award for Outstanding Contributions to Sports Journalism. She is the author of twelve books of nonfiction including The Real All Americans, the story of the Carlisle Indian School, and its use of football as a form of resistance following the close of the Indian Wars. Her work for The Washington Post has included coverage of ten Olympic Games. In 2005 she was the first woman to be inducted into the National Sportswriters and Sportscasters Hall of Fame. Her most recent book is called The Right Call: What Sports Teach Us about Leadership, Excellence, and Decision Making.

    • 51 min
    526: Mark Miller (VP of Chick-fil-A High Performance Leaderships) - How Chick-fil-A Built A World Class Culture

    526: Mark Miller (VP of Chick-fil-A High Performance Leaderships) - How Chick-fil-A Built A World Class Culture

    Text Hawk to 66866 to become part of "Mindful Monday." Join 10's of thousands of your fellow learning leaders and receive a carefully curated email from me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right...
    Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com
    Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12   https://twitter.com/RyanHawk12
    Mark Miller started his Chick-fil-A career working as an hourly team member in 1977. Mark's cell phone number is 678-612-8441. He asked that you text him your thoughts on this episode. In 1978, he joined the corporate staff working in the warehouse and mailroom. Since that time, he has provided leadership for Corporate Communications, Field Operations, Quality and Customer Satisfaction, Training and Development, and Leadership Development. During his tenure with Chick-fil-A, the company has grown from 75 restaurants to over 2,300 locations with annual sales approaching $10 billion. Mark began writing almost twenty years ago when he teamed up with Ken Blanchard, co-author of The One Minute Manager, to write The Secret: What Great Leaders Know and Do. He's now written 11 books that have sold over 1 million copies. His latest is called Culture Rules. 
    Notes: 
    “Your capacity to grow determines your capacity to lead.” You must make the choice to be a learner... Let’s start with a story told by the late philosopher, David Foster Wallace. He said, “There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way who nods at them and says, “Morning boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, “What the hell is water?” Mark Miller conducted research with more than 6,000 individuals from ten countries that revealed that 71% of U.S. leaders believe culture is their most powerful tool to drive performance. However, the study revealed that enhancing workplace culture ranked eleventh on the leader’s priority list. “If your heart is not right, no one cares about your skills.” Your character, integrity, and care for others must be there to earn any type of followership. If your heart is not right, no one cares about your skills. The 3 culture rules are aspire, amplify, and adapt: Aspire - Share your hopes and dreams for the culture (Andrew Cathy, new CEO, said “Rooted in purpose, known for our care.”) Amplify - Always be looking for ways to reinforce and amplify the aspiration for your culture. Adapt - Always look for ways to enhance your culture and be innovative. The Magic Circle: It dates back to 1938 when Dutch Historian Johan Huizinga wrote about the impact of play on culture… The "Must-Have" leadership qualities Character Competence Chemistry Mark has spent a lot of time with Navy SEALs to learn about culture... Key takeaways: Shoot Move Communicate Is focusing on culture a soft skill? The data suggests it is the #1 driver of performance. Storytelling - People remember the stories more than the stats. Don't just tell... Take people there.

    • 1 hr 1 min
    525: Frank Slootman (CEO of Snowflake) - Raising Your Standards, Pushing The Pace, Hiring Ahead Of The Curve, & Amping It Up

    525: Frank Slootman (CEO of Snowflake) - Raising Your Standards, Pushing The Pace, Hiring Ahead Of The Curve, & Amping It Up

    Text Hawk to 66866 to become part of "Mindful Monday." Join 10's of thousands of your fellow learning leaders and receive a carefully curated email from me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right...
    Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com
    Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12   https://twitter.com/RyanHawk12
    Frank Slootman is the CEO at Snowflake. Frank has over 25 years of experience as an entrepreneur and executive in the enterprise software industry. Frank served as CEO of ServiceNow from 2011 to 2017, taking the organization from $100M in revenue, through an IPO, to $1.4B. Prior to that, Frank served as President at EMC following an acquisition of Data Domain Corporation, where he served as the CEO, leading the company through an IPO to its acquisition by EMC for $2.4B. He's also the best-selling author of Amp It Up.
    Notes:
    Frank's work ethic was developed as a child in the Netherlands. In his teens, he had summer jobs harvesting tulip bulbs and walking behind a tractor ten hours a day. He also cleaned factory toilets one summer in the plant where his dad worked. “The Man In The Arena” Theodore Roosevelt – Frank put this at the beginning of Amp It Up.  After retiring from ServiceNow in 2017, Frank had no intention of taking another CEO role, but people like him “have a hard time leaving the arena.” It’s exciting to be back in a CEO role with Snowflake. Hiring -- “Hire people ahead of their own curve.” Hire more for aptitude than experience and give people the career opportunity of a lifetime. NO MBO -- “Another source of misalignment is management by objective (MBO). Which I have eliminated at every company I’ve joined in the last 20 years.” Push the pace -- Leaders set the pace. “Instead of getting back to me in a week, I asked, “Why not tomorrow?” Change the cadence. Push the pace. The leadership "must-have" qualities: A need to prove something Unbalanced They want to show the world something... They have passion High trust Need some ego, but it has to be in check Legacy? "I don't think about legacy much. When you're dead, you're dead." Frank's leadership team: We are not balanced, we are available to each other 24/7. Drivers vs. Passengers -- “Passengers are people who don’t mind simply being carried along by the company’s momentum …They are often pleasant, get along with everyone, attend meetings promptly, and generally do not stand out as troublemakers … While passengers can often diagnose and articulate a problem quite well, they have no investment in solving it.” Frank wants front-seat drivers who’ll take ownership, make trouble, and help navigate. Raise Your Standards -- Push for insanely great. A leader must always push the standard higher. Focus -- “Founders don’t have a mindset around operating companies. Focus is one of our number one things. You need to learn to have extreme, machine focus, and most people don’t even know the beginning of what that means. They think they do, and they don’t.” “I’m more of a Patton than an Eisenhower,” he says, known for constantly driving the troops forward. Sequoia’s Carl Eschenbach remembers, “When we brought Frank into Snowflake, at our first board meeting he said, ‘Let me tell you how I’m running the board meetings and how you’re going to participate. We’re going to keep this very simple. I’m not even gonna tell you anything about the good stuff that’s happening because you already know that—I’m going to dive into the shit that’s broken and how we’re going to fix it.'” Very Brief Retirement -- In 2017, Frank spent time regatta sailing, winning the iconic ocean race, Transpac. Race from Los Angeles to Oahu. (To win, “We focused on recruiting talent”). Put The Success of The Company Ahead of Your Own – If you want to build a Snowflake-sized company,  you can’t be about the celeb-CEO lifestyle. “That’s not real life. Real life is you’re terrorized and

    • 1 hr 5 min
    524: Oscar Munoz (Former CEO of United Airlines) - Listening To Your Employees, Responding From Tragedy, Swinging Easy, & Turning Around A Failing Company

    524: Oscar Munoz (Former CEO of United Airlines) - Listening To Your Employees, Responding From Tragedy, Swinging Easy, & Turning Around A Failing Company

    Text Hawk to 66866 to become part of "Mindful Monday." Join 10's of thousands of your fellow learning leaders and receive a carefully curated email from me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right...
    Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com
    Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12   https://twitter.com/RyanHawk12
    Oscar Munoz served as CEO and chairman of United Airlines, previously holding several executive leadership positions at CSX, AT&T, US West, PepsiCo, and Coca-Cola.
    Listen, Learn, AND THEN Lead… The purpose of the listening tour was to hear from people at the ground level, listen, learn, and then make decisions. I love the simplicity in the question to his team, “Hey, what are the 10 dumbest rules we’ve put in place?” And then changing them… This is something we all should think about periodically. The father-daughter bond Oscar has with his daughter, Jessica. The traits he sees in her that are also in him are “tenacity and refusal to give in no matter what.” Before Oscar became CEO, the culture was based on a “cost-cutting, rule-obsessed, disciplinary-heavy culture." Listening Tour - In 2015, After becoming CEO of United Airlines, Munoz embarked on a "listening tour" of the company, meeting with disgruntled employees around the United States and discussing their concerns. While this phase was intended to last for the first 90 days of the job, Oscar was hospitalized after having a heart attack in October 2015, 38 days into the job. In 2015, Oscar was one of two Hispanic CEOs in the top 100 of the Fortune 500 list. Munoz has been named among the "100 Most Influential Hispanics" by Hispanic Business magazine. In March 2017, Oscar was named "Communicator of the Year for 2017" by PRWeek. How to be both a great dad and a great CEO? "Model the right behavior for your kids." Advice: Swing easy. Be yourself.

    • 1 hr 4 min
    523: Derek Thompson - The Meaning Of Work, Responding To Rejection, Earning Your Dream Job, Impressing Bill Simmons, & How To Find The Next Great QB

    523: Derek Thompson - The Meaning Of Work, Responding To Rejection, Earning Your Dream Job, Impressing Bill Simmons, & How To Find The Next Great QB

    Text Hawk to 66866 to become part of "Mindful Monday." Join 10's of thousands of your fellow learning leaders and receive a carefully curated email from me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right...
    Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com
    Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12   https://twitter.com/RyanHawk12
    Derek Thompson is a staff writer at The Atlantic and author of the books Hit Makers and On Work: Money, Meaning, Identity, and the host of the podcast Plain English.  
    Notes:
    Before graduating from high school, Derek appeared in several theatrical productions at the Folger Shakespeare Theater and the Shakespeare Theater. Why do Americans care so much about work? workism is “the belief that work is not only necessary to economic production but also the centerpiece of one’s identity and life’s purpose.” Jobs, Careers, or Callings: One theory of work holds that people tend to see themselves in jobs, careers, or callings… The Bow and Arrow metaphor… We need stress, but we need to let it go. You pull back on the bow and arrow… Then you let it go. Stress + Rest = Growth “Happiness means being balanced between busyness and leisure.” The mark of a good leader? Don’t be afraid to ask the ignorant question… Have the confidence to ask it. Derek had breakfast with the prominent CEO… The CEO was deeply curious about Derek. Asked him a lot of questions, listened intently, and asked great follow-ups. Great leaders make their conversations about the other person. Follow your curiosity with great rigor. That same leader also had the emotional intelligence to not bother Derek Jeter while he was having breakfast. He knew there would be a better time to meet. The book, an anthology of Thompson’s articles for The Atlantic, includes a new adaptation of his essay on workism, a term that he defines as “the belief that work is not only necessary to economic production but also the centerpiece of one’s identity and life’s purpose.” “The decline of traditional faith in America has coincided with an explosion of new atheisms,” Thompson writes. “Some people worship beauty, some worship political identities, and others worship their children. But everybody worships something. And workism is among the most potent of the new religions competing for congregants.” How Derek earned a job writing for The Atlantic out of college? After being rejected 30 times, he applied for a fellowship with The Atlantic and got it. He then earned a job writing about economics for them even though he had no background or interest in economics. "It's like the New York Yankees offered me to play second base even though I played catcher my whole life." How Derek earned a role as a podcast host working for Bill Simmons? "Bill had me on his podcast to talk about Covid after he read some things I'd written for The Atlantic. That was sort of an audition. After he had me on, he asked if I wanted to have my own podcast on his network. We eventually came up with the name Plain English." The name of the show is very important. You want people to be able to easily say, "Hey, I listen to Plain English." How to predict the next great quarterback? It's contingent upon their surroundings (their coaching staff, receivers, linemen, etc...) Life/Career Advice: Skin thickness -- It can't be so thin that you can't accept criticism, but it can't be so thick that you stop listening. You have be somewhere in the middle. Working hours — no large country globally averages more hours of work per year than the United States. Americans work longer hours, have shorter vacations, get less unemployment, and retire later.

    • 1 hr 18 min

Customer Reviews

4.9 out of 5
1.2K Ratings

1.2K Ratings

BP Writer ,

Fabulous Podcast! Good content, great host

Fabulous Podcast! Fantastic content, great guests, gems galore! 5 starsCame across the Learning Leader Show podcast and am loving it! Really appreciated the podcast with guest, Oscar Munoz, about his journey as CEO at United Airlines and his experience turning the company around. I appreciated the candid and transparent conversation about his challenges initiating a listening tour, and journey to success. Tons of amazing takeaways! Look forward to more great episodes! Thank you.

theseanfranklin ,

so good

listen to any episode. you’ll see what we’re all talking about. ryan rocks and you’ll get insane value from this. i promise.

Kevin8282828 ,

Practical leadership advice from the experts!

Ryan does an amazing job asking specific questions that provoke practical answers that can be applied personally & professionally at any age and/or stage of your career. This is a must listen podcast for anyone serious about their personal development!

Top Podcasts In Education

Mel Robbins
Dr. Jordan B. Peterson
Purdue University
The Atlantic
Leo Skepi
Duolingo

You Might Also Like

Dave Stachowiak
John Maxwell
Patrick Lencioni
Essential Communications - Tom Henschel
FranklinCovey
John Maxwell