The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk Text LEARNERS to 44222 For full show notes, go to www.LearningLeader.com #370: Steve Herz: Don't Take Yes For An Answer Notes: Sustaining excellence = Curiosity - Genuine interest A desire to learn and grow Finding uncommon commonalities: His parents went to Ohio University (which is where I graduated) Do your homework prior to meeting someone (as Steve did on me) Be actionable and intentional Meet someone on their turf. ACKNOWLEDGE them. Turner Smith: "Don't Take Yes For An Answer" -- Beware of the counter-fit yes. They are not helpful. "Don't live in an echo chamber of Yes." Seek feedback - Turner Smith not only didn't give Steve an offer... He gave him specific feedback as to why. Changed his life. Tough love with kindness Read the book: Seabiscuit. Knowing when to use carrots vs. sticks. Taking his shot with Alfred Geller - "I met him in a elevator and only had a few seconds. I asked to work with him... He said, 'meet me in my office at 8:00am tomorrow.'" "I downloaded his brain." "You need to perfect your A. W. E." Authority Warmth Energy John Kasich didn't use his voice properly. "Change your voice, change your life." Mid-level manager advice: "Act like you've been there before (like Barry Sanders)." Internalize it. "When you're walking your dog, who is walking who?" Providing feedback to his clients: "Joe Tessitore couldn't figure out how to modulate his voice." Don't get into the "vortex of mediocrity:" The most painful thing in the world is unfulfilled potential. Find the people who are able to give you critical feedback and listen. When he started his company, he called it IF after Rudyard Kipling’s poem by the same name which says, “If you can dream-- and not make dreams your master… yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it.” We are ALL in sales: Steven Shapiro, member of the board of overseers of University of Pennsylvania Law School, “We have a saying at the firm: You can buy a pound of brains at the butcher. I walk through the halls of the university, and there are many brilliant future lawyers. But they can’t look you in the eye in the hallway. In 15 years, this person may be writing law on the tax code, but they’re probably not going to have a lot of clients.” You know where lawyers, or salespeople, or consultants go when they don’t bring in business? Neither do I. Because you rarely hear about them ever again."

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk Text LEARNERS to 44222 Full show notes can be found at www.LearningLeader.com #369: Nancy Koehn & Adi Ignatius Nancy Koehn is a historian at the Harvard Business School. She's the author of multiple books, her most recent: Forged in Crisis: The Power of Courageous Leadership in Turbulent Times. Adi Ignatius is the Editor in Chief of the Harvard Business Review. Previously, he was deputy managing editor for Time, where he was responsible for many of its special editions, including the Person of the Year and Time 100 franchises.  Notes: Sustaining excellence = Leaders are made, not born "Crisis are great greenhouses to make great leaders" Resilience - It's a muscle built over time A unique combination - The ability to commit, married to that, but flexibility to the means to make it happen Empathy & Emotional awareness - How a leader shows up in service to the mission Convey conviction and confidence A real sense of how much impact a leader has. Humble and own the sense that they have great influence. They use it to help people overcome their own limitations Adi - Understand the long term. Need the ability to shift. Transparency - Direct reports should know where they stand at all times. Emotional discipline: Don't send email when you're mad. Think about the long term impact of what you do. JFK - White House discovered missiles in Cuba. Read: Guns Of August - How WWI Started Slow pace down Imagine what Khrushchev would do - Give him room, hold off... Use "calculated empathy" Standing up to others like Winston Churchill - He stood up to the opposition. Dunkirk - Leadership when everything changes Ernest Shackleton - He took 27 men to Antarctica How did he avoid mutiny in the midst of huge adversity? He had the trust of his men. They believed he cared about them. Emotional awareness - He addressed their fears - "What can I do to address their fears?" Extraordinary ability to toggle seamlessly between little things like the weather and the big picture. Zoom in and zoom out. Pay attention to the mundane - The daily work schedule. Stick to the routine. And also have a plan to solve the problem. How to lead a remote team: It's reassuring to have your leaders step up and speak the truth. "Here's what we're going to do..." False optimism doesn't help. Honesty is critical. Brutal honesty + credible hope... Share the team's capabilities, the history. "Nothing to fear but fear itself." Great leaders 'feed their team.' Leaders in crisis: Shackleton gave duties to each man. They regularly changed duties to stay fresh. Isolation feeds fear. It feeds the 'worst case scenario' in the minds of people. Shackleton combated that by forcing them to socialize. They told stories, had skits, made up games. He empowered his team. It's important to have rituals that bring you back to a good place. For Nancy: 1) Deep breaths 2) Classical music 3) Walks Adi: Meditates daily, 10 minutes of breath work. Connect, Connect, Connect with others. Say thank you. Shift places depending on the type of work. President Lincoln had no plans for winning the way. "I navigated from point to point." "Great careers are build on passion and the dedication to do the work." Gather years in every career. You do not always need to check off boxes. "Life is long. Don't burn bridges." The benefits of teaching: "It keeps you honest. You have to think like a chess player. You must stoke the fires of curiosity."

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk Text LEARNERS to 44222 Full notes at www.LearningLeader.com 358: Jim McKelvey - How To Build An Unbeatable Business (One Crazy Idea At A Time) Jim McKelvey is the co-founder of Square, was chairman of its board until 2010, and still serves on the Board of Directors. In 2011, his iconic card reader design was inducted into the Museum of Modern Art. Jim also founded Invisibly, a project to rewire the economics of online content; LaunchCode, a non-profit that trains people to work in technology; and Third Degree Glass Factory, a publicly accessible glass art studio & education center in St. Louis. In 2017, he was appointed as an Independent Director of the St. Louis Federal Reserve. Sustaining excellence = The people you lead will eventually kick you out... This signifies your ability to hire, train, and develop excellent leaders. "I'm not a good leader. I don't run the business. I build the company and then get out of the way." "I have a weird skill set... I'm comfortable doing things that have never been done before." What it's like working with Jack Dorsey (Jim started Square with Jack): "He has the ability to administer and incrementally improve... That's something I value in a person. Jack is incredibly competent, very quiet, and very capable. He knows the difference between good and excellent." Jim sees himself as a normal guy without any gifts... "Don't disqualify yourself because you think other people are special (or gifted) and you're not." What if the activity had never been done before? The Wright Brothers were no more qualified to build the first ever flying machine than someone else. They made the choice to do it, and put in the work to make it happen. "To be excellent, you need to reach out to others who are." Interview process: "People who lie are not consistent. Ask similar questions in different ways multiple times." Tell people very honestly all the reasons they shouldn't work at your company. Be very honest. Then say, "I can't tell if you're lying to me, I won't be able to catch you now, however I will find out eventually and I will fire you." Jim describes what it's like to be a billionaire... Think of the companies that have done something that had never been done before: Bank of America Ikea Southwest Airlines Square "Commitment can be a great substitute for being qualified." “Admitting you don't know something frees your mind from constraints. To actually do something new requires the humility to admit that your solution may not work, followed by the audacity to try anyway.” How to get people to perform at higher levels? "Go hang out with smarter people and raise their level of performance... Ask questions." Never interrupt Leave pauses in a sentence, give them a chance to keep going... An Innovation Stack = Series of inventions that create a new product. Doing something new. What it was like to prepare for a demo with Steve Jobs: "He can be nasty if he doesn't like you. You had to make it beautiful." Advice: "Consistently do something that makes you slightly uncomfortable." Jim flies planes and gives speeches (both make him uncomfortable) --> This will slowly expand the things that you like. It will create more friends, and you'll develop more respect for people who have differing views. "You'll learn it's possible to function even when you're uncomfortable." Continually do little things to strengthen yourself... It helps you continue to go when others quit. “Customers who trust you are more valuable than customers who love you. There's only one shot at trust, and Square was trustworthy because of its values and mission, and built its Innovation Stack around them.” Here is WHY joining a Learning Leader Circle is a good idea...

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk Text LEARNERS to 44222 Full show notes found at www.LearningLeader.com #367: Ozan Varol - How To Think Like A Rocket Scientist Sustaining excellence = The ability to learn from failure - "Failure sucks and shouldn't be celebrated. We must learn from it." "Learn fast, don't fail fast. We need to get better with each iteration. Breakthroughs should be evolutionary, not revolutionary How success can lead to failure The Challenger Explosion - A string of successes discounted the role that luck played in the process "Just because you're on a hot streak doesn't mean you'll beat the house." Post mortem - A Latin phrase for "after death." Instead of a post mortem, do an "after action review." Review after all actions whether they succeeded or failed. The "Kill The Company" exercise Ask the people within your company what they would do to compete and beat your company... And then do that. Mark Zuckerberg does this with acquisitions (WhatsApp, Instagram). One of his greatest fears is becoming the next MySpace. As a mid-level manager: Put yourself in the position of your customer. Why are customers justified in buying from our competitions? "They see something we're not seeing." Growing up in Istanbul, Turkey. It was a culture of conformity. Ozan did not fit in. In fact, he was assigned a number in school and that was used to call on him instead of his name. His parents let him choose which school he went to and he remembers feeling so empowered by them for having a choice. He wanted more of that. So he decided to come to the United States for college and attended Cornell. Ozan blindly applied for a job that didn’t exist by emailing Steve Squyres (he was in charge of a NASA funded project to send a river to Mars). And he acted on his dad’s advice, “you can’t win the lottery if you don’t buy a ticket.” “Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.” - Carl Sagan In the modern world we look for certainty in uncertain places. We search for order in chaos. The right answer in ambiguity. And conviction in the complexity. We should be fueled not by a desire for a quick catharsis but by intrigue. Where certainty ends, progress begins. “The great obstacle to discovering was not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge. - historian Daniel J Boorstin It takes courage... Often times there is a failure of courage. Have the courage to take action when the rest of the world is standing still. Ask yourself two questions: What's the worst that can happen? What's the best that can happen? Adopt an experimental mindset - Frame your actions as experiments. Don't be afraid to try new things... "The way you figure out what's right is to try to prove it wrong." The goal? "Find what's right, not to be right." Ask people who disagree with you... Why? Have a mindset to learn from them. "Tell me what's wrong with this..." Be a work in progress. "All progress happens in uncertain times." "It's bizarre. People prefer certainty of bad news instead of the fear of the unknown." "Be curious about tomorrow." Think: "What problems can I solve right now?" It is not helpful to try and solve something that you cannot control. Diversify your identity and services -- This allows you to be flexible and not depended on one stream of revenue. "All of our differences are minimized when we zoom out." The Apollo 8 mission gave us an opportunity to look at the Earth from afar (mission to go near the moon). Jim Lovell could cover up the earth with his thumb. It put things in perspective. Rocket science teaches us about our limited role in the cosmos and reminds us to be gentler and kinder to one another.  

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk Text LEARNERS to 44222 Full show notes can be found at www.LearningLeader.com Episode #366: Laurie Santos -  Laurie Santos is a cognitive scientist and Professor of Psychology at Yale University. She has been a featured TED speaker and has been listed in Popular Science as one of their "Brilliant Ten" young scientists in 2007 as well as in Time magazine as a "Leading Campus Celebrity" in 2013. In January 2018, her course titled Psychology and the Good Life became the most popular course in Yale's history, with approximately one-fourth of Yale's undergraduates enrolled. Notes: Sustaining excellence: Good habits: Form consistent routines Healthy: Exercise regularly Socialize with others They "offload dumb decisions" Create a morning routine - Limit the wardrobe (limit mental energy spent on trivial things). Harness the power of habits - "Set you exercise clothes out the night before." Do it at a consistent time each day no matter what. This decreases anxiety. For writing: Stop in the middle of a sentence. This will help you get started the next day (and avoid seeing the blank screen) Laurie is the head of a college at Yale. She lives and eats with the students in the dining hall. She built her class based upon hearing the complaints of students daily (they were unhappy) Important behaviors: Gratitude Social connection Random acts of kindness Students didn't realize their misconceptions about happiness It's not about your job, house, or money. Happy people are: Socially connected - They spend a lot of time with others. They prioritize connecting with others. They don't focus on themselves - "Others oriented." They do more for others. Grateful - They look for the good. They have a mindset of gratitude. They write down 3-5 things they are grateful for everyday. They are mindful. The GI Fallacy - It's more than just knowing... "You must DO IT." Be deliberate about connecting with others. Hang out with people you care about. Set up Skype calls with others. Do NOT complain - It's awful. Laurie's class has become the most popular class in the history of Yale... Her lectures have been filmed for the Today Show Created The Happiness Lab It's given more meaning to life Advice for mid-level managers: Doctors find happier workers use less than 15 sick days a year Work with your employees to do what they're best at Find out what they're getting out of the job "Your emotions can be contagious. If you embody calm, they will be calm." Affective spirals - The leader can turn emotions positive How to run excellent meetings: Infuse it with gratitude - Say what you're grateful for. Grateful team members are more productive. Regulate your emotion. Don't transmit negative energy to your team. At home: Regulate emotion. Take time to pay attention to your emotion. What are you bringing home? Be present. Express gratitude to your family. Shift from complaining to being grateful. Say what you love about each other at your family dinner table The best way to learn is to teach it.

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk For more details text LEARNERS to 44222 Full show notes can be found at www.LearningLeader.com #365: James Altucher - How To Become An Idea Machine "Vulnerability equals freedom." "You need to say something interesting. You need to step outside of your comfort zone." James started writing in 1990 after a girl he liked chose to date a writer instead of him. He wrote 3,000 words a day and yet didn't publish anything for 12 years. Why write about your flaws? Watch the movie 8 mile... "Eminem shares all of the negative aspects of himself. He left his competition with nothing to say about him. He beat him to the punch." "I don't hit publish unless I'm worried. Am I afraid? If yes, then publish." "All good writing has to have a story." Commonalities of people who sustain excellence: Physically healthy - They are in shape Emotionally healthy - They have good relationships They are extremely curious - "Ken Langone came in my comedy club and asked tons of questions. He's so curious." They are very creative They have a "ready, fire, aim" approach - Sara Blakely started Spanx and got a $300K order and hadn't figured out how to manufacture her product yet. Creativity/Idea generation is a muscle - If you don't work it, it atrophies. Write 10 ideas a day. Quantity is more important than quality. "He who has the most ideas wins." You'll have a lot of bad ideas. You have to get through those to get to the good ones. Quantity is important. "Writing 10 ideas a day changed my life. I wasn't depressed anymore." Write ideas for companies and share with them... They might call you. Being an "intrapreneur" within your company - Think of ideas that can help your company and share with the CEO. "Success is always on the other side of can't." Great entrepreneurs focus on reducing risk How to speak to powerful people? Realize they are just people Humor is key. "Laughter is the way to level the playing field." Developing a skill - Deliberate practice The "10,000 Experiment" rule The key to getting good is to experiment Be in the top 1% of doing experiments Work your idea muscle every single day - The neurons will be re-wired Share your ideas to help other companies Over-promise AND over-deliver. Do both. Everyone else under-promise with the hope to over-deliver. Don't do that. Overpromise upfront and over-deliver.

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk Text LEARNERS to 44222 Full show notes can be found at www.LearningLeader.com #364: Derek Sivers: Derek Sivers is a writer, musician, programmer, and entrepreneur best known for being the founder and former president of CD Baby, an online CD store for independent musicians. A professional musician since 1987, Sivers started CD Baby by accident in 1997 when he was selling his own CD on his website, and friends asked if he could sell theirs, too. CD Baby went on to become the largest seller of independent music on the web, with over $100M in sales for over 150,000 musician clients.  Notes: The similarities between becoming a Dad and starting a business: The transition from being "me" focused to becoming focused on others first. "That happened when I started a business... Long before I became a dad." "As a dad, I learned to be fully present with him. To shut everything else down and focus on him." "Adults are always looking for amazing superlatives. Kids are happy with tiny details." "Stop wasting hours... Learn to have a blast where you are." Making big decisions: There is a difference between theory and in practice "Don't consider anything decided until you've tried it." Why you should keep your goals to yourself: An identity goal makes you a different person. If you announce it to others and they give you social satisfaction, that feedback you receive gives you internal satisfaction. That could lead to you already feeling satisfaction and thus less likely to achieve the goal... Receiving the satisfaction from others before you've done it is not helpful. (NOTE - There is additional information to read about this nuanced topic. THIS is helpful.) Sustaining excellence: They hold themselves to high standards. They set high stakes. They have amazing self-control "Excellence is setting high standards and living up to them." Excellent leadership is being selfless... Doing what's in the best long-term interest of the people you're leading. Selling CDBaby for $22m and giving the proceeds away to charity. The power of writing: "I journal my ass off." Documenting your daily thoughts is a very useful exercise -- It's fascinating to look back on how you felt at that specific time. Create "Per Topic" Journals Journals that focus on a specific topic (Singapore, Interviews, Language Learning) Values = Learning... Remaining flexible and creative. Answering the questions, "What did I really want from that?" Derek's values evolve and change over time Being a monomaniac - Obsessed with one thing at a time Currently: Writing a book called How To Live The stress of replying to 7,000 emails vs making a genuine connection with each person... Being a longterm thinker Here is WHY joining a Learning Leader Circle is a good idea...  

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk Text LEARNERS to 44222 Full show notes can be found at www.LearningLeader.com #363: Admiral William McRaven - 363: Admiral William McRaven - The Bin Laden Raid, Saving Captain Phillips, & Leadership Lessons For Life Notes: Sustaining excellence: Great listeners - They value the opinions of others and listen Decisive - The leader must take responsibility and make the call Measured - Calm. Staying cool under pressure is vital Importance of coaching in Admiral McRaven's life… and being pushed by them. He pushed himself  to his physical limits to set the school record for the mile with the help of a phone call from a coach. (Jerry Turnbow). Write letters to the parents/spouse/kids of the people you want to recognize. "Love on the people who love them." Failure can make you stronger —- Being assigned to “The Circus” in SEAL training helped him build resilience and a "never quit" attitude. Writing ­– He was a journalism major at Texas. Admiral McRaven has consistently worked to become a great writer. It is critical for leaders to be exceptional communicators... Both of the written AND spoken word. In July 1983, he was fired as a SEAL squadron leader for trying to change the way his squadron was organized, trained, and conducted missions. His response was the difference between a long, successful career, and quitting. Georgeann (his wife) offered him encouragement and said, ‘you’ve never quit at anything in your life and don’t start now’.  Admiral McRaven has always had great respect for the British Special Air Service: the famed SAS. The SAS motto was “Who Dares Wins.”  He said that even moments before the Bin Laden raid, his command sergeant major Chris Faris, quoted it to the SEALs preparing for the mission. To him that motto was more than just how special forces operated. It’s about how each of us should approach our lives… Life is a struggle and the potential for failure is ever present… Admiral McRaven walked us through the strategy development and the decision making process for the bin Laden raid: It was a team effort - Leon Panetta could have done it only as a CIA mission, but he reached out to Admiral McRaven because the mission was what was most important, not getting credit.  Great leaders recognize that it’s never about them. If you think it’s about you you’re probably not a good leader. It was still an extraordinarily difficult decision to green light the mission. Admiral McRaven described that conversations he had with President Obama. "If we got there and the guy on the third floor was just a tall Pakistani man, then President Obama would have been a 1 term president." The SEALs on the mission rehearsed and practiced  A LOT. No matter how much experience you have, you ALWAYS need to practice. The night of the bin Laden raid, Admiral McRaven was in charge of 10 other missions! He didn't have time to celebrate, he was focused on identifying the body, telling the President, and then paying close attention to the other missions he had going on that night. Courage — “without courage, men will be ruled by tyrants and despots. Without courage,  no great society can flourish. Without courage, the bullies of the world rise up.”  Over the course of a month he visited Saddam Hussein in the jail where they were holding him, he would rise to meet Admiral McRaven. McRaven would motion for him to go back to his cot. The message was clear, “you are no longer important.” Rise to the occasion.  Be your very best in the darkest moments – Think about the moment we are in right now. Great leaders rise to the occasion in the midst of a pandemic Books Admiral McRaven recommends- The Speed of Trust- Stephen M.R. Covey, It’s Your Ship - Michael Abrashoff No plan survives first contact with the enemy- things will go wrong and you need to plan accordingly. Be prepared, think through worst case. "Have a plan, work the plan, plan for the unexpected." Get over being a sugar cookie and keep moving forward. Don’t ever say “that’s not fair.”  The story of Moki Martin - bike accident that left him paralyzed

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk Text LEARNERS to 44222 Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com Episode #362: Chris McChesney - How to Achieve Your Wildly Important Goals Chris McChesney is a Wall Street Journal #1 Best-Selling Author – The 4 Disciplines of Execution. In his current role of Global Practice Leader of Execution for FranklinCovey, Chris is one of the primary developers of The 4 Disciplines of Execution. For more than a decade, he has led FranklinCovey’s design and development of these principles, as well as the consulting organization that has become the fastest growing area of the company. Notes: Sustaining excellence = They execute on the strategy that's been launched... They have amazing drive High expectations - They expect a lot of everyone and do it in a positive way They "radiate love." Warmth... Strategy to execution -- It's an art and a science "Execution doesn't like complexity..." Great leaders develop pattern recognition over time. An experienced quarterback has more repetitions and the game "slows down" which creates a situation he recognizes Three components to any strategy to execution process: Lower the blood pressure -- "Stroke of the pen." Take life support measurements Break through What is a 'stroke of the pen' action as a mid level manager? Modify the portfolio, work within the limited budget, figure out incentives, hiring decisions, combining territories "Sometimes in life our challenges are really hidden opportunities." Chris did an unpaid internship.  He warned that with Stephen Covey by continuing to show up and add value to the lives of the people at the company. Advice: "Work outside of your job description but within your influence." "Don't fall in love with a solution, fall in love with a problem." "I have never gotten a job from a standard interview process... I've gotten seduced by a problem... And then worked to solve it." This is how Chris created a company within a company. He identified that execution was a problem, and worked to solve it. Useful feedback Chris received earlier in his career from a mentor: "Chris, when you come to headquarters, people like you, but you aren't fun to work with." The power of honest, specific, feedback.  Paul Walker (President) - "It's never about him. He's always interested in understanding what's going on around him and with others." Pat Lencioni - Not everyone should be a leader... "I don't like the term 'servant leadership.' It makes it sound like there's any other way." The 4 Disciplines of Execution: Focus on the Wildly Important -- Exceptional execution starts with narrowing the focus— clearly identifying what must be done, or nothing else you achieve really matters much. Act on the Lead Measures -- Twenty percent of activities produce eighty percent of results. The highest predictors of goal achievement are the 80/20 activities that are identified and codified into individual actions and tracked fanatically. Keep a Compelling Scoreboard -- People and teams play differently when they are keeping score, and the right kind of scoreboards motivate the players to win. Create a Cadence of Accountability -- Great performers thrive in a culture of accountability that is frequent, positive, and self-directed. Each team engages in a simple weekly process that highlights successes, analyzes failures, and course-corrects as necessary, creating the ultimate performance-management system. “As legendary Harvard marketing professor Theodore Levitt put it, “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole.” “People who try to push many goals at once usually wind up doing a mediocre job on all of them. You can ignore the principle of focus, but it won’t ignore you.” “If you ignore the urgent, it can kill you today. It’s also true, however, that if you ignore the important, it can kill you tomorrow” “Managing a company by looking at financial data (lag measures) is the equivalent of “driving a car by looking in the rearview mirror.” Optimization - Consistency is wildly important. Lock down elements of the process. Anchor the process at two points. Rule - "If we can meet the lead measure for 14 weeks, we're calling it a habit."

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk Text LEARNERS to 44222 Full show notes can be found at www.LearningLeader.com Episode #361: John C. Maxwell - The Essential Changes Every Leader Must Embrace Notes: Adaptability: “Good leaders adapt. They shift. They don’t remain static because they know the world around them does not remain static.” 3 questions to ask yourself every day: How will this crisis make me better? How will I use this crisis to help others? What action will I take to improve my situation? Leaders get paid to deal with uncertainty. They must relish it because it comes with the territory. Betty Bender, former president of the Library Administration and Management Association, explains, “Anything I’ve ever done that ultimately was worthwhile initially scared me to death.” "Success in life comes not from holding a good hand, but from playing a bad hand well." - Warren Lester Leaders become invigorated with problems. “Doing the right thing daily, compounds over time.” Ask what you can do to add value to others during this time. “Leaders don’t rise to the pinnacle of success without developing the right set of attitudes and habits; they make every day a masterpiece.” It’s okay to be uncertain but it’s not okay for a leader to be unclear. If you prepare today you don’t have to repair tomorrow. The opposite of distraction is traction. Crisis moves us You help people gain traction by helping them gain perspective. Fear is a negative emotion, feeding fear is like putting fertilizer on weeds. The question is what is going to dominate between fear an faith and the dominant emotion will win the day. What gains your attention and focus only grows whether that's fear or faith. “A difficult time can be more readily endured if we retain the conviction that our existence holds a purpose, a cause to pursue, a person to love, a goal to achieve.” Great coaches make adjustments during a game. Action is where all transformation takes place. The most overrated English phrase is good intentions. “Change is inevitable. Growth is optional.”  A crisis doesn’t make a person, a crisis reveals a person. “The difference between average people and achieving people is their perception of and response to failure.” "Decision making is easy when you know what your values are." Right now the people come first, the company second, yourself last. Respect is learned and earned on difficult ground. "No one ever coasted their way to greatness." People don’t want perfect leaders, they want authentic leaders. Experience is not the best teacher. Evaluated learning from experience is the best teacher. The first step to great communication is to get over yourself. It’s not about you. Focus on others and adding value.