How Leaders Lead with David Novak

Today's guest is Terry McGurk, the Chairman of the Atlanta Braves. In 2016, right after the Braves went 68-93 (a pretty rough season), Terry told me that it would take five years to turn the franchise around. Well guess what? He had a turnaround plan that worked. And in 2021, the Braves won the World Series, which is exactly what he predicted. In this episode, you'll hear him talk about how they did this. But the lesson for us here as leaders is that Terry had extreme clarity about where he and the organization needed to go. Many leaders don't have a clear vision for their teams. Instead, they get caught in a vicious cycle of responding to emails and attending meetings without doing the necessary work to pause and zoom out and get clear about where the company needs to go. The goal of the leader is to take their team to victory. And we can't do that if we haven't first identified exactly where we need to go. You're about to hear how a great leader like Terry McGuirk had a clear view of success and how he assembled a team around him to execute that vision.Take your learning further. Get proven leadership advice from these (free!) resources:The How Leaders Lead App: A vast library of 90-second leadership lessons to stay sharp on the go Daily Insight Emails: One small (but powerful!) leadership principle to focus on each dayWhichever you choose, you can be sure you’ll get the trusted leadership advice you need to advance your career, develop your team, and grow your business.

Today’s guest is Larry Bossidy … the former chairman and CEO of Honeywell International and author of the book Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done.Have you ever put together a business strategy that didn’t work? Or perhaps the plans to execute that strategy weren’t effective and ultimately, you failed? Building a strategy is one thing and executing it successfully is another. But Larry knows what it takes to get things done and in this conversation, you’re going to hear how he leverages three things, just three things to make big things happen: people, strategy, and operations. It was the process and discipline he put around those parts of the business that made his teams successful and it’s what you can focus on as a leader if you too want to be successful.Take your learning further. Get proven leadership advice from these (free!) resources:The How Leaders Lead App: A vast library of 90-second leadership lessons to stay sharp on the go Daily Insight Emails: One small (but powerful!) leadership principle to focus on each dayWhichever you choose, you can be sure you’ll get the trusted leadership advice you need to advance your career, develop your team, and grow your business.

Today’s guest is Elane Stock, the CEO of ServiceMaster Brands.There’s an adage I’m sure you’ve heard: the only way to gain control is to give up control.If you’ve ever run a business or led a team, you know how true this statement is. I’m sure you also know how hard it can be to give up control.   But if we want our companies to grow, we have to learn to trust our partners and team members and allow them to do their part to build the business.What you’re going to hear in this episode is how Elane has learned to give up control while running a franchise system where her company owns the brands and the franchisees own their independent businesses.Whether you’re struggling to give up control running a large business with franchisees or running a small business, there’s a lot here for you on today’s episode. And here’s what I want you to learn today: the great leaders I know have learned to give up control. Take your learning further. Get proven leadership advice from these (free!) resources:The How Leaders Lead App: A vast library of 90-second leadership lessons to stay sharp on the go Daily Insight Emails: One small (but powerful!) leadership principle to focus on each dayWhichever you choose, you can be sure you’ll get the trusted leadership advice you need to advance your career, develop your team, and grow your business.

Today’s guest is James Gorman, the Chairman and CEO of Morgan Stanley.In Australia, there’s something known as the Tall Poppy Syndrome. In a field of poppies, there are always one or two that stand out from the rest and it disrupts the beauty of the field. And so for that reason, they’ll snip off those poppies … they trim them down so they don’t stand out amongst the others.What’s interesting is that as a culture, Australians do this with one another. If someone starts to succeed and think too highly of themselves, they help to keep each other grounded. And it’s important for all of us, as leaders, to know who keeps us grounded. Humility is vital if we want our success to be sustainable.Take your learning further. Get proven leadership advice from these (free!) resources:The How Leaders Lead App: A vast library of 90-second leadership lessons to stay sharp on the go Daily Insight Emails: One small (but powerful!) leadership principle to focus on each dayWhichever you choose, you can be sure you’ll get the trusted leadership advice you need to advance your career, develop your team, and grow your business.

Today’s guest is Jim Nantz, an Emmy Award winning sports commentator, and in my opinion, the top sports commentator in the world! He’s the voice of the NFL on CBS, the NCAA’s March Madness, and golf—in particular, the Masters.As you well know, Jim is an incredible storyteller and communicator. He is able to pull stories and statistics seemingly from nowhere that really capture the moment. What you may not realize is just how much work he puts in to prepare for every broadcast.Regardless of how much time you spend in front of a camera, showing up prepared is a quality of great leaders. And I’ll tell you, Jim is an exceptional leader who’s at the top of his game. I think you’re going to learn a lot from Jim and be inspired by how he does his work.Take your learning further. Get proven leadership advice from these (free!) resources:The How Leaders Lead App: A vast library of 90-second leadership lessons to stay sharp on the go Daily Insight Emails: One small (but powerful!) leadership principle to focus on each dayWhichever you choose, you can be sure you’ll get the trusted leadership advice you need to advance your career, develop your team, and grow your business.

Today, we're going to talk about a book that I coauthored with my friend Jason Goldsmith, a sports performance coach for world class athletes. The book is available now wherever you buy books, and is titled Take Charge of You: How Self-Coaching Can Transform Your Life and Career. Now, what makes this book different is you can obviously read this book from front to back, and I know you'll enjoy the stories that Jason and I tell. But the big differentiator is that we have great exercises and tools that you can use in this book to help you coach yourself to reach your full potential in your life and career. This is a book you can not only read, it's a book you can use again and again to take yourself to new heights. Now, you know, I usually do these podcasts myself and ask all the questions, but I thought it'd be a lot of fun to let you hear from both Jason and I and have someone else interview us. So I asked my friend Donna Barton Brothers to sit in and guide our conversation. Donna is a former jockey and world renowned broadcaster for NBC. She's the one you see at the Kentucky Derby interviewing the winner on horseback (while riding backwards). So we're off to the races! Let's not wait any longer. Here's a very fun conversation with two of my good friends, Donna Barton Brothers and Jason Goldsmith.Take your learning further. Get proven leadership advice from these (free!) resources:The How Leaders Lead App: A vast library of 90-second leadership lessons to stay sharp on the go Daily Insight Emails: One small (but powerful!) leadership principle to focus on each dayWhichever you choose, you can be sure you’ll get the trusted leadership advice you need to advance your career, develop your team, and grow your business.

In this BONUS episode of How Leaders Lead, David shares the introduction to his new book, Take Charge of You: How Self-Coaching can Transform your Life and Career. Find out how to take the methods and metrics of coaching into your own hands and find the success you want in life.

This week’s guest is Dr. Tom House, a world-renowned expert in the biomechanics of throwing who's coached elite athletes like Tom Brady, Drew Brees, Nolan Ryan, and Greg Maddux. He's been called a quarterback whisperer and a pitching guru, but if you ask him, he prefers to simply be called “coach.” Tom is the preeminent pioneer who brought science into the coaching equation. For decades, Tom has used elite athletes to create models that others can replicate. For example, if you're a little league pitcher or high school quarterback, Tom has developed technology that will compare your mechanics and timing to Nolan Ryan or Tom Brady. Now just think about the coaching that provides young up-and-coming athletes!The leadership lesson for us here is that we should do the same in business. We should look to those who’ve come before us that have been wildly successful and mirror our approach to what they do to build healthy, high-performing businesses. The great leaders learn from the best and then apply those learnings to be even more successful themselves.You're going to learn: How to learn from the best and democratize that information How to make a habit of continuous improvement How to embrace failure as a more valuable learning experience than success What Tom learned when he slowed down Sandy Kofax’s pitch, and how that information transformed coaching How to turn broken players into top-performers Why preparation is more valuable than talent How Tom Brady became one of the fastest quarterbacks in NFL history How Drew Brees went from a busted, career-ending shoulder injury back to top-performance The story behind Disney’s movie Million Dollar Arm How to bring out the best in your team members PLUS, Tom’s advice the parents of student athlete (hint: the struggle is worth it). Take your learning further. Get proven leadership advice from these (free!) resources:The How Leaders Lead App: A vast library of 90-second leadership lessons to stay sharp on the go Daily Insight Emails: One small (but powerful!) leadership principle to focus on each dayWhichever you choose, you can be sure you’ll get the trusted leadership advice you need to advance your career, develop your team, and grow your business.

Today's guest is Stephanie Stuckey, the CEO of Stuckey’s. This company started in 1937 by Stephanie's grandfather who opened a single store in eastern Georgia. It was one of the country's first roadside retail shops. At its peak in the 1970s, Stuckey’s had grown to 368 stores in 40 states, along pretty much every major interstate. From humble beginnings to a roadside empire. But then, things turned for the worst due to external threats and internal weaknesses. When Stephanie took over the business in 2019, she was faced with challenges in every aspect of the business. How do you reimagine a brand and get the train back on the track? Well, you can't live in the past. You can't be thinking about how it used to be. You have to think about how it has to be TODAY. So she went to work thinking about new possibilities, new ways to make money, and new ways to satisfy customers. The result? A company that was losing money is now profitable again and the brand legacy has been restored. So whether you're leading a turnaround like Stephanie is or simply need to reimagine the way you get things done in your company or with your team, there's a lot you can learn from this week’s episode, like: How to revive a brand How to generate new revenue streams The benefits of an entrepreneurial mindset  How to build rapport with customers and partners How to cultivate employee involvement  PLUS, how a has-been company is making a comeback in 21st century style. Take your learning further. Get proven leadership advice from these (free!) resources:The How Leaders Lead App: A vast library of 90-second leadership lessons to stay sharp on the go Daily Insight Emails: One small (but powerful!) leadership principle to focus on each dayWhichever you choose, you can be sure you’ll get the trusted leadership advice you need to advance your career, develop your team, and grow your business.

Today’s guest is Shantanu Narayen, the Chairman and CEO of Adobe.It’s the leader’s job to communicate the vision of the company in a way that ignites the hearts and minds of the people they lead and plant the flag of a big idea. Our teams don’t show up simply for the paycheck. They want something bigger to be a part of, a compelling vision to get behind that infuses all kinds of meaning and passion into their day to day.Since 2018, Adobe’s valuation has tripled and is now at 300 billion dollars. That type of growth is possible because of the work Shantanu has done to lead his team toward a compelling vision. Adobe is a team of innovators and they’re chasing a vision they believe in, one their team is pursuing together, and with passion. There’s a lot we can learn from Shantanu and how he’s igniting the hearts and minds of the people he leads.In this episode, you’ll learn: How a software engineer becomes a CEO, and what roads and flags have to do with it How to prioritize long-term innovation AND short-term execution How to disrupt your own company in order to stay ahead of competitors Why having data AND a narrative matters in an Adobe performance review Why this year’s stock price is not a good indicator of current performance PLUS, Why your vision may not yet be aspirational ENOUGH Take your learning further. Get proven leadership advice from these (free!) resources:The How Leaders Lead App: A vast library of 90-second leadership lessons to stay sharp on the go Daily Insight Emails: One small (but powerful!) leadership principle to focus on each dayWhichever you choose, you can be sure you’ll get the trusted leadership advice you need to advance your career, develop your team, and grow your business.