How Leaders Lead with David Novak

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Sneak peek of "Take Charge of You" read by David Novak Mar 22, 2022

Show notes

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.

#74: Tom House, Coach to Elite Athletes & Mustard Cofounder—Learn From the Best Mar 17, 2022

Show notes

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 day

Whichever 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.

#73: Stephanie Stuckey, Stuckey's Corporation CEO—How to Reimagine Your Brand Mar 10, 2022

Show notes

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 day

Whichever 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.

#72: Shantanu Narayen, Adobe Chairman & CEO—Plant the Vision Mar 03, 2022

Show notes

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 day

Whichever 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.

#71: Larry Senn, Senn Delaney Founder & Chairman—Help Others Be at Their Best Feb 24, 2022

Show notes

Today's guest is Larry Senn, who's actually the father of corporate culture, and the Chairman and Senn Delaney. Larry and his business partner were hired by Sam Walton in the early days of Walmart. And it was there that Larry began to understand the intangible part of an organization that really makes a difference. Today, we call this company culture, which is simply defined as the way people behave and the way they work together. Believe it or not, Larry published the world's first research on corporate culture, and has spent his entire career helping organizations be at their best, when you think about it, helping others be at their best. That is what being a great leader, and a great coach is all about. And I'll tell you, Larry has made quite an impact in my life as my coach over the years.

In this episode, you’re going to learn:

How Larry built a flower business and bought a Jaguar K 120 sports car at age 18
How Larry learned that he was in the wrong career after college, and what he did to make a change
What Larry learned as a consultant for Sam Walton before Walmart went big
How to build exercises that inspire employees to embrace change
What jigsaw puzzles reveal about teamwork
How to build actionable work values and principles
Why it’s hard to get company cultures to change
How to develop the mindset of a leader
The best and worst things leaders can do for (and to) their companies
PLUS How to thrive at work and home without making compromises

#70: Brittany Fuisz, Malibu Mylk Founder & CEO—Never Lose the Startup Mindset Feb 17, 2022

Show notes

Today's guest is Brittany Fuisz, the Founder and CEO of Malibu Mylk.

Building something from scratch is not easy. In fact, the majority of businesses that launched don't make it past five years. So what is it that allows some companies to thrive while others fail? Whoever leads the business in the mindset they approach their work with is a key ingredient in the success of a company. And in my conversation with Brittany, you're about to see a unique mindset on full display as she tells a story of launching Malibu Mylk. Brittany has what I call a startup mindset, and what I mean by that is incredible passion to make something big happen and truly change the world.

They're not willing for someone to tell them what to do. They think outside the box, they give themselves the permission to charge forward and they attack every unknown and challenge with optimism.

In this episode you’ll learn:

What’s going on in the milk category
How to build a brand from scratch as an outsider
How a celebrity’s advice sent Brittany down an unexpected career path
How Brittany scaled the success of her blender to something that could be mass-produced
How to respond to setbacks in quality
What it really takes to be ready for a meeting with Whole Foods
How the Malibu Mylk subscription model works
The formula for a great culture
How to embrace pushback that improves the brand
PLUS, Brittany shares a promo code for getting your own batch of Malibu Mylk!

Get your first order of Malibu Mylk 20% off when you use the promo code LEAD20 at checkout.

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 day

Whichever 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.

#69: Scott Hamilton, Olympic Gold Medalist—How to Get Up After You Fall Down Feb 10, 2022

Show notes

Today's guest is Scott Hamilton, an Olympic gold medalist and founder of the Scott Hamilton Cares Foundation, an organization that is working to eliminate cancer. Now, Scott obviously doesn't need much of an introduction. You already know about his gold medal and figure skating. You probably have seen his incredible backflips on the ice. And you have likely watched him as a commentator on the Olympics over the years. And while you may know him for his successes, you may not know about the challenges that he's had to overcome to win. His childhood illness, cancer, multiple brain tumors, the times he's fallen on the ice in critical situations. Scott says any goal will always have obstacles, difficulties and setbacks. You will be defined not by those setbacks, but by how you respond to them. There's so much that we can learn from Scott about how to get up after we all fall and let me tell you something, we all do. I'm so excited to have you listen in. Here's my conversation with my new friend – and soon to be yours – Scott Hamilton.

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 day

Whichever 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.

#68: Ken Chenault, AMEX Former Chairman & CEO—Embrace Constructive Confrontation Feb 03, 2022

Show notes

Today's guest is Ken Chenault, the Former Chairman and CEO of American Express, and the current Chairman and Managing Partner of General Catalyst, a dynamic private equity firm. Now, if you run a business or lead a team, there are moments when you need to lean into confrontation. And I don't mean dance around the confrontation, I'm talking about facing it head on. For a lot of people, this can be really hard to do, really intimidating. But the great leaders I know, like Ken, have learned how to engage in constructive confrontation.

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 day

Whichever 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.

#67: Aneel Bhusri, Workday Cofounder, Co-CEO & Chairman—Walk the Talk of Your Core Values Jan 27, 2022

Show notes

Today's guest is Aneel Bhusri, the Co-Founder, Co-CEO and Chairman of Workday, an American on‑demand financial management and human capital management software vendor. When Aneel started Workday with David Duffield, they defined a handful of core values for their company. Now this is pretty common practice for business leaders, but here's the problem. A lot of leaders write down the company values and never think about them again. They even laminate them, put them up on the wall, but I’ve got to tell you, all they do is collect dust. But that wasn't the case with Aneel and his Co-Founder Dave Duffield, they decided that investing in their people was going to be the number one value at their company. So how did they live out that value?

Well, believe it or not, they personally interviewed the first 500 team members they hired. Now that's something that says they value people over anything else. The key lesson here is that they aligned their schedules and their priorities with the company's number one value. You see, the great leaders I know walk the talk of their core values. They just don't write them down and forget them. They actually use their core values to dictate how they spend their time, and how they focus their energy. We have a lot to learn from today's conversation, including:

Why Aneel shifted from applying for a job at Apple to join an HR software startup instead
How a hostile takeover led to a new venture
What value system Aneel and Dave built the company around
Why the Co-Founders interviewed the first 500 employees together, regardless of other work and time priorities
Why Aneel looks for “shiny new penny folks” when hiring talent
Why the tech team goes off-site every few years to talk about the future
How to get customers involved in innovation
How to build partnerships between humans and machines that don’t compromise the work value of either
Why Aneel prefers having a Co-CEO
Why Phil Mickelson does Workday advertising
PLUS Aneel’s advice for aspiring leaders

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 day

Whichever 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.

#66: Ginni Rometty, IBM Former Chairman & CEO—You Only Grow When You're Uncomfortable Jan 20, 2022

Show notes

Today’s guest is Ginni Rometty, the Former Chairman, President and CEO of IBM and current Co-Chairman of the OneTen Initiative. Rising through the ranks from systems engineer to CEO, Ginni has learned to be comfortable with situations outside her comfort zone, because that’s where she grew the most in her journey as a leader. While leading IBM, Ginni learned what was essential about IBM that must endure before making changes that set the company up for future growth in new industries. And so what you're about to hear from Ginni, and what you'll learn from her journey to become CEO of IBM, is that great leaders are comfortable being uncomfortable.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

How to mentally process a promotion to the top job - especially as a woman
How Ginni’s mother modelled the courage and leadership Ginni needed to succeed
Why propensity to learn is more important than a college degree in a job candidate
Why women don’t put themselves forward for new assignments and how to help them go the distance
Why preparing for the next job might actually a bad idea
How to make the leap from being an individual contributor to a leader who coordinates other people effectively
How to focus on the long-term with conviction and a thick skin
Why Ginni’s favorite IBM achievement is employee engagement
How the hybrid cloud works and the future of artificial intelligence at IBM and around the world
How the OneTen Initiative intends to tap hidden pools of talent by changing priorities in hiring
PLUS, Ginni’s single biggest piece of advice for reinventing yourself and your company

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 day

Whichever 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.

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