The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk Podcast Por Ryan Hawk arte de portada

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk

De: Ryan Hawk
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As Kobe Bryant once said, "There is power in understanding the journey of others to help create your own." That's why the Learning Leader Show exists—to understand the journeys of other leaders so that we can better understand our own. This show is full of learnings taught by world-class leaders—personal stories of successes, failures, and lessons learned along the way. Our guests come from diverse backgrounds—CEOs of multi-billion dollar companies, best-selling authors, Navy SEALs, and professional athletes. My role in this endeavor is to talk to the most thoughtful, accomplished, and intentional leaders in the world so that we can learn from them as we each create our own journeys.Learning Leader LLC 062554 Economía Exito Profesional Gestión Gestión y Liderazgo
Episodios
  • 675: Tom Hardin (Tipper X) - The Largest Insider Trading Case, How Ambiguous Leadership Destroys Culture, Resume vs. Eulogy Virtues, Bad Decisions vs. Mistakes, and Building Psychological Safety

    675: Tom Hardin (Tipper X) - The Largest Insider Trading Case, How Ambiguous Leadership Destroys Culture, Resume vs. Eulogy Virtues, Bad Decisions vs. Mistakes, and Building Psychological Safety
    Feb 16 2026
    The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk Go to www.LearningLeader.com This is brought to you by Insight Global. If you need to hire one person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through Talent or Technical Services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world has the hustle and grit to deliver. www.InsightGlobal.com/LearningLeader My guest: Tom Hardin was known as "Tipper X" during Operation Perfect Hedge, the largest insider trading investigation in history. After making four illegal trades based on inside information, the FBI approached him on a Manhattan street corner and convinced him to wear a wire over 40 times, helping build 20 of the 81 cases. Key Learnings Ambiguity is where ethical lines blur. Tom's boss said, "Do whatever it takes," after the hedge fund lost money, and as a junior employee, Tom didn't ask clarifying questions. The undiscussable becomes undiscussable. Leaders give ambiguous messages, then pretend they weren't ambiguous, employees get confused and don't question the boss, and you end up with a culture of silence. Making decisions in isolation is dangerous. The information came to Tom and he didn't talk to his boss or his wife (who probably would've slapped him around for crossing ethical lines). Psychological safety requires muscle memory. You have to practice saying "I'm just going to ask some clarifying questions here" when your boss gives ambiguous orders. Bad decisions aren't mistakes. Mistakes are made without intent, but bad decisions are made with intent. Tom told himself for years he made "mistakes," but on a drive home from speaking at a keynote, he realized: "There's no way I made mistakes. I made bad decisions." Never say never. Tom argues you're more susceptible to falling down your own slippery slope when you think "that would never be me." 80% of employees can be swayed either way. 10% are morally incorruptible, 10% are a compliance nightmare, and 80% can be influenced by the culture around them. Tone at the top means nothing. Company culture isn't the tone at the top or glossy shareholder letters; it's the behaviors employees believe will be rewarded or put them ahead. Reward character, not just results. You can't just focus on short-term performance and dollar goals without understanding how the business was made and what was behind the performance. The question isn't "what?" but "how?" If you're just focused on the numbers and not on how you got there, you have the opportunity to end up in a slippery slope situation. Celebrate people who live your values. Companies that spend millions on trips for people who live out shared values (not financial performance) are putting their money where their mouth is. Leaders must share their own ethical dilemmas. We've all been in situations where we could go left or right, and sharing how you worked through those moments makes you more endearing and a better leader. Keep a rationalization journal. When Tom and his wife have big decisions (or even little things), he writes them down in a rationalization journal and reflects on them once a month. He's still susceptible to going down another slippery slope, so checking himself on those passing thoughts improves his character over time. It's not what you say, it's what you do. Just like kids see what parents do (not what they say), employees see what behaviors leaders actually reward. $46,000 cost him $23 million. A business school professor calculated Tom would've made $23 million if he'd stayed on the hedge fund path, but he made $46,000 on the four illegal trades before getting caught. His wife was his rock. 85% of marriages end when something like this happens, and she had every right to leave. They just got married, no kids yet. But she stayed. When Tom interviewed her for the book 20 years later, she said, "All I remember is you accepted responsibility immediately. You didn't make up excuses." Running pulled him out of a shame spiral. Tom got obese as a stay-at-home dad. His wife signed him up for a 5K race (and beat him while pushing a jogging stroller). Just crossing that finish line lit a fire. He ended up running a 100-mile race. Doing hard things teaches you that you can do hard things. When Tom had to start a speaking business because they were running out of money, he said, "I can do this" because he'd already put his body through ultramarathons. No challenge is insurmountable. He ended up with something better. It's not about status or money anymore; it's about who he is with his family and his relationships now. Windshield mentality, not rearview mirror. Tom can't change the past, but he can look forward instead of backward. A lot of people in their twenties do stupid stuff (maybe not to this degree), but now, in his forties, he can learn from it. Why not embrace it rather than try to scrub it off the internet? Eulogy virtues versus resume virtues. In his twenties, Tom only thought about resume virtues (how much money, the next ...
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    55 m
  • 674: PJ Fleck - Building Elite Culture, Nekton Mindset, Selecting >Recruiting, Intrinsic Motivation, Row The Boat, and Transformational Coaching

    674: PJ Fleck - Building Elite Culture, Nekton Mindset, Selecting >Recruiting, Intrinsic Motivation, Row The Boat, and Transformational Coaching
    Feb 9 2026
    Go to www.LearningLeader.com This is brought to you by Insight Global. If you need to hire one person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through Talent or Technical Services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world has the hustle and grit to deliver. www.InsightGlobal.com/LearningLeader My guest: PJ Fleck is the head football coach at the University of Minnesota. Before that, he transformed Western Michigan from one win to 13 wins and a Cotton Bowl appearance. Before his coaching days, PJ was a stud receiver at Northern Illinois and was a guy I played against in college. Coach Fleck has built one of college football's most distinctive culture-driven programs. You'll hear why he maintains an 80-20 split favoring high school recruiting over the transfer portal, how he runs practice with a 32-second clock to make it harder than games, and why he sees himself as a cultural driver rather than a motivational coach. This is a conversation recorded with all of our coaches inside "The Arena." That is our mastermind group for coaches in all sports. And it did not disappoint. Notes: Stop recruiting, start selecting. PJ doesn't chase the highest-rated players... He looks for fit and alignment with his values. Ask yourself: Are you trying to convince people to join your team, or are you selecting people who already want what you're building? Efficiency beats duration. PJ runs 95-minute practices with a 32-second play clock, always moving, always intense. The principle: Make practice harder than the game. Where in your work are you confusing time spent with intensity and focus? Internal drive trumps external motivation. PJ calls his ideal players "Nektons," always attacking, never satisfied. He's looking for people who prove their worth to themselves, not to others. If you need constant external motivation, you're not ready for elite teams. A leader must teach and demand. A team member must prepare and perform. These aren't opposing forces—they're two sides of the same commitment to excellence. My junior year at Ohio University. I was the quarterback of the Ohio football team. We lost to No. 17 Northern Illinois 30-23 in overtime on a Saturday night. P.J. Fleck caught the game-tying 15-yard touchdown pass late in the fourth quarter. PJ finished with 14 catches for 235 yards and a touchdown. (I threw a 30-yard TD pass to Anthony Hackett to put us up a TD right before halftime). Let your team see you played. They do"Guess that Gopher" before team meetings, where players guess which coach's highlights they're watching. Give them a peek behind the curtain. It builds credibility and connection. PJ honors his mentor, Jim Tressel, by wearing a tie while coaching. Who are you honoring through your daily practices? Keep your door open. PJ has no secretary. Players can walk into his office at any moment. Create fluidity between you and your team. Transparency after tragedy is a choice. When PJ's son died from a heart condition, he had two options: never talk about it again, or let it shape him. He chose radical transparency, knowing it would get scrutinized. That's where "Row the Boat" comes from. A losing season reveals what you actually need. After going 1-11 at Western Michigan while also getting divorced, PJ says every coach should experience a losing season. It forces you to identify what you actually need versus what you don't need. Choose what scares you. When deciding on Minnesota, Heather asked him, "Does this scare you?" He said, "Hell yeah, it scares me." His response: "Well then, that's where we're going." Life versus living. Living is the salary and contract. Life is about moments and memory. If you can't stay in the moment and reflect on great moments or hard moments, life will be like mashed potatoes to you. Your expectations should match your resources. The gap between expectations and resources is called frustration. The bigger the gap, the more frustration from everyone around you. Maintain an 80/20 model if you can. 80% high school players, 20% transfer portal. PJ has one of the highest retention rates in the country because of selection and fit, not recruiting. "It's not about the money until it's about the money." The kids' PJ gets value for other things before the money talk. They enjoy the experience of being a college athlete. PJ leads with "I'm really difficult to play for." PJ's opening line to recruits. He asks for a lot. This makes people who are lazy, complacent, or fraudulent run like hell. "This is going to expose me." Start with good people, not good players. Out of 500 kids, who are the best 25 young men? PJ doesn't get five stars. He gets two and three stars who believe they can be five stars. A chip versus a crack on your shoulder. Once you do something the media says you couldn't do, they'll set a new bar. All PJ wants is kids who want to prove to themselves that they can do what people say they couldn't. You don't need PJ's personality. You need the ...
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    1 h y 2 m
  • 673: Daniel Coyle - Opening Yellow Doors, Mastering Your Craft, World-Class Storytelling Techniques, Great Questions to Ask, Building Your Community, The Power of Curiosity, and How to Flourish in Life

    673: Daniel Coyle - Opening Yellow Doors, Mastering Your Craft, World-Class Storytelling Techniques, Great Questions to Ask, Building Your Community, The Power of Curiosity, and How to Flourish in Life
    Feb 2 2026
    Go to www.LearningLeader.com for full show notes This is brought to you by Insight Global. If you need to hire one person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through Talent or Technical Services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world has the hustle and grit to deliver. My Guest: Dan Coyle is a New York Times bestselling author who's spent the last two decades studying what makes great teams great. He wrote The Talent Code, The Culture Code, and now Flourish—books that have shaped how millions of people think about skill development, team culture, and meaningful connection. He works with the Cleveland Guardians as a special advisor on culture and performance. We recorded this one together in Cleveland. Notes: Find your yellow doors. Most of us go through life looking for green doors (clearly open paths) and red doors (obviously closed paths). But yellow doors are different. They're out of the corner of your eye, things that make you uncomfortable or feel brand new. That's where life actually happens. We think life is a straight line from A to B to C, but it's not. Life isn't a game... It's complex, living, shifting. Yellow doors are opportunities to create meaningful connections and explore new paths. "Life deepens when we become aware of the yellow doors, the ones we glimpse out of the corner of our eye." The craft journey always involves getting simpler. Simple is not easy. The great ones have their craft to where there's a simplicity to it. In this world of clutter and noise, it's easy to want to compete with energy and speed, but the stuff that really resonates is quieter and simpler. Be a beginner again in something. With climbing, Dan's at the very bottom of the craft mountain. With writing, he's somewhere in the middle. It's fun to have a couple of zones in your life where you're a beginner. It's liberating, but it also develops empathy. Some stuff looks very simple, but isn't. Every good story has three elements. There's some desire (I want to get somewhere), there's some obstacle (this thing standing in my way), and there's some transformation on that journey. Teaching teaches you. Coaching Zoe's writing team helped Dan, and then Zoe ended up coaching Dan. It was never "let me transmit all my wisdom to my daughter." It was a rich two-way dialogue that helped both of them. Suffering together is powerful. Doing hard things together with other people, untangling things together (literally and figuratively), and being vulnerable together. That's culture code stuff. Whether it's skiing with your kids, seeing them fall and get back up, or being trapped underground like the Chilean miners. Behind every individual success is a community. Dan dedicates all his books to his wife, Jenny (except one). Growing up, he had this idea of individual success, individual greatness. But when you scratch one of those individual stories, what's revealed is a community of people. Jenny is the ecosystem that lets Dan do what he does. Going from writing project to writing project, hoping stuff works out, exploring... it's not efficient. It's not getting on the train to work and coming home at five o'clock. It's "I think I need to go to Russia" or "I need to dig into this." She's been more than a partner, an incredible teammate. Great organizations aren't machines; they're rivers. The old model of leadership is the pilot of the boat, the person flipping levers who has all the answers. That's how most of us grew up thinking about leaders. But Indiana football, the SEALs, Pixar... when you get close to these organizations, they're not functioning like machines. Machines are controlled from the outside and produce predictable results. These organizations are more like energy channels that are exploring. They're like rivers. How do you make a river flow? Give it a horizon to flow toward (where are we going?), set up river banks (where we're not gonna go), but inside that space create energy and agency. Questions do that. Leaders who are good at lobbing questions in and then closing their mouth... that's the most powerful skill. Great teams have peer leaders who sacrifice. Since Indiana football's fresh in our minds... Peer leaders who sacrifice for the team are really big. Fernando Mendoza got smoked, battered, hammered, and he kept going without complaint. In his interview afterward, he talks about his teammates. That's the DNA of great teams. Adversity reveals everything. The litmus test: in moments of terrible adversity, what's the instinct? Are we turning toward each other or away from each other? You could see it in that game. The contrast between the two teams. When things went bad, they responded very differently. The coach isn't as important as you think. Coaches can create the conditions for the team to emerge, but great teams sometimes pit themselves against the coach. The US Olympic hockey team of 1980 would be an example. They came together against Herb Brooks. So coaching ...
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    58 m
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This is the best podcast. Regardless of who you are or where you’re at in life, you’ll absolutely find incredible value. Literally every episode shared ways to just be a better person overall. And Ryan asks meaningful, impactful questions that drive to tactical approaches that we can actually use. Very grateful for him and this show.

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