The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk

Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com

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This is Episode #601 with the CEO of Automattic, Matt Mullenweg

Notes:

• What is your creed?
  • I will never stop learning. I won’t just work on things that are assigned to me. I know there’s no such thing as a status quo. I will build our business sustainably through passionate and loyal customers. I will never pass up an opportunity to help out a colleague, and I’ll remember the days before I knew everything. I am more motivated by impact than money, and I know that Open Source is one of the most powerful ideas of our generation. I will communicate as much as possible because it’s the oxygen of a distributed company. I am in a marathon, not a sprint, and no matter how far away the goal is, the only way to get there is by putting one foot in front of another every day. Given time, there is no problem that’s insurmountable.
    • "People need something to believe in." -- That's what draws talent to the company.
• What do you look for when hiring a leader? "The four qualities that you can't train..."
  • Work ethic
  • Taste
  • Integrity
  • Curiosity
• Coaching -- Expose your leaders to coaches.
  • Mirror
  • Ask questions
  • Reflect
• Commonalities of leaders who sustain excellence:
  • Optimism in dark times
  • Player coaches -- They can do the work AND lead others
  • Hire well -- They spot talent, hire, train, develop, and retain them
• Commencement speech -- Encourage others to think bigger. Raise their ambition. From Tyler Cowen -- The high-return activity of raising others’ aspirations - (PhD instead of Masters) At critical moments in time, you can raise the aspirations of other people significantly, simply by suggesting they do something better or more ambitious than what they might have in mind. It costs you relatively little to do this, but the benefit to them, and to the broader world, may be enormous.
• Matt's Twitter Bio -- I can think. I can wait. I can fast– This comes from Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha. Siddartha said “if you can think, wait, and fast, you can do just about anything.”
• Don’t constrain your mentors by their availability, engage with their work! Jim Simons was a mentor for Matt. Be guided by beauty.
• Will Durant - Health lies in action, and so it graces youth. To be busy is the secret of grace and half the secret of content. Let us ask the gods not for possessions, but for things to do; happiness is in making things rather than in consuming them.”
• Matt's goals -- My goals in life are to democratize publishing, commerce, and messaging. I travel a lot. In 2023 I visited 63 cities, and 18 countries, and my average velocity was 41.9 miles per hour. I was born and raised in Houston, Texas. I write code, poetry, prose, and music, often in support of those three goals, but sometimes just to make the world a more beautiful place. I love taking photos and have posted over 30,000 to this site, hence my common username photomatt.

Read our book, The Score That Matters - https://amzn.to/4ggpYdW

Full shownotes at www.LearningLeader.com

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk

We are celebrating episode #600 with Keith Hawk and AJ Hawk

• Tell a story about an awesome leader you worked with...
  • Ron Ullery – I’m a firm believer that people either live up to or down to your expectations. And most people set their expectations for themselves too low. So it’s on you as a leader to raise those expectations for them. Demand more because you know they can do more.
  • Tyler Cowen – The high return activity of raising others’ aspirations. Encouraged someone who was going for an MBA to get a Phd. At critical moments in time, you can raise the aspirations of other people significantly, especially when they are relatively young, simply by suggesting they do something better or more ambitious than what they might have in mind. It costs you relatively little to do this, but the benefit to them, and to the broader world, may be enormous.
• What helps you give a great speech? How do you prepare?
  • Ask, "What do I want my audience to do after seeing my speech?" Interview members of their team. Learn their terminology, challenges, what's going well, what's not, what are their goals, etc...
  • Practice, practice, practice. Say it out loud. Rehearse so that once you're on stage, you can let it rip.
• What did the best teams you’ve been on do differently than the average teams?
  • The best players on the best teams always practiced the hardest. They set the tone for the work ethic of the team. They chose extra work. They set high standards and they demanded others raise their level of performance.
  • The best teams hung out together outside of work. AJ was a Captain of the Green Bay Packers Super Bowl-winning team in 2010-2011... That team regularly hung out together outside of working hours, shared lots of meals, and knew each other extremely well. They trusted each other.
• Tell a story about how you’ve shown resilience… Failed and what did you do next?
  • The Miami/Ben Roethlisberger story - The world doesn't care what you think you deserve. The primary goal is focused on adding value to others' lives.
  • AJ shared a story from his sophomore year at Ohio State. His defensive coordinator, Coach Mark Dantonio sat with him 1 on 1 watching each play of the Michigan game. A day he’ll never forget for how hard it was, how upset he was, and how determined he was to respond. AJ never lost to Michigan again in his career after that.
  • Pistol shared a story about the time when the new CEO wanted to bring in his own head of sales (which was Pistol's job). Instead of complaining and leaving the company, he got creative and offered a new idea and a great way to leverage all the skills and knowledge he developed from being at the company for so long. It is amazingly rare for the head of sales to stay at a company after he’s been replaced. But he thrived in the role and made the company better.
• Front line obsession – Pistol’s story of the legendary Mert McGill going to the Supreme Court to demo LexisNexis and earning the most important sale in the company's history. I love stories about leaders proactively taking action and not being afraid to do the work.
• Update since Episode #500:
  • Built the Learning Leader Team -- Officially working full-time with Sherri Coale, Brook Cupps, Geron Stokes, and Eli Leiker. We are working with leaders from a wide variety of companies throughout the U.S.
• The magic of the Pat McAfee Show -- They are unafraid. They say what others are thinking but are too afraid to say. They are authentic and fully themselves. They have great role clarity. Everyone knows and embraces their roles and excels at them.
• The End of the Podcast Draft – You’re stranded on a deserted island. You have one iPad. On that iPad has 5 TV shows (and nothing else). Which shows do you choose? This is a competition with a clear winner and losers. The object is to win the draft.

Read our book, The Score That Matters https://amzn.to/3XxHi7p

Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com

• Sustaining Excellence
  • Good get at getting stuff done
  • Make a change from an expert to a learning machine
• Apply to be in my Learning Leader Circle
• Leadership is:
  • Teaching – sharing with others what they need to know, how to do something
  • Mentoring - Help them see the world from our eyes
  • Coaching - Help them see the world through their eyes. To do that, we must be good listeners, ask questions, and challenge them
• Follow what’s interesting to you… To figure out your passion, you have to do stuff. That’s the only way to fully learn what you’re good at and what you want to do. Have to be willing to try, fail, keep going, and figure out where you excel and what you’re curious about. That’s how you find your passion and do it for a living.
• They set up leadership dyads and triads at the Mayo Clinic. Group up a doctor, a nurse, and an administrator to help make decisions. This way you gain the perspective from different angles, people, and experiences.
• You have to context-shift radically, from an ER to a boardroom to a coaching session. Not everybody can wear all those hats, and yet Rick does it really well (with grace and humility).
• What’s the difference between a coach and a mentor?
  • When you mentor: You share your experience & subject-matter expertise. You help a colleague see the world & its potential—through your eyes.
  • When you coach: You help your colleague make sense of their world—from their perspective.
• Effective leaders:
  • seek diverse perspectives
  • recognize the bias of individual opinion
  • make decisions methodically
• Ineffective leaders:
  • make reflexive decisions
  • amplify the thoughts of a few
  • see alternate perspectives as obstacles
• Hiring -- What are the must-haves for a leadership role?
  • Knowledge
  • Fit with the team
  • Collaborate
  • Align with the values
• How to run 1:1s
  • Consent to an agenda
  • Ask useful questions
  • LISTEN
• Career and Life Advice:
  • Ask Who, How, What, Why
  • Seek multiple perspectives
• Atul Gawande's Checklist Manifesto is useful.