The Pursuit Of Excellence! Feat. Ryan Hawk

Welcome to the US script Authentic Leadership Podcast, a podcast we're seeking to lead change. We're also seeking to understand. We're also here as a platform for leaders to come together, to unite, to develop and empower other leaders in the areas of business, family and community. I'm your host, Lafayette Lane, joined by my co-host John LeBrun. Today we are joined by our special guest Ryan. Put those hands together, put those proposals in the comments section. Make Ryan feel real good right here, unscripted. Ryan has joined us to have Alex conversation about the pursuit of excellence. Just a little bit about Ryan. Ryan Huff is the author of the books Welcome to Management and the Pursuit of Excellence. The Uncommon Behaviors of the World's Most Productive Achievers. He is also the founder and host of The Learning Leader, So podcast with millions of listeners and over 150 countries, which was named a top five podcast to make you a Smarter Leader by Ink Magazine. He has interviewed notable leaders such as Jim Collins, Adam Grant, Kat Cole, Dan Pink, Gary Vee, Simon Sinek and many others. And today, he has joined us right here on the Unscripted Authentic Leadership Podcast Ryan, thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me. Guys, I appreciate the warm welcome. Absolutely. Well, let's get right into the conversation. We're talking about the pursuit of excellence. Before we get into that, I really want to get your backstory of how you got into leadership, how we got into the whole pursuit of excellence, writing books and just, you know, being that standout leader that you are. Give us your backstory is really an upbringing in athletics. Played football, baseball, basketball, growing up and fortunately had a great family, parents and brothers to grow up around, was fortunate to get a college scholarship played in college at both Miami University and finished my career at Ohio University and then played a little bit afterwards in the Arena Football League and so I played quarterback. So that's a position where you're kind of thrust into a leadership role. You need to be a leader so I think that was super helpful, helpful for me. And then more, I had to get a real job after finishing playing sports. I went like a lot of former athletes in the profession of sales and kind of figured some things out after getting a lot of help from some great mentors who got promoted. Then a few times well, from a sales rep to then a manager, then director. And then I was a VP of our North American team for a company called Elsevier Clinical Solution, selling in the healthcare space responsible for about a $500 million team. I left that job and left corporate America to do what I do now full time, about four and a half years ago. And now that's, as you mentioned, recording my podcast, which is the foundation for everything, writing books, helping with leadership teams at various companies and it's pretty it's it's pretty fun. It's cool. It's fulfilling. It's hard. But I feel very fortunate to get a chance to do it every day. Now, you said you you had a successful corporate career before and a half years ago. You left and start doing your own as an entrepreneur. What made you do that? Was there any fears behind that? And what made you want to leave your successful corporate career to start doing your own thing? You mentioned Dan Pink earlier when with some of them having I've had on my show, I'm having Dan on today, actually to talk about his recent book, which is about regret. And the reason I share that is because the question that I posed to myself about four and a half years ago, about five years ago, was what what would I regret less not giving it a go or or going for it. And I thought I would regret not going for it more than the former. So that's partially why I chose also to me, I'm really motivated as a dad to kind of chart a path to say that anything is possible. It sounds kind of cheesy and maybe even clich, but I like the thought of being able to point to my career as something to say. Like you can create your own career for yourself. And I hope that that my actions will inspire first and foremost the people in my family. And so that's part of the motivation, too. And know, like, it's it's really fun and cool to be able to create get a job for yourself, create a new way of of working. I would have never, ever envisioned that even five I mean, six years ago, there's no way I would have thought that this was possible. So I think that's that's part of the fun part too. What do you say we have we have a good mix of entrepreneurs and like middle management sort of listeners. Right. And what would you say to those who are sort of management kind of in your position and say, I hear this a lot, I would love to do something, I just don't know what. But then the big I think the biggest issue is, is they're scared because of that false sense of security. How did you how did that. I have my own opinions on when I was in corporate America and then got out of corporate America and how that security thing felt. What do you say to towards that like the guaranteed salary, quote unquote? I mean, I would have never done it if the opportunities weren't overwhelming. So I wouldn't just leave for the fun of it. I left because I was literally running out of PTO days to go give keynote speeches and to work with teams. And that was a big part of it was the fact that there was that over the course of doing my podcast, for years and publishing hundreds of episodes, that then created the opportunity to get a book deal to work with leaders to go into the country and giving speeches. All of that happened before I left my job, not after. So I would say the opportunities were popping up very frequently to the point where I had to make a choice Do I go this route and go for it and give 100% of my time and effort to this as opposed to where before I was giving like half or less than that? Because two, as you rise up in a company, you have you have more and more responsibility. It just becomes too hard. There's not enough time to do both things really well. And so I felt like I was starting to get to the point where I was doing both things kind of average or good, and I wanted I'd rather be great at one thing than average it to. So that's where when I, I would caution people, I wouldn't just leave for the sake of leaving or start something for the sake of that, I would establish the fact that it's real, that people are literally willing to cut checks for that work so that you can support your family. I was I would never have left and not support my family because first and foremost, I'm a provider. And if I don't if I don't do that, then I'm a failure. So I have to provide for my family. So it wasn't on a whim or it wasn't like crossing my fingers and hoping it was because the market had told me that this was real and that there was a chance that this could work. And then I really leaned into it. And obviously at this point, I'm really glad that I did. So I started off as a side hustle that you worked hard on outside of work and then established yourself and so forth, and never and never intended to make any money from any of this. It was I started the podcast as to to create my own form of a leadership PhD program. I got my MBA, but I didn't love the entire process of getting my MBA because they, they they gave you the list of classes and teachers that you have to go to. Which wasn't that fun for me as I got older. I loved learning, but I love being to choose what I'm going to learn. And so my podcast was was instead of going back to school again, it was I want to create my own form of leadership program, not be told who I had to go learn from, but I'm going to choose my professors and I'm going to interview them and ask them the questions I want to ask, and then I'll learn in public and I'll publish that. And then hopefully it helps other people. I would have never envisioned that that that many people would have wanted to listen and that that not only that, but they would want to take it a step further and maybe do some work together. So there wasn't any ambition to make it a business. There wasn't any ambition to make money. In fact, I mean, I lost, as you guys know, when you produce a podcast, it costs money. I lost money for two years. I didn't I didn't even try to make money. I just spent it as well. Like, this is an investment in my education. You know, the results then just started to happen as we got into it for a few years. But it wasn't there was no ambition to ever or make it a business Everything that you've been talking about, it's been a pursuit or a journey. And you have written your latest book The Pursuit of Excellence The Uncommon Behaviors of the World's Most Productive Achievers. Can you talk to us about that whole concept, about the pursuit of excellence? Because I love how you defined it. It's not just to pursue our journey because I think a lot of times people like I'm on a journey, I'm on a pursuit, I'm trying to fulfill purpose, and it's kind of vague, but you're narrowing it down to say, Hey, this is a pursuit of excellence. You break that down for us. And therefore, I think I think to me it's really about is the comparison of success versus excellence for me and to me, success is a comparison with other people and excellence as a comparison with yourself. And so this pursuit is just a an intentional intentional actions to be better tomorrow than I am today, to be a little bit wiser when I go to bed at night than when I woke up. That's it. And so if my intentional pursuit and I have actions in place to ensure that that happens, that's what the pursuit is all about. That's what that's what excellence is about. It's it's there's not really ever a destination. You don't really ever get there. It's just this one kind of goal to say, what am I doing today to ensure that I'm going to go to bed a little bit wiser than when I woke up. That's it. So I'm not I don't need to compare myself against anybody else. It's not helpful. I think comparison, if the adage is true, is that the joy whenever I find myself doing that, when looking at social media, you know, it's a reminder of like, that's not what this is about this this is about me trying to get a little bit better, a little bit better, a little bit better. In that compounding effect of that has amazing returns and then the results take care of themselves. That's why I love Bill Walsh's book, The Score Takes Care of itself. You know, football background. He does, too. It's really it wasn't really about the score. The goals weren't about winning the goals were about getting better each day and then having standards of performance each day to live up to. And then the score will take care of itself. To me, that's excellence. That's what excellence is all about as being in pursuit of that. So there's not really a destination. There's not really, hey, we made it. There's not really an arrival. It's just a continuous kind of pursuit like this. And if you're doing things that I think fulfilled you, then there's a chance that the score will take care of itself, a good chance. And so that's just what I'm trying to do. And I think I just kind of stumbled into it because as I told you guys, there was no ambition, there was no plan, there was nothing like I want to get to this certain spot. It was it was out of my curiosity, was out of my desire to get better is out of my desire to learn that I started kind of what this is. And so I've kind of tried to stay true to that. And because of that, it seems like good opportunities arise. Can that's so cool. I think a lot of us run into sort of fall into a personal development thing. Whether you were given a book one day. That was my story. And I thought, what is this stuff? And I never heard of self-help books enhance that. And what's that book? The first book I ever read was called Rich Dad, Poor Dad. And then Who Moved My Cheese? And I read both of them about the same month just from a friend, and I thought I was in college. I was not a reader. I hated reading and I thought, What is this stuff like? It was just like Food for the soul. And then that just started the journey and I started reading See You At The Top and all these other things, and but you mentioned you wasn't looking for it, but once you found it, you're like, What is what is this I need? This is this is good for me. I feel good about this. You mentioned that daily pursuit of pursuit of excellence. I find a lot of leaders have sort of a routine, whether it's a morning routine, evening routines. Give us some insight to sort of how you set up your day, that kind of thing. Yeah, I think like a lot I'm probably similar. It starts the night before and planning for the morning. I'm a workout guy, so I believe in, you know, pushing around heavy things, moving my body as fast as possible. So lifting weights, running, calming down on the elliptical reading, that's a part of every day. So I think I have kind of that mental issue where if I don't do it and the rest of the day is bad, I don't know if that's a good thing. I mean, maybe there are parts of it that's good because I kind of forces me to work out every day. But that's a big part of my early mornings. I like to try to stretch and hydrate and document some thoughts, read a little bit, workout, and then it's family breakfast time with with my family, like my seven year old daughter to the bus stop and then it's time to get to work. So that's that's that's kind of my wife kind of makes fun of the fact of how regimented I am. But I've been regimented for a long time. It serve me well. I feel kind of good and it puts me in a good position when I when I really push myself physically because it helps me mentally want to spend some time with my family before they go to school. And then it helps me get after it at nighttime, you know, where my my wife and I are Uber drivers, we have kids. They play sports they're all over the place. We go to practices, games. I was just sort of all I will terminal weekend out of town, staying in hotels, doing that fun thing so it can get turned upside down, especially as parents. But it's it's the best. I mean, I wouldn't trade it for anything, but yeah, every morning is pretty it's pretty regimented. And the reason I choose the early morning is because nobody else is awake. And so that time is to myself and I can really do what I need to do. And it doesn't get in the way of any family time or anything else because they're all sleeping and then that gives me a chance to kind of get down what I need to get done in order to feel good for the rest of that. Yeah. Can you can you break down the difference between what a manager and a leader? Can you break down the difference between those two? So I think managers are good at working within the the current system for which they get brought into managers are typically more of a title. Leaders are chosen as leadership is a choice. So I can choose to be a leader regardless of my title. A manager is usually a title. I had that title. Regional Sales Manager was my first management job. That was a title given to me. I don't know if I was a quite an accomplished enough leader yet, but I was a manager. So I think it's kind of figure out how to work within the systems. You're and leaders are more about the choice. The title doesn't matter. Anybody can choose to be a leader. I think leadership is all about utilizing talents and skills and emotional intelligence to move people towards a noble cause. And again, that's irregardless regardless of title. Whereas whereas managers you it's more operationally within the system that you're in, I think you need to do both really well. I think they're both really important but I also think there are differences between the jobs. I know Tom Peterson on my podcast and argued with me about the fact that they're the same thing. I agree with just about everything he says. That's just one of them that I don't I'm with oil. Well, I mean, John Maxwell says a leader is anyone with a following. So like by definition. And so that if you look back, he says, if you look behind you and there's no one there, then you're not leading anybody. Yeah. And I think the how that with that prompts you is, is to say I do are my actions did my actions make me worth following? I mean, that's great. I love John Maxwell stuff. He's, he's one of the greatest. But yeah, I mean that's what that's the prompt. I would ask myself what I'm doing. I ask myself, is a dad or a husband and certainly as a leader are the things that I did today are they is is it worth following me? Is it worth worth listening to me in some days? It's not. And so I want to I want to regularly ask myself that question to make sure I'm at least trying to do that and hopefully accomplishing it some of the days. Yeah, someone can be a manager and there be nobody following them. They might be telling somebody what to do, but they're not necessarily following what they do. But you can be a leader without a title. You might be leading your family. You might be leading some things in church I mean, you can so so I wrote and you're probably right, compliance can be commanding, but commitment cannot. You choose to make in your commitment to a leader if you're my boss, I have to comply unless I'm okay being fired. So that's why you can command somebody to comply based upon your title, but you cannot force them to commit to you. You have to earn that. And leaders, regardless of title, can earn commitment right? I would much rather earn commitment than to force compliance. I think that's a big difference, too, between someone you choose to leave refused or someone you choose to follow. I'll tell you what, you got some t shirt one liners on where were so you you've obviously interviewed a lot of leaders. You mentioned Dan Payne and some others. What are some like common traits that you've noticed? A bit of the leaders in the pursuit of excellence while interviewing them okay. We get to show for a while I'll I'll I'll pull for one of my favorites was Kat Cole, Episode 78. So it's been a long time, but I think the end she coined the phrase productive achievers to me many years ago. So I still use it obviously to subtitle I think on one side they have a great deal of courage and confidence, courage to stand up for what they believe in, confidence that has been built up through a track record of good things happening on a regular basis of making sure you're doing what you want to do. So right then you're not going to follow people who don't have courage and who are confident. I think confidence is is very necessary. They have to be equally balanced. On the other side with curiosity and humility, curiosity, you say I am always out there. I'm a learning leader. I'm always out there striving to learn more, to understand what's a better way to do this. And then also the humility to make sure others know, hey, I don't have this thing figured out. I need you. I want to work with you. I am not certain of everything and so I think this this equal balance of courage, courage and confidence with curiosity and humility leads to, I think, probably a pretty effective leader. You put a quote up about on Instagram about talkers versus doers, and you said, if it adds value to the lives of others, people will share it. You unpack that for us. Yeah. I mean, I so this is a smaller excerpt from my book that that was learned from my parents about talking about their kids sports exploits. A lot of a lot of parents like to brag about how awesome their kids are at sports. And my my mom and dad were pretty intentional about the fact that they just weren't going to do that. They said let other parents talk about how good you guys are in sports, not help that we were good, I guess. So they they felt pretty secure in that. But that's kind of where it stemmed from then. My dad's always been more of a doer than a talker. He can go give a great speech. And that's I think that's important. That's part of the doing is sharing to me. It's, it's, um, I'm sure you guys hear this too, where people tell you what they're about to do. I might start this podcast or a lot of them now to me, I'm going to write this book that they're all about to do it. Whereas I would just say, why don't you just do it and then let me see it when you do it. If you're going to write the book or the podcast, I'll listen to the podcast or I'll read the book or whatever, instead of telling me what you're about to do, go and just do the thing and then let others talk about that. One of my one of my good friends and one of the most impactful leaders in the world right now is a guy named Brooke, cos he's won a state championship for several high school and first ever in basketball was an amazing coach Brooke is the ultimate doer when it comes to talkers versus what he just does. It just does the thing and lets everybody else talk about how amazing is as I'm doing right now, unprompted. Right. And that's that's what I mean. Like instead of and the world of talkers and doers, don't tell me what you're about to do. Just go do the thing. We'll talk about it and then you'll be busy doing the next thing, which then we'll probably talk about. That's that's what I mean by talkers versus doer in part of it. Maybe just because over the last handful of years when I meet with people, I don't know why they feel like they need to say what they're about to do. I'm just like, just go do it. Just, just do it. Then, you know, you don't have to talk about this do it. And then we'll talk about it and especially if it's really good. And then you can go to the next thing so being from a sports background with kids and so forth, now we obviously both have kids in sports as well, seven and seven and ten. So they're they're still young and they're in their athletics and so forth. And what do you say to the parents who want to sort of make their kids the, you know, all star athletes? And that's what they you said they don't you know, parents didn't cheer you on just for athletics. Other things like, oh, we we they were they were. And they are amazingly supportive and they definitely cheered for us. They weren't in the community yapping about how good we were, though. That's what I mean. So so I'm sorry. What was your question, though, about like yeah. I think sometimes we get confused what's important to promote to our children as far as what areas to edify our children. And I think so many get caught up and solely edifying in athletics when the reality is less likely most of our children are not playing D1 college or professional and whatever sport. So sometimes I think we get off base when saying when the only time we edify our children is when they, you know, score and score a goal or whatever, whatever it is they're doing versus versus sort of harvesting and putting in an environment for them to grow and whatever area they're supposed to grow. Obviously, you were a phenomenal athlete, right? I was very average at best. My parents never made a big deal of it. They just came to everything, put me on the best team I could be on for my skill level. So so for us, they're amazing at it. But I see I coach now and I see so often parents are so hard at the youngest ages on their kids to go and excel. And I'm like, I don't, I don't I don't think this is they're going to be that there's no natural ability. They just have heart. My son has all the heart in the world. Natural abilities, relatively limited. But hey, he loves to wrestle. He loves to play football, loves lacrosse. So he's not bad. He's just not I don't know that he'll be the all star again if he wants to be, but that's not my goal for him. It's whatever he wants. I agree. I mean, I think I think one of the biggest measures of kids is, is what do they do when they have free time you know, I have a daughter who if she has free time, she's asking me to pass the volleyball back and forth in the backyard. Right. And no surprise, she's kind of excelled at that but she's also does really well in school. I think one of the other things to focus on report cards just came out. So this is top of mind that I had a podcast guest years ago who brought this up. And my wife and I, we try to be intentional. Obviously, you know, grades are important, but what's more important to us are just the small comments in the corner of the report card from the teacher. And the teacher says, these types of things, we care about attitude, we care about effort, we care about kindness, right? So we look for those kind of signals. And that's what we we really talk and we try to model that ourselves with them because they're going to watch what we do far more than what we say. But before we even talk about the grades, we're looking for the little paragraph in the corner of the report card that that focuses on being kind, on being diligent, on being hard, working on having a positive attitude. Right. Those things are far, far more important. Yes, we do want the grades to be good, too, because I think that's that that monitors some of the work ethic and the the discipline in order to do do the necessary work. So it goes hand in hand. But that's just that's just some of the little things that I think about when it comes to sports. It's just really about a few things controlling your attitude, controlling your effort, and controlling how you respond to adversity, because that's why sports are amazing, especially, like I said at the Bible term in volleyball, you play the 25 best of three sets. So these girls are losing a lot. You have to respond to losing a point all the time, to going up for the hit and getting stuffed by the blocker or or them spiking in on you or you missing a pass all of that is constant adversity that you have to bounce back from. So sports can be great in that regard. So I guess to wrap up like how I view that and we are definitely a work in progress here where we mess up all the time. So just focusing on kind of their behaviors and the choices they make and their discipline and work ethic and kindness level at school and then especially in sports. How are you a good teammate? How do you respond to adversity, how hardy playing, what type of attitude, what's your body language right? None of that. I never mentioned the score. I never mentioned winning or losing. It was those those things because again, I think that relates to everything. If you take care of those things, I like our chances. I like our chances of winning, and those are transferable skills for the rest of their life. So if you focus on these things, I don't I almost don't even care about the rest or about the result is if they take care of their control over if they take care of themselves being a good teammate, of them having good body language, of them having a good attitude, of them working hard, of them responding well to adversity, that's a win. That's a win for me. And then the score, it's going to be what it is. But those are the things that we try to focus on and and again, mess up all the time. But but those are those are like kind of the grounding principles I try to think about. Those are golden I think sometimes as parents we get so caught up in, Oh, Bobby, let that last girl go in. I mean, I forget there's a huge team in front of them, but whatever or that point was scored on my daughter. And then we almost let our own rough self-image get in the way. So are now is like how does that make me look as as the parent? And then we put that on our kids. Like, why did you let that go by you? And not focusing on what you just mentioned was was all right. What's his response? Is his head down or is he as he fighting back? Is this be honest, when you play sports, you're always going to mess up and it will be your fault sometimes and sometimes not or partially your fault or whatever. So I brought me that as my my college coaches always said, hey, there on scholarship, too. You know, sometimes they're going to be you. They're going to beat you, you know? And that's and that's so that's why it's all about like how you're choosing to respond and so you're not going to I would love when I watch my kids play. I would love if they just dominated every time, like, but that's just not reality. And in fact, it would it would not be healthy or not be useful for them if they just easily won every time. It's good for them to have to show some grit and to fight back and to respond when things get tough because that's to me, I know this is heavy in the sports, but to me that's been just a huge I've drawn so much from those moments that have helped me outside of the sporting world that it's like, what can we take away to learn from this? Because you're right, even if you are a professional athlete, you know, my brother did that for 11 years, but he still draws from that and to the other things of this of his life beyond just the time on the field. Ryan, leave our audience one last piece of advice. One last piece of something that you think that would help them or be a benefit to them. But I, I think it all comes down to the who I was recording with Jim Collins. You mentioned in episode two 16 on my podcast and I was really animated and energetic and excited. He's one of my heroes, maybe like at the top of the list. And I was going on and on and on about why I was doing what I was doing and what I was doing, and I was sharing how I was going to go about doing all this stuff. And he's like, Hey, hey, hey, calm down a little bit, man. Who is your who? Who's your mentor or who are your friends? Who is your spouse? Who are you spending time with? That will be the single greatest determining factor in your and your long term performance, who is your who? And so that's what I would I would urge people to think about. Who are you intentionally choosing to spend your time with? Who is in your kitchen cabinet? As John Calipari told me, when we record together the Final Four, like who are those people that you can go to on a regular basis and talk to, ask questions, learn from? They're going to push you a little bit. They're going to help you. They're looking out for either championing you, who are those people? And I found sometimes, you know, you have to move on from some relationships and other ones. You really have to reinforce and put more effort into them because that will be the single greatest determining factor in how you do if you're who. So I would for anybody, I would really pause to think about that and say, what am I doing to ensure I'm building great, mutually beneficial relationship reps each day? And I think that that gives you a better chance of things going well. If you've got that in mind. Stay connected with Ryan. You can do that several ways. On Instagram at Ryan Hall 12 also on LinkedIn, Ryan Hall also go out and purchase his latest book, The Pursuit of Excellence The Uncommon Behaviors of the Highest Achievers. Listen. Thank you again to Ryan. Our special guest for having this amazing conversation with us about the pursuit of excellence. As always, we pray that you be the leader that God is called you to be stay connected here with us here. Unscripted or unscripted leadership on all social media platforms or website, unscripted. That's leadership dot com And of course, you're going to find our podcast available on all streaming platforms. We're here to build bridges and not walls. Bridges connect and walls divide until next time. God bless you.