Every year I protect a two-day slot in my calendar to attend the Global Leadership Summit. Of all the conferences I’ve been to this one remains the most impactful to me. It’s packed with amazing speakers who talk about all things leadership and mixed in with engaging arts, stories and faith. It’s the largest leadership experience with a main campus in Chicago, an online experience as well as over 400 host sites around the world; of which I attend an awesome local host site.
No one tells me to go to this conference, and I don’t connect it as a work event. I individually choose to go on my own separate doing because I value my professional and personal development. I actually think it’s more impactful to go to a conference on your own doing and in solo. For myself, it’s like a two-day vacation of immersive learning (which I love) and getting out of my comfort zone (which is hard as my introverted self but an important practice). Not only do I learn from some of industry’s top leaders and meet new people, I get inspired and re-energized.
As the summit emphasizes, if you have influence you are a leader; and everyone wins when the leader gets better. Below are some of my notes of learning from this years summit event.
“When it comes to building trust, it’s not what you do occasionally that matters. It’s what you do consistently.”
Craig Greoschel
Craig Groeschel – “The Power to Change”
Founding and Senior Pastor, Life Church
Best-Selling Author
- Building trust isn’t about what you do occasionally. It’s what you do consistently.
- If your team doesn’t trust you, they won’t follow you. In order to build trust, you need to have the following characteristics:
- Transparency: you share truths
- Empathy: you have a heart to care
- Consistency: you build a culture to trust
- When you lead with transparency: trust increases, teams get closer and problems get solved faster.
- When communication decreases within teams, uncertainty increases.
- Your team won’t care about your mission if you don’t care about your team. Someone who doesn’t feel part of a team will not bring their whole heart into their work.
- People are impressed by your strengths, but they connect with your weaknesses. Be vulnerable.
- Talk less and listen more. Ask more questions. Your team wants to be seen, and leaders need to show “I notice. You matter.” Some questions to ask your team:
- What are you most excited about in this season?
- What would you love for me to know about you that I’ve never asked?
- If I could do one thing to make your life better, what would it be?
- Be clear on expectations. Reward when they are met. Make corrections if they’re not.
- The number one reason team members don’t meet expectations is because the expectations are not clear.
- When you don’t acknowledge what’s happening in the room, you lose credibility with the team.
- The moment you start leading defensibly is the moment you start losing in leadership.
- Consistency builds emotional safety, organizational clarity and makes exponential impact.
- The best way to figure out if you can trust someone is to trust them. You’re going to have to take a risk on someone because at some point someone took a risk on you.
“The best predictor of how a team will perform comes down to what the worst performing team member is like.”
Erin Meyer
Erin Meyer – “No Rules Rules”
Professor, INSEAD
Best-Selling Author
- Erin talked about the “Netflix Experiment” where Netflix decided to remove their processes and let the employees just be adults in order to bring in and keep quality employees. For example, instead of saying employees receive 14 vacation days per year, they just said “vacation: take some.” Turning the lengthy employee handbook of rules and processes into simple statements that empowered employees to behave as responsible adults improved employee performance and retention.
- A great workplace has stunning colleagues.
- An individual performer effects the team. Poor performance is contagious.
- The best predictor of how a team will perform comes down to what the worst performing team member is like. Team performance always falls to the level of the lowest team member.
- Lead with context, not control.
- Invest in yourself.
“Integrity is the bedrock of leadership.”
Condoleezza Rice
Condoleezza Rice – “No Higher Honor”
Director of Hoover Institute
66th Secretary of State
Author and Professor
- Integrity is the bedrock of leadership. If you lose trust you can’t get it back. Develop trust and protect it.
- Don’t be a victim and let circumstances control you.
- Own your past, but don’t become a prisoner to it.
- Not everything is nuclear war. Sometimes it’s just paper clips. Have true perspective on what needs to be done when.
- Gossip erodes confidence.
- Use stories to connect with others.
- You may not complete everything in your watch, but leave it better than you found it for the next watch.
“Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care.”
Pat Gelsinger
Pat Gelsinger – “The Juggling Act”
CEO, Intel Corporation
- Develop a career MAP:
- M: Mentors – find people who can make you better
- A: Audacious Goals – work on goals bigger than yourself
- P: Passion – work on goals you’re passionate about
- Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care.
- As a leader don’t be the first person in the room to give your opinion. Let everyone else on the team share their’s first. Listen first.
- Technology is generally neutral. It can be used for good or bad.
- You’re going to have crappy days; it’s all about how you respond to those crappy days.
- The five L’s of Leadership:
- Listen
- Learn
- Link
- Lift
- Love
- Great leaders love their company, their people and the mission.
“You don’t rise to the levels of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”
James Clear
James Clear – “Atomic Habits”
Founder, Habit’s Academy
Best-Selling Author
- There is importance in the aggregation of marginal gains. Always strive for 1% improvement everyday. Excellence isn’t about radical changes but rather the small accruing changes.
- Be the architect of your habits, not the victim.
- You fall to the level of your systems.
- Habit stages:
- Cue – the trigger
- Craving – the prediction that compels you to act
- Response – the action
- Reward – satisfies your craving
- Your brain needs to feel a positive emotion to stick a habit.
- 4 laws to creating a habit (invert this to break a bad habit):
- Make it obvious
- Make it attractive
- Make it easy
- Make it satisfying
- Your physical environment influences your behavior. Improve your environment.
- Get a commitment device, something that locks you in to help develop a habit.
- The two-minute rule (example: read one page). Let behavior lead the way.
- A habit must be established before it can be improved.
- Make your progress visual.
- Create identity-based habits. For example, your goal isn’t to read a book but to become a reader.
“Sometimes we trust globally, but we need to trust contextually.”
Dr. Henry Cloud
Dr. Henry Cloud – “Trust”
Clinical Psychologist
Leadership Consultant
Best-Selling Author
- Trust requires:
- Understanding: We trust when we feel they understand us
- Motive: We feel people’s motives and question who it’s for
- Ability: We assess if people have the ability to do their work
- Character: We look at a person’s makeup
- Track Record: We look at a person’s previous work record
- Forgiveness is free. Trust is earned.
- We always are building mental maps with people.
- Do your people feel that you actually want them to win, that you’re for them?
- Sometimes you trust people globally but not contextually. For example, you may trust your fishing buddy (globally), but they might not be the best business partner (contextually).
“When you’re doing something authentically and different, you’re not crazy, you’re just first.”
Jamie Kern Lima
Jamie Kern Lima – “Worthy”
Best-Selling Author
Founder, IT Cosmetics
- If you don’t think you’re worthy of it, you won’t get it or you’ll self-sabotage it.
- There’s a difference between self-confidence and self-worth:
- Self-confidence (external things): skills, abilities, willingness to try
- Self-worth (internal things): a deep internal knowing you’re worthy of love and belonging exactly as you are. It’s unshakeable, and you can’t achieve it.
- If you want employee retention you must pay attention to self-worth.
- The things that build self-confidence don’t build self-worth.
- When you change your relationship with rejection you can change your life.
- Some people are not assigned to your destiny.
- When you’re pursuing an audacious goal that no one understands or perhaps that people envy, you’re not crazy. You’re just first.
- Most people won’t cheer you on until after you make it.
“Good leaders try to be interesting.
Ryan Leak
Great leaders try to be interested.”
Ryan Leak – “Leveling Up”
CEO, The Ryan Leak Group
Best-Selling Author
- When leaders stop growing, organizations stop growing.
- Success is often determined by the circles we grew up in.
- What is your definition of success?
- Good leaders try to be interesting. Great leaders try to be interested.
- What’s it like to be on the other side of your leadership?
- People can enjoy following us or they can endure following us.
- Failure is the tuition price for success.
- Chasing failure can take you further than chasing success ever would.
- You’ll never know if you’re an exception to a rule unless you’re willing to try something exceptional.
- “Keep it moving.”
If you want to learn more about the Global Leadership Summit and other resources from their network, visit: globalleadership.org/summit
