The Global Leadership Summit is one of my annual go-to events for leadership development. This year was no different. The following are a list of speakers and their top quotes from this two-day event.
Day 1
Craig Groeschel – Lead Like It Matters
- “Your leadership matters because everyone wins when the leader gets better.”
- “Every leader that has IT has very extreme qualities. I don’t want well-rounded people. I want people who are extremely talented in little areas.”
- “Greatness is found in the extremes.”
- “I looked at Jesus and thought He was extreme. He was fully-God, fully-man. He is the Lion and the Lamb. He is Alpha and Omega, first and last. If you want to find your life, you have to lose your life. If you want to be great, you have to serve.”
- “Leaders who have IT have extremes that seem in conflict but are not.”
- “A growing leader is in a constant place of discomfort.”
- “I was overconfident. I had significantly misdiagnosed the state of our organization. As COVID season lessened, I went back to normal. These are not normal times. This is leading out of a crisis, and it is an entirely different mindset.”
- “You need to raise your tolerance for work and stress. 40 hours is not too much. It may take 50 hours to accomplish what you need to get done.”
- “What is one of the greatest enemies to your success? I think it is a lack of focus.”
- “The essence of great leadership is choosing what not to do.”
- “In 2008, I had IT. Somewhere along the way, I lost IT. I found I was praying more publicly than I was privately. I was more concerned about what people thought about me than what God thought of me. I had become a full-time pastor, part-time follower of Christ. I got help. It’s not weakness to get help; it’s wisdom.”
- “Be weird. Be all-in.”
- “You are a leader, step into it. Fall in love with it; let it consume you. Solve problems. Make a difference. Meet needs. Serve people. Leaders get better. Leaders give it away because that is what great leaders do and that is what you are.”
Vanessa Van Edwards – The Science Of Connection
- “Great leaders excelled at emotions. Good leaders focus on planning, metrics, revenue. Great leaders focus on those things, but they focus on connection and emotions.”
- “Leaders can get trapped in logistics, small talk, metrics.”
- “Self-narratives are self-creating.”
- “Three common self-narratives: hero, healer, victim.”
- “Hero – Think of them as obstacles, mistakes that with hard work they can overcome.”
- “Healer – Dedicated themselves to a life of service. They are giving, compassionate. They tend to pick professions with their self-narratives. Doctors, teachers, nurses, homemakers.”
- “Your self-narrative can create the same mistakes over and over again. Healer self-narrative can suffer from burnout since they put themselves second.”
- “Victim – They have faced obstacles, challenges but have not been able to overcome them. They don’t think they can overcome it. They struggle to get out.”
- “Swan effect: Swan going across the lake looks smooth. Underneath they are furiously paddling. Most of us struggle with the swan effect. On the surface we are calm, cool, collected. Underneath the surface, it is dark and murky. We don’t show people the hustle.”
- “Behind every success I have had is a failure. The more I talk about the dark, the lighter it feels.”
Sahar Hashemi – Unlocking The Startup Mentality In Your Organization
- “People talk about overnight success. I don’t believe it. It takes 15 years to become an overnight success.”
- “Me wanting to scratch my own itch is what activated the passionate entrepreneurship within me. I didn’t want to grab market share. I just wanted a skinny cappuccino.”
- “Think about your ideas from the end-user perspective.”
- “I thought being clueless was our biggest disadvantage; it was our advantage.”
- “Be like a tourist. Observe everything. See what needs to be changed.”
- “Momentum is really powerful. It is just a process of discovery. It is messy but eventually you are moving it along.”
Johnny C. Taylor Jr. – Empathetic Leadership Is A Key Value In Successful Organizations
- “The pandemic has given us an opportunity to rethink and reset the way that we see the world and experience the world of work. We have for so long focused on productivity. And while productivity is terribly important, human beings are not robots.”
- “It’s one thing to say you value people. Words are cheap. Actions speak.”
- “When we are burned out, we move into a fight or flight mode and into survival mode.”
- “Sympathy is nice, but ultimately empathetic leadership is going to be the number one cultural value of every [successful] organization across national borders and industries.”
- “That’s the beauty of diversity. You can have different opinions about any number of things in the workplace, but when people are listened to, and that the organization takes what they observed during these listening opportunities and actually tries to make the workplace better. If you’re going to be successful in this knowledge-based economy, you’re going to have to figure that out.”
- “We cannot address things that can’t be discussed. We can’t fix things and problems that have not been identified.”
- “At the end of the day, each of us have unique cultures and we need to do our best to be clear about them, so that when you recruit a person to your organization, you can be honest—this is who we are, and this is what you’re going to spend a lot of time. This is the environment in which you’re going to work. Most CEO’s have failed at that—they have either not had a real conversation about what their culture is, or they’ve been so busy trying to create an employer brand that the words they say in the descriptors of their culture aren’t actually representative of the culture within the organization. That disconnect is why employees leave. It is why you, ultimately, in the long term, destroy your employer brand.”
Deb Liu – Take Back Your Power
- “Power: The ability to influence the events and people around you.”
- “Success isn’t about never failing, but about taking the lessons from that failure to propel yourself forward.”
- “There are four types of allies: mentors, sponsors, teams, and circles.”
- “Mentors are the teachers: They are the ones who share their experience with you and who give you direction when you need it.”
- “Sponsors are the ones who open doors for you. They provide access and visibility. They see the potential in you, and they are willing to invest in you to help you realize it.”
- “Your team are those who share your vision and labor at your side to make it a reality. Their skills complement yours, and together you can accomplish more than each of you can alone.”
- “Your circle is the people whose lives intersect with yours. Your circle is your cheer section outside of work, your family and friends, the people who know you best. They will applaud when you succeed, and they will hold you up when the going gets tough.”
- “When you’re on your own, you have to be strong on your own. But when you have allies, your strength multiplies.”
Judah Smith
- “Some of you are disgusted with my lack of preparation. Well, I’m disgusted with your football team.”
- “I have an anger problem currently.”
- “I’ve got three minutes and I’m going to start my message.”
- “What am I doing up here?”
Dr. Heidi Grant – The Science Of A Growth Mindset
- “I thought that ability was a DNA lottery. In the U.S., we have an expression, ‘I’m not a math person.’”
- “We talk about genius like it is innate.”
- “The single most powerful thing you can do to achieve any goal: the idea of your mindset.”
- “Anxiety has effects on the brain that creates a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
- “It’s not about proving your ability, but about improving your ability. We’re trying to develop our skills rather than demonstrate them. We are focused more on comparing against our growth rather than against another person.”
- “The best way to shift your mindset and reorient: Carol Dweck – she adds the word YET. ‘I’m not good at this YET.’”
- “It’s not about being good, it’s about getting better. When you say this, the first thing that I feel is a ton of anxiety and tension roll off me. It is reorienting to growth.”
- “If you do this enough, it becomes a habit.”
- “Focus on rewarding progress and persistence. Celebrate improvement. The person who went from terrible to okay needs to be celebrated.”
- “It is the most impactful thing you can do with your leadership.”
Ron Howard – Rule Of Collaboration
- “I believe when you’re working with a cinematographer, an actor, a writer, a composer, production designer—any of the key creative collaborators on a project—your job as the storyteller and as the director is the keeper of the story.”
- “It’s much easier to edit people’s ideas and say no, and not have them be frustrated, angry, and close down on you, but instead respect your thinking when they know you’re more than willing to say yes. When talented people know you’re more than willing to say ‘yes’ to their suggestions, they are also more sanguine about accepting a ‘no.’ In fact, they like it.”
- “There are great directors that don’t operate that way. Charlie Chaplin didn’t listen to anyone. (Stanley) Kubrick was not much of a listener. There are others who have a vision, and they follow it. That’s completely valid. It just doesn’t happen to be the way I work. I revel in the excitement of the collaboration. I think it provides all of us—not just me—with a kind of creative safety net, but more than that it just energizes a set in a great way.”
Day 2
Jon Acuff – Building A Winning Mindset
- “A goal is the fastest path between where you are today and where you want to be tomorrow.”
- “Starting is fun but the future belongs to finishers.”
- “There is a 92% chance that New Year’s resolutions will fail.”
- “Overthinking wrecks more leaders than anything else.”
- “Overthinking is the most expensive thing that companies invest in every year without realizing.”
- “Overthinking steals time, creativity, and productivity”
- “If you can worry, you can wonder. If you can doubt, you can dominate.”
- “Great thoughts lead to great actions. Great actions lead to great results.”
- “Google wondered, ‘What do our most successful teams have in common?’ They launched Project Aristotle. Spent millions of dollars. Measured 180 teams. Used 35 models. What did they find? They had psychological safety. You can ask questions. You can suggest new ideas. You can admit you are wrong without being treated unkindly by the team.”
- “You only get to fix mistakes that you can admit are wrong.”
- “Leaders who cannot be questioned end up doing questionable things.”
- “Great leaders pick thoughts ahead of time and they choose thoughts that are actionable.”
- “Care about what the people you care about, care about.”
- “Read less minds. Ask more questions.”
- “When you ask someone what they need, they become visible and valuable.”
Lynsi Snyder – The Heart Behind In-N-Out Burger
- “We’re a family. We treat our associates like family, and we make sure they treat the customers as guests.”
- “My grandparents set the bar, and what happens is over time, keeping things the same, or the way they want them gets more challenging—but it’s about not compromising or looking at what everyone else is doing. It’s knowing who we are and who we aren’t.”
- “Humility before God and others is important in leadership.”
- “We say and we believe that the customer is our most important asset.”
- “So, we make the decision that will be best for our customers, but don’t compromise the quality, cleanliness, or friendliness.”
- “Servant leadership is really looking to the best leader that walked this earth, and how can we be more like Him.”
- “There’re many styles of leadership, and for sure more than one way to get there, but I think that if the goal in life is to love others and love God, then what better way to lead than serving them, loving them, and lifting them up, and wanting them to be better than you?”
- “God’s grace is bigger than any mistake and any failure in someone’s life. His love can cover all of it.”
- “I’m not just here to run In-N-Out Burger. The bigger part is the people and the platform I’ve been given, and I want others to have the healing and the grace, and to know the God I know—and experience the love they can have in their life.”
- “If you’re ashamed of Him, He’ll be ashamed of you.”
- “I’m not trying to shove my beliefs in everyone’s face, but I think part of being a family business is having the freedom to share that this is part of our family.”
Stephanie Chung – Adapting Your Leadership For Today’s Challenges
- “We’ve hit a new level of low when it comes to distrust in the world.”
- “Businesses are now more trusted than the media or government; making the relationship between employer & employee incredibly important.”
- “Learn to consciously visualize another person’s viewpoint. Let’s develop our abilities to see people for who they are, not who we’ve been programmed to think they are.”
- “As leaders, the world is looking to us to bring stability to this emotional chaos we find ourselves in.”
- “Leaders, we’ve been called for such a time as this. I do believe that we will be like the other courageous leaders before us, that during times of uncertainty, when trust was bestowed upon them—they rose up, they understood the call, they minimized their bias, and they made a difference for all.”
Bob Iger – The Ride Of A Lifetime
- “Decent people finish first.”
- “If you can’t take risk you don’t get anywhere.”
- “Status quo is not a winning strategy.”
- “No one wants to follow a pessimist. Where are they going to take you?”
- “If you’re nothing but optimistic you don’t prepare your people for what’s in store.”
- “A lack of hope is as bad as it gets.”
Andy Stanley – Not In It To Win It
- “The church always looks better when we are fighting for other people’s rights rather than our own.”
- “The number enemy of the church is disunity. ”
- “You get to choose if you will follow Jesus. You do not get to choose what it looks like, sounds like, or how to react like Jesus.”
Countless leaders got better as a result of GLS 2022. I was one of them. I can’t wait for next year’s event!
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