What if the secret to excellence isn’t reaching the goal—but learning to love the work required to get there?

Ryan Hawk has spent more than a decade studying leadership and high performance through more than 700 conversations on The Learning Leader Show. He’s interviewed some of the most respected thinkers and leaders in the world, written four books, and built his career around a simple question: What helps people keep getting better?

In this episode, Ryan joins Chris Lee and Teli Van Rycke to talk about the daily practices that compound into excellence, why great leaders stay curious, and why the work itself has to become the win.

The conversation ranges from hiring and interviewing to parenting, competition, difficult conversations, and what Ryan has learned after hundreds of conversations with remarkable people.

Key takeaways:

• The work has to be the win. Outcomes can motivate us temporarily, but lasting excellence comes from developing a love for the craft itself.
• Push your edges every day. Ryan shares three questions he uses to reflect each evening: Did I get wiser? Did I push my edges? Did I add value to someone else’s life?
• Leadership is caught more than it’s taught. Whether you’re raising kids or leading a team, people pay attention to the standards you model.
• Competition doesn’t have to be zero-sum. Seeing excellence up close can raise our own standards without requiring someone else to lose.
• Bad news doesn’t get better with age. One of Ryan’s earliest leadership lessons was learning to stop avoiding the difficult conversations that come with management.
• Learning should make us less certain, not more. After 700+ interviews, Ryan says the more he learns, the more aware he becomes of how much he still doesn’t know.

For parks and conservation professionals—many of whom move into leadership because they were excellent at the technical work—Ryan’s lessons are especially relevant. Leadership is its own craft, and excellence comes from the same place restoration does: intentional practices, repeated consistently, over time.

Ryan Hawk is the host of The Learning Leader Show and author of four books, including his newest, The Price of Becoming: The Compounding Practices of High Performance. Learn more at LearningLeader.com.

Ready to take your leadership to the next level? Join the Next Level Leadership Community at parksandrestoration.com for leadership insights, conversations, resources, and a growing network of parks, conservation, and natural resource professionals committed to becoming better leaders.

About Parks & Restoration
Better leaders. Better parks.

Parks and Restoration is a podcast and leadership development platform exploring leadership through the lens of ecology — for the land, via the people who serve it. Each episode is built for current and aspiring leaders in parks, conservation, and natural resources who want practical lessons on culture, growth, impact, and what it really takes to lead well.

Find out more and join the movement at www.parksandrestoration.com