HELLO. A note from the editors (Nick @skytland, Ali @adllewellyn) to YOU Thank you for joining us at the 2015 Global Leadership Summit. We are taking these notes so that you can enjoy the event itself and come back later to revisit all that you experienced. That being said, the more people who pitch in and contribute, the better the notes will be. If you would like to help us take notes, please just jump in and start typing! If you simply have edits, improvements or suggestions, please add a comment… and please share with others. Don’t let this be a two day leadership conference, but an opportunity to redirect what you do with your life. Remember, there is a greater vision with your name on it. To help take notes or edit them to make them better, just start typing. Twitter: #gls15 Bill Hybels Founder and Senior Pastor, Willow Creek Community Church The 5 Intangibles of Leadership

Grit ­ A life of ease is the arch enemy of grit. Courage and resolve; strength of character. One of the greatest predictors of success is -grit. Passion and

perseverance over the long hall. They don’t waiver and they don’t quit They can overcome any obstacle that stands in their way. “the little engine that could”.

I think I can, I think I can Do you have grit?

Grit assessment test on GLS website Can grit be developed?

Grit development demands difficulty Grit sets you better at a confidence level every time you overcome an

obstacle. The arch enemy of grit is ease.

The most elite leaders push themselves to great difficulty. Overcoming physical challenges is one way to grow grit and flows to

other areas as well. When senior leaders over deliver and show their grit -their teammates

follow as well. Everyone gets grittier.

Blind Spots ­ We all have blind spots. Something someone believes they do well, but everyone else knows they don’t do it well. Leaders on average have 3.4 blind spots per person. The danger is that you really have no idea they exist. Self awareness is a very big deal ­ knowing how your past is messing with the decisions you are making today is crucial information.

Resourcefulness ­ Figure out the solution. Learning agility; resourceful people are quick learners; they are endlessly curious; enthusiastic experimenters. These people can “just figure it out.” Resourcefulness can be developed but you do that by putting yourself in confused and broken situations and experiment with diligence until you figure it out.

Self Sacrificing Love ­ Showing personal love. Love never fails. Love changes the order of things. Love never leaves a heart the way it found it; love changes people. It molds people into tightly knit families. The root of leadership is not strategy, ideas, or vision. The true core of leadership is self­sacrificing love.

Sense of Meaning ­ Know your way. Start with they Why. Summary

No matter who you are...no matter what you do, leadership matters. Leadership matters in every industry. Find your white hot why and move heaven and

earth to make it happen. In this world of globalization, accelerated change, and constant flux ­ How high are the

stakes of leadership? It's going to take unity, trust and total teamwork to achieve your mission. Leadership matters in every single area of life. God sees your gap and loves you anyway. Leadership matters across all disciplines Life is too short to not have a clear why.

Jim Collins Nationally Acclaimed Business Thinker; Best­selling Author Good to Great Seven Questions: Beyond Good to Great

Questions are better than answers, will discuss 7 challenges in the form questions. Question 1: what cause do you serve? If you have a charismatic cause, you do not

need to be a charismatic leader. The deep inner essence of level 5 leadership is service. Ambition ­ channel it

outward away from yourself into something that is bigger than we are. Level 5 leaders inspire people to follow a cause.

The X­factor of leadership is personal humility combined with an utterly indomitable will.

Question #2: Will you settle to be a good leader or will you grow to be a great leader? Infuse your enterprise with a purpose greater than making money What is leadership?

Leadership is not personality; we confuse leadership and personality all the time. It is not position, title, rank, power.

True leadership only exists if people follow when they would otherwise have the freedom not to follow. To evoke rank, power, position, title as the primary means of getting things done is not leadership.

We all possess a unique skill of leadership, this is the art of leadership that must be identified and maximized

Armed with enough humility, leaders can learn from anyone. General Dwight Eisenhower: Leadership is the art of getting people to want to do

what must be done. As a leader you have to know what must be done, that’s part of the

responsibility. It’s not about getting them to do it, it’s about getting them to want to do it. It’s not a science, it’s an art.

In 1936, Dwight Eisenhower was working as an assistant in the Philippines. Eight years later is was commander of allied forces and then President. He did not start out as Eisenhower we know today, he grew into it. Most leaders do not start as great leaders, they grow into great leaders. The critical question is will you do whatever it takes to scale your leadership as the demands of your enterprise grows. As your scales from 1x to 10x, will you scale your leadership with it?

Question 3: How can you reframe failure as growth in pursuit of a BHAG? BHAG is a term from Built to Last ­ stands for Big Hairy Audacious Goals. Does a BHAG have to be achievable? If you know for certain, then it is not a

BHAG. Question 4: How do you succeed by helping others succeed?

Sometimes the choice you have to make is do you push to the top, to the summit, to achieve the BHAG or commit yourself to get someone else through the climb?

At West Point, everyone is failing at something. Classmates help each other to make sure they all get through the training. If there is one takeaway that I wish I could bottle and put into every organization is that we succeed at our very best only when we help others succeed. Create this idea: “you are never alone.”

I came away from West Point thinking about “engaged cultures.” How do you build this into your organization:

Service: are you willing to suffer for it, sacrifice for it?

Success: communal success; we only succeed by helping each other; that’s where we find meaning

Growth: Commitment to service is a life choice.

Question 5: Have you found your personal hedgehog? It’s a crux idea in Good to Great: It’s at the intersection of the three circles:

What are you passionate about? What are you made for? What are you encoded for? What you are put here for?

This is very different than what you might be good at. What drives your economic engine I met a persistent hedgehog in 1988, Steve Jobs. What if Steve Jobs quit in

1985? Level 4 leaders inspire people to follow them. Level 5 leaders inspire people to

follow the cause. True creators stay in the game. They can not control, predict, every hand dealt

in life is not up to them. Sometimes they get good hands, sometimes bad, but if you believe life comes down to a single hand, you can lose easily. If you see it as a series of hands; and refuse to play the game; and give every hand to the best of your ability, that adds up to a huge compounding effect. How many of you somewhere along the way have been flat out layed out on your back looking up? That’s when you have to stay in the game.

Michael Henley, West Point Professor, … note to a mentor that he feared he was fast becoming to old to be of any use, but he was in his hedgehog, being a leader that gets things done behind the scene without a lot of credit, and he stayed in the game, and after that note he became the first five star general office in the history of the army and eventually the recipient of the nobel prize. Real creative impact, accelerates if you choose, after 50.

Question 6: Will you build your unit, your minibus into a pocket of greatness. Great leadership at the top does not amount to much unless you have greatness

at the unit level of responsibility. Build your unit into a pocket of greatness. Focus on your unit, not on your career. Every responsibility you get make it a pocket of greatness. Above all be a “first who” leader then a “first what” leader. Figure out who should

be in the key seats on the bus ­ be rigorous about the people decisions. Be rigorous not ruthless, which means taking care of your people. In the end, life

is people. The greatest leaders find a way to make a contribution, a distinctive impact on

people. Question 7: The question. How will you change the lives of others?

There might be a lot of people or just a few, but how will some people’s lives be better and different because you were here on this earth.

Life is people and I hope you take advantage to be useful.

I end where I began, I’m grateful. It’s been my tremendous privilege to be back at the summit, with all of you, to share a little of what I have learned.

Ed Catmull @edcatmull Co­founder of Pixar Animation Studios; President of Walt Disney Animation Studios Creativity, Inc: One on One with Ed Catmull

This session is an interview hosted by Bill Hybels Bill recommends Creativity, Inc. Was determined to become an animator in his youth but didn’t see how to get to the

level of the Disney animators, so he switched over to physics in college. I’ve told this story before, and there is always this big disconnect between art and science. One of the great misconceptions is that they are noncontiguous ­ that creativity is the same on both sides. One of the unfortunate things in school funding cuts is that art is the first to go. Art is not about drawing, its about the ability to see.

Spent 60,000 hours on animating a hand in graduate school. Was fortunate to be involved early on in grad school where art and technology where coming together in computer graphics. It was fairly feasible at the time and forced him to solve the hard problems.

He helped develop the technology that moved the field forward. “I don’t care how great the computers can be, it all comes down to the power of a story.” Great animation connected to a poor story makes for a bad film. A lot of people misconceive stories as entertainment, without realizing that stories are how we communicate among people. We have learned that there is a form of stories, movies and books have various formats. There are some well told and some poorly told. The difference is that people can not only adhere to the form but they need to connect with others at a deep level (emotions).

Your finish products dazzle people ­ the last 14 pixar films have been #1 box office hits. You say in the book that every great film starts as an ugly baby. It’s a misconception that when you see something beautiful it was that way from the start; our misconceptions are incorrect. We really don’t know how to do it, or what we are doing, so we present it to people. How do we measure progress? Our measure is how the team is working together ­ if there is laughter in the room ­ they will solve the problem no matter how hard it is.

At some point, about six months, you pull together the “brain trust” that gives feedback to the creative team on how the film is developing. Tell us how that process works. In truth we accidently happened upon it and over the years developed it. Four principles.

Peers talking to Peers: Not boss to employee, it’s peer to peer In that room there is no power structure: they do not have to take the notes from

John Lasiter, or from me, or from Jim Morris, they are just taking the notes. They already feel vulnerable, so if they know someone is going to override them, they will be defensive.

They have a vested interest in each others success. If a friend of yours wants to pitch something to you, your vested interest is in your friendship, so you may not

tell them the truth. While they are all friends with each other, their vested interest is in the film being right.

We give and listen to good notes. Do we all look up to our own principles? Generally yes, but there are times when we

don’t. When human dynamics get in the way. Every once and awhile magic happens. By magic I mean the loss of ego in the room, when ideas come and go, when people do not become attached to their ideas, and it becomes easier to work through them to come up with solutions.

One of the premises underlying the whole idea is that these wonderfully gifted artists will inevitably get lost along the way in the artistic quest, so they need the brain trust to run their work by. When you are working on something, and are in the middle of it, you can not help but lose objectivity, so you need some mechanisms on the outside to help you. That’s why we have our peers, so they can help pull us out through mutual respect. Sometimes you need an outside force, because the whole group can get lost. Some, we show it to an objective audience.

If you were to run a totally different company, like a clothing company. Would you employ the brain trust concept? I believe the basic principles apply everywhere ­ family, profession, etc. We have problems that need to be solved. It’s not about drawing or writing, but about solving problems. And what is our mechanism for dealing with them? Coming up with solutions is a creative act. We want simple explanations, and these simple explanations dilute us. It requires a complex of people working together, and their culture is the determinate whether they can solve the problem.

You had to drive into the culture the idea of embracing failure and simultaneously candor with kindness. Talk to us about that culture. With a culture like that, it’s not always stable. One of them is the notion of failure, which has two meanings. We all have failed in our lives, and we learned from it, and we are better for it. The second is more negative, that when we fail it’s a very bad mistake ­ there is a real aurora around failure that we have emotional reactions from. These two meanings are simultaneously inside of us, and no matter what we say about it, almost everyone can not separate these two meanings. Recognizing this is a continual effort to address the new thing that is causing us to fear and trying to make it safe for them to be honest. Even the notion of honesty is hard. What are the real barriers to telling each other the truth ­which is why I use the word candor. There are times when it is not appropriate to use candor, it may devastate someone. If you can talk about their fears, you can get deeper into the issue and understand the problems.

Fail fast, it’s a part of the creative process. You will fail, so our job is to make it safe so you progress faster. You can fail slowly or fail fast. We want them to do it faster, but it’s also a message from us that it’s okay. We consciously make sure that people are not punished or embarrassed because of it. The faster you get over the embarrassment, you become more creative and it frees you up.

You believe that a budget is a really good idea and that it sometimes pushes creativity levels higher instead of lower. In the book you make a strong case that budgets can drive good outcomes. It is a complex issue but all good artists have to operate within

constraints. If we can do what we wanted for any project, the number of things you want to do is unbound. The problem with being unbounded is that you can’t do everything forever, the constraint forces us to reorder and to sort what we can do. The sorting is super important, and it’s not until time or budget is defined, that you can't define what it is you are to do. If you spend too much time on something, you zap the energy from it.

Concept of the beautifully shaded penny. In order to make everything beautiful, you can waste your energy on the things that are unseen. We can’t assume that everyone wanting to do the best thing is going to actually lead to the best outcome.

Concept of post­mortems ­ after each big project you perform an autopsy to understand the journey. Both at the personal level and organization level it’s important to step back and be introspective to understand what you did right and what you did wrong. You want to learn from it. In every project you learn a lot. The interesting thing is that people get this intellectually, but people don’t want to do it. Some of the post­mortems work well, some don’t. Some like to use it as an opportunity to say how good their team was ­ this is about looking at it differently each time because otherwise people game the system. We keep mixing up so we don't’ become accustomed to how we did it befor eand stop learning.

Disney / Pixar culture clash. Disney bought Pixar and the two cultures were very different. As part of that they put John Laster and me in charge of Disney animation. Disney had a long up and down history, and when the acquisition was made, it had been a 17 year downhill spiral. We went in their knowing they had failed, not knowing anyone, but wanting to fix it and restore their heritage. The question was would our principles apply to a different group. Most of the people thought we were spread too thin. We laid out the principles and had an order of things we wanted to do. It took about two years for the braintrust to really work well. Trust is something you have to earn, its not something you just agree to do. We learned that we could lay out the principles in four hours, but it took four years to ingrain it in the culture. Starting values and agreeing to them is easy to do, the hard part is holding each other accountable to them.

You even changed the office layout to help change the culture. It was very executive driven when they started Disney. That’s a terrible way of doing things. We essentially busted down the walls and put an open space at the center. The executives had offices at the centers so we could have open meetings and random lunches, so we could be present and have people feel comfortable and allow for accidental encounters.

You have worked with some of the most creative people in the world ­ creative people have a different style to access creative potential. Talk to us about the variety of ways people can get creative. Several components to it. We don’t have many rules. We don’t have a lot of framework because we don’t want to repeat ourselves. We also try to allow for people to naturally work on stuff they are interested in ­ we select people based on their passion. We encourage people do research trips to find out something they didn’t know. Scuba diving in Australia and visiting sewage plants for Finding Nemo. If you think about it, you’d never get there. You actually have to go there. If you bring the thing you don’t know into the film, you take it to a different level. Most people haven’t been inside in an actual kitchen, so by seeing how the restaurant works and bringing

that into a movie, you can sense it’s real. It’s that subconscious sense that effects people even though they don't know why.

Near the end you make a statement: you think it’s going to be stories that improve our world. It’s how we communicate with people. I was affected by stories as a child. We have complex emotions and they are part of our reality. If we understand that and allow for that we are healthier people ­ if we can get that message out we can be effective. Education is basically storytelling. Marketing is storytelling. Our job is to use storytelling for good.

Silent retreats: You do silent retreats and reflect on a regular basis. Why? What happens? The first time I was a bit scared. Most people find the notion of being with themselves as a really scary idea. I realized 3 days in that I’m not those thoughts I’m having in my head. You think this voice is ourselves and it’s when I was able to be quiet for awhile that I realized this chatter was not me. By feeling something different deeper I was in a calmer place and came back with a different perspective. It takes a few days to let those thoughts go.

Adam Grant @AdamMGrant Professor, Wharton School of Business; Best­selling Author Give and Take: A New Perspective on Leadership

Success is about hard work, talent and luck, but that overlooks the role of relationships in success.

There are only two kinds of people ­ the kind that divide the world into two kinds of people and those that don’t.

You really need three categories: Takers, Givers and Matchers We all have moment of giving, taking and matching. Your style is your default, the way

you treat most of the people most of the time. The real givers are those who are generously helping others. One of the big blind spots

we have is when we think we are giving but really taking. I think it’s sad news that givers tend to sink to the bottom. In groups givers thrive, because it’s critical to organizational effectiveness, but data

suggests they do it at their own expense. “To be as Canadian as possible under the circumstances.” Just because someone is

nice to you does not mean they actually like you. Pay careful attention to the words they tend to use.

Takers Givers Matchers

Not the best performers; tend to rise quickly and fall quickly. Takers hate to see other takers succeed.

Worst performers? Fail in short term, success in the long term. (engineering, medical, sales, etc) ­ doing too many favors for others

Make the world go around, most people work as matchers by default. They take it upon themselves to be the karma police.

means your work might be undone!

3 Recommendations

#1: Have to get the right people on the bus; if you want a culture of successful givers, you should hire not takers. One good egg does not make a dozen, but one bad apple can spoil the barrel. Even one taker on the team and paranoia starts to spread. Weed out the takers.

Weeding out agreeable takers: pay careful attention to the words they tend to use

Givers use ‘me’ in the context of failure more than success. Best way to spot a taker is not to look backward at their history but look forward at the future. “The greater your prediction that other people are thieves, the more likely that you are a thief”

“What will others do” is usually turned into “what would I do” Takers anticipate selfish behavior from others.

#2: Redefine Giving: How do you build a culture of productive giving? Pay attention to what kind of giving people actually do.

“In the end, only kindness matters.” Do more 5 minute favors to add value to other people’s lives. Give

microloans of your time, connections and experience. 100 hrs/yr is the sweet spot for having an impact without losing your

sanity Are you doing enough giving, too much giving, or just the right amount?

#3: You need a culture of help seekers: people have to ask. People don’t step up when they are afraid of vulnerability.

As a leader ­ ask for help. Givers step up ­ they can go to anyone. Takers become generous

because everything is visible. Matchers realize that matching is useful and there is a time and place for quid pro quo.

Pronoia. Planning behind your back to seek your welfare and speaking well of you!

Dr. Brené Brown Research Professor, University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work; Best­selling Author, Rising Strong

The story: My husband Steve and I pooled our vacation days to rent a lakehouse at Lake

Travis. We were really excited; Lake Travis is where I went growing up, learning to fish, kshoot a BB gun, set a table. Everything. I wanted to share the magic.

This is a 2 week vacation: there have to be rules. We had a plan for screen time, bed time and cooking: a healthy vacation. Goal was to come back in better shape than when we left.

House was on a deep water cove about 500 yards across; we planned to swim across the cove every morning. We are both former competitive swimmers. I went and bought a Speedo. This was our first time in the water together for 25 years. Our whole family was there ­ everyone invited.

Went down and dove in: stopped about halfway across. We were about 15 feet apart and I am overwhelmed by the sheer majesty of this place. I look at Steve and say “I feel so connected to you right now, I’m so glad we’re doing this” and he said “yes.”

My first thought was he was so overwhelmed with emotion that he didn’t know what to say back to me. We keep swimming to the other side… and on the way back we are much closer to each other. I tell him how grateful I am for the beauty. He looked back at me and said “water’s good” and kept swimming.

I am now fueled through the water by rage. The gift of midlife is you can play the tape to the end. “I forgot how vacation works. I forgot that I am in charge of breakfast, and lunch, and dinner, and bug spray, and goggles, and laundry, and everything else.” It then became uncomfortable. He wonders what happens, and the cold war begins. I will win, because I am meaner.

“I don’t know about you, but I grew up with eggshelly, and I don’t like eggshelly.” We get back in the water. It’s 30 ft, and we are treading water. I say “what’s

going on?” He says “I don’t want to have this conversation with you right now.” I replied “tough; I am trying to connect with you.” He turns around and says “are you being vulnerable?” “I am, but I’m right on the edge of rage. What you say next matters.”

What is the emotion we feel when we make a bid for connection and it is pushed away? Anger, a secondary emotion? No, it’s feeling like you are not good enough, shame.

Here’s the sentence that changed my life, parenting and leading: “I’m trying to connect with you and you are blowing me off. You either looked over at me while we were swimming and thought ‘she’s old, what happened’ or you looked over at me and said ‘she does not rock a speedo like she used to.’” He looked back and said “I don’t mind taking care of the kids.” “I don’t know what you were saying to me this morning; I was counting strokes trying to stave off the worst panic attack of my life. I had a dream last night about this ski boat…”

#1 shame trigger for women: appearance and body image #1 shame trigger for men: appearance of weakness You show me a man who can sit with a woman in real fear and vulnerability and listen to

her and not fix it, that’s a man who has done his own work with vulnerability. He challenged me: “You want the guy that when the boat comes he throws all five kids

to shore, swims really fast, catches them, and says hey babe, I’ve got this.”

When someone shares something vulnerable and sacred with us, and then we use it against them, that’s an unholy act.

The stories we are telling each other put our marriage in trouble. We are all we have. If we can’t sit here and tell the truth about it, we won’t be able to build a path to love, intimacy and joy. We have to show up and let ourselves be seen and known by each other.

Our brain is hardwired in the instant something difficult happens to make up a story about what’s happening. Our brain recognizes the narrative power of story. It rewards us chemically when we create a narrative ­ whether the story is accurate or not.

The middle space is where you can’t see far in front of you ­ but leadership is born. The other side of ‘not good enough’ is ‘better than’ The men and women who get back up and are braver after adversity have a process in

common. Reckoning: They reckon with emotion ­ and are willing to get curious about what

they are feeling and what triggered them. Emotion dictates behavior, if you want to create change you have to speak into that.

Transformational leaders do real discomfort. They have absolute emotional awareness about themselves and others. Curiosity and lines of inquiry are the greatest tools for leaders.

Rumble: with emotion; be willing to walk in and get brave talking about the discomfort.

“In our culture we clap for the truth.” You can choose courage or you can choose comfort; you can not have

both. Revolution:

Our worthiness lives inside these stories. When we deny the story, we deny ourselves. When we own the story, we get to write the ending. You don’t get to write the end of a story that you don’t own.

How much courage does it take to ask questions and get clear? Courage is rare because it’s uncomfortable

Physics of vulnerability is straightforward: if you are brave enough, often enough, you are going to fail.

There is nothing more dangerous than those of us willing to fail, willing to know heartbreak because we have learned how to get back up.

Sallie Krawcheck @SallieKrawcheck Chair, Ellevate Network; Former President, Bank of America's Global Wealth & Investment Management Leadership and Ethics on Wall Street

Wealth retirement gap Adding someone with a different perspective, from a different background adds more

than someone with the same skillset as everyone else. Diverse teams out­perform smarter, more capable teams.

Diversity in leadership = greater employee engagement, greater profitability Why is corporate america not making more progress on diversity? Diversity is hard. We all have inherent bias. We are used to seeing men in positions of

our power. The research tells us we like powerful men, but not powerful women. We all fall into a gender bias trap. F

#1 Recognize the differences #2 Ask different questions #3 Live your values #4: Realize we women are tired… we are tired. We do double the housework, triple the

childcare. That’s not what I’m talking about ­ it’s hair and makeup. Story about being CFO at Citigroup and requiring more prep time than most and balancing this in the workplace.

#5: Watch the micro­lessons. Leadership is the result of thousands of mini­lessons and the feedback we get.

How did you get through the ups and downs of your career? The usual answer is resilience and grit. For me, it doesn’t fully capture it.

Work every day as if your children are watching… because they are. Hybels comments: One of the biggest mistakes I made in church work was a

misjudgement about 15 years ago - did an 18 month research project when we started Willow about how men and women should use their skills. We were a young church and a couple hundred people left our church because we believed women could serve in certain ways. Many churches today limit the potential of what women can do. 1`

Albert Tate Founder and Senior Pastor, Fellowship Monrovia in Southern California Leading with Leftovers

Who do I believe? Lie in truth's clothing or naked truth? (After story told about truth and lie swimming)

There is this reality about leadership: I play on the field, but I work at home. If I leave it all on the field I go home with nothing. How do you lead and stills have something left? So we can have a future?

The only place we can live in abundance is in Jesus. (Parable of the loaves and fishes) Why does Jesus ask dumb questions? He wants them to do the math, add it up and see

that we don’t have the resources to do this. Now that you know that it’s an impossibility, you will look up on the other side of the miracle and say “if it had not been for the Lord…”

You never know when God uses a dumb idea to transform A dumb idea + God’s hand = my transformation What would it mean for us to build a culture where there was space to bring dumb

ideas? Jesus specializes in using dumb ideas! Gang members baking. Jesus using what you bring for a miracle. What are you bringing?

The little boy has brought his lunch, gives it to Jesus. Then steps away. What does it mean to pack your lunch? And to step away, get out of the way.

He discovers in that moment the awe and wonder of God: what happens when you bring what you have, offer it, and let God have his way with it. Have you gotten out of the way? or are you still carrying it?

When was the last time you were amazed that your scarcity turned into his abundance? And you were in wonder about the power of God?

Hey friends: we would love help. The greatness of these notes happens when we all add and make them better. Please feel free to chime in, help record, and add details! Don’t feel like they don’t belong to you ­ they belong to all of us. Thank you!