How Leaders Lead with David Novak

In this BONUS episode of How Leaders Lead, David shares the introduction to his new book, Take Charge of You: How Self-Coaching can Transform your Life and Career. Find out how to take the methods and metrics of coaching into your own hands and find the success you want in life.

This week’s guest is Dr. Tom House, a world-renowned expert in the biomechanics of throwing who's coached elite athletes like Tom Brady, Drew Brees, Nolan Ryan, and Greg Maddux. He's been called a quarterback whisperer and a pitching guru, but if you ask him, he prefers to simply be called “coach.”  Tom is the preeminent pioneer who brought science into the coaching equation. For decades, Tom has...

Today's guest is Stephanie Stuckey, the CEO of Stuckey’s. This company started in 1937 by Stephanie's grandfather who opened a single store in eastern Georgia. It was one of the country's first roadside retail shops. At its peak in the 1970s, Stuckey’s had grown to 368 stores in 40 states, along pretty much every major interstate. From humble beginnings to a roadside empire. But then, things turne...

Today’s guest is Shantanu Narayen, the Chairman and CEO of Adobe. It’s the leader’s job to communicate the vision of the company in a way that ignites the hearts and minds of the people they lead and plant the flag of a big idea. Our teams don’t show up simply for the paycheck. They want something bigger to be a part of, a compelling vision to get behind that infuses all kinds of meaning and passi...

Today's guest is Larry Senn, who's actually the father of corporate culture, and the Chairman and Senn Delaney. Larry and his business partner were hired by Sam Walton in the early days of Walmart. And it was there that Larry began to understand the intangible part of an organization that really makes a difference. Today, we call this company culture, which is simply defined as the way people beha...

Today's guest is Brittany Fuisz, the Founder and CEO of Malibu Mylk. Building something from scratch is not easy. In fact, the majority of businesses that launched don't make it past five years. So what is it that allows some companies to thrive while others fail? Whoever leads the business in the mindset they approach their work with is a key ingredient in the success of a company. And in my conv...

Today's guest is Scott Hamilton, an Olympic gold medalist and founder of the Scott Hamilton Cares Foundation, an organization that is working to eliminate cancer. Now, Scott obviously doesn't need much of an introduction. You already know about his gold medal and figure skating. You probably have seen his incredible backflips on the ice. And you have likely watched him as a commentator on the Olym...

Today's guest is Ken Chenault, the Former Chairman and CEO of American Express, and the current Chairman and Managing Partner of General Catalyst, a dynamic private equity firm. Now, if you run a business or lead a team, there are moments when you need to lean into confrontation. And I don't mean dance around the confrontation, I'm talking about facing it head on. For a lot of people, this can be...

Today's guest is Aneel Bhusri, the Co-Founder, Co-CEO and Chairman of Workday, an American on‑demand financial management and human capital management software vendor. When Aneel started Workday with David Duffield, they defined a handful of core values for their company. Now this is pretty common practice for business leaders, but here's the problem. A lot of leaders write down the company values...

Today’s guest is Ginni Rometty, the Former Chairman, President and CEO of IBM and current Co-Chairman of the OneTen Initiative. Rising through the ranks from systems engineer to CEO, Ginni has learned to be comfortable with situations outside her comfort zone, because that’s where she grew the most in her journey as a leader. While leading IBM, Ginni learned what was essential about IBM that must...

Today's guest is Dave Calhoun, the President and CEO of Boeing, the largest aerospace company and leading manufacturer of commercial jetliners Defense, Space and security systems. Dave joined Boeing as CEO in January of 2020, and little did he know the challenges that he’d be up against only a couple months later, when COVID hit. But what Dave has shown is the great leaders restore stability in th...

Today's guest is Will Ahmed, the Founder and CEO of WHOOP, a wearable fitness tracker that measures a few key metrics to help top athletes and everyday consumers achieve peak performance. You're going to learn that Will is an incredibly sharp young leader. Believe it or not, he's in his early 30s, running a company that was recently valued at $3.6 billion. Running a company at that level requires...

To round off 2021, today’s episode features six of David’s favorite insights from the year from leaders like Marvin Ellison, Indra Nooyi, and Tom Brady. You’re going to learn about how to react to overwhelming and scary situations with focus, confidence, planning, and communication. Plus, David will teach you his number one exercise for taking stock of where you are now in order to work towards wh...

Today's guest is Steve Kerr, the head coach of the Golden State Warriors. Earlier in his career as a player, Steve won three NBA titles with the Chicago Bulls alongside the one and only Michael Jordan. He then went on to win two more titles playing for the San Antonio Spurs, and then he became a coach and won three more titles for the Warriors. Needless to say, this guy knows how to win, and he kn...

From the United States Marine Corps to Wall Street, Eric Gleacher believes the world belongs to the aggressive. After one round of golf with the right person, the trajectory of his career changed as he pursued his dream of working in finance. After only four years at Lehman Brothers, Eric became a partner and was a large part of establishing the merger and acquisition department. Against the advic...

A force of positivity and pioneer of Financial Technology, Alexa von Tobel felt so strongly about democratizing financial advice for Americans that she dropped out of Harvard business school to build her first business, LearnVest, in 2008. After revolutionizing digital financial services, she sold LearnVest the very same week that she gave birth to her first child. Now, Alexa von Tobel is the Mana...

Scott Mahoney, the Chairman and CEO of Peter Millar, goes the distance to for quality in how he shapes the brand and develops his people. Coming up in business, it wasn’t until Scott worked at Polo that he found his love for golf and apparel sales married in an exciting career. He was inspired to buy Peter Millar during the long drive back from a USGA meeting, and moved quickly to scale the brand...

Dr. Neal ElAttrache is a renowned American orthopedic surgeon best known as the Lead Physician for the Los Angeles Dodgers and Rams — as well as his patents and innovation in sports medicine. As a leader, Neal believes strongly in the three “A’s” — Affability, Availability, and Ability. Listen as David and Neal discuss why chasing passion is a sure way to set yourself up for failure and burnout, a...

Every leader knows how important listening is. But how often do we break it down and try to understand what it actually means to be a good listener?   Today’s guest, Rob Light, can really help us answer that question. He’s the Managing Partner of Creative Artists Agency, the world’s largest talent and sports agency. As the head of their music division, he has represented some huge names like Bruce...

How do leaders navigate conversations about the challenges parents, and especially women, face in the workplace? The first step is to simply have the conversation and get the shared perspectives of men and women. In this special episode from the How Leaders Lead Insight Series, Ashley Novak Butler, the Executive Director of the Lift-a-Life Foundation, interviews her dad, David, and Indra Nooyi abo...

Today’s guest is Jessica Kim, Co-Founder and CEO of ianacare, a digital platform that connects family caregivers with the resources they need to care for their loved ones.  Jessica founded ianacare because she herself was a caregiver in her mother’s last days of life. She saw firsthand how frustrating, exhausting and isolating the experience was, and she knew there had to be a better way.  That’s...

Anyone listening this show knows that I am absolutely passionate about the game of golf, and how blessed I am to have been able to play with some of the top players in the game. So we thought we'd mix things up a little bit and create an episode featuring some of the best stories we've heard from around the golf course - some that I'm sure you've never heard before, and you definitely don't want t...

Today’s guest is Dan Cathy, Chairman & CEO of Chick-fil-A. With Dan at the helm, Chick-fil-A has become the envy of the restaurant industry. The average unit volumes in their stores are absolutely unheard-of – even though they’re only open six days a week. And they’ve had sales increases every single year of the 75 years they’ve been in business. You can’t do that kind of growth for that long with...

Today’s guest is Tom Brady, the quarterback of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and – let’s be honest – the greatest of all time. Now, we all go into new situations where we're expected to come in, turn the team around, and perform. And that’s exactly what Tom did at the Bucs, winning the Super Bowl in his very first season at Tampa Bay. That’s why we call him the GOAT, right!? In this conversation, we r...

Today’s guest is Johnny Taylor, President & CEO of SHRM, the Society of Human Resource Management, which is the association for over 300,000 human resource officers in 165 countries. The formula for success in any business is to get your people capability right. That’s how you’re going to satisfy more customers. That’s how you make more money. And more importantly, that’s how you make a bigger dif...