One habit. Practiced daily. Compounded over years. That is the actual price of becoming an excellent leader, and most ambitious people are paying a completely different price instead.
Ryan Hawk has spent 11 years hosting The Learning Leader Show, with over 700 conversations with some of the highest-performing people in business, sports, and beyond. His new book, The Price of Becoming, is built on a simple but uncomfortable idea: the thing that separates sustaining excellence from fleeting success is not talent, vision, or even hard work. It’s reliability. Consistency. The willingness to go to bed a little wiser than when you woke up, day after day, without interrupting the compounding.
I got to sit down with Ryan on the Systematic Leader podcast, and I walked away with a pile of notes and one image I can’t stop thinking about.
Ryan flew to Boulder, Colorado, to record an interview with Jim Collins, author of Good to Great and one of the most respected names in business. Before they started recording, Collins walked in and began quietly emptying his pockets. Apple Watch. Key fob. Phone. A Ziploc bag with cash and an emergency contact. He placed it all in a neat pile outside the door. Then he walked in.
He never mentioned it. Never made a speech about presence. He just removed every possible distraction before the conversation began.
Ryan said he asked Collins’ assistant about it afterward. Her answer: “Jim is so good about being locked in on what he chooses to do.”
That story tells you everything about what this episode is about.
What Ambitious Leaders Consistently Get Wrong
Ryan has asked hundreds of high performers what separates the great ones from everyone else. The answer is almost never what people expect. Not charisma. Not risk tolerance. Not some secret morning routine that takes four hours.
The leaders who struggle, he says, are usually the ones who don’t have vivid clarity about their own purpose and values. They are wandering. Hoping the right results show up. And sometimes they do get lucky, but luck doesn’t compound.
The Inner Scoreboard vs. The Outer Scoreboard
One of the most useful distinctions in this conversation is the difference between winning externally and winning internally. Ryan has worked with Brooke Cupps, the winningest high school basketball coach at Centerville High School, who has never set a single goal around winning games. Every goal his teams set is a process goal, tied to their core values: tough, passionate, unified, and thankful.
The score, Ryan says, seems to take care of itself when your focus is that clear. The leaders who get out of whack are the ones fixated on what others will think, how something will look, or hitting a specific number. That outward focus crowds out the internal work that actually produces results.
See It, Say It: The Simplest Culture-Building Practice
Ryan shared the framework he uses with his coaching clients, borrowed from his collaborator Garen Stokes. The idea is this: when you observe something worth saying, you say it immediately.
That is the entire system. Think it. Say it. The compounding effect of that habit, applied to your relationships and your team culture over the years, is enormous.
5-Min. Systems Segment:
Vivid Clarity Is the Leader’s Job
One theme Ryan returns to again and again is that if someone on your team doesn’t know what excellence looks like in their role, that is the leader’s fault. Not the employee’s. Yours.
The best leaders define what an A-plus job looks like, communicate it clearly, and have those conversations constantly, not just once a year. Coaching is not an annual event. It is a daily habit. The teams that thrive are the ones where everyone knows exactly where they stand because someone is always saying so.
Full Interview:
About Ryan Hawk
Ryan Hawk is the host of The Learning Leader Show, one of the longest-running leadership podcasts with over 700 episodes and millions of listeners worldwide. His new book, The Price of Becoming (Amazon Link), releases July 21st. You can also connect with him on LinkedIn.
Listen to the full episode on the Systematic Leader Podcast wherever you get your shows. And if you want one practical systems idea in your inbox every week, join the newsletter at systematicleader.
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