Notes from book Trillion Dollar Coach

Introduction Source

• Bill’s unique insights into leadership and team-building made him one of the world’s most influential and important business minds by the time

Chapter 3: After leaving Apple, Bill set himself on the path to coaching and mentoring. Source

• Bill met up with Eric and other Google leaders just about every week

Chapter 4: True leaders champion their companies’ core values and break ties rather than dictating terms. Source

• The response was unanimous – they wanted managers. Why? They needed leaders to resolve stalemates. Because everyone was on an equal footing, disagreements about which projects needed prioritizing weren’t being resolved
• flat hierarchies are great at fostering creativity but less adept at implementing the innovation that results.
• it’s a leader’s duty to remind everyone of the company’s first principles – the values that define its mission and purpose.

Chapter 5: Effective leaders aren’t afraid to show their emotions. Source

• More importantly, he’d drop everything to help people out if they were in trouble.
• showing that you care about the people you work with is a telltale sign of an effective leader.
• companionate love – a kind of emotional openness that treats everyone as equals – have higher rates of employee satisfaction, better team performance levels and lower absenteeism
• When Bill was working at Apple, he made sure that the board responded to presentations they liked by getting out of their chairs and clapping
• Simply remembering names and asking “how’s it going?” or “what are you working on?” was more than enough to start building personal connections with his coworkers.

Chapter 6: Bias can prevent top talent getting a hearing, so it’s important to bring everyone to the table. Source

• he was the greatest champion of bringing women to the boardroom table
• winning is about selecting the best players, whoever they are
• higher IQ teams allow everyone to participate, rather than being dominated by one or two voices
• emotional intelligence
• encourage mentoring programs.

Chapter 7: Trust is the most important currency in the boardroom. Source

• trust is all about a willingness to take a chance because you have positive expectations for someone else’s behavior.
• Bill’s method of earning people’s trust was simple: listen! Google computer scientist Alan Eustace calls Bill’s approach free-form listening
• he focused his full attention on what people were saying. More importantly, he asked questions.
• Practitioners of this kind of respectful inquiry are regularly regarded as the most trustworthy and valuable conversation partners because of their ability to trigger spontaneous insights.
• the best answers usually emerge when you talk things out honestly.

Chapter 8: Final summary Source

• With his passion and straight-talking advice, Campbell helped a series of start-ups conquer the world and generate trillions of dollars in revenue.
• insistence on getting emotional responses to setbacks out of the way at the beginning of meetings and moving on to other issues at hand. Psychologists call this problem-focused coping.

Linking

• Socratic Leadership
• Personal Systemic Coaching
• Leadership Coaching
• Multipliers

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