Colin Nanka, Senior Director at Salesforce and endurance adventure racer, blends sales leadership with extreme racing. He talks about sustaining excellence through integrity and hard work. He shares why multi-day races restored perspective after career setbacks. He explains mentorship as learning from those above, beside, and below and how racing shapes resilience and leadership.
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question_answer ANECDOTE
Crisis On Top Of The World Sparked A New Path
A crisis after top performance led Colin to Mount Kilimanjaro and a shift toward adventure for balance and service.
He trained, nearly quit on Kilimanjaro, then used nature and giving back to reset his life and career direction.
insights INSIGHT
Mentorship Above Beside And Below
Success starts with a choice and deliberate mentorship structure.
Colin advocates a three-tier mentorship model: someone above you, peers beside you, and people below you to teach and reinforce learning.
volunteer_activism ADVICE
Buy The Gallup Test And Build On Your Strengths
Invest $15 and take the Gallup strengths test to find your top natural strengths.
Colin's top strength is Learning, which he uses daily through podcasts, blogs, and small idea compounding.
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The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk. Episode 248: Colin Nanka Colin Nanka is the Senior Director, Enablement for North American Sales and Leadership Development at the world's leading Customer Relationship Management Company, Salesforce.com. He is a proven sales leader with over 20 years of sales experience including time at Salesforce and Xerox Corporation. In his spare time, he competes in multi-day, self sustained, adventure races in the world's most treacherous terrains, including the Sahara Desert, Gobi Desert, Iceland, Grand Canyon, Atacama Desert and, most recently, in Antarctica.
The Learning Leader Show
"Success starts with a choice. Find someone above you, below you, and at your level. That's mentor-ship."
Show Notes:
Commonalities of leaders who sustain excellence?
Understanding of their strengths - self awareness
"Do what you say you will do" "DWYSYWDO" - integrity
The combination of vision --> execution
How have you sustained excellence?
Know how to prioritize
Tiered accounts
Invested 4-6 hours on Saturday and Sunday while others were not working
"Going in on the weekend" - The sheer amount of hard work AND extra work differentiated from the rest
Going door to door in Canada - "It takes 20 knocks to get 1 opportunity"
"Good pipeline solves all ills"
"Flood the market with good will"
Marc Benioff's management process, V2MOM, an acronym that stands for vision, values, methods, obstacles, and measures
Why do crazy races all over the world?
"I hit a crisis. I was very successful and then had a couple bad years. It hurt my confidence."
"I realize there is more to life than just working. The elements of nature... A give back -- be of service to others."
The 2011 Sahara Desert race - Trained for a full year. 6 days a week, 160 miles/week.
"Success starts with a choice. Find who's the best, learn from them."
Mentor-ship = "Above you, below you, and at your level." Have all three.
The practice of "playing up." Play against someone who is better than you in order to stretch and grow.
Constantly put yourself in positions to be stretched
Using Gallup to find your strengths -- "A very wise investment"
Colin's #1 strength - Learning. Curiosity
The compound effect of learning, growing, approaching each conversation with a curious mind
What have you learned from the adventure races?
Dealing with failure. How to learn from others. "We all get better from sharing ideas."
Biggest mistake new managers make?
"They are constantly surprised about the "people" side"
How to have tough conversations
They try to do it all -- You need to be a multiplier -- Trust, Coach, Empower
"If you don't lengthen the leash, you aren't allowing them to grow"
First 30 days - "Focus on winning hearts and minds"
Do a full day off site meeting with no focus on the business. Get to know them.
The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk