I listened to a podcast conversation between Annahid Dashtgard and Jerry Colonna this week that inspired me to write about my relationship with race and belonging. I first heard Dashtgard on an episode of Colonna’s Reboot podcast, and then read her book The Bones of Belonging to learn more about her journey, before discovering her […]
Category: people
Creating Collective Intelligence
Several years ago, Google ran a study to determine what made teams effective, and later published the results, including sharing a summary in a New York Times article. While one might think that an effective team depends on having the most capable individuals, Google’s researchers discovered that the members of the team mattered far less […]
The Courage to Be Disliked, by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga
Amazon link Written as a dialogue between a passionate but unhappy youth and a wise philosopher, this book takes on big questions like what it means to be happy, and how to live a meaningful life. It’s based on the work of psychologist Alfred Adler but you don’t need to know anything going in, as […]
Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship, by Terrence Real
Amazon link There is a path toward us, toward integration, connection, wholeness. And there is a path toward you and me, trauma, scarcity, selfishness. Choose connection. This book centers around a simple idea. When we were children, we adapted to our environment to get our emotional needs met. We used our parents as role models, […]
Practicing Celebration
Celebration is really hard for me. I used to feel that celebration is only for achieving something you didn’t expect to achieve, but after I’ve done something, I was clearly expected to have done it, so what is there to celebrate? Instead, I historically have pushed on to the next challenge. Yet researchers like BJ […]
Lost Connections, by Johann Hari
Amazon link Johann Hari was diagnosed with depression as a teenager, and was prescribed the antidepressant Paxil, because his doctor told him that depression was a disease of the brain, so his brain chemistry needed to be fixed. He stayed on antidepressants for 13 years, dealing with side effects like weight gain and sexual dysfunction, […]
Radical Friendship, by Kate Johnson
Amazon link Radical Friendship book site I learned of this book from listening to this podcast episode where Layla Saad, author of Me and White Supremacy (which I found valuable and challenging), interviewed the author Kate Johnson about her new book. Johnson, a multiracial Buddhist practitioner and teacher, based the book around the Mitta Sutta, […]
Together, by Vivek Murthy
Amazon link In response to my newsletter talking about Radical Friendship, a friend suggested I read this book, subtitled “The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World”. Dr. Murthy became the Surgeon General of the United States in 2014, and was initially focused on all the usual health problems of heart disease, […]
You don’t have the answer
One of my pet peeves is when people tell me what I should do. Normally, this is because they did something that worked for them, and they want to tell me I should also do it. I generally don’t want such advice for a variety of reasons: I don’t want the same thing that they […]
Creating Alignment with Others
I’ve described leadership as the art of identifying gaps between what is and what could be, and mobilizing others to address them. In the alignment series thus far, I have been addressing the identifying gaps part of leadership in identifying your own gaps for personal development, identifying an aspiration to orient your actions, and identifying […]
