This week a question came to me about job/work overwhelm. The question was around feeling overwhelm at work and whether or not I ever felt overwhelmed by my workload. While I do feel overwhelmed at times by the emotional aspect of some of the work I do, I rarely feel workload overwhelm. So, I honestly had to say “no”.

The reason I rarely feel overwhelm is due, in part, to many of the tactics I’ve shared here. I do my very best to stay on top of things like creating small habits to increase productivity and efficiency, spending a few extra minutes on communication to reduce time later on, using systems and tools to remain efficient, and using micro-projects which can enhance efficiency, reduce overwhelm, increase productivity and even bring joy.

So this week I want to focus on reducing overwhelm, not all forms of overwhelm, but those related to workload, tasks, getting things done, organization, etc. Emotional overwhelm can come from these things, of course, but my primary focus today isn’t on emotions. And, it goes without saying that if you reduce overwhelm in other areas, emotional overwhelm can be reduced as well.

So let’s dig in…

Reducing Job/Work/Task Overwhelm

I use a variety of strategies for reducing workload overwhelm. These aren’t the only strategies I use on any given day to manage my life. There are different strategies for different pieces of the day and the strategies shift. I’m a firm believer in flexibility.

I want to add that you need to test things out to make sure the strategies you choose work best for you. And, finally, make sure you test your strategies over time to make sure that they continue to work well. If a strategy doesn’t work very well anymore, switch it up. Remember, flexibility!

Here we go:

• Ask for what you need. I see this a lot, folks let overwhelm continue to build and build because they don’t simply say, “this isn’t working for me”. Yes, we all want to do a good job at work. Yes, we all want to look and feel competent. But overwhelm can, oftentimes, cause us to do substandard work. Don’t wait until it’s too late and things go off the rails. As soon as you feel overwhelm creeping in, evaluate. Figure out what needs to change and sometimes that means going to a boss, supervisor or employees and outlining how you can be more effective and the changes you need in order to do it. Ask for what you need when you need it.
• Set boundaries around your time. If you don’t control your time, everyone else will. I do my very best to control my time so that I can stay on top of my workload. This is a place where you can make big strides in reducing overwhelm. Everything eats into time, everything. If you hope to control your time and get the most out of the time you have, you have to be strict. Every time you let time get taken from you it extends your working day. Five minutes here, 15 minutes there, and before you know it your day is 30 minutes longer. Extending your day to get all of the things required done means that you are tired and less effective. Things take longer. All of this adds to overwhelm. If your workload is consistently growing then it’s time to step back and begin tracking your time for a few days, it’s an eye opening exercise and can help you find places to set some rules and boundaries. (This is a big topic, so look for another piece just on this.)
• Pick the right tools and use them. You shouldn’t feel pigeon-holed into using a specific set of tools in the same way every day. The idea is to have a bucket of tools to pull from. BUT, the tools in your bucket need to be good tools. And, you’ll have more than one bucket that you’ll pull from during the day. Your day runs on lots of tools. If you want to get the absolute best from your day, use the best tools you can, and use the best tools for you.
• Set up mini-systems. If you are not yet working to create small systems to keep tasks easy and efficient, then stop what you are doing right now and spend some time on it. For every 10 minutes you spend creating an effective process for a task, you save hours later. Time spent up front is necessary but the savings can be huge. Over time, as you use your process and refine it, you’ll reap even more rewards. I find that tasks that once took 30 minutes now take less than 10 minutes consistently. That means that at the end of the day I’ve accomplished more. It also means that I get to keep some of that time for myself. Ultimately, it will help you catch up and keep on top of things, which means less overwhelm.
• Eat all of the frogs. One of my all time favorite audiobooks is Eat that Frog by Brian Tracy. I listened to it more than 15 years ago. The big take away for me then was that you have to tackle the big stuff, not just the low hanging fruit, if you want to make strides in getting things done. Over the years I’ve tried to remember that one rule when I find myself procrastinating on bigger tasks. I tend to procrastinate when I’m stuck on one bit of the bigger project or when I’m having a hard time breaking a bigger project into manageable chunks. Eventually, I realize I just need to eat the damn frog and force myself to make some progress, any progress. That always seems to break the bottleneck. Once in awhile you just might have to eat the frog…
• Pack it and store it. We all have things that no longer serve us. These come in a variety of formats. Sometimes it’s a process or tool that just doesn’t work well anymore. Sometimes it’s stuff that begins to clutter our lives. Maybe it’s a place we once found joy in but don’t any longer. We don’t need to hang onto these things. Simply trying to hang onto them can cause overwhelm. It’s okay to pack away things that no longer serve you. Sometimes you can box them up and send them off to a good home. Other times you might just want to box them up and store them. And finally, you can pack things up and store them mentally, refusing to spend energy on things that no longer work for you. Don’t compromise on this and, it’s also okay to be a little bit brutal about it… and it’s also okay to feel a sense of loss. Ultimately, packing things away will reduce overwhelm and you’ll likely feel a whole bunch lighter.

Got some great “beat the overwhelm” tips? Send them my way!

[This piece was originally published in the Generalist newsletter.]

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In undertaking the creation of a new newsletter, I had to think about what I was going to do and how I was going to do it. Now, that means taking a bit of time to think about it… but NOT overthinking it. You can’t jump into a black hole every time you want to start a project or streamline a process and be highly productive.

Course correction is a tool you can use to be more efficient. The idea around course correction is to pick a few ideas, do a quick pros and cons analysis, and start. Things don’t always work out the way you might envision them but that’s okay. Course correction gives you the freedom to change a piece of the process without revamping the whole.

If you find the idea of starting quickly difficult, then use a timer or hard deadline to avoid overthinking. The key is to start your project quickly. Here’s why… you cannot possibly think of every single scenario around execution of your project. If you just start, then streamlining and saving time happens much faster because you are forced to course correct. Course correcting allows you to make changes “on the fly” to increase efficiency and that can’t happen if you are still thinking about it. You need to be actively working a process in order to adjust it.

Course correcting does have a right and wrong way in this scenario. The right way is to make small changes or singular changes. If you make big changes or you change four or five things, then you may not know what, of those changes, is working and you may not see a positive result. The way those changes interact with each other can also affect whether or not you see a positive outcome.

For this newsletter project, I went back and forth a bit on my primary execution tool. I could use Gmail… I didn’t have a giant list of people to send it to and it didn’t need to be fancy. But… what if I might want to do more later? I decided on Mailchimp. Here’s why… it’s the more efficient solution. I can have a simple link for people to get on the list, it’s free, it’s easy to use, it does the heavy lifting. Simple, clean, efficient… that means more time for teaching my furry girls how to take selfies.

The next decision to make… what the helvetica do I name this thing? I didn’t want to stew on this, I really didn’t. I had an immediate idea and used it while I worked on the content. By the time I was ready to publish something more relevant came to me. I never went down a rabbit hole and I never spent time overthinking it.

Finally, content. What the should I write about? I chose the simplest thing ever… “Write what you know.” Blam! Done. In record time, 20 minutes, I had the initial details ironed out. These are the kinds of things that can easily spiral into a rabbit hole of overthinking. You could literally spend weeks on a tool choice weighing the pros and cons of Mailchimp-like programs. You could spend days on a name. Weeks on a topic.

Instead, if you really want to get more shiitake done, you just need to start. I might have to change something as things progress. I may have to course correct. But, look at all the time I’ve saved… now, you’re reading this newsletter and, well, shiitake got done…

• Total newsletter project time start to execution:
  • 20 minutes total project design
  • 20 minutes on a header design in Photoshop
  • 10 minutes setting up Mailchimp
  • 30 minutes designing the first issue and saving as a template
  • 3 hours or so on the writing (I revamped and revised a bit)

Moving forward… I have set up an Evernote Notebook for capturing ideas and for writing each newsletter. I estimate spending 2-3 hours per week writing each issue which includes gathering research and notes. I don’t want to speed up the writing process too much because improvement is the primary goal… faster would not achieve better results.

What projects are you working on? Can course correction help you move them forward?

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Listening…

It’s a skill. Some are better than others at it.

Then thing is… it is a critical and necessary business and professional skill. You need it. Success depends on it.

Recently, I chatted with another business professional who was looking for a specific service and wanted to find a contractor to do the work. She reached out to someone we both know and told me her experience.

She explained in a phone call, in detail, what she needed, she also explained her budget. She was clear. I know this because she is exceptionally detail-oriented.

The contractor came back with an estimate double the budget and included all kinds of things in the proposal that were not in alignment with the requested work.

“What?” I asked. “How can that be?”

I was really surprised.

Then my colleague said, “She didn’t listen… At.All.”

Yup. She didn’t listen.

Result… no contract.

So I suggested someone I knew that might be able to help. I gave her the name and website. She looked up this person and reached out.

Her reach out email was generic. No details, no budget.

This second person replied with a proposal.

“What?” I asked. “How can that be?”

I was shocked. How can someone give a proposal without even asking for details of the work? Never mind the budget part because this person fell within the budget.

Result… no contract.

If the person wasn’t even willing to have a conversation to find out what was required, then my colleague wasn’t interested.

Now, that might sound harsh. Why not give her another chance since she came in under budget?

Well, actually, I might have done the same thing. I mean with all of the choices out there why settle for someone who doesn’t listen? Or someone who doesn’t do customer relations?

These contractors aren’t bad people and I would argue that there’s a customer for everyone… in this case everyone did not include those first two choices for my colleague.

I was disappointed. I had referred one of them and I knew the other.

Of all the things we are teaching in business why aren’t we teaching this?

Customer service isn’t just about treating people well or going above and beyond. It isn’t about “the customer is always right”.

It’s about trust.

Before a customer cares about whether or not you can do the job, whether or not you are qualified, whether or not your product fits their criteria, whether or not you are capable… the customer requires trust.

Trust doesn’t come from capability, qualifications, or price.

Trust comes from listening, from actually hearing what they want, from making time for them, from providing a proposal that aligns with what they asked for NOT what you think they need. Trust comes from genuinely caring about each prospect even when you know it might not work out.

Last night a student asked me about customer service, they asked if I thought the customer was always right.

My response… “Hell no the customer isn’t always right! BUT that does not mean that they don’t each deserve our respect or that we shouldn’t work as hard as we can to make things right.”

Great customer service, the kind that builds trust, the kind that builds reputation, isn’t really about the customer at all.

Great customer service is about us, the business owner and professional. It’s about our willingness to care even when caring is hard.

And caring, oftentimes, means simply listening…

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I hope everyone is having a great summer!

I have been digging into my August non-fiction reads and I have some good ones to share with you next month. For now let’s take a look at what I managed to get through in July. I think you’ll find something here that might resonate. I’m not going to lie Amy Cuddy’s Presence is going to be an all-time favorite. It’s worth your time to see her TED talk (link), I watched it after I’d read the book and it’s a great primer if you want to get a feel for what to expect.

I had so many takeaways from the July reads that I’ll likely share more with you but for now, here are my thoughts:

Presence by Amy Cuddy

My favorite July read was Presence.

Amy Cuddy is a social psychologist, her TED talk has been viewed more than 50 million times. One of my recent reads led me to her book and boy am I glad!

I’ve been interested in non-verbal communication for years. I’m fascinated by what can be gleaned by simply paying attention to what someone isn’t saying; how they hold themselves, how they walk, facial expressions, including vocal tone and inflection. Presence is a culmination of all the non-verbal signals we receive from someone. The things that we can’t put our finger on but that make you take notice and listen. I think of it as charisma. We know it when we see it.

Cuddy sets out to define presence and then shows us how we can achieve it. I was completely hooked as soon as I started reading. She shares her story, she shares the stories of others, and she shares her research. I was especially interested in the chapters that focused on body language. If you’ve heard of the Wonder Woman pose and its relation to increasing confidence, then you’ve heard of Cuddy’s work.

Can posing really increase presence? Yes, it can and the science behind it is fascinating.

I highly recommend this one… go grab a copy (it’s available in paperback) or head over to the library. You won’t be sorry!

Company of One by Paul Jarvis

One of my more favorite reads this year is Company of One. I tagged the shiitake out of this one. I found so much to relate to in this book… I could have written it myself. What I loved most was the amount of research Jarvis shared.

Something I discuss with college students is how they want their businesses to look in relation to their lifestyles. Many of them haven’t considered that they don’t need to be a big corporation to have financial success. They just assume they need to scale in order to make more money and it’s just not true. I ran a small construction company with 30-50 employees and made more money running a 3-person automotive repair business. It was also far less stressful.

Jarvis argues that you can have a small business that outsources in lieu of employees. He is not talking about freelancing but rather a business.

Company of One sets out to provide information and guidance on how to build a super small business. It’s an easy read filled with great statistics, strategies, and stories of entrepreneurs who have embraced and succeeded with a one-person operation.

If you are more interested in lifestyle freedom and less interested in scale, then this book is for you. I highly recommend it.

Be Fearless by Jean Case

Jean Case is an accomplished woman. A philanthropist who spent many successful years in the tech industry, Case is also the current National Geographic Chairwoman. Sprinkled throughout Be Fearless are stories of her experiences which were, for me, the more interesting parts of the book. Of course, having read so many books, I felt as if the “5 Principles for a Life of Breakthroughs and Purpose” weren’t especially unique.

This is still a good read and an easy one. If you are at all interested in the work the Case Foundation does or if you are interested in non-profits and social good, you’ll find this book full of interesting ideas and stories of change-makers you know and some you likely haven’t heard of.

Radical Responsibility by Fleet Maull

This was my least favorite read for the month. It didn’t resonate with me and the title didn’t seem to fit the content. Maull was incarcerated for 14 years. After his release he set about changing his life. The premise of his book and teachings are rooted in mindfulness. Sprinkled throughout the book are mindfulness exercises. I felt like this was a book about mindfulness and not radical responsibility.

This book may speak to you, especially if you are looking for a mindfulness-based approach to self-improvement.

Go grab something and READ!

Resources
• Presence by Amy Cuddy
• Company of One by Paul Jarvis
• Be Fearless by Jean Case
• Radical Responsibility by Fleet Maull

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I read… a lot… at any given time I’ve got at least four books going. I’m a mood reader which means that I read based on my mood so I might start something and not finish it for a month or two. I also read a lot of fiction but I generally don’t track those books and I go through at least six of those a month. (For those who want to ask… I’m a mystery & thriller reader for the most part.)

Okay, June! I had high hopes for finishing a few more books this last month but travel got in the way. I drag books with me but I don’t always get time to read. Here’s what I got finished in June. I think you’ll find something interesting here…

Oprah Winfrey – The Path Made Clear

Is there ever really a bad Oprah book? This was a library find, sitting on the new releases shelf begging to be taken home.

Since it was an unexpected find, I wasn’t sure what to expect but dug right in. Filled with images, quotes, and other’s thoughts, this book was a really nice and insightful read. Not too heavy but definitely thoughtful.

Oprah opens each section with her own thoughts and then lets those she’s invited to share their perspectives. I found a lot of wisdom in this book’s pages.

This is a multi-layered work as it combines so many different voices, some resonated, others did not. The nice part of this book is the easy to read style. You can walk away at any time and not get lost when you return.

If you are looking for something to read that won’t break your mental bank, then The Path Made Clear provides it in spades. You might just walk away with some life changing nuggets.

Diane Keaton – The House That Pinterest Built

Another library find, this tome spoke to me with its completely minimalist cover. Sparking my curiosity when I saw Diane Keaton’s name, I simply couldn’t pass it up. What would the inside hold?

I wasn’t disappointed. The House That Pinterest Build is a picture book and narrative. The story surrounds the house that Keaton designed and had built. Interestingly the story starts with Keaton discovering Pinterest and falling down the rabbit hole collecting image after image which in turn sparked the ideas for the new house. Much of the book is filled with images from Pinterest. The images are black and white or heavily desaturated. In each section, she shares her thoughts about the rooms of a house with associated pictures. Finally, she reveals the house she built which took years to finish.

In some ways it’s a frivolous book, it could not have been inexpensive to produce. But the ideas and thoughts make for an interesting look into Keaton’s process. This is the kind of book that you grab at the library before making it your own. It won’t resonate for everyone but in its weird, quirky way it fits Keaton.

Angela Duckworth – Grit

I avoided this book for years. I kept feeling that the word “grit” was just another catch-phrase intended to be trendy more than substantive. When I found a reference in another book to Duckworth’s work I decided to look deeper.

Turns out Duckworth is a Ph.D. who studies grit and self-control. It was definitely time for me to grab this one and boy was I glad I did.

Filled with research, her own and others, Duckworth gives us a nicely developed definition of what grit is – a combination of persistence and passion – and she provides insights on how to build it.

For some, grit seems to be ingrained at a very early age, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be cultivated. Using stories from countless interviews, Duckworth’s book feels less academic and much more accessible.

I love the fact that she has created a Grit Scale! You can take the test yourself and see where you rate here https://angeladuckworth.com/grit-scale/. I scored a 4.8, turns out I’m pretty gritty… who’d have thunk it?

There is so much to love about this book for me and if you are interested in human behavior and human psychology I think you’ll find it a fascinating read. I especially love that you can get grittier if you work at it and Duckworth provides the tools, research, and insights to help you understand grit and cultivate it.

This one is definitely going to be a book I return to over and over.

Gretchen Rubin – Outer Order, Inner Calm

I’m a fan of Gretchen Rubin’s books, I’ve read all but one of them. Her newest is a perfect starting point if you’ve not read any of her books or if you’ve read them but want a refresher of sorts.

It’s a super quick read. I’d describe it as “all the meat without the potatoes”. In her previous books, Rubin is a storyteller. She gives substance (potatoes) to the tips and tactics by providing personal stories, stories from others, and research. I really love her books for that reason. I enjoy a good story to illustrate a point. Outer Order, Inner Calm takes out the potatoes and simply provides you with the substance – the tips and tactics. Throw in some insightful quotes and you’ve got a really nice, compact read.

All of the tips and tactics are helpful and while she isn’t unearthing anything new, she is providing a carefully curated collection of things that work.

In reading through Outer Order, Inner Calm, I found myself remembering tactics I’d forgotten and even discovering new ways of thinking about organizing clutter. Not everything works for everyone but there’s a lot of meat in this small book.

If you’ve wanted to work on decluttering or organizing but didn’t want to spend a week reading an in depth book on the subject, then Outer Order, Inner Calm is for you!

One big takeaway for me that I’ve been practicing since I finished this one are:

• When you leave a room, take something with you. The idea is that if you leave the living room and take your running shoes with you to the bedroom, you’ll keep messes at bay. Or maybe you leave the bedroom and grab a glass to return to the kitchen. I find myself looking around when I get up to leave a room just in case I can take something with me. It’s a great strategy.

Happiness is right around the corner…

Resources
• The Path Made Clear by Oprah Winfrey
• The House That Pinterest Built by Diane Keaton
• Grit by Angela Duckworth
• Outer Order, Inner Calm by Gretchen Rubin

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Get articles delivered to your inbox when
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So I was skimming through my Facebook feed looking for interesting things to read. For me Facebook and LinkedIn are less about the people I’m connected to and more about the interesting nuggets that spark a desire to learn more. (Sorry faceybook friends…)

I came upon an article headline that stopped me in my tracks:  “Short period of parental sexual contact prior to pregnancy increases offspring risk of schizophrenia”. (Link)

What???!!!!

Yeah, I had to stop and read it again. How could that be?

I had to investigate because the article was posted in Neuroscience News.

Curiosity…

Now before I tell you more about what the article said, here’s the problem… Illusion of Cause.

If you don’t know what that means, the best explanation is that it is the act seeing patterns and assigning meaning to those patterns where none exists, it is assigning cause and effect where there is none, in other words a coincidence is oftentimes just a coincidence.

Using the headline above, it’s easy to assign a cause and effect and believe it to be true based upon just the information in the headline… Parents who weren’t sexually active for very long could cause their children to have schizophrenia. Cause and effect.

The problem is… it’s not actually a truth.

Humans have been living under the Illusion of Cause forever. You have done it. I have done it. It’s simply part of how our brains work.

A story… A man is traveling through the desert, he is simply on his way home from a hike. He sees another man up ahead. The man up ahead turns, sees him, and runs. The man continues on his return hike. As he often does, he looks down at the ground to keep an eye on the trail and avoid rocks. After a quarter of a mile or so, he looks down and sees a woman lying off the trail just beyond a low bush. Startled, he stops and calls to her but receives no response. He walks closer and squats down to see if she is okay. He notices immediately that she has a bloody wound to her head and her backpack is opened with the contents strewn about. What has just happened?

Likely you’ll go through a few scenarios in your head. The guy running away… does he know what happened? Did he have a hand in it? Why did he run away? Maybe she fell? But why was her bag opened?

All of the questions are based on the information you have. It’s easy to begin to assign cause and effect to the scenario playing out in front of the man who just happened to come upon her.

But what if he is the cause? What if he injured the woman on his way out on his hike? What if he’s only startled because the body is moved? What if he is now concerned that her bag has been gone through? What if the guy running away is running to get help?

The point is we don’t know anything about what has happened or is happening and yet, our brains try to make sense of what we see.

Back in the caveman days, it would make sense to assign cause and effect to things we saw to protect us. Maybe we came upon a dead caveman and saw animal tracks and decided it might be safer to take a different route. Even if we didn’t know what happened we are primed to protect ourselves.

Today, we don’t need those instincts in the same way. And yet, the instinct to draw conclusions is strong. And when someone else draws those conclusions and provides some semblance of evidence we believe them without doing the work of investigating.

If your caveman buddy says, “hey we must take a different way, I am told there are lions in this area!” You are like, “get me outta here!”

No need to confirm, just go, now! Lions and tigers and bears oh my!

The problem is… it’s a lazy way of thinking. It’s fast and easy but lazy.

Which is why I decided to read the article…

Here’s the thing… yes, the scientists investigated a large group of people… 90,000. Yes, when broken down, the data showed that married couples who had been married for less than three years had children who were at an increased risk for schizophrenia.

What the data doesn’t tell us is whether or not those married couples had been sexually active before getting married and for how long. The study doesn’t tell us if there are inherited vulnerabilities that could account for the findings. The study also looked at couples in a very specific place… a defined area of Jerusalem.

There are far too many questions left unanswered.

The only way…. repeating this for effect… The only way to know for sure that a cause and effect relationship exists is to test it.

But wait… isn’t that what the scientists in the schizophrenia article did? They tested their hypothesis on a group of 90,000 people?

Well, yes and no. Simple questions were left unanswered… like the very obvious sex before marriage question.

The only way to know for sure if their hypothesis is true, is to remove all of those questions. While it might be likely that in Israel pre-marriage sex is low… it’s still a factor that cannot be ignored.

So it must be tested… again. AND even if that test is passed, the hypothesis must be tested and replicated on another group of people. How else could we confirm with certainty?

It is the reason that ideas like vaccinations causing autism persist. We see a cause and effect relationship where there is nothing more than coincidence. All of the research and testing has confirmed there is no direct cause and effect and yet… the idea persists.

Some ideas, like the vaccination illusion, are dangerous. Some illusions are not.

The point in all of this is that if you want to be a better learner, a more knowledgeable person, you must fight the comfort of finding cause and effect where nothing more than coincidence exists. It’s easy to believe that something is true because we read a headline, but is it really true?

The best way to fight the illusion of cause is to ask more questions, look for obvious loopholes and then look to find the answers to those loopholes. Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons, in their book, The Invisible Gorilla suggest the following:

“When you hear or read about an association between two factors, think about whether the people could have been assigned randomly to conditions for one of them. If it would have been impossible, too expensive, or ethically dubious to randomly assign people to those groups, then the study could not have been an experiment and the causal inference is not supported.”

When we look at the schizophrenia article again, we see that the pool of 90,000 was not random. The participants were from a very specific place. To be random, parents would have to be selected from a world-wide pool of participants. But that’s not the only problem with the study, as I’ve pointed out earlier.

When we take the time to investigate things more thoroughly, we practice learning at its best… curiosity.

Understanding how the illusion of cause works and what you can do to avoid its trap make you a better learner. And, while we cannot fight entirely the instinct to draw conclusions we can stop and check ourselves frequently. It takes, like anything, a little practice.

You can start with your Facebook feed… before you believe or buy into what you see there, stop and ask yourself if it could actually true.

I’ve only just scratched the surface of the illusion of cause, there are many other biases that play into how it works. But a taste of what your intuition is telling you and how it might be swayed by seeing patterns where none exist is a good start.

Resources:
• The Invisible Gorilla by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons

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May had some interesting and insightful reads. I’m pleased to say that the three non-fiction titles I finished were all great.

Let’s dive in!

Nine Lies About Work by Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall

I picked this one up because I’m a fan of Marcus Buckingham and the StrengthsFinder book and associated tool. I also picked this one up because at the beginning of May I was still mired in research into leadership so when this book showed up in an article online I nabbed it.

(I have written a post on my more emotional reaction to the book here if you want to dig into it as well.)

Buckingham and Goodall subtitle their book, “A Freethinking Leader’s Guide to the Real World” and it’s fitting. Written in a myth-busting framework, the book sets out to dispel most of the popular ideas around work but really, I see it as a book about leadership and how we think about what leadership means and how we measure it.

There are nine points as the title suggests, they range from culture to goal setting to teamwork. The research reflected in the book stems from mostly from the work that the authors have done to support their ideas.

I found a few things very interesting, first how we measure and the fact that the way most organizations measure competencies, including leadership, are deeply flawed. The fact that we believe others can perform an unbiased assessment of members of their team or of subordinates is flawed. Worse yet, how is a supervisor we never see able to assess us? And, how does one measure leadership or strategic thinking?

Most high performers are unique and it is that uniqueness that fails time and again to fit into a box with a rating of 1 through 5. Layer that with the lens the supervisor is using, a bundle of knowns and unknowns and a handful of unconscious biases… it’s a recipe for erroneous reporting, hurt feelings, and overall employee dissatisfaction.

It’s easy to related to any one of the nine myths. Is candid feedback really the best method? Can we really rate potential from one person to the next? Is work-life balance really a thing?

The one bit that will stay with me, because it speaks to something I’ve often felt about leadership, is that leaders have followers. Anyone without followers isn’t a leader no matter what role they hold: boss or CEO.

A titled leader with a revolving door, unable to hold employees for long, is a great example of failed leadership. If you can’t get someone to stick with you for more than six months or a year, whether they move onto a better job or not, isn’t a true leader.

The best leaders have followers. We want to stick with those leaders. We’ll pass up a promotion or promise of more money someplace else for those leaders. I’ve worked with those kinds of leaders and I’ve worked with some I wouldn’t even follow to a free cupcake stand; I’ll take the former over the latter every single time.

If you work with leaders, are into leadership, work for or with orgs, then this book is a great read.

Mindshift by Barbara Oakley

Oakley’s first book is a favorite of mine, it’s called A Mind for Numbers. If you are interested in learning then you’ll enjoy both books.

Her latest, Mindshift, is really about how we learn, change, and grow. It is very much filled with stories told by the individuals who showcase specific concepts in the book. I did find the stories a bit lengthy. I wanted less story and more concepts, for me the balance was a bit off. Nonetheless, each story really showed what’s possible when we figure out how to navigate personal learning styles as much as the tried and true concepts.

One especially interesting piece in the book relates to career shifting and the idea that you can change careers at any time even later in life. Because of brain plasticity we have the capacity to learn as long as we apply ourselves. More importantly, if you want to career shift later in life, you have the benefit of all of your experience to help boost your shift. As you leave one career and enter a new one, all of the experience you have provides a new and unique perspective that younger folks won’t yet have.

Other concepts include nontraditional learning methods, making lifelong learning an important part of society, and the ability to uplevel skills with MOOCs (massive open online courses).

Finally, the last two chapters deal with MOOCs and it was a little weird. A lot of time was spent talking about what makes MOOCs great and how to make a great MOOC. Given that Oakley’s MOOC is the single most popular MOOC online, I can understand wanting to share but it all seemed out of place given the rest of the book. It was interesting but not at all what I wanted to read about in a book about learning so I skimmed.

While I enjoyed Mindshift, it didn’t bring much new especially given the amount of information out there on learning strategies. If you have no background knowledge about learning strategies then much of this is interesting and helpful.

Insight by Tasha Eurich

I loved this book, although I will say that depending upon when and why you read it, it could harbor some emotional reactions.

This book is about how we see ourselves, how others see us, and how those two things play out in work and business settings primarily. However, all of it is relevant to our personal lives as well.

I got a lot out of this one, I even took the time to write down my values list on my white board and make a list of things I believe I could be better at… it’s not easy to honestly think about how others see you… it’s hard and it’s uncomfortable.

This book is definitely a “work thru” book because if you have any hopes of being more self-aware, you can’t simply skim through this one.

And… it’s not for everyone. While I found it helpful, if you aren’t ready to dig in you won’t benefit. So many folks aren’t willing to see where they could use improvement and to be clear, improvement it hard, it takes work. How others see us, especially in the work place, is important. If we aren’t willing to address shortcomings we will always find ourselves scratching our heads wondering why our co-workers react to us in specific ways.

The biggest take away for me was the fact that introspection isn’t helpful, primarily because we are doing it wrong. But worry not… Eurich provides lots of exercises, suggestions and best of all, research to support your journey.

Insight is a must read and one book I’m already re-reading in sections.

Where’s Grit???

I started Grit in May but didn’t quite finish until June so you’ll see it in the June Reviews!

Resources:
• Nine Lies About Work by Marcus Buckingham
• Mindshift by Barbara Oakley
• Insight by Tasha Eurich

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