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Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection by Charles Duhigg (8/10)

by

Prologue

When emotions are reciprocated (acknowledging and sharing feelings) it creates trust and connection. When this happens, our bodies even synchronize, from pupil dilation to heartbeat rhythms, a phenomenon called neural entrainment.

Key insight: how we ask questions matters as much as what we ask. Acknowledging differences, treating conversations as negotiations for understanding, and focusing on emotional undercurrents leads to deeper connections.

Duhigg explains that most conversations are actually three conversations at once:

  1. Decision Making – “What’s this really about?”
  2. Emotional – “How do we feel?”
  3. Social – “Who are we?”

Miscommunication often happens because people are in different conversations at the same time. Becoming a “supercommunicator” means recognizing which type is happening and adapting.

Ultimately, the goal is to have learning conversations—discussions aimed not at winning or proving, but at understanding how others see the world while sharing your own perspective.

The key takeaway: anyone can learn these skills and become a supercommunicator.

The Three Kinds of Conversation

Chapter 1: The Matching Principle: How to Fail at Recruiting Spies

Great communication starts with connection. When we truly listen and others feel understood, our brains align, allowing conversation to flow naturally.

The best communicators share two habits:

  • They ask more questions—often ten to twenty times more than average—because curiosity builds trust and draws people out.
  • They adjust their style to match their partner’s. If someone turns serious, they respond with equal seriousness. If the tone shifts to playful, they’re quick to play along. This flexibility creates an instant sense of alignment.

Conversations typically fall into three categories:

  1. Decision Making conversations – What’s this really about? (e.g., making plans, solving problems, negotiating options)
  2. Emotional conversations – How do we feel? (e.g., sharing frustrations, expressing joy, talking through fears)
  3. Social conversations – Who are we? (e.g., gossiping about office politics, bonding over shared backgrounds, clarifying roles or identity)

Miscommunication happens when people are in different conversations at the same time. One person might focus on solving a problem while the other is expressing how they feel or discussing identity and belonging.

The solution is the matching principle:

  • If someone is emotional, allow yourself to show emotion too—“That sounds frustrating; I’d feel the same way.”
  • If someone is focused on decisions, mirror their analytical mindset—“Let’s map out the options and next steps.”
  • If someone is concerned about identity or relationships, reflect that perspective—“I get why that matters for how you’re seen at work.”

Bottom line: Effective communication isn’t about winning or being clever—it’s about syncing up with the type of conversation that’s actually happening.

A Guide to Using These Ideas, Part I: The Four Rules for a Meaningful Conversation

Rule 1: Pay attention to what kind of conversation is occurring.

  • The most effective communicators pause before they speak and ask themselves: Why am I opening my mouth? (practical / emotional /social conversation)

Rule 2: Share your goals and ask what others are seeking.

  • Example: In some organizations, participants write one sentence before meetings about what they want to achieve.
  • Ask others: “What’s most important for you in this discussion?”

Rule 3: Ask about others’ feelings and share your own.

  • “How are you feeling about this?”
  • “Here’s where I’m at emotionally…”

Rule 4: Explore if identifies are important to this discussion.

  • Sometimes, conversations are about more than facts—they’re about who we are.
  • Pay attention to comments about reputation, relationships, or social belonging.

A useful question framework (used by some schools): “Do you want to be helped, hugged, or heard?”

  • Helped → a practical “What’s This Really About?” conversation
  • Hugged → an emotional “How Do We Feel?” conversation
  • Heard → a social “Who Are We?” conversation

The What’s This Really About? Conversation

Chapter 2: Every Conversation Is a Negotiation: The Trial of Leroy Reed

At their core, conversations are negotiations—not necessarily about who wins or loses, but about how to align so everyone walks away better off.

Two Goals in Every Conversation

  1. Clarify what everyone wants.
    • What is each person hoping to get from this conversation?
    • Example: a patient might want hard data about treatment options, or they might want reassurance and emotional support.
  2. Agree on how decisions will be made.
    • Are we reasoning logically—comparing costs and benefits?
    • Or are we using empathy and shared experiences—relying on the “logic of similarities”?

How These Rules Take Shape

Most of these “rules” for how we’ll talk and decide aren’t spoken out loud. Instead, we test the waters:

  • We introduce topics, watch reactions and how others respond.
  • For instance , negotiators often conduct experiments — first I’ll interrupt you , and then I’ll be polite, and then I’ll bring up a new topic or make an unexpected concession, and watch what you do — until everyone decides, together, which norms are accepted, and how this conversation should unfold
  • We adjust tone, make concessions, or shift from facts to stories to see what sticks.
  • Over time, a shared norm for how to communicate emerges.

The Power of Asking Questions

Great communicators and negotiators ask open-ended questions to uncover what people truly want—even when they don’t fully know it themselves.

  • Example: “What’s most important to you about this?”
  • When others feel heard, they’re more willing to hear us in return.
  • Seek first to understand, then be understood

Rational vs. Empathetic Logic

  • Rational conversations: Focused on facts, data, and cost-benefit reasoning (e.g., “How much should we bid on this house?”).
  • Empathetic conversations: Driven by personal stories, values, and emotions (e.g., “Here’s what this decision means for my family…”).

Matching the logic someone is using—rational or empathetic—is key to being understood.

Dr. Ehdaie learned that different patients needed different approaches when he discussed vaccines:

  • Rational patients asked analytical questions about efficacy rates and side effects. He persuaded them using data, charts, and studies.
  • Empathetic patients shared stories about past experiences, fears, and values. With them, he shifted to stories and compassion, focusing on protecting loved ones and community well-being.
    The same goal—encouraging vaccination—required two completely different conversational logics.

The Lesson

  • Step 1: Figure out what people want from the conversation.
  • Step 2: Agree on how choices will be made—whether by reason or by empathy.
  • Step 3: Match their mindset. Speak their language, tone, and logic.

A Guide to Using These Ideas, Part II: Asking Questions and Noticing Clues

Before the Conversation

A little preparation can make every conversation more meaningful:

  • Pick two general topics you could discuss (e.g., “last night’s game” or “TV shows we like”).
  • Decide one thing you want to share and one question you’ll ask.
  • With practice, take it deeper:
    • “What’s one thing I want to say that reveals what I value?”
    • “What’s one question I can ask to uncover what matters to them?”

Use Open-Ended Questions

Open-ended questions invite people to open up:

  • Beliefs or values: “How did you decide to become a teacher?”
  • Judgments: “Are you glad you went to law school?”
  • Experiences: “What was it like to visit Europe?”

Watch for Engagement Signals

Positive signals (they want to connect):

  • Leaning in, making eye contact, smiling, backchanneling (“Interesting,” “Hmm”), even interrupting. (Interruptions often mean excitement, not rudeness.)

Negative signals (they’re pulling back):

  • Quiet responses, passive expressions, looking away, or deep contemplation without adding to the conversation.

Adjust Based on Mindset

  • Empathetic mindset: People share stories, jokes, or personal experiences. → Respond with empathy, connection, and shared experiences.
  • Practical mindset: People discuss decisions, plans, or comparisons (e.g., “Is Maine or Florida better in June?”). → Match with analytical reasoning and problem-solving.

Pay Attention to Topic Shifts

  • Sudden changes or repeated questions often signal what someone really wants to talk about.
  • Let them explore those shifts—it’s an invitation to a topic that matters.

Experiment to Learn the “Rules”

  • Tell a joke.
  • Ask something unexpected.
  • Try interrupting once, then not interrupting.
  • See how they respond—those reactions reveal how they want the conversation to flow and what norms they accept.

The How Do We Feel? Conversation

Chapter 3: The Listening Cure: Touchy-Feely Hedge Funders

Why Feelings Matter

  • Every conversation is influenced by emotions—even if we don’t mention them.
  • When we acknowledge emotions and share our own, we build trust, understanding, and connection.

The Role of Vulnerability

  • Connection deepens when we share something raw or personal—a moment that could be judged.
  • Vulnerability triggers emotional contagion: when someone shares openly, we feel what they feel and are more likely to open up in return.
  • Example: Asking about someone’s dreams or challenges often leads to honest, heartfelt exchanges.

How to Trigger Emotional Connection

  1. Ask emotional questions about feelings, values, beliefs, and experiences:
    • “Do you love that job?”
    • “Was there something else you always dreamed of doing?”
    • A close-up of a question AI-generated content may be incorrect.
  2. Follow up.
    • Follow-up questions show you’re listening and want to know more.
    • Example: “Why does that matter so much to you?” or “What made that experience so meaningful?”
  3. Reciprocate.
    • Share your own emotions in return: “I know how that feels; I felt the same way when…”

Chapter 4: How Do You Hear Emotions No One Says Aloud? The Big Bang Theory

Hearing the Unspoken: Emotional Intelligence in Action

Why Laughter Matters

  • Laughter (and sighs, gasps, smiles, frowns) isn’t just noise—it’s proof that we’ve heard how someone feels.
  • Connection doesn’t come from simply laughing together; it comes from matching emotional intensity.
    • Example: If one person is belly-laughing while another only politely chuckles, it doesn’t feel like real connection.

The Matching Principle in Practice

  • Connection comes not from mimicry (copying words or gestures) but from genuine alignment:
    • Matching someone’s mood and energy shows a desire to connect.
    • If they’re upbeat and animated, respond with higher energy. If they’re quiet and reflective, tone down your intensity.
  • Merely mirroring without emotional intent can feel disinterested or even patronizing.

How Our Brains Read Emotion

  • Humans evolved to rapidly scan others’ mood (positive vs. negative) and energy level (high vs. low).
  • This quick-read system helps us decide whether to approach, avoid, or align.

How Supercommunicators Do It

  • They pay close attention to subtle signals:
    • Gestures and body language
    • Volume and speed of speech
    • Cadence and tone
  • Instead of decoding every micro-emotion, they focus on overall mood and energy.

Practical Takeaways

  1. Notice mood and energy first. Are they excited or subdued? Positive or stressed?
  2. Match intentionally. Align with mood and energy to show you care about connection.
  3. Acknowledge feelings if matching isn’t appropriate. (“You seem frustrated—do you want to talk about it?”)
  4. Watch how others respond to you. Are they trying to sync with your mood and energy?

Chapter 5: Connecting Amid Conflict: Talking to the Enemy About Guns

Conflict Is Inevitable—Connection Is a Choice

“Peace is not the absence of conflict, but the ability to cope with it.” – Dorothy Thomas

Rethinking the Goal of Conflict

  • Many approach conflict with the wrong mindset: to win, to defeat the other side.
  • The real goal is understanding why the conflict exists in the first place—which often involves both:
    1. A surface issue (the stated disagreement).
    2. A deeper emotional conflict (what’s really driving the tension).

The Power of Listening

  • People become more trusting and willing to share when they feel truly heard.
  • How to prove you’re listening:
    1. Let them finish speaking fully.
    2. Repeat back what you heard in your own words: “So what I’m hearing is…”
    3. Ask if you understood it correctly: “Did I get that right?”
  • This approach, called looping for understanding, signals respect and helps people feel safe enough to express their real emotions.

Control & Happy Relationships

  • Conflicts often feel like battles for control—who controls the situation, the decision, or even emotions.
  • Happy couples handle control differently:
    • They regulate their own emotions: take breaks, breathe deeply, use “I statements,” and recall positive memories.
    • They choose the right time and place for difficult discussions.
    • They keep fights contained rather than letting one disagreement spill into others.

How to Use Control to Build Connection

  • Rather than trying to control the other person, focus on controlling:
    • Your own emotional state.
    • The scope of the conflict (keep it small and manageable).
  • Give others a sense of control by proving you’re listening and matching their tone and mindset (emotional when they’re emotional, practical when they’re practical).
  • This shared control lowers tension and creates space for collaboration instead of escalation.

Key Takeaways

  1. Understand before solving. Look for both surface and underlying emotional conflicts.
  2. Listen actively and prove it. Repeat what you heard and check for accuracy.
  3. Control yourself, not others. Focus on emotional regulation and limiting the scope of conflict.
  4. Share control through listening and matching. This keeps conversations constructive and connection-focused.

A Guide to Using These Ideas, Part III: Emotional Conversations, in Life and Online

Starting Emotional Conversations

  • Begin with a deep question.
    • Ask about values, beliefs, judgments, or experiences—not just facts.
      • Instead of “Where do you work?” → “What’s the best part of your job?”
    • Quick tip: Imagine you’re talking to a close friend. What would you ask them?
  • Examples of deep emotional questions:
    • “How do you feel about…?”
    • “Did that make you happy?”
    • “Why do you think he got angry?”
    • “How would you feel if that happened to you?”
  • Asking deep questions creates vulnerability, which triggers emotional connection.

Reading Mood & Energy

  • Look at mood: Are they upbeat or glum? Calm or angry?
  • Look at energy: High-energy (talkative, animated) vs. low-energy (quiet, withdrawn).
  • Match appropriately: Acknowledge their state (“You seem upset. What’s wrong?”) rather than simply mirroring anger with anger.

Looping for Understanding

  1. Ask clarifying questions.
  2. Repeat back what you heard in your own words.
  3. Check accuracy: “Did I get that right?”
  4. Repeat until there’s agreement.
  • Benefits:
    • Ensures true understanding.
    • Shows empathy and creates space for reciprocal vulnerability.

How to Reciprocate Vulnerability

  • Find what they need: Comfort, empathy, advice, tough love?
  • Ask permission before sharing:
    • “Would it be okay if I shared how your words affect me?”
  • Give something back:
    • “It makes me sad to hear you’re in pain.”
    • “I’m so happy for you.”

Conflict Conversations

  • Acknowledge understanding: “Let me make sure I understand…”
  • Find specific points of agreement: “I agree with you that…”
  • Temper your claims: Use words like “somewhat,” avoid sweeping generalizations.
  • Focus on specific actions (“about dishes in the sink”) vs. broad traits (“you never do your part”).

Online Conversations

  • Overemphasize politeness: Use “thanks,” “please,” and greetings.
  • Avoid sarcasm: Tone doesn’t translate well online.
  • Show gratitude and humility: “That comment taught me a lot.”
  • Hedge statements: Use softer language (“I think…”).
  • Avoid public criticism: It spreads negativity and escalates tension.

Key Takeaways

  • Ask deeper questions → invite feelings and vulnerability.
  • Notice mood & energy → match or acknowledge appropriately.
  • Loop for understanding → prove you’re listening.
  • In conflict → show empathy, find agreement, and keep claims specific.
  • Online → be extra polite, avoid sarcasm, and keep criticism private.

The Who Are We? Conversation

Chapter 6: Our Social Identities Shape Our Worlds: Vaccinating the Anti-Vaxxers

The Power of Social Identity

  • We all have multiple social identities (e.g., political affiliation, religion, race, profession, class).
  • These identities deeply influence how we see ourselves and how we behave—often without us realizing it.

The “Who Are We?” Conversation

  • This type of conversation focuses on belonging and connection within society.
  • A key challenge: stereotypes and stigma can trigger anxiety and reduce performance.
    • Example: Women reminded of stereotypes about math often underperform—not because of skill, but because the stereotype creates stress and distraction.

How to Disrupt Stereotypes

  1. Highlight multiple identities.
    • People are not one-dimensional: “I’m not just a teacher; I’m also a runner, a parent, and a musician.”
    • Mapping out multiple roles reduces the power of any single stereotype.
  2. Level the playing field.
    • Avoid power plays like unsolicited advice or boasting.
    • Choose topics where everyone is either equally knowledgeable or equally new.
    • Encourage balanced participation—invite quieter voices and moderate the talkative ones.
  3. Find common ground.
    • Identify shared experiences or similarities that already exist.

Motivational Interviewing & Vaccine Hesitancy

  • Best approach with identity-driven issues (like vaccine hesitancy):
    • Use motivational interviewing, which avoids direct persuasion and instead:
      1. Draw out a person’s beliefs, values, and identities.
      2. Explore their own reasons for and against change.
      3. Help them articulate their personal motivations.
  • This approach respects social identity, reduces defensiveness, and often opens paths to unexpected change.

Key Takeaways

  • We all hold many identities; emphasizing them reduces the power of stereotypes.
  • Equal footing and inclusion are essential for successful “Who Are We?” conversations.
  • Change happens not by arguing but by helping people explore their own beliefs and motivations.

Chapter 7: How Do We Make the Hardest Conversations Safer? The Problem Netflix Lives With

Why Identity Threats Derail Conversations

  • People feel deeply uncomfortable when they are lumped into a group they don’t identify with.
    • Example: “You people always…” or “You’re just like…” → triggers identity threat.
  • Identity threats are especially common in “Who Are We?” conversations, making them emotionally charged and prone to breakdown.

How to Reduce Identity Threat

  1. Acknowledge awkwardness upfront.
    • “This might feel uncomfortable, but I want to understand your perspective.”
  2. Plan for obstacles.
    • Think ahead about what might make the conversation tense and how you’ll respond.
  3. Lead with empathy and support.
    • Acknowledge experiences and feelings:
      • “That must have hurt.”
      • “I’m sorry that happened to you.”
      • “It’s awful you were discriminated against.”
    • Even brief acknowledgment can make people feel safer and understood.

Key Insights for Difficult Conversations

  1. Prepare before starting.
    • Consider what you want to say, who should speak first (research suggests the person with the least power should open), and what emotions might arise.
  2. Don’t avoid tough conversations.
    • Discomfort is normal, but planning helps us navigate it.
  3. Focus on how, not just what.
    • Conversation structure (order of speakers, tone, emotional readiness) is as important as the words used.

Bottom Line

Hard conversations, especially around identity, are safest when we:

  • Avoid identity threats.
  • Prepare for emotional triggers.
  • Lead with empathy and acknowledgment.
  • Focus on structure and tone, not just content.

A Guide to Using These Ideas, Part IV: Making Hard Conversations Easier

How to Make Hard Conversations Easier

This approach breaks conversations into three stages: before, beginning, and during.

1. Before the Discussion

  • Clarify your goals:
    • What do you hope to accomplish?
    • What do you want to say?
    • What do you want to learn?
  • Consider others’ goals: What might they want to say or achieve?
  • Anticipate obstacles:
    • Will people get angry, withdraw, or avoid tough truths?
    • How can you make it safe for people to speak honestly?
  • Plan responses:
    • How will you stay calm if things get tense?
    • How will you bring quiet voices into the discussion?
  • Weigh the benefits: Remind yourself why this dialogue matters, even when it’s uncomfortable.

2. Beginning the Discussion

  • Set clear guidelines:
    • No blaming, shaming, or personal attacks.
    • Encourage questions (with sensitivity for personal topics).
    • Ensure everyone feels they belong and has a voice.
  • Encourage personal stories:
    • Speak from your own experience; don’t generalize or diminish others’ experiences.
    • When someone shares pain, acknowledge it: “I’m sorry that happened to you.”
  • Surface goals:
    • Emotional goals: “I want us to stay friends.”
    • Practical goals: “I’d like to leave with a plan.”
    • Group goals: “I want us to show compassion to each other.”
  • Normalize discomfort:
    • Expect mistakes, naïve questions, and awkward moments.
    • Use them as opportunities to learn rather than shutting down.

3. As the Discussion Unfolds

  • Draw out multiple identities:
    • Ask about backgrounds, communities, and affiliations.
    • Share your own identities—remind everyone we are multi-dimensional.
  • Ensure equal footing:
    • Avoid flaunting status, wealth, or expertise.
    • Choose topics where everyone is either an expert or a novice.
  • Acknowledge experiences & build genuine similarities:
    • “You went to Valley High? So did I! What was it like for you?”
    • Even when no similarities exist, listening and validating creates connection.
  • Manage the environment:
    • Shift to settings that feel safer (one-on-one, casual locations).
    • Open with neutral, friendly topics before diving into sensitive issues.

Key Takeaway

Hard conversations don’t become easier by avoiding them—they become easier by planning, setting norms, normalizing discomfort, and focusing on shared humanity.

Afterword

Relationships and Lifelong Happiness

  • Many factors contribute to happiness and health:
    • Loving parents
    • Good genes and physical resilience
    • Healthy habits (exercise, nutrition)
    • Education and lifelong learning
  • But one factor stands above all:
    • The quality of relationships.
    • People who were most satisfied with their relationships at age 50 were the healthiest—mentally and physically—at age 80.
  • Social connection is a powerful predictor of longevity.
    • Strong, positive relationships protect health.
    • Weak or poor-quality relationships increase risk for illness and unhappiness.

Key Takeaway

Happiness and health are rooted not just in what we do, but who we connect with. Investing in close, supportive relationships is one of the most powerful ways to live a longer, healthier, and more fulfilling life.

Good Inside by Dr. Becky Kennedy (10/10)

by

Part I – Dr. Becky’s Parenting Principles

Chapter 1: Good Inside – Every child—and adult—is good inside.

Understanding that we’re all good inside is what allows you to distinguish a person (your child) from a behavior (rudeness, hitting, saying “I hate you”). 

This type of leadership is what every child craves – someone they can trust to steer them down the right path. It’s what makes them feel safe, what allows them to find calm, and what leads to the development of emotional regulation and resilience.

“Most generous interpretation”: Finding the good inside can often come from asking ourselves one simple question: “What is my most generous interpretation (MGI) of what just happened?”

Finding the MGI teaches parents to attend to what is going on inside of their child (big feeling, big worries, big urges, big sensations) rather than what is going on outside of their child (big words, or sometimes big actions).

Tell your kid: “You’re a good kid having a hard time…I’m here. I’m right here with you.” – Kids will develop empathy for their own struggles and helps them regulate their emotions.

Chapter 2: Two Things Are True: Multiplicity – the ability to accept multiple realities at once – is critical to healthy relationships.

You can validate your child’s emotional experience and enforce boundaries. (e.g. I hear you’re mad about turning off the tablet – and yes, it’s still time to turn it off”)

Building strong connections relies on the assumption that no one is right in the absolute, because understanding, not convincing, is what makes people feel secure in the relationship.

To understand, we must attempt to see and learn more about another person’s perspective, feelings, and experience.

Convincing is an attempt to be “right” and as a result, make the other person “wrong.”

Understanding (“two things are true”) and convincing (“one thing is true”) are two diametrically opposed ways of approach other people, so a powerful first step is in any interaction is to notice which mode you’re in.

At our core, we all want someone else to acknowledge our experience, our feelings, and our truths. When we feel seen by others, we can manage our disappointment, and we feel safe and good enough inside to consider someone else’s perspective.

“Two things are true” is a foundational parenting principle because it reminds us to see our child’s experience as real and valid and worthy of naming and connecting to. And it also allows us to hold on to our own experiences as real and valid and worth of naming and connecting to.

Chapter 3: Know Your Job: Parenting gets easier when you know your job—and what is not your job.

The parent’s job is to provide safety (physically and emotionally) and set boundaries (calmly and consistently)not tomake your child always happy or prevent all negative feelings.

Boundaries are not what we tell kids not to do; boundaries are what we tell kids we will do. (e.g. I won’t let you throw these toys. I won’t let you hit your brother. Screen time is over now, I’m going to turn off the TV” vs. “please stop hitting your brother”)

Validation is the process of seeing someone else’s emotional experience as real and true, rather than seeing someone else’s emotional experience as something we want to convince them out of or logic them away from.

Empathy, the second part of a parent’s emotional caretaking job, refers to our ability to understand and relate to the feelings of another person.  We need to be curious about our child’s emotional experience from a place of learning, not judgment.

Final statement with validation and empathy: “I won’t let you hit your brother…I know you’re frustrated! Having a brother who can crawl and get into all of your stuff is so hard. I’m here. I’ll help you figure out how to keep your block structure safe”

Chapter 4: The Early Years Matter: the way parents interact with their kids in their early years forms the blueprint they take with them into the world.

Kids will learn emotional regulation, sense of safety and security, beliefs about their self-worth, and develop habits of connection, conflict, and resilience in these early years.

Attachment Theory: children are wired to seek out and attach to individuals who provide the comfort and security they need to survive.

Behavior: A child is hesitant to join a birthday party, clinging on to his mom.

Parent Response #1: You know everyone here. Come on! There’s nothing to be worried about!

Attachment Lesson #1: I can’t trust my feelings because they’re ridiculous and overblown. Other people know better than I do how I should feel.

Parent Response #2: Something about this feels tricky. I believe you. Take your time. You’ll know when you’re ready.

Attachment Lesson #2: I can trust my feelings. I’m allowed to feel cautious. I know what I am feeling, and I can expect other people to respect and support me.

Relationships with parents that include responsiveness, warmth, predictability, and repair when things feel bad set a child up to have a secure base.

The more children feel they can depend on a parent, the more independent they can be.

Chapter 5: It’s Not Too Late – it’s never too late to change, heal, and build stronger connections with your child.

The Power of Repair – one of the most powerful tools in parenting isn’t perfection – it’s repair.

Children who are left alone with intense distress often rely on one of two coping mechanisms: self-doubt and self-blame.

Self-doubt causes a child to wire themselves to believe: I don’t perceive things accurately. I overreact. I cannot trust how things feel to me. Other people have a better idea of my reality than I do.

Self-blame allows a child to feel in control, because as long as he convinces himself he’s a bad kid doing bad things, and that if he was better he would feel more secure.  

How to repair: Say you’re sorry, share your reflections with your child – restating your memory of what happened, so your kid knows it wasn’t all in his head and then say what you wish you had done differently and what you plan on doing differently now and in the future. It’s important to take ownership over your role.

Chapter 6: Resilience > Happiness – Many parents chase their child’s happiness—but resilience is a more powerful and sustainable goal.

Cultivating happiness is dependent on regulating distress. We have to feel safe before we can feel happy.

Anxiety is the intolerance of discomfort.

Regulation first, happiness second

The Power of Resilience:

We can’t always change the stressors around us, but we can always work on our ability to access resilience.

Building resilience is about developing the capacity to tolerate distress, to stay in and with a tough challenging moment even when we don’t have confirmation of achievement or pending success.

We should be guided by on question: am I helping my kid tolerate and work through this distress, or am I encouraging my child to avoid and beeline out of the distress? We want the first, not the second.

Happiness vs. Resilience: The more we emphasize our children’s happiness and “feeling better”, the more we set them up for an adulthood of anxiety.

Chapter 7: Behavior Is a Window: Rather than viewing behavior as something to fix or punish, view it as a window into a child’s internal experience.

Behavior is never “the story”, but rather it’s a clue to the bigger story begging to be addressed.

When we see behavior as the main event instead of as a window into an unmet need, we may “successfully” shut down the behavior, but the underlying need remains, and it will pop again, Whack-a-Mole style. When we don’t attend to the source of the leak, the water flow remains unchanged.

Ask yourself these questions after any tough moment:

  • What is my most generous interpretation (MGI) of my child’s behavior?
  • What was going on for my child in that moment?
  • What was my child feeing right before that behavior emerged?
  • What urge did my child have a hard time regulating?
  • What is a parallel situation in my life? And if I did something similar, what might I have been struggling with in that moment?
  • What does my child feel I don’t understand about them?
  • If I do remember that my child is a good kid having a hard time..what are they having a hard time with?
  • What deeper themes are being displayed underneath this behavior?

Chapter 8: Reduce Shame, Increase Connection: Shame is one of the most destructive forces in a child’s development. While it may change behavior in the short term, it disconnects children from themselves—and from you—in the long run

Shame activates the ultimate fear for a child, the idea, “I am bad inside, I am unworthy, I am unlovable, I am unattachable…I will be all alone.”

Our goal as parents should be to notice when shame arises in our child, understand what situations bring it up, and see how it presents behaviorally. After that, we want to develop shame reduction, which enables us to help our children feel safe and secure again. Detect first, reduce second.

When we use shame-based tactics (e.g., yelling, threats, guilt trips), we might stop the behavior, but at the cost of our child’s internal sense of worth and safety. The question isn’t “Did it work?”—it’s “At what cost?”

Connection First: Connection is the opposite of shame.  Connection is a sign of presence, safety, and goodness.

Chapter 9: Tell the Truth: Truth-telling is foundational for trust, but many children lie—not because they’re “bad,” but because they’re scared. We don’t want our kids to lie better, we want them to feel safe telling the truth.

Our parenting is dependent on our willingness to confront our own truths and from there, we can better connect with our kids. Watching a parent confront hard truths will help a child learn to regulate his feelings

Confirming Perceptions:  When in a “tell the truth” situation, start with “______ happened” You were right to notice that.”  This is critical. Confirming our children’s perception sets them up to recognize when things don’t feel right later, and it will empower them to trust themselves enough to speak up.

Labeling What You Don’t Know: Talking honestly with our children about what we don’t know is an important iteration of the “tell the truth” principle.

  • When we don’t have clear answers say: “Here’s what I don’t know and here’s what I do know”

Chapter 10: Self-Care: You can’t regulate your child if you can’t regulate yourself

There’s a common misconception that having kids means sacrificing your own identify – that once you’re charged with taking care of young children, you are no longer entitled to take care of yourself.

Kids actually feel comforted when parents set firm boundaries around self-care.

Kids don’t want to feel their leader is someone who cannot be located, who is easily overrun by others, who is…lost.

The quality of our relationships with others is only as good as the quality of the relationship we have with ourselves.

The more regulated you are, the more effective, connected, and compassionate your parenting becomes. You don’t need to parent perfectly—you just need to lead from a place of steadiness and self-awareness.

Part II – Building Connection and Addressing Behaviors

Chapter 11: Building Connection Capital: We can’t change behavior until we build connection

Just like a bank account, your relationship with your child holds connection capital—the emotional reserves built through consistent, attuned, warm interactions.

The more connection capital we have with our kids, the more likely they are to listen, trust us, and come to us when things are hard.

Ways to Build Connection Capital:

  1. Play No Phone (PNP) Time: being fully present:
    1. Limit time to 10-15 minutes
    1. No phones, no screens, no siblings, no distractions
    1. Let your child pick the play. This is key
    1. Allow your child to be in the spotlight; your job is only to notice, imitate, reflect, and describe what they’re doing.
  2. The Fill Up Game: use at the beginning of the day, before any separation, etc.
    1. Tell your child, “I don’t think you are filled up with Daddy right now. I think Daddy is only up to your ankles. Let’s fill you up!
    1. Give your child a long tight squeeze
    1. “How about now? What? Only to your knees? Ok round two…”
    1. Squeeze your child again; maybe grimace, as if you’re using all your might.
    1. What? Only to your belly? I though it got higher with that squeeze! Ok, more Daddy coming, round three…”
    1. Once your child feels filled up, give one more squeeze saying: “Ok, well let me give you some extra, just in case. There are so many changes these days, it’s probably good to have some extra mommy stored up in there.
  3. Emotional Vaccination: We connect with out children before a big feelings moment, thereby strengthening regulation skills before our child needs to use them. By connecting, validating, and anticipating, we build up our child’s “emotion regulation antibodies.”
  4. The Feeling Bench – sit with your child when your child tells you about a difficult feeling. Say very little as they talk. Nod. Look sympathetic. Offer your child a hug while they’re upset. Breathe deeply together.
    1. Say:
      1. That sounds really hard.
      1. That sticks. It really does
      1. I’m so glad you’re talking to me about this
      1. I believe you
      1. I’m right here with you. I’m so glad we’re together talking about this
  5. Playfulness: find ways to laugh and have fun together
  6. Did I Ever Tell You About the Time…?  allow the parent to relate to the child’s struggle from a personal perspective – builds connections, acknowledges a child’s good-inside-ness, and teaches problem solving skills, all without talking about the problem directly, which can feel too intense for a kid in the moment.  Shares your vulnerability
    1. Identify the essence of your child’s struggle.
    1. Take on the problem as your own: remember a moment, in the past/when you were a child, when you struggled with something similar.
    1. Talk to your child not in the heat of the moment, but when things are calm. “Did I ever tell you about the time…”
    1. Engage your child in the story, ideally one where you didn’t come up with a  quick fix, but struggled and just kind of got through it.
    1. Do not end your story by directly relating it to the child. There’s no need to spell it out.  Allow the story and moment to stand on their own, trusting that it will reach the part of your child that needed connection
  7. Change the ending: Repair
    1. Share that you’ve been reflecting
    1. Acknowledge the other person’s experience
    1. State what you would do differently next time
    1. Connect through curiosity now that things feel safe

Chapter 12: Not Listening: “Not listening” is rarely about disrespect. It’s usually a sign that something deeper is going on—emotionally, neurologically, or relationally.

The more connected we feel to someone, the more we want to comply with their requests.

When our kids aren’t listening to us, it’s critical to frame the struggle not as a child problem, but as a relationship problem. The relationship needs to be strengthened.

Strategies:

  1. Connect Before You Ask: The single most important strategy in regard to listening is to connect to your child in their world before you ask them to do something in your world. (e.g. Wow, you’ve been working so hard on that tower. I know it’s going to be tricky to pause and take a path. If we do a quick bath now, you will have time to build more before bed.”)
  2. Give Your Child a Choice: this strategy works really well when paired with “connect before you ask.” If you can give your child the agency to make a choice, they’ll be more likely to cooperate.
  3. Humor: “Oh no…your listening ears are lost! Ok wait I think I found them. Oh my goodness, can you believe this…I found them in this plant! How did they get there? Let’s get them back on your body before they sprout into a flower.”
  4. Close Your Eyes Hack: “I’m going to close my eyes – then place your hand over your eyes – and all I’m saying is that if there is a child with his shoes on when I open my eyes…oh my goodness if there is a child all velcroed up , I just don’t know what I’m going to do? Maybe fall to the floor or do a silly dance”

Chapter 13: Emotional Tantrums: Tantrums signal a child’s emotional nervous system in overload—an explosion of feelings they haven’t yet learned to regulate.

Be the firefighter, not the judge during a tantrum.

We cannot encourage subservience and compliance in our kids when they’re young and expect confidence and assertiveness when they’re older.

Our goal during a tantrum should be to keep ourselves calm and keep our children safe. After that, we want to infuse our presence so that children can absorb our regulation it the face of their dysregulation.

Strategies

  • Remind Yourself of Your Own Goodness – stay regulated yourself
  • Two Things Are True – validate their feelings without fixing
  • Name the Wish – literally say out loud what your child is wishing for that they aren’t getting (“You wish you could have ice cream for breakfast. I know”)
  • Validate the Magnitude (You want crayons….You want them SO big…as big as this room! Or the whole neighborhood!”) “I’m so glad I know how big it is. It’s so important. I’m here with you.

Chapter 14: Aggressive Tantrums (Hitting, Biting, Throwing) – these moments call not for punishment, but for protection: protecting the child, yourself, and your connection

Aggressive behaviors like hitting, biting, or throwing are not signs of a “bad” child.
They are signs of a child whose emotional distress has overwhelmed their nervous system, and whose body is now trying to release that energy in the only way it knows how.

Your job during these tantrums is to: keep your own body clam and keep your child safe.  Keeping a child safe in his case means focusing on containment, because a child who is out of control needs a parent to step in firmly, put a stop to the dangerous behavior, and create a safer, more boundaried environment where the child cannot continue to do damage.

Strategies:

  • “I Won’t Let You” – communicates that a parent is in charge, that a parent will stop a child from continuing to act in a way that is dysregulated and ultimately feels awful.  This behavior begs for sturdy leadership.
  • Differentiate Urge from Action – Having the urge to hit is okay; hitting a person is not okay. Finding safe ways to redirect our children’s urges can be much more successful than trying to shut down the urges themselves.
  • Contain the Fire – pick up the child and carry them into a room that is relatively safe. Get into the room, shut the door, sit at the door so your child cannot get out. prevent any physical aggression – “I won’t let you…”,  calm yourself down, don’t try to reason, don’t lecture, don’t punish, don’t’ say too much at all.  Before you talk to your child, find your slow pace and soft tone. Loud, chaotic tantrums need calm, steady voices.

Telling the Story

By returning to the scene of the emotional fire and layering on connection, empathy, and understanding, you add key elements of regulation on top of the moment of dysregulation.

Telling the story is essentially reviewing a chaotic meltdown moment in order to build coherence. Don’t need to tell the kid how to handle it differently next time – the simple act of adding your presence, coherence, and a narrative will change how to experience is stored in a child’s body.

Chapter 15: Sibling Rivalry – is a child’s way of saying, ‘Do I still matter to you?

Children don’t want more than their sibling—they want equal love, significance, and connection. When one child perceives a sibling is favored (more attention, praise, freedom), they feel emotionally unsafe. That insecurity comes out as competition, attention-seeking, regression, aggression toward the sibling.

Strategies:

  • PNP Time – dedicated alone time for each child to spend with a parent
  • “We Don’t Do Fair, We Do Individual Needs” –  we don’t want to aim for “fairness” in our families: we want to help our kids orient inward to figure out their needs, not orient outward.
  • Allow Venting (but Only to You) – allow kids to talk to you honestly about their feelings toward their sibling(s).
    • Have a zero tolerance policy for name calling / insulting each other – this is a way for one kid to chip away at another kid’s confidence, especially when parents don’t step in to stop it.
  • Step In When There’s Danger, Slow Down and Narrate When There’s Not
    • Step In (Dangerous Situation) – when our kid are out of control, they need us to assert that we are in control. “I won’t let you…”
    • Slow Down and Narrate (Not Dangerous Situations) – narrate the situation, model regulation yourself (deep breaths)

Chapter 16: Rudeness and Defiance: Rudeness and defiance are often just distress in disguise.

These behaviors are usually a child’s protective response to feeling powerless, overwhelmed, embarrassed, disconnected, or dysregulated. What looks like rebellion is often a plea for safety or control.

Meeting their rudeness with empathy and kindness will make them feel seen and help inspire kindness in return.

Strategies

  • Don’t Take the Bait – responding to your child’s on the surface behavior, as if their words are their sole truth, is taking the bait. Seeing the feelings underneath the words is not taking the bait.
  • Embody Your Authority – Without Punishing or Being Scary – narrate what you’re doing as you reassert your role of establishing boundaries.  Maintain the boundary and try to redirect the urge.
  • Reflect and act later – connect and build regulation

Chapter 17: Whining: Children whine when they feel helpless

Whining = strong desire + powerlessness

The more focus on those feelings underneath the surface and give them the connection they need, the less your children will whine.

Children are often looking for an emotional release, and wining is a sign that everything feels too much – often it’s an indicator that a child needs to “let it all out” – say “Nothing feels good huh? Nothing feels like you want it to. I get that sweetie. Some moments are like that”

Strategies

  • Restate the Request in Your Own Voice and Move on – “can you ask me that again without whining?
  • See the Need – give 100% presence, squat down to the child’s level and say “something doesn’t feel good to you. I believe you. Let’s figure it out.”  Emphasize, allow the release, play the fill up game

Chapter 18: Lying – Kids lie not because they’re bad—but because they’re scared

Kid’s lie because:

  • They believe telling the truth will threaten their attachment with their parents. Their survival is dependent on their attachment with us. They’re afraid of how we’ll respond.
  • Assert their independence – try “I want to give you more independence. I know it feels awful, when you’re a kid to be in charge of so little. Where can we start? Where’s an area you’d like to have more control”

Strategies:

  • Reframe the Lie as a Wish – “I didn’t know down my sister’s tower, it just fell” – respond with “You wish that tower was still up…” or “sometimes I do things and then wish I hadn’t done them…it’s so hard when that happens.  Seeing it as a wish allows us to feel on the same team as our child instead of them as the enemy.
  • Wait and Provide an Opening Later – child:“I didn’t mess up the puzzle” me: “hmmm” (slow nod, not saying anything”). Come back and try to find the underlying reason/feeling for the lie.
  • If it Did Happen – “All I’m saying is that if a kid in this family didn’t do their homework, I would really try to understand.  When I was seven and didn’t do homework for a bunch of days, it was so hard for me.  Anyway, if it did happen, I’d sit with you and talk it out. You wouldn’t be in trouble.”
  • Asking a Child What He Needs to Be Honest – “Hey I want to talk for a few minutes. You’re not in trouble. I’m just thinking about how sometimes it’s hard to tell me the truth. And I’m not blaming you because I realize there must be things you must need from me in order to tell the truth. I’m wondering what you need from me, or if there’s something I could do differently. Because I want this house where you can tell me the truth about things even if you think they’re not so great.”

Chapter 19: Fears and Anxiety – When kids feel afraid, what they need most is to feel safe with us—even before they feel safe with the thing they fear

Our goal as parents should be to recognize when our child is in a fear state and help them move from: “I am in danger” to “I am safe”

We don’t want to talk our kids out of their fears because we want them to trust their feelings of threat and discomfort (“there’s nothing to be afraid of”, “it’s ok you’ll be fine”, “just do it”).

Strategies:

  • Jump into the Hole with Them – keep them company.  Use the script below
  • Dry Runs – think about an upcoming challenging situation and give children an opportunity to practice how they will reach when the “real thing” happens
  • Scripts for Addressing Specific Fears
    • Talk to your child about his fear, aiming only to collect information and build understanding – “tell me more about what it’s like to walk into the dark”
    • Validate the child’s fear “makes sense” – “the dark can be scary because we can’t see”
    • Tell your child how glad you are that you talked about this fear – use the word important.  “I’m so glad we’re talking about this.  This is really important stuff.”
    • Engage in problem-solving with your child – “I wonder” and “I’m thinking about” can help
    • Create a mantra – “it’s ok to be nervous. I can get through this”
    • Share a “slowing coping with fear” story – “have I told you about the time when…”

Chapter 20: Hesitation and Shyness – Shyness is not something to fix. It’s something to understand

Some children charge into new settings with excitement. Others hang back, observe, and take time before engaging. Hesitation is not a flaw—it’s a temperament.

Strategies:

  • Validate + “You’ll Know When You’re Ready” – use: “You’ll know when you’re ready to…” Communicates that you trust your child, which will teach them to trust themselves, and trust is the essence of confidence.  (“You haven’t been here before. It’s ok to check it out. You can stay near me as you do. You’ll know when you’re ready to join.”
  • Preparation: prepare in advance, predict feelings.  Try preparing your child for a feeling without adding a solution or coping strategy; just pause, as if that really is enough. See what your child does next.
  • Avoid Labeling – don’t label “oh she’s just shy” – provide a generous interpretation of your child’s behavior.  “She’s just figuring out what feels comfortable to her and that’s great”

Chapter 21: Frustration Intolerance – Kids don’t need to be rescued from frustration. They need help tolerating it.

The more we embrace not knowing and mistakes and struggles, the more we set the stage for growth, success, and endurance. Embracing mistakes as opportunities to learn, and helps build frustration tolerance.

The most impactful thing we can do with our kids is to show up in a calm, regulated, non-rushed, not blaming, non-outcome focused way – both when they are performing difficult tasks and when they are witnessing us perform difficult tasks.

Strategies:

  • Deep breaths – take a deep breath and model it yourself
  • Mantras – “I can do it” “I like to be challenged” “I can do hard things”
  • Frame Frustration as a Sign of Learning, Not a Sign of Failure – “did you know that learning is hard? It feels frustrating. That feeling of “ugh I can’t do it” is a feeling that we’re doing something wrong, but actually, it’s a sign that we’re learning and doing something right.
  • Growth Mindset Family values – “In our family, we love to be challenged.”
  • Emotional vaccination, Dry Runs, and “Did I ever tell you about the time”

Chapter 22: Food and Eating Habits: Food struggles aren’t about food—they’re about control, safety, and autonomy.”

Eating is one of the few things kids can fully control. When parents try to force, bribe, or pressure, it often backfires, creating power struggles, anxiety, and disconnection.

Parent’s job: decide what food is offered, where it is offered, and when it is offered

Child’s job: decide whether and how much to eat of what’s offered

The most important idea around kids and food: minimizing anxiety around food is more important than consumption of food.

Strategies:

  • Explain roles: “When it comes to food, you have a job and I have a job – and our jobs are different. It’s my job to decide on what we eat, when we eat, and where we eat. And just so you know, I’ll always offer at least one thing you like to eat so eating never feels stressful.
  • Dessert-specific strategies – you shouldn’t link desert to how much a child eats, because that is the domain of a child, not a parent. Could serve it with the meal (smaller portion).
  • Snack-specific strategies – “when you get home from school, the only snacks I will offer are ___and ___.”

Chapter 23: Consent – Kids learn about consent by how their bodies, their feelings, and their boundaries are treated—every day

Children need to internalize:

  • “My body belongs to me.”
  • “I can say yes or no—and be respected.”
  • “I should respect other people’s bodies, too.”
  • “If something feels uncomfortable, I can speak up.”

Strategies:

  • “I Believe You” – “You’re cold, huh? I believe you. Let’s see what we can do about it”
  • “There’s Something About…” – “there’s something about this red shirt that doesn’t feel good to you…” “there’s something about saying goodbye today that doesn’t feel good to you.”
  • “You’re the Only One in Your Body” – “You’re the only one in your body so only you could know what you like”

Chapter 24: Tears – Tears are the body’s way of sending a  message about how a person is feeling

When we allow children to cry and stay with them in it, we teach them that feelings are safe, and being vulnerable is allowed.

Shame around crying is often passed down through the generations. Tears aren’t weakness – they’re emotional release and regulation.

“I can tell something important is happening for you. I care about that. I’m here” or “I can see how upset you are. I believe you. I really do.” are powerful scripts for your toolbox in these moments.

Strategies:

  • Connect Tears with Importance – “did you know that sometimes our body knows things before our brain does?”it’s a powerful message to your child that sometimes our body knows things that our mind doesn’t yet understand.

Chapter 25: Building Confidence – true confidence is the belief that I can handle whatever comes my way—even if it’s hard

Confidence is our ability to feel at home with ourselves in the widest range of feelings possible and it’s built from the belief that it’s ok to be who you are, no matter what you’re feeling.

What Undermines Confidence

  • Overpraising (“You’re amazing!”)
  • Performance focus (“You’re the best player on the team!”)
  • Fixing mistakes too quickly (“Let me just do it for you”)
  • Shaming struggle (“Come on, this is easy!”)

Strategies

  • Validation – name the feelings and validate them – show those feelings are ok
  • “How’d you think to…” – “How’d you think to draw that?”  “How did you think to start that story that way?” – nothing feels better than when someone around us expresses interest in how we think about things, how we came up with our ideas, or where we want to go next.
  • Inside stuff over outside stuff – praise effort, attitude in winning and losing, and willingness to try new things.
  • You really know how you’re feeling / it’s okay to feel this way – reinforce these statements with your kids

Chapter 26: Perfectionism – Perfectionism isn’t confidence, its fear disguised as high standards

Perfectionism is a strategy to avoid the shame of not being enough.

Children who exhibit perfectionism often believe:

  • Mistakes = failure
  • Failure = disconnection, embarrassment, or feeling unworthy

Their self-worth becomes contingent on getting it right—every time.

Strategies:

  • Make Your Own Mistakes – kids are always watching their parents and learning what they value matters most in the family.  Model that mistakes aren’t a threat to your worth.
  • Do a 180 on perfectionism – “not knowing something means I can learn, and learning new things is awesome.”

Chapter 27: Separation Anxiety – When kids have a hard time separating, they’re not trying to be difficult. They’re trying to feel safe

For separation to feel manageable, children have to internalize, meaning, and have within them, the feelings that often come in the presence of a parent, to trust that they are safe in this world even when a parent is not right next to them.

Separation anxiety can be driven by fear of abandonment or loss, worry about unfamiliar situations, difficulty trusting they’ll stay in your mind once you’re gone, transitions that feel too fast or unpredictable

Strategies:

  • Talka bout separation and feelings before it happens
  • Routine and practice – come up with a routine that is easy to practice and repeat – when we say goodbye, I’ll give you one hug
  • Transitional Object – stuffed animal, blanket can help

Chapter 28: Sleep – Sleep struggles are often separation struggles

Whether it’s stalling, fears, getting out of bed, or asking for “just one more hug,” these behaviors are often signs that your child doesn’t feel fully safe or regulated enough to rest.

Sleep disruptions are often linked to: separation anxiety, fear of the dark or the unknown, unprocessed stress from the day, a dysregulated nervous system, need for closeness or connection rituals

Strategies

  • “Where is Everyone” – when you go to sleep, I’ll still be here. Even when your eyes are closed and even you can’t see me, I’m here.
  • Examine Your Daytime Separation Routine – practice saying goodbye and assure that your child that even when you’re not right together, she is safe, and you will come back
  • Infuse your presence – have a picture of you next to the child’s sleeping area.

Chapter 29: Kids Who Don’t Like Talking About Feelings (Deeply Feeling Kids) – Kids who resist talking about feelings often feel them more intensely than they can handle

Why These Kids Resist Emotional Talk: Fear of being overwhelmed, fear of being seen as “too much”, early experiences of shame or judgment when expressing emotions, discomfort with vulnerability, lack of internal regulation capacity

Strategies:

  • Containment First – DFKs often have massive meltdowns. They often escalate quickly and are full of flails, kicks, thrown objects, and total dysregulation. Contain it first!
  • You’re a Good Kid Having a Hard Time  
  • Be Present and Wait it Out – nothing is more powerful as your presence. No words or fancy scripts is the most important parenting “tool”
  • Thumbs Up/Down/to the Side – “I’m going to say some things…if you agree, give me a thumbs up. If it’s a no- give me a thumbs down. If something about what I said is kind of right, kind of not, give me a thumbs to the side.”

The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership by Jim Dethmer, Diana Chapman, and Kaley Warner Klemp (9/10)

by

PART I | INTRODUCTION

Leadership operates from one of two places: above the line or below the line.

  • Above the line leadership is open, curious, and committed to learning.
  • Below the line leadership is closed, defensive, and committed to being right.

The first mark of conscious leaders is self-awareness and the ability to tell themselves the truth. Distortion and denial are cornerstone traits of unconscious leaders.

When we perceive a threat to our sense of well-being, we go “below the line.” We don’t choose this at a conscious level.

Once leaders develop self-awareness and locate themselves accurately below the line, they create the possibility of shifting, a master of conscious leaders.

Shifting is moving from closed to open, from defensive to curious, from wanting to be right to wanting to learn, and from fighting for the survival of the individual ego to leading from a place of security and trust.

Commitment is a statement of “what is.”  You can know your commitments by your results, not by what you say your commitments are. We are all committed. We are all producing results. Conscious leaders own their commitments by owning their results.

All conversations have both content and context. Content answers the questions, “What are we talking about?” Context answers the question, “How are we talking about the content?” Great leaders pay more attention to how conversations are occurring (context) than what is being talked about (content).

THE FOUR WAYS OF LEADING MODEL: Shows the states of consciousness leaders operate in: To Me, By Me, Through Me, and As Me.

  1. “TO ME” – LIFE HAPPENS TO ME

Posture: Victim

If I am in the To Me consciousness, I see myself “at the effect of,” meaning that the cause of my condition is outside me. It is happening To Me. Whether I see the cause as another person, circumstance, or condition, I believe I’m being acted upon by external forces.

We call this To Me mindset “victim consciousness”. Those operating in the To Me victim consciousness are constantly looking to the past to assign blame for their current experience.

Leaders are well served by focusing first on the shift from To Me to By Me leadership.

  •  “BY ME” – I MAKE LIFE HAPPEN

Posture: Creator

By Me Leaders choose curiosity and learning over defensiveness and being right (two cornerstones of the To Me consciousness). Instead of asking, “Why is this happening to me?” the By Me Leader asks questions like, “What can I learn from this?” “How is this situation ‘for me’?” “How am I creating this and keeping it going?”

The gateway from moving from To Me to By Me is radical responsibility.

  • “THROUGH ME” – I COOPERATE WITH LIFE HAPPENING

Posture: Co-Creator

The key to Through Me is that leaders begin to notice something beyond themselves. They do not try to “figure out” their answer, which would be By Me consciousness.  Instead, they listen attentively to what wants to be communicated to them.

Surrender or letting go is the gateway to move from By Me to Through Me. For most leaders, this means getting go of control.

  • “AS ME” LIFE IS ME

Posture: At one with all

As Me Consciousness has two aspects: oneness and the absence of a personal “me.” 

Oneness – imagine a world where there is no separation between you and your employees or you and your competitors or you and the environment.

The As Me state has no questions, no seeking, no suffering.

PART II | THE 15 COMMITMENTS
COMMITMENT 1: Taking Radical Responsibility:

  • Taking full responsibility for one’s circumstances (physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually) is the foundation of true personal and relational transformation.
  • Blame, shame, and guilt all come from toxic fear. Once fear kicks in, a common defense mechanism is to blame someone, something, or ourselves so we can keep our sense of identity (our ego) intact.
  • Toxic fear drives the victim-villain-hero triangle. Heroes hate conflict, pain, and tension, and seek to temporarily relieve discomfort without really dealing with the issue.  It’s toxic because it leads to burn out, supporting others in taking less than their full responsibility (being victims), and rewards behaviors that ultimately lead to individual and team breakdown.
  • Conscious leaders and teams take full responsibility—radical responsibility—instead of placing blame.
  • Radical responsibility means locating the cause and control of our lives in ourselves, not in external events.
  • Instead of asking “Who’s to blame?” or “how can we fix this” or “how can we keep this from happening”, conscious leaders ask, “What can we learn and how can we grow from this?”
  • Conscious leaders are open to the possibility that instead of controlling and changing the world, perhaps the world is just right the way it is. This creates huge growth opportunities on a personal and organizational level


COMMITMENT 2: Learning Through Curiosity

  • Four competencies are the greatest predictors of sustained success: self-awareness, learning agility, communication and influence. Self-awareness and learning agility are the foundation of conscious leadership.
  • Conscious leaders are passionately committed to knowing themselves, which is the basis of their willingness to live in a state of curiosity.
  • At any point, leaders are either above the line (open, curious, and committed to learning) or below the line (defensive, closed and committed to being right).
  • No other commitment is more central to the core of unconscious people than the one to being right. Being “right” doesn’t cause drama, but wanting, proving, and fighting to be “right” does.
  • Even though conscious leaders get defensive like everyone else, they regularly interrupt this natural reactivity by pausing to breathe (be present), accept (for being in a drift/defensive/reactive state), and shift.
  • The issue is not whether we will drift but how long we stay in a drift before we shift.
  • There are two kinds of shift moves: conscious breathing (box breathing – 4 seconds inhale, 4 seconds hold, 4 seconds exhale) and changing our posture (less defensive).  and those that change our consciousness (such as speaking unarguably and appreciation).
  • Effective leaders get into a state of wonder on a consistent basis. Wonder is as much about the question as it is about the answer. A wonder question is an open-ended question that has no “right” answer. “I wonder what I can learn today that will benefit everyone” “I wonder how we could get more done in less time”


COMMITMENT 3: Feeling All Feelings

  • Great leaders learn to access all three centers of intelligence: the head, the heart, and the gut.
  • Feelings are viewed as negative and a distraction to good decision-making and leadership. Emotional intelligence is the ability to lead from the heart center along with the head and gut.
  • Conscious leaders know that feelings are natural and expressing them is healthy. Emotion is “e-motion.” Energy in motion; feelings are simply physical sensations.
  • The five primary emotions are anger, fear, sadness, joy, and sexual feelings. To help leaders develop emotional intelligence, we need to locate our feelings and ask: “what am I feeling right now?”
EmotionLocation
AngerJaw, back, back of neck, across the shoulders
FearBelly
SadnessEyes, high chest, upper throat
JoyCore, Spine
SexualPelvis, genitals, erogenous zones
  • Every feeling we experience invites us in a specific way to grow in awareness and knowing.
  • Repressing, denying, or recycling emotions creates physical, psychological, and relationship problems. If you repress or recycle emotions, it can harden into a mood: Anger becomes bitterness. Fear becomes anxiety. Sadness becomes apathy.

To release emotion,

  1. Locate the sensation in the body (“What are the bits in our body doing?”)
  2. Breathe (box breathing)
  3. Allow or accept the sensation (“Can I allow or even welcome these sensations?”). Don’t repress or resist the emotion.
  4. Match your experience with your expression (“What sound or movement does this sensation want?”).
  • Conscious leaders learn to locate, name, and release their feelings. They know that feelings not only add richness and color to life but are also an essential ally to successful leadership.


COMMITMENT 4: Speaking Candidly

  • Leaders and teams have found that seeing reality clearly is essential to being successful.
  • In order to see reality clearly, leaders and organizations need everyone to be truthful and not lie about, or withhold, information. They need candor.

e.g. I judge that my boss is disrespectful towards others and me. I withhold this judgment and withdraw a bit in the relationship. From this place of withdrawal, I see him through my lens of judgment, which means that I see him as disrespectful. Once I see him as disrespectful, I look for evidence to confirm that I’m RIGHT about my judgment.

  • Candor is the revealing of all thoughts, feelings, and sensations in an honest, open, and aware way.
  • Truthfulness: How accurate was my reveal? Time is 9:15
  • Openness: How complete was my reveal? If you watch battery died and you arrive at 9:40. You say you arrived after 9:15 (you are truthful and open, but not aware)
  • Awareness: How self-aware am I?
  • Speaking candidly increases the probability that leaders and teams can collectively see reality more clearly.
  • Withholding is refraining from revealing everything to all relevant parties.
  • Withholding also decreases energy in leaders, which often shows up as boredom or lethargy in them and relational disconnection in the team.
  • Rather than withholding, conscious leaders practice revealing. They reveal not because they are right, but because they wish to be known.
  • Through this transparency, they create connection and open learning.
  • Conscious listening is one of the most important skills for effective leadership: by identifying our listening “filters,” we can let go of them and become fully present to the expression of the other person.
    • Avoid these common listening filters: diagnose, correct, avoid conflict, or defend. 
  • Conscious listening takes courage:
  • We must listen for the content (head center) – repeat what you heard to get confirmation
  • Listen to their emotions (heart center) – what emotions are being expressed directly or indirectly as they speak
  • Base desire (gut center) being expressed by the other person – what does the other person want? 
  • It is best to start with candor in relationships only when you have a shared commitment to it, along with the necessary skills, including being able to speak unarguably.
  • Speaking Unarguably: a thought (I’m having the thought that…), a feeling (I feel..), or a sensation (I’m having a body sensation of …”)


COMMITMENT 5: Eliminating Gossip

  • Even though gossip has long been a part of office culture, it is a key indicator of an unhealthy organization and one of the fastest ways to derail motivation and creativity.
  • Gossip is a statement about another made by someone with negative intent or a statement the speaker would be unwilling to share in exactly the same way if that person were in the room.
  • People gossip to gain validation, control others and outcomes, avoid conflict, get attention, feel included, and make themselves right by making others wrong. In short, people usually gossip out of fear.
  • If you gossip, clean it up by revealing your participation in the gossip to everyone involved.
  • Use the issue-clearing model as a tool to separate fact from story and to learn to speak directly to one another.
  • Brian: Clears the Issue
    • Affirm a meaningful relationship – “Jim, I want to clear this issue with you because I value our business relationship”
    • Establish a time to talk – “Is now a good time or talk? If not now, when?”
    • The specific facts are…” – “The facts are that for four of the last five meetings, you showed up after the start time.”
    • “I made up a story that…” – “I made up a story that this meeting isn’t important to you. You aren’t prioritizing this project.”
    • “I feel…” – “I feel angry and scared”
    • “My part in this is…” – “My part in this is that I didn’t speak directly to you the first time it happened. I also didn’t create a clear agreement with you at the onset about the timing or priority of these meetings.
    • “And I specifically want…” – “I want to make clear time agreements with you and negotiated them beforehand, if necessary. I would really like you to check in with yourself to see whether you are aligned with this project and to tell me if you aren’t
  • Jim – Listens to Understand
  • “What I hear you saying…” – What I hear you saying is that when I was late to four meetings, you made that mean I wasn’t committed to the project and that my with priorities as they are now this project may fall through the cracks. You feel angry and scared. You want to have clear time agreements for the future and for me to check about my own commitment to the project as a priority.
  • After reflecting, ask, “is that accurate” – if not, reflect again
  • “Is there more” – ask in a kind, genuine curious voice
  • “Are you clear about this?”
  • When leaders and teams learn to speak candidly with each other, they benefit from the direct feedback about issues within the organization that otherwise could derail creative energy and productive collaboration.


COMMITMENT 6: Practicing Integrity

  • Integrity is the practice of keeping agreements, taking responsibility, revealing authentic feelings, and expressing unarguable truths. It is essential to thriving leaders and organizations.
  • Integrity is not defined here as conforming to a moral or ethical code, but rather as facilitating wholeness and congruence.
  • Integrity is an unbroken flow of energy and life force, congruence between what is experienced and expressed, and alignment with life purpose.
    • Congruence is matching what is on the inside to what is on the outside.
  • Organizations have a natural flow of energy, but when it is interrupted by integrity breaches, leadership is dampened, and employee engagement decreases.
  • Conscious leaders are masters at managing energy, which leads to an organizational culture that is alive, engaged, passionate, on purpose, creative, innovative, intuitive, clear, visionary, playful, relaxed, and refreshed.
  • There are four pillars of integrity: taking radical responsibility (Commitment 1), speaking candidly (Commitment 4), feeling all feelings (Commitment 3), and keeping agreements (Commitment 6).
  • Conscious leaders are impeccable with their agreements. They make clear agreements, keep them, renegotiate them when needed, and clean them up when broken.
    • Clear Agreements: Instead of a whole body YES, many leaders practice the “corporate nod” – e.g. “I have no intention of doing that, but no one will ever follow up”
    • Keep Them: Conscious leaders keep 90% of the agreements they make
    • Renegotiate Them: Conscious leaders negotiate less than 10% of their agreements
    • Clean Them Up: When cleaning up a broken agreement, first keep your statement short and simple – It’s my fault that I did (or didn’t do it) and take 100% responsibility.  Second ask, if there is anything you can to do clean up the broken agreement.

COMMITMENT 7: Generating Appreciation

  • Committing to appreciation, along with avoiding entitlement, helps leaders and organizations grow value and connection in the workplace.
  • Appreciation is comprised of two parts: sensitive awareness (simply paying attention and noticing the finer details or fresh set of eyes) and an increase in value.
  • Entitlement arises when rewards and benefits become an expectation instead of a preference.
  • Living in appreciation has two branches: being open to fully receiving appreciation and being able to fully give appreciation.
    • Research shows approximately five appreciations for every one criticism comment is the optimal ratio for strong relationships
  • Masterful appreciation is sincere (must be real and true), unarguable (I appreciate you for…; I felt…), specific, and succinct (said in one breath).

COMMITMENT 8: Excelling in Your Zone of Genius

  • Conscious leaders build an organization that allows all team members to realize their full potential—and they support and inspire others to do the same.
  • People tend to work and live in four zones: incompetence, competence, excellence, and genius.
    • Incompetence: if you both dislike the activity and do it poorly, dump it (stop doing it), delegate it, or do it differently (can you do it fun?) Exit this zone!
  • Conscious leaders are committed to maximizing their zone of genius, where their full magnificence and creativity can be expressed without hesitation.
  • Unconscious leaders get stuck in the zones of excellence, competence, and incompetence, never living up to and expressing their extraordinary brilliance.
  • The Upper Limits Problem, named by Gay Hendricks, identifies the fears and beliefs that keep people from stepping into their zone of genius.
  • We can program our nervous systems to allow for greater happiness, fulfillment, and relational connectedness.
  • Becoming aware of our unique giftedness, as well as the environments where that is most valued, (the Best Stuff Exercise – where we were in the zone) helps us spend more and more of our time thriving.
  • Conscious leaders who spend time with team members to assess, understand, and appreciate their own unique genius qualities and talents create organizations that excel on all levels.

COMMITMENT 9: Living a Life of Play and Rest

  • Creating a life of play, improvisation, and laughter allows life to unfold easily and energy to be maximized.
  • Play is an absorbing, apparently purposeless activity that provides enjoyment and suspends self-consciousness and a sense of time. It is also self-motivating and makes you want to do it again.
  • An imposed nose-to-the-grindstone culture will lead to higher levels of stress, guilt, employee burnout and turnover.
  • Energy exerted with this type of “hard work” is wrought with effort and struggle, whereas energy exerted through play is energizing.
    • Effort implies resistance and exertion doesn’t.
  • Most leaders resist play because they think they will fall behind if they aren’t seriously working hard.
  • Organizations that take breaks to rest and play are actually more productive and creative. Energy is maximized when rest, renewal, and personal rhythms are honored.
  • Conscious leaders who value and encourage an atmosphere of play and joy within themselves and in their organizations create high-functioning, high-achieving cultures.
    • The humor in most organizations is sarcastic humor that pokes fun at others often when they are not present or sophomoric humor that trivializes what is good and beautiful in life.
  • Workaholism is just like any other addiction, and it is an epidemic in the corporate world.

COMMITMENT 10: Exploring the Opposite

  • Exploring the opposite means being open to the notion that the opposite of your story (thoughts, beliefs, opinions) could be as true as or truer than your story.
  • It is not the issue itself that causes pain, but your interpretation of it.
  • Conscious leaders take responsibility for being the labeler of their experiences and their life, and they learn to question all their labels.
  • Conscious leaders practice simple ways to question the beliefs that cause suffering, starting with “Is it true?” and “Can I absolutely know it is true?” How do you react, what happens when you believe that thought?  Who would you be without that thought?
  • The turnaround exercise allows leaders to practice shifting their beliefs from knowing to curiosity.
    • Example: John is unkind to me
    • Turn it around to the opposite: John is kind to me
    • Turn it around to the other person: I am unkind to John
    • Turn it around to yourself: I am unkind to me
    • How is this statement as true or truer? Give at least three specific examples.
  • When conscious leaders let go of the righteousness of their beliefs, they open to curiosity and align with their deepest desires.

COMMITMENT 11: Sourcing Approval, Control and Security

  • Humans have core wants of approval, control, and security. All other wants are versions of these three basic desires, which show up in a multitude of ways.
  • Security is about survival, approval is about belonging and being part of something, and control is the ego’s last resort if it cannot achieve security through approval.
    • Conscious leaders regularly ask themselves: “What is the core want driving this (surface) desire?”
  • The challenge is not in having approval, control, and security, but in believing that they are missing. This causes people to seek these core desires outside themselves—somewhere “out there.”
  • The “If Only . . . I Would” exercise can help leaders wake up from the trance that their happiness is located outside themselves.
    • “If only I would lose weight, I would have approval and security”
  • It’s not the wants but the “wanting” of something different that leads to an unsatisfying life.
    • Wanting says I don’t have it and I need to go outside of myself to get it.
  • All leaders at any moment are operating from one of two experiences: either they think they lack something and seek to get it from somewhere or someone, or they believe they are already whole, perfect, and complete and move in the world from love and creativity
  • Pain in life is not optional, but suffering is. As long as we keep seeking and wanting something we believe we don’t have, we suffer.

COMMITMENT 12: Having Enough of Everything

  • Conscious leaders experience their lives as having enough of everything: time, money, love, energy, space, and resources.
  • The scarcity belief that there is “not enough” causes leaders to focus on making sure they get what is “theirs.”
  • The myths that feed scarcity are that there is never enough, more is better, and it will always be this way (we can never change or escape).
  • Conscious leaders notice this focus on the toxic myth of insufficiency and shift from a mentality of scarcity to one of sufficiency.
  • To unwind scarcity, conscious leaders notice their reference point and check in with themselves, actively challenging their beliefs.
  • Conscious leaders can practice checking in with their experience in the present moment, bringing attention to the physical body, and noticing the abundance of each moment.
  • To those committed to conscious leadership, the belief and experience of sufficiency creates a profound shift in their relationship with others, work, and life.

COMMITMENT 13: Experiencing the World as an Ally

  • Conscious leaders commit to seeing all people and circumstances as allies in their growth.
  • Unconscious reactive leaders view other people and circumstances as obstacles to getting what they want.
  • Most leaders start with this reactive mindset: they are convinced they will feel happy once they get what they want and if they can’t get what they want, it’s because others are standing in their way.
  • Rather than seeing all people as allies, unconscious leaders think either/or: “people are either with me or against me.”
  • This does not mean that competition is nonexistent, but that even competitors are supportive catalysts for growth and that adversaries can be extremely beneficial.
  • Challenges create the positive pressure often needed for conscious leaders to expand beyond the comfort zone and into their full magnificence.
  • Conscious leaders are able to shift out of the state of comparison to see everyone and everything as equally valuable.
  • This perspective recognizes that all people and circumstances are allies in learning and growth.

COMMITMENT 14: Creating Win for All Solutions

  • Win-for-all solutions are a goal of conscious leaders and organizations.
  • Conscious leaders commit to moving beyond the zero-sum game into a creative solution that serves all.
  •  
  • Win-for-all solutions require the building blocks of the other conscious leadership commitments, providing a concrete example of how conscious leaders integrate all the commitments into a way of being in the world.
  • Within an organization, win-for-all coaching questions help create a culture that supports and encourages everyone.
  • The energy resulting from win-for-all collaboration allows solutions to be implemented quickly.
  • A win-for-all culture allows an organization to thrive as creativity, collaboration, vision, and achievement are optimized

COMMITMENT 15: Being the Resolution

  • Being the resolution means that conscious leaders recognize what is missing in the world (what could be more? What could be even more beautiful, efficient, aligned, or productive) and view that as an invitation to become what is needed.
  • When unconscious leaders grow weary of an intense version of the victim-villain-hero triangle, they often shift to an “indifferent” experience of drama, characterized by apathy and resentment.
  • Many unconscious leaders, who have spent their entire careers problem-solving, delivering results, and pulling people along, often feel drained and want to disconnect.
  • Team members who don’t feel heard by unconscious leaders stop caring about making changes and give up on creating solutions that could benefit the organization.
  • Conscious leaders see what is missing, not from a perspective of lack, but of opportunity. They then follow a calling to respond to the perceived need.
  • Being the resolution takes place only from a conscious leader’s whole body YES!
  • Being the resolution incorporates the mastery of living from several of the other commitments and, once mastered, allows conscious leaders to move the world to greater beauty, alignment, productivity, efficiency, and grace

PART III | SHIFTING TO CONSCIOUS LEADERSHIP
THE CHANGE FORMULA: (V X D) + FS > R = C

C = Change

R = Resistance (resistance to change is rooted in fear – if I changed, what am I afraid would happen, what’s at risk if I stop being the way I’ve been or doing what I’ve been doing?)

V = Vision (a picture of a preferable future – e.g. like MLK Jr. or Steve Jobs)

D = Dissatisfaction (could refer to pain; dissatisfaction with the status quo – most people/organizations overcome resistance to change by becoming extremely dissatisfied with the status quo or having a “burning platform”

FS = First Steps (V X D gives us the “why”, while FS gives us the “what and how”; they are not equal to vision and pain in their efficacy for overcoming resistance. They are necessary, but not equal).

Willingness to Change

  • What in life do you want to change? Make a list
  • Now ask yourself, “Am I willing to change? Am I really willing to change?)

The first step to willingness is owning – fully owning – our unwillingness.

When we own our resistance, we see that we simply need more motivation: more vision or dissatisfaction.

Practice the 4 A’s:

  • Acknowledge – can you simply acknowledge that you are where you are?
  • Allow – stop and see if you’re willing to allow yourself to just be where you are?
  • Accept – can you accept yourself for being just the way you are?
  • Appreciate – can you appreciate yourself for being just where you are?

15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership Statements

#CommitmentAbove the LineBelow the Line
1ResponsibilityI commit to taking full responsibility for the circumstances of my life, and my physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual well-being. I commit to supporting others to take full responsibility for their lives.I commit to blaming others and myself for what is wrong in the world. I commit to being a victim, villain, or hero and taking more or less than 100% responsibility.
2CuriosityI commit to growing in self-awareness. I commit to regarding every interaction as an opportunity to learn. I commit to curiosity as a path to rapid learning.I commit to being right and to seeing this situation as something that is happening to me. I commit to being defensive, especially when I am certain that I am RIGHT.
3FeelingsI commit to feeling my feelings all the way through to completion. They come, and I locate them in my body, then move, breathe, and vocalize them so they release all the way through.I commit to resisting, judging, and apologizing for my feelings. I repress, avoid, and withhold them.
4CandorI commit to saying what is true for me. I commit to being a person to whom others can express themselves with candor.I commit to withholding my truth (facts, feelings, things I imagine) and speaking in a way that allows me to try to manipulate an outcome. I commit to not listening to the other person.
5GossipI commit to ending gossip, talking directly to people with whom I have an issue or concern, and encouraging others to talk directly to people with whom they have an issue or concern.I commit to saying things about people that I have not or will not say to them. I commit to talking about people in ways I wouldn’t if they were there. I commit to listening to others when they gossip.
6IntegrityI commit to the masterful practice of integrity, including acknowledging all authentic feelings, expressing the unarguable truth, and keeping my agreements.I commit to living in incompletion by withholding my truth, denying my feelings, not keeping my agreements, and not taking 100% responsibility.
7AppreciationI commit to living in appreciation, fully opening to both receiving and giving appreciation.I commit to feeling entitled to what’s mine, resenting when it’s not acknowledged in the way I want.
8GeniusI commit to expressing my full magnificence and to supporting and inspiring others to fully express their creativity and live in their zone of genius.I commit to holding myself back and not realizing my full potential by living in areas of incompetence, competence, and excellence.
9Play and RestI commit to creating a life of play, improvisation, and laughter. I commit to seeing all of life unfold easefully and effortlessly. I commit to maximizing my energy by honoring rest, renewal, and rhythm.I commit to seeing my life as serious; it requires hard work, effort, and struggle. I see play and rest as distractions from effectiveness and efficiency.
10Opposite of My StoryI commit to seeing that the opposite of my story is as true or truer than my original story. I recognize that I interpret the world around me and give my stories meaning.I commit to believing my stories and the meaning I give them as the truth.
11ApprovalI commit to being the source of my security, control, and approval.I commit to living from the belief that my approval, control, and security come from the outside people, circumstances, and conditions.
12EnoughI commit to experiencing that I have enough of everything… including time, money, love, energy, space, resources, etc.I commit to a scarcity mentality, choosing to see that there is not enough for me and others in the world, and therefore I have to be conscious of making sure I get and preserve what is mine.
13AlliesI commit to seeing all people and circumstances as allies that are perfectly suited to help me learn the most important things for my growth.I commit to seeing other people and circumstances as obstacles and impediments to getting what I most want.
14Win for AllI commit to creating win-for-all solutions (win for me, win for the other person, win for the organization, and win for the whole) for whatever issues, problems, concerns, or opportunities life gives me.I commit to seeing life as a zero-sum game, creating win/lose solutions for whatever issues, problems, concerns, or opportunities life gives me.
15Being the ResolutionI commit to being the resolution or solution that is needed: seeing what is missing in the world as an invitation to become that which is required.I commit to responding to the needs of the world with apathy or resentment and doing nothing or assigning blame to others.

Smart Brevity: The Power of Saying More with Less by Jim VandeHei, Mike Allen, Mike and Roy Schwartz – 7/10

by

Part 1: What Is Smart Brevity?

2: Smart Brevity, Explained

People want to know something new, revelatory, exciting. And they want you to put it in context and explain “Why it matters.” Then, with a visual or verbal cue, they decide whether to “Go deeper” into the conversation.

Smart Brevity’s Core 4

  1. A muscular “tease”: Whether in a tweet, headline, or email subject line, you need six or fewer strong words to yank someone’s attention away from Tinder or TikTok.
  2. One strong first sentence, or “lede”: Your opening sentence should be the most memorable — tell me something I don’t know, would want to know, or should know. Make this sentence as direct, short, and sharp as possible.
  3. Context, or “Why it matters”: We’re all faking it. Mike and I learned this speaking to Fortune 500 CEOs. We all know a lot about a little. We’re too ashamed or afraid to ask, but we almost always need you to explain why your new fact, idea, or thought matters.
  4. The choice to learn more, or “Go deeper”: Don’t force someone to read or hear more than they want. Make it their decision. If they decide “yes,” what follows should be truly worth their time.

4: Audience First

We tend to think too much about what we want to say versus what others need to hear.

Reverse this thinking. Instead:

  1. Focus on ONE person you are targeting.
    • If you’re targeting a group, zero in on a specific individual — a name, a face, a job.
    • Always do this before you start communicating. If you try to speak to everyone, you usually reach no one. Singling out the person you want to reach clarifies big-time.
  2. Plot out ONE thing you want them to remember. If you don’t know exactly what you’re trying to convey, the reader has zero chance of understanding it.
    • You will truly achieve Smart Brevity when you figure out what you want this person to remember specifically — and find taut, vivid, memorable ways to express it.
  3. Write like a human, for humans.
    • Be simple, clear, direct. Be conversational. Authenticity and relatability are essential ingredients. They help people become more willing to hear you and remember what you said.
  4. Then write it down.
    • Write down that one thing you want the reader, viewer, or listener to remember if it’s all they take away. Write that before doing anything else.
    • Then try to shorten it to fewer than a dozen words — less is more. It should be a declarative statement or data point, not a question. Make sure it’s new or essential. Scrub the weak words and delete any soggy verbs or adjectives.
  5. Then stop.

Part 2: How to Do It

5: Be Worthy

The top four ways to lose readers: Too much text. Too much jargon. Too many choices. Long video.

  1. List the points you must make.
    • Write them in order of importance. The first one is the one most likely to stick.
    • “If there’s only one thing you remember from this talk…” That’s a great way to signal unmistakably what matters most and what you want people to take away.
  2. Whittle down your list of important points to one or two, if possible. Do a real gut check. Is this point, detail, or concept essential? If so, is there a simpler way to convey it?
  3. Delete, delete, delete.
    What words, sentences, or paragraphs can you eliminate before sending? Every word or sentence you can shave saves the other person time. Less is more — and a gift.

6: Grab Me!

The most important words you type are subject lines, headlines, and the first line of tweets, notes, or papers. You need to grab me, entice me, seduce me.

  • The Axios audience team found that roughly six words is the optimal subject line for emails — short enough to show all words in a mobile phone format.
  • There’s a foolproof way to know if you have a good attention grabber: Would you read it if you hadn’t written it?

Write — then go back and kill at least half the words. It winds up sharper every time.

Start by stopping.

  • Stop using too many words in a headline or subject line. Limit yourself to six words, tops.
  • Stop being funny. Or ironic. Or cryptic. It’s confusing, not clever.
  • Stop using fancy SAT words or business-speak.

In 10 words or less, write the reason you’re bothering to write something in the first place.

  • Write it in the most provocative yet accurate way possible.
  • Short words are strong words. A general rule: A one-syllable word is stronger than a two-syllable word, which is stronger than a three-syllable word.
  • Strong words are better than soft and soggy ones.
  • Active verbs ALWAYS.

Read it aloud.

7: ONE Big Thing

If there is one thing you take away from this book, it is this: Learn to identify and trumpet ONE thing you want people to know.

The first sentence is your one — and likely only — chance to tell someone what they need to know and convince them not to move on.

  • Boil down your most important point.
  • Keep your target audience top of mind.
  • Skip the anecdotes. Or jokes. Or showing off.
  • Stick to the one-sentence limit.
  • Hack off the adverbs, weak words, extraneous words.
  • Now ask yourself: If this is the ONLY thing the person sees or hears, is it exactly what you want to stick?

Part 3: Smart Brevity in Action

13: The Art of the Newsletter

The average person reads roughly 265 words per minute — the number we use in this book to calculate reading time.

  • Say up top how many items will follow. Five to ten items is ideal — anything longer is a book, not a newsletter. Trim it.
  • Anything longer than 1,200 words total is too long. Under 1,000 is ideal. Trim it.
  • Keep each item to 200 words, tops. This shows respect for readers’ time.
  • Simple graphs or pictures that make your point alone are pure gold.

14: Be Heard @ Work

Gallup, which has been polling since the 1930s, found that two things keep people feeling good about their job and staying put: close relationships with colleagues and engagement.

The data show you should send updates in the morning to maximize open rates.

Your presentations:

  • Start with your big idea, distilled using the tricks for teases in Chapter 6.
  • Each point on subsequent slides should have a similarly taut headline and then a few bullet points with the shortest ONE sentence possible.
    • Rule of thumb: If you have more than 20 words on a slide, try again.
  • Keep your visuals clean, simple, and additive (see Chapter 20).
  • Rarely should you exceed five or six slides.
  • End where you began by restating your Big Idea. Then stop.

15: Smart Brevity Your Email

Bad emails start with lame subject lines. You want it short, direct, urgent.

  • The news or ask should be in the first sentence, always.
  • Give the recipients the “Why it matters” context.
  • Bullets make it easy for skimmers and close readers to catch the most important data points or supporting ideas.
  • Bold any words, figures, or names you want to stand out — this is the perfect eye-trap for skimmers.
  • Clean, intuitive visuals help amplify or bring to life an important point.

16: Smart Brevity Your Meetings

A good meeting is usually determined before it starts.

  • Sounds silly, but make sure you truly need a meeting.
    • If it requires privacy or brutal honesty, it might be better handled as a one-on-one chat.

The person calling the meeting should:

  • Set an objective (one direct sentence) and an agenda (three bullet points, max) in an email before the meeting.
    • Do this the night before to give participants time to think.
    • Six smart sentences will suffice!
    • Outline specific decisions or actions to be made, if possible.

During the meeting:

  1. Start with your headline — the one-sentence objective you emailed in advance.
  2. Next, explain “Why it matters” to this specific group at this specific moment.
  3. State clearly what specific decisions need to be made.
  4. Guide the discussion and set the tone for focus and efficiency.
  5. Encourage quiet voices to share their views.
  6. With 2 minutes left, summarize takeaways and next steps.
  7. Let the team know you’ll send a follow-up email before close of business.

After the meeting:

  • While it’s fresh in your mind, send a quick email with follow-ups in bullet points.

17: Smart Brevity Your Speeches

The Smart Brevity version of the “secret structure” of great speeches:

  • Describe the status quo — how the world or topic exists today.
  • Contrast it with your idea — ideally, the point of your speech.
  • Move back and forth from what is and what could be.
  • Make a call to action.
  • End with a vivid portrait of utopia if they embrace your idea.

Think about writing and speaking authentically.

  • Be yourself.
  • Slides, notes, and teleprompters are bad crutches. The focus should be on YOU and your words.

Speaking tips:

  1. Remember the audience.
    • Start with a real-life story (ideally with a chuckle).
    • One joke or anecdote is enough.
  2. Distill your most important ONE point.
    • Write it down word for word — don’t just “kind of know it.”
    • Once you have your Big Thought, build your speech around it.
  3. Harvard Business Review recommends: 15 words max for your big point — the shorter, the better.
  4. Hit them over the head with your point.
    • At the start, say:
      • “The one thing I want you to remember today is…”
      • Then follow with your sharpened Big Thought.
  5. Explain “Why it matters” immediately.
    • Maybe even say, “This matters to you because…”
  6. Support your Big Thought with stats or stories.
    • Number them to help people take notes and show you know where you’re going.
  7. Reinforce your Big Thought at the end.
    • Say: “If there is one thing you take away…”

18: Smart Brevity Your Presentations

  1. Write down the precise outcome you want and three to five points you MUST make to support it.
    • Put your supporting points in order of importance.
    • This is your outline.
    • Apply the Smart Brevity writing tricks to sharpen your specific ask or outcome into six or so words.
    • This focuses the audience’s mind on THE most important point.
  2. Simplify every slide.
    • One message per slide.
    • People should absorb your point in 3 seconds, max.

Part 4: The Smart Brevity Cheat Sheet

23: The Cheat Sheet

  1. Define your audience.
    • Who are they?
    • What do they need to know?
  2. Write your headline.
    • Is it 6 words or fewer?
    • Clear and specific?
    • Conversational, with muscular words?
  3. What’s new?
    • One sentence only.
    • What do you need readers to remember?
    • A distinct detail from your headline?
  4. Why it matters.
    • The bottom line: What will it change?
    • The big picture: What’s the larger context?
  5. Structure for readability.
    • Use your Axioms (e.g., “The big picture,” “What’s next”).
    • Break up data points into bullet points.
  6. Review your work.
    • Accurate: Did you lose necessary details or nuance?
    • Cohesive: Does it flow logically?
    • Human: Does it still sound like you?

Final test:

  • If your communication feels too curt or robotic, you’ve cut too much.
  • Take a moment to breathe some life back into it.

Final Thoughts

You do not need 20,000 words to make an impact. If 200 words can get the job done, that’s the smart choice.

Smart Brevity is a gift.
It respects people’s time, grabs attention, and delivers impact fast.

Now, apply it everywhere.

The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel (9/10)

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Chapter 1: No One’s Crazy

People’s lifetime investment decisions are heavily anchored to the experiences they had in their own generation. If you were born when the stock market was strong, you invested more in stocks than those who grew up when stocks were weak.

Financial decisions are often made based on emotions rather than pure logic and are influenced by a person’s background, experiences, and emotional relationship with money (e.g., lottery tickets—poor people buy more lottery tickets than rich people because they feel like it’s their only shot at wealth, not because it’s a mathematically sound choice).

Chapter 2: Luck & Risk

When people succeed, they tend to credit their skills and hard work rather than external circumstances. When people fail, they often blame bad luck rather than poor decisions. However, both luck and risk are unpredictable forces that influence financial outcomes (e.g., Bill Gates is successful because of a lucky break—he attended a school that had one of the first computers).

Be careful who you praise and admire. Be careful who you look down upon and wish to avoid becoming.

  • Realize that not all success is due to hard work, and not all poverty is due to laziness. Keep this in mind when judging people, including yourself.

Focus less on specific individuals and case studies and more on broad patterns.

  • The more extreme the outcome, the less likely you can apply its lessons to your own life, because the more likely the outcome was influenced by extreme ends of luck or risk (e.g., Warren Buffett’s investment success).

Chapter 3: Never Enough

There is no reason to risk what you have and need for what you don’t have and don’t need.

Ask yourself:

  • At what point would earning more money no longer change my quality of life?
  • What risks am I willing to take—or not take—to achieve financial success?

The hardest financial skill is getting the goalpost to stop moving. If expectations rise with results, there is no logic in striving for more because you’ll feel the same after putting in extra effort. Happiness = results – expectations.

Social comparison is the problem here—no matter how much money you have, there’s always someone richer or more successful. Chasing status through money is a never-ending game.

Enough is not too little—enough is realizing that the opposite—an insatiable appetite for more—will push you to the point of regret.

There are many things never worth risking, no matter the potential gain: reputation, freedom & independence, family and friends, being loved by those you want to love you, and happiness.

Chapter 4: Confounding Compounding

Warren Buffett’s real secret to wealth isn’t high returns but the fact that he has been investing for over 75 years.

Many investors focus too much on high returns instead of maximizing how long they let their money compound.

Chapter 5: Getting Wealthy vs. Staying Wealthy

Getting rich and staying rich are different skill sets.

  • Getting rich requires taking risks, being optimistic, and making big moves.
  • Staying rich requires humility, fear, frugality, and risk management.

Survival is the key to long-term success.

  • Avoid unnecessary risks that could wipe you out.
  • Focus on being able to invest for decades (e.g., compounding), not just a few years.

Survival mindset:

  1. More than I want big returns, I want to be financially unbreakable. And if I’m unbreakable, I actually think I’ll get the biggest returns because I’ll be able to stick around long enough for compounding to work wonders.
  2. Planning is important, but the most important part of every plan is to plan on the plan not going according to plan (have a margin of safety).
  3. A barbelled personality—optimistic about the future but paranoid about what will prevent you from getting there—is vital.

Chapter 6: Tails, You Win

Rare but powerful events (tail events) have an outsized impact on outcomes.

  • Warren Buffett’s portfolio is heavily influenced by just a few of his best investments.
  • Failure and small losses are part of the process. You don’t need to be right all the time—you just need a few big wins.
  • Make sure you stay in the game long enough to catch a tail event.

Chapter 7: Freedom

The ability to do what you want, when you want, with who you want, for as long as you want, is priceless. It is the highest dividend money pays and the broadest lifestyle variable that makes people happy.

Freedom isn’t about being rich – it’s about flexibility. You don’t need millions to achieve freedom; you need enough money to avoid being forced into decisions you don’t want to make.

Chapter 8: Man in the Car Paradox

People desire wealth and status not for the possessions themselves but for the respect and attention they believe those possessions will bring. However, in reality, people rarely admire the owner of luxury goods—they admire the idea of owning them themselves.

  • When you see someone in an expensive car, you don’t think highly of them—you think about how you would feel in the car. This is the “man in the car paradox.”
  • Chasing status through material possessions often leads to a cycle of dissatisfaction—people keep buying more to impress others, only to find that admiration is fleeting or nonexistent.
  • True respect and admiration come from qualities like kindness, generosity, and humility, not material wealth.

Chapter 9: Wealth is What You Don’t See

People assume someone is wealthy because they drive an expensive car or live in a big house.

However, wealth is hidden—it’s income not spent. Wealth is an option not yet taken to buy something later. Its value lies in offering you options, flexibility, and growth rather than immediate material possessions.

The most financially successful people don’t seek validation through spending; they build lasting financial security by prioritizing saving, investing, and financial freedom over material possessions.

Chapter 10: Save Money

Building wealth has little to do with income or investment returns and a lot to do with savings habits.

  • Building wealth doesn’t require a high income, just good habits.
  • The value of wealth is relative to what you need—past a certain level of income, what you need is just what sits below your ego.
  • Many rich people stay broke because they spend everything they make.

You don’t need a specific reason to save.

  • Savings without a spending goal give you options, flexibility, and security.
  • Flexibility and control over your time is an unseen return on wealth.

Chapter 11: Reasonable > Rational

Many financial experts emphasize making purely logical and rational decisions (e.g., optimizing every investment for the highest returns, minimizing taxes, or avoiding emotional biases). However, people aren’t robots—they have emotions, fears, and personal goals that influence financial decisions.

  • Instead of striving for perfectly rational financial decisions, being reasonable is more sustainable.
  • A strategy that helps you sleep well at night and stay invested for the long run is better than a theoretically perfect but difficult-to-stick-with plan.
  • Example: Paying off your mortgage early may not be the best financial move mathematically, but if it gives you peace of mind, it’s the right choice for you.

Chapter 12: Surprise!

The biggest financial and economic events in history are often the least expected.

  • Uncertainty and surprises are a constant in the financial world. The best approach is to embrace flexibility rather than assume you can predict the future.
  • Two dangerous mistakes when relying too heavily on past investment history:
    • You’ll likely miss outlier events that drive major financial outcomes. History does not repeat itself exactly, it surprises us in new ways.
    • History can be a misleading guide to the future because structural changes occur (e.g., 401(k) plans are only 42 years old, Roth IRAs were created in the 1990s).
  • The further back in history you look, the more general your takeaways should be. General things like people’s relationship to greed and fear, how they behave under stress, and how they respond to incentives tend to be stable in time.

Chapter 13: Room for Error

The future is unpredictable, and mistakes are inevitable. A margin for error protects against uncertainty.

  • No financial plan goes exactly as expected—having extra savings, flexibility, and conservative assumptions helps you survive surprises.
  • Expect the unexpected—don’t assume perfect outcomes. Don’t rely on best-case scenarios, but instead prepare for the worst and hope for the best.

Example: Morgan Housel assumes his lifetime returns will be 1/3 lower than the historical average.

Chapter 14: You’ll Change

Who you are today is not who you will be in the future.

  • Many people make financial plans based on current wants and ambitions, assuming they will remain the same.
  • However, people evolve significantly over decades, and their values, priorities, and preferences shift in ways they never expected.

Two key lessons for long-term financial decisions:

  1. Avoid extreme financial plans.
  2. Don’t choose between a low-income life of contentment or endlessly chasing wealth at the cost of happiness. Give yourself options.
  3. Rigid financial goals can lead to regret. Many people work hard to achieve a goal, only to realize they no longer want it.
  4. Be comfortable with changing your mind.
  5. Avoid the sunk cost fallacy—anchoring decisions to past efforts that can’t be refunded makes you a prisoner of your past.

Chapter 15: Nothing’s Free

Like everything else worthwhile, successful investing demands a price.

  • The price of earning high returns is enduring market volatility, fear, doubt, uncertainty, and regret.
  • Many people expect high rewards without paying the price, but tolerating short-term pain is the necessary cost of long-term financial success.

Instead of trying to avoid risk, investors should reframe volatility as an admission fee rather than a fine. It’s not a punishment for bad investing; it’s the cost of participating in the market. The key is being mentally prepared for ups and downs so that you don’t make emotional decisions that hurt your long-term gains.

Chapter 16: You & Me

Different people play different financial games based on their personal circumstances.

  • What makes sense for one person may be completely irrational for another.
  • Investors have different goals, time horizons, and risk tolerances.
  • Reacting to short-term noise when playing a long-term game can hurt your financial success.

The most important financial skill is self-awareness.

  • Identify the game you’re playing and make sure your actions align with your strategy.

Housel’s game:
“I am a passive investor, optimistic in the world’s ability to generate real economic growth, and I’m confident that over the next 30 years, that growth will accrue to my investments.”

Because everyone has different risk appetites, timelines, and financial goals, there is no universal right or wrong approach—only what works for each individual. Problems occur when people take advice meant for someone else’s financial situation instead of recognizing their own unique needs.

Chapter 17: The Seduction of Pessimism

Pessimism sounds smarter and gets more attention than optimism. People take bad news seriously because it feels urgent and immediate.

Why do we believe pessimism more than optimism?

  1. Money is ubiquitous—bad financial news affects everyone.
  2. Pessimists extrapolate current trends indefinitely and ignore how markets adapt.
  3. Progress happens slowly, while setbacks happen suddenly and dramatically. Example: Technological advances occur over decades, while market crashes happen in days.

Chapter 18: When You’ll Believe Anything

People’s financial beliefs are often shaped by their personal experiences, emotions, and the stories they tell themselves – rather than objective facts or data.

  • Human’s seek patterns and explanations for financial success and failure, even when randomness plays a big role.
  • The more you want something to be true, the more likely you are to believe a story that overestimates the odds of it being true.
  • Everyone has an incomplete view of the world. But we form a complete narrative to fill in the gaps.  The illusion of control makes us believe we have more influence over outcomes than we actually do.

Daniel Kahneman:

  • When planning, we focus on what we want to do and can do, neglecting the plans and skills of others whose decisions might affect our outcomes.
  • Both in explaining the past and in predicting the future, we focus on the casual role of skill and neglect the role of luck
  • We focus on what we know and neglect what we do not know, which makes us overly confident in our beliefs.

Chapter 19: All Together Now

  • Go out of your way to find humility when things are going right and forgiveness / compassion when they go wrong. Because it’s never as good or as bad as it looks.
  • Respect the power of luck and risk and you’ll have a better chance of focusing on things you can actually control. You’ll also have a better chance of finding the right role models.
  • Less ego, more wealth. Saving money is the gap between your ego and your income, and wealth is what you don’t see.
  • Manage your money in a way that helps you sleep at night.
  • If you want to do better as an investor, the single most powerful thing you can do is increase your time horizon.
  • Become OK with a lot of things going wrong. You can be wrong half the time and still make a fortune, because a small minority of things account for the majority of outcomes.
  • Use money to gain control over your time, because not having control of your time is such a powerful and universal drag on happiness.
  • Be nicer and less flashy. No one is impressed with your possessions as much as you are.
  • Save. Just save. You don’t need a specific reason to save.
  • Define the cost of success and be ready to pay it. Because nothing worthwhile is free. And remember that most financial costs don’t have visible price tags. Uncertainty, doubt, and regret are common costs in the finance world.
  • Worship room for error.
  • Avoid the extreme ends of financial decisions.
  • You should like risk because it pays off over time. But you should be paranoid of ruinous risk because it prevents you from taking future risks that will pay off over time.
  • Define the game you’re playing, and make sure your actions are not being influenced by people playing a different game.
  • Respect the mess. Smart, informed, and reasonable people can disagree in finance, because people have vastly different goals and desires. There is no single right answer; just the answer that works for you.

Chapter 20: Confessions – Housel’s personal financial philosophy

  • Independence, at any income level, is driven by your savings rate. And past a certain level of income, your savings rate is driven by your ability to keep your lifestyle expectations from running away.
  • Every investor should pick a strategy that has the highest odds of successfully meeting their goals. For most investors, dollar-cost averaging into a low-cost index fund will provide the highest odds of long-term success.
  • Beating the market should be hard; the odds of success should be low. If they weren’t everyone would do it, and if everyone did it there would be no opportunity.

The Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Looks to You (8/10) by Zhuo, Julie

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CHAPTER ONE: WHAT IS MANAGEMENT?

A MANAGER’S JOB IS TO build a team that works well together, support members in reaching their career goals, and create processes to get work done smoothly and efficiently.

The One-Line Definition of a Manager’s Job

The crux of management: The belief that a team of people can achieve more than a single person going alone. It is the realization that you don’t have to do everything yourself, be the best at everything yourself, or even know how to do everything yourself. Your job, as a manager, is to get better outcomes from a group of people working together.

How Do You Tell a Great Manager from an Average Manager?

Andy Grove Evaluation: “the output of the work unit and not simply the activity involved.”

Alternatively, review the team’s results (present outcomes) and the other half was based on the strength and satisfaction of my team (future outcomes; did I do a good job hiring and developing individuals, and was my team happy and working well together)?

THE THREE THINGS MANAGERS THINK ABOUT ALL DAY (purpose, people, and process).

Purpose is the outcome your team is trying to accomplish, otherwise known as the why.

  • Everyone on the team should have a similar picture of why does our work matters. If this purpose is missing or unclear, then you may experience conflicts or mismatched expectations.
  • To ensure that your team knows what success looks like and cares about achieving it.

People – are the members of your team set up to succeed? Do they have the right skills? Are they motivated to do great work?

  • If you don’t have the right people for the job, or you don’t have an environment where they can thrive, then you’re going to have problems.
  • To manage people well, you must develop trusting relationships with them, understand their strengths and weaknesses (as well as your own), make good decisions about who should do what (including hiring and firing when necessary), and coach individuals to do their best.

Process – how your team works together.

  • How everyone’s supposed to work together?
  • What the team’s values are
  • Who should do what by when?
  • What principles should govern decision-making?

For managers, important processes to master include running effective meetings, future proof against past mistakes, planning for tomorrow, and nurturing a healthy culture.

Your role as a manager is not to do the work yourself, even if you are the best at it, because that will only take you so far. Your role is to improve the purpose, people, and process of your team to get as high a multiplier effect on your collective outcome as you can.

I learned then one of my first lessons of management — the best outcomes come from inspiring people to action, not telling them what to do.

The Difference Between Leadership and Management

Anyone can exhibit leadership, regardless of their role. Leadership is not something that can be bestowed. It must be earned. People must want to follow you.

CHAPTER TWO: YOUR FIRST THREE MONTHS

The Apprentice: Promoted to manage a team you were once part of

Work with your manager on a joint plan for getting started.

Questions to discuss include:

  • What will be my scope to start, and how do you expect it to change over time?
  • How will my transition be communicated?
  • What do I need to know about the people that I’ll be managing?
  • What important team goals or processes should I be aware of and help push forward?
  • What does success look like in my first three and six months?
  • How can the two of us stay aligned on who does what?

What to Watch Out For

  • It can feel awkward to establish a new dynamic with former peers.
  • Playing the role of coach: Your job now includes understanding your former peers’ career goals, what kinds of projects are well suited to their strengths and interests, what they need help with, and how they are doing relative to expectations.
  • Having hard conversations: The manager – report relationship is different than the peer relationship. You are now responsible for the outcome of your team, including all the decisions that are made within it. If something is getting in the way of great work happening, you need to address it swiftly and directly.
  • Having people treat you differently or share less information with you
  • At the point in which your team becomes four or five people, you should have a plan for how to scale back your individual contributor responsibilities so that you can be the best manager for your people.

The Pioneer: You were among the first to take on a challenge that is now turning into a bigger team effort.

In the early days, make sure that you’re spending time calibrating with your new team what your group’s goals, values, and processes ought to be.

Some questions to ask yourself in preparation:

  • How do I make decisions?
  • What do I consider a job well done?
  • What are all the responsibilities I took care of when it was just me?
  • What’s easy or hard about working in this function?
  • What new processes are needed now that this team is growing?

How to hire the right team:

  • What qualities do I want in a team member?
  • What skills does our team need to complement my own?
  • How should this team look and function in a year?
  • How will my own role and responsibilities evolve?

The New Boss: You’re brought in to manage an existing team that you’re unfamiliar with

What to Take Advantage of:

  • People cut you slack in the beginning. The biggest advantage of being new is that you have a window of time, usually about three months, when everyone recognizes that you’re the new kid on the block.
  • Use the newbie card to your advantage by asking as many questions of as many people as you can.
  • You start with a blank slate. You have a chance to form new ties and reset your identity.

In your first few one-on-one meetings, ask your reports the following questions to understand what their “dream manager” looks like.

  • What did you and your past manager discuss that was most helpful to you?
  • What are the ways in which you’d like to be supported?
  • How do you like to be recognized for great work?
  • What kind of feedback is most useful for you?
  • Imagine that you and I had an amazing relationship. What would that look like?

What to Watch Out for

  • It takes a while to adjust to the norms of a new environment.
  • One of the biggest mistakes new bosses make is thinking they need to jump in and exert their opinions right away to show that they are capable.

In your first few months, your primary job is to listen, ask questions, and learn. New managers on my team tell me that the thing they most want to understand is how to calibrate their expectations around “what’s normal.” One effective way to do that is to look at specific scenarios together with your own manager.

Questions to ask include:

  • What does it mean to do a great job versus an average or poor job? Can you give me some examples?
  • Can you share your impressions of how you think Project X or Meeting Y went? Why do you think that?
  • I noticed that Z happened the other day . . .. Is that normal or should I be concerned?
  • What keeps you up at night? Why?
  • How do you determine which things to prioritize?

You need to invest in building new relationships.

  • “Since I’m new, you might not feel comfortable sharing everything with me right away. I hope to earn your trust over time. I’ll start by sharing more about myself, including my biggest failure ever.

THE SUCCESSOR: Similar to the apprentice, but with a twist: because your manager is leaving, you’re taking on supporting the entire team yourself, not just a portion of it.

What to Watch Out for

  • It can feel awkward to establish a new dynamic with former peers.
  • The increase in responsibility can feel overwhelming.
  • “Our last manager left big shoes to fill, and while I’ll do my best, I expect I’ll go through a few bumps along the way. I want to ask you for your help and support during this period.”
  • You feel pressure to do things exactly like your former manager.

CHAPTER THREE: LEADING A SMALL TEAM

Andy Grove asks: What gets in the way of good work? There are only two possibilities.

  • The first is that people don’t know how to do good work.
  • The second is that they know how, but they aren’t motivated.

Is it a matter of motivation or skill?

  • First, discuss whether your expectations are aligned — does “great work” mean the same thing for both of you?
  • Then discuss whether it’s a matter of motivation.
  • If neither of those don’t resolve your concerns, then dive into whether the issue is with skills.

Trust Is the Most Important Ingredient

You can avoid being blindsided by developing a relationship founded on trust, in which your reporters feel that they can be completely honest with you because they have no doubt that you truly care about them.

You’ve accomplished this if the following three statements are true:

  1. My reports regularly bring their biggest challenges to my attention. A hallmark of a trusting relationship is that people feel they can share their mistakes, challenges, and fears with you.
  2. My report and I regularly give each other critical feedback and it isn’t taken personally.
  3. My reports would gladly work for me again. One of the truest indicators of the strength of your relationships is whether your reports would want you as their manager in the future if they were given the choice.

You can also get an approximate reading by asking your report, “What are the qualities of a perfect manager for you?” and evaluating how you compare to the description you get back.

STRIVE TO BE HUMAN, NOT A BOSS

Earn trust with your reports through:

Respect and Care about Your Report: If you don’t truly respect or care about your report, there is no faking it. Trust me, they know.

Invest Time to Help Your Report: I recommend no less than a weekly 1: 1 with every report for thirty minutes, and more time if needed. One-on-ones should be focused on your report and what would help him be more successful, not on you and what you need. If you can remove a barrier, provide a valuable new perspective, or increase their confidence, then you’re enabling them to be more successful.

How can you achieve stellar 1: 1s?

  • Discuss top priorities: What are the one, two, or three most critical outcomes for your report and how can you help her tackle these challenges?
  • Calibrate what “great” looks like: Do you have a shared vision of what you’re working toward? Are you in sync with goals or expectations?
    • Share feedback: What feedback can you give that will help your report, and what can your report tell you that will make you more effective as a manager?
    • Reflect on how things are going: How is he feeling on the whole? What’s making him satisfied or dissatisfied? Have any of his goals changed? What has he learned recently and what does he want to learn going forward?

Every morning, I’ve gotten into the habit of scanning my calendar and compiling a list of questions for each person I’m meeting with. Here are some of my favorite questions to get the conversation moving:

  • Identify: These questions focus on what really matters for your report and what topics are worth spending more time on.
    • What’s top of mind for you right now?
    • What priorities are you thinking about this week?
    • What’s the best use of our time today?
  • Understand: Once you’ve identified a topic to discuss, these next questions get to the root of the problem and what can be done about it.
    • What does your ideal outcome look like?
    • What’s hard for you in getting to that outcome?
    • What do you really care about?
    • What do you think is the best course of action?
    • What’s the worst – case scenario you’re worried about?
  • Support: These questions zero in on how you can be of greatest service to your report.
    • How can I help you?
    • What can I do to make you more successful?
    • What was the most useful part of our conversation today?

Be Honest and Transparent about Your Report’s Performance

Your report should have a clear sense at all times of what your expectations are and where he stands.

HELP PEOPLE PLAY TO THEIR STRENGTHS

Don’t let the worst performers dominate your time — try to diagnose, address, and resolve their issues as swiftly as you can.

Good CEOs know that they should double down on the projects that are working and put more people, resources, and attention on those rather than get every single project to the point of “not failing.”

Make People Moves Quickly If They’re Underperforming

Help someone find a new role in your organization or let him or her go.

The first option should always be considered because if there is a better role out there that’s more aligned with your report’s interests and skills, then that’s a great outcome for both the person and your company.

  • Avoid shuffling around people who lack the right skills or who exhibit toxic behavior.
  • Just because your report didn’t work out on your team doesn’t mean it’s on him – “Perhaps it’s you who shouldn’t be his manager, not the other way around.”

CHAPTER FOUR: THE ART OF FEEDBACK

For a leader, giving feedback — both when things are going well and when they aren’t — is one of the most fundamental aspects of the job. The two of the biggest barriers preventing your reports from doing great work — unclear expectations and inadequate skills.

WHAT DOES GREAT FEEDBACK LOOK LIKE?

Feedback doesn’t have to be critical. Praise is often more motivating than criticism. And for another, you don’t always have to start with a problem.

Below, you’ll find the four most common ways to inspire a change in behavior:

  1. Set Clear Expectations at the Beginning

Make sure you address the following:

  • What a great job looks like for your report, compared to a mediocre or bad job
  • What advice you have to help your report get started on the right foot
  • Give Task-Specific Feedback as Frequently as You Can

You provide this kind of feedback about something that someone did after the fact.

  • For example, after your report presents an analysis, tell her what you thought she did well and what could do better in the future. Be as precise and as detailed as you can.

Task-specific feedback is most effective when the action performed is still fresh in your report’s memory, so share it as soon as you can.

  • Share Behavioral Feedback Thoughtfully and Regularly

When you zoom out and look at many examples of tasks-specific feedback for a report, what themes emerge? Does he make decisions quickly or slowly? Is he a process wizard or an unconventional thinker? Does he gravitate toward pragmatic or idealistic solutions?

Asking this question about themes helps you reflect on your report’s unique strengths or areas of development as shown in his patterns of behavior.

When you give behavioral feedback, you are making a statement about how you perceive that person, so your words need to be thoughtfully considered and supported with specific examples to explain why you feel that way.

  • Collect 360-Degree Feedback for Maximum Objectivity

Every quarter, for each report, I send a short email to a handful of his or her closest collaborators asking: a) What is X doing especially well that X should do more of? and b) What should X change or stop doing?

EVERY MAJOR DISAPPOINTMENT IS A FAILURE TO SET EXPECTATIONS

 “If the first time a direct report hears that he’s not meeting expectations is during his performance review, it’s going to feel terrible.”

Whenever you find yourself deeply disappointed, or disappointing someone else, ask yourself: Where did I miss out on setting clear expectations, and how might I do better in the future?

YOUR FEEDBACK ONLY COUNTS IF IT MAKES THINGS BETTER

The key question that should always be in the back of your mind is: Does my feedback lead to the change I’m hoping for? To help answer this question, ask yourself:

Am I Giving Feedback Often Enough? The most common response to the question “How could your manager better support you?” is simply “Give me more feedback.”

Is My Feedback Being Heard? What you intend to say and what the listener hears are not always the same. You might think you’re being clear when in fact you’re saying too much, or too little, or sending a different message through your body language.

  • The best way to make your feedback heard is to make the listener feel safe, and to show that you’re saying it because you care about her and want her to succeed.  This is why positive feedback is so effective.
  • When you do have critical feedback to share, approach it with a sense of curiosity and an honest desire to understand your report’s perspective. One simple way to do this is to state your point directly and then follow up with, “Does this feedback resonate with you? Why or why not?”
  • At the end of a conversation, when you’re not sure whether you’ve been heard, there are a few things you can do. The first is a verbal confirmation: “Okay, let’s make sure we’re on the same page — what are your takeaways and next steps?” The second is to summarize via email what was discussed. Writing can clarify the points being made as well as be reread and referenced in the future. The third tactic is to help the person hear the same message many times and from many sources.

Does your Feedback Lead to Positive Action?

1. Make your feedback as specific as possible. Use clear examples that get at the why so it’s easier for the recipient to know what you mean.

2. Clarify what success looks and feels like.

3. Suggest next steps. Be clear about whether you’re setting an expectation or merely offering a suggestion. A softer approach is to ask your report, “So what do you think the next steps should be?” and let them guide the discussion. Can you do another pass on this report with the changes we discussed today, and I’ll set up the next review for Thursday?

DELIVERING CRITICAL FEEDBACK OR BAD NEWS

The best way to give critical feedback is to deliver it directly and dispassionately.

Plainly say what you perceive the issue to be, what made you feel that way, and how you’d like to work together to resolve the concern.

Template: When I [ heard / observed / reflected on] your [ action / behavior / output], I felt concerned because . . . I’d like to understand your perspective and talk about how we can resolve this.

CHAPTER FIVE: MANAGING YOURSELF

If you don’t have a good handle on yourself, you won’t have a good handle on how to best support your team. You first need to get deep with knowing you — your strengths, your values, your comfort zones, your blind spots, and your biases.

Get to Brutal Honesty with Yourself

For self-awareness: use StrengthsFinder 2.0 by Tom Rath or StandOut by Marcus Buckingham.

If you want to do a quick version, jot down the first thing that comes to mind when you ask yourself the following questions:

  • How would the people who know and like me best (family, significant other, close friends) describe me in three words?
  • What three qualities do I possess that I am the proudest of?
  • When I look back on something I did that was successful, what personal traits do I give credit to?
  • What are the top three most common pieces of positive feedback that I’ve received from my manager or peers?
  • Whenever my worst inner critic sits on my shoulder, what does she yell at me for?
  • If a magical fairy were to come and bestow on me three gifts I don’t yet have, what would they be?
  • What are three things that trigger me? (A trigger is a situation that gets me more worked up than it should.)
  • What are the top three most common pieces of feedback from my manager or peers on how I could be more effective?

Ask others for feedback:

Ask your manager to help you calibrate yourself through the following two questions:

  • What opportunities do you see for me to do more of what I do well? What do you think are the biggest things holding me back from having greater impact?
  • What skills do you think a hypothetical perfect person in my role would have? For each skill, how would you rate me against that ideal on a scale of one to five?

Pick three to seven people whom you work closely with and ask if they’d be willing to share some feedback to help you improve.

Examples of specific asks:

  • On our last project together, in what ways did you see me having an impact? What do you think I could have done to have more impact?
  • With my team, what am I doing well that you’d like to see me do more of? What should I stop doing?
  • One of the things I’m working on is being more decisive. How do you think I’m doing on that? Any suggestions on how I can do better here?

Ask for task-specific feedback to calibrate yourself on specific skills

  • “I’m hoping to improve my speaking skills. What do you think went well with my presentation?”
  • “I’m working on making sure my point is clear in the first three minutes. Did that come across? How can I make it clearer next time?”

LEARNING TO BE TWICE AS GOOD

Set a lofty goal for yourself: How can I be twice as good? Then maximize your learning through the following.

Treat Your Manager as a Coach

  • Engage your manager for feedback. Ask, “What skills do you think I should work on in order to have more impact?” Share your personal goals and enlist his help: “I want to learn to become a better presenter, so I’d be grateful if you kept an eye out for opportunities where I can get in front of others.”
  • Use 1: 1s with my manager as an opportunity for focused learning (e.g. “How do you decide which meetings to attend?” or “How do you approach selling a candidate?”)

Make a Mentor Out of Everyone

  • In particular, people in your peer group — those with a similar job to yours — can be an excellent source of support and advice.
  • Whatever the skill, don’t be afraid to ask, “Hey, I’m really impressed with the way you [ do X]. I’d love to learn from you. Would you be willing to grab a coffee with me and share your approach?”

Set Aside Time to Reflect and Set Goals

  • Personally, I like to schedule an hour on my calendar at the end of every week to think about what I accomplished, what I’m satisfied or dissatisfied with, and what I’m taking away for next week. I then jot down some notes in an email to my team, as an easy way to keep up the habit.
  • I also set personal goals and do bigger look-backs every six months, which gives me a longer time frame to tackle ambitious projects and learn new skills.
  • At the end of every six months, I’ll pull up my goals and evaluate how I did. The important thing isn’t the grade but what I learned.

CHAPTER SIX: AMAZING MEETINGS

Good meetings are simple and straightforward. You leave them feeling the same way every time:

  • The meeting was a great use of my time.
  • I learned something new that will help me be more effective at my job.
  • I left with a clearer sense of what I should do next.
  • Everyone was engaged.
  • I felt welcome.

WHAT IS A GREAT OUTCOME FOR YOUR MEETING?

You may hear the conventional wisdom that “all meetings should have a purpose.” That’s good advice, but it doesn’t go far enough. You need to ask: “what does a great outcome look like?” Being crystal clear about the outcome you’re shooting for is the first step to running great meetings.

Meeting Type: Making a Decision

In a decision meeting, you’re framing the different options on the table and asking a decision-maker to make a call.

Success here is both getting to a clear decision and everyone leaving with a sense of trust in the process. You don’t need consensus, but those whom the decision affects should feel that the way it was made was efficient and fair.

A great decision-making meeting does the following:

  • Gets a decision made (obviously)
  • Includes the people most directly affected by the decision as well as a clearly designated decision-maker
  • Presents all credible options objectively and with relevant background information, and includes the team’s recommendation if there is one
  • Gives equal airtime to dissenting opinions and makes people feel that they were heard

Bad outcomes to avoid:

  • People feel that their side wasn’t presented well, so they don’t trust the resulting decision.
  • Decisions take a long time to make, which delays progress. While important and hard-to-reverse decisions deserve deep consideration, be wary of spending too much time on small, easy-to-reverse decisions.
  • Decisions keep flip-flopping back and forth, which makes it hard to trust and act on them.
  • Too much time is spent trying to get a group to a consensus rather than escalating quickly to a decision-maker.
  • Time is wasted on rehashing the same argument twenty different ways.

Meeting Type: Sharing Information

Done well, it allows for more interactivity – groups can ask questions or express their reactions.

A great informational meeting accomplishes the following:

  • Enables the group to feel like they learned something valuable
  • Conveys key messages clearly and memorably
  • Keeps the audience’s attention (through dynamic speakers, rich storytelling, skilled pacing, interactivity)
  • Evokes an intended emotion — whether inspiration, trust, pride, courage, empathy, etc.

Meeting Type: Providing Feedback

Often known as a “review,” the purpose of a feedback meeting is for stakeholders to understand and give input on work in progress.

A great feedback meeting achieves the following:

  • Gets everyone on the same page about what success for the project looks like
  • Honestly represents the current status of the work, including an assessment of how things are going, any changes since the last check-in, and what the future plans are
  • Clearly frames open questions, key decisions, or known concerns to get the most helpful feedback
  • Ends with agreed-upon next steps (including when the next milestone or check-in will be)

Meeting Type: Generating Ideas

The best idea generation comes from understanding that we need both time to think alone (because our brains are most creative when we’re by ourselves) and time to engage with others (because hearing different perspectives creates sparks that lead to even better ideas).

Preparation and good facilitation is key. A great generative meeting does the following:

  • Produces many diverse, nonobvious solutions through ensuring each participant has quiet alone time to think of ideas and write them down (either before or during the meeting)
  • Considers the totality of ideas from everyone, not just the loudest voices
  • Helps ideas evolve and build off each other through meaningful discussion
  • Ends with clear next steps for how to turn ideas into action

Meeting Type: Strengthening Relationships

A great team bonding meeting enables the following:

  • Creates better understanding and trust between participants
  • Encourages people to be open and authentic
  • Makes people feel cared for

Give People a Chance to Come Prepared

  • Organizers to send out any presentations or documents the day before so that everyone got the chance to process the information in advance.
  • Sending out an agenda ahead of time shows a level of care and intentionality in helping the group stay focused. It’s a good idea to do this for meetings of any size, even 1: 1s, but the larger the meeting, the more important the preparation.
  • In the last few minutes of a meeting, get into the habit of asking, “So before we break, let’s make sure we agree on next steps . . .” After the meeting, send out a recap to the attendees with a summary of the discussion, a list of specific action items and who is responsible for each, and when the next check – in will be.

MAKE IT SAFE FOR PEOPLE TO CONTRIBUTE

Be Explicit about the Norms You Want to Set

  • If you want everyone to participate in your meeting, sometimes the easiest tactic is just to say that directly.

Manage Equal Airtime

  • Be on the lookout for interruptions. If someone starts making a point but another loud voice cuts her off, provide cover by saying, “Hang on, Ann wasn’t finished.” As an added bonus, I’ve found that doing this also bolsters your own credibility.
  • Reading the room: Particularly perceptive managers might even try directed questions: “Susan, you look puzzled — what do you think we should do?” or “Rick, we haven’t heard from you yet. What’s your opinion?”
  • For the overtalkers , be clear but polite in letting them know that it’s time for someone else to get a turn: “Ian, it’s clear you have more you want to say, but let’s first make sure other people get a chance to weigh in ” or “ Laura, I’m hearing that you feel very strongly we should do X — before we wrap , does anyone have another opinion? I want to make sure all points of view are heard.”

CHAPTER SEVEN: HIRING WELL

DESIGN YOUR TEAM INTENTIONALLY

One exercise I do every January is to map out where I hope my team will be by the end of the year. I create a future org chart, analyze gaps in skills, strengths, or experiences, and make a list of open roles to hire for. You can do something similar by asking yourself the following questions:

  • How many new people will I add to our team this year (based on company growth, expected attrition, budget, priorities, etc.)?
  • For each new hire, what level of experience am I looking for?
  • Which specific skills or strengths do we need in our team (for example, creative thinking, operational excellence, expertise in XYZ, etc.)?
  • Which skills and strengths does our team already have that new hires can stand to be weaker in?

HIRING IS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY

Describe Your Ideal Candidate as Precisely as You Can

  • It’s the hiring manager’s job to identify when a role is open and what kinds of people would be the best fit. Write the job description

Develop a Sourcing Strategy

  • Once you have a good sense of the kind of person you want, it’s helpful to sit down with the recruiter and brainstorm where to look for your ideal candidate.

Deliver an Amazing Interview Experience

  • A great interview process gives the candidate confidence in our company and the team they would be working with.

Show Candidates How Much You Want Them

  • After I deliver an offer, I try to check in with the candidate every other day to let her know that I am thinking about her and that I’m excited to welcome her to my team.
  • The more senior the candidate, the more critical your involvement is in the close because that person likely has many options, and you are looking for her to play a leadership role within your team.

HIRING IS A GAMBLE, BUT MAKE SMART BETS

Examine Past Examples of Similar Work – The best predictor for how someone will do in the future is to understand how they’ve done in the past on similar projects in similar environments.

Seek Out Trusted Recommendations – Trust the feedback. However, when evaluating references, keep in mind people typically improve their skills over time, so discount negative feedback that isn’t recent.

Reject Weak Hires – nothing “wow” about them and none of the interviewers felt strongly enough to fight for the hire if the decision came down to no.

Prepare Your Interview Questions Ahead of Time (Top Questions)

  1. What kinds of challenges are interesting to you and why? Can you describe a favorite project?
  2. What do you consider your greatest strengths? What would your peers agree are your areas of growth?
  3. Imagine yourself in three years. What do you hope will be different about you then compared to now?
  4. What was the hardest conflict you’ve had in the past year? How did it end, and what did you learn from the experience?
  5. What’s something that’s inspired you in your work recently?

Reject Anyone Who Exhibits Toxic Behavior – Be on the lookout for warning signs in interviews: bad-mouthing past employers (“My last manager was terrible”); blaming failures they were associated with on others (“The reason my last project didn’t succeed was because of internal politics”), etc.

Hire People Who Are Capable of More – Hiring someone who seems to offer more than what the role needs right now means they can help you tackle bigger problems in the future.

CHAPTER 8: MAKING THINGS HAPPEN

START WITH A CONCRETE VISION – Questions to Get Started

  1. Assume you have a magic wand that makes everything your team does go perfectly. What do you hope will be different in two to three years compared to now?
  2. How would you want someone who works on an adjacent team to describe what your team does? What do you hope will be your team’s reputation in a few years? How far off is that from where things are today?
  3. What unique superpower(s) does your team have? When you’re at your best, how are you creating value? What would it look like for your team to be twice as good? Five times as good?
  4. If you had to create a quick litmus test that anyone could use to assess whether your team was doing a poor job, a mediocre job, or a kick-ass job, what would that litmus test be?

A good strategy understands the crux of the problem it’s trying to solve. It focuses a team’s unique strengths, resources, and energy on what matters the most in achieving its goals.

Focus on Doing a Few Things Well – “If I could only achieve one goal, which would it be?”

Define Who Is Responsible for What – When ownership isn’t clear, things slip through the cracks.

Break Down a Big Goal into Smaller Pieces

From your target date, work backward and figure out who needs to do what every week. Ask people to set and publicly commit to their weekly goals—this creates accountability.

Order tasks by what matters most—which ones are “critical path” and which are “nice to have”? Always tackle “critical path” first.

PERFECT EXECUTION OVER PERFECT STRATEGY

Executing well means that you pick a reasonable direction, move quickly to learn what works and what doesn’t, and make adjustments to get to your desired outcome.

Here are some ways to tell if your team is executing well:

  • Lists of projects or tasks are prioritized from most to least important, with the higher-up items receiving more time and attention.
  • There is an efficient process for decision-making that everyone understands and trusts.
  • The team moves quickly, especially with reversible decisions.
  • After a decision is made, everyone commits (even those who disagree) and moves speedily to make it happen. Without new information, there is no second-guessing the decision, no pocket vetoing, and no foot dragging.
  • When important new information surfaces, there is an expedient process to examine if and how current plans should change as a result.
  • Every task has a who and a by when. Owners set and reliably deliver on commitments.
  • The team is resilient and constantly seeking to learn. Every failure makes the team stronger because they don’t make the same mistake twice.

Define a Long-Term Vision and Work Backward

  • What problems are you hoping to solve with what you’re doing?
  • How do you imagine people will get value out of your work?
  • Based on that, what are the most important priorities for the team now?

GOOD PROCESS IS EVER EVOLVING

Debriefs – One of the most useful tools for improving process is the practice of doing debriefs (also called retrospectives or postmortems). You can do this at the completion of a project, on a periodic basis, or anytime an unexpected event or error occurs.

  • Here’s how it works: You invite the team to come together for an hour or two to reflect on what happened.
  • Ask: What went well, what didn’t go well, and what would the team do differently next time?
  • You must create a safe environment to have open and honest discussions. Present the facts as objectively as possible.

As a manager, part of your job will be the cultivation of such playbooks: how to run a team meeting, how to close a new hire, how to complete a project on time and on budget. If you find yourself doing a similar thing over and over again, chances are good that it can be codified into an instruction manual or checklist that can make the task go smoother in the future. Another bonus of doing this: you can then pass the playbook to others to learn and execute.

CHAPTER 9: LEADING A GROWING TEAM

BIG TEAMS VERSUS SMALL TEAMS

When you’re in leadership positions, they’re less likely to tell you the ugly truth. Here are ways to make it easier for people to tell you the truth.

  • Emphasize that you welcome dissenting opinions and reward those who express them.
  • Own your mistakes and remind your team that you are human, just like everyone else.
  • Use language that invites discussion: “I may be totally wrong here, so tell me if you disagree. My opinion is . . .”
  • You can also ask directly for advice: “If you were me, what would you do in this situation?”

GIVING PEOPLE BIG PROBLEMS IS A SIGN OF TRUST

The best work comes from those who have the time to live and breathe a problem fully, who can dedicate themselves to finding the best solution.

Give space for your employee to lead. Tell everyone else that she should now be considered the owner of the problem. Doing so creates accountability, but more important, the public declaration empowers the delegate.

TWO HEADS, ONE SHARED VISION

To create a shared vision of what’s important, ask yourself two things.

  1. What are the biggest priorities right now for our team? Then, talk about those with your reports and discuss how they might play a role.
  2. Are we aligned in how we think about people, purpose, and process?
  3. People: Do we feel like we have the right people on the right problems?”
  4. Purpose: Are you and your report aligned on why you’re doing what you’re doing and what success looks like?
  5. Process: Are your reports establishing healthy processes for their teams?

WHAT TO DO WHEN A MANAGER STRUGGLES

Ask yourself: “Assume the role was open. Would you rather rehire your current leader or take a gamble on someone else?” If the answer is no, make the move.

AIM TO PUT YOURSELF OUT OF A JOB

Rule of thumb: “Try to double your leadership capacity every year.” How?  Through delegation.

The rule of thumb for delegation goes like this: spend your time and energy on the intersection of 1) what’s most important to the organization and 2) what you’re uniquely able to do better than anyone else.

From this, you can extrapolate that anything your report can do just as well or better than you, you should delegate.

CHAPTER TEN – NURTURING CULTURE

An organization’s culture is best understood not from reading what’s written on its corporate website but from seeing what it’s willing to give up for its values.

Culture describes the norms and values that govern how things get done.

KNOW THE KIND OF TEAM YOU WANT TO BE A PART OF

UNDERSTANDING YOUR CURRENT TEAM

  • What are the first three adjectives that come to mind when describing the personality of your team?
  • What moments made you feel most proud to be a part of your team? Why?
  • What does your team do better than the majority of other teams out there?
  • If you picked five random members of your team and individually asked each person, “What does our team value?” what would you hear?
  • How similar is your team’s culture to the broader organization’s culture?
  • Imagine a journalist scrutinizing your team. What would she say your team does well or not well?
  • When people complain about how things work, what are the top three things that they bring up?

UNDERSTANDING YOUR ASPIRATIONS

  • Describe the top five adjectives you’d want an external observer to use to describe your team’s culture. Why those?
  • Now imagine those five adjectives sitting on a double-edged sword. What do you imagine are the pitfalls that come from ruthless adherence to those qualities? Are those acceptable to you?
  • Make a list of the aspects of culture that you admire about other teams or organizations. Why do you admire them? What downsides does that team tolerate as a result?
  • Make a list of the aspects of culture that you wouldn’t want to emulate from other teams or companies. Why not?

UNDERSTANDING THE DIFFERENCE

  • On a scale from one to nine, with nine being “we’re 100 percent there” and one being “this is the opposite of our team,” how close is your current team from your aspirations?
  •  What shows up as both a strength of your team as well as a quality you value highly?
  • Where are the biggest gaps between your current team culture and your aspirations?
  • What are the obstacles that might get in the way of reaching your aspirations? How will you address them?
  • Imagine how you want your team to work in a year’s time. How would you describe to a report what you hope will be different then compared to now?

NEVER STOP TALKING ABOUT WHAT’S IMPORTANT

When you value something deeply, don’t shy away from talking about it. Instead, embrace telling people why it’s important to you. Assume that for the message to stick, it should be heard ten different times and said in ten different ways. The more you can enlist others to help spread your message, the more likely it is to have an impact.

These days, I think a lot about how to communicate what I care about. I try different approaches—1:1 conversations about what’s on my mind, emails to my managers about my reflections for the week, notes to my entire staff on our top priorities, and in-person Q&A sessions focused on how we work.

ALWAYS WALK THE WALK

Our radars are fine-tuned to spot instances where someone in a position of authority says one thing and does another. This is one of the fastest ways to lose trust.

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