I am totally down with disagreement. I don’t like Haterade, but disagreement is wonderful. When someone disagrees, we try to reach common ground. —Roxane Gay
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As leaders, we should be able to make the following series of statements with confidence:
I know who my best people are, and we have plans in place to keep them engaged while ensuring their continued growth.
I’m delighted with our talent brand …
The end of 2021 is a good time to take a breather after another tumultuous pandemic year. In addition to gathering with friends and family, many of us will use the holiday break to dive into a new book or two.
We asked 10 CEOs and founders to share their favorite reads from the past year. Consider a few of the below for your last-minute gifts—or to expand your own reading list:
Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime, by Sean Carroll
“One of my favorite reads this year was Something Deeply Hidden, by Sean Carroll, with whom I’ve had the opportunity to speak on my Never Stand Still podcast,” says Dan Schulman, CEO of PayPal.
“The book presents one fascinating concept after another, and I think it is an essential read. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the implications of the Many Worlds and entanglement, and the fact that our reality is always an infinite set of connected possibilities. It’s really blown my mind. The deeper you dive into quantum mechanics, the more it challenges you to keep an open mind about everything.”
Love in the Time of Cholera, by Gabriel García Márquez
“I have always been an avid reader, and I believe great fictional works need to be gifted forward. Love in The Time of Cholera, by Gabriel García Márquez, is one such novel,” shares Claire Spofford, CEO of women’s clothing brand, J. Jill. “Márquez brings to life unapologetically flawed characters grappling with love, aging, and death. It’s a timeless masterpiece in which readers can explore the human condition through beautifully written prose.”
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration, by Isabel Wilkerson
George Nichols III, CEO of American College of Financial Services shares, “The Warmth of Other Suns is a wonderful book about the migration of Black [people] to the Midwest, Northeast, and West between 1915 and 1970. The history and statistics are very interesting, and the more powerful story is the biographies of real people whose lives were forever changed.
The book presents a contrast and provokes thought as we now look to ‘go home to the South.’ What will we find? How will we feel? I went through that thought process when I considered, ‘Could I return to Kentucky knowing who I am now?’”
The Orphan Master’s Son, by Adam Johnson
“I love the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction winner, The Orphan Master’s Son, by Adam Johnson, and have gifted it many times,” says David Rawlinson II, CEO of retail group and home to QVC and HSN, Qurate.
“It is a gorgeous and deeply researched work of fiction set in North Korea that brings to life a completely different reality–both through its historical account and in its exploration of the personal, inward experiences of the characters throughout the book.”
On the Shortness of Life: Life Is Long if You Know How to Use It, by Roman philosopher Seneca
“The life we live is a function of how we spend our time. Your number one responsibility as a CEO is to spend and invest your time—and your team’s time—strategically and wisely,” says CEO and cofounder of BetterUp, Alexi Robichaux.
“In today’s fast-paced and achievement-oriented world, it’s easy to believe that simply we don’t have enough time to accomplish everything we need to do. Seneca counsels us to think differently, placing us in the ‘driver’s seat’ of our own lives, chiefly by illuminating the ways in which we can more wisely invest our time: ‘So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short. . . . Life is long if you know how to use it.’”
Drop the Ball: Achieving More by Doing Less, by Tiffany Dufu
“As we navigate this intersectional reckoning, with gender equity as a key issue, we need more women to know that it’s okay for them to drop a ball or two in order to achieve what they need in life,” says DeNora Getachew, CEO of DoSomething.org.
“Tiffany’s quotes [speak to our times], such as: ‘Women have to stop doing this. We have to stop letting other people hijack our journeys.’ Her quote [later in the book] is also salient: ‘If you want something you’ve never had before, you’ll have to do something you’ve never done before in order to get it.’”
Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike, by Phil Knight
“I think it is the most incredible story,” says David Segal, founder of DavidsTea and cofounder of Firebelly Tea. “We think of Nike as this overnight success, when in reality it took over a decade for Phil to even be able to quit his day job! He put his house on the line and his entire livelihood for that business—talk about operating under pressure. So many lessons from how to adapt when a supplier throws you a curveball to the power of being present and making people feel special.”
Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As if Your Life Depended On It, by Chris Voss with Tahl Raz
“This is the best negotiating book I have ever read (and I have read a lot). I couldn’t put this book down,” shares Joe Spector, CEO of Dutch and a cofounder of Hims & Hers. “The examples Chris provides surrounding negotiation are riveting and extremely applicable to situations both big and small in the workplace.”
The Long Game: How to Be a Long-Term Thinker in a Short-Term World, by Dorie Clark
“I’m always trying to make time for long-term, strategic thinking, and encouraging any executive I know to do the same,” shares Lindsay Kaplan, cofounder of executive network, Chief. “I recently read Dorie’s book and found it inspiring and practical—which is a rarity.”
Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now, by John Doerr
Tim Murphy, CEO of non-toxic cleaning-products company Branch Basics, recommends venture capitalist John Doerr’s latest release. “Everyone is talking about climate change, but John Doerr offers an actionable, real, and inspiring plan to get us to net-zero emissions by 2050. It’s a must-read for anyone building a business today.”
Mothers of young children are more likely to leave the workforce, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, which found 9% of those with preschool-aged children left the workforce between January 2020 and January 2021, as did 8% of moms with children …
“Don’t be so sensitive.” It’s a phrase that’s often thrown around as a jab or criticism.
Many of my coaching clients have been told that they need to “grow a thicker skin” and quit “wearing their …
With January 2022 fast approaching, the wait to return to the office for many employees may be coming to end. More companies are announcing official return to office dates and plans on getting people back together in person. According to one study, 94%…
David Brendel is the co-founder of Strategy of Mind, an executive coaching, consulting, and leadership development firm rooted in philosophy and psychology. He is a board-certified psychiatrist with an MD from Harvard Medical School and a PhD in philosophy from the University of Chicago. Ryan Stelzer is cofounder of Strategy of Mind. He served in the Obama White House as a presidential management fellow, where his team was responsible for improving and sustaining high levels of performance across federal agencies.
Below, David and Ryan share five key insights from their new book, Think Talk Create: Building Workplaces Fit for Humans.
1. The CEO should be a custodian.
A few years ago, we ran a half-day workshop for a property management company that ran assisted living facilities. They were struggling with low morale, high employee turnover, and a plateau in their earnings. In a large catering hall, we arranged for the members of each division of the company to sit together at round tables. After a mini-lecture, we pivoted to our favorite open-ended question: “What keeps you up at night?” At first, we heard a bunch of common workplace grievances: heavy workloads, too many emails, a lack of communication from leadership.
At the last table to go sat the custodians. Their designated summarizer reported that what kept them up at night was loss. These custodians didn’t just fix leaky faucets—they also became friends and confidants. With tears in his eyes, the custodian told a story about how an elderly resident called him regularly to open a pickle jar that she was too weak to open herself. They would then sit together and warmly talk about each other’s families. They came to care about each other over a number of years. And when the calls to help with the pickle jar ceased, he was devastated.
The floodgates then opened across the room, as participants dove into energized discussions about reconnecting with the company’s core human values. Months later, we learned that many of their relevant metrics had improved significantly: higher employee engagement scores, less turnover, greater quarterly earnings. They attributed the turnaround in large measure to the workshop. An open-ended question—”What keeps you up at night?”—had transformed things.
This company’s experience reflected the findings of Google’s Project Aristotle study. Google learned a few years earlier that the thing which best distinguished its highest-performing teams was the “psychological safety” people experience when they are free to brainstorm and speak openly, without fear of negative judgment or reprisal. The path to psychological safety and high performance runs through open-ended questions. One such question revealed that custodians may be the most reliable stewards of an entire corporate enterprise.
2. Conversation is a hard science.
Ensuring that custodians contribute to overall company growth shouldn’t be serendipitous; it’s best to be proactive and intentional about fostering great conversations with everyone at work. Those conversations should start with carefully constructed open-ended questions, which is harder to do than it might appear—especially when we’re overwhelmed by our to-do list. But we should be as rigorous with how we talk to each other as we are with the more technical aspects of our jobs.
Recent research shows that the vast majority of conversations wind down and end with one or both people feeling dissatisfied. We live in a world where people seem more interested in barking orders or expressing opinions than in curiously asking questions, genuinely listening to the replies, and having enough self-restraint to foster an exchange of ideas. The problem occurs everywhere we look, from the workplace to the kitchen table to the halls of government power.
Other research shows that infants experience significant development of Broca’s area, the brain region responsible for expressive language, when adults talk with them rather than talk to them. Good parents know this intuitively, and engage continually in linguistic back-and-forth that promotes healthy development. Adults reap similar benefits, as we know from Project Aristotle and related studies. But fostering psychological safety is no easy task; it requires a disciplined methodology to be effective and sustainable.
The methodology we’ve developed, which we call “active inquiry,” can be fine-tuned through practice. It entails a meticulous and nearly exclusive focus on asking open-ended questions and making clarifying statements. Active inquiry breeds neural synchrony and interpersonal harmonization. It gives people the space to slow down, reflect on pesky problems, and construct novel solutions. Closed-ended questions (which result in little more than yes/no responses) and leading questions (where the inquirer already thinks they know the right answer) do just the opposite.
3. Humanism is an overlooked technology.
Active inquiry is a key skill not just in business, but in all areas of professional practice, including medicine. Physicians are trained to deploy their wealth of scientific knowledge to render a diagnosis and make a treatment plan. But without active inquiry as part of their skill set, opportunities for treatment may be lost. Sociologist Thorstein Veblen talked about the “trained incapacity” of experts—the blind spots created when outsize knowledge in one area obstructs the view of other salient human phenomena.
Dr. C. Miller Fisher was a pioneer of the field of neurology and an expert on abulia, a syndrome of apathy and absence of spontaneous speech in patients with a stroke in a particular brain region. Fisher held a weekly case conference for Harvard Medical students working on the neurology ward at Massachusetts General Hospital in the 1990s. At one of these conferences, Fisher sat face-to-face for two hours with a middle-aged man with abulia. On the wall behind Fisher was a majestic painted portrait of the great doctor. And indeed, the patient hardly said a word and his facial expression was totally flat.
But Fisher missed something important. After the conference ended, a medical student pushed the patient’s wheelchair into the hallway. The student then paused, came around to the patient’s side, and kneeled down to be at eye level with the patient. He then kindly asked an open-ended question: “How was the conference for you?” In response to the active inquiry, the patient’s face brightened, and he blurted out, “That was quite a portrait of Dr. Fisher!”
The patient gradually improved in the coming days to the point that he could return home. Indeed, something remarkably therapeutic happened for a patient whose abulia turned out to be much more complex than even a preeminent expert in clinical neurology could understand.
4. It pays to be raised in a barn.
Professional hockey is a surprisingly good place to glimpse the power of active inquiry. Starting in 1972, the New York Islanders played in a beloved arena that, by the early 2000s, was pretty dilapidated and malodorous. Fans affectionately began to call it the “Old Barn.” But the team was raised there, starting as a hapless and underfunded team and later winning the Stanley Cup championship 4 times in a row. The Islanders were woven into the fabric of Long Island, adored by its middle-class families living in the backyard of the world’s capital of finance.
That is, until the NHL and team owners saw greater financial opportunity in the swanky Barclays Center in Brooklyn. The team was moved there in 2016, and it was quickly a calamity, in part because it was so far away from the fan base. Ticket sales and revenue plummeted.
So the new team owners began to ask a masterful set of open-ended questions. Jon Ledecky joined fans on the Long Island Rail Road to and from games in Brooklyn, and he asked them what the team should look like in the future. They gave him an earful, and he took it all in with a warm, boyish smile. Ledecky also engaged with the governor, the Nassau County executive, and other stakeholders to fashion a new deal for his loyal customers on the Island.
As a result, the Islanders are moving into a new arena close to their fan base on Long Island. UBS, the multinational Swiss bank, has purchased the naming rights to the arena. The bank’s leaders would do well to conduct active inquiry sessions with residents across Long Island about how they can engage the community and excite the fan base. Perhaps a marriage of big bank and Old Barn values may be just what we need to bring the world of professional sports, and of the entire economy, into a more sustainably human equilibrium.
5. Believe yourself capable.
Urban legend tells of a story in which the famed psychologist William James was asked to deliver a lengthy speech in front of a crowd of academics and researchers. Settled in for an extensive report, the crowd was shocked by James’s choice to speak for just a few seconds. “They’ve asked me to talk about the last hundred years of psychological research,” he allegedly told them. “It can be summed up in this statement: People, by and large, become what they think of themselves. Thank you and good night.”
James’ notion is backed up by cognitive psychology research, that we can (and must) choose what we think and how to live. Each of us—regardless of our status at work or station in life—can make meaningful choices with outsize influence. We all need to use our choice and agency to ask good questions and promote psychological safety. You don’t have to be the CEO to make a profound difference; we all have agency.
“‘I am capable of changing the world,’” James said, “can only be true—or become true—if you first adopt the belief without prior evidence.” In other words, if you haven’t changed the world yet, the first step in doing so is believing that you can.
This article originally appeared in the Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission.
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