The First Quarter Of An Incredible Year of Reading
As I begin to reflect on 2020, even on Day 279 of the Global Pandemic, I must say it has been an incredible year of reading. As of today I have finished 115 books and must say that these books have caused a great reflection and further research. I have learned so much from the books I have read and have written many blog posts inspired by the learning. Each year, and this year is no exception, I always get asked what my favorite book I read was, my top books of the year, or which books I would recommend. This is really tough because no one will ever let me off the hook with me saying, “All of them!”
Last year I did a post Best Books of 2019 to answer the question of my favorite books from the year. This year I am going to do it a little differently. I am going to do five posts over the last days of 2020 highlighting all the posts that were inspired by books that I read in 2020, and then a final post of the year naming my top five. Hopefully, this will make it easy for you to take a look at the inspirations and learning provided by a few of the books I have read this year. So, here we go for the first quarter of 2020:
January, 2020
Every Day We Are Making Memories
“Remember, Freedom Is Yours Until You Give It Up”
“It Has Been An Honor To Live This Life”
When Purpose & Passion Turn Into Ambition
Empowerment Triggers The Approach System
366 Page Best Selling Autobiography
February, 2020
Arguing The Value Of Our Experiences Is Futile
A Time To Fish & A Time To Mend Nets
March, 2020
Influencer, Inspiring, & Impactful
The Nuanced Context Of The Great Society
Reflective Culture Gut Checks: A Five Star Review
Some pretty great inspiration from the first three months of 2020, wouldn’t you say? I’ll get the second quarter compiled and posted soon.
If Only We Would Just Ask
Have you ever complained about something? I know. Stupid question, right? We have all complained about something. Many times a complaint is an unspoken request. Additionally, when we don’t ask for what we want we tend to complain about our needs not getting met. I guess as much as we complain, we must not be very good at asking for what we want. I also believe it to be much more complicated than this, however. When we ask for what we want we make ourselves vulnerable to being turned down or judged negatively for our request. Sometimes people don’t ask because they do not believe they really deserve what they are asking for.
Let’s think about this from a case study perspective. Let’s say I like running through the television channels a time or two. Or three. Or four. It seems my wife is not into that as much as I am. Now, my wife could complain about me, or she could ask me to stop doing that. Did you catch that? If only we’d just ask! Remember, many times a complaint is an unspoken request. We also need to make sure we are paying attention to what it is that makes others complain as well. Also, don’t forget, we are generally much better at listening to ourselves than others.
This very subject was the topic of Chapter 16 entitled “Work On Yourself” in Mindset Mondays With DTK by David Taylor-Klaus (DTK). I loved that he quoted one of my favorite presidents when he said, “If leading is the ultimate responsibility, then it makes sense to start by improving yourself, and working on yourself even harder than you work on your business. As Harry Truman said, ‘The buck stops here'” (p. 134). What does this mean? We need to express what DTK calls the “dream behind the complaint.” The buck stopping with us begins with us expressing what we need to have changed or done. Again, if only we’d just ask!
Make Your Changes Out Loud
We know that a best practice for editing written work is listening out loud. Hearing our written work offers a new perspective to help us catch grammatical errors, poor sentence structure, plot holes, or pacing issues that your eyes skip over when you read. Because our minds will automatically make corrections when looking at something, listening provides another perspective for us to review our written work. In fact, there are apps for this. These apps allow you to edit documents while exercising, taking a run, or in my, case milking cows.
Last night when working with teacher leaders from Florida, Georgia, and Tennessee we were discussing how to adapt boldly and one of the participants said that we need to “make your changes out loud.” This was a ‘click the mic moment’ (the Zoom equivalent of ‘drop the mic’). This comment was genius. If we make our changes or intended changes out loud we can get feedback from others to make the proposed change better and give others a chance to understand the changes before they happen.
Let’s go back to using writing as the analogy here. Whether we are working on a blog, novel, or business document it’s critical that each paragraph is well written and tells the complete story necessary in that block of verse to get our point(s) across. Reading audibly as opposed to only in our head, changes our perspective on the text and provides deeper meaning. By employing making your changes out loud you will inspire others to greater engagement, ownership, and action to create positive change. So, I challenge you to listen to make your changes out loud, make sure others are listening and providing feedback, and listen to yourself as you speak or read your own words of change.
Leading From The Optimal Height
The Brown Pelican is one of my favorite birds. In fact I have blogged about them before in Pelican Leadership Lessons. The Brown Pelican will target and dive for food from heights of 60-65 feet. They have also learned that a steep dive angle, between 60 and 90 degrees, reduces aiming errors caused by water surface refraction. In doing some research I found that Brown Pelicans “learn” this behavior because adults are better marksmen than young birds.
This lesson and example from the Pelican reminded me that I must get myself to the optimal height to see the detail needed, but yet still get the big picture. This really becomes a question of strategic insight. An insight is the combination of two or more pieces of information or data in a unique way that leads to the creation of new value. Strategic thinking, then, is the ability to generate insights that lead to competitive advantage.
One of the leadership lessons I have learned over time is how we need to step into the balcony, as leaders, and watch the dance above all the chaos and noise. But, like the Brown Pelican, we must find the optimal height for seeing our targets and diving in to support our teams.
A Great Unknown
David Taylor-Klaus (DTK) used the smoothing of a rock under a waterfall over a period of time as the metaphor in Chapter 15, Define Yourself, in Mindset Mondays with DTK. He wrote, “Just as it is in nature, there’s no escaping the fact that your human experiences shape who you are.” He went on to say, “Yet you neither become nor are defined by the events that impact you.” DTK’s metaphor made me think of the beach and ocean. Beaches are constantly changing. Tides and weather can alter beaches every day, bringing new materials and taking away others.
Even though a beach is constantly changing (just like us) every beach has a beach profile. A beach profile describes the landscape of the beach, both above the water and below it. We, like the beach, all have a profile that the events of our lives do not have to define. While ever rolling in a constant rhythm of ebb and flow, each wave, day, and week is different. No matter the changes, the beach is always beautiful – just like us.
We never know what we are going to encounter. Just like the beach has new weather and tidal patterns in its future, we have an unfamiliar element, perhaps a great unknown. But, it’s only by encountering the unknown that we can learn, grow, and experience adventure.
The Possibilities Are Endless
I just had to do a followup post on my sandcastle post from this morning, Build Great Things Anyway. I have continued to think about how sandcastles have endless possibilities. Kids don’t go out with a set plan, architectural drawing, or blueprint; they just create. Scale isn’t even worried about in most cases. This thought reminded me of Peter Block teaching me that, as a leader or community member, when creating and ideating you don’t want to move to quickly to scaling. This can kill great ideas. The sandcastle teacher I encountered never tells kids that something can’t go somewhere she wants to put it, he can’t make it look that way. That’s why sandcastles are so beautiful.
Many times the process is more important than the product. This is very true when making sandcastles. We make the awesome structures in and out of sand with the understanding that when the tide comes in, or if it rains overnight, or even if left, the castle will wash away, or erode away in the wind, and the sand will again become part of the beach. Kids, even at a young age, get that it is about the process and activity of building the sandcastle.
I wonder if we should take a cue from the kids on the beach. In a world that requires us to work as a community to solve complex issues, develop new ideas, and be creative we need to be cognizant of the process. If we want everyone to be engaged we need to remember the process of building sandcastles on the beach.
Build Great Things Anyway
I had a chance meeting of a professional sandcastle builder and teacher of sandcastle making this week. First of all, I did not know there was such a thing. Secondly, I didn’t do much sandcastle building in my childhood, so I was fascinated to discuss the art of sandcastle building. Really, I hadn’t thought much about the fact there are different kinds of sand. Bottom-line: lots of new things going through my mind.
There are three main rules for sandcastle building:
- Always use wet (sloppy) sand (no such thing as too much water)
- Always form shapes using a pyramid – larger at the base – thinner at the top
- When all the formed sand is completed work from the top to the bottom
Other pieces of advice were to build on a big mound. This enables sand to fall down and away from the sandcastle as you are carving. And, it makes it up higher and easier to work on. Besides buckets of sand and water, the tools are pretty basic. You use simple tools (like a straw, a pencil, and a metal cutting device) to chisel it starting from the top.
The rule that was stressed over and over was working from the top down. If you work from the bottom up, the pieces from the top will tumble down onto the bottom, thus flawing your previous work. This is a lot like leadership in an organization. If the leader is a tyrannical monster all the trash falls down on the people doing the work getting marred and ruined. Thus, the flatter the organization the better, or at least the leader needs to already be chiseled and refined so all the chaff and sand isn’t ruining those below. But remember, if there are no “those below” in an organization, no worries.
I love that there are people helping kids learn to build sandcastles. When children play and create in the outer world, simultaneously they also create and learn in the inner world. We adults know change is coming when we build sandcastles but we encourage kids to build something great anyway. In our schools and classrooms, this is a valuable lesson. It’s also an important lesson for leaders to remember. Change comes, colleagues come and go, new research is discovered with the ebb and flow of the waves ever coming and going, and the tide is ever shifting. Build great things anyway.
A Penguin Inspired Quest
Every Penguin in the World: A Quest to See Them All by Charles Bergman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Besides being in the non-fiction genre, this book could be categorized as a wildlife, leadership, global community building, travel, survivalist, and motivational literary work. This book encompasses all those things. Charles Bergman, traveled the world to see all 18 penguin species in their natural habitats. I did not even know there were 18 different species of penguins until I read this book. This book is an incredible visual and written chronicle of the 20-year-long journey it took the author to see all 18 species. He artfully used storytelling and photography to take the reader into the wilderness, from the Galapagos to South Africa and Antarctica, to teach us about these beautiful creatures. This book enables us to see and learn about an animal most might never see in the wild. It it important, however, for us to understand all these penguins, the environments in which we live, and our responsibility in the global community for their wellbeing.
View all my reviews
Becoming The First Me
Chapter 14 entitled “Trust Yourself” in Mindset Mondays with DTK, by David Taylor-Klaus (DTK) really resonated with me because he started out by talking about a coach he admired and then was encouraged to follow exactly. He went on to explain that this was toxic with his audience. Think about it; if you are trying to be someone else, there is no room for authenticity. I actually have a section of a leadership gathering that I discuss this. It starts with a slide that says, “Great leaders don’t copy!” I then ask the group to react. It’s always interesting to hear the responses. At first they usually want to push back and say that they try to do the things great leaders do. Then it shifts to, well they are learning from what the others are doing. Then they decide that copying probably is not the best way – they are adapting to fit in with their style.
DTK said, “I tried to become the next “fill-in-the-blank” instead of becoming the first me” (p. 121). We are all unique, have special talents and skills, and have our own style. This means we need to work toward being the best “me” we can be. As an educator I absolutely hate it when I hear someone say, “You need to be more like ___________.” Really? Why? This does not mean that we do not seek to grow professionally and personally. Growing is very different that stuffing yourself in a template.
Becoming the first me means we are not going to depend as much on outside validation. Do we need more likes and followers? I’m not sure. What do those likes and followers do? The great musical artists don’t try to write songs that are hits. They write songs from inspiration that then become huge hits. There is a difference. Otherwise, we just become a cheap imitation of someone else.
Becoming the first me also means that we trust in our own answers. Many times I say, “Make a decision, even if it’s wrong” or “Let’s do something, even if it is wrong.” We nee to trust our own decisions. DTK included a quote in Chapter 14 from Larry Winger that I love, “Don’t worry too much about making the right decision. Just make the decision, and then make the decision right” (p. 122). Or, as I always say, “The sun will come up tomorrow, and if it doesn’t that nothing else matters anyway.” So, let’s be the best first me we can be because we are the only me we can be.
Waves Of Change
“Sometimes in the waves of change, we find our true direction”
Unknown
As I read this quote I thought about how very relevant this is to us all in 2020. Changes from the global pandemic continue to hit us hard. Sometimes things are unexpected and we have to adjust on the fly to changing circumstances. As we ride the waves, the unrecognizable becomes clear, and finding new direction becomesJust as the tide changes, other things in our life can change too, and this can push us towards the path that we were destined to follow.
Change is something we cannot keep from experiencing, but the way we get over the hurdles is where the difference stands. We all have extra obstacles put in the way right now during the global pandemic. The question becomes what are you learning, what are you doing with that learning, and how are you sharing the learning? We must be a community. How are you breaking through and finding the right path?
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