Greetings -  

I hope you, your family and friends are all well and enjoying the run-up to the holiday season! It is hard to believe the year is fast coming to a close.

We have the opportunity and obligation to be adept in our execution of technical and non-technical skills, chief among them effective communication (followed closely by meaningful collaboration, emotional intelligence, etc.). Technical and non-technical competence is not inferred nor should it be assumed based on gendered stereotypes. Rather, competence in both spheres can and should be cultivated through deliberate, strategic career development and professional growth opportunities. The importance we place on their value and the narrative we use to describe their meaning is fundamental to developing holistic leaders and outstanding workplace cultures. 

As Lindsey Galloway notes, Stop Calling Them Soft: Why Today’s Essential Skills Are Anything But, "by reframing how we think and communicate these types of skills, we can broaden our perspective of who might have them and how we can train for them, thereby creating leaders who are flexible, resilient, and enduring — anything but soft."

While communication takes center stage in this edition, I am also including an array of other reading and listening. Diverse in content and sourcing, these pieces offer a variety of perspectives that piqued my curiosity and desire to learn more. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.

This will be my last publication for 2022. Our daughter is coming home this week and we will all be enjoying a nice, long stretch of family and friends time. I would like to recognize and thank each of you for your support, partnership and, in many cases, business. I deeply appreciate you sharing your journey with me and being an integral part of mine! 

I wish you, your families and friends a happy and gratitude-filled holiday season! Safe and expeditious travels for those of you on the move over the next few weeks.

As always, happy reading and listening! 

Be well, take good care of your families and community.
-kj

Articles 

Harvard Business Review: How Great Leaders Communicate. "...You can have the greatest idea in the world, but if you can’t persuade anyone else to follow your vision, your influence and impact will be greatly diminished. And that’s why communication is no longer considered a 'soft skill' among the world’s top business leaders. Leaders...study the art in all its forms — writing, speaking, presenting — and constantly strive to improve on those skills."

Harvard Business Review: How to Sell Your Ideas up the Chain of Command. "To sell your ideas up the chain of command, think about the psychology behind managers’ resistance and reframe your proposals in a way that makes you a more persuasive advocate for change."

Big Think: 3 Rules to Express Your Thoughts so That Everyone Will Understand You. "Actor and science communicator Alan Alda shares his three rules of three for effective and empathic communication."

Knowledge At Wharton: So Your Company Has a Vision: Why Can’t Everyone See It? "Wharton research looks at why some vision statements are more powerful than others, and how leaders can craft them effectively."

Harvard Business Review: Research: Men Speak More Abstractly Than Women. "When someone gives a speech, leads a meeting, or sends you an email, you probably don’t consciously think much about how abstract their language is. But our research suggests that this subtle difference in communication style can substantially impact how people are perceived. Moreover, this difference tends to correlate with gender, meaning that we’re more likely to associate men’s speech patterns with leadership, and thus more likely to see men as potential leaders. To encourage everyone to reach their leadership potential, we must acknowledge that this bias exists, and ensure that how someone speaks doesn’t drown out what they’re saying."

Harvard Business Review: How to Have Difficult Conversations Virtually. "Having difficult conversations is hard to do successfully under the best of circumstances. When you must have that conversation virtually, a little extra preparation can go a long way toward making the interaction feel more like it would if you were in the same place at the same time."

HR Brew: How Over-Hiring During the Pandemic Led to the Rash of Layoffs In 2022. "Companies that scaled up rapidly when the Covid economy favored their businesses are now suffering the consequences."

The Wall Street Journal: A Psychologist Spent Five Years Studying World Cup Penalty Shootouts. "Every job requires performance under pressure. Here’s what everybody can learn from the most tense few minutes in sports."

The New Yorker: What Hunter-Gatherers Can Teach Us About the Frustrations of Modern Work. "Research on early human societies offers lessons about improving our jobs today."

Book

It's Showtime: Richard Butterfield's Power of Persuasion. "The playbook for professionals who understand that effective communication is the key to success...This indispensable guide combines Richard's dual experience as an actor and as the man behind the curtain for high-profile leaders across the globe. His tactics for the spoken word apply to every facet of the organization, from the ultra-concise elevator speech to the magnificent keynote address. He punctuates his lessons with anecdotes borrowed from sessions with clients like Linked In, Microsoft and the Cleveland Clinic, and then provides exercises to help you inject key concepts into your own public speaking engagements."

Blog Posts & Opinion

Seth's Blog: When We Look In the Mirror. "It turns out that when you’re surrounded by people who care about you, when you have freedom and a chance to lead, you can become a different, more generous, happier, more powerful, more friended version of yourself."

Fast Company: Research explains the big difference between kind and nice. One has a bigger impact on success. "Data shows a direct causal relationship between the height of a company’s score in one factor and the degree to which it is able to foster an environment of innovation."

Quartz: Is it burnout, or is it moral injury? "When we feel helpless around our beliefs at work, we may think we're burnt—but it may be this instead."

Podcasts 

TED2022: You don't actually know what your future self wants. "You are constantly becoming a new person," says journalist Shankar Vendantam. In a talk full of beautiful storytelling, he explains the profound impact of something he calls the 'illusion of continuity' -- the belief that our future selves will share the same views, perspectives and hopes as our current selves -- and shows how we can more proactively craft the people we are to become."

TED2022: Why art is a tool for hope. "Famed for enormous black-and-white portraits that are pasted on surfaces ranging from the Louvre to the US-Mexico border wall, multimedia artist JR continues to tackle ambitious projects. In this powerfully moving talk, he shares how he made a giant mural on the courtyard floor of a maximum-security prison -- with the help of guards and prisoners alike -- and ended up with much more than a compelling image."

IDEAS.TED.COM: Even gritty people get discouraged. "The difference between being all in versus anything else comes down to whether or not you’ve crossed the Rubicon. This is the metaphor that psychologist Peter Gollwitzer uses to explain the difference between deliberating about what to do and resolving that yes, this is exactly what you want to do. On one side of the river, you’ve got options. On the other, you’re committed."

Arts, Music, Culture, Literature & Humor Corner

Literary Hub: Accumulated Memory: Ken Burns on the Intersection of Individual Intimacy and National Narrative. “Rhymes of race, freedom, innovation, politics, war, leadership, prejudice, art, and scandal recur vividly and insistently.”

Rolling Stone: Jewel-Box Heroes: Why the CD Revival Is Finally Here. "Compact discs never had the romance of vinyl or the convenience of MP3s. But they're still the ideal format for getting lost inside your music collection."

The New York Times: Heart and Hands: The Claddagh Ring. "A piece of jewelry that, in modern times, has come to symbolize Ireland."

The New Yorker: The Hollow Children, by Louise Erdrich

The New Yorker: The Script of Every Movie Set in Boston. "The sun sets in the Southie neighborhood of Boston, which is Boston’s only neighborhood. It is snowing heavily, and everything looks cold but somehow also wet. People are shovelling snow into six-foot-high piles while others walk past, tightly gripping their winter coats to shelter themselves from the bitterly cold wind. Everyone is angry. They are angry because they live in Massachusetts."

Reflections

“The daily routine of most adults is so heavy and artificial that we are closed off to much of the world. We have to do this in order to get our work done. I think one purpose of art is to get us out of those routines.

When we hear music or poetry or stories, the world opens up again. We’re drawn in — or out — and the windows of our perception are cleansed, as William Blake said. The same thing can happen when we’re around young children or adults who have unlearned those habits of shutting the world out.”

- Ursula K. Le Guin

Look To This Day, an ancient Sanskrit poem

Look to this day:

For it is life, the very life of life.
In its brief course
Lie all the verities and realities of your existence.
The bliss of growth,
The glory of action,
The splendor of achievement
Are but experiences of time.
For yesterday is but a dream
And tomorrow is only a vision;
And today well-lived, makes
Yesterday a dream of happiness
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.
Look well therefore to this day;
Such is the salutation to the ever-new dawn!