"Muse of listeners, hope of interpreters, inspire us to act." ~ Kathleen Norris
Photo Credit: Kevin Jordan, Manhattan Beach, CA.
Greetings -
The holiday season and impending calendar year end offer, for many of us, time for reflection and meaningful connection with family and friends. Though the start to this holiday season feels searingly different and considerably more uncertain to me than in past years, I am and will continue to reflect on the many gifts received and bestowed during the year. And while this time of year should hold no monopoly on the thoughtful and creative expression of gratitude and generosity at work and at home, it feels especially important to demonstrate and remain grounded in both now. In that spirit, I would like to thank each of you for your kindness, generosity of energy, time and spirit and, for many of you, your business.
Safe travels for those navigating TSA lines or the open road during the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday. We will be in the lovely confines of Alameda and Inverness, CA in west Marin County enjoying the company of our beloved daughter and my wife's lovely family. My best wishes to you and yours.
With respect and deep admiration for you all, happy reading and listening!
Be well, take good care of yourselves, families and community.
-kj
PS - (Missed a newsletter? Past editions can be found here: https://www.kevinjordan.coach/blog. And if you hit paywall on an article(s), feel free to send me a note and let me know what you need. I have subscriptions to many of the sources that I cite.)
Featured: Why Employees Quit
Considerable research and analysis continues to pour forth on the myriad reasons professionals leave their employers, with the stubbornly persistent trend that most exit due to negative working relationships with their managers. Worse, according to Gallup, for those professionals that do choose to stay, as many as 70% are not engaged at work. What do we continue to get wrong about employee experiences?
Daniel Pink, in his wonderful book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, demonstrated that fostering cultures grounded in autonomy, mastery and purpose result in significantly high-levels of professional satisfaction and engagement. (You can find a great, short graphically illustrated video by RSA of the key themes of his book here.)
In a recent Harvard Business Review article, Why Employees Quit, the authors look at the motivators and behaviors that both "push" people to leave their employers, as well as those that "pull" them to stay. Many people are pushed due to a lack of respect, trust, engagement, sense of purpose, porous boundaries and unclear paths for growth, development and advancement, to name a few. They are pulled, essentially, by the exact opposites forces that push them, with many attractive pull features coalescing around autonomy, mastery and purpose, as Pink notes.
We are not served by our continued reliance on antiquated methods to attract, engage and retain talented people. The research is clear that for people to give their best effort, "...[they] need meaningful work, managers and colleagues who value and trust them, and opportunities to advance in their careers...By supporting employees in their individual quests for progress while also meeting the organization’s needs, managers can create employee experiences that are mutually beneficial and sustaining."
Articles
Harvard Business Review: Stay Cool Under Pressure — Without Appearing Cold. "By being empathetic to others’ stress levels and teaching them your own coping mechanisms, you show that you care. This care will yield dividends both for you and the department."
The Irish Times: Why psychological safety at work boosts employees and productivity. "In a psychologically safe workplace staff feel free to speak up and be creative, which is good for business." [KJ: In addition, here is an excellent companion piece that focuses on the rapid erosion of psychological safety in the context of newly hired employees: HBR: Research: New Hires’ Psychological Safety Erodes Quickly.]
Harvard Business Review: The Surprising Benefits of Work/Life Support. "Employers sometimes worry about the bother or cost of implementing work/life programs, but what they should really worry about is the bother and cost of not implementing them. Specifically, they should be concerned about losing workers who are good at their jobs, about the cost of finding and training their replacements, and about losing the battle for diverse talent."
Harvard Business Review: How to Create Your Own “Year in Review." "While the reality of work can feel especially overwhelming at the end of the year, reflection is the key to doing things differently in the year to come. Taking the time to review your year increases your self-awareness and provides insights to improve, which is perhaps the best gift you can give yourself."
Forbes: How To Prevent The ‘Great Stay’ From Turning Into The ‘Great Stagnation.’ "The reasons behind employees tightly holding onto their current jobs is more nuanced than a lack of available white-collar opportunities. The "Great Stay" phenomenon, also known as the “Big Stay,” is being driven by economic turbulence due to high inflation, interest rates and the cost of living, in addition to geopolitical turmoil with wars in the Middle East and Ukraine. All of the uncertainty has caused workers to hunker down in their jobs and take a wait-and-see approach before making any long-term decisions about their careers."
Blog Posts & Opinions
Substack: Granted (Adam Grant): No, you don't owe me a favor. "Generosity is not a loan to repay or a debt to settle. It's a gift to appreciate."
Seth's Blog: What Do We Owe The Future? "The circle of now is how far into the future you’re hoping to make an impact. Do you care enough to invest in a thousand tomorrows? What will you invest in (or sacrifice, depending on your point of view) to receive in the future?"
Simon's (Sinek) Journal: Purpose Cannot Be Rationalized. "Because a true sense of purpose is deeply emotional, it serves as a compass to guide us to act in a way completely consistent with our values and beliefs. Purpose does not need to involve calculations or numbers. Purpose is about the quality of life. Purpose is human, not economic."
ZengerFolkman: 10 Critical Behaviors That Improve Resiliency. "Comparing the results from those peers who were rated in the bottom 10% to other peers in the top 10%, we identified a list of the most contagious behaviors. When a person performs these behaviors well, their peers mirror these behaviors, and persons who perform these behaviors poorly seem to teach the opposite lesson."
Podcasts + TED Talks
Joan Garry: Conflict Resolution and Finding the Third Ground. "World-renowned conflict resolution expert, Ken Cloke, shares his secrets for overcoming conflict using proven strategies from his mediation practice that have brought “impossible” conflicts to peace across the world for 4 decades."
Freakonomics Radio Network: No Stupid Questions: Why Can’t We Tolerate Discomfort? "Are we using technology to make ourselves numb?"
TEDxBrayfordPool: Are you really as good at something as you think? "Does confidence equal competence? Not quite. In a talk that will make you better aware of yourself, experimental psychologist Robin Kramer delves into the Dunning-Kruger effect — which argues that those who are least capable often overestimate their skills the most — and explores just how good you are at judging your own abilities."
Arts, Music, Culture, Literature & Humor Corner
Wired: The Untold Story of How Ridley Scott Saw Star Wars—and Ended Up Making Alien. "In 1977, Ridley Scott was considering making a medieval period piece. Then he saw Star Wars and set about making two sci-fi classics, Alien and Blade Runner."
The New York Times: How Florence Welch Turned Rage Into Power. "For nearly two decades, Florence Welch’s songs have offered a mythic view not only of pop music but of the glories and rages of being a female artist today."
Aeon: The case for empathy (and its limits). "In a world of difference we can – and should – work harder to cultivate subtle, perceptive empathy towards all human beings."
The New Yorker Fiction: Hi Daddy, by Matthew Klam. "He was the kind of father they had back then, and maybe I was the kind we had now."
The New Yorker Humor: Thanksgiving Rider. "This document acknowledges that Lauren (“Talent”) has agreed to appear for a MAXIMUM of THREE (3) days and TWO (2) nights at the residence of her mother (“Venue”) during the Thanksgiving holiday, pursuant to the terms of this agreement."
Reflections
“In the end, people don't view their life as merely the average of all its moments—which, after all, is mostly nothing much plus some sleep. For human beings, life is meaningful because it is a story. A story has a sense of a whole, and its arc is determined by the significant moments, the ones where something happens. Measurements of people's minute-by-minute levels of pleasure and pain miss this fundamental aspect of human existence. A seemingly happy life maybe empty. A seemingly difficult life may be devoted to a great cause. We have purposes larger than ourselves.” ~ Atul Gawande, MD
“After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, love, and so on—have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear—what remains? Nature remains; to bring out from their torpid recesses, the affinities of a man or woman with the open air, the trees, fields, the changes of seasons—the sun by day and the stars of heaven by night.” ~ Walt Whitman
A Prayer to Eve
by Kathleen Norris in The Paris Review
Mother of fictions
and of irony,
help us to laugh.
Mother of science
and the critical method,
keep us humble.
Muse of listeners,
hope of interpreters,
inspire us to act.
Bless our metaphors,
that we may eat them.
Help us to know, Eve,
the one thing we must do.
Come with us, Muse of exile,
Mother of the road.