Hey, have you subscribed to the bookmark newsletter? A fortnightly email with book reviews and ideas of what you should be reading next. Click here to subscribe.   About the book You may have outgrown a relationship. Your job may no longer excite you. Maybe you look in the mirror and see someone you don’t want to be anymore. You might be so fed up that you’re ready to throw in the towel at work or in a friendship or relationship. Behind the scenes, thousands of smart, capable, amazing people like you feel the exact same way. In There Has To Be More, Rachel shares the methods and tools she created to genuinely grow and build a life that reflects what makes her happy. Source: amazon.com.au   About the author Rachel Service is the CEO of Happiness Concierge and the author of There Has To Be More: The Essential Guide to Personal Growth. After experiencing an aha moment at a Beyonce concert (true story!), with $300 in her bank account, entrepreneur Rachel Service started Happiness Concierge™, the company empowering thousands of people across the globe. Since then, she has saved companies millions by empowering their people, partnered with ASX listed companies, retail banks, universities and government departments and shifted the dial on workplace culture. Rachel’s award-winning approach to personal and professional growth has been featured in the BBC, Financial Review, Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. Her TED talk, ‘How to Break Up With Your Public Identity’, was internationally syndicated on the official TED website in 2020. Rachel’s belief is when we create our own version of success, we take control of our life and work. Source: https://www.rachelservice.com/rachel-service   Big idea #1 — The Growth Cycle The main structure of the book is around the growth cycle, Rachel’s on model on how to take your goals and reach them. The five stages of the growth model are… Own it; doing an audit and really checking yourself on what’s really happening, including how you’re getting in your own way at the moment. Find your way back; reflecting on what’s changed and what those trigger points were. What do you want; defining what you want and really being clear on what’s important and what’s not important. Game plan; the people, the actions, the roadblocks, and then prioritizing the goals. Take the first step; acknowledging the small wins, finding little ways to fail, and setting a bit of a commitment to yourself. There’s lots of reflection questions and frameworks throughout the model and book. One I particularly liked was looking at behaviour and communication patterns where we fall into the trap of our own outdated beliefs and how we reinforce them, and therefore ending up going in a bit of a cycle. Which is not particularly useful for actually achieving our goals and breaking some of those patterns and habits and ways of thinking.   Big idea #2 — Choose your people There’s a really strong theme in the book about the people around you and that you surround yourself with and choosing them wisely. Rachel shares that some people might freak out when you make a big change, or when you decide that you’re going to commit to yourself and make and achieve a goal. You might even be concerned trolled, which was a term that I had never heard before, but I really enjoyed as a description. It is when you get a back handed comment or false curiosity from someone when you share your goal or actions with them. Eg;Concern troll: how was your morning?You: Great, I did a fitness class.Concern troll: oh I would never do that of kind of jumping around.You: well, you know, it’s not for everyone. Concern troll: don’t you ever worry about getting injured? That sort of backhanded comments or false curiosity/concern is something that you probably hear, and do, on a regular basis. And I had never thought of it as being a bad thing; just different preferences / opinions. So it was a useful reminder how in some cases, it might make people feel bad or feel like they shouldn’t do the thing because they’ve been concerned trolled. There’s also a useful section in the book so that if you do find you need to edit some relationships, there’s also advice in here around saying no, establishing boundaries, and potentially distancing yourself from certain individuals or certain groups or relationships that aren’t serving you.   Big idea #3 — Reflect, reflect, reflect This is more of an overall theme of the book as there’s a huge amount of questions, practical activities, sections you can fill in, and even an associated workbook that comes with the book. Quite a few of the reflection questions involve looking backwards; thinking back to a time you felt excellent or you felt at your best and then asking yourself what’s changed to get you here, where maybe things aren’t working as well for you, or there’s something a little bit missing. The hardest thing is often knowing what you do want. So the book asks you what you want to; feel or be have  achieve Which is quite a nice way of breaking it down for the little prompts that can help you define what success looks like. And then from there you can set up timelines, stepping stones, habits required, and the people you need around you to actually achieve those things.   Let’s connect LinkedIn Instagram See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Steph's Business Bookshelf Podcast

There Has to be More by Rachel Service: how to achieve your goals

Hey, have you subscribed to the bookmark newsletter? A fortnightly email with book reviews and ideas of what you should be reading next. Click here to subscribe. About the author James Nestor is an author and journalist who has written for Scientific American, Outside Magazine, BBC, The New York Times, The Atlantic, National Public Radio, Surfer’s Journal, The San Francisco Chronicle, and more. He’s spent the last several years working on a book called Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art. It released through Riverhead/Penguin Random House on May 26, 2020 and spent 18 weeks of the New York Times bestseller list in the first year of publication. At home in San Francisco, James runs his 1978 Mercedes-Benz 300D on used cooking oil whenever he can and used to zip around town (correction: breakdown all over town) in a Sebring-Vanguard CitiCar, the first-ever American-made production electric vehicle, which barely ever worked and was later offloaded on some dude with purple suspenders in Eugene, Oregon. Source: https://www.mrjamesnestor.com/about   About the book There is nothing more essential to our health and well-being than breathing: take air in, let it out, repeat 25,000 times a day. Yet, as a species, humans have lost the ability to breathe correctly, with grave consequences. Journalist James Nestor travels the world to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it. The answers aren’t found in pulmonology labs, as we might expect, but in the muddy digs of ancient burial sites, secret Soviet facilities, New Jersey choir schools, and the smoggy streets of Sao Paulo. Nestor tracks down men and women exploring the hidden science behind ancient breathing practices like Pranayama, Sudarshan Kriya, and Tummo and teams up with pulmonary tinkerers to scientifically test long-held beliefs about how we breathe. Drawing on thousands of years of medical texts and recent cutting-edge studies in pulmonology, psychology, biochemistry, and human physiology, Breath turns the conventional wisdom of what we thought we knew about our most basic biological function on its head. You will never breathe the same again. Source: https://www.mrjamesnestor.com/#/breath-book/ Big idea #1 —Our changing faces There are over 5,400 known species of mammals, but humans are the only ones with regular misaligned jaws, under and overbites, and snuggled teeth. Evolution isn’t always better, it’s just change. And we are at a point now, and have been for several thousands of years, where we’re passing down these unhealthy and unhelpful deformities to future generations. This change started before homo-sapiens were even sapiens. There’s a full timeline in the book, but over the last hundred of thousands of years, our species changed, we ate different food, which made our brains grow much, much bigger, which in turn meant that they needed more space in our skulls. Our brains stole this space from our sinuses, our airways and our mouths, which then shrunk our faces. You can see this in comparing the skulls of modern homo-sapiens to prehistoric sapiens. By processing and cooking food, even in a very primitive way, we started chewing less, which resulted in our jaws were getting looser, weaker, and changed the shape of our face. Learning to speak dropped our larynx and pushed our tongues back, creating too much space at the back of our throat, meaning that we are the only mammals, and the only sapiens that can choke. We even do that in our sleep; through snoring and sleep apnea. As we evolved, those in colder climates developed long, thin noses, which were able to warm up the cold air before it reached out lungs. Those in warm and humid climates had flatter noses, which is much more efficient for processing that humid air ready to hit the lungs. But look at us now. We are not breathing well, we’re snoring, we stop breathing altogether as we sleep with sleep apnea, and never mind our teeth. These things are all unique deformities of the human race, rather than something that is prevalent in mammals more generally. So our big old brains haven’t been that good for us. Big idea#2 — We’re breathing wrong First things first; mouth breathing is very bad.Mouth breathing, it turns out, changes the physical body and transforms airways all for the worse. Inhaling air through the mouth decreases pressure, which causes the soft tissues in the back of the mouth to become loose and flex inward, creating less space and making breathing more difficult. Therefore mouth breathing begets more mouth breathing. Our small mouths cause our teeth overcrowding, and many other issues. Sleeping with an open mouth makes it even worse, because gravity blocks the airways and therefore that’s when we get snoring and sleep apnea. In the book, James talks about his experiment (which sounds absolutely horrific) where he had his nose blocked up with padding for 10 days, to test exactly what happens when you can only breathe through your mouth. By the end of the experiment, his snoring was 4,800% worse than it was at the beginning of of the experiment, and he was having 25 apnea episodes a night. Some were so bad that he actually dropped below 90% oxygen, which on an ongoing basis can cause all sorts of issues. Some studies show that sleep apnea and snoring (ie poor breathing / mouth breathing at night) lead to things like bed-wetting, ADHD, diabetes, high blood pressure, and cancers. The Mayo Clinic now says that chronic insomnia is actually a breathing problem, not a psychological one. One Japanese study, showed that mouth breathing reduces oxygen to the prefrontal cortex, which is associated with ADHD. Another bad breathing habit we have is holding our breath, particularly when we’re maybe sat at our desks at work and having a bit of a stressful day. There was some really interesting research and studies that have been done of indigenous groups of people who are living in a less modernised way, and some of their practices around breathing. Even though these groups of people are in completely different continents, they all had really similar techniques and ways of breathing, which were much more unfettered by some of the modern ways of living that we have. And their dental structures, facial shapes, and respiratory health are much better for it. James talked about one particular Native American group of people who wouldn’t even smile with their mouth open in case some dirty unfiltered air crept into their mouth. They felt so strongly that nose breathing is the clean way to breathe, and mouth breathing was quite a dirty way to breathe because you’re not filtering the air.   Big idea #3 — How to breathe better You may have already gathered the breathing better way is through your nose as a starting point.  (Note: all of the following techniques and ideas are covered more thoroughly in the book and here on James’ website, this is obviously a very high level overview and NOT medical instruction, so don’t do anything silly) At night one option to train yourself to breathe through your nose is to put a little piece of medical tape over your lips, which starts to tease them closed at night. The other thing we can be doing is increasing our lung capacity, there is some quite interesting research into the link between lung capacity and longevity / health. We can increase our lung capacity by taking really long out breaths, and accessing the full lung capacity, rather than just the little, short, shallow breaths. This technique is a used lot by athletes, particularly around better using the exhale. We’ve also become over breathers. In today’s modern age is between 12 and 20 breaths per minute, taking in about half a liter each time, which is almost twice as much as it used to be at the high end of that range. So we can practice slower breathing. Aiming for around 5.5 breaths per minute, practicing fewer inhales and exhales at a smaller volume. Another way of improving our breathing is by chewing more. Now you don’t need to go and start eating bark and sticks like some of our prehistoric ancestors did, but even using gum (particularly chewy gum, rather than the soft squishy ones) will help. It can strengthen our facial bones and jaws and help open up the airways. There’s also various yoga breathing techniques, for example, alternate nasal breathing, and box breathing, which you may be familiar with from yoga or meditation practice. There’s also some quite advanced methods as well, which come with a whole plethora of different warnings and caveats, such as the Wim Hof method, some of which you can not practice if you have heart conditions, are driving, operating heavy machinery, or are anywhere near some water! James’s website contains a whole little video section with some of these techniques that you can practice at home and build your breathing repertoire.   Let’s connect LinkedIn Instagram See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Breath by James Nestor: how we're breathing all wrong (and what to do about it)

Hey, have you subscribed to the bookmark newsletter? A fortnightly email with book reviews and ideas of what you should be reading next. Click here to subscribe.   About the book The average human lifespan is absurdly, outrageously, insultingly brief: if you live to 80, you have about four thousand weeks on earth. How should we use them best? Of course, nobody needs telling that there isn’t enough time. We’re obsessed by our lengthening to-do lists, our overfilled inboxes, the struggle against distraction, and the sense that our attention spans are shrivelling. Yet we rarely make the conscious connection that these problems only trouble us in the first place thanks to the ultimate time-management problem: the challenge of how best to use our four thousand weeks. Four Thousand Weeks is an uplifting, engrossing and deeply realistic exploration of this problem. Rejecting the futile modern obsession with ‘getting everything done,’ it introduces readers to tools for constructing a meaningful life, showing how the unhelpful ways we’ve come to think about time aren’t inescapable, unchanging truths, but choices we’ve made, as individuals and as a society — and its many revelations will transform the reader’s worldview. Source: https://www.penguin.com.au/books/four-thousand-weeks-9781847924025   About the author OLIVER BURKEMAN is the author of The Antidote: Happiness for People who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking and Help! How to Become Slightly Happier and Get a Bit More Done. He wrote a long-running column for the Guardian, This Column Will Change Your Life, and has a devoted following for his writing on productivity, mortality and the power of limits. Source: https://www.oliverburkeman.com/books   Big idea #1 — In the long run, we’re all dead There’s no escaping this fact. But we try to constantly, from measuring everything, hacking our time, choosing convenient options, and practicing every time management trick in the book, we’re constantly trying to control the uncontrollable. But what are we really doing with all this time we’ve hacked and supposedly saved from using the dishwasher, rather than doing the washing up, or getting takeaways or meal boxes, or smoothie-ing all of our different meals so we don’t have to waste time eating or chewing? We’re still being churned in the machine. We’re burnt out, stressed, with a to do list that we’ll never get done. And we’re living for an imaginary time in the future (time which isn’t guaranteed) where we’ll magically have time for all of the things we say we don’t now, despite how important we say these things that we never get round to are to us. We’re also attaching our self-worth to how we spend our time, which is a of a fool’s errand. The system is rigged. We are not machines. Time management is a lie, no list of ‘10 things to do before 7am’ will fix the systemic issues of spending our time on the wrong things, because our idea of being fully optimised and living our best lives is impossible. But this is excellent news because by admitting it we can then let go and can take the first steps to spending our time actually in a better way. Big idea #2 — Finitude and FOMO We need to embrace our insultingly short time on earth and stop trying to do the impossible, which is everything, and controlling our time. But what do we need to do next? Firstly, we need to ditch FOMO. We need to accept that almost everything that happens in the world, we will miss out on. What we need to do after that, is think about procrastinating better, which means saying no to things that we do want to do. In order to be able to spend better time on the things that we really do want to do. This means starting the projects, even though we know they won’t be good enough (because they won’t be) because ultimately we only have one chance to do them. There’s an idea in the book of paying yourself first. To do these things that we say we really want to do, and we want to happen, we need to do those first. We need to make the time in our days a month to do them, and accept the consequences of doing so. It might mean we need to reduce our client workload, or reduce our hours at work, or say no to other things in order to do the things that we say we really want to do, and that are important. This will it be helped if you limit your work in progress. Oliver only allows himself to have three tasks/projects in progress at one time. And he has a one in one out policy on those. Limiting your work in progress means you have to make sure that those three things really are the most important things, no middling priorities allowed. Of course, these priorities may change over time. Some will draw to a natural conclusion and allow for a new one to take its place, others will become less important (or fail) and be replaced by another.  He likens this to the adage of the rocks and the bucket. The problem with that particular anecdote, Oliver argues, is that the teacher turns up with only enough big rocks fit in the bucket in the first place. Whereas in our lives, we are overwhelmed by the opportunities and the possibilities of all the big rocks. There’s a whole beach full of big rocks. The skill is not about fitting them in the bucket, but choosing which big rocks to put in there in the first place. And finally, he says that we should do some things just to feel good. Not everything has to be a means to an end. Big idea #3 — Five questions and ten antidotes In the book Oliver shares five reflective questions to help you decide if you’re living a way that helps you make the most of your four thousand weeks, and ‘ten tools for embracing your finitude’. Here they are: The questions Where in your life or your work are you currently pursuing comfort, when what’s called for is a little discomfort? Are you holding yourself to, and judging yourself by, standards of productivity or performance that are impossible to meet? In what ways have you yet to accept the fact that you are who you are, not the person you think you ought to be? In which areas of life are you still holding back until you feel like you know what you’re doing? How would you spend your life differently if you didn’t care so much about seeing your actions reach fruition?   The tools Adopt a ‘fixed volume’ approach to productivity (ie create better time boundaries to your daily work) Serialise, serialise, serialise (one or two big things at a time) Decide in advance what to fail at Focus on what you’ve already completed, not just on what’s left to complete Consolidate your caring Embrace boring and single-purpose technology Seek out novelty in the mundane Be a ‘researcher’ in relationships Cultivate instantaneous generosity Practice doing nothing  What would you do differently with your time, today, if you knew in your bones that salvation was never coming — that your standards had been unreachable all along, and that you’ll therefore never manage to make time for all you hoped you might?   Let’s connect LinkedIn Instagram See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman: how to make the most of your limited time on earth

Hey, have you subscribed to the bookmark newsletter? A fortnightly email with book reviews and ideas of what you should be reading next. Click here to subscribe.   This week, it's time for another quarterly check in on my favourite reads from the last three months. If you missed the first part of the 2021 'best books', you can listen to it here, and the second instalment here. This time I'm talking about... Everyday Creative by Mykel Dixon 4000 Weeks by Oliver Burkeman Breath by James Nestor Find Your Artistic Voice by Lisa Congdon The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath   What are your favourite books of the year so far? Let me know by connecting on: LinkedIn Instagram   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Best books of 2021 so far (part 3): my favourite books I've read this quarter

Hey, have you subscribed to the bookmark newsletter? A fortnightly email with book reviews and ideas of what you should be reading next. Click here to subscribe.   About the author Guy Raz is an independent producer who has been described by the New York Times as “one of the most popular podcasters in history.” He’s the founder and CEO of Built-It Productions and the creator and the creative force behind How I Built This. He’s also the former host and co-creator of TED Radio Hour. Guy is also the co-founder of Tinkercast, a children’s media company that produces audio podcasts and educational content for kids. Guy co-created and hosts one of those programs, Wow in the World — the number one kids podcast in English. Together, Guy’s programs are heard by nearly 19 million listeners a month. Source: https://www.npr.org/people/6597623/guy-raz About the book Based on the highly acclaimed NPR podcast, How I Built This with Guy Raz, this book offers priceless insights and inspiration from the world’s top entrepreneurs on how to start, launch, and build a successful venture. Great ideas often come from a simple spark: A soccer player on the New Zealand national team notices all the unused wool his country produces and figures out a way to turn them into shoes (Allbirds). A former Buddhist monk decides the very best way to spread his mindfulness teachings is by launching an app (Headspace). A sandwich cart vendor finds a way to reuse leftover pita bread and turns it into a multimillion-dollar business (Stacy’s Pita Chips).   Award-winning journalist and NPR host Guy Raz has interviewed more than 200 highly successful entrepreneurs to uncover amazing true stories like these. In How I Built This, he shares tips for every entrepreneur’s journey: from the early days of formulating your idea, to raising money and recruiting employees, to fending off competitors, to finally paying yourself a real salary. This is a must-read for anyone who has ever dreamed of starting their own business or wondered how trailblazing entrepreneurs made their own dreams a reality. Source: amazon.com  Big idea #1 — Dangerous or just scary? Despite the amazing stories of growth and entrepreneurship in the book, it’s important to see the underlying theme of calculated risk in many of the stories. Very few of the founders went into create the mega brands that they ended up creating. They started with an idea, they started with an audience and they developed, tested and created. They created a following and then they made steps to growth gradually. Of course there’s always exceptions; the people who do make the big, risky leaps. But many of the big leaps in the book are made with a “fully packed parachute”. There’s some risk mitigation that has happened. Some people stayed in that full-time or part-time jobs for a long time after the company was successful. They use their own money rather than borrowing. They started and stayed small until growth sustained their next step; the next product line, the next city, or the next bricks and mortar outlet. Now, of course, there’s always a point where there is an element of risk. And for every Lisa Price (Carol’s Daughter founder) who grew slow and steadily, there’s the Airbnb co-founders sat in their tiny apartment eating noodles every night for dinner. But really, they’re all human, just like you and me. They’re all just normal people who created something and they’ve all just approached it in a different way. Similarly, they all come from different backgrounds, different upbringings, different levels of luck and privilege and being in the right place and the right time, and have things going for them and others against them. But ultimately, it comes down to this:Failing is scary. Wasting your life is dangerous. Big idea #2 — Find a friend Many of the entrepreneurs in the book found a business partner pretty quickly, if they didn’t start with one. This allowed them to spread their particular skills, and tackle different parts of the business. In many cases, someone was the maker and someone else was the marketer. But there was a bit of a recurring theme about the impact on a relationship that a starting a business can have. Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohani, co-founders of Reddit, had been through a hell of a lot by the time they exited after selling to Condé Nast. And by that point, there wasn’t actually much of a business partnership or a friendship left. They hadn’t had the hard conversations. They didn’t set boundaries, discuss roles, and set have the hard talks around decisions. Similarly, Adam and Eric, co-founders of the household cleaning products brand Method, bought totally different skills and styles. One of them was the scientist, the other was the product designer, but they didn’t always approach or appreciate each other’s differences, or see the differences as strengths. After several years, these differences became a point of tension rather than a point of strength. There are heaps of similar stories in the book from couples who started businesses whose relationship then broke down, friends who started businesses but left the business no longer on talking terms.The similarity is that they grew a business together, but in building the business, they forgot to grow their relationship or friendship along the way. Some of them specifically said that looking back they could see it happening They stopped hanging out, they stopped talking, they stopped having fun together, and all the things that made the relationship work initially and in the early days or before starting the business just stopped happening.  Big idea #3 — The side door There’s lots of information in this book about different funding options for a startup, from credit cards to venture capital. But this is really the mechanics of business/startups, which is worth reading if you’re interested in those areas. But the one area I did want to call out is this one around going in through the side door. There’s this chapter specifically dedicated to this, but also you see this theme coming up a few times in the founders stories. Ultimately, the front door is often very crowded, with your competition, gatekeepers, and also with very high barriers. And even in 2021, for some people, unfortunately, the barriers are still even higher. So often, the side door is actually bigger, less guarded and just generally less crowded. One of the side door examples in the book was Peter Rahal, the founder of RX Bars, a paleo energy bar. When Peter started the business he went into Wholefoods (the holy grail of where to sell such a product) and saw box after box, and bar after bar of similar products. The competition was huge and getting a conversation with a buyer from Wholefoods about yet another another sports bar or another energy bar was just going to be impossible. So instead, he thought about who he was really making the product for. And it was people like him; CrossFitters who eat in a paleo way. So that’s how he went on to sell directly into CrossFit gyms/boxes. In this environment he was the only product being sold (so zero competition), and given he was a small business, this niche market was big enough to sustain his business. Plus, these were his people; he understood them and they understood what he was selling. Peter ultimately sold to Kellogg’s for $600 million, which goes to show that starting small does not need to mean you stay small. Side doors could include things like how you position your product, who you sell through, the product itself, or access to funding. There’s plenty of different ways to think about the side door, but the important thing is that you do think about the side door. Let’s connect LinkedIn Instagram   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

How I Built This by Guy Raz: why entrepreneurship isn't all about risk

Hey, have you subscribed to the bookmark newsletter? A fortnightly email with book reviews and ideas of what you should be reading next. Click here to subscribe. About the book Do you find yourself swamped by everyone landing problems on your desk, for you to solve? Do you wonder why your team members hand over issues for you to sort out, rather than sorting them out themselves? Even issues that you think they should be able to sort out themselves? Are you getting so bogged down in solving other people’s problems that you aren’t getting time to focus on your own work?  If so, The Manager’s Dilemma — How to Empower Your Team’s Problem-Solving is the book for you. This book starts by exploring the manager’s dilemma — be good at problem-solving or focus on developing other people’s problem-solving skills? You will explore how escalation habits contribute to the overload. You will then consider the problem-solving process, discover how to identify at which step a team member might be getting stuck and how to develop and coach them towards empowering their own problem-solving skills. Source: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B09FZV3Q8L About the author Irial O’Farrell is endlessly curious by what drives performance in business. She has 10+ years direct management experience, and 20+ years experience of coaching and developing managers and leaders. The Manager’s Dilemma is based on initial direct observations Irial made of behaviours she saw in her own team and how she responded. While mentoring a group of senior managers, she realised they had similar issues within their teams, so she tested her theories with them, which resonated with them. She realised that while managers tend to be very good at problem-solving, they tend to be less good at developing other people’s problem-solving skills, so she designed and delivered a well-received workshop. This book is based on the insights she gained through those workshops. She lives in Dublin with her husband, three kids and two cats. Source: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B09FZV3Q8L You can find out more about Irial's work here. Big idea #1 — The Manager’s Dilemma This is the tricky situation you find yourself in when you’re promoted to a manager role, because you’re good at problem solving, but you find yourself solving everyone else’s problems, leaving your little time for your own. This creates a dynamic of dependence and learned helplessness, which Irial talks about throughout the book. She emphasises the fact that the manager’s role is really to empower others, and to let go your need to fix other people’s problems, instead investing that into developing your management skills. Other than being quite stressful, this way of working is also hugely inefficient when the wrong people, spending the wrong amount of time on the wrong problems. It means no one’s getting developed in the right skills, and it can actually diminish trust in teams too. Ideally, you want to get to a point where there’s only three reasons for escalation; True escalation; someone more senior needs to sign off on or input to the task. A sounding board, or where someone genuinely needs some help. Being kept in the loop (which can be done more efficiently). These are obviously three quite broad reasons for escalation, but you would use this framework and tailor them to be more specific to your own needs of the project / team / organisation. Big idea #2 — The eight steps of problem solving I thought this is one of the most useful parts of the book, to see the eight stages of problem solving in a very clear way for you to evaluate where each of your team members gets stuck along the steps (including you as the manager). The eight steps are; Identify and recognise the problem Evaluate the size of the problem Research the cause of the problem Identify potential options Evaluate the potential options Decide on the best solution Implement the best solution Review the outcomes Whilst some of this might feel intuitive, you sometimes identify that a team member isn’t great at problem solving, but it’s hard to break down to exactly what they struggle with. This also gives you an explicit, logical process that your team could work through as a bit of a checklist, and set an expectation of the questions you will ask them if they do come to you.  Big idea #3 — The coaching approach A large chunk of the book is dedicated to the manager having a conversation with her coach about the problem solving problems each of her team are having, and how to approach them. Together they come up with a bit of a plan of action. It’s a bit meta as Trish is having a coaching conversation with her coach, so that she can then go back to her team and coach them. What’s really clear is that questions are at the core of this — both Trish asking questions of herself, the coach asking questions to Trish, and Trish planning the questions to ask the team. Note: this section of the book is written as an exchange between the coach and Irial, almost like a script, which was a useful way of seeing the level of detail that you need to go into when you’re doing this level of coaching with a team member. It can help you to see some of the questions, considerations, perspectives from other people that you may miss if you just dive straight into trying to solve other people’s problems, solving problems. This coaching approach allows for better problem solving, as it allows for input from the team members and to prompt their thinking, rather than giving them the answers. Especially relevant given the context of this challenge. Let’s connect LinkedIn Instagram See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Manager's Dilemma by Irial O'Farrell: how to solve your problem solving problem

Hey, have you subscribed to the bookmark newsletter? If you liked this, you might like my fortnightly email with book reviews and ideas of what you should be reading next. Click here to subscribe.   About the author Holly Cardamone is a Melbourne-based author, communications specialist, writer and all round Word Nerd who works with people to tell their story and grow their business using beautiful communications. Through her consultancy, Blue51 Communications, Holly provides specialist communications support and mentoring and business writing services. She writes anything and everything, and almost always with a smile on her face and a coffee within grasp. She’s a water baby, a voracious reader, an almost fearless box jumper (Google it) and is hands down the person you want on your table at a trivia night. Source: https://www.blue51.com.au/my-story/   About the book People in business often have massive creativity, impeccable services and unique ideas, but a lot of business writing is bad. Excruciatingly so. This book is for people who: Feel too close to their work for the objectivity to share their message accurately and effectively in writing. Know that their written words aren’t working as hard as they should. Love what they do but need help to polish their message. Find it really difficult to explain on paper both what they do, and the benefits they could genuinely bring to peoples’ lives. The perfect book for people who are in the business of growing their brand, be it personal or professional, this super-actionable, solutions-focused guide provides motivation and practical support by the bucketload. It’s a funny, fresh and clever guide to communications, writing and branding storytelling. As readable as a novel, it’s packed from introduction to conclusion with ideas, suggestions, tips and strategies to tell your story and grow your business or influence with beautiful communications. Source: https://www.blue51.com.au/shop/tell-your-story/ Big idea #1 — Don’t be boring Early on in the book, Holly looks at some of the common issues in business writing. These include mistakes such as weak structures, introductions that don’t make sense, repetition, sentences that are just too long or too short, passive writing, jargon (bleugh), dense and difficult to read content, a lacks substance, and no call to action. The content in his book will help you overcome many of the common pitfalls that people fall into, as Holly shares how to craft compelling content, which keeps your readers reading. Holly recommends having five different touch points with your audience and that across these, you are consistent, accurate, and compelling. Much of this comes back to knowing your audience and how you want them to feel as a result of your communications. Side point: early on in the book, Holly talks about her experience and how she’s always loved writing as a child/teenager. Before she went to university, her English teacher at school suggested that the best writers have interesting life experiences. Therefore, maybe Holly should go and study something other than English, which was going to give her a pathway to stories. So Holly studied nursing. This isn’t something she necessarily wanted to do, but knew that this was the exposure she needed to a vast range of different people, at incredibly difficult times in their life, and would give her a huge amount of life experience (ie story material) for her future writing. She didn’t just studying nursing, but worked in that field before going back to university later to do a degree in communications and writing, which would then give her the additional chops and skills that she needed to then bring that life experience to life. And to go on to do the other types of writing that she does too. I think this is such an incredible investment to not being boring, and being a better writer. (And also, what great mentorship from that English teacher). Big idea #2 — Make a plan The crux of the book is really about having a tight plan for your communications. And your plan doesn’t need to be complex or overwhelming, it is essentially taking the what you do, and who you do it for, marrying those things together, and then putting it into a content plan. Throughout the book, Holly emphasises the importance of clarity in your writing, Holly also shares the usefulness of having a house style. This improves the consistency of your writing, and stops you having to make decisions all the time. A house style includes things such as whether you capitalise the first letter in your headings and subheadings (this tends to be a more American style) or they are in sentence case, where you only capitalise the first word and then any proper nouns the heading/subheading. A style guide would also include which spelling/dictionary you use (eg British English or American English), deciding which versions of words to use, whether you use hyphens or not, having a consistent format for times, dates, and numbers and your brand pronoun; I or we. The more decisions are covered in your style guide, the more consistent your writing will be, and therefore the more clarity it will have and the easier it will be to write. Big idea #3 — Sort to your structure To write compelling copy, the structure needs to work hard. Holly talks about hooking people in at the beginning, and offers ways to start a piece of writing with impact, be it a quote, a statement, a statistic, or a shocking fact. You need something that is going to encourage people to keep on reading. The middle of your piece of writing is where you make your case, and where you keep your reader reading. It’s the substance, so it’s important to make sure you actually do have some substance in order to write something of substance! And then finally at the end, you need a call to action. This is the ‘so what’, the response you want from your audience, or the link back to you that the piece of content is making. Holly also included some specific structures in the books, such as about pages, bios, emails, and landing pages, but you can use this in really any piece of writing, there’s just some particular nuance for certain contexts. And yes, in the book she does talk about SEO. The most important point here is that it shouldn’t override an interesting of a good piece of writing. We’ve all been to food blogs, for example, where all we want is that damn recipe, but we’ve got to wade through 2000 words about the weather, because people have put the, at their SEO needs above the reader experience. Don’t do that. Let’s connect LinkedIn Instagram See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tell Your Story by Holly Cardamone: how to stop being a boring business writer

Hey, have you subscribed to the bookmark newsletter? A fortnightly email with book reviews and ideas of what you should be reading next. Click here to subscribe.   About the author Austin Kleon is the New York Times bestselling author of a trilogy of illustrated books about creativity in the digital age: Steal Like An Artist, Show Your Work!, and Keep Going. He’s also the author of Newspaper Blackout, a collection of poems made by redacting the newspaper with a permanent marker. His books have been translated into dozens of languages and have sold over a million copies worldwide. He’s been featured on NPR’s Morning Edition, PBS Newshour, and in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. New York Magazine called his work “brilliant,” The Atlantic called him “positively one of the most interesting people on the Internet,” and The New Yorker said his poems “resurrect the newspaper when everybody else is declaring it dead.” He speaks for organizations such as Pixar, Google, SXSW, TEDx, and The Economist. In previous lives, he worked as a librarian, a web designer, and an advertising copywriter. He lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife and sons. Source: https://austinkleon.com/about/ About the book A book for people who hate the very idea of self-promotion, Show Your Work! is the followup to my New York Times bestselling guide to creativity, Steal Like An Artist. If Steal was a book about stealing influence from others, Show is about influencing others by letting them steal from you. In ten tight chapters, I lay out ways to think about your work as a never-ending process, how to build an audience by sharing that process, and how to deal with the ups and downs of putting yourself and your work out in the world. This book is not just for “creatives”! Whether you’re an artist or an entrepreneur, a student or a teacher, a hobbyist or a professional, it’s time to stop worrying and start sharing. Source: https://austinkleon.com/show-your-work/   Like this episode? You might want to hear the three big ideas from Austin's first book Steal Like An Artist.   Big idea #1 — Show Your Work The idea here is that your work doesn’t have to be done or perfect, or you don’t have to be an expert, in order to share something. Austin shares a quote that says “the real gap is between doing nothing and doing something”. As opposed to the real gap being between being good and great work. Without showing your work, it’s harder to find your own voice, your own style and refining these as they’ve never really been exercised enough. This isn’t about just self promotion, but about being findable by showing your work and being visible. This allows space for opportunities to happen, it allows people to stumble upon your work and find you. You don’t even have to show a finished product. You can share a question you’re pondering, a behind the scenes process, something that didn’t work out, or an idea that’s in progress. And who knows who you might inspire by doing this. This is really how punk started, as people saw others getting up on stage, playing terribly and saying, ‘I want to be terrible on stage too!’, or ‘I can do better than that’, and embracing the DIY way of expression. Importantly, this isn’t just unique to creative projects or creative pursuits. This is absolutely relevant if you’re a thought leader on leadership, or an accountant who’s thinking about the future of financial reporting. Whatever you do, your way of thinking, doing things, operating, is worth sharing in some way, shape or form.   Big idea #2 — Show others how to do it Teaching is a great way to show your work. And sometimes it feels less like self promotion, so it can be a nice gateway into showing your work more often. Showing your work is a gift, but even more so when you teach someone something. Austin encourages us to share our secrets, our techniques, and our operating manuals of how we do what we do. And before you worry about ‘copying’, just because you’ve shared, it doesn’t mean that people will put in the required time / effort / money to copy you. So we should be much less concerned about people copying us, and much more concerned about being invisible. Some experts in the secretive art of barbecue are bucking the traditional trend and embracing this mindset. They’re sharing their secrets and will teach you everything. By doing that, many people are then very happy to pay the $10/$15/$20 to go eat the expert’s food because they realise the time and the effort that has gone into it, having seen the behind the scenes process. This is much more likely than them wanting to do it themselves, or certainly at a commercial level. Austin also says the minute you learn something, you should share it. And we don’t have to be experts in order to share and start teaching things. In fact, amateurs are usually the best place to actually help other amateurs because they don’t have the curse of knowledge. Amateurs can actually be more helpful to another amateur who’s facing the same problem because they’ve experienced that same problem more recently. Teaching is a constant cycle; share, learn, share, learn, share, that we need to make a habit.   Big idea #3 — Show up Austin publishes something daily, and then he shares these daily posts in his excellent weekly newsletter. He is a big proponent of the compound effect or not breaking the chain, doing something daily, which sharpens your thinking and builds momentum, consistency, and improvement. This is not an invitation to become human spam as he calls it. There’s a line between contributing and spamming and Austin suggests that the difference is that contributors will ‘shut up and listen’. They’ll connect with people through sharing their work, and stop to have conversations, rather than just pumping stuff out. Most importantly though is that we shouldn’t quit. Those with long careers stick with it. They roll one project into the next one. They create, they assess, they think what worked well or what didn’t, and roll those lessons into the next project. They ride the highs and the lows, and remain focused on the work in front of them rather than the overwhelming thought of what’s next or the idea of doing this forever. That said, we obviously need to find ways to recover and to restock our creative reserves and brain power through appropriate levels of rest, and also from finding inspiration from other places.   Let’s connect LinkedIn Instagram See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Show Your Work! by Austin Kleon: how to embrace the art of beign findable

Hey, have you subscribed to the bookmark newsletter? A fortnightly email with book reviews and ideas of what you should be reading next. Click here to subscribe. About the author Marc Brackett, Ph.D., is the Founder and Director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and a Professor in the Child Study Center of Yale University. As a researcher for over 20 years, Brackett has focused on the role of emotions and emotional intelligence in learning, decision making, creativity, relationships, health, and performance. He has published 125 scholarly articles and received numerous awards and accolades for his work in this area. He also consults regularly with corporations, such as Facebook, Microsoft, and Google on integrating the principles of emotional intelligence into employee training and product design. Most recently, he co-founded Oji Life Lab, a corporate learning firm that develops innovative digital learning systems on emotional intelligence. Brackett’s mission is to educate the world about the value of emotions and the skills associated with using them wisely. “I want everyone to become an emotion scientist”, he says. “We need to be curious explorers of our own and others’ emotions so they can help us achieve our goals and improve our lives.” Source: https://www.marcbrackett.com/about/about-marc-brackett-ph-d/ About the book The mental wellbeing of children and adults is shockingly poor. Marc Brackett, author of PERMISSION TO FEEL, knows why. And he knows what we can do. This book combines rigour, science, passion and inspiration in equal parts. Too many children and adults are suffering; they are ashamed of their feelings and emotionally unskilled, but they don’t have to be. Marc Brackett’s life mission is to reverse this course, and this book can show you how. Source: amazon.com    Big idea #1 — Be an emotion scientist There is a science to understanding emotion. Yes, some of us may have previously (or may still) think it’s all just the fluffy stuff or it’s nonsense. But with the right skills we can uncover that we can learn to understand and appropriately respond to our own, and other people’s, emotions and see emotions as information. That information when taken with a scientific mindset, gives us something to consider or to analyse, especially noticing when certain emotions arise more than others. Chronic stress impacts learning, processing memory and overall health. So knowing how we feel, and maybe helping others understand how they feel, has bigger implications in life too. And yes, these skills are best learned young, but it’s better late than never. Marc and his late Uncle Marvin tried to bring these skills to schools in the late 90s, but failed. Not because the kids couldn’t handle it or couldn’t have those conversations, but because the teachers (the adults in the room) couldn’t, and wouldn’t see the importance of it. They weren’t equipped to handle their own emotions, and therefore were deeply uncomfortable with having any conversation about emotions with the kids in their classes. Which goes to show that unless the adults in the room, or in society, are equipped with these skills, there’s no hope for the younger generations coming up. Big idea #2 — The five skills of emotional intelligence And these skills sit under the acronym of R U L E R. R — Recognise: recognising in ourselves and others, through verbal and nonverbal cues, what emotion is being felt. U — Understand: understanding those feelings and more importantly, the source of them. L — Label: this requires us to have a better vocabulary in terms of our emotional awareness and being able to label emotions. E — Express: learning to express our emotions in a healthy way that informs others of how we’re feeling and maybe what action/support we need. R — Regulate: regulating your emotions rather than letting them regulate you. By practicing these regularly, you get better at them and may find situations people (and maybe just your general days) easier to deal with. Especially if you practice them in conjunction with in your partner, family unit, or work team. Understanding is probably one of the hardest ones to master, as we need to be able to ask why in the heat of the moment; why is that person, or why am I reacting like this or feeling this way? Which when you’re in the heat of the moment, maybe in a high emotion situation might be hard to do. Labeling might be a good skill to start building, because that we can do it in isolation with a list of emotions and improving our emotional vocabulary from the limited ‘mad, sad, glad’ and recognise more subtle, nuanced emotions. Big idea #3 — bring emotional intelligence home or to work It’s so incredible how much people deeply want, and need, to share their feelings, but yet how much we’re hiding from each other, for fear of ridicule or some kind of repercussion for sharing how we feel. There’s so many examples in the book, particularly teachers and groups of parents, that Marc has run workshops with. Given a chance, they release an outpouring of stress, shame, guilt, and all these other deep emotional states that people just don’t have the opportunity, or feel safe to share in other situations. So along with being an emotion scientist, and using the RULER skills, we can bring emotional intelligence into our homes or workplaces by doing four things. Set yourself up for success by setting some kind of charter, and consistently role modeling, healthy emotional management. The book shares examples of families or school classrooms that have set a charter for how they will treat each other, how they will deal with emotions, the conversations they will have, the language they will use, which sets a consistent baseline for emotions and relationships. And how having these charters, or agreements, helped then later on in conversations when things do get a bit heated. Explore, using the emotion scientist mindset, being a learner, not a knower, and helping others label their emotions, and not trying to fix or minimise how other people are feeling. Strategise, once you know how the other person is feeling, you can help them move forward. This might just actually be by being there for them, or it could be a hug (if appropriate!), or potentially helping them seek some more professional help, if required. Follow up with them a little bit later, ask them how they’re feeling now, help them reflect, and help them to identify any emotional patterns repeating over time as well.   Further listening:Marc Brackett on Brené Brown’s Unlocking Us podcast.   Let’s connect LinkedIn Instagram See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Permission to Feel by Professor Marc Brackett: how to be a RULER of your emotions for better health

Hey, have you subscribed to the bookmark newsletter? A fortnightly email with book reviews and ideas of what you should be reading next. Click here to subscribe.   About the author By some accounts, Roy Peter Clark is America’s writing coach, devoted to creating a nation of writers. A PhD in medieval literature, he is widely considered the most influential writing teacher in the rough-and-tumble world of newspaper journalism. With a deep background in traditional media, Clark has illuminated the discussion of writing on the internet. He has gained fame by teaching writing to children and has nurtured Pulitzer Prize-winning authors. He is a teacher who writes and a writer who teaches. For more than three decades, Clark has taught writing at the Poynter Institute, a school for journalists in St. Petersburg, Florida, considered among the most prominent such teaching institutions in the world.  Clark has authored or edited nineteen books about writing, reading, language, and journalism. Humorist Dave Barry has said of him: “Roy Peter Clark knows more about writing than anybody I know who is not currently dead.” He plays keyboard in a rock band. He lives with his family in St. Petersburg, Florida, where he has become famously fond of pelicans. Source: https://roypeterclark.com/#about About the book With writers of the digital age in mind, this book looks back on the enduring power of short writing from the beginning of written texts. Looking at both the craft and purposes of short writing — the how and the why — I offer hundreds of examples of the best short writing, from sonnets, proverbs, aphorisms, marginalia, and song lyrics to blog posts, text messages, and tweets. Source: https://roypeterclark.com/books2/#row2   Big idea #1 — Write shortIf you want to write long, begin with writing short. There’s a whole section at the start of the book about how writing short is not necessarily a means to an end in itself. It can actually be a means to other types of writing. It includes a quote from The Notebook author, Umberto Eco that says “it’s everyday writing that inspires the most committed works, not the other way round”. So even if you have ambitions to write a tome, or really long particular type of text, that doesn’t mean that the lessons from this particular type of short writing are irrelevant to you. In fact, a lot of the time it’s that type of writing that will lead to longer, more committed work. In the book, Roy talks a lot about keeping a daybook dedicated to short writing and collecting examples of great short writing. Finding clever writing on the back of your shampoo or cereal. He encourages us to practice writing interesting sentences, to play with haiku, play with Tweets, and find little phrases that punctuate a short sentence.  The book is full of these types of practical activities and prompts that you can pick and choose from next time you’re writing an article, social media post, email, or a speech. The lessons in this book that are applicable to all sorts of writing, and not just writing that is going to stay as writing, but writing that is going to become speech or another type of communication. Most of these activities are things that you wouldn’t necessarily think of doing by yourself, but are the things that are going to stretch your brain to think a little bit cleverly, and more laterally about your writing and the message you’re trying to get across. Big idea #2 — Subtract, subtract, subtract. Roy talks about applying a rule of 75%, or trying to deliver your work in three quarters of the expected length.  He asks you to think about how you feel when someone speaks for just 10 minutes, rather than 20 minutes. You are probably incredibly grateful, particularly if you’re sat in an uncomfortable conference room in an uncomfortable chair. So he invites you to give that gift to your audience too.  You can surprise, and delight, with brevity. The book itself is a beautiful example of writing short. The chapters are short and it feels like the words in there are all so intentional.  By surprising and delighting with brevity, you can make every word feel like it’s meant to be there. There’s no flabbiness to it. Roy talks about the difference between two types of writers; The putter-inners; put everything in and revise and take things out. They’ll start with 500 words and they’re edited back to 300. The taker-outers; take it all out as they’re writing and then add back when they think that things need a little bit extra. They might write 200 words, but take it up to 300 words. There should be an editing process, and in the editing process shouldn’t happen simultaneous to the writing process. Subtraction is not a case of relentless slash and burn, but we do need to consider what doesn’t serve the purpose of the statement, and what needs more space to stand out a little bit more. Professor William Strunk, Jr. is evangelical about ‘omitting needless words’. But we need to be conscious of ‘at what cost’. There comes a point where we take so much out, that we’ve lost a little bit of meaning or impact. Or as E B White said, ‘will leave you with nothing more to say, but time to fill’. There is a fine balance, and there’s no exact rule, but what it should do is encourage you to pause, stop, and think about where does that line of ‘too much / not enough’ sits with your copy that you are writing. Big idea #3 — Think like a poet and an advertiser Poetry comes up regularly in the book, and offers a structure for playing with short writing. The patterns of three, the rhyming couplets and specific forms like the limerick or the haiku force an efficient use of words. Similar to poetry, advertisers have mastered the art of the punchiness. Advertisers have been forced into this by minimal space, which comes at a premium and needing to appeal to the simpler parts of our brains, they reduce things into the three word slogan or the tagline. I’m lovin’ it The real thing Breakfast of champions You can use this by thinking about your own structure, looking at where you can add a compelling, short, first sentence and then follow it up with a similarly short and second sentence as an invitation to keep on reading. This is another element of the book that I really enjoyed, looking at all these different types of writing. Roy shares examples from the greater orators in history, the ones who have written speeches which have gone down in history the ones where key statements, made up of carefully chosen words, are repeated for generations. Martin Luther King, Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill. But then at the other end of the spectrum, you’ve got junky types of advertising slogans. Both memorable, and both using the same concepts, patterns and lessons. Let’s connect LinkedIn Instagram   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

How to Write Short by Roy Peter Clark: top writing lessons from orators and advertisers

Hey, have you subscribed to the bookmark newsletter? A fortnightly email with book reviews and ideas of what you should be reading next. Click here to subscribe.   About the author Dr. Marshall B. Rosenberg was the founder and director of educational services for The Center for Nonviolent Communication. Growing up in an inner–city Detroit neighborhood Dr. Marshall Rosenberg was confronted daily with various forms of violence. Wanting to explore the causes of violence and what could be done to reduce violence, he chose to study clinical psychology and received his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Wisconsin in 1961. In 1966 he was awarded diplomat status in clinical psychology from the American Board of Examiners in Professional Psychology. Nonviolent Communication training evolved from Dr. Rosenberg’s quest to find a way of rapidly disseminating much needed peacemaking skills. The Center for Nonviolent Communication emerged out of work he was doing with civil rights activists in the early 1960’s. During this period he also mediated between rioting students and college administrators and worked to peacefully desegregate public schools in long-segregated regions. Worldwide reactions have been inspiring. Evaluations indicate that this training vastly strengthens the ability to connect compassionately with oneself and others, as well as to resolve differences peacefully. Reports also indicate that the benefit of the training is not only stable over time, but actually increases. Source: https://www.cnvc.org/about/marshall About the book Non-violent Communication is an enlightening look at how peaceful communication can create compassionate connections with family, friends, and other acquaintances, this international bestseller uses stories, examples, and sample dialogues to provide solutions to communication problems both at home and in the workplace. Guidance is provided on identifying and articulating feelings and needs, expressing anger fully, and exploring the power of empathy in order to speak honestly without creating hostility, break patterns of thinking that lead to anger and depression, and communicate compassionately. Practical nonviolent communication skills are partnered with a powerful consciousness and vocabulary that can be applied to personal, professional, and political differences. Included in the new edition is a complete chapter on conflict resolution and mediation. Source: www.amazon.com    Big idea #1-Observe, feel, need, and request The nonviolent communication process is made up of four key stages. Observing concrete actions that affect your wellbeing Knowing how you feel as a result of what you observe. 3. Recognising the needs and the values and the desires that create the feelings that you are feeling. 4. The concrete actions you request in order to enrich your life. Going through this process allows you to express yourself better and notice the needs in others, more empathetically. It also allows more space for compassion, and allows you to reframe situations and feelings in a different way. By noticing the needs of others, more empathetically, you’re able to actually connect with them a little bit more, rather than simply assessing how wrong they are for what they’re saying or doing at the time. Because our analysis of others is often an expression of our own needs or values, not necessarily what the other person is thinking, or what they are needing at the time. Big idea#2 — Responsibility and expression Marshall says that we are particularly dangerous when we deny personal responsibility, and attach our feelings and actions to other people’s or other group’s actions. So essentially if we blame our actions or blame how we feel on what someone else does, we then deny personal responsibility for our own feelings and attach them to other people. There are several examples in the book that include situations like; Blaming the actions of others on how we react; (eg. I hit my child because he ran into the street). So the action of another person has caused your reaction. And we’re blaming them, rather than taking our own responsibility for what we did. Using group pressure (eg. I started smoking because my friends did). Blaming vague impersonal forces on what you do (eg. I cleaned my room because I had to) rather than assuming you have any control over what you choose to do. On the topic of expression, there’s stories in the book of people who have been angry at their partners for decades and decades for not meeting their needs. But having gone through the nonviolent communication training, they realise they’ve never actually made their needs clearly known. Instead, they’ve been stuck in resentment and anger and let these unmet and uncommunicated needs take over and really undermined their relationships. If we do not value our needs, and express them in a healthy way, we can’t expect others to do the same.   Big idea #3-The root of feelings Marshall says that underlying our feelings, are our needs. We need to uncover these in ourselves and others, and we need to listen to what other people are needing, not what they are thinking. One of the techniques he uses for helping to uncover others’ feelings is paraphrasing. In one example in the book, Marshall was doing a bit of coaching or mediation, between a husband and a wife who are not communicating very well.  Husband: “what good does talking to you? You never listen.” Now, if you had received/heard that from your partner, there’s probably a million different things you would respond with, some that are much more helpful than others. With some coaching, what the wife actually came back, using paraphrasing, was this: Wife: “are you feeling unhappy because you need to be heard?” Rather than attacking his position, or asking something that brings the responsibility to her, such as “are you unhappy with me?” she instead came back to that core underlying need. What is the need that is causing that reaction or statement or action from the other person or that statement from the other person? There’s so much nuance here, but the paraphrasing allows for a better conversation. It’s okay to be wrong when guessing the need, because by getting it wrong, you get closer to them helping you uncover the need. And it’s unlikely that you’re going to be right the first time. There’s usually going to be a bit of an uncomfortable exchange between the starting point and getting to that need. Importantly, this conversation isn’t about fixing, which is one of the traps we can fall into, it is about trying to understand the need and then the request or desire. We also need to distinguish between feelings and non feelings. One of the non-feelings examples of the book is: “I feel inadequate as a guitar player” In that statement, you’re assessing your ability as a guitar player rather than clearly expressing your feeling or your need. The actual feeling might be, I feel disappointed in myself as a guitar player, or I feel impatient with myself as a guitar player. It’s important in order to do this well, both with ourselves and with other people, to have a better vocabulary of emotions and be able to spot what is an emotion, and what is not. There’s another couple of examples here when you’re attaching a feeling to other people. We have to distinguish the feeling we have and remove the connection to other people. For example: “I feel unimportant to the people with whom I work” The word unimportant describes how you think others are evaluating you, rather than actually what you’re feeling. Maybe you feel sad or you feel discouraged. Similarly something like: “I feel misunderstood” That is an indication of other people’s level of understanding of you, rather than your own feeling. You might be annoyed or anxious. Words like bullied, cheated, abused, attacked, betrayed all related to our interpretation or judgement of someone else’s thinking or behaviour, rather than our own feeling. It’s such a subtle difference between between the two, and comes back to splitting out our own feelings and taking personal responsibility for them. Let’s connect LinkedIn Instagram See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Nonviolent Communication by Marshall B Rosenberg: how to take personal responsibility for your feelings

Hey, have you subscribed to the bookmark newsletter? A fortnightly email with book reviews and ideas of what you should be reading next. Click here to subscribe.   About the book We don’t need better speakers. We need more effective leaders. This book isn’t a primer on becoming a better speaker, though if it helps you nail your next presentation that’s great. The real goal is to help you become a more effective leader. In ‘Lead The Room’ you’re invited to think bigger and aim higher than the idea of presentation skills. To think holistically about how you can communicate and connect more effectively. This book will give you the tools to raise your visibility, leverage your leadership platform and lead with more impact at scale. Source: https://shanemhatton.com/   About the author Shane works with organisations to develop remarkable people leaders. The kind that you talk about and remember. Put simply he helps shift people leaders from high potential to high performance and from great to remarkable so that executive leaders can move from transactional to strategic.  His clients tell him that his‘secret sauce’ is the ability to bring clarity to their thinking and simplicity to complexity. Shane is an author, trainer, coach and speaker based out of Melbourne, Australia and works online, onstage and in person. He’s a member of the Forbes Global Coaches Council, a Gallup Certified Strengths Coach and the author of ‘Lead The Room — Communicate a Message That Counts in Moments That Matter’ (available in all good bookstores). Source: https://shanemhatton.com/ Big idea #1 — Who, what, and when This goes to the idea that a great presentation or great communication is all in the preparation. Shane says “there’s more to leading a room than being a great speaker or delivering a polished presentation”. He shares a couple of examples in the book of where he saw two different speakers at a conference. One of them had a super polished presentation, but the audience looked bored and disengaged. The second presenter, was visibly a little bit nervous, probably less experienced as a presenter, but had everyone leaning in and enraptured by their energy and the engagement. Most of us worry about how to present. We worry about things like ‘what to do with our hands’ and ‘where to stand’ or ‘how to move’, without actually thinking about the who and the what of a presentation or communication. The who is who you are, what’s your reputation, how credible are you? The what is what you say? Is it clear, succinct, and valuable? How is delivering in a way that connects, and using the appropriate medium or the method that connects.   Big idea #2-positioning, messaging and developing This is the core idea and provides the structure of the book. It’s the ‘three big obsessions’ of great communicators. Positioning is all about developing your character, leading your narrative, and building your credibility. This allows you to position yourself as someone who can be trusted in a particular topic. This requires you to manage your reputation, making sure that you’re showing up consistently and being authentic in your values and your behaviours. Messaging is determining your value. Shane describes this as comparing the the ‘boardroom versus the bedroom’ problems that your audience might be worrying about. Boardroom problems might be things like ‘I’m worried about our staff attrition’, or the slightly more surface topics. Whereas the bedroom problems are what you might only admit to your closest confidants. Things like ‘I’m worried that I’m not relevant anymore’, or ‘I’m worried that my job is at risk’. By determining your value, you can make sure that you actually get to the heart of the problem, likely the ‘bedroom’ problems, rather than the surface issues. Then you can define your message, and think about the structure of any presentation or communication that you are putting together.  Finally, developing is the evolution of the craft and getting better at thinking, investing, asking, and failing so that your communication skills and style continues to evolve and develop. Big idea #3 — The flight path For the rough structure of presentation or a communication, Shane uses the analogy of the flight path, or the preparation, takeoff, in-flight, and the landing. The five parts of the flight path are; Attention; getting people’s attention upfront by asking a question, making a statement (maybe a controversial one), or telling a story. Tension; giving people a reason to stay engaged by painting a picture of a vision of the future, or really getting into the pain points people are feeling. Perspective; sharing some stats or some research, or key thoughts on the idea or the topic. Resolution; the ‘what then’ question, or the big idea you’re sharing. Action; what should people do next? What is the one thing that they could go and do as a result of you sharing this particular idea? You can listen to me talking to Shane about learning on his podcast Phone Calls with Clever People, here. Let’s connect LinkedIn Instagram See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Lead the Room by Shane Hatton: the real secrets behind great presentation skills

Hey, have you subscribed to the bookmark newsletter? A fortnightly email with book reviews and ideas of what you should be reading next. Click here to subscribe.   About the book These experiences of overwhelm can be a common part of a normal day or week in our life. Yes, the world can be an overwhelming place. We might have an emotional experience of being overwhelmed. We can experience the ‘too much on’ of workload — too much to do and not enough time in which to do it. Or we might feel like we’re submerged under an endless pile of information, reports, books and reading. At other times we can just be plain ‘drowning in’ it from a wicked combination of all three: emotions, workload and information. In today’s world, it’s these three that can be the cause of repeated and unending overwhelm. And it’s not good for us. Burnout and health issues are waiting. We need to find ways to acknowledge our emotions, manage our workload … and filter all of that information. Our overwhelm CAN be outsmarted. Once you get the powerful techniques explained by Lynne Cazaly, you’ll find new ways to make sense of overwhelm, new ways to work, and new ways to cope with information. You’ll be all over overwhelm… it won’t be all over you. Source: https://www.lynnecazaly.com.au/   About the author Lynne Cazaly helps individuals, teams and businesses transition to better ways of thinking and working. Lynne is an international keynote speaker, multi-award winning author and a master facilitator. She is an experienced radio broadcaster, presenter and producer having presented more than 10000 hours on-air. Her background is as a communication specialist, having lectured in under-graduate and post-graduate programs in several of Australia’s Universities and consulting to different industries and sectors on change and transformation. Lynne can help you think better, make sense of information and handle the realities of workplace overwhelm and information overload with her clever hacks and ingenious processes, tools and methods.  Lynne is an experienced board director and chair and an #avgeek, loving everything aviation, helicopters and air traffic control. Source: https://www.lynnecazaly.com.au/   Big idea #1 — The three types of overwhelm. Overwhelmed has become the new busy, a bit of a catch all for when we’re feeling up against it. But we need to get better and dig a little bit deeper to understand the type of overwhelm we’re experiencing, and therefore better be able to create strategies to fix it or overcome it. Lynne suggests that there are three types of overwhelm; Overwhelmed, which is the emotional overwhelm.  Once you’ve identified you can help redefine it by digging in a little bit deeper and find out which emotions are overwhelming and are they positive or negative? We can be overwhelmed in a positive way, with excitement or joy. 2. Overloaded Identifying this means we can redirect our attention to understand how we’re doing it and how else we can do it. 3. Overworked By identifying this, we can redesign the work to take back control of what we, what we’re doing and what we’re working on.   Big idea #2 — Write it down Without oversimplifying or trivialising the overwhelm you might be feeling, a lot of this can be alleviated by writing down everything that’s going on and using this list or this brain dump to make sense of what’s going on. Sense-making is another core theme of this book. By asking the question ‘what’s going on and what do I need to do about it?’ we can move forward.  Because otherwise it’s easy to sink into overwhelm and let it fester without actually doing anything about it. (And let’s face it, often we avoid doing anything about it, because we then would have to do something about it!) Lynne offers some models and frameworks to help sort everything in your brain and actually work out what’s going on. (Note: this reminded me a little bit of a light version of Getting Things Done by David Allen. You can read or listen to my three ideas from that book.) Once everything in your brain is all sorted and out on paper (paper is better,so grab a pen or pencil and a piece of paper and write everything down) you can then work out, what’s important, what’s junk and what’s someone else’s problem. Lynne shares a great little tip from a lady she used to work with called Patsy (a name which obviously immediately makes me think of Absolutely Fabulous). Patsy always had four folders on her desk and that contained everything she needed to do. The folders were labeled sooner, later sometime and never. A few times a day, Patsy would go through those folders, working her way through the sooner stuff, keeping an eye on what was in the later folder to see if anything needed to move from later into sooner. When she had some extra time, she’d go to sometime and some stuff eventually made it into the never folder (and then straight in the recycling bin from there). You can also obviously use things like the Covey/Eisenhower matrix as well to help organise your brain dump of things into more manageable chunks of how they need to be dealt with, and when they need to be dealt with as well.   Big idea #3 — Where did it go wrong? One of my favourite models in the book is this 2x2 matrix that helps you work out why you got to the stage of overwhelm in the first place, in order to help you avoid it next time.  In the top left-hand corner, it has ‘I created it’. Maybe you just kept on taking more and more work and created your own bed of overwhelm. In the bottom left-hand corner, it says ‘I allowed it’. Maybe you didn’t say no to something and you allowed the overwhelm to happen. In the bottom right corner, you’ve got ‘I ignored it’. Maybe you’ve been procrastinating on this particular thing for a while, and by ignoring it, it’s now become a bit of a problem and you’re overwhelmed by it. Finally, in the top right corner is ‘I outsmarted it’. This is ideally where we want it to be, where we have outsmarted our overwhelmed by putting the strategies in place by saying no, prioritising, asking questions, asking for help, and generally managing it in advance. Going through this process and working out what went wrong in the first place isn’t to beat ourselves up, but it helps to identify what happened and means we can reverse engineer this for future situations. This level of self-awareness will show us how likely we are to fall into overwhelm, know how it feels, how it shows up, so that we can identify in advance next time. Lynne suggests it’s good to build this kind of reflection into the end of our daily routine, not just in those moments where we’re already overwhelmed when it’s probably a bit too late. At the end of the day you can go back and just think about what you’re ignoring, what future overwhelm you might be creating, assess how you’re feeling like and where creeping overwhelm might be lurking, in order to take remedial actions. If you liked this episode, you might also like Ish, also by Lynne Cazaly   Let’s connect LinkedIn Instagram   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Argh! by Lynne Cazaly: how to outsmart your overwhelm and make sense of everything in your brain

Hey, have you subscribed to the bookmark newsletter? A fortnightly email with book reviews and ideas of what you should be reading next. Click here to subscribe. About the author Robin Sharma is a globally respected humanitarian who, for over a quarter of a century, has been devoted to helping human beings realize their native gifts. Widely considered one of the top leadership and personal mastery experts and speakers in the world, his clients include NASA, Microsoft, Nike, Unilever, General Electric, FedEx, HP, Starbucks, Oracle, Yale University, PwC, IBM Watson, and the Young Presidents’ Organization. As a presenter, Robin Sharma possesses the rare ability to electrify an audience while delivering uncommonly original and tactical insights that lead to individuals doing their best work, teams providing superb results and organizations becoming unbeatable. His #1 international bestsellers such as The 5AM Club, The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, and Who Will Cry When You Die? have sold millions of copies in over ninety-two languages and dialects; making him one of the most widely read authors in the world. Source: https://www.robinsharma.com/about-robin About the book  The 5AM Club is Robin Sharma’s masterwork, blending his original insights into legendary leadership, uncommon creativity and exponential productivity with battle-tested tools to help you produce work that allows you to dominate in your field — while you live a life that inspires the world. Source: https://www.robinsharma.com/books Big idea #1 — Incremental changes for big results Ultimately, this is a book about small changes, or one small change in particular, getting up early, being the catalyst for numerous other changes, benefits, and positive results in your life. It’s also a bit of a nod to the compound effect, which if you’ve read anything else on habit building, you’ll know that the impact of the compound effect on habits (both good habits and not so good habits) is significant. There’s a quote in the book that says ‘the smallest of implementations is always worth more than the grandest of intentions’. The important points here are that 1) you have to start, and 2) you have to accept a level of discomfort when changing. There’s several points throughout the book where he talks about the fact that we need to get used to the discomfort we face when trying to implement a new change into our life, be it a new habit, or a way of doing things. And as you’ll see in the next big idea, there are a number of small changes that are suggested in the book which revolve around getting up early being the start of change. Big idea #2–20/20/20 This is the main method in the book. Yes, it’s a list of things to do at a certain time of the day, but it’s really more about the discipline of consistently taking these particular healthy actions. The three elements of 20/20/20 are; (05:00–05:20) Move for 20 minutes (get sweaty, hydrate, breathe to cleanse your early morning cortisol and boost your energy, serotonin and dopamine for the day) (05:20–05:40) Reflect for 20 minutes (journal, meditate, contemplate to practice gratitude, raise your awareness, and set intention for the day) (05:40–06:00) Grow for 20 minutes (read, listen to a podcast, practice a skill, or take a course to build your knowledge and skills) Yes, maybe you want to do more of each of those activities, but see this as your minimum effective dose, and something that’s easy to stick to every day. It’s easy to see that these are all good things to do, and doing them at a quiet undistracted time of the day, with a disciplined routine to them, is the main idea here. These are all activities that might fall by the wayside. We all know that if we wait until later in the day to do them, we’ll either talk ourselves out of them, forget to do them, or just not get round to them. And that can easily happen for days in a row if we don’t build a habit and get them done early. Big idea #3 — Own your story This flows through a few different places throughout the book, as an overall idea of not letting an imperfect past ruin your future. Robin argues that people who do extraordinary things aren’t different or special, they just act differently, and have better habits and systems. But if you tell yourself that you can’t, or you won’t, do something, then likely that will become true. It’s all an inside game. We need to own our story, and be the authors of that particular story or that book that we are, we are creating through our lives. And therefore, we can’t let what has happened previously, influence what happens next. Let’s connect LinkedIn Instagram See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The 5am Club by Robin Sharma: the three big ideas from the worst book I've read

Hey! I'm taking a two week mid-year break from fresh episodes, so ICYMI, here's a rebroadcast of the most popular episode of 2021 so far (which incidentally is my favourite book of the year... so far). Have you subscribed to the bookmark newsletter? A fortnightly email with book reviews and ideas of what you should be reading next. Click here to subscribe.   About the book A riveting, deeply personal account of history in the making—from the president who inspired us to believe in the power of democracy. In the stirring, highly anticipated first volume of his presidential memoirs, Barack Obama tells the story of his improbable odyssey from young man searching for his identity to leader of the free world, describing in strikingly personal detail both his political education and the landmark moments of the first term of his historic presidency-a time of dramatic transformation and turmoil. A Promised Land is extraordinarily intimate and introspective-the story of one man's bet with history, the faith of a community organizer tested on the world stage. Obama is candid about the balancing act of running for office as a Black American, bearing the expectations of a generation buoyed by messages of "hope and change," and meeting the moral challenges of high-stakes decision-making.   About the author Barack Obama was the 44th president of the United States, elected in November 2008 and holding office for two terms. He is the author of two previous New York Times bestselling books, Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope, and the recipient of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife, Michelle. They have two daughters, Malia and Sasha. Extracts from https://www.penguin.com.au/   IDEA 1 - The best answer won’t be perfect There are countless examples in the book of hard policy, people and political decisions that Obama had to make. And the commonality in all of them was the messiness of getting to an answer. Even things that seem like a no-brainer on the service (free / affordable healthcare for everyone) turned into painful, watered-down versions of the original vision. But, these sacrifices and compromises meant that something moved forward, even if it was a far cry from the dream. In other situations, such as the activities in Iraq and Afghanistan, and dealing with the Global Financial Crisis and its impact on America and Americans, all options seemed to balance towards being ‘bad’. But as POTUS, Obama had to find the ‘least bad’ options and make sure the decisions were made on as-good-information as was possible at the time. And of course, balance the public optics of a situation, with the reality of what happens behind the scenes. Obama was especially good at sitting in the ‘grey’. Dealing with ambiguity and being able to hear different sides of an argument, actively seeking out Republican/opposing views, was one of his strengths as a leader. Even so, you could sense the incredible frustration of working with a system that seemed to force the status quo, and squash change or good ideas. This quote summed it up: “I didn’t like the deal. But in what was becoming a pattern, the alternatives were worse.” IDEA 2 - Know your values The book features numerous situations where Obama, when faced with hard decisions, had to come back to his values. The recurring values were; What he had promised whilst campaigning What was true What his friends and family would say (especially his Mum and Grandma) These were also what he judged himself against. There were lots of questions of self-doubt amongst his introspection and reflection; had he been naive and overly hopeful and promised too much? Was there anything else? Had he done enough to push for change for those who needed it most? He actively kept these values front of mind - regularly reading and responding to letters from American residents and paying many visits to the military hospital where wounded soldiers were treated and rehabilitated. On the latter, he was criticised, being told that it would cloud his judgement. He disagreed, saying that if he was going to send more young people to war, he had to be acutely aware of the cost of it. His constant revisiting and evaluation of what was most important served as a yardstick throughout his life, not just his presidency. And it allowed him to critically assess what was wrong and the mistakes made - his own, and America’s.   IDEA 3 - Surround yourself with good people Politics aside, this is really a book about leadership and relationships. A significant part of the book is spent talking about, praising, forgiving, thanking, describing and sometimes, criticising, the people around him. From his family to his early friends and the people he worked with, the descriptions of friendship are personal and human. He also demonstrates the ability to rebuild relationships; having Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton as key members of his administration when the three of them had stood against each other in the Democratic nomination race. (Side note: I felt quite a tinge of sadness when Obama describes the loneliness of his role, especially earlier on during the transition when suddenly people he’d known and worked with for years stopped calling him Barack and started calling him Mr President). Of course, you can’t talk about the people around Barack Obama without mentioning Michelle Obama. He shares his fears about the impact on Michelle, their marriage and the lives of their daughters of him running, and becoming president, questioning the inherent selfishness of it. The pride and respect he has for Michelle in the book is tangible, talking about her health initiatives and work with young people, encouraging them to dream bigger.   “The time chooses you. Either you seize what may turn out to be the only chance you have, or you decide you’re willing to live with the knowledge that the chance has passed you by.” See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

*REBROADCAST* A Promised Land by Barack Obama: the ultimate lessons in leadership

Most people don’t have time to read the books they want to. Each week join Steph (@steph_clarke__), a life-long bookworm, as she brings you the lessons from the best non-fiction books she’s read. Steph will share the ‘three big things’ the books taught her, favourite quotes and actions she’s implemented since reading the book. If you have an ever-growing pile of half-read books on your bedside table, this podcast is for you. Steph's Business Bookshelf; doing the reading so you don't have to.

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Steph's Business Bookshelf Podcast

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