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SPOTLIGHTED BOOK: The Perfectionists Guide to Losing Control by Katherine Morgan Schafler
GUEST READER : Viktoriia Berezhna 

CONVERSATION HIGHLIGHTS:

• Perfectionism evolves over time when we challenge our beliefs
• Preparing does help, but doesn't change perfectionism
• The 5 Kinds of Perfectionists : Classic, Intense, Messy, Procrastinator, Parisian
• Intense - really high expectations for self and others and get intense if expectations not met
• Procrastinator Perfectionist - wait until it's flawless before putting it out there
• Are there differences in how perfectionism shows up based on your age?
• Perfectionism being external - meeting invisible standards
• The role of social media on perfectionism
• When you're driven by what other people think
• Small towns, gossip, and the connection to perfectionism
• Living in integrity means letting go of perfectionism
• When you take something that's perfect in your head and move to create it in the real world
• Are we afraid of the reality not meeting our vision, or the feelings that come up
• Perfectionism connected to shame, regret, grief, etc. 
• Not calling ourselves as a "Recovering Perfectionism"
• Can you see perfectionism as a super-power? Use perfectionism in an adaptive and maladaptive way.
• Positive sides of perfectionism 
• When you work in a team and how perfectionism styles collide
• Perfectionism is not an illness
• Seeing the gifts in your individual perfectionism
• Power in the self-awareness of your perfectionism
• Purposely making mistakes to "cure" perfectionism
• Different contexts drive different perfectionist tendency
• How do we become a perfectionist?  Conditioning from parents, society, etc.
• What we do to make our parents feel proud.
• Coping mechanisms vary depend on the type of perfectionist you are
• Knowing who you are as a way to help you cope
• Keep self moving and out of over-thinking - preparing to do the thing isn't doing the thing, making a list about what to do is also not doing the thing
• Repeated action - just start.
• Do something in which you never expect yourself to be perfect. Purposely be bad. 
• Whose yardstick are you measuring yourself by?
• Whose rules are you living by? Can you break some of them? 
• How do you know if you are striving in a healthy way or in a perfectionist way?

OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED:

• Playing Big by Tara Mohr
• The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt

GUEST BIO:
Viktoriia is a product designer with a passion for creating impactful and user-friendly solutions. With over two years of experience at her current workplace as a Design Team Lead, she is exploring her path as a leader. Currently, she's building a startup called Bookclub VR, an Extended Reality app designed for reading and book clubs, alongside an incredible team of professionals. 

Beyond her work, I’m passionate about reading fiction, playing all kinds of racket sports (with a special love for table tennis), and constantly surface-learning new and interesting things, all while still being deeply connected to her journey in design.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/viktoriiaberezhnaya/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/bookclubvr/

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SPOTLIGHTED BOOK: Moose Heads on the Table by Karin Tenelius and Lisa Gill
GUEST READER : Alejandro Garcia Machuca

CONVERSATION TOPICS:

• Leadership is something you step in and out of. It's too heavy to be a leadership all the time.
• Self managed organizations don't have managers - they distribute the power and authority among the employees
• When people take ownership for their work, they don't need managers
• Manager as the person who clears the way for others to do their work
• 3 Big Lessons From the Book - a coaching mindset and way of being, a focus on a working climate, a culture of mandate and involvement
• Having the power to give the power away
• Power will always emerge
• People require sensing and adapting
• Most of the underlying issues are unsaid
• Moose Heads on the Table = Elephant In the Room
• Advice being toxic as it disempowers employees
• Leaders NOT being the hero.
• Managing others means not doing the job 
• When being "helpful" erodes trust with the team
• Legitimacy comes from trust.
• There is no such thing as objectivity. There is intersubjectivity and agreement.
• We all have blind spots. Be humble. 
• Managing and leading aren't the same thing. 
• The "Listening Gym" - If we honored listening most, there would be a listening gym on very corner
• Leaders are listeners 
• Light fades away, but gravity holds it all together. We wouldn't have stars without gravity, but we only see the light. 
• Be like gravity - hold it all together without being seen. 
• People won't be silent if they feel empowered
• Passivity and patience aren't the same thing.
• There is a lot of activity in listening. 
• Lau Tzu Quote: Go to the people. Live with them. Learn from them. Love them. Start with what they know. Build with what they have. But with the best leaders, when the work is done, they task accomplished, the people will say, "We have done this ourselves." 
• People gifted to speak and people gifted to listen. 
• Leadership not as a ladder, but as pendulum.
• When the belief of arriving somewhere keeps us stuck.
• Can't have true power without listening
• Power is an emergent property of groups. 
• You know when things are working when people are engaged - people taking charge of their meetings, claiming their own power, focus
• Information when shared regains its purpose - it's the same with power. 
• Power is like fertilizer. Concentrated it poisons. Spread around it nourishes. 

BOOKS MENTIONED/OTHER RESOURCES:

• The Advice Trap, by Michael Bungay Stanier
• No Rule Rules, Erin Meyer and Reed Hastings
• Unlearning Silence, by Elaine Lin Hering
• Good to Great, by Jim Collins
• The Power of Giving Away Power, by Matthew 

GUEST BIO AND LINKS:
Alejandro is currently navigating the muddy waters of fully remote work environments and the ever constant shift of focus and responsibilities within his job as a Software Consultant.

In a nutshell, his responsibility is to design and deliver transformational programs aimed at improving collaboration, all of it underlining the wonders of visual collaboration technology.

Beyond all the above verbiage, he's passionate about anything that's deeply moving, highly thoughtful, and unmistakably authentic. He takes conversations, vulnerability and presence very seriously.

Linkedin : https://www.linkedin.com/in/alejandrogarciamachuca/

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SPOTLIGHTED BOOK : Images of Organization by Gareth Morgan
GUEST READER :  Vincent Musolino

CONVERSATIONAL TOPICS : 

• We talk of organizations as metaphors
• We speak in metaphors and stories
• Some metaphors are older than time
• Analysis of what we do, drawn from metaphors
• The 8 Metaphors - Orgs and Machines, Organisms Brains, Cultures, Political Systems, Psychic Prisons, Flux and Transformation, Instruments of Domination
• Metaphors drive our images and our language, and thus our structures and processes
• Humans driven from the outside (social) more than the inside (psychology)
• "Culture eats strategy for breakfast" ~Peter Drucker
• Recognize the dynamic nature of organizations - we are more than our org chart
• Could be a book that you don't have to read from start to finish
• Listen for the words/phrases that your clients or colleagues use and match it to the corresponding metaphor - read that part
• Good for better understanding your organization - better book for outside vendors
• What does understanding the metaphor change?
• Understanding the metaphors allows you to predict upcoming challenges
• Using one metaphor is dangerous - it's too reductive
• Multiple metaphors can shift perspectives and allow you to see new ways of working
• Play around with metaphors within meetings - create debate
• Not book circle specific

BOOKS/RESOURCES/PEOPLE :

• Peter Drucker
• Edward de Bono - Thinking Hats
• Clean Language - David Grove
• Book: Own Your Armor - Michelle Brody

GUEST INFO:

Vincent Musolino is the founder of COAPTA, where he works as a leadership coach and trainer. He works in both French and English.

Website: https://www.coapta.ch/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vincentmusolino/
Podcast (in French) : https://www.coapta.ch/category/podcast/

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Check-In:

• What actor or actress would play you in the movie version of your life? 

Episode 1:

• Power is for everyone
• Power is an expression of our relationships within groups
• Power over and power to are different 
• How different types of power unconsciously drive us

Episode 2:

• Unleashing is allowing
• Who is doing the unleashing? 
• Purpose is in relationship to others
• Purpose is temporary 
• People can do the same job but find different meaning
• Purpose vs meaning

Episode 3:

• Belief that everyone is doing the best that they can  - Is that true and does that set us up for failure
• Generous intent
• We can't fully understand people, and they may not even understand themselves
• Understanding as an illusion

Episode 4:

• The treadmill idea - what happens to people that they get matrixed into a corporate job? 
• Multiple causes for treadmill - fulfilling expectations (society, family, etc.)
• HR looking for second generation immigrants due to high motivation
• When people tell you no, it can push you even more

Episode 5:

• Vulnerability as a strength even in 
• Coming into leadership in a protective state versus an open state
• Power dynamics shift how vulnerable we can be

Episode 6:

• Being autonomous and interdependent
• Rugged individualism can hold us back when we don't ask for help

Episode 7:

• Gratitude coming from within
• Recognition coming from outside of us

Episode 8:

• Some people who don't want a voice
• When people aren't ready to be empowered?
• Stepping back and looking at the bigger picture and where an employee fits in

Episode 9:

• Is salary enough for engagement?
• Salary is not a driver for everyone 
• Disparity between what society says we need and what we actually need
• Generational differences

Episode 10:

• "You don't have to ask, but you have to listen." 
• Many of us know what listening is, but we don't know how to do it
• Poor listening as a way to sit with discomfort
• Asking questions not to know more, but to understand

Episode 11:

• Chess and checkers

Episode 12:

• Empowering people to grow - what if they don't want to grow?
• Rock starts versus Super stars - it's important to honor people where they are

Episode 13:

• The importance of stories
• If we don't hear other people's stories, we make up stories
• Brains liking closed loops
• If we have a shared sense of who we are below our roles
• Show don't tell

Episode 14:

• Is awareness enough to change behavior?
• Nothing new is created from self-awareness - self-awareness just the start
• Taking responsibility for your behavior

Episode 15:

• Being too passive in your relationship to your manager
• Imposter Syndrome gets in the way of asking manager for more

Episode 16:

• Do we have to let go of "When I was your age?"
• Not about what you said, but how you said it
• Creating connection through stories of our generation, not from a sense of our way was better
• Sharing perspective goes both ways across generations

Episode 17:

• Free added value - when corporations exploit employee generosity
• ERG - Employee Resources Groups - when organizations ask employees to volunteer their time to push DEI initiatives

Episode 18:

• Why don't peop

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Check-In:

• What was your favorite job? And why?

Big Ideas:

• move from shallow questions to deep questions
• freedom, pace, connection
• autonomy and connectedness are part of the motivational factors of humans
• autonomy within a group, leaning into the group rather than isolation
• independence, dependence, and interdependence
• 3 types of conversations - the practical conversation (What's this really about?) , the emotional conversation (How do we feel?), the social conversation (Who are we?)
• context matters and appreciate what type of conversation to have
• when we are having different types of conversation with others, there is a mismatch and information doesn't get through
• meta-communication - talking about the type of communication
• we communicate through our emotions 
• we aren't rational beings but emotional ones
• recognize the nuance of other people's communication, and ask questions about their emotions without becoming emotional myself
• exercise where Theresa shared something meaningful with another person, and that person was instructed to be completely indifferent - Theresa had a strong emotional reaction
• our bodies speak to us if we listen
• holding multiple emotions at the same time - even if they seem competing emotions
• the 3 types are all in a multidimensional space
• communicate about ourselves, about the relationship, and about what we want
• emotion comes from the relationship we have with ourselves and others
• communication is like an orchestra, and certain aspects of it play louder
• cognitive dissonance - when evidence goes against what we believe about ourselves
• confirmation bias - sort out information that doesn't vibe with who we think we are
• when social media feeds our biases
• learning about the full humanity of people, and seeing their values, beliefs, history, and let go of the data to reduce polarization
• people agree a lot more than we think
• when we can listen deeply in some contexts but not others
• teach people how to be curious and ask deep, profound questions
• political system is based on making arguments, not on asking questions
• how much our childhood plays a role in our communication skills
• how story-telling about what people say or don't say interferes with our relationships
• emotional expression in professional settings is not fully expressed
• if a lot of books have been written on listening, why do we still not listen well
• we fail to practice listening to the emotional and social aspects of conversation
• stereotype threat - prime yourself on your multi-dimensional roles to overcome the threat
• being a good talker doesn't make you a good leader
• the training and book doesn't do anything for you

Resources:

• Supercommunicators, by Charles Duhigg
• Friedemann Schulz von Thun, German Psychologist
• Nancy Kline's deep listening

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SUMMARY:
In this episode, Vincent and Theresa chat about some Gallup data around employee engagement across the world. Who is actively disengaged at work? Who is not engaged? Who is engaged?

Check-In:

• What's at the top of your bucket list? 

Big Ideas:

• professional bucket list 
• the success race
• when we buy things to make us happy
• Connection between engagement and success
• Company tap into personal engagement
• Let people be engaged how they want to be engaged
• Lebanon - highest percentage of active disengagement
• Actively disengaged, not engaged, engaged 
• Sweden - lowest percentage of actively disengaged
• Mali - highest percentage of engagement
• Italy - lowest percentage of engagement
• Cultural implications of engagement - social expectations and relationship to success
• Social media and relationship to engagement 
• Engagement NOT connected to GDP
• Engagement levels have doubled in the last decade
• Covid-19 made people realize the importance of things other than work
• Choice of 5 day of disengaged employee, or 3 days of an engaged employee
• Ease in hiding your engagement in large companies
• Gallup 12 Questions:

1. I know what's expected of me
2. I have what I need to do my job
3. I can do what I do best
4. I get recognition at work
5. Someone cares for me at work
6. Someone encourages my development
7. My opinion seems to count
8. Mission and purpose of company
9. I see commitment to quality to work
10. I have a best friend at work
11. Someone talks to me about my progress with me
12. I can learn and grow

• When best friends at work keep you from being objective
• Cultural nuances around "best friends"
• Use questions like these concretely
• Engagement of entrepreneurs or in small companies is probably higher
• Would it make sense to break out large companies to improve engagement?
• Breaking up companies into pods
• If you have to make any decision, you have to find 2 other people to back you
• Create the conditions for collective intelligence
• A group is not a team
• Do work that we love and be engaged
• Are the younger generations less tolerant of corporate BS?

Resources:

• Book: The Success Myth by Emma Gannon
• Book: The Way of Integrity by Martha Beck
• Gallup Poll Data: https://www.gallup.com/394373/indicator-employee-engagement.aspx
• Book: The 12 Elements of Great Managing
• Book: Humanocracy
• Podcast: Social Science Bites

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Check-In: 

• What's your favorite place in your neighborhood?

Big Ideas: 

• Common issues in phone-based children now adults - social isolation, sleep deprivation, attention fragmentation, addiction
• Lack of in-person interactions and conflict, leaves them unable to resolve conflict in reality
• Dopamine addiction online, leads to cycle of waiting for acknowledgement
• Judging people in ways that we wouldn't do in real time
• Cancel culture emphasized online 
• Sense of community is superficial online - high quantity, low quality
• Anxiety - keeping up with social expectations and fear of not being accepted
• How do leaders support Gen Z? Who is doing the accommodating?
• History of the 13-year-old law on social media
• No phone policies within schools
• Withdrawals and failure to launch due to social options online
• Sense of creation and confidence
• Using vocational training to support people's confidence and purpose as a professional
• Parents modeling phone-behavior
• How can we create an environment and culture of engagement, even when we are online for meetings?
• The closer and more visible the phone is to you, the more distracting it is
• Handwriting notes and limiting access to distractions while in meetings
• Phones can be dangerous for our work 
• Creating learning opportunities for employees around phone and/or social media challenges
• Creating online community
• Leaders modeling better online detoxing and communicating it with the team
• Setting better work time boundaries for when to expect people to be online
• Good psychological safety
• Gamify non-screen time within a team or between teams
• How often we go down a road and only in hindsight realize the issues
• Meeting the younger generation where they are 
• Some younger people have been conditioned into this way of being, not chosen it
• Work design - multiple/flex job sharing to create a sense of flexibility in their roles
• Reverse mentoring - look at the strength of the technology
• Employee Resources Groups for Gen Z
• Let go of "When I was your age...."
• Enter into conversations with the intent to listen, not speak
• Be aware of who we are allowing to dictate your life and where there might be a value misalignment
• Where are we jumping on bandwagons without looking at the long-term implications
• Back-chaining behaviors so that people feel confidence
• Being "good enough" without our phones and our social media accounts
• Cultivating an internal sense of value within employees

Resources:

• "The Anxious Generation" by Jonathan Haidt
• "Indistractable" by Nir Eyal
• "Hooked" by Nir Eyal

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Check-In:

• What has recently become less important to you?

Big Ideas:

• Look at the lattice of the organization, not just the ladder
• Leap between individual contributor and manager
• No change of nature between the different levels of managers - shift in intensity, but not the nature of the work
• Develop a network of people at and around your level
• At some point you'll be playing the game, so need a wide network to support you
• How do we define a "good working relationship" with your manager?
• Being too passive in the relationship with your manager
• Lack of clarity of expectations and not asking for more clarity
• Bringing people's reputations into your relationship
• Confirmation bias - when you see people through the lens you want to
• Asymmetric power relationships
• When you think your boss should do something differently - you suffer, not them
• Relying too heavily on your power of expertise and not your power of connections
• Managing up connotates teaching your manager how to do their job
• First step - check your own ego
• Second step - develop self awareness, know your triggers, what pisses you off about people
• Third step - Know what motivates you and how your manager aligns or not with those
• Fourth step - Take the time to develop a relationship
• Know your external motivators which are context driven
• The power of working their way gains capital with them and builds trust
• Prove that you can work in their system
• Do you known what your boss needs? How can you "manage up" if you don't know what your boss needs?
• Develop a coaching mindset up toward everyone around you
• Do you ever ask your boss "How can I help?" 
• Whether we like it or not we are in service to our manager - we aren't just in service to our direct reports
• Not standing in someone else's shoes for a while
• Empathy can be dangerous. Compassion is less taxing

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Check-In: What's giving you hope right now? 

Big Ideas:

• What constitutes inequity?
• When your unbelonging can connect you with other people who feel unbelonging
• Gender equity issues not coming up in some leadership trainings 
• Cultural and country differences in gender equity
• Calling out misogynistic jokes - Should I? Context dependent?
• "isms" as part of the air we breathe - it's conditioned into us
• Creating the system and benefitting from it - are they separate
• Unconscious bias that comes out in small ways as a parent
• Is awareness enough to change behavior? 
• If we are all sexist, does that make the word meaningless?
• Sexists are actively causing harm...???
• Sexism is mostly unintentional - men don't even know it's sexist
• What do we call people who are functioning in patriarchy in unconscious ways, but still causing harm?
• The myth of meritocracy 
• Meritocracy - achievement is based solely on your skills
• Blind assessments to even things out
• Performance review differences between men and women
• Transparent data and decisions on manager, causing inequities to even out
• Be internally transparent with income differences
• Women tend not to negotiate their salaries, but they will negotiate on the behalf of others
• Women less likely to nominate themselves for promotions
• Asking women to be like men doesn't work
• Double bind - not assertive enough, not seen as a leader, too assertive, seen as being bitchy
• Anger as a man is okay, being sad/emotional as a man is associated with weakness
• Expectations in our gender roles
• When there's no problem, there's no data usually
• Believing you are objective, makes you more likely to be sexist. 
• Thinking of the behavior separate from the identity

Resources:

• Invisible Women by Caroline Criando Perez 

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Check-In:

• Which projects give you energy?

Big Ideas:

• 3 skills that lead to successful groups: building safety, sharing vulnerability, establishing purpose
• cohesive groups - telling stories and reminding one another what they stand for
• murmuration - how birds move together
• using small signals to link the present moment to the future ideal
• organizations that don't have a purpose, mission, vision, etc. 
• the challenge of extracting a purpose
• how to detect weak signals and act on them
• going through the motions of purpose - some people feel it's not worthwhile
• "What's the purpose of having a purpose?" 
• Purpose is a higher order construct - something you can build everything else around
• If there are no words, there's no knowledge
• Purpose seems too impractical - not actionable, practical enough
• Cultural differences in focusing on culture
• A tool without a purpose is just an object.
• Leadership without purpose doesn't serve anyone
• You can pivot around a purpose, and shift your business structure
• Don't sell change
• When companies focus their purpose around a story or stories, it can motivate employees in a new way
• Having a clear beacon of purpose
• What can organizations do to re-engage employees? Is story enough?
• Belief that narratives only apply to children and politicians 
• Stories are a way to make groups work together - story-telling goes back thousands of years
• Any good story has conflict and strong emotion -- some organizations still try to separate emotions from work
• How to help people identify the stories that they are telling themselves? 
• Once you identify the story, you can change the story
• How stories drive our emotional world.
• Our brains want to close the loop, so we make up the rest of the story so we can move on - a necessary evolutionary device
• Being in the matrix and not knowing you are in the matrix
• Leading for Proficiency (being the lighthouse) - establishing priorities and connected behaviors
• Leading for Creativity (being the ship's engineer, not the captain) - safe flat, high-candor environment, not about how to
• What's your leadership purpose?
• Transactional versus transformational leadership
• The leader's job isn't to motivate others, but to create conditions for people to be motivated

Resources:

• The Culture Code, by Daniel Coyle
• Start with Why Simon Sinek
• Find Your Why, Simon Sinek
• Adam Grant

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