<aside> 🐘 A collection of the 3 Pieces of Content I've found the most valuable this week on the internet, with some reflections, key lessons, and why they can add value to our lives. Plus, one thought-provoking quote. I do this because I believe in intentionally choosing the content we consume, especially on the internet, in an era in which the amount of content we expose ourselves to consumes us, if we are not mindful enough.
</aside>
(11).png)
Table of Contents ▶️ ▶️ ▶️
On being authentic with empathy vs. being brutally authentic.
Empathy is not agreement. It's understanding. Being brutally honest is often not the way to enter into conversations, also when talking about leadership.
3 Things to foster empathetic authenticity:
<aside> 🌱 Being authentic comes in many shapes and forms. And we don't need to be brutal in order to be authentic. Being authentic with empathy encourages conversations, openness, and trust.
</aside>
notes from official podcast episode page (revisited)
Excellence in almost everything has a set of foundational routines. In leadership too this is valid. Trustworthy and admired leaders have mental models and habits that make them stand out from the crowd.
What leaders do is they make situations and people better. They do not just focus on inspiring the people around them. They take a wide, human-centered approach to leadership, in which behavioural management is highly taken into account.
Great leaders strike a good balance of giving positive and negative feedback. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but too much positive makes it so that people get alarmist when they hear negative and too much negative means people defend themselves as a first, immediate response to conversations.
Everybody should have direct, clear priorities going on. The best leaders do that. Prioritizing is key to provide a direction, and clear set of actions to strive towards.
"Here’s something that everybody on the planet wants. They want the people that they respect, that they admire, that they look up to, they want them rooting for them. They want them clapping, cheering for their ball to go in. What that really means is they want them to say and do, we’ll talk about that, and prove that they’re a fan."
What do the best leaders do in crisis? It’s not the actual act that defines you. It’s always your response. It’s the response that defines your credibility in every case.
In the pre-modern world, the attention was to read a few books, but very well. In the modern world, on the other hand, it seems like we read as much as possible, in order to know everything. This video-essay from 'The School of Life' brings some perspective on how to read fewer books, in an era in which reading fewer books often leads to a feeling of FOMO and inadequacy. Today's society (generally speaking) locates the value of reading on quantity rather than quality.
So, the video presents one fundamental question to ask ourselves in order to not feel overwhelmed by the bandwagon effect of what society values, and instead think for ourselves:
What am I reading for?
This seemingly simple question can open up a whole new perspective on the reason why we actually read in the first place. Once you know why you are reading at any moment in your life, you will be able to enjoy the intimate relationship with a few, very well chosen titles, without feeling pressured to jump on the bandwagon of reading the latest, bestselling titles, just because everyone does so.
"for a truly well-read person isn't the one who has read a gargantuan number of books; it's someone who has let themselves be deeply shaped by just a few, very well chosen titles."
If only it were so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.
THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO, ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYN