Communication & leadership, tips from the best
JC’s Newsletter #183
Dear friends,
In JC’s Newsletter, I share the articles, documentaries, and books I enjoyed the most in the last week, with some comments on how we relate to them at Alan. I do not endorse all the articles I share, they are up for debate.
I’m doing it because a) I love reading, it is the way that I get most of my ideas, b) I’m already sharing those ideas with my team, and c) I would love to get your perspective on those.
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👉 Maria Sharapova
❓ Why am I sharing this article?
How to win even when you are not great. Learn to not be the norm.
“What sets the great players apart from the good players?” asks Maria Sharapova. “The good players win when everything is working. The great players win even when nothing is working, even when the game is ugly; that is, when they are not great.”
“To me, a picture of success is painted when you’re in the gym and it’s dark, cold, and freezing outside. Or it’s somebody’s birthday or wedding and you’re not able to make it. I’m more proud of myself in moments like that, when I took the tougher road. Those were the moments I thought about even when I was holding trophies—the moments when you persevere and do things that aren’t the norm. That was my mindset.”
👉 Conscious Leadership (Alex MacCaw)
❓ Why am I sharing this article?
I like this notion of conscious leadership.
Stop blaming others for the circumstances of your life
End gossip
Conscious leadership:
Conscious Leadership is about being more interested in learning than being right. When our egos make us afraid to be wrong, that fear leads us to defend our ideas at all costs, and to work hard to convince others that we are right—often with anger.
It is in a state of playful curiosity that truly elegant solutions are achieved.
The first mark of conscious leadership is self-awareness and the search for truth. The second is pausing, taking a second, and shifting yourself into a open and curious state, and rising above the line.
I commit to taking full responsibility for the circumstances of my life and for my physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual well-being. I commit to supporting others to take full responsibility for their lives.
Blame, shame, and guilt all come from toxic fear.
I commit to growing in self-awareness. I commit to regarding every interaction as an opportunity to learn. I commit to curiosity as a path to rapid learning.
Gossip:
I commit to ending gossip, talking directly to people with whom I have a concern, and encouraging others to talk directly to people with whom they have an issue or concern.
Even though gossip has long been a part of office culture, it is a key indicator of an unhealthy organization and one of the fastest ways to derail motivation and creativity.
People gossip to gain validation, control others and outcomes, avoid conflict, get attention, feel included, and make themselves right by making others wrong. In short, people usually gossip out of fear. If you gossip, clean it up by revealing your participation in the gossip to everyone involved.
👉 Gokul Rajaram on Twitter (Twitter)
❓Why am I sharing this article?
Good tips for oral presentations!
The larger the audience, the fewer the words on the slide. In Eric’s case, the audience was thousands of employees, so we had 0 words per slide.
The title does most of the heavy lifting, which means it cannot be passive. It must be action oriented. Eg: not “Subscriber retention” but “Subscribers continue to be retained strongly” or even better “Net revenue retention continues to be > 100%”.
Use memorable images that substantiate and give credence to the words of the title. This image is what will occupy most of the slide area, so you need to spend much of your time thinking about what picture will best get the point (made by the title) across. In some cases, it might be a customer image or logo. in other cases, a graph. In yet other cases, it could be something else entirely.
If the presentation has to be emailed to an audience who will consume it asynchronously, that’s completely different and has different rules).
👉 Tilting the Odds (Farnam Street)
❓ Why am I sharing this article?
Write not to look smart, but to have the biggest impact.
Writing for Productive Communication
"Most people write to sound smart when they should write to be useful. Communicating to sound smart lowers your potential for impact.
The harder people have to work to understand you, the less they want your input. Writing to be useful means writing what you would want to read. Simple, but not easy."
👉 Kevin Kelly (Wired): Excellent Advice for Living - The Knowledge Project (Farnam Street)
❓ Why am I sharing this article?
See if you can find the truth in what people who disagree with you believe. How do they see the world?
Always demand a deadline
Different is better than perfect.
Forgive others
Don’t aim to be the best; aim to be the only. Don’t imitate others.
Learn how to learn from those you disagree with or even [those who] offend you. See if you can find the truth in what they believe.
Always demand a deadline because it weeds out the extraneous and the ordinary. A deadline prevents you from trying to make it perfect, so you have to make it different. Different is better.
Find that the deadlines force me to make decisions that you don’t have enough time [for]; you never have enough time.
This idea that you want to do things on a regular basis because that is the source of great stuff, but [it] also gives you that confidence and liberty to put out something that’s not quite the best and not get really hung up on it because we’re going to do it again.
When you forgive others, they may not notice, but you will heal. Forgiveness is not something we do for others; it’s a gift to ourselves.
Don’t aim to be the best; aim to be the only. I think I’m better and I do better when I am not trying to imitate someone else’s success state and how they define success.
The best way to have any hope of changing someone’s mind is to try [to] listen and truly understand why they think what they’re thinking, how they got there.
How do they see the world? What would the world have to look like for me to exhibit that behavior or that belief? That goes a long way to helping you understand how other people see it because nobody’s intentionally acting irrationally.
👉 Shreyas Doshi on hard work (Twitter)
❓ Why am I sharing this article?
I like his definition of hard work about growing your skill and your mindset
I tend to agree with him that complaining about others is useless
I also agree that people have the right to choose how hard they want to work, but they should not have the same expectations, and it is fine!
In my career, I developed myself through hard work, and trying to learn as much as possible at every step.
Hard work does not mean burning yourself out, quite the contrary, it is knowing how to make learning compounding, to be efficient, to do the extra mile on the right things, to enjoy every bit of it.
You can work as hard as you want.
You have the right to work hard or not work hard or anything in between.
But, once you have made the choice for yourself, it is pointless to say that it is unfair if others who work harder are getting rewarded more than you. (there are many otherwise-smart people who do exactly this)
Hard work isn’t just about the work you do in office or on your work projects.
Hard work includes the time you spend outside of your work projects, on growing your skills and your mindset.
👉 The Carlyle Group co-founder/co-chairman David Rubenstein
❓ Why am I sharing this article?
Why I think the core of healthybusiness.org and our reach out strategy should be to interview people (HRs, CEOs) about their life.
We should always send questions ahead of time (and do great research)
Pivot off what people say (including in hiring interviews). Don’t follow the script too much.
Between my books and PBS show, I’ve done a fair amount of interviewing.
What I’ve found is that most people don’t mind being interviewed.
Most people like to talk about themselves.
Most people have a story about how they came from modest means.
And most people want to talk about their legacy and what they’ll leave behind.
I’m not a journalist, but I do have some tactics for interviewing I lean on.
One is I write up questions in advance after having done a lot of research.
I then send the questions to the person ahead of time to get them to relax and know I’m not trying to embarrass them.
During the interview I try to bring out the person’s background and understand what makes them tick.
When I interviewed Oprah Winfrey, she said that she wasn’t a great interviewer, but she was a great listener.
So when I interview, I listen, then pivot off what they say.
I also have a reasonably good sense of humor and try to inject that in from time to time. It helps to be able to make fun of stuff without embarrassing anybody.
👉 Big ambitions, Low expectations and High Standards (Farnam Street)
❓ Why am I sharing this article?
Focus on less information, less news but higher quality.
Big ambitions, low expectations, and high standards
Don’t think the world owes you something
Always give your best
The Noise Bottleneck:
We think the more information we consume the more signal we’ll consume.
Only the mind doesn’t work like that.
When the volume of information increases, our ability to comprehend the relevant from the irrelevant becomes compromised.
We place too much emphasis on irrelevant data and lose sight of what’s really important.
Big ambitions, low expectations, and high standards are a powerful combination for living your best life.
Ambitions pull you forward when it's hard. They connect you to something larger.
You will never be happy unless your expectations are exceeded. If you think the world owes you something, you're going to end up disappointed. The world doesn't owe you anything. You can't sit around waiting for the world to come and hand you what you think you deserve. If you want something to happen, you have to take action. Go positive and go first.
High standards - When it gets hard, do not lower your standards. I am not always at my best, but I always give my best. I hold myself to a high bar. I don't always meet it, but I won't lower the bar to feel better about myself.
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Let’s talk about this together on LinkedIn or on Twitter. Have a good week!
I enjoyed this article a lot! Thank you Jean-Charles!