Author: rlipon

For Book Club this month we read Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success. In this book, Adam Grant categorizes people into three types: givers, matchers, and takers. Givers proactively help others, matchers try to give exactly as much as they get, and takers attempt to get more than they give, believing that this is required to be successful. Grant writes about the advantages and disadvantages of adopting a giving “reciprocity style” in the workplace, and highlights that givers can be both the most and least successful with data; the primary difference between successful and unsuccessful givers is knowing how to establish boundaries.

It was an interesting discussion at book club. Everyone enjoyed the book, either as a reflection to understand one’s personal style and whether or not we consistently show up that way in all contexts, or as a way to think through strategies when you are confronted with a person who isn’t matching your reciprocity style. The examples are clear in the book: people who accomplish great things can be all styles across any profession (Frank Lloyd Wright and Jonas Salk are examples of takers who met with great success in architecture and science respectively, and Adam Rifkin and Abraham Lincoln are given as examples of givers who met with great success in fields of entrepreneurship and politics), but he makes the case that givers are the MOST successful based on several studies in the long run. Fundamentally, we all appreciated a world view in which the “good guy” wins in the end.

If there is any critique I would personally give this book it is two-fold:

1. The classifications of styles are singular and ascribed to the individual vs. the context, and that has not been my personal experience. I have met many people who are givers at home, but not in the workplace, and arguably it is the culture of the workplace that leads to their choices in this matter. A company who celebrates giving back (in the form of mentorship, sponsorship, industry contributions, etc.) nurtures a culture of “give as much as we can give without hurting the business” vs. a “take more than you give” approach. That percolates into every decision one’s employees take, and how they interact with one another–the best in people will come out if you reward it. If you work at a company with a “winner takes all” business mindset, I have seen that trickle into who gets promoted/recognized/etc. and in those companies a giver will struggle to succeed.

I honestly believe most people want to give to others (and Grant also calls this out in the book), but they have to feel that they can, and companies/leaders/managers can do a lot to foster that kind of community and trust. Grant focuses on the individual as if this is entirely their choice and control, and doesn’t tackle the systems which contribute. That notion clashes with my world view that people are usually good, and systems create the majority of the bad behavior. I appreciate the individualism in his approach, but I think we as leaders need to tackle our systems for rewards in order to ensure that we are cultivating environments to enable people to work best together.

2. All of the givers, takers, and matchers given as examples in the book are men of European descent. I can see two reasons for this: one, Grant is trying to normalize the data and therefore stick with one “type”; two, there is bias in the historical record making it harder to discern a consistent signal on female and minority figures of the past.

In book club I brought up the observation that there were no female examples in the book. It was a difficult conversation: bias is a touchy subject, and I almost felt bad mentioning it, yet it stood out to me that there wasn’t an account of a woman in the entire book who was noted as a giver, taker, or matcher. Research done by women and underrepresented minorities was cited, so I don’t believe this speaks to Grant’s bias against people, but rather the possibilities above: this was a conscious decision to normalize, or he felt there wasn’t enough historical information to make a strong conclusion.

It was interesting to me that no one else noticed this (indicates that I might be over-sensitive), and that the response to me bringing it up led to a discussion about safety to have difficult conversations, and even the concept of meta conversation (discussions about discussions rather than the actual topic) in order to align upon how we would approach this observation. (Aside: I love that this little community we have built will delve into the concept of meta communications to frame a discussion and then dive in!)

We did have a short conversation about the observation (our time was running out), and the conclusion was that there are gendered norms around reciprocity, and there are gendered expectations around communication styles, but delving into those would be a different book. Examples of books which attempt to tackle the research include Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation, and I’m sure more, so maybe this was indeed a conscious choice by Grant to stick to examples in one gender and race profile, which maybe could be applied to others, but he didn’t attempt to do so.

Within our book club we represent a wide array of races and genders and we all could think of examples of givers, takers, and matchers across all of these lines, so I believe Grant’s observations of types hold. What was less clear to us was whether or not his conclusion about givers being the most successful over time would hold. It is truly hard to say, and maybe should delve into a discussion about what success is (which often changes throughout one’s life)…that too is a different book (The Second Mountain, and Designing Your Life come to mind as books I really enjoyed tackling that realm).

Ultimately I like the notion of living in a world with Karma, and trying to give more than we get. Most situations are not “fixed pie” scenarios, and finding ways to reframe decisions into win-win situations has been one of the most important insights in my professional life. I really enjoyed the book and recommend it highly.

Happy Reading!

For June book club we read Brené Brown’s book Dare to Lead. Full disclosure: I had already read this book and really enjoyed it personally. I felt SEEN and really had to dig deep on two concepts:

1. Speaking about others when they are not in the room. There is a section where she mentions that in order to build trust, you should always bring issues TO someone and never speak about someone else without them in the room. I have always found this to be daunting. I like to believe I don’t gossip, but as a manager, often people bring personnel issues to me, and it is hard to discuss that without in some sense discussing the other person. I always seek to encourage direct dialogue with the party in question, but in order to coach I find myself sharing insights about my interactions with that person (trying to help them understand if that individual is biased to action and maybe that is why they came across as gruff, or more shy and reserved and so maybe they are not engaging yet, but will utilizing alternate media such as a blog or chat, etc.) I find this specific feedback hard to execute in practice, although I agree that the underlying concept (talking behind people’s backs) is unhelpful. I would just caveat that intention matters, and I hope if I share the intention behind the discussion then it will be ok to have these kinds of discussions, but I am far more deliberate about that framing than I used to be.

2. Showing sympathy vs. empathy. When I was going through the hardest part of last year (watching my nephew and my family suffer and not being able to do anything) I really got to see this in action. People, quite accidentally, often say “I’m sorry for your family” or “I’m sorry that your nephew has to go through this.” Fundamentally this is sympathy, and it is distancing–it separates you from the subject. Then there would be folks who said something more along the lines of, “Please take care of yourself. I remember when I was going through my father’s illness–it is a marathon and not a sprint. If there is anything I can do to help you or your family, please let me know.” Here that person was relating to my experience, and showing me they were there, holding my hand, willing to support me if they could. I had never learned these concepts in school (not really an engineering subject) or felt I necessarily needed them before last year, but after going through such an experience, I now know: be WITH people in their pain. There is no “right” thing to say, just show you are there to hold their hand, share a book on grief (that was incredibly thoughtful gift from a friend of mine), or just send a text checking in. I hope I will always show up for others this way after having been on the receiving end, and I’m sorry to all the friends/colleagues I may have accidentally isolated or made worse before I knew better.

Our book club session was lightly attended given the holiday in the US, but I was glad to have had the discussion with other folks in different phases of their careers and leadership journeys because I always learn something. Some of the feedback shared was that Dr. Brown’s colloquialisms were too outdated and/or “Southern” and were triggering/hard to relate to for that person since he came from the South himself. Many of us felt that she uses the term “rumble” a lot, and honestly outside a 1950s reference to car racing, it really isn’t a term I know or relate to very well. However, I can see where it could get triggering based on background, or just be difficult to relate to for someone earlier in their career journey or not from the US. I personally found her style charming and relatable, but not everyone has the same reaction to these sorts of things.

The other feedback was that she had a strong underlying principle for the book, but it was potentially redundant. Fundamentally the book’s premise is that being a good leader requires you to lean into your discomfort, have hard conversations, be vulnerable, authentic, and brave. There is a fair amount of repetitiveness of this theme throughout the book. I read that as reinforcement of the key concept through different stories/lenses, but if you prefer books with more brevity, I could see where that style might not appeal. There was actually the observation from one of our attendees that this almost felt like a set of essays rather than a book. Again, that was not how I read it, but I can see the perspective.

Something everyone really loved was distilling and sharing one’s core values. What are the one to two things that are core to who you are, and how can you ensure that the work in your life relates to those values? If you are clear about those values, can you share them with the folks you care about? If someone you work with has shared their values, do you find that making sense of their behavior and interactions is clearer? If we are honest about our core motivations and willing to share, then working together can become significantly easier. I personally value learning and people above everything. Note I use the word “people,” not community, purposefully. I value you, the individual, and I want to know you. I never want to know people solely through context (we work at the same company, our kids attend the same school, etc.) because then our brains use archetypes to generalize about the other person rather than really understanding who people are and what motivates them.

This set of values means I tend toward smaller groups: I like one-on-one discussions, and team-building is particularly important to me (grabbing a meal, taking a walk, going on a hike together, etc.) to establish trust with people. Anyone who knows me or has worked with me probably knows the learning piece–I love learning, and whenever I have successfully figured out how to frame an experience as a learning one, I have nearly infinite motivation to grind through it. Similarly, if the work is for a person I care about (be it a customer, partner, etc.), I can almost always make it happen, and if I cannot it is particularly hard for me. The heart of this exercise from Dr. Brown is to reflect on this about yourself, and share it with your team/teammates., so you find ways to work best together.

In general I’m a large fan of Dr. Brown and her books, and I personally enjoyed and recommend this book, but obviously the opinion is not universal.

For May book club we read the Principles of Life and Work by Ray Dalio. This book is DENSE, so only 2 of us actually finished the book (more than 50 folks are in our book club, although only 10-20 show up monthly), and usually 95% of folks finish the book, so this is fairly rare. That being said, I don’t think it was an indictment of the book so much as the topic is written with a lot of due diligence (a deeply data-driven approach to interpersonal topics), and can be a bit robotic if you don’t relate to a numerical analysis framework. Still there are incredibly good nuggets that came out, and are worth calling out:

1. Write down one’s principles. No one teaches you this, nor is this a typical phase of development in school, at home, or at work. Truly though, don’t you want to be clear about your values and principles? Won’t that help your spouse/partner, children, coworkers, etc. to know what you value, how you think, and therefore the best ways to interact with you? What a blessing to have that insight into another person so you can understand where they are coming from and how to approach a discussion, decision, etc. to help anchor the decision in what matters to them.
2. The concept of an “orchestrator” you vs. the “worker” you. Fundamentally this notion is that you must seek to understand what you are truly good at, and where you should delegate for the sake of the overall project/organization/team. Feedback in this is your greatest friend in this process, particularly negative feedback. NO ONE is good at everything. This truth is not something to bemoan or be ashamed. You have to seek to learn where “worker” you is not good, decide if you want to improve, or enable the “orchestrator” you to ensure that part of the work is with someone else. Ultimately, you own the outcomes of your career and life, and you need to approach it objectively to have excellent outcomes.
3. For a data-driven approach, he discusses the strength of computers and AI, but also the dangers. In a sense that AI will detect patterns, but there is more that goes into decision making than directing patterns–AI without human interpretation and/or validation only reinforces bias, and our goals for our organizations and decision making should be greater than that.

So since so few folks made it through the whole book, I decided to try to write a summary. The 5 Major Life Principles Mr. Dalio states are:

1. Embrace Reality and Deal with It
2. Use the 5-step-process to get what you want in life:
   1. Set clear, audacious goals
   2. Don’t tolerate problems
   3. Diagnose the root causes
   4. Design a plan before you act 
   5. Execute to completion
3. Be radically open-minded
4. Understand how people are wired differently
5. Learn to make decisions effectively

His major work principles fall into similar themes:

1. Build a great team:
   1. Focus on great people 
   2. Build a great culture
   3. Create the machines to ensure your outcomes consistently match your goals 
   4. Align your work with your passions
   5. Do it with people you want to build a future with
2. Get the culture right by surfacing and resolving disagreements
   1. Radical Truth and Radical Transparency
   2. Nurturing Meaningful Work and Meaningful Relationships
   3. Making it a cultural norm to learn from mistakes
   4. Getting people in sync
   5. Using Believability-Weighted Decision-Making
   6. Having an agreed resolution process
3. Get the people right
   1. Put WHO before WHAT
   2. Hire right
   3. Fit the right people into your organizational design by continually training, testing, evaluating and sorting them
4. Build and evolve your machine:
   1. Running your machine as a manager/designer
   2. Not tolerating problems
   3. Diagnosing problems root causes
   4. Continually improving your machine design 
   5. Executing your plans
   6. Using tools and protocols to shape habits, and 
   7. Paying attention to governance

These concepts are simple to write down (it is what makes them so compelling), but are actually hard to execute (which is what makes the book long/detailed). I think believability-weighted decision making seemed difficult to institute culturally (but then again, we all have bias and are bringing it to work anyway, so why not be explicit about the reasons for weighting one person’s input differentially).

I highly recommend this book, as much as an exercise in how to approach an analytical person on the topics of culture, leadership, principles, and values, as for one’s own introspection. You will definitely learn something.

For the month of April we read the Infinite Game by Simon Sinek. For those who have no idea who Simon Sinek is, you’ve likely seen some clip of him speaking about business practices, ethics, etc. somewhere on the Internet: TED, Youtube, Facebook, etc. and if you, like me, have found these presentations meaningful (this is my personal favorite), you probably also felt excited to read this book.

So let’s start with the good: the principles of this book deeply resonate with me. Fundamentally, he is pushing back on the purpose of organizations: do we live to serve our shareholders (who are effectively “renters” of our organization), or to serve a bigger purpose (our customers needs, connecting people, helping the world, etc.) His point is that companies who play “the infinite game”–a long term strategy aligned to that greater purpose the company serves will make wiser long term decisions, which ultimately will accrue greater value than those who play to the market dynamics alone (whom he calls “finite” players). He gives great examples, and I found myself nodding along.

Another point he mentions are that companies who are more aligned to long term value tend to have more engaged employees (most of us want to work on something that is GOOD for the world, not just good for our shareholders), make better ethical choices, and have fewer incidents of questionable behavior (fraud, misuse of data, etc.) because they won’t suffer from the same “ethical fading” in which organizations without a clear purpose (above making money for investors) may find themselves.

But, here is where he could have cited research and helped us disambiguate between his opinions/observations and what the science tells us. In my mind, that is the biggest issue I had with this book. When we sat down to discuss it at Book Club, Dr. J Metz reminded me of “Gell-Man amnesia” a term coined by Professor Murray Gell-Mann and popularized by Michael Crichton (yes author of Jurassic Park, etc. etc.) that basically shows that we read a piece of garbage and if we know the subject, we will pick it apart, but if we don’t know the subject AND we agree with the statements, we will somehow forget that the source is the same as the previous piece of said garbage–that “amnesia” when you are biased to believe is the issue. Basically: we believe what we want to believe, and are only naturally skeptical if we DON’T already believe it, which isn’t a good way to learn (it is a great way to reinforce bias). We HAVE to force ourselves to be critical regardless of our bias, review our sources, etc. if we want to be life-long learners, and not subject to our own echo chambers (a problem often cited in these days of social-media influenced news).

All that said, I really loved these quotations from the book:

• “Leaders are not responsible for the results, leaders are responsible for the people who are responsible for the results. And the best way to drive performance in an organization is to create an environment in which information can flow freely, mistakes can be highlighted and help can be offered and received.” 
• “To ask, “What’s best for me?” is finite thinking. To ask, “What’s best for us?” is infinite thinking.” 
• “The ability to succeed is not what makes someone a leader. Exhibiting the qualities of leadership is what makes someone an effective leader. Qualities like honesty, integrity, courage, resiliency, perseverance, judgment and decisiveness,” 
• “One of the primary jobs of any leader is to make new leaders. To help grow the kind of leaders who know how to build organizations equipped for the Infinite Game.” 
• “When leaders are willing to prioritize trust over performance, performance almost always follows.”

I think listening to this as a lecture and thinking about how you would integrate the messages into your personal leadership style, or your framing for your company’s mission is useful. I just think there are more meaningful books that walk through the psychology of WHY his points resonate. Specifically the value of serving a just case, having a worthy rivalry to inspire your best work, building trust with teams (great work by Amy Edmonson on the value of psychological safety) and maintaining a strong ethical basis for your business decisions to have fewer issues associated with ethical fading (I would have LOVED to see the research on this because I want to believe it).

Anyway, no regrets that I read this, but gosh it could have been so much MORE impactful and not reinforced the “business guru with no hard facts” stereotype through some really simple citations to sources that are from credible publications and not business-sponsored.

This month for book club we read Radical Candor by Kim Scott, both because it is an awesome book, and also because I really wanted to choose a female author in honor of Women’s History Month. I was introduced to the book a while back, and honestly wished I had read it much earlier in my management journey because there were many important lessons that resonated with me personally.

In general most of our attendees really enjoyed the book with some exceptions; the worry was that this framework might not “age well”. As we dug in the concern was that candor without a strong coupling of psychological safety will inevitably lead to bosses feeling empowered to share “toxic” feedback and employees not feeling safe enough to speak up. (I think this concern is real, and highly recommended folks pair this with The Fearless Organization by Amy Edmonson, which reiterates that feedback which can only trickle down is toxic and a waste of talent.)

The overwhelming area people resonated most strongly about was the need to “challenge directly”. Some self-identified as strong in this domain, but working on making sure it was received well, and others felt they likely weren’t as direct in the moment in sharing their actual feedback with colleagues, direct reports, and their management team. All shared how NOT challenging directly and providing timely feedback had repercussions (which Kim Scott labels “ruinous empathy”). The primary issue is that the individual could have learned something in the moment with appropriate coaching, but by trying to be nice/likeable/etc. we miss these moments, and then reserve feedback for more formal sessions (which is far less effective since with time the ability to really recall details and remember the impact is muted, so the value of the feedback is as well). When in doubt, start by SEEKING feedback–create a culture where you show you can take it, and encourage them to give feedback to one another directly (rather than escalating to you). A culture of direct communication enables issues to be resolved in a far more timely manner rather than always escalating, and eliminates back-stabbing. These ultimately make every team more effective.

One of the other critical lessons in the book is to “care personally”. Many people don’t get that coaching coming into management, and it seems like an awful shame. When people know they personally are respected and cared about, they will absolutely feel safer and more secure in sharing their perspectives (which will make your team and your company stronger), and they will also be more secure receiving criticism, which is a necessary part of learning and growing. Showing one cares does not have to involve hugs, or anything that might be deemed inappropriate: remembering to follow up on a difficult item personal or professional that they brought up in a previous 1:1, not canceling 1:1s without following up, showing that you value your people’s time by showing up on time, finding time to connect and celebrate milestones (birthdays, baby showers, etc.), encouraging people to take the time they need (for vacations, or leave if that is necessary) and ensuring that they know you have their backs during that period of time, etc. Ultimately IF you care personally, and your people know that, then offering feedback will land better because they know you are seeking to help them develop and succeed, and not to make them feel badly.

Much of being a good boss begins by knowing your people, and knowing what makes them feel cared for personally, whether in terms of personal development, or just checking in on life. There are great tips in this book for getting to know your people and helping them with their LIFE journeys both within and exterior from their current role. The best bosses I have had have been mentors for life who have come to know me and my skills and been great sounding boards for me on other decisions I made later in my career. I truly hope I can be that for my people as well.