Category: Book Club

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.

For February book club we read The Light We Carry by Michelle Obama. At its heart this book is a call to action and a message of hope in times of uncertainty, and while it isn’t necessarily the prototypical choice for a book club on leadership in technology, I have historically found biographies and autobiographies of leaders managing turbulent times to be incredibly inspiring. This book was no exception. The book isn’t really memoir, but it is autobiographical in the sense of the stories she shares. Here are the nuggets that particularly resonated with me and the group, and might be lessons leaders in technology want to reflect upon as well:

1. Build your “kitchen table”. Mrs. Obama talks about the kitchen table of her youth: how many people were gathered there with love and support for one another, not just family, but also friends, and that was particularly poignant to me. With Covid19 lockdowns, increased remote work, the age and associated obligations of my children, and other factors, my “kitchen table” is not as full as I personally would like. The de facto friendships I used to get at work are much harder to create remotely and without the regular touchpoints of work travel making it easier to say “yes” to grabbing dinner or drinks with friends. I try to stay in touch with friends when they happen to be in town, or if I happen to be traveling to their towns, but it is far more sporadic, and the friends and colleagues I once spoke with constantly, of course have less frequent touch points with me now that we are dispersed to other companies. Mrs. Obama shares wonderful stories about her “bootcamp” weekends with her best friends (at Camp David no less) and I have to admit that it was a personal inspiration to remember that we can choose to continue our friendships, and it has immense dividends to us personally and professionally. We need a village, and it begins by picking up the phone, texting to check in, or just sending a little virtual love on social media to the folks we care about. The limiter here is time of course, but a book club, email/text thread with besties, running/gym club/buddy, etc. can be good life hacks to keep folks in touch on a semi-regular basis. There is a great book called Multipliers, which changed my life on this topic, and I know lots of other folks refer to Never Eat Alone. There is never enough time to do all the things, but if you combine objectives with friendship, there absolutely can and will be a multiplier effect, and increased accountability that results in far greater dividends throughout life.
2. Gladness is nourishing. Mrs. Obama refers to a Toni Morrison quotation about how she looks upon her children that particularly resonated with me, “Let your face speak what’s in your heart. When they walk in the room my face says I’m glad to see them.” So much of the time when we see our children (or our partners, coworkers, friends even!) we likely reflect what needs to be done “where are your shoes? Do you have your water bottle? Where are those TPS reports?” but children (and in fact all of us) look to see that that the person on the other side of the table is genuinely glad to see them. That is what fills up their hearts and allows them to flourish. So think about how you show up. Bring your gladness and watch how people thrive.
3. The feeling of not belonging carries a mental load. Mrs. Obama shares her experiences being an “only”: the only black woman at the law firm, the only black woman in a class at Princeton, and how exhausting it is to not be in the “club”. I definitely cannot claim those same “only” distinctions, but I have definitely been the only woman in my class or in many decision forums and discussions and it is a different load to bear (particularly earlier in my career before I became more comfortable with myself.) I took the stories she shared as a reminder and a call to action to continue to remember the value of inclusiveness, welcoming all, seeking input regardless of communication style, and to be the change we want to see.
4. Competency is the other side of fear. The book contains a fabulous discussion around decoding one’s fear and advice for how to manage one’s need to step up in difficult situations. Don’t be afraid; find ways to be prepared. This advice was also given with the recommendation “don’t make decisions in a period of fear; make decisions from strength.” I have always tried to ensure I’m running toward an outcome I seek when making my decisions versus running away from situations I don’t like. When you choose a path (even if it is difficult along the way) you are far more engaged and likely to succeed.

For me, the lessons the book reinforced were fundamentally about self-awareness and self-care. Your emotional state and your bias effect your decision making, and you cannot show up for others when your cup is empty. This book club session was particularly rewarding because 90% of the participants said they likely wouldn’t have picked up the book if it weren’t for the book club. I like when we have an excuse to get out of our comfort zones, so that made me particularly happy. We ended making a commitment to each other about what we would like to focus upon to fill our cups: friendship, parenting with joy, self-care in times of difficulty, making decisions from a good place, having empathy for one’s self, speaking up when you are not the majority, and being the change we want to see while holding ourselves with grace. If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it. The book is like a big warm hug, and a kick in the pants to be your best self all at once.

For our January Book club session we read Crucial Conversations. I was first exposed to this book over a decade ago as part of a training session on communication skills at Synopsys, but it was good to revisit it since I find what you take away from this book often depends on what you are dealing with when you are reading it. Since I already had the book from my previous session, I re-read the first edition, which has mostly US-based examples, and a lot of recommendations about in-person communication for the most important discussions. My understanding is that they have added content around different cultural backgrounds and remote work conditions in subsequent editions, so I’d highly recommend editions 3+. That being said, fundamentally the skills are the same: recognize when you are being triggered, ask yourself questions to help transition into an intellectual place vs. a reactionary one, and don’t get caught in a silence or violence cycle. To stay in dialogue you need to maintain psychological safety: you have to focus on what you want to get out of the discussion and use techniques to get back on track (if you see negative reactions, try apologizing for making the other person feel unsafe, use contrasting techniques to help them understand what you were trying to say vs. what they seem to have reacted to, establish mutual purpose for the discussion, etc.) I think the value of the newer editions is really around sensitizing yourself to reading queues of others who are not the same as you. Obviously techniques differ based on the medium of interactions as well as cultural backgrounds, so keeping that in mind is incredibly helpful.

On the Crucial Conversations website there are seminars as well, and of course experiencing this as a class with a cohort is probably the most ideal methodology to practice the teachings. Reading is great, but we learn through application, so especially if this is one’s first exposure to these approaches, a class would be great.

My biggest personal takeaways from the book were:

1. Beware the stories you tell yourself. Start with “why would a reasonable, rational, and decent person act in this way?” This question helps me understand what stories I am telling myself vs. focusing on the facts. We often observe an action and assume a meaning, but in reality there are other interpretations of a person’s actions. Rather than reacting to my story, start by questioning why a person has entered an agitated state, or why you yourself are getting agitated. If you figure out how things went off track, then you can try to reset. If you get caught up in your own reaction, you cannot reestablish trust and safety.
2. Engage in active listening–make sure I am hearing their words vs. thinking of my response. If you were clear on the goal of the meeting before the session, then the most important part of the discussion is listening to the questions, concerns, data and insights from the other parties. If you are thinking through your response or rebuttal, you are not actually listening. Never forget the goal is connection and dialogue, not a pithy response.
3. Seek input. Especially in positions of authority, don’t speak in absolutes, which will hinder those who are more hierarchical in their disposition/culture to engage and lead to withdrawal from dialogue. As a leader, offering your opinion first almost inevitably sends the message that the decision is made, and really why are you coming to the team if that is the case? Sometimes tops-down decisions have to be made (and if that is the case, then document why the decision was made that way and don’t waste folks’ time), but if the goal is to get alignment with other stakeholders or solve a tricky problem where you do not know all of the challenges or risks, then seek input first and foremost.

I highly recommend this book, as much for discussions at home with your family as with your coworkers. When I first read this book, I was not yet a parent, and this time around I found many of the examples I thought through in my head were with respect to negotiations with my children than with my coworkers. Ultimately, when we assume the good intentions of the people around us, and show up with an open mind, we all can accomplish so much more. Happy Reading!

Our next book for book club is Michelle Obama’s The Light We Carry, which really is an acknowledgement of the times we are in, and how we manage ourselves, inspire others, and keep moving forward in times of uncertainty. I hope you will join us.

For our inaugural book club we read Will Larson’s An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management. For those familiar, Will has an excellent blog focused on the challenges and opportunities of being an engineering manager at high growth companies, and I’ve found his insights particularly useful at this phase of my career.

Since I’ve been reading his blog for a while, I was ok with the fact that this book had a lot of lists/reference tools rather than a lot of narrative, but I think it is a fair critique that from about chapter 4 onward the book feels heavy on references and lighter on the analysis of why a particular approach works, or stories of where it worked specifically in his career. I also think rules of thumb that work for him are generally applicable to the high growth market he has been occupying and are not as generalizable to larger/slower growth companies, or during periods of extreme turbulence. Still, the book provides real tools/methods for approaching problems with a concrete thesis, and to me this is a strength and not a weakness. He isn’t an academic or a researcher, so he isn’t giving the background and context for why these approaches work (I think it would be even more powerful if he joined forces with someone from that domain to make his analysis more generalizable in context), but he is clear that these are his lessons–in some sense his reflection and offer of mentorship to the world. He also makes references to others who have written academic texts in key domains worthy of further study that helped him formulate his thesis and approach (systems thinking, developer velocity, strategy, etc.) and I for one will absolutely be reading his references.

If you are an engineering manager or a manager of managers in this domain looking to level up your skill set in key domains from executive presentation, leadership, hiring, managing metrics and goals, organizational debt, and planning a reorganizaton to product management basics, I’d highly recommend the book.

For our January book club we are reading Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When the Stakes are High based on our poll. I have read an earlier edition of this book, but like many others in the group, I felt the learnings were critical, so it will be great to read again with a cohort. I honestly love revisiting good books: great opportunity to see how I have changed and where the narrative resonates now.

I’ve decided to start hosting a book club since I love reading, and would like to be able to connect with folks who have different perspectives about their key insights. Officially we will start in 2023 (part of my New Year goals to not just read for me, but to build and strengthen community). Please sign up here if you are interested.

Format

I will publish the book as a post here on my blog that I intend to read toward the beginning of the month, and then I will schedule a virtual meet up on the last Friday of the month at 3:30PM PST to ensure that we have an hour to talk about key takeaways/findings. I will start this month just as an experimental effort to work out the kinks, so if you would like to join early, please feel free to respond here or on LinkedIn.

Kickoff

For December’s experiment, I’m reading An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management by Will Larson. Will Larson is a prolific writer, with an amazing blog that likely has advice, or at least insights, about almost any situation you might encounter in engineering management. Having managed different kinds of teams, I will say definitively that there are unique challenges to every one, and being able to step back and think about the specific group you are managing, their challenges and strengths, is a requirement. Even if you are in a position of influence with that type of team versus directly overseeing their work, it is useful to dig into the kinds of processes and flows they use, so that you can be effective in partnering.

Thanks all, and Happy New Year!