6 Books to Read in Honor of Women’s History Month

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Change is coming. And patience is running out for those who don’t get it. 

We’ve poured through some of the latest books written by women, about women, and for women in honor of Women’s History Month. Here are 6 fresh books that we think are well worth the turn of the page:

1. Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility by Patty McCord

What it’s about: At Netflix, McCord served as Chief Talent Officer when a popular slide deck about its culture went viral. Now a consultant, McCord promotes the idea of radical honesty in the workplace, sharing lessons from her time at Netflix and elsewhere.

Why pick it up: It’s a guide for leaders of all levels on how to build a high-performance culture in the midst of vertigo-inducing change.

2. Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All of the Facts by Annie Duke

What it’s about: Duke, a former World Series of Poker champion, was awarded a National Science Foundation fellowship to study cognitive psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. She shares her work on decision strategy and distills its lessons in this book.

Why pick it up: Various sources estimate that an adult makes about 35,000 remotely conscious decisions each day.  This number may sound absurd, but in fact, we make 226.7 decisions each day on just food alone according to researchers at Cornell University (Wansink and Sobal, 2007). As your level of responsibility increases, so do the smorgasbord of choices you are faced with.

3. Brotopia: Breaking Up the Boys’ Club of Silicon Valley by Emily Chang

What it’s about: For women in tech, Silicon Valley is a land where men hold all the cards and make all the rules. Vastly outnumbered, women face toxic workplaces rife with discrimination and sexual harassment, where investors take meetings in hot tubs and network at sex parties.

Why pick it up: In this powerful exposé, Bloomberg TV journalist Emily Chang reveals how Silicon Valley got so sexist despite its utopian ideals, why bro culture endures despite decades of companies claiming the moral high ground, and how women are finally starting to speak out and fight back.

4. That’s What She Said: What Men Need to Know (and Women Need to Tell Them) About Working Together by Joanne Lipman

What it’s NOT about: Man shaming.

Why pick it up: Filled with illuminating anecdotes, data from the most recent studies, and stories from Joanne Lipman’s own journey to the top of a male-dominated industry, it shows how we can all win by reaching across the gender divide.

5. Cringeworthy: A Theory of Awkwardness by Melissa Dahl

What it’s about: New York magazine’s “Science of Us” editor explains the compelling psychology of awkwardness, and asks: what if the moments that make us feel most awkward are actually valuable?

Why pick it up: When everyone else is pretending to have it under control, you can be a little braver and grow a little bigger–while remaining true to your awkward self. And along the way, you might find that awkward moments unite us in our mutual human ridiculousness.

6. The Rules Do Not Apply by Ariel Levy

What it’s about: A hopeful meditation on womanhood and a universal quest

ion: What’s the most we should expect from ourselves and our bodies? It’s also a rumination on memory, family, commitment and the frailty of those things. You don’t have to be a woman for Levy’s writing to resonate.

Why pick it up: Levy’s story of resilience is an unforgettable portrait of the shifting forces in our culture, of what has changed—and of what is eternal.

Question: What titles would you add in honor of Women’s History Month?

Doing Well by Doing Good: 12 Companies that Got it Right in 2017

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The strongest organizations in the world achieve sustainable success largely because they understand the value of culture as a competitive advantage. Whether you nurture it or not, you have a culture. It may be empowering or toxic. Either way, the results are showing up on your bottom line.

Here are the 12 companies we featured in CEE News this year that show how doing well and doing good are not mutually exclusive.

1. Dancing Deer Baking Company, Hyde Park, MA, “Scratch-Baked Goodness to the Community”

Dancing Deer Baking Company has flourished since introducing its first cookie in 1994 and so has the community of Hyde Park, Massachusettes. The bakery hires chronically unemployed individuals in the community and dedicates a portion of its profits to local development projects. Dancing Deer has won national recognition for its delicious baked goods, its sustainable business practices, and its community impact initiatives. [Read more]

2. Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soap, Vista, CA, “All-One”

Open a bottle of Dr. Bronner’s Magic Liquid Soap, and you’ll be taking part of a story that dates back over 150 years. It’s a story that began with a family of soapmakers in the Jewish community of Heilbronn, Germany. The story includes the holocaust, an escape from a Chicago mental institution, an attempted crucifixion on a bridge in 1945 Woodstock, and, well, it’s a complex epic that has passed through five generations of the Bronner family. [Read more]

3. Masonite, Tampa, FL, “Helping people walk through walls”Not many American companies today can trace their history back for 92 years, or link to inventor Thomas Edison. But, Masonite, a publicly-traded company (NYSE: DOOR) can follow its roots back to Laurel, Mississippi, and its founder William H. Mason, an apprentice of Thomas Edison. [Read more]

4. Stonyfield, Londonderry, NH, “Yogurt on a mission

While Stonyfield is best known for making yogurt, yogurt wasn’t the way the founders of Stonyfield thought they’d change the world. In 1983, co-founders Samuel Kaymen and Gary Hirshberg were trying to help family farms survive, protect the environment, and keep food healthy through their nonprofit organic farming school. [Read more]

5. Igloo Products Corp., Katy, TX, “Culture of commitment”

If you’ve ever gone on a family picnic, packed a boat for a day of fishing, or brought drinks to keep the soccer team hydrated, there’s a good chance an Igloo® ice chest was involved. Igloo chests, along with the iconic red and white coolers, are just two of more than 550 products made by the 70-year old Igloo Products Corporation in Katy, Texas, just west of Houston. [Read more]

6. W.L. Gore and Associates, Newark, DE, “Conscious culture”

Imagine operating a manufacturing company with no core product, no bosses, and a democratically-elected CEO. How long do you think it would survive? [Read more]

7. Sticker Giant Longmont, CO, “Open book management”

One political bumper sticker based on the indecision of the Bush/Gore presidential election in 2000. That’s how CEO John Fischer launched StickerGiant from his basement 17 years ago. Today, the company employees nearly 40 people and processes about 18 miles of sticker material every week. [Read more]

8. TGI Fridays, Dallas, TX, “The gift of time”

You have to hand it to a company that has survived for five decades, fought off imitators, and endured shaming for asking its employees to wear flair. The chain’s signature look – a combination of Antiques Roadshow and Hoarders – actually started in 1965 as one of New York’s City’s first singles bars. [Read more]

9. Great Little Box Company, Richmond, BC, “Big Outrageous Xtravaganza (BOX) Goals”

For 35 years, Canadian-based Great Little Box Company has created an equally great little culture. What started as a three-person shop in 1982, has grown to 225 employees in locations across British Columbia and Vancouver, Washington. [Read more]

10. Meltwater, San Francisco, CA, “MER values”

The year was 2001, just after the dotcom bubble burst. Jorn Lyseggen had a big idea for a new business, a coffee machine, some used furniture, and some borrowed office space in a Norwegian shipyard shack. [Read more]

11. SEMCO Partners, São Paulo, Brazil, “Big company with (almost) no rules”

If your employees could vote you in or out as their leader, would you keep your position?

That was just one of the many questions that Ricardo Semler started to ask when he went to work for his father’s company, SEMCO Partners, in the late 1970’s. [Read more]

12. Thinking Putty, Philadelphia, PA, “Shaping culture one tin at a time”

If you ask Aaron Muderick what he does for a living, he’s likely to say, “Professional Kid”. Muderick, a fidgety computer scientist, was constantly playing with Silly Putty while thinking at work. One day, he borrowed some textbooks from a friend who had just completed her Ph.D. in chemistry. He learned enough from the borrowed books to teach himself how to invent what he calls “Thinking Putty”. [Read more]

Interested in getting more content like this? Subscribe to CEE News!

CEE News is designed to help you with the challenges you face every day by sharing infographics, white papers, best practices, and spotlighting businesses that are getting it right. I hope you’ll subscribe to CEE News and it becomes a resource that continually adds value to your walk as a leader. If I can be of assistance in any way, please don’t hesitate to reach out!

How Not to Fall for Your Own Fake News

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Putin issues international arrest warrant for George Soros.

Black Lives Matter thug protests President Trump with selfie . . . accidentally shoots himself in the face.

Passenger allowed onto flight after security confiscates his bomb.

All three of these headlines were widely reported last year. Two of them were fake. Can you tell which one is true?*

Fake news has become part of the world’s daily news cycle. Many people now operate in virtual gated communities or information echo chambers. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to separate fact from fiction in both the political and popular press. To combat fake news, a growing body of websites and apps give consumers the ability to stop to fact check before sharing headlines in the social media feeds.

But the echo chamber effect is not limited to our smart phones. The same theory can apply to leaders. The higher we climb up the org chart, the greater our tendency is to spend most of our time with our direct reports. By operating in our own virtual gated community at work, we can severely limit our ability to assess reality correctly.

Author and Center for Executive Excellence’s Scholar-in-Residence, Dr. Tony Baron, suggests that leaders must be intentional about building community. To build an inner circle to help you assess reality correctly, Dr. Baron offers this criteria for choosing your community:

1.    Choose those in your community who are with you the most, not those who see you the least.

2.    Choose those in your community who can see you at your worst, not just those who see you at your best.

3.    Choose those in your community with whom you are willing to eat or play, not just those you are willing to work with.

4.    Choose those in your community whom you respect for their integrity, not just those you admire for their accomplishments.

5.    Choose those in your community who are willing to listen to understand, not just those who want to be understood.

6.    Choose those in your community who care about you as a person, not just those who care about you professionally.

7.    Choose those in your community who are willing to ask the tough questions, not just those who provide the easy answers.

8.    Choose those in your community who maintain confidentiality, not just those who are compelling in personality.

Every one of us needs a small number of people in our inner circle. People whom we can be honest with. People who will be honest with us. Because it’s just too easy to fall for our own fake news.

*The correct response to the opening quiz was the third headline. A teenage passenger in Edmonton, Canada, was allowed to board a flight after a pipe bomb found in his bag was confiscated by airport security. He claimed to have forgotten the device was in his bag after making it with a friend for fun some months before.

Question: What are you doing to assess reality correctly as a consumer of news and as a leader?

How to Give Thanks Like a Boss

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We’ve all come across them. Those leaders who people naturally gravitate toward. Though it seems counterintuitive, the magnetic effect these leaders have on people is not because of how people feel about the leader. It’s because of how the leader makes people feel about themselves.

These leaders have mastered two basic facts about people. Fact 1: Every person matters. Fact 2: Every person wants to feel valued.

As Thanksgiving approaches, this is an excellent time to review the skills necessary to express meaningful gratitude to your team. Here are three skills that will yield the highest return:

1. Write a Note. Do not. I repeat. Do not mistake a thank you email for the real thing. Handwritten thank you notes are about relationships. Emails are about transactions. When you take a little extra time to write a personal message to team members to acknowledge your gratitude, you are also acknowledging that they are more than just a tool. They are human beings who matter and are valued. If your note writing skills are rusty, here’s a quick primer to get you started.

2. Make It a Habit. When it comes to business, we can fall into the trap of not seeing people who come in, get the job done, and don’t require constant attention. We take these employees for granted and just assume they don’t need a show of gratitude. To turn your attention to those who don’t ask for it, take a few minutes each morning to make a list of three team members you appreciate and why. Over time, you’ll begin to cultivate of habit of putting yourself in a gratitude mindset.

3. Give People Sincere Appreciation. People who don’t feel appreciated are often the first to burn out or jump ship. It only takes a minute to recognize a team member for making a positive contribution. But, doing it right requires more than the occasional “Attagirl!” Give timely and specific praise to show your team members how you value their contribution. Here’s a quick demo to show you how.

One final secret to mastering leadership gratitude – you can’t fake it. Leaders who genuinely care about their team members will invest the time to help each one feel valued. Make it a habit to sincerely recognize their efforts. Every day is an opportunity to help people see the best in themselves and feel like a valued contributor to the team.

Question: Have you had a leader who gave you a handwritten note of thanks? What did you learn from that experience? 

Interested in getting more content like this? Subscribe to CEE News!

CEE News is designed to help you with the challenges you face every day by sharing infographics, white papers, best practices, and spotlighting businesses that are getting it right. I hope you’ll subscribe to CEE News and it becomes a resource that continually adds value to your walk as a leader. If I can be of assistance in any way, please don’t hesitate to reach out!

Make A Mistake? Take A Failure Bow!

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Think about the last mistake that you made. Now think about what happens to your body when you realize you made the mistake.

Here’s an example. You’re happily going about your daily routine, when, “Oops!” you realize that you forgot to bring something that you need for your next meeting. Or, you remember a commitment you made that you forgot to deliver on. It could be something as innocuous as leaving a phone on a colleague’s desk, to something important like forgetting your anniversary. Regardless of the level of the mistake, in the moment it occurs to us that we did not do the right thing at the right time, what happens to our body?

We cringe. And sometimes, not subtly. Sometimes, we instinctively throw one hand over our head and block our chin with the other. Our shoulders curl, we squint our eyes, and we make ourselves smaller — like a prize fighter protecting himself from a blow. But, there is no physical blow. There’s only a mental blow that we manifest physically as shame for failure.

It’s something that we have done so many times over the years of making mistakes, that we don’t event recognize that we do it. It’s automatic.

The problem is, suggests Matt Smith in his TEDx Talk on Sustainable Happiness, that embodying our mistakes over and over can lead our thoughts to change from, “I made a mistake” to “I am a mistake.” The cringe mode is the embodiment of the mistake. We become the mistake.

When we allow ourselves to go into cringe mode every time we make a mistake, we put our bodies in a protective, inward posture that does not invite growth. Over time, the muscle memory of what it feels like to make a mistake keeps us from trying new things, from suggesting new ideas, or even from thinking new thoughts. We freeze.

Research by social psychologists like Amy Cuddy suggests that we may be able to change our own body chemistry — simply by changing body positions. What’s more, neuroscience studies show that our brains are filled with neurons that mirror not only the actions, but the emotions, of those around us. So, going into self-imposed cringe mode can cause those around us to replicate the shame we feel for making mistakes.

So how do you rewire your impulse to protect yourself from cringe mode when you realize you’ve made a mistake?

Take a Failure Bow. If you’ve ever watched an Olympic gymnast recover from a shaky landing after a vault jump or a high beam routine, you’ve seen the Failure Bow. The next time you catch your body going to automatic cringe posture from making a mistake, stop yourself and immediately switch to a Failure Bow. You can do it like an Olympic gymnast. You can do it like a trapeze artist. You can do it like a magician. You can even add a “Ta Da!” for emphasis.

Bring Yourself Back to the Present. The Failure Bow develops the skill of bringing your attention back to the present moment and resets your focus. It’s impossible to cringe in shame and bow like a gymnast who’s just stuck the perfect landing at the same time. Likewise, it’s impossible to feel shame and get locked in the past if your body is facing open and outward.

Acknowledge the Learning Path. The purpose of the Failure Bow is not to celebrate mistake making. Its purpose is to acknowledge the facts of a mistake, then create an alternative interpretation of those facts. “I failed because I’m lousy at this” tells a radically different story than “I’m bravely walking a risk-filled learning edge.” The former compounds the mistake by embodying it — the latter makes it a natural part of learning.

We work in a world where innovation is a requirement for survival. We need to be creative, take chances, and innovate. Mistakes are a natural part of that process. The next time you find yourself going into cringe mode, celebrate the learning path by taking a dramatic Failure Bow. You’ll reset the shame, acknowledge your vulnerability, and move forward with humor.

Question: How do you rewire your impulse to protect yourself from the shame that comes with the innovation process?