Book: Are You Fully Charged? The 3 Keys To Energizing Your Work And Life

Publishing Year: 2015

About the Author: Tom Rath is an author and researcher with over two decades spent studying the interaction between work, human health and well-being, including during his 13 years at Gallup, where Tom led the organization’s strengths, employee engagement, wellbeing, and leadership consulting worldwide. His books have sold in over 10 million copies and include global bestsellers such as StrengthsFinder 2.0, Strengths Based Leadership, Wellbeing, and Eat Move Sleep, and Are You Fully Charged?. Tom also co-authored two illustrated books for children, How Full Is Your Bucket? for Kids and The Rechargeables. 

Growth Is A Journey book review consists of a series of questions and answers, intended to represent 1-2 key nuggets of insight from the book, as well as personal takeaways with an invitation for readers to discover the book in its entirety.

Key message of the Book: Fully-charged individuals are those who live an abundant and happy life as result of three main reasons: (1) they have found meaning in their life and work, (2) they are mindful about having more positive interactions than negative ones and (3) they are practicing a healthy lifestyle via healthy eating, sleeping and exercising habits.

What to know before reading: The book is a guide in living a fully-charged life, via three main sections on Meaning, Interactions and Energy.

Each section is an invitation to a fully-charged life via adoption of proven principles and insights, that represent the essence and findings of a myriad of surveys and research work.

To make it more concrete, as an example, Chapter 1 of the Part 1: Meaning is titled Create Meaning With Small Wins and is a walk-through to creating meaning in our day-to-day life. As per Tom Rath, meaning is not about some grandiose results and actions in our lives, it is about making a difference in our environments: “Small wins generate meaningful progress. You might create a small positive charge for one of your customers today or work on a new product that will benefit people in the future. Over the weekend, maybe you’ll have a long conversation with a loved one that makes a difference. It is these little moments, not grand actions, that create substance and meaning.” Tom demonstrates this is the case via research work led by Roy Baumeister and Barbara Fredrickson, University professors who in their lifelong work found that “Happiness without meaning characterizes a relatively shallow, self-absorbed or even selfish life“. By comparison, engaging in meaningful activities – that improve the environment around us- leads to more sustaining levels of happiness: “Every minute you can set aside your own happiness for the sake of others will eventually lead to stronger families, organizations and communities”.

Throughout the book, the reader will be discovering similar nuggets of insights and research-based principles around finding purpose in life and work, redefining happiness in our own terms and based on our strengths, valuing prioritizing experiences and positive interactions, and adopting a healthy lifestyle.

Biggest personal learning from the book: Key personal learning was that a fully-charged life depends on three variables – all three variables are required and interdependent. For a fully-charged life, it is not enough to create meaning or have positive interactions or stay healthy. It has to be all three. In other words, if you are not adopting a healthy, lifestyle you are less likely to sustain positive interactions and create meaning. If you are doing everything right health-wise but not having positive interactions or finding meaning in your day-to-day activities, you are less likely to sustain mental or physical health.

One specific learning from the book: A point made in the book is around the ratios of positive and negative interactions. In the chapter “Be 80% Positive”, Tom Rath explains the benefits of targeting that “at least 80% of our conversations should be focused on what’s right.” This is because three to five positive interactions are needed to outweigh a negative exchange. Positive interactions are associated with higher body’s production of oxytocin, the feel-good hormone; negative interactions are associated with higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol. Such principle can be practically applied in our verbal or written communications by being mindful about the words we use: “Positive words are the glue that holds relationships together”.

How is this book different from other leadership books: The book is like a cocktail of vitamins, condensed to provide a roadmap for a fully-charged life. Behind each principle, there is a good amount of research work, surveys or studies done to support such findings.

Additional resources: For more details www.tomrath.org

Comments/Feedback: I would love to hear from you with comments, thoughts, and testimonials on Are You Fully Charged?

Book: Living an Examined Life: Wisdom for the Second Half of the Journey – A 21-Step Plan for Addressing the Unfinished Business of Your Life

Publishing Year: 2018

About the Author: James Hollis, PhD is a Jungian psychoanalyst and the author of sixteen books including Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life, On This Journey We Call Our Life: Living the Questions, and Creating a Life: Finding Your Individual Path. James Hollis served as  Executive Director of the Jung Educational Center in Houston, Texas for many years, was Executive Director of the Jung Society of Washington until 2019, and now serves on the JSW Board of Directors, while having a private practice in Washington-DC. His work has been translated into many languages including Swedish, Russian, German, Spanish, French, Hungarian, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian, Korean, Finnish, Romanian, Bulgarian, Farsi, Japanese, Greek, Chinese, and Czech.

Growth Is A Journey summary consists of a series of questions and answers, intended to represent 1-2 key nuggets of insight from the book, as well as personal takeaways with an invitation for readers to discover the book in its entirety.

Key message of the Book: The “second half of the journey” or growing up is not a chronological milestone in our lives (e.g. getting married, having kids, being financially independent) but a psychological stage of maturity and awareness. Once we reach this stage of conscious and intentional living, we can “leave behind the expectations of others and grow into the persons we were meant to be“. Living an examined life is what makes possible “the recovery of your journey“, a journey that, in James Hollis’ words, is “more productive, more clearly our own“.

What to know before reading: The book is a guide in self discovery and inner growth, structured as a 21-step plan with questions, insights and wisdom offered to help us journey through examining and discovering our lives, values and ultimately our unique purpose.

Each chapter of the book is challenging the reader into questioning limiting beliefs, behaviors, ways of thinking or values that when examined, it becomes clear that they are not in the service of a life of “personal authority, integrity and fulfillment”.

To make it more concrete, as an example, Chapter 1 titled The Choice Is Yours is a wake-up call to the fact that as human beings, we will always have a choice. This is despite learning from early age that experimenting or pushing boundaries will likely cause negative reactions, teaching us to adapt and survive largely by fitting in and limiting our discoveries. It is therefore powerful to rediscover that we do have choice and ultimately remain the “central character in our life drama“, despite our environment, upbringing or possible limitations. In fact, such discovery is life-giving: “Our life begins twice: the day we are born and the day we accept the radical existential fact that our life, for all its delimiting factors, is essentially ours to choose. And the moment when we open to that invitation and step into that accountability, we take on the power of choice.”

Throughout the book, as per James Hollis ‘intent for the book, the reader will be making an appointment with his/her soul by examining questions like “It’s time to grow up”, “Let Go of the Old”, “Vow to Get Unstuck”, “What is the Bigger Picture for You?”, “Choose Meaning over Happiness”, “Construct a Mature Spirituality”,…

Biggest personal learning from the book: Key personal learning was the idea of embedding in every day’s life a continuous practice of examining and reflecting over both the brightest and the darkest corners of our existence, pasts, behaviors, hearts and minds. Such journey of self-questioning and self-examination is what will bring healing, courage and integrity in our lives, and become a foundation for continued inner growth.

One specific learning from the book: A point made multiple times in the book is around the human story, which is a cyclical one of losses and wins, of separation and isolation, of new and old – the faster we accept and embrace that, the faster we enter our second halves of our journeys: “Life is a series of attachment and losses, beginning with our disconnect from the womb, a primal trauma from which we never wholly recover. During our journey, we link with, attach to, and also separate from others on a continuing basis. People come and go in our lives. Some of these losses are traumatic: a marriage that sinks, a child lost, a career up in smoke. Those things hurt, yet not to move forward in service to life, in service to bringing more into this world, is to abrogate our reason for being here – to bring our more evolved chip to the great mosaic of being, a humbling and enabling participation in the vast puzzle that the human venture has been adding or substracting from since its beginning in the African veldt many millennia ago.”

How is this book different from other leadership books: The book is like booking a therapy session with a very seasoned and intuitive therapist. Via a series of questions and insights turned into a 21-step plan, the journey to growing up enfolds at times in a way that is uncomfortable. As James Hollis noted in the preface of the book, “sometimes we need a list, sometimes to be reminded, and sometimes to be kicked in the butt. This book is that reminder, that kick in the butt. This book promises nothing easy. It asks that the reader be serious about looking at his or her life and taking responsibility for it”.

Additional resources: For more details https://www.jameshollis.net/welcome.html

Comments/Feedback: I would love to hear from you with comments, thoughts, and testimonials on Living An Examined Life.

Book: Outliers, The Story of Success

Publishing Year: 2008

About the Author: Malcolm Gladwell is an English-born Canadian journalist, public speaker, and author of five New York Times bestsellers — The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, What the Dog Saw, and David and Goliath. His latest book published in 2019 is titled Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know. Gladwell is also the co-founder of Pushkin Industries, the producer of the podcasts Revisionist History. He has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1996. Included in the TIME 100 Most Influential People list, Gladwell is considered one of Foreign Policy’s Top Global Thinkers.

Growth Is A Journey summary consists of a series of questions and answers, intended to represent 1-2 key nuggets of insight from the book, as well as personal takeaways with an invitation for readers to discover the book in its entirety.

Key message of the Book: Outliers is a non-fiction thought-provoking book, reframing stories of success of high achievers, such as Bill Gates and Beatles, referred to as outliers. Such stories of extreme success are not defined solely through the lens of personal traits, talents, and hard work; they are presented through the lens of external factors such as the culture, environment, upbringing, generation and family of those outliers. As Malcolm put it, “the point of my book Outliers was that we need to tell the story of success in different ways, looking at the way talent is affected by luck and circumstance and culture and context.”  Of interest, as of June 2020, HBO Max is reported to have an “Outliers” series project under development, based on Gladwell’s book.

What to know before reading: The book is structured in two parts: opportunity and legacy, two external factors found to be strong contributors to the success of outliers. What opportunities we are being offered and what social, cultural, and family legacy we are inheriting can make a huge difference: “The people who stand before kings may look like they did it all by themselves. But in fact, they are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot.”  Each chapter of the book is alike a social study case, used to demonstrate how things like the birthdate, place, generation, timing, environment, and culture where you might be born or grow up into matter a lot.

To make it more concrete, as an example: Chapter one titled the Matthew Effect talks about how many hockey league players in Canada have birth months close to the cutoff date for youth hockey leagues. Players who are born within a few months of the cutoff date -January 1st- are generally slightly more developed than players who are born later in the year. Even if there is a slight age advantage, older kids are likely a bit stronger physically, meaning they have higher chances to be drafted for All-Star teams. Once selected, those kids are given better opportunities to practice and get coached than the younger kids. What started as a small advantage becomes a built-in advantage based on birth date, causing significant differences in the players ‘physical abilities on the long run. Such phenomenon has been coined as the Matthew Effect from the bible verse, calling out that those advantaged will get further advantaged while the disadvantaged will see more losses.

Throughout the book, you will be journeying through the connection between plane crashes and national cultures, why many software tycoons in Silicon Valley are born around 1955, why descendants of Jewish immigrants, born around 1930 became very successful lawyers in New York, and why Asian children are so good in math.

Biggest personal learning from the book: Key learning for me was the idea of success being the result of not only hard work but also of opportunities created by the environment, generation, culture, or family you are born in. External factors influence success, as much or potentially even more than personal traits like IQ, talent or determination. Reading the book, it has opened my eyes and mind to the opportunities I have received via my birth date, culture, environment, generation and family history, and how as a parent, professional or leader, I cannot ignore the importance of such external factors when considering success of my own or those around me in my sphere of influence.

One specific learning from the book:

Known as the 10,000-hour rule, Malcolm talks about the importance of practicing and mastering a skill to achieve world-class level of expertise: “Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing you do that makes you good.” Furthermore, Outliers seem to be folks who were given unique opportunities to practice early enough to get to the 10,000-hour level early in their careers or lives: “But there is nothing in any of the histories we’ve looked at so far to suggest things are that simple. These are stories, instead, about people who were given a special opportunity to work really hard and seized it, and who happened to come of age at a time when that extraordinary effort was rewarded by the rest of society”.  For instance, Beatles started as a high school rock band, struggling at the beginning but which got the opportunity to practice hard when invited to play at a night club in Hamburg for eight hours a night, seven days a week for several times between 1960 and 1962: “All told, they performed for 270 nights in just over a year and a half. By the time they had their first burst of success in 1964, in fact, they had performed live an estimated twelve hundred times”.

As someone who sees hard work as a personal value, I also empathized with the idea of finding meaning in work: “Those three things – autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward – are, most people will agree, the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying.” In other words, “hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning. Once it does, it becomes the kind of thing that makes you grab your wife around the waist and dance a jig”.

How is this book different from other leadership books: The book is not the typical success/self-help book encouraging a specific set of individual traits or skills, or a particular mindset. It is a book woven in social, economic, and cultural research that explains in a fascinating way how as human beings our success has a lot to do with the external world/culture/environment/generation we live in. It brings to light in a very compelling way that “success is a group project”: “It’s because of the contributions of lots of different people and lots of different circumstances, and that means that we, as a society, have more control about who succeeds – and how many of us succeed – than we think.”

Additional resources: For more details on https://www.gladwellbooks.com/

Comments/Feedback: I would love to hear from you with comments, thoughts, and testimonials on Outliers.

Title: Guts & Grace, A Woman’s Guide To Full-Bodied Leadership, How To Lead Consciously, Dissolve Glass Ceilings, and Dismantle the Patriarchy Within

Publishing Year: 2020

About the Author: LeeAnn Mallorie is a leadership coach, who started her career as an executive coach in 2005, working with C-level leaders and teams around the globe. As the founder and CEO of Leading in Motion, LeeAnn has spent the last decade helping leaders combat both meaning-depletion and burnout by bridging the gap between the hard-driving, logical mind and the deeper, more subtle wisdom of the body and intuition. LeeAnn has taught courses on embodied leadership at the Berkeley Hass School of Business, the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and the Strozzi Institute. Her client list includes brand names like NASA, Capital One, Roche, Campbells Soup Company, Mattel, Nordstrom, Salesforce, Logitech, and the US Naval Air Systems Command, along with startups, non-profits and foundations.

Growth Is A Journey summary consists of a series of questions and answers, intended to share 1-2 key nuggets of insight and personal takeaways. The summary is designed to be an invitation to you all to read the book in its entirety as part of your own journeys of personal and professional growth.

Key message of the book: Guts & Grace is a book about growing leadership skills, by understanding and building upon the connection between body and mind. As strange as it might sound when hearing about it for the first time, there is a powerful connection between body and mind. We understand this oftentimes when when we are tensed and our body aches. Once this deep body-mind system is activated via embodied practices, a more authentic, grounded and stronger leader awakens in each one of us.

What to know before reading: The book is structured across four Themes – Embody, Empower, Activate and Inspire. Within each theme, chapters are focused around a leadership myth. Dispelling the myth involves replacing it with a new leadership truth, backed by a piece of research or other books on the myth, as part of a science section. LeeAnn ends each chapter with a practice section with 1-2 recommended embodied practices to integrate and experiment with. There are 12 embodied practices in the book, the core of embodied leadership teaching. Playlist recommendations are a bonus to each chapter.

To make it more concrete, as an example, chapter one is about the leadership myth that when we are leaders and striving to make an impact, it is normal to feel exhausted, body and joy coming the last. This is a lie we tell ourselves especially as new leaders or from time to time when we normalize the feelings of being overwhelmed. The truth however is that if we don’t prioritize feeling good in our bodies and mind, sooner or later we will end up missing on “powerful and compelling leadership”. Replacing the myth by the truth is supported by past research and science. For instance, LeeAnne points to John Ratey’s research findings. As a clinical associate professor at Harvard Medical School, Ratey was puzzled by the rise in physical and mental disease despite the technological and medical advances over the past few decades. Via his work, Ratey found that our sedentary lifestyle choices are a big driver in this trend because these lifestyle choices are violating our original biological design. In other words, we were built to move, and by not doing so, our bodies are not functioning at the optimal level. Therefore, Ratey’s advice is for us to find ways to return to our wilder, more original nature – the medicine needed the most by modern-day human beings. The two embodied practices LeeAnne is recommending in this chapter are anchored in this research: (1) commit to a Joy workout class every week (e.g. dance, pottery, cooking, piano,…) – meaning an activity that brings you JOY; and (2) take a daily happy dance  – which will activate joy, creativity, play, and the inner child in you. Such physical practices will energize you and will improve your capacity to make new moves in other domains as well, at work or in your personal lives.

Other leadership myths in the book pertain to time management (e.g. the myth of being at the mercy of others and deadlines), saying no, having difficult conversations, effective and long-lasting change…

All those myths replaced by leadership truths are foundation to the 4 principles of conscious leadership -Embody, Empower, Activate and Inspire.

Biggest personal learning from the book: My key learning from the book is the idea of using our bodies to strengthen leadership skills. The recommended practices are making this learning very practical as they literally build the capability to awaken to our bodies, to listen within (to our bodies and intuition), and to connect with ourselves and our emotions, all in order to grow in our leadership capacity in a way that is both gracious and authentic. My only regret is to not have read this book much earlier!!! 

One specific learning from the book: A practice that I found powerful and a practical tool to grow to a next level is around two key concepts presented in Guts & Grace. Those concepts are: the Core Dilemma and the North Star.

– The Core Dilemma is the one thing – behavior or emotion – that, consciously or unconsciously, stands in our way and sabotages us. It’s the “internal glass ceiling”, the “Achilles heel” , the “survival strategy” that served us once to survive and which likely impacts both our personal and professional lives. Core Dilemma could be beliefs such as “I need to do all to show I am strong” or “It’s better to not speak up to keep peace”.

– The North Star is a declaration for a specific outcome, embodying a commitment to a new form of existence or emotion. “I am a commitment to speaking up and being seen” or “I am a commitment to loving and letting go of the need to prove myself”. Having a North Star practice for a specific intention (e.g. a particular physical posture while affirming your new commitment) will be the catalyst for the intention to be embodied. We ultimately become our North Star – the body will take on the natural shape the North Star declaration inspires.

How is this book different from other leadership books: The book is truly a guide taking the reader from one myth to another, from a practice to another …. with the intent for the reader to find and use the inner wisdom of the body. I love the practicality of the book via the 12 embodied practices. Even after an initial read, the book remains a practical and life-long tool for continued growth or when particular leadership myths make their way back into our beliefs and lives.

The author’s special message for the Growth Is A Journey community: “I’m excited to support you through a journey of growth and transformation as you read my new book Guts & Grace. Whether it be at work or at home, taking the lead requires courage and strength… but it also requires knowing when (and how!) to surrender to forces bigger than yourself and trust that they will carry you through. Guts & Grace is designed to help you heal old wounds, release anxieties, build resilience and really step into your whole self as a leader, regardless of your age. I hope you and your community have an amazing journey with Guts & Grace, and always remember to trust your gut!” (LeeAnne Mallorie, March 2020)

Additional resources: For more details on Guts & Grace embodied practices, please check out Guts& Grace and the resource page: https://www.gutsandgrace.com/book-resources-page.

Comments/Feedback: I would love to hear from you with comments, thoughts and testimonials on Guts & Grace and your own journeys of embodied leadership.

Growth Is A Journey invites you to a journey of reading and discussing a book every two months.

While oftentimes a book club may embrace a specific genre of book, the Growth Is A Journey book club will showcase all genres of books: fiction or non-fiction, personal or professional development, chidren’s literature…

The only condition for a book to make it to the Growth Is A Journey book club is to teach us something, be it at a personal or professional level.

If you have book suggestions, I would love for you to share them in the comments below.