Finding opportunity amidst constant change, much of which is out of our control, can be challenging. Our ability to slow down, appreciate an inflection point and adopt an open bowl mindset about what could be is powerful and liberating. Inflection points can potentially transform our approach to our work, how we show up for ourselves and in service to our teams and how we chart the next path on our respective career journeys.
This edition’s featured article, The Art of Asking Great Questions, posits that curiosity and provocative, aperture-widening questions are exceedingly helpful (if not always comfortable) to being present to and successfully navigating inflection points. When done with intent and a desire to grow, a commitment to ask before assuming or asserting fuels trust, deference to expertise and humility. Questions can ignite generative environments that inspire depth of inquiry, breadth of imagination and leaps in innovation.
Leaders have the opportunity and the obligation to foster an environment of personal development and growth. Effectively doing this requires cultivating a depth of expertise in both their questioning and listening skills. Leaders who role-model thoughtful questioning and active listening have the ability to create sustainable cultures that value our gifts and inspire us to bring the very best of ourselves every day.
As a bookend to the last edition, I have curated a series of additional perspectives on inflection points, change and our ability to navigate and find our next new, different, etc. ways. Though the primary focal point of the resources below is professional, many of the same concepts and mindsets are applicable to our personal lives.
Articles
Psychology Today: How You Change. “The question is not whether you’ll change; you will. Research clearly shows that everyone’s personality traits shift over the years, often for the better. But who we end up becoming and how much we like that person are more in our control than we tend to think.”
The Wall Street Journal: Now Is the Most Rewarding Time to Switch Jobs in Years. “Pay raises for job hoppers are the biggest they’ve been in more than two decades, a sign of workers’ power despite hints of a cooling job market.”
Harvard Business Review: How to Figure Out the Power Dynamics in a New Job. “Your ultimate success in an organization depends on your ability to execute with and through others. But when you’re starting a new job, it can be hard to find out who the true power players are and how to get close to them.”
Harvard Business Review: How Much Should New Hires Focus on Building Peer Relationships? “Starting a new job can be exciting — but it’s not without its challenges. From navigating new workplace norms to figuring out how to use new tools and processes, there’s a lot to learn in the first few days, weeks, and months. What’s the best way to help a new employee get up to speed?”
Harvard Business Review: Persuading Your Team to Embrace Change. “Ultimately, there is no one right way to lead change and unleash exceptional performance. But there is one universal challenge: to persuade people to do things they would rather not do.”
Harvard Business Review: Change Is Hard. Here’s How to Make It Less Painful. “…You’ll be helping your people to become more change-capable overall: to create skills and habits of mind to approach change in a more neutral, open way, and therefore to be better able to navigate all the changes that will arise in this new era.”
Blog Posts & Opinions
The Daily Stoic: Are You Disciplined Enough For This? “We have to know how to do nothing. We have to be able to be disciplined about our discipline. We have to know when it’s time to take a break. We have to slow down. Those who cannot are not the best. Because they have no tranquility, no perspective and no self-control.”
Seth’s Blog: And When We Disagree…”What happens when we disagree? Because when the world changes (and it always does) we’ll probably end up disagreeing sooner or later. Being good at it is a skill.”
Joseph Wells’ Blog: Action is Everything. “…I implore you to find your challenge. Because if you don’t force yourself to act, you’ll be forced to watch as the best version of yourself flashes before your eyes, never to be seen again.”
Podcasts
WorkLife with Adam Grant: How to Change Your Workplace. “It’s hard to make change at work happen. But wherever you sit in the hierarchy, there are steps you can take to overcome resistance and motivate people to embrace new ideas.”
Kelly Corrigan: Readings and Conversation – How to Do Change Well. “Reflecting on the persistence and challenge of change as a way of life and a few deep dives into very specific changes with writer, activist and community leader Jen Hatmaker.”
Freakonomics Radio Network: No Stupid Questions: Can You Change Your Mind Without Losing Face? “What is the cost of admitting you’re wrong? How can intellectual humility make you more open minded?”
Arts, Music, Culture, Literature & Humor Corner
The New York Times: It Was a Mystery in the Desert for 50 Years. “In a remote Nevada valley, the artist Michael Heizer’s astonishing megasculpture is finally revealed.”
Time: Why We Remember Music and Forget Everything Else. “People often wonder why we tend to remember songs and lyrics more easily than our own memories, where we kept our keys, and what we learned in school. It seems to be because of how often we experience music, in the world or in our minds, and the joy and emotional connection it brings us. Music represents who we are and how we feel, so of course it’s what we remember.”
The Baffler: Care Tactics: Hacking an Ableist World. “Caregivers and disabled people have been left to hack their way through a world indifferent—if not outright hostile—to their actual needs and desires.”
The New Yorker: In the Beforetime. “I could sense in my bones that the worst had happened, yet a road trip allowed time and space for disbelief. Disbelief is a kind of hope.”
The New Yorker: What Tsunami? “The massive tsunami wave looming above us is no reason to selfishly deny your parents a grandchild.”
Reflections
“Every problem, every dilemma, every dead end we find ourselves facing in life, only appears unsolvable inside a particular frame or point of view. Enlarge the box, or create another frame around the data, and problems vanish, while new opportunities appear.”
— Rosamund and Benjamin Zander
“Why is it that we yearn to be more or other than we are? It so rarely occurs to us that what we are looking for may be—indeed, always is—already within us, simply undiscovered.”
— Toinette Lippe
43
by Robin Coste Lewis
Absolutely nothing
significant
except the growing
realization that
with or without me
it is happening.
And that for
the first 42
I thought that
it needed my
approval, my agreement.
It began a while ago.
It’s been waiting
and not waiting
wishing
I would catch up.
I am catching up
to the day
accepting
that the Sun cares
and does not care,
that with or without me
it will spin and burn.
That I should
spin and burn
too.
This article was originally published here.
