Susan
David’s Required Reading
“Emotions can be harnessed to live and lead in
better ways,” says Susan
David. “For so long, we’ve treated emotions in
organizations as warm, fluffy, and disruptive. Now we’re recognizing how
powerfully they affect outcomes.”
A
psychologist at Harvard Medical School, cofounder and codirector of the
Institute of Coaching at McLean Hospital, and CEO of Evidence Based
Psychology, an organizational development consultancy,
David is a leader in the effort to transform how we view emotion in the
workplace. This is especially important in business today, as organizations
face unprecedented complexity, competition, globalization, and disruptive
technologies. Managing in this context requires the ability to adapt and
flourish in changing circumstances. “The truth is,” notes David, “that
organizations can never be truly agile unless the people who work within them
are agile — and more specifically, emotionally agile.”
David
introduced the concept of emotional agility to the business world in a 2013
article, written with Christina Congleton, in Harvard Business Review,
which heralded it as a “Management Idea of the Year.” Her acclaimed book, Emotional
Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life (Avery, 2016), outlines how to identify and accept
our emotions and respond to them in ways that ultimately make us happier and
more successful.
When I asked David about the books that
influenced her thinking on emotional agility and that executives should read to
learn how to effectively use emotions in leading themselves and others, she
responded with four titles.
“The first step in developing emotional
agility is creating mental space to make effective choices about how to act,”
she explains. “That thread connects these books. They can help leaders — and
anyone else who reads them — to shift perspective and move forward in a way
that is authentic and aligned with their values. These books teach the power of
emotions and the importance of meaning, and how both can be used to achieve
profound workplace change.”
Man’s Search for
Meaning, by Victor Frankl (Beacon Press, 1959). “This is one of the most important books of our
time. Often in life and work, we get hooked on our emotions and our stories,
and they start dictating our actions. Leaders, especially, can get hooked on
the idea of being right. What’s remarkable about this book is its message that
there is a space between stimulus and response, and in that space lies our
power and our freedom to choose. Frankl also speaks to our fundamental need to
be seen, to experience a sense of meaning and purpose, to activate our own
levels of courage, and to treat ourselves and other people with compassion.
These are key lessons for executives, because understanding what it is that
drives people is essential to effective leadership. Lastly, Frankl teaches
leaders that success is not a goal — it is a by-product of understanding and
moving in directions that are concordant with their values.”
Pilgrim, by David Whyte (Many Rivers Press, 2012). “The poems in this book are about the transitions —
the seasons — in people’s lives. I chose it because leaders often become overly
focused on the mechanistic aspects of outcomes and organizational processes.
This can lead to a loss of connection with the beauty and inspiration at the
heart of life. Whyte’s poetry reconnects us to human truth in ways that can be
very uplifting and hopeful. It offers leaders perspective and enables them to
find inspiration in their journey.”
Quiet:
The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, by Susan Cain (Crown, 2012). “I love this book because it exposes one of the
most common biases in Western society — placing extroversion on a pedestal.
Cain questions that bias and the power that it holds over leaders. She shows
how leaders can categorize people in ways that don’t necessarily serve them or
their organizations. Leaders who read this book will learn how to find value in
the unique perspectives that different personalities bring to the workplace.”
TED Talks: The
Official TED Guide to Public Speaking, by Chris Anderson (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016). “All leaders need to be effective speakers, but
Anderson’s message is that persuasive speaking is more than glossy production;
he teaches that you can’t persuade people unless you start from where they are,
and then take them on a journey. The book is filled with eminently practical
tips — avoiding jargon, building concepts, etc. But it also has a deeper
message, that creating emotional resonance in people is necessary for them to
travel with you. For me, this book is a metaphor about taking people on a
journey in which they become invested and choose to make key changes in their
lives and organizations.”
Theodore Kinni
https://www.strategy-business.com/blog/Susan-Davids-Required-Reading?gko=b6c04&utm_source=itw&utm_medium=20170726&utm_campaign=resp
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