John Pearson's Buckets Blog

Live Large! 7 Lasting Lessons for Navigating Life’s Twists & Turns

Issue No. 478 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting shares a “slow down/stop rushing around” lesson learned by a now-retired CEO. Powerful! And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and click here for the new book from John Pearson and Jason Pearson, Mastering Mistake-Making: My 25 Memorable Mistakes—And What I Learned. See Mistake #4 below.


Like this grandparent pictured here (not Bob Lonac!) you may also discover that something extraordinary can happen when we intentionally slow down.
 
“I Learned to Become Still”

Warning! Read Bob Lonac’s new book at your own risk!

Reflecting on his leadership career with Young Life, International Justice Mission, and then 13 years as CEO of CRISTA Ministries (1,800 staff members), Bob Lonac confesses in Live Large! 7 Lasting Lessons for Navigating Life’s Twists & Turns:

“…I never thought that retiring in January of 2019 would provide the opportunity to learn my greatest lesson about being still before the Lord. How was I to know my teacher would be a child not even old enough to walk?”

As COO of International Justice Mission, Lonac had learned from Gary Haugen, IJM’s founder, the powerful potential of giving staff “30 minutes of quiet time at the start of each workday.” He notes, “This daily ritual and rhythm of prayer sent IJM on a new trajectory of continuing to grow a culture of listening to God and acting on what He says.” (See my brief note about “8:30 Stillness” in my list of recommended spiritual growth books for this decade. Click here.) 

Yet…(perhaps you also have a “yet” in your daily discipline?)…Lonac admits, “Those 30 minutes of quiet time and being still in prayer continued to be tricky for me.” He adds, “…often it still felt more like an obligation than a joy.”

Fast forward. Grandpa Bob and his wife, Kathleen, volunteered for an 11-week stint as substitute nannies for their ninth grandchild, Keva. Just seven months old, this “gentle, beautiful, and precious” (the Gaelic meaning of Keva) granddaughter melted their hearts from the moment their son, Ryan, dropped her off at 7:15 a.m.—five days a week! Oh, my!

Read this poignant chapter and you’ll understand why the Lonacs were grateful that little Keva took several naps every day—yet something extraordinary also happened.

“I would prepare Keva’s bottle, and Kathleen would feed her sitting on the couch. I would then take Keva and walk with her around the house until she fell asleep in my arms. I started to sing the same song while I was walking her—one I liked by the Mills Brothers called “Across the Alley from the Alamo.”

Listen to the Mills Brothers sing, “Across the Alley From the Alamo” (2 ½ minutes).

“Each day little Keva fell asleep a little sooner. A few days after I started this routine, I sat down in my easy chair in my office (still singing along with the Mills Brothers, of course) with Keva on my chest. As she slept, I grew quiet.”

I don’t want to issue a spoiler alert here because you’ll reap the reward by reading this nuanced holy moment yourself. But you should know that Lonac “succumbed to the moment” and little Keva—asleep on his chest—slowed his breathing and the resulting epiphany was powerful. He writes,

“During those 11 short weeks Kathleen and I cared for Keva, I learned to slow down. In slowing down, I learned to become still. And in discovering a new capacity and desire to be still, God drew near to me.”

Whew. I’ve shared just one of the seven chapters from Live Large! 7 Lasting Lessons for Navigating Life’s Twists & Turns. Lonac is equally transparent in all seven chapters, including Chapter 5, “Bad Things Happen.” Just 115 pages, you’ll repeat the memorable stories and lessons to your family and your team members.

I’ll close with one more insight from Lonac: “During the entire time with Keva, no criticism or shame came my way from God, only affirmation and love. Thankfully, I had insights into things I had been thinking about and inspirations about current tasks. Now I try to pause before I start tasks like phone calls, errands, and most everyday stuff I do. I ask God to direct my path and my spirit. There is no rush. Sometimes even just waiting on God brought me peace and pure joy.”

NOTE: Lonac’s Live Large! stories and lessons have that familiar flavor of Henry Blackaby’s writings—“Find out what God is doing and then join Him.” Watch for my review later this year of the 2021 expanded edition of Experiencing God: Knowing and Doing the Will of God. Blackaby’s all-night prayer for his newborn son, Richard, is inspiring and convicting (ditto Lonac’s 11-week prayer sessions!). Richard now leads Blackaby Ministries International.

To order this book, click on the title for Live Large! 7 Lasting Lessons for Navigating Life’s Twists & Turns, by Bob Lonac. (Note: not available on Amazon.) And thanks to the author for sending a review copy.

YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS
1) “There is no rush,” writes Bob Lonac. If (like me) you find slowing down almost impossible, read the four chapters in Part 5, “God Moments, Joanne’s Question, Dorm Room Evangelism, and Idolatry,” in Mastering Mistake Making. Mistake #19 suggests you begin by listening to Chuck Girard’s classic anthem, “Slow Down.” Click here.

Listen to Chuck Girard sing “Slow Down” (4 min.).

2) If we can’t spare four minutes to listen to “Slow Down,” what does that say about our pace of life in our organization and our own lives? Yikes!
3) Raise your hand if you’d hop on a short Zoom call just to hear Bob Lonac sing “Across the Alley from the Alamo.”
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Mistake #4 of 25:
Not Learning How to Listen
Insights from Mastering Mistake-Making: My 25 Memorable Mistakes—And What I Learned, by John Pearson with Jason Pearson


Hot-off-the-press! Read the new book by John Pearson and Jason Pearson and then feature a “10 Minutes for Lifelong Learning” segment at your weekly staff meeting.

“Way too late in life I’m learning how to listen.” That’s the subtitle of Mistake #4 in the new book by John Pearson with Jason Pearson. John describes a wake-up call in 1993 when he was facilitating a Q&A with Lee Strobel and 920 church leaders in Auckland, New Zealand. (LOL!)

John writes, “I thought I was a decent listener, but I wasn’t. I had never read even one article, chapter, or book on effective listening. I preferred talking!”

Each chapter in Mastering Mistake Making features a brief and personal “mistake story,” (often a hilarious management mistake), and then what John learned after reading a recommended fork-in-the-road book. He recommends one book for each mistake: 25 must-read books!

For Mistake #4, in addition to Strobel’s classic, The Case for Christ (over 5 million sold), John recommends The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever, by Michael Bungay Stanier. The mistake chapter also quotes Ruth Haley Barton on effective listening: “Do not formulate what you want to say while someone else is speaking.” Whoa!

Click here to view the list of all 25 mistakes and read the introduction to Mastering Mistake Making. To order this book from Amazon, click on the title for Mastering Mistake-Making: My 25 Memorable Mistakes—And What I Learned (10 Minutes for Lifelong Learning Workbook), by John Pearson with Jason Pearson.
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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Are you dashing and racing to the finish line—rushing around without direction—in your communication strategies? Slow down…and check in with Jason Pearson at Pearpod Media (branding, digital, print, and video).
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Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers, the frequency of which is based on an algorithm of book length, nap duration, and client deadlines. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. PRIVACY POLICY: Typepad, Inc. hosts John Pearson's Buckets Blog. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform for Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews. By clicking (above) to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy policy here.

No Way Home: The Crisis of Homelessness and How to Fix It with Intelligence and Humanity

Issue No. 477 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting features a True or False Pop Quiz on a new book on how to fix homelessness. And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and click here for the new book from John Pearson and Jason Pearson, Mastering Mistake-Making: My 25 Memorable Mistakes—And What I Learned. See Mistake #3 below.


“A homeless-industrial complex has arisen in California that acquires power and profit by pursuing an utterly dysfunctional strategy” and “has grown into a voracious leviathan, devouring billions in taxpayer’s money.”
 
TRUE or FALSE: We Can Fix Homelessness

Raise your hand if you’ve ever read a book on the crisis of homelessness—and how to fix it. (I thought so. Me neither until this month.)

One of the avoidable mistakes in my career was reading too narrowly—just stuck in my lane (see Mistake #3 below). So when John Ashmen, CEO of Citygate Network, invited me to join a panel on “mastering mistake making” at his CEO Summit in San Diego this week, I decided to read a new book on homelessness. Whew! I urge you to read it also.

No Way Home: The Crisis of Homelessness and How to Fix It with Intelligence and Humanity will shock you! The book quotes Edward Ring of the California Policy Center who warns that “a homeless-industrial complex has arisen in California that acquires power and profit by pursuing an utterly dysfunctional strategy” and “has grown into a voracious leviathan, devouring billions in taxpayer’s money.”

If you’ve got any kind of a heart for every precious person created in the image of God, you must read this important book—with just 12 short chapters (138 pages, plus appendix and notes). It’s readable, but also upsetting. Last week I described No Way Home to a colleague, “A journalist, a filmmaker, an economist, and an attorney…walk into a bar and have a robust conversation on homelessness in California.”

The four co-authors (not a typo: four!), Wayne Winegarden, Joseph Tartakovsky, Kerry Jackson, and Christopher F. Rufo, have street cred. As Stephen Moore notes in the foreword, this book project was organized by the Pacific Research Institute (PRI).

“The PRI team visited shelters, listened to those who work with the homeless every day, researched problems and solutions outside the state, and studied the methods of successful private organizations that are improving lives.” The result: “…a unique guide that state and local policymakers, social service groups, academics, and grassroots organizations could draw from…”

So how can I convince you to get unstuck and read outside your discipline? How about a True or False Pop Quiz?

TRUE OR FALSE?

_____ 1. “California has the worst homelessness crisis in the country [151,000 Californians were homeless in 2019]. More than 39,000, or 40.6 percent, of the nation’s more than 96,000 chronically homeless are located in California.” (Chronically homeless: “a person with a disabling condition who has been continually homeless for one year or more.”)

_____ 2. “Homelessness also puts the public at risk. This is particularly true in San Francisco, where the ‘streets are so filthy,’ reports National Public Radio, ‘that at least one infectious disease expert has compared the city to some of the dirtiest slums in the world.’”

_____ 3. In a Santa Clara County economic impact report on homelessness: “These costs arise because homelessness is an important risk factor for many adverse health outcomes. In part due to these health risks, the unsheltered homeless population die, on average, 20 years earlier than people who are sheltered.”

_____ 4. What would it cost to end homelessness just in the Bay Area “under the current methods of building and providing services?” To create “…a new unit of permanent housing (at $450,000 per unit) for each of the 28,200 people experiencing homelessness identified in PIT [point-in-time] counts…” the cost would be $12.7 billion. Plus: “Providing services (at $25,000 per person per year) to half of that population over 10 years would require an additional $3.5 billion.”

_____ 5. “Today, the old models of punitive workhouses and drafty police station ‘tramp rooms’ are memories of an unfeeling past. They have been replaced by ‘wraparound’ service shelters with professional staffs trained in medicine or social work.” Note: “In 2019, Los Angeles spent an average of $1.7 million a day directly on homelessness.”

_____ 6. “During the winter of 1935-1936, California and Florida set up border patrols to blockade indigents from entering.” Fast-forward to 2019 in San Francisco, where per Heather MacDonald, we find that “the city enables the entire homeless lifestyle”—and what the authors detail as “the mass migration of out-of-state residents in search of the ‘San Francisco Special’” (housing and generous benefits).

_____ 7. In San Francisco, “Harm reduction methods and treatment goals are free of judgment or blame and directly involve the client in setting their own goals.” When the coronavirus pandemic arrived in 2020, “San Francisco placed about 1,200 homeless people in city hotels…” According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the city “provided these quarantined homeless with alcohol, tobacco, medical cannabis, and other substances ‘in an effort to prevent a handful from going outside to get the substances themselves.’”

_____ 8. “The Perilous Trifecta.” The data sheet “on the perilous trifecta is nothing short of catastrophic: there are 4,000 men and women in San Francisco who are simultaneously homeless, psychotic, and addicted to alcohol, meth, and heroin: 70 percent have been on the streets for more than 5 years; 40 percent have been on the streets for more than 13 years.”

_____ 9. In San Francisco, “The current policy regime can be divided into three domains—the hospital, the jail, and the subsidized apartment. Together, these institutions represent the new orthodoxy of the socialized state: they reduce homelessness to a set of social-scientific variables, to be manipulated through the intensive application of the medical and social sciences.” Yet…look deeper at San Francisco’s stats:
   • “…70 percent of all psychiatric emergency visits involved a homeless individual and…66 percent of all visitors had co-occurring mental health and substance abuse disorders.”
   • Not 80/20! “In total, the top 5 percent of ‘super-users,’ the majority of whom fall into the perilous trifecta, accounted for 52 percent of total systemwide service use.”
   • “According to the San Francisco County Jail, the homeless account for 40 percent of all inmates.”
   • “The problem is that members of the perilous trifecta are the least likely to seek services.”

_____ 10. “Today, across Los Angeles’s 500 square miles, roughly 10,000 people live in some 5,000 vehicles.”

SPOILER ALERT: THE ANSWERS! How did you do on this True or False Pop Quiz? Sadly, all of the above statements are true.

Is there hope for California and other major cities? Part III of No Way Home devotes the final three chapters to “Innovative Ways to Reduce Homelessness Despite Budget and Legal Constraints.” But note this: when I finally read a book on how to read a book (see Mistake #3), the author gave me permission to skip around, so I read Chapter 8 of No Way Home first. It’s a short course on “Housing First”—“the political class’s primary mantra on homelessness.” (Per the authors: It’s not working!)

In 2015, the Washington Post crowed that the inventor of Housing First, Sam Tsemberis, had “all but solved chronic homelessness.” He boasted, “Give homes for the homeless, and you will solve chronic homelessness.” That was in 2015. The result now in 2021? Not so fast, Sam! Chapter 8 is a must-read—as is the entire book.

To order this book from Amazon, click on the title for No Way Home: The Crisis of Homelessness and How to Fix It with Intelligence and Humanity, by Wayne Winegarden, Joseph Tartakovsky, Kerry Jackson, and Christopher F. Rufo. And thanks to Encounter Books for providing a review copy and to Jim Palmer, president of Orange County Rescue Mission, whose book endorsement inspired me to read the book!



YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS
1) According to a Housing First experiment in Ottawa, Canada, researchers divided up a study into two populations: an “intervention” group that received Housing First and numerous services, and a non-intervention “control” group that received no services and remained on the streets. Shockingly and sadly, after two years, “…doing nothing resulted in superior human outcomes than providing Housing First with wraparound services.” Question: before we trumpet our success stories, should we measure them against others who don’t receive our products, programs, or services?
2) Raise your hand if you’ve ever read a book on the crisis of homelessness—and how to fix it. In addition to No Way Home, click here for more resources from Citygate Network and the Invisible Neighbors book by John Ashmen and resource videos.

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Mistake #3 of 25:
Reading Too Narrowly—Stuck in My Lane
Insights from Mastering Mistake-Making: My 25 Memorable Mistakes—And What I Learned, by John Pearson with Jason Pearson


Hot-off-the-press! Read the new book by John Pearson and Jason Pearson and then feature a “10 Minutes for Lifelong Learning” segment at your weekly staff meeting.

“I should have read a book on ‘how to read a book’ 50 years ago!” That’s the subtitle of Mistake #3 in the new book by John Pearson with Jason Pearson.  John quotes Steve Leveen, author of The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life: How to Get More Books in Your Life and More Life from Your Books. To uncover the books that will change your life (the big idea of the book), the author suggests you have two libraries:
   1) The Library of Candidates (based on your List of Candidates)
   2) The Living Library (your library of well-read friends).

Leveen cautions: “Do not set out to live a well-read life but rather your well-read life. No one can be well-read using someone else’s reading list.”

Each chapter features a brief and personal “mistake story,” (often a hilarious management mistake), and then what John learned after reading a recommended fork-in-the-road book. He recommends one book for each mistake: 25 must-read books! However, for Mistake #3, he couldn’t help himself and thus recommends TWO books! If you’ve been stuck in your reading lane too long, read “The Heroes Chapter” on Zheng He and Harriet Tubman in Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s book, Leaders: Myth and Reality.

Click here to view the list of all 25 mistakes and read the introduction to Mastering Mistake Making. To order this book from Amazon, click on the title for Mastering Mistake-Making: My 25 Memorable Mistakes—And What I Learned (10 Minutes for Lifelong Learning Workbook), by John Pearson with Jason Pearson.
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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. As you evaluate the effectiveness of your products, programs, and services—are you using outside eyes and ears to weigh in on your sacred cows and dead horses? Check in with Jason Pearson at Pearpod Media (branding, digital, print, and video).
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Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers, the frequency of which is based on an algorithm of book length, nap duration, and client deadlines. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. PRIVACY POLICY: Typepad, Inc. hosts John Pearson's Buckets Blog. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform for Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews. By clicking (above) to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy policy here.

Citizen Trump: A One Man Show - the 2021 book and 2020 documentary film

Issue No. 476 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting spotlights a fascinating book just released today from Robert Orlando, filmmaker and author. And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and click here for the new book from John Pearson and Jason Pearson, Mastering Mistake-Making: My 25 Memorable Mistakes—And What I Learned. See Mistake #2 below.


Orson Welles, writes Robert Orlando, “was a titan, all four faces of cinema’s Mount Rushmore: actor, producer, writer, and director.”
 
“Thank God for Movies!”

Filmmaker and author Robert Orlando confesses, “In the end, who’s to say this writer isn’t as subjective as [Orson] Welles and merely putting on another show just to entertain you? After all, just like Welles did with [Citizen] Kane, I am finding something familiar in Trump. As an author and filmmaker, I spend many hours competing for airtime and needing the stage as a place where we remind ourselves we are not alone.”

You gotta like this guy! (No, I don’t mean you gotta like Donald Trump. I mean Robert Orlando.) His fascinating book (and movie), Citizen Trump: A One Man Show, will challenge your deeply-held convictions—whether blue or red.

Robert Orlando focuses in on the dilemma of leaders who “lose awareness of their own corruptibility,” and the archetype of “the leader as trickster (or shapeshifter), one who can hold an audience without restriction.” He notes, “I wanted to capture that in this book, not only for those in my age group but with millennials in mind, those who do not have the length of life to see the patterns of those who come and go, rise and fall.”

“What I want to tell them is to be like Welles, bold and independent-minded. Forget the herd and find your own voice. And for God’s sake, watch the great films, the stories about ourselves and the hero’s journey. Thank God for movies,” he adds!

Last September 2020 (before the U.S. presidential election), Robert Orlando released his film, Citizen Trump, contrasting Trump with Citizen Kane—Trump’s favorite movie. Orson Welles’ acclaimed film received nine Academy Award nominations and won the Oscar for Best Writing.

The 2020 release date for Citizen Trump was intentional—before the election. Would the real ending matter? Would Trump rise or fall? Would the fall of the fictitious character, Charles Foster Kane (a composite character based on William Randolph Hearst and others), foretell Trump’s fall?

BREAKING NEWS! “Cancel culture” isn’t new. Hearst prohibited the 1941 film from being mentioned in his newspapers. Fast forward: many critics today still consider Citizen Kane to be the greatest film ever made.

View the trailer for Citizen Trump: A One Man Show here:


Click here to view the 90-second Citizen Trump trailer.

No spoiler alert needed. The 2020 election is history—and we know the results. Or do we?

Gratefully, Robert Orlando has now written the book (with 2020 in the rear-view mirror). And so with a historian/filmmaker’s insights, he spotlights key events in the Trump saga—skillfully positioning his camera to illuminate the Trump persona and the Trump/Kane contrasts. Did I mention it’s fascinating?

I’m addicted to U.S. presidential biographies (with Winston Churchill thrown in to properly position the grading curve). And while we don’t have five, 10, or 20 years for a proper look-back, Citizen Trump is a page-turner—and Orlando’s new book (just released today, June 15, 2021) prompted me to watch the Citizen Trump film one more time.

I’m more of a reader than a listener or viewer—so the Citizen Trump book is the perfect companion to the film. (Hmmm. The bibliography is immense. I wonder what all those authors think about Trump’s persona?) Orlando has done his research—extensive research—on our 45th president and it shows.

Orlando, the filmmaker and author of other works including Silence Patton and The Divine Plan, brings a unique voice to 2021. In my Sept. 9, 2020 review of the film, Citizen Trump (see the second article), I mentioned that Josh Shepherd, who covers culture, faith, and public policy for several media outlets (and previously worked at The Heritage Foundation and Focus on the Family), had recently interviewed Robert Orlando for The Federalist.

The headline: “Is Donald Trump Today’s ‘Citizen Kane’? ‘Citizen Trump’ Film Suggests Yes. Through the lens of the 1941 classic 'Citizen Kane,' a documentary filmmaker seeks to understand the life journey of President Trump and his successful venture into politics.”

Shepherd: “Watching the film, I kept waiting for it to shift. I thought, ‘This is where it’s going to become a Trump hit piece.’ Or, ‘Now it’s going to be a Trump ad.’ But it seemed to stick to facts and let the chips fall where they may. Why did you seek to avoid either extreme?"

Orlando: “As a filmmaker, I’m just telling a story about a person, warts and all. Why wouldn’t a documentary about real-life events reveal all sides of the narrative? It’s not for me to tell you how to make a political decision about it.”

The chapter titles in Citizen Trump are just too tempting! Thought-provoking chapters!
   • A Modern-Day Kane
   • Reality TV Kingpin
   • The Trickster Candidate
   • Channeling Trump
   • The Faceless Enemy
   • And more…

Many readers, I’m guessing, will equally appreciate the jam-packed appendix—with surprising background information and context. Orlando notes Trump’s appreciation for Carl Jung from Trump’s 2004 book, How to Get Rich. Trump writes, “I have to stress that I am not cynical, but I am aware. I hate being in situations where I’m asking myself, How could this have happened?" Trump adds, "This reminds me of my favorite quote from Napoleon about being surprised: A good leader shouldn’t be.”

So…if you’re a leader, maybe you won’t be surprised with the jewels in the appendix! Check out the mini-chapters:
   • Rosebud Works
   • The Mask Is the Message
   • The Forgotten City on a Hill
   • It’s the Media, Stupid!

Again, whether you lean red or blue—I urge you to read this book. Orlando’s intentions are trustworthy: “…my aim was not to produce a political film. As an independent filmmaker, I was more interested in pursuing a deep character study into one of the most controversial figures of our time. My template was not a Right vs. Left, faith vs. nonfaith, or even madness vs. sanity paradigm, but to explore the archetypes of storytelling as expressions of interior character, especially where Trump and Kane were so amazingly similar.”

After you read Citizen Trump (or view the Citizen Trump film), you’ll find it impossible not to view Citizen Kane again. Both films lend themselves to the perfect case study for your next weekly staff meeting—or perhaps late-night viewing at your next staff or board retreat.

Orlando writes, “My fascination with Kane began in film school when I first felt the power of sound, light, and action in the hands of a master. Welles—to me—was a titan, all four faces of cinema’s Mount Rushmore: actor, producer, writer, and director. He was also a theater and radio star.”

Orlando, again: “My pick for best film of all time goes to Citizen Kane, a seamless visual masterpiece and a technical inspiration. In this one film, Welles introduced myriad innovations, breaking form and storytelling in new ways. It was incomparable at the time, almost docudrama in style.”

He adds, “The film is a work of genius and also a cautionary tale.” We’ll wait another 80 years to see if the Citizen Trump film and book qualify for “a work of genius.” But…the Trump saga is clearly a cautionary tale. As I mentioned in my review and pop quiz of the book on White House staff conflicts, Fight House, remember this wisdom from Ecclesiastes:

“There’s nothing new on this earth. Year after year it’s the same old thing. Does someone call out, ‘Hey, this is new’? Don’t get excited—it’s the same old story.”

To order this book from Amazon, click on the title for Citizen Trump: A One Man Show, by Robert Orlando. Are you a listener? Pre-order the audio book on Libro.fm. And thanks to the author for sending me an advance manuscript.



Click here to view the film:
Citizen Trump: A One Man Show.



YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS
1) According to a CBS News interview in 2008, Joe Biden’s favorite movie is Chariots of Fire (1981). Donald Trump’s favorite movie is Citizen Kane. Does this give you any clue about these two leaders? What’s your favorite movie—and why?
2) Robert Orlando writes with “millennials in mind, those who do not have the length of life to see the patterns of those who come and go, rise and fall.” Why might the millennials on your team benefit from viewing Citizen Kane and Citizen Trump? And what movies might millennials recommend that old geezers view?
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Mistake #2 of 25:
Reading…But Not Learning
Insights from Mastering Mistake-Making: My 25 Memorable Mistakes—And What I Learned, by John Pearson with Jason Pearson


Hot-off-the-press! Read the new book by John Pearson and Jason Pearson and then feature a “10 Minutes for Lifelong Learning” segment at your weekly staff meeting.

“I’ve always been a reader, but not a lifelong learner.” That’s the subtitle of Mistake #2 in the new book by John Pearson with Jason Pearson. Writing on “Reading…But Not Learning,” John quotes Peter Drucker:

“In the knowledge society, people have to learn how to learn. Indeed in the knowledge society subjects may matter less than the students’ capacity to continue learning and their motivation to do so. Knowledge society requires lifelong learning. For this, we need a discipline of learning.”

The Mistakes book also notes that “Mark Cuban, the outspoken owner of the Dallas Mavericks, reads three hours per day. His goal is to find just one idea he can use to give him and the over 150 companies in which he’s invested an edge in the marketplace.”

Each chapter features a brief and personal “mistake story,” (often a hilarious management mistake), and then what John learned after reading a recommended fork-in-the-road book. He recommends one book for each mistake: 25 must-read books! The recommended book for Mistake #2 is My Ideal Bookshelf (read John’s review here).

Now you and your team members can avoid these 25 mistakes by leveraging the workbook format for your own professional development or at your weekly staff meetings. This “10 Minutes for Lifelong Learning Workbook” includes a bonus chapter, a “Do-It-Yourself Mistake-Maker,” with a template for inviting your team members to present one of their memorable mistakes at future weekly staff meetings!

Click here to view the list of all 25 mistakes and read the introduction to Mastering Mistake Making. To order this book from Amazon, click on the title for Mastering Mistake-Making: My 25 Memorable Mistakes—And What I Learned (10 Minutes for Lifelong Learning Workbook), by John Pearson with Jason Pearson.
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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Are you leveraging the power of storytelling to lavishly communicate your organization’s message and mission? Check in with Jason Pearson at Pearpod Media (branding, digital, print, and video).
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Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers, the frequency of which is based on an algorithm of book length, nap duration, and client deadlines. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. PRIVACY POLICY: Typepad, Inc. hosts John Pearson's Buckets Blog. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform for Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews. By clicking (above) to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy policy here.

Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams

Issue No. 475 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting spotlights a must-read book about anxiety at work—and why managers and bosses must talk about it. And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and click here for the new book from John Pearson and Jason Pearson, Mastering Mistake-Making: My 25 Memorable Mistakes—And What I Learned. See Mistake #1 below.


Think of staff growth as a climbing wall. “The only thing you can’t do on a rock wall is just hang there.”
 
Anxiety at Work: “Generation Paranoia”

Yikes! According to the hot-off-the-press book, Anxiety at Work, “In America, workplace anxiety is estimated to cost some $40 billion a year in lost productivity, errors, and health-care costs, while stress is estimated to cost more than $300 billion.”

It gets worse! “Though the problem is becoming more serious with older employees, it’s been particularly acute with millennials and Gen Z. According to a 2019 study published in the Harvard Business Review, more than half of millennials and 75 percent of Gen Z reported they had quit a job for mental health reasons.” But…apparently many bosses don’t want to talk about it.

According to co-authors Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton (along with Anthony Gostick’s very transparent contributions to the book), “We’ve found that most young people want to be able to discuss their anxiety at work. Said one twenty-something employee in an interview, ‘My generation talks about anxiety all the time to each other.’ Rightly so, they believe that it’s impossible to fix something we are scared to talk about.”

They add, “And yet in a 2019 survey of one thousand employed adults with anxiety, 90 percent judged it would be a bad idea to confide their situation to their bosses. Sad.”

Attn: Bosses and Managers! This doesn’t work anymore:
   • “Don’t bring your personal problems to work.”
   • “Just fix yourself!”
   • “Of course you’ll fit in here. We have a great culture.”
   • “If you’re not physically sick, you must clock in.”

In early 2020, the authors were scheduled to speak to a company’s leadership team. The fast-breaking COVID news distracted the group from their scheduled topic and instead—prophetically—the authors talked about the workplace anxiety to come. Anxiety at Work is COVID-relevant with amazingly fresh insights and solutions. The subtitle is aspirational for every manager: “8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done.”

I had high expectations for this book, just published in May 2021, because I continue to appreciate and recommend the list of 125 practical employee recognition ideas from their 2007 book, The Carrot Principle: How the Best Managers Use Recognition to Engage Their People, Retain Talent, and Accelerate Performance. (Idea #54 is my favorite: “Print out and present a team member a ‘long lunch’ certificate for a two-hour lunch.”)

After seriously reviewing books for almost 15 years now, rarely does a book exceed my expectations—but this did. The authors knocked it out of the ballpark. I made more than 40 specific notes for this review, but I can only mention a few. You must read this book—and implement the practical strategies. Five big ideas:

#1. THE DUCK SYNDROME. This term “was coined at Stanford University to describe the masquerade of students at this high-pressure school, as at many colleges, working mightily to appear as though they’re doing just fine, gliding calmly along like a duck on a pond, keeping up with all of their work with effortless grace.” But—look under the surface—and those “smoothly gliding ducks are paddling like mad—just as these students are manically pushing themselves, frantically trying to stay afloat.” What’s needed? A new leadership style that combines “vulnerability with care for the individual.”

Managers: How would you know if the duck syndrome is alive and well in your organization? (Read the eight strategies.)

#2. GENERATION PARANOIA. “The fact is, this rising generation is a much more anxious group as a whole. Some have termed them ‘generation paranoia.’” The authors note an Atlantic article that “described a generation of young people who scan any room they enter for exit points and game out how they’d survive an active-shooter scenario.” According to Forbes, “four times as many millennials as Gen Xers list ‘fear of losing job’ as one of their top concerns at work.”

Managers: Since it’s inappropriate to ask, “Do you have anxiety?”—what should you do? Read Chapter 2’s “Six Methods to Meet Uncertainty Head-on,” including Method 1, “Make It Okay to Not Have All the Answers.” (See page 51 for creating a learning environment where making mistakes are standard practice. See “mistake-making” below!)

#3. COACH OPTIMIZERS TO BECOME TASKERS. “Crunch time has become the standard,” note the authors—and that’s not healthy. Taking a page from those who survive the Navy Seals “Hell Week,” managers can coach younger team members to be “taskers” (focus on the job at hand), not “Optimizers” (those who visualize and hyper-plan every job and every step). “The secret of success for the Taskers is they take this monolithic thing and break it down into chunks.
               It’s task, rest.
          Task, rest.”
The Taskers survive “Hell Week.” Optimizers don’t.

Managers: Don’t believe the myth that “overload is good for productivity.” Instead, read page 73 and a mid-level leader’s confession: “I made a mistake in pushing my team so hard on the last upgrade.” (They worked 16-hour days.) See the five check-in questions on page 87, including “What have you learned that we might do differently next time we are up against a task like this?”

#4. THE MOTIVATORS ASSESSMENT. “Employees who feel anxious about their career path may actually be on the wrong path,” note Gostick and Elton. They suggest that “caring managers can often help them know if that’s the case.” How? Collaborating with the authors of Emotional Intelligence 2.0, they built a very, very helpful Motivators Assessment tool—and urge managers to “Help Employees Assess Their Skills and Motivations” (Method 3 of 8 in Chapter 4). Click here for more information or to take the assessment.

Managers: Read Chapter 4 to help team members avoid mismatches in their work. Try “job sculpting” with three options: transferring work, altering work, or adding work that motivates each unique employee. (And this is obvious, but take the assessment yourself to see if you are in the right slot! Even at my age, I learned something new about myself when I completed the assessment this week.)

#5. DR. NO! I mentioned I wouldn’t list all 40 of my book review notes, so I gotta stop. But let me sneak in several more here:
   • Page 109 gives coaching suggestions for how to leverage the “Dr. No” persona on your staff. “Instead of coaching Brian out of that habit, a talent magnet leader [great concept!] would work with it.”
   • Page 139 is worth the price of the book to listen in on a goal-setting review between a CEO and the organization’s founder/board chair. The CEO reported that two goals were “epic failures,” but the founder’s response? “Darcy, if we had achieved all our goals, that would have been an indication that we weren’t dreaming big enough.” He added, “And I’m guessing we will apply the lessons we learned from any mistakes we made along the way?” The CEO said “yes.” Then exiting, the chairman said, “Awesome. Carry on. See you next quarter.”
   • If you avoid giving constructive feedback out of fear that a team member will react badly, read page 59 on why you should not use the “sandwich” approach of “offering a negative between two positives.”
   • At a hospital: “Each week one staff member received what they called the Grace Under Fire trophy, a fire hose mounted on a block of wood.” (See the five practical methods in Chapter 9, “Turn Doubts into Assurance,” including the fork-in-the-road difference between recognition and celebration.)

Managers: if you’re guilty of fostering a “socialism of gratitude” culture, see page 223—before you create more havoc by ignoring Method 4: “Provide Gratitude to High-Flyers, Too.”

Did I mention? This is a Must-Read—especially as you’re adapting to the realities of COVID, and we pray, post-COVID.

To order this book from Amazon, click on the title for Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done, by Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton with Anthony Gostick. Are you a listener? Listen to the book on Libro.fm (6 hours, 29 minutes). And thanks to Fortier PR and Harper Business for sending a review copy.



YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS
1)The authors quote the CHRO at Keurig Dr Pepper: “For a long time we thought about career paths as a ladder. It was all about how you move up. The imagery we’re moving to is a rock wall, where a person can move up, sideways, a little up, and a little sideways. Everybody can have their own destination. The only thing you can’t do on a rock wall is just hang there.” How could your team use the rock wall metaphor to create opportunities for growth in your organization?
2) The section, “Millennials and Conflict,” in Chapter 6, “From Conflict Avoidance to Healthy Debate” includes a 17-word text conversation between a boss and employee late on a Friday afternoon. It spoiled the millennial’s weekend, but the boss was clueless that he had created any anxiety. The authors noted the boss needed to update his “texting awareness.” Rate our communication effectiveness here: A, B, C, D, or F? 
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Mistake #1 of 25:
Neglecting the Mistake-Making Literature
Insights from Mastering Mistake-Making: My 25 Memorable Mistakes—And What I Learned, by John Pearson with Jason Pearson


Hot-off-the-press! Read the new book by John Pearson and Jason Pearson and then feature a “10 Minutes for Lifelong Learning” segment at your weekly staff meeting.

“I needed more practice and more laps in the mistake pool.” That’s the subtitle of Mistake #1 in the new book by John Pearson with Jason Pearson. Writing on “Neglecting the Mistake-Making Literature,” John confesses:

“'Don’t make mistakes!' has been drummed into our DNA since childhood. For many years, I was too careful and avoided risks. Later, as I read the mistake-making literature, I understood the value of taking calculated risks—and that failure is not final.”

John notes that BMW gives a “Flop of the Month Award” to employees whose innovative ideas fail during implementation. He quotes John C. Maxwell, “To get maximum attention, make a big mistake. To cause maximum damage, fail to admit it.”

Each chapter features a brief and personal “mistake story,” (often a hilarious management mistake), and then what John learned after reading a recommended fork-in-the-road book. (He recommends one book for each mistake: 25 must-read books! The recommended book for Mistake #1 is Call Sign Chaos, by Gen. Jim Mattis.)

Now you and your team members can avoid these 25 mistakes by leveraging the workbook format for your own professional development or at your weekly staff meetings. This “10 Minutes for Lifelong Learning Workbook” includes a bonus chapter, a “Do-It-Yourself Mistake-Maker,” with a template for inviting your team members to present one of their memorable mistakes at future weekly staff meetings!

Click here to view the list of all 25 mistakes and read the introduction to Mastering-Mistake Making. To order this book from Amazon, click on the title for Mastering Mistake-Making: My 25 Memorable Mistakes—And What I Learned (10 Minutes for Lifelong Learning Workbook), by John Pearson with Jason Pearson.
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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Are you learning from your own communication mistakes and the hilarious missteps of others? Jason has stories for you! Check in with Pearpod Media (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social).
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Memorial Day Masterpiece: Call Sign Chaos

Issue No. 474 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting asks that you join me in this USA Memorial Day tribute to the heroes who keep us safe. If you missed my 2019 book-of-the-year, here are the highlights from Call Sign Chaos, by former U.S. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis. With Israel and Palestine in the headlines recently—this leadership-savvy book will also shed light on a general’s in-the-trenches insights on the Middle East. And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and click here for my review of another hero's insights in Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t.

Memorial Day Masterpiece

EDITOR'S NOTE: Memorial Day Blessings! This review was first published on Oct. 18, 2019. Call Sign Chaos was my 2019 book-of-the-year.

Wow. This morning I just finished one of the most powerful, insightful, leadership-savvy books I’ve ever, ever read. I will read it again. It’s remarkable on many, many levels. Jim Mattis, former U.S. Secretary of Defense (Jan. 20, 2017 to Jan. 1, 2019), writes:

“If you haven’t read hundreds of books, learning from others who went before you, you are functionally illiterate—you can’t coach and you can’t lead.”

To read the full review, click here.

2019 Book-of-the-Year!