A post about Transfer Learning - Finished Reading: The Yes Brain & Team Human

As you probably know by now, I like to read business and non-business books in rotation of each other. I truly believe that we learn from a variety of sources. For example, recruiting high school athletes to the college hockey team that I coached, taught me a lot about how to build a pipeline and an organic marketing message. It also taught me the power of social influence and peer-to-peer marketing.

Reading a book about how to raise resilient, courageous, and curious children may be one of the best ways to change how you think about raising a team that is resilient, courageous, and curious. We so often forget about the human element in our work place, that our employees have A LOT going on outside of work. The Yes Brain is a great read and has a lot of insight into fostering confidence, which allows us to thrive as individuals.

Team Human is a great exclamation point to ground our work as business leaders as empathetic humans. A little slow to start, this book becomes extremely interesting and certainly very relatable to anyone with a smartphone...which is mainly everyone, since more people have smart phones than access to a toilet. This book reminds us that all humans are social creatures, how technology through the history of the world has been an attack on social connectivity - but none as destructive as current technology which really isolates us and creates homogenous thinking through echo chambers and algorithms.

These two books were read together by serendipity...but I am glad they were. Extremely complimenting of each other, they remind us to be empathetic, alert, and communicative people that can help one another get along as a group and understand different view points. I think this is an often lost skill in management and results in poor performance, turn over, and worst of all a negative impact on our employees personal lives.

Let's not forget the power of being a parent or just a human in general. Our work is to build a community, be it a workplace, a school, a peer group, or your actual living area that allows us to thrive. Management, efficiency, and managing an operating budget are great, but often are biggest intangible factor for success is empathy, communication, and working together. Don't be afraid to reach outside your comfort zone to learn something new - it can have a profound impact on your learning and applying new or freshly reminded old skills to your everyday life.

I strongly suggest picking up a book that is of a subject matter where you have interest, but is not directly applicable to your work or life. I guarantee, you can learn something from it that will make you a better person, employee, or leader. Here's to growing each and everyday!