Bob's Books

Why this book: Given to me as a gift from my brother who had read it and thought I would like it.

Summary in 3 sentences:  Martin Dugard had researched and written about a number of history’s most intrepid explorers, to include James Cook and Christopher Columbus.  As he continued to research other explorers, he asked himself what attributes or qualities they all had in common.  The book is broken into seven chapters, and while the story of Richard Francis Burton and Jack Speke’s competition to find the source of the Nile in the 19th century provides a continuing theme and backbone for the book,  each of the chapters explores one of those qualities and gives a number or examples of renowned explorers and some little known ones, who exemplified that trait.

My Impressions: The Explorers included some interesting stories about explorers down thru the ages, but I felt like Dugard strained to apply his taxonomy to all of them. His thesis was that the great explorers in history exhibited seven qualities or characteristics to a greater degree than most people: Curiosity, hope, passion, courage, independence, self-discipline, and perseverance.  While some of the explorers he profiled exhibited one or the other of these traits in abundance, I never felt that these qualities had any real credibility in explaining what makes explorers explorers. Great ambition is not one of his qualities, but was clearly a common denominator.

I also felt that his 7 traits taxonomy was only loosely applied to the stories he enjoyed telling.  He had much to share and he seemed to simply stick some of his stories into chapters without any relevance to the title of the chapter.  For example he has some concluding lessons learned for the whole discussion of The Explorers, but they are simply included in the final chapter on the final trait – perseverance.  This was typical – I found  good material in each chapter that just didn’t seem to fit the theme of that chapter.  That said – I enjoyed reading the hodgepodge of fascinating stories and little known facts.

The backbone of the story was about the two explorers Richard Francis Burton and John Hanning “Jack”  Speke – one time partners, eventual rivals and competitors for the honor of having discovered the source of the Nile – one of the great goals of adventurers of the 19th century. This story was particularly interesting to me since I had read a biography of Burton, but had only vaguely heard of Speke, who Dugard clearly admired more, and apparently with good reason.  We learned of them and their exploration in considerable detail.

The book is a potpourri of adventure and exploration stories from the great age of exploration, from the early 1700s until the early 1900s. A few example of stories Dugard touches on:

• Robert Falcon Scott and his ill-fated attempt to be the first man to reach the South Pole,  which cost him his life.
• Gaspar de Portola leading explorers inland in California searching for a location to build a mission, camping in what is now Orange County.
• Daniel Boone building a road through the Cumberland Gap that would open the westward expansion of the United States and which led to the purchase of the Louisiana Territory.
• James Cook circumnavigating the globe, charting the coast of New Zealand and discovering the east coast of Australia and mapping most of the Pacific Rim, including Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, Alaska and Hawaii.
• The amazing life story of Jean Godin and Isabel Grameson in Latin America where the married couple were separated in the 1700s and braved the Amazon river and the jungles to cross the continent to find each other again.
• Sir John Franklin, Royal Geographic Society founder and former governor of Tasmania, sought the Northwest Passage through Canada’s waters to reach Asia, never to be found, never to return.
• Ernest Shackleton, who sought to be the first to cross the Antarctic continent, but whose ship was crushed in the ice and after an epic 2+ years of struggle, brought all his men home.
• Paul DuChaillu, the inspiration for Edgar Rice Burroughs Tarzan,  who claimed to be an American spent years exploring Africa with new discoveries in the center of the dark continent in the 19th century.
• Edmund Hillary, who in 1953 was the first to summit Everest after many before him had failed.
• William Dampier, something of an amoral opportunist, who circumnavigated the world 3 times, explored vast areas of the South Pacific, rescued the man from a South Pacific Island who became the inspiration for Robinson Crusoe and introduced the words barbecue, avocado, and chopsticks to the English Language.
• Alexander von Humboldt who travelled over r1500 miles up river explored the Orinoco River in South America in 1800 and eventually became the first mountain climbers in South American history, climbing the 20,564 foot Chimborazo.

The book concludes noting that while there are no longer new continents, new oceans or  mountains to discover and explore, the spirit of adventure and exploration still exists and this intrepid human spirit finds other avenues for expressing itself.  Testing man’s limits in aircraft, in space, new challenges out on the edge of science and knowledge, exploring new capacities of human endurance  – these are all  new opportunities for ordinary people to do extraordinary things.

Bottom line: A fun and interesting read, with lots of interesting stories that are only loosely held together by the theme of his book.

Why this Book:    I went to a Wim Hof half-day seminar in LA with a couple of crusty old SEAL master chiefs who had been following and practicing the Wim Hof method for a while.  I went along out of curiosity, did the half day session, and was amazed and impressed.  While there, I overheard someone mention a book by an investigative reporter who sought to discredit Wim Hof, but who became a convert.   So I bought and read it to give me some background on this seemingly simple program to augment what I was already doing for my physical, mental, spiritual well-being.

Summary in 3 Sentences: Scott Carney is a journalist who had  made a name for himself unmasking charlatans in the human potential world, and after reading about Wim Hof, he smelled another phony selling a weird formula for youth, power, and a better life.  As an investigative journalist, he signed up for and went through Wim Hof’s program, stayed with it, and progressed in ways that Wim Hof had promised.  Based on his own experiences and his research behind some of the claims about the experiences of others, Carney becomes a convert to the Wim Hof method, and explores how and why it seems to give him and his followers unexpected strength, physical resilience, and improved health.

My Impressions: I enjoyed the book and learned a lot about Wim Hof, got some background on the myths and stories surrounding him. And it reinforced my decision and commitment to continue following his simple method.  Someone interested in the physiology of self-development, and in Wim Hof in particular will find this book at least interesting, and perhaps fascinating.  I found it fascinating.   The casual reader who is not an avid athlete or fitness nut, will not particularly enjoy or be inspired by this book.

The introductory chapter of What Does Not Kill Us is a scientific and anthropological look at why Wim Hof’s methods might work.  In short, Hof claims that we all have much more mental and physical capacity to overcome environmental stresses – such as cold, heat, physical and mental exhaustion, stress, viruses, etc – than we, or Western medicine, realize.  He argues that many of our in-born capacities to resist a harsh environment and other stresses have atrophied and become dormant from lack of use in our comfortable Western lifestyle.  This is a claim that shamans, mystics, some philosophers (most notably Nietzsche) and other wise leaders, as well as any number of charlatans have made.

Wim Hof claims – and seems to prove – that these capacities can be awakened, activated, and enhanced by putting the body under managed duress (primarily cold) AND by regularly saturating our tissues with oxygen followed by breath holding.  He claims these simple exercises enhance a broad spectrum of our natural capabilities.  Wim Hof says,      “(Rabbits) know fight and flight.  The wolf chases them and they die. But everything dies one day.  It is just that in our case we aren’t eaten by wolves. Instead, without predators, we’re being eaten by cancer, by diabetes, and our own immune systems.  There’ no wolf to run from, so our bodies eat themselves.” (p. 114)

Hof and his supporters claim that when we put our body under duress through cold, we activate hormonal and adrenal capacities in our DNA that have evolved over millions of years to make us stronger, more resilient, and help us survive harsh and unforgiving environments.  These systems, like any aspects of our physical being, atrophy if they are not used, and need to be activated and exercised regularly thru environmental stress (shocking the system with cold) to become strong.  Cold exposure also apparently increases mitochondria formation throughout the body, which would mean more aerobic power.  Add to this the advantages of exercising the heart and lungs through hyperventilating and oxygen saturation, and the stress of breath holding, and  you have the essence of the Wim Hof method.

With the mental focus that comes from withstanding the cold and doing his power-breathing exercises, Hof claims that we can learn to exert our will over the body’s autonomic nervous system – those responses our bodies automatically have to external and internal stimuli – such as heart rate, immune system, heat/cold regulation etc.  It is clear that Hof himself has achieved a level of mental control over his autonomic nervous system that is incredible.  In What Does Not Kill Us, Carney explores these claims, and experiments with them himself, and claims that he and others have indeed increased their minds’ abilities to regulate or at least manage some of their autonomic responses.

An important part of the Wim Hof method is to strengthen what Carney calls the “wedge” – that ability of the conscious will to impose itself “between the autonomic and somatic nervous systems at the point where an environmental stimulus meets an innate response.” (p 50)  In other words, Wim Hof seeks to strengthen the power of the will to “direct” the body to respond more powerfully and with greater resilience to everything from cold, to wanting to breathe, even to disease and other biological functions.  Those who seek to go to the advanced levels of Wim Hof’s method follow a stricter and more demanding cold and power breathing regimen, and Hof offers nutritional and exercise advice to go with it – mainly yoga, meditation and intermittent fasting.   But the essence is the same – cold and power breathing.

Those who have followed Wim Hof’s simple formula have had some amazing results, and in this book, Carney gives examples of some stunning transformations.  In What Does Not Kill Us, Carney uses  himself as a guinea pig to test and study Wim Hof’s method, actively participating in several of Hof’s multi-day camps, seeking other opportunities to push his limits, eventually climbing Mt Kilimanjaro with Hof, shirtless and with less than 2 days of acclimatization.

In addition to making healthy people like Carney healthier, it seems there is promising evidence that it can also help people with depression, PTS, and other disabilities.  Carney researched and describes several cases in which people who were seriously debilitated by disease (Parkinson’s, Crohn’s, Rheumatoid arthritis)  were helped significantly by following Hof’s  protocols, after having had little success with conventional treatments.

Carney sees Hof as a crusader, intent on spreading the word that his simple method can help anyone live a healthier and happier life.    He clearly admires him as an eccentric “genius,” a visionary, and an inspired crusader,  but expressed reservations about his leadership when he left a number of people behind on the Kilimanjaro climb.   I sensed Wim Hof’s eccentricity when I was at his seminar – he is like an ADHD saint on steroids – with more energy and enthusiasm than it seems he can fully control.   His sons and other disciples help him with the organizational part of his demonstrations, seminars and his business.  A big part of their challenge seems to be managing his energy and enthusiastic good will.  But Wim Hof himself, his passion for what he does, and the experience he gives people, is the show.

What Doesn’t Kill Us swings back and forth between an explanation of Hof’s methods and Carney’s personal journey to become tougher, stronger, more resilient.  While most of Carney’s journey is built around understanding and practicing Wim Hof’s method, there are chapters in which digresses to  recount his participation in a Spartan Obstacle Course race in the Rocky’s and a Tough Guy competition in the UK – the inspiration and precursor to today’s Tough Mudder competitions.  Carney concludes the book with an epilogue in which he explains the before and after effects of augmenting his relatively modest workout routine only with Wim Hof’s cold exposure and power breathing.  The degree of improvement shocked the lead exercise physiologist at the Boulder Center for Sports Medicine, who measured Carney’s health and fitness before and after following Wim Hof’s method.  Carney went from sceptic to convert, as he realized his new capacities,  and the positive effects to his health and fitness that ensued from following the simple Wim Hof protocol.

My own experience with Wim Hof’s method: I’ve been practicing Wim Hof’s method for about 5 months and plan to continue it.  It’s just a matter of discipline fueled by a faith that it is good for me – at least does no harm. I’m still a beginner, and haven’t yet taken the step that several of my friends have, who have signed up for Wim Hof’s 10 week program.

• For the power breathing, I have been able to do 2 or 3 breathing cycles once a day, most days.  The power breathing is interesting in that I share experiences with my retired master chief friends with whom I started this adventure,  all of whom are avidly sticking with it –  and we  each do power breathing somewhat differently Reviewing the book, I see that Carney distinguishes between breath holding with breath in, and breath holding with breath out (relatively empty lungs.)  Each is good, and each has a different affect on how our will impacts the sympathetic nervous system.  I so some breath-in breath holding, some breath-out breath holding, and mix them up.
• For cold therapy, my showers are cold, and 2 or 3 times a week, I go into the cold tank at the SEAL training facility.    I’ve gotten used to the cold showers – they are short and invigorating. The cold tank is an amazing experience – and I mix sitting in the cold tank (water temp in the 40s) with power breathing. Amazing how focused power breathing can make the cold almost go away.  Wim Hof: “Fortune favors the cold!”
• The power breathing has enhanced my meditation practice. Though I’ve tried numerous time, I’ve never been able to stay with meditating in the past, but with the power breathing and breath holding, I’ve found much greater satisfaction and motivation to stay with a meditation program.   I’ve been able to achieve a state of detached calmness that I’d rarely gotten to before. And as Carney notes, the more you quiet your mind, the longer you can hold your breath.
• Exercising the self-discipline to stick with this program – to choose to be cold, to do the daily work of power breathing is an added strength and resilience builder.

Wim Hof in a classic picture of him, sitting in lotus position on ice

Why this book: Selected by my literature reading group.  Patsy – you have lobbied hard for a couple of real winners, and this is another one! I understand why you were willing to read it for the 3rd time!

Summary in 3 sentences. Two very intelligent, well read and eccentric women share their perspectives on their worlds, how they think and how they live. One is a 54 year old concierge of an apartment building in Paris, who describes herself  (more or less) as a frumpy, ugly, and poor; the other is an extremely precocious 12 year old girl in a wealthy family who is cynical and disenchanted.  In the first part of the book, the narrative alternates between the perspectives of these two women, and the chapters are brilliant, almost standing alone as essays on the world these women are viewing – until about halfway through the book, their lives converge in an unexpected way.

My Impressions: I loved this book. One of my favorite reads in recent years.  If you  enjoy getting inside the heads and hearing the perspectives of intelligent, thoughtful and observant women, and reading their thoughts beautifully expressed in wonderful prose, I expect that you would thoroughly enjoy this book.

Two main characters occupy center stage for most of this book:

Renee: The lead character is Renee Michel, a 54 year old woman who presents herself to the world as overweight, unattractive and uninteresting –  a typical grumpy concierge – who has managed her apartment building for 27 years.  She indeed believes herself to be dumpy, frumpy, and unattractive, but not unintelligent.  She is a voracious reader, who avidly studies history, philosophy, and literature (especially Tolstoy), and is a connoisseur of the arts.  She is is a sensitive thinker and student of life, with a Buddhist monk’s appreciation of beauty, simplicity, and the joy that can be found in moment or insight.

BUT,  she actively hides this side of herself from the world, preferring to remain a non-entity, playing the role of the grumpy and dull concierge, so that people will  ignore her and leave her alone.  She is careful not to arouse anyone’s interest and is determined to protect and hide who she really is.   People in her apartment see her as little more than a bland functionary, a non-person, not worthy of their attention, or even their respect. Nurturing this perception gives Renee the privacy, freedom and space to explore the world of ideas and the arts on her own terms, without being invited, nor expected to participate in the superfluous social rituals that characterize much of modern urban living. “Thus am I,  poor concierge, resigned to a total lack of luxury – but I am an anomaly in the system, living proof of how grotesque it is, and every day I mock it gently, deep within my impenetrable self.” (p 124)

Paloma:  The other main character in The Elegance of the Hedgehog is the youngest daughter of a well-to-do family living in the apartment building Renee manages. With a precocious wisdom beyond her years, she is disenchanted with the lives and values of her parents, her older sister, and others in her social class, and simply sees no way out for herself.  She is angry and frustrated but feels powerless, except to express her cynicism and anger in her journal.  We hear her voice through her journal, each journal entry a separate chapter in the book, full of her humorous and condescending observations of her family and upper-middle class values in general.  The world she observes and comments on is so superficial and pretentious that she wants no part of it. She unemotionally plans her suicide as a statement to shake up the complacency of her family, for whom she has so little respect.  Her voice is not as sophisticated as Renee’s, and though the author/translator attempts to give her something of a teenage girl’s irreverent voice, it isn’t very convincing.  It’s just a bit hard to believe how a young girl of her age can have arrived at her sense of history, social awareness and philosophy.  Her cynicism and insights are merciless and often deliciously biting and on target.  I distinctly heard the influence of the French existentialists I’ve read (Sartre and Camus) in her commentaries, though they were never mentioned by name.

These two very different women share an alienation from the values, behaviors and pretentiousness of normal society and polite social intercourse.  And they express their alienation in very different ways.  As we get to know them individually, we know that their lives will eventually and somehow converge. And they do.

A couple of important supporting players help provide context for getting to know these two fascinating women.  About halfway through the story, a third important character – a successful and worldly Japanese business man – enters the story and unconsciously and with little fanfare, changes the dynamic of all the relationships in the story.

Camellia lying on moss.  Renee’s image of a beautiful camellia lying on bed of moss is an image that returns in the story again and again, and gives meaning to this story, from multiple perspectives.  And by the way, Renee is the “hedgehog.”

I loved this book.

———————

A few quotes. It was a joy to go back and review the many passages I had marked.  I was again struck by how well Muriel Barbery (and her translator) captured the Buddhist wisdom of Renee and the existential cynicism of Paloma.  I know I include a lot of quotes here, but these are but a few of those I marked as noteworthy or remarkable:

Paloma:  – even for me life is already all plotted out and so dismal you could cry: no one seems to have thought of the fact that if life is absurd, being a brilliant success has no greater value than being a failure. It’s just more comfortable.  And even then: I think lucidity gives your success a bitter taste, whereas mediocrity still leaves hope for something.  p 24

Paloma: We are, basically programmed to believe in something that doesn’t exist, because we are living creatures; we don’t want to suffer.  So we spend all our energy persuading ourselves that there are things that are worthwhile and that is why life has meaning.  p 24

Renee: (referring to her Portuguese cleaning woman) Manuela …is an aristocrat.  an authentic one, of the kind whose entitlement you cannot contest: it is etched onto her very heart, it mocks titles and people with handles to their names   What is an aristocrat?  A woman who is never sullied by vulgarity, although she may be surrounded by it. p 32

Paloma: With the exception of love friendship and the beauty of Art, I don’t see much else that can nurture human life. I’m still too young to claim to know much about love and friendship. But Art…if I had more time to live, Art would be my whole life.  p 37

Renee: I have read so many books…And yet, like most autodidacts, I am never quite sure of what I have gained from them.  There are days when I feel I have been able to grasp all there is to know in one single gaze, as if invisible branches suddenly sprung out of nowhere, weaving together all the disparate strands of my reading – and then suddenly the meaning escapes, the essence evaporates, and no matter how often I reread the same lines, they seem to flee ever further with each subsequent reading, and I see myself as some mad old fool  who thinks her stomach is full because she’s been attentively reading the menu.  p 53

Renee:  We are all prisoners of our own destiny; must confront it with the knowledge that there is no way out and, in our epilogue must be the person we have always been deep inside, regardless of any illusions we may have nurtured in our lifetime. Just because you have been around fine linen does not mean you are entitled to it – no more than a sick person is to health.  p 90

Renee: Elsewhere the world may be blustering or sleeping, wars are fought, people live and die, some nations disintegrate, while others are born, soon to be swallowed up in turn – and in all the sound and fury, amidst eruptions and undertows, while the world goes its merry way, bursts into flames, tears itself apart and is reborn, human life continues to throb….   So, let us drink cup of tea. p 91

Paloma: In our world, that’s the way you live your grown-up life; you must constantly rebuild your identity as an adult, the way it’s been put together it is wobbly, ephemeral, and fragile, it cloaks despair and, when you’re alone in front of the mirror, it tells you the lies you need to believe.  p 92.

Renee: We talk about love, about good and evil, philosophy and civilization, and we cling to these respectable icons the way a tick clings to the nice big warm dog.  p 97

Renee: The camellia against the moss of the temple, the violet hues of the Kyoto mountains, a blue porcelain cup – this sudden flowering of pure beauty at the heart of ephemeral passion; is this not something we all aspire to? and something that, in our Western civilization, we don not know how to attain? P 101

Renee: I find this a fascinating phenomenon: the ability we have to manipulate ourselves so that the foundation of our beliefs is never shaken. p 108

Renee: ….there are marvelous poets born in stinking caravans, or high-rise slums who do have for beauty the sacred respect that it is so rightfully owed….To the rich, therefore, falls the burden of Beauty.  And if they cannot assume it, then they deserve to die.  p.110

Paloma: What is love? How will we love? Who will it be? When? Why? Our opinions differ. Oddly enough Marguerite has an intellectual vision of love, whereas I’m an incorrigible romantic.  She sees love as the fruit of a rational choice (of the http://www.sharedtastes.com variety) whereas I think it springs from a delicious impulse.  There is one thing we do agree on, however: Love mustn’t be a means, it must be an end.  p 194

Paloma: Our other favorite topic of conversation is fate, and people’s prospects in life…and if you want my opinion, the most awful thing is not that we’re playing this game, but that it isn’t a game. p 194

Renee: But when we gaze at a still life….we delight in its beauty…we find pleasure in the fact that there was no need for longing, we may contemplate something we need not want, may cherish something we need not desire….In the scene before our eyes – silent, without life or motion – a time exempt of projects is incarnated, perfection purloined from duration and its weary greed – pleasure without desire, existence without duration, beauty without will…. For art is emotion without desire.  p 204

Renee: Entrusting ones life is not the same its opening up one’s soul, and although I love Manuela like a sister, I cannot share with her the things that constitute the tiny portion of meaning and emotion that my incongruous existence has stolen from the universe.  p 224

Paloma: Personally I think there is only one thing to do: find the task we have been placed on this earth to do, and accomplish it as best we can, with all our strength, without making things complicated or thinking there’s anything divine about our animal nature.  This is the only way we will ever feel that we have been doing something constructive when death comes to get us. Freedom, choice, will, and so on? Chimeras. We think we can make honey without sharing in the fate of bees, but we are in truth, nothing but poor bees, destined to accomplish our task and then die. p 238

Renee: Like any form of Art, literature’s mission is to make the fulfillment of our essential duties more bearable…something has to save us from the woeful eternal fever of biological destiny.  p 248

Renee: Every gray morning, day after gloomy day, secretaries, craftsmen, employees, petty civil servants, taxi drivers and concierges shoulder their burden so that the flowor of French youth, duly housed and subsidized, can squander the fruit of all that dreariness upon the alter of ridiculous endeavors.  p 249

Why this book:  Selected by the All American Leadership Reading group to read and discuss.  Several other friends  had already recommended the book to me.

Summary in 3 sentences:  In the opening section of the book, Sam Walker explains his criteria for deciding which were the 16 most successful sports teams in history – criteria that will naturally be very controversial and contested.  Then he explores the one characteristic that all of these super-elite teams had in common – each had a strong player-captain who served as the glue and driving force that propelled these teams to stay great over a period of numerous years to become among “the Greatest Of All Time,” and break out from those which were great once, or twice.  He explores each of seven characteristics he found were common to each these team captains – and there are some surprises here – before he concludes in Part III, with what he calls “The Opposite Direction – Leadership Mistakes and Misperceptions.”

My impressions:   I liked and learned a lot from this book.  It is a book which will stimulate thinking and controversy – and in a positive way.  The Captain Class arrives at some conclusions that are not part of the conventional leadership curriculum.   Though his lessons learned are written to apply to highly competitive teams – and I would include elite Special Operations Forces in that group – they may be of less relevance to most business organizations, which are not made up of elite players, nor players who aspire to being elite.  That said, there are lessons learned that can make any team better – IF a CEO or leader is willing to find and empower the right “captain” within the organization, with the respect and moral authority to serve as a sparkplug, motivator, and disciplinarian within the team.  Walker does go to some effort to apply his criteria for excellence of team captains to settings outside of the most elite sports teams, including the corporate world.

The Best Teams: The first part of the book would be of interest to any avid professional sports fans, as he breaks down in some detail how he arrived at the criteria by which he selected the best sports teams in history.   BUT he also categorized great teams into Tier 1 (the 16 teams he designated as the elite of the elite) and Tier 2 (108 teams which were among the very best – but not fully achieving his criteria to qualify as Tier 1.  His Tier 2 list include such redoubtable teams as the New England Patriots 2001-2017, San Francisco 49ers 1981-1995, Chicago Bulls 1991-1998, NY Yankees 1936-41.  This section of the book includes a fair amount of analysis and a few stories to back up his culling and selecting – fully anticipating push back to which teams he included and excluded from elite Tier 1 status.

The teams he lists and discusses, not only Tier 1 but also many of the Tier 2 teams, include teams from all over the world and from less popular (at least in the US) sports such as field hockey, volleyball, water polo, and team handball, and he includes men and women’s teams as well. In fact, three of his Tier 1 teams are women’s teams.   His list of Tier 2 teams is included in an Appendix, broken out by sport and includes a brief description of each.

The Seven Traits. The meat of the book is in Part 2, in which he explores each of the seven qualities he found that the captains of his Tier 1 teams shared. Each chapter begins with stories of great captains exemplifying the particular characteristic of that chapter.   These stories make for compelling reading and are effective in helping him make the case for how the specific trait being addressed in the chapter is manifest in Tier 1 captains.

He writes a separate chapter for each of the Seven Traits he found were common to all of the Tier 1 team captains.  Those seven traits (p 91) were:

1. Extreme Doggedness and focus in competition (Chapter title: They Just Keep Coming)
2. Aggressive play that tests the limits of the rules (Chapter title: Intelligent Fouls)
3. A willingness to do thankless jobs in the shadows (Chapter title: Carrying Water)
4. A low-key, practical, and democratic communication style (Chapter title: Boxing Ears and Wiping Noses)
5. Motivates others with passionate nonverbal displays (Chapter title: Calculated Acts)
6. Strong convictions and the courage to stand apart (Chapter title: Uncomfortable Truths)
7. Ironclad emotional control (Chapter title: The Kill Switch)

Walker explains all the reasons why these men and women didn’t fit what he expected to be the profile of the key leaders of great teams.  These included (p 50:)

1. They lacked superstar talent;
2. The weren’t fond of the spotlight;
3. They didn’t “lead” in the traditional sense;
4. The were not angels;
5. The did potentially divisive things;
6. The weren’t the usual suspects (i.e. the well-known stars of great teams;)
7. Nobody had ever mentioned this theory (i.e., that the captain might be the team’s driving force;)
8. The captain isn’t the primary leader (i.e., not the coach or manager).

Bending/Breaking the rules: The most interesting and controversial chapter was Intelligent Fouls- Playing to the Edge of the Rules.  He  points out that all of the captains were focused on winning and would bend and stretch the rules when they could get away with it, to win. He points out (arguably) that:

“There are two activities in polite society in which it’s okay to do harmful things to other people in the pursuit of victory.  The first is war. The second is sports. Part of the deal, however, is that there are some lines not to be crossed.  (p116)

Such aggressive bending of the rules he divides into two important categories:  hostile and instrumental.  Breaking the rules out of “hostile” motivations, driven by anger or frustration in order to hurt or punish the opponent are forbidden, and the Captain Class would not go there.  Instrumental bending or breaking rules isn’t motivated by a desire to injure, rather by the determination to achieve a worthwhile goal.

Later he says that:

“The captains of the world’s sixteen greatest sports teams were not angels. They sometimes did nasty things to win, especially when the stakes were highest.  They didn’t believe that being sportsmanlike all the time was a prerequisite for being great…..

“The world puts a lot of pressure on athletes, especially captains, to be champions and paragons of virtue. But these two thing do not always correlate. It’s sometimes one or the other. The most decorated captains in history understood this.”  (p 130  131)

Walker is being descriptive, not prescriptive.  He’s saying that whether we like it or not, this is what his research has found.  In sports as in war, however, there are lines not to be crossed, and I really found his distinction between hostile and instrumental bending/breaking of the rules insightful.  I think of the battles between offensive and defensive linemen in football often as a battle for who can get away with bending or  breaking the rules in order to better get at, or protect the quarterback.

Captain Class Communications – It was interesting to me that Walker spends much of the book directly or indirectly addressing how captains communicate with their teams, noting that they communicate differently than most leaders in other contexts.  Tier 1 captains prefer not to communicate in public, often don’t do it well, and are not effective at giving motivational speeches.  They communicate best during play, or in closed circles with their team, and communicate best when coaches, managers, or outsiders (the press especially) are not around.  Their communication is practical and direct, often silently,  with gestures, or body language.  Walker devotes a whole chapter (Uncomfortable Truths) to describing how Captain Class captains were not afraid to put themselves at risk, sometimes in a shocking manner, by challenging management on behalf of the team.

My good friend Mike Lerario – author of Leadership in Balance (my review here) – noted in his review of Captain Class that the reserved approach to communicating in public  characteristic of Tier 1 captains diverges from what is necessary to succeed in most senior leadership positions.   CEOs and leaders of large organizations are required to effectively represent and “sell” their organizations to the public and audiences outside of their own.  Tier 1 team captains were uniformly poor at this.  I can only think of two successful senior military leaders I knew – one a man and one a woman – whose communication styles approximated the Captain Class formula. While adequate when called upon to communicate in public to broader audiences, they excelled so well in other aspects of their leadership that their very reserved public personas didn’t seem to matter.

Walker describes the quintessential Captain Class team captain as someone who:

• Does not want, nor seek the spotlight, nor personal stardom. Avoids the press and publicity.  Is focused on Team, first, second and third.
• Is willing to do the small, non-glorious jobs that don’t get much attention, but which s/he considers to be essential to the team’s success. Is not too big or important to do anything that needs to be done which will help the team succeed.
• Is not only willing, but chooses to be in the shadow of the star players and the most talented performers, and thereby help them better help the team;
• Though quiet in public and in front of coaches and managers, is vocal and communicates actively when among teammates.  Sees his/her role as keeping open communications within the team, and letting each team member know that they are valued and important.
• Communicates most forcefully through actions, gestures, and body language. Is not usually a dramatic or effective speech giver;
• Is willing to push limits and bend rules – to a point – to help the team win. When the rules are bent, or even broken, it is with one goal in mind – helping the team win, not to fulfill any personal agenda;
• Takes great care of individual players, in order to take care of the whole team. No one individual, including him/herself, is more important than the success of the team.
• Is all-in, all the time, and therefore has the moral authority to demand that of others on the team.
• Is passionate about the team and winning, but manages passion and emotions – especially in public – so that passion and emotion work for, and not against the goal of team – to win.

He describes Valeri Vasiliev as typical of the Captain Class:

He was dogged on the ice, carried water for others, and played to the edge of the rules.  He didn’t give speeches, but teammates say he was constantly advising the coaches and  counseling the players without ever raising his voice. “When there were no coaches around, he would talk to the players,” Tretiak told me.   “He always said the right thing in the locker room and on the ice.” (p 190)

Captain Class echoed many of the themes that James Kerr makes in his outstanding book Legacy (my review here), which describes the culture of the New Zealand All Blacks rugby team.  There are many great parallels between these two books.  Walker describes his Tier 1 captains as metaphorically “carrying water” for their teams, while Kerr describes how All Blacks team captains “sweep the sheds” with their teams, as a hallmark of All Blacks humility.    It is no coincidence that two of the Tier 1 teams, and one of the Tier 2 teams were All Blacks.

This book was a fun read with compelling stories and an original approach.  His point: If we define truly exceptional teams as those who have succeeded at the very highest levels for an extended period of time, that level of success may require a somewhat different style of leadership, than what works to be “merely” very good or great.  Walker reveals what for some may be uncomfortable truths in his analysis.

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Some other interesting and telling quotes from Captain Class (page numbers refer to 2017 hardback edition:)

<This is> ultimately a book about  a single idea – one that is simple, powerful, and can be applied to teams in many other fields, from business and politics to science and the arts… It’s the notion that the most crucial ingredient in a team that achieves and sustains historic greatness is the character of the player who leads it. p xvii

The longer he played, and the more Barcelona won, the more acutely Puyol felt the need to keep the team focused, to keep pulling hard on the rope. “Winning is difficult,” he said, “but to win again is much more difficult – because egos appear.   Most people who win once have already achieved what they wanted and don’t have any more ambition.”  p110

…most of the Tier One captains had zero interest in the trappings of fame.  They didn’t pursue the captaincy for the prestige it conveyed – if they pursued it at all.. 137

One of the great paradoxes of management is that the people who pursue leadership positions most ardently, are often the wrong people for the job.  p 141

A water carrier can improve a team by focusing on shoring up weaknesses and enforcing high standards – this much we’ve seen.  But there was still one missing piece of the puzzle.  If the chief responsibility of a team leader is to direct their players on the field, then by all rights these captains must have found ways to influence, if not control the team’s tactics.  p 145

To Deschamps, carrying water wasn’t just a servile act, it was a form of leadership – the sort of command that most of us, up in the stands, don’t appreciate or even notice. “I knew I couldn’t make a difference with a single move,” Deschamps said. “but over the long run, through hundreds of small acts of service and management, I was able to balance things out and to be come indispensable”….In other words, while the television cameras tend to focus on the players at the front, the hard work of leadership is often conducted from the rear.  p 147

I wondered if the communication style of great captains wasn’t solely a matter of how much they talked but also of the emotional energy they put behind their words through body language, facial expressions, gestures and touch.  p.164

The teams in Tier One had talkative cultures – and the person who fostered and sustained that culture was the captain.  Despite their lack of enthusiasm for talking publicly, most of these captains, inside the private confines of their teams, talked all the time and strengthened their messages with gestures, stares, touches, and the other forms of body language.  The secret to effective team communication isn’t grandiosity. It’s a stream of chatter that is practical, physical, and consistent.  p 170

What all of this research shows is that anyone who wants to change the emotional composition of a group – whether it’s a Viennese mob or a football team – can do so by tapping into an invisible network that connects all people together.  Strong leaders, if they are so inclined, can bypass the conscious minds of their followers and communicate directly with their brains.  p 178

…the difference between positive dissent and the negative, destructive variety…..teams that had high levels of conflict were often more likely to engage in open discussions that helped them arrive at novel solutions to problems. The worst outcomes came when groups engaged in thoughtless agreements….There was a difference…between teams that squabbled because the members didn’t like one another and teams that fought over their different views of how to solve a problem they were working on.  p 199

To lead effectively, Lahm believed, a captain has to speak truth not only to power but to teammates as well.  “It’s a totally romantic idea that you have to be eleven friends,” he said.  p. 201

A leader who isn’t afraid to take on the boss, or the boss’s boss, or just stand up in the middle of a team meeting and say, “Here’s what we’re doing wrong, ” is an essential component of excellence. p. 202

During their careers, the Tier One captains all faced some issue that stirred up powerful negative emotions – an injury, a rebuke, a personal tragedy, even a climate of political injustice. These captains not only continued playing through setbacks – they excelled. They walled off these destructive emotions in order to serve the interest of the team. p. 228

Why this book: My literature reading group decided to select a topic rather than a book, and the topic for this session was John Adams.  We selected him in part because we were approaching the 4th of July, and in part because several of the women in our group wanted to read more about Abigail Adams. McCullough’s bio of John Adams has a great (well deserved) reputation and had been on my shelf un-read for years.  So I finally decided to read it. So glad I did.

Summary in 3 sentences: It is a biography – about John Adams’ life – from birth until his death, at age 90 – but  focuses largely on his efforts leading up to and during the American Revolution, the forming of the Republic afterwards, his time as Washington’s Vice President and then as President. The final 20 percent of the book is about his life after the Presidency, his mentoring of his son John Quincy, and most notably his relationship with his political rival Thomas Jefferson.

My Impressions:  It’s a long and very worthwhile read.  McCullough is a great storyteller and his story of Adams was a great immersion experience into 18th century New England – leading up to, through, and after the revolutionary war.  McCullough is clearly a great admirer of Adams; that comes out in how he describes his integrity and character. But he doesn’t refrain from being critical when he felt that Adams was occasionally overly principled and inflexible, and at other times when he allowed himself to be cajoled, for example when he signed the infamous Alien and Sedition act.

This is probably the most widely read and popular biography of Adams, and served as the basis of the HBO seven part part series staring Paul Giamatti which I highly recommend. I saw the series before reading the book, and look forward to watching it again. But the two go well together.

Here are a few of the things that most surprised and impressed me reading about Adams’ life and that period of time in our nation’s history:

• The Depredations of Disease. Though we all know that disease and infection were a much greater scourge to society two centuries ago than they are today, that message is brought home when we read about SO many people dying of typhoid, malaria and other diseases. Every summer in Philadelphia, hundreds and sometimes thousands of people died of typhoid fever, so many that those who could and had the resources to do so, left the city – including the Continental Congress. Those without the means to leave, and especially the very young and the older, died in the hundreds and sometimes the thousands.  Also during this period, we are reminded that almost every family lost one or more children in childhood – an almost routine, heart wrenching tragedy.
• I was stunned by the viciousness of the politics – actually making what we currently deplore in the ad hominem attacks between political competitors, look tame. There were fewer news sources then, so a brutal attack in a newspaper or magazine could have a huge impact.
• Adams tempered his responses.  Though he had a well known capacity for anger – the dark side of his positive passion – Adams was unusual in that he refused to get into the mud with those who attacked him, as vicious as those attacks often were.  He never attacked an opponent’s person or character in public, though he did in some of his private correspondence.
• There were many times when Adams stood on principle against popular opinion of his colleagues and often of the public.  As a young attorney he successfully defended some of the English soldiers engaged in the infamous Boston Massacre the he felt were being unfairly railroaded because of the anti-English sentiment in Boston. Later as President, he stood fast against the widespread desire to go to war against France, which may have cost him his reelection. Though history shows that to have been the right decision, a better politician – one more attuned to public opinion – certainly could have achieved the same result while still placating the public animosity toward France.  Though very principled, his unwillingness to bend and play the political game, gave his enemies much ammunition, and often cost him in outcomes.
• His focus on duty has seldom been equaled in a political leader.  At great cost to himself and at great risk, he accepted direction to cross the Atlantic to France twice. Without question.  He did whatever his country asked. He seemed to have little ambition for personal glory.  In fact, for much of his life he would have preferred to stay at home on his farm in Braintree Massachusetts.
• I had hard a lot about Abigail Adams.  McCullough – as do all biographers of John Adams – emphasizes the very strong and positive role she played in John Adams’ life.  She supported him through thick and thin, and the strength of their relationship, and her equally principled and strong will transferred to and supported his own unusually strong and principled stances.   They spent extensive time apart – sometimes years, when Adams was assigned overseas.  Most of the time he spent in Philadelphia writing the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, they were apart, but he always claimed that she was a main source of his strength and conviction.  They wrote to each other constantly – and most of these letters survive.
• Jefferson and Hamilton actively undermined Adams during his presidency, and McCullough was unsparing in his recounting their uncompromising opposition to Adams and efforts to undermine his policies and decisions while he was President.   But at least Hamilton was fairly open in his opposition to Adams, whereas Jefferson worked primarily through surrogates, and his opposition was subtle and insidious.
• Adams reached out to reestablish a warm relationship with Jefferson after they had both been presidents,.  This spoke highly of Adams’ character, since he was very aware of much of Jefferson’s treachery, which he did not reciprocate while Jefferson was President.   After all of that, one can’t help but be amazed and impressed that he initiated the reconciliation, which resulted in a long and close friendship, and one of the most extensive collections of  (post) presidential letters in history.
• I was impressed at how Adams grew old. He was a happy, expansive, and very engaged older gentleman – an excellent model for an ex-President.  Even after he lost his beloved Abigail, one of his sons, and many of his closest friends, he remained grateful and happy, and shared the joy he saw in life – in things large and small.  He was a highly respected and admired elder statesman and projected the best in American and human values.

McCullough concludes the book with the following paragraph describing Adams’ approach to life in his later years:

“…Nor did he love life any the less for its pain and terrible uncertainties.  He remained as he had been, clear-eyed about the paradoxes of life and in his own nature.  Once, in a letter to his old friend Francis van der Kemp, he had written, ‘Griefs upon griefs! Disappointments upon disappointments.  What then? This is a gay, merry world notwithstanding.’  

It could have been his epitaph.” 

Why this Book: I was scheduled to travel to Tanzania to climb Mt Kilimanjaro and then afterward participate in a follow-on safari tour of the Serengeti and other wild animal parks in northern Tanzania. Though this book takes place mostly in Kenya, it was suggested by the tour operator as providing good insights into the culture, wildlife, and environment we would encounter in Tanzania.

Summary in 3 Sentences: The author Rick Ridgeway is a renowned mountaineer and adventure writer who has been all over the world.  He and a good friend who leads safaris in Kenya hatched the idea of making a foot safari from the peak of Kilimanjaro through Kenya’s  famed Tsavo   wildlife parks, out to the Indian Ocean, a distance of about 250 miles.  While the book does describe the trek and their adventures along the way, Ridgeway uses the trek as a backbone around which to share engaging stories about many fascinating personalities who have been involved in managing the parks, the movement to preserve wildlife, the fight against poachers, and various legends of man’s interface with wild animals in the region.

My impressions:  I really liked this book – very well written, and I liked the humility, curiosity, insights and perspectives of the author. In many ways this book is as much about the history of the white man in Kenya – beginning in the early 19th century- as it is about the trek from Kilimanjaro to the Indian Ocean.  Given that Ridgeway is a professional mountaineer and adventurer, a journalist, travel writer and amateur naturalist, it is also very much about the interface between  man and the environment – especially as it has related to the impact of Westerners on the previous balance between native African tribes and the wildlife in the area.  The encroachment of humans on what had been previously shared habitat has had a profound impact on wildlife – but humans have clearly suffered as well.

Ridgeway’s three main companions are the subject of much of his narrative.  His good friend and fellow mountaineer Iain Allen was  “widely regarded as the most experienced mountaineer in East Africa,” ran a safari business, leading climbs, safaris and other adventures in East Africa. And as experts and guides,  he brought along Bongo and Danny Woodley, brothers and both hunters and park rangers themselves, following in the footsteps of their father Bill Woodley, one of the great hunters and park rangers in Kenya in the 20th century.  Many of the stories he shares are from them – about their experiences in the bush, as well as stories from their father and his friends and acquaintances. Fascinating stuff.  Additionally he had two armed Kenyan park rangers with them and a cook and driver who met them with food and provisions at various campsites throughout the trek.

The book is filled with a fascinating narrative and vignettes from their trek.  But as I’ve noted, a highlight of the book was the many digressions he made into the history and stories of the area through which they were hiking.  Some of the stories I found most compelling were:

• The fascinating story of the man-eating lions that plagued the effort to build the railroad into the interior of Kenya at the beginning of the 20th century.  Two lions had developed a taste for human flesh, and nearly every night would stalk, kill, and devour one (occasionally two) of the railway workers, eluding all attempts to capture them, defeating all attempts to protect the workers from the lions. These lions killed and ate nearly 30 railway workers before effort to kill them finally succeeded. The account of the personal efforts of the head of the railway project to finally defeat these very clever predators was a great page turner.  Based on accounts of other people disappearing without a trace, it was estimated that these lions may have killed and eaten over 100 human beings.  The stuffed skins of these two lions are in the Chicago museum, and one member on our safari had seen them.

• The fascinating story of the focused efforts to defeat poachers in the Tsavo parks of Kenya, culminating in the 1980s.  The park rangers had been up against native Kenyan tribes, small time criminals, as well as corrupt officials who were  profiting from the ivory trade.  The poacher issue seemed to be more or less under control, when armed Sudanese rebels realized that poaching ivory was an easy and profitable source of revenue, and began sending fairly well trained and ruthless para-military criminals into Kenya.  At this point, the park rangers, with the support of some influential government leaders, created a para-military counter-guerilla force which fought back.  It has been an on going battle, which at the time of the writing of this book in 1997, had reached a delicate level of stasis.  But Rhinoceros populations were decimated and elephant populations remained under threat.

• And finally, related to the poaching stories, the park rangers struggled to find accommodation with a native tribe of African bow-hunters whose culture for centuries had evolved around the art of hunting and killing elephants for ivory. The ivory trade had existed for centuries, and the Waliangulu tribe were among the most proficient big game bow hunters in the world.  They had shared the environment with elephants for centuries and their culture was built around hunting elephants as an ethos. They were poachers only as defined by the game laws that came into being in the 20th century.  The story reminded me of Alaskan Eskimos and whales, or native American cultures built around following buffalo, and warrior tribes counting coup against each other.   Ridgeway sadly notes how population growth in Africa, the encroachment of 20th century civilization on tribal and wildlife lands, and the legal prohibitions on hunting had already led to the demise of the once proud Waliangulu culture.

Throughout the book Ridgeway sought to understand the relationship between hunting and wildlife conservation.   Ridgeway was not a hunter,  hadn’t had much sympathy for big-game hunting, and was somewhat surprised to find that a large percentage of strong advocates for protecting and preserving wildlife were indeed hunters.  And getting to know some of the most prominent of these men, he realized that their efforts to preserve wildlife were due to more than a selfish motivation to simply preserve targets for their hunting.  The experience of hunting, and the delicate relationship between hunter and hunted is much more complicated than that.

When stalking game and being on the hunt, the hunter must venture into the wild lands and the discomfort of being in the field, and enters the primordial food chain, putting him/herself at risk in the search for game.  The hunt is very often unsuccessful, after much effort.  Serious hunters experience a primal connection to nature in which one eats only what  one is able to kill, and which we in our comfortable and civilized lives don’t often experience.  Hemingway alluded to this several times in Green Hills of Africa and some of my best and most environmentally conscious friends in the National Outdoor Leadership School are also hunters and have  partnered with hunters for years in lobbying to preserve wild lands and protect wildlife.

I really enjoyed reading Shadow of Kilimanjaro.   I like Ridgeway’s voice, how he wove fascinating stories from the history of the interface between white Western culture and the local tribes and wildlife into his narrative.  As something of a small time adventurer myself, I found Ridgeway to be a very appealing character, and I loved his descriptions of the many interesting and eccentric characters who populate his book. As an adventure and travel writer, he has a well-respected gift for writing and description. Whether one is going to Africa or not, this is a really good read.

Why this Book: I was scheduled to travel to Tanzania to climb Mt Kilimanjaro and then afterward participate in a follow on safari tour of the Serengeti and other wild animal parks in northern Tanzania. This book is Hemingway’s account of his big game hunting trip in that same part of Africa and I  hoped to learn something about where I was going.

Summary in 3 sentences:  Hemingway had  hunted in his youth and after some of his initial successes as an author, found a sponsor to subsidize this trip to fulfill one of his manly-man dreams. He took with him a friend and his wife Pauline – the “other woman” from the book, The Paris Wife – as well as guides to help him find and identify his game, and a number of local porters to provide for a comfortable camp life, and to butcher and transport game he had killed.  Hemingway writes about his adventure in first person as a story teller, with drama and context, detailing the challenges, excitement, dangers of many of his stalks and kills, his frustrations when he failed, and generally describing his experiences as a big game hunter in 1930s Tanganyika – now Tanzania.

My Impressions:  This is not one of Hemingway’s classics, but it does give some insights into the man, the era and the manner of wealthy Western big game trophy hunters. Teddy Roosevelt, who must have been one of Hemingway’s heroes, set the standard and in fact, Hemingway hired the same guide, Phillip Percival (“Pop” in the book,) to lead him through this expedition.  It is written in first person and includes Hemingway’s thoughts and musings on more than the hunt.  But it is mostly about his feelings and experiences hunting big game in Africa.

The Forward, written by Hemingway’s son Patrick, and the Introduction, written by Hemingway’s grand son Sean offer interesting insights into the background to the book.  After reading the book, I found Pauline’s journal, which is provided in the back as an appendix, to be very enlightening as a very different perspective to the events Hemingway describes in the book.  Pauline herself was a published writer for magazines and I found her account more straightforward, with less of Hemingway playing the role of man’s man and literary icon on the hunt.  Pauline’s account seems more sincere and descriptive of the actual events of the safari.

I wish I had waited until after going on the safari to read the book.  Reading it before arriving in Tanzania, much of it was hard for me to relate to – the animal names and locations were often unfamiliar to me.  But reviewing it afterward, was more rewarding – I had been to many of the places mentioned and had seen, up close and personal, most of the animals he observed and hunted.  Hemingway’s expedition spent time in the Serengeti and the Ngorogoro crater, both of which we visited on my safari.

I read the book with 21st century sensibilities about killing wild animals merely for sport, and the killing of (what are now) endangered species.  Frankly, I was disheartened by SO much killing with high powered rifles.  Reading Pauline’s journal, it seemed that they were on a killing spree to get great trophies, and just because they could.  I can hardly imagine that they needed or were even able to use that much meat.

That said, the guides and Hemingway did show an appreciation for the limitations of the animal resources.  They sought to kill only older and mature males, which of course also usually made the best trophies, expressed regret when they unintentionally killed a cow, and scrupulously avoided killing the young.  Hemingway spent a whole day trying to follow an animal he had wounded, finally giving up, expressing regret and even a sense of moral unease at being the cause of the likely painful death it would experience,  from its wounds, or being ripped apart by hyenas.   And in one instance he noted how certain areas had already been overly hunted.  At one point he writes, ” We are the intruders and after we are dead we may have ruined it but it will still be there and we don’t know what the next changes are. I suppose they all end up like Mongolia.”

I recommend this book to anyone studying Hemingway the man, or who, as was the case with me, is going to East Africa on safari.  This edition of the book includes a number of appendices to provide detailed background and supplementary material for those interested in understand Hemingway, his style, writing process and other background. To me, the appendix of greatest interest was Pauline’s diary.  I recommend scanning the Forward and Intro before reading the book and then going back and reading them (with greater interest) after reading Hemingway’s published version of Green Hills of Africa.

Why this Book: Selected by the All American Leadership reading group as our pick  to discuss for June 2017.

Summary in 3 Sentences: Bill George adds his own experience into the mix of stories and insights from over 125 key business leaders in the US, some in their 70s and some as young as in their 20s, who he and Peter Sims had interviewed and researched.   The message and focus is on “authentic” leadership, based on self-knowledge and passion driven commitment to a purpose bigger than self and career.  These are almost cliched ideas in 2017, but the points are well made, reinforced with many compelling stories and first person accounts of leaders who have struggled and succeeded.

My Impressions:  This book reinforced points I’ve read in many other leadership books –  so there wasn’t much “new” in it.  Of course, it was written 10 years ago, and there have been hundreds of leadership books written since then making many of the same points,  a few of which I’ve read.  The strength of the book is in the illustrative stories.  Bill George and Peter Sims interviewed and/or researched over 125 leaders for this book and many of their compelling and sometimes truly memorable stories are included,  which help reinforce the points of the book.

A couple of other things make this book stand out.

I like how they begin with an emphasis on the leaders’s personal life story as key to his/her leadership, a point which they reinforce later when they discuss how leaders must select a “style,’ that is most appropriate not only to their experience, but also to the situation. The uniqueness of one’s life story should determine one’s “authentic” style.

Related to that, the book emphasizes the importance of self-knowledge and self- awareness, as necessary to “discover your authentic leadership” (from the cover) and becoming a mature  leader.  He used the following graphic to to help describe his idea of the “authentic self” as central to who we are:

The Leadership Exercises that were offered for each chapter in Appendix C at the end of the book were excellent, and included some probing and provocative questions.  While I did look at the questions, and recognized them as thoughtful and very worthwhile, I did not spend time thinking about or writing responses to the questions posed.  Doing these exercises however would be a very worthwhile investment in time – particularly toward the goal of  inspiring thinking, and self-knowledge.  I could imagine a leadership course going chapter by chapter through this book, and requiring the participants to write down their own answers to the probing questions in Appendix C, and then share and discuss them with each other.

I thought many of the graphic representations were a real strength.  I include  several below with the quotes I offer, which will help me (and perhaps you) with a quick review of the contents of the book – of course without the strength of the stories.

Possible Weakness:  Throughout the book, the authors write about the importance of a leader being “authentic.”  I recalled how in Leadership BS (my review here)  Jeffrey Pfeffer challenges this concept, noting that an important part of leadership is in role playing, appropriate to the demands of the situation.  The idea of the leader finding the balance between playing the role expected of a leader, and wearing his/her feelings on their sleeve was not addressed.  In True North, Bill George points out how being open about one’s shortcomings can yield positive and more trusting relationships with colleagues, teammates, or subordinates.  On the other hand, in his section on building one’s personal support team, he alludes to how we need a friend, mentor, partner, spouse with whom we can REALLY be vulnerable and authentic. The issue of “authenticity” is more interesting and complex than he describes. And in Waking Up (my review here) Sam Harris emphasizes how and why he believes that there is no “authentic self” at the center of the onion – that our “self” is really made up of the sum of all those outer layers.

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Some quotes:  Below are some quotes I found representative of the message of the book. I’ve included a few of the excellent graphics.  (page numbers from the 2007 Hardback edition.)

To lead others, you must know what you are doing, have deep curiosity, and develop keen judgment.. Competence counts.  xvii

True North is the internal compass that guides you successfully through life. It represents who you are as a human being at your deepest level.  It is your orienting point 0- your fixed point in  spinning world  that help you stay on track as a leader. Your True North is based on what is most important to you, as your most cherished values, your passions and motivations, the sources of satisfaction in your life.  xxiii

Leaders are highly complex human beings, people who have distinctive qualities that cannot be sufficiently described by lists of traits or characteristics.  Leaders are defined by their unique life stories and the way they frame their stories to discover their passions and the purpose of their leadership.  xxvii

Yet by acknowledging their shortcomings and admitting their errors, (authentic leaders) connect with people and empower them.  xxxi

Five dimensions of authentic leaders:

1. Pursuing purpose with passion;
2. practicing solid values;
3. leading with heart;
4. establishing enduring relationships;
5. demonstrating self-discipline. xxxi

The test of authentic leaders’ values is not what they say, but the values they practice under pressure.  xxxii

Asked what motivates them to lead, authentic leaders consistently say they find their motivation through understanding their own stories….What emerges from these stories is that virtually all the leaders interviewed found their passion to lead through the uniqueness of their life stories….not by being born leaders….not by believing they had the characteristics, traits, or style of a leader… Not by trying to emulate great leaders.  8

Many people with painful stories see themselves as victims, feeling the world has dealt them a bad hand.  Or they lack the introspection to see the connection between their life experiences and the goals they are pursuing now.  Some get so caught up in chasing the world’s esteem that they never become genuine leaders… The different with authentic leaders lies in the way they frame their stories.   14

Novelist John Barth once said, “The story of your life is not your life. It is your story.”  In other words, it is your story that matters, not the fact of your life.    15

Vanguard CEO Jack Brennan believes that the worst thing people can do is manage their careers with a career map:  “The dissatisfied people I have known and those who experienced ethical or legal failures all had  a clear career plan….If all you’re interested in is advancing your career, you’ll be dissatisfied at the end of the day.”  15-16

…The leaders journey followed the new span of life and subdivides into three periods, each of roughly thirty years. …Phase I is labeled: “Preparing for Leadership.” Phase II, from thirty to sixty years of age, is the “Leading” phase, in which leaders take on successive roles until they complete their peak leadership experience…Finally, Phase III is for “Giving Back”… 17

“(Phase I)) is your opportunity to rub up against the world.” 17

Two thousand years ago Roman statesman Marcus Cicero declared that “old age is to be resisted.”  24

There is nothing wrong with desiring these outward symbols as long as they are combined with a deeper desire to serve something greater than oneself.   28

The other side of fear of failure is an insatiable craving for success. …along the way, success can go to their heads and they develop a sense of entitlement…they are prone to pushing the limits and thinking that they can get away with it.  30

..authintic leadership is about empowering others on their journeys.  The shift is from “I” to “We.” ….If our supporters are merely following our lead, then their efforts are limited to our vision and our directions about what needs to be done.  44

Only when leaders stop focusing on their personal ego needs are they able to develop other leaders….A  lightbulb goes on as they recognize the unlimited potential of empowered leaders working together toward a shared purpose.  45

When you face your own mortality, as Mike Sweeney did, your priorities and your True North become crystal clear.  The same is true when someone close to you passes away.  58

Too many leaders believe that by being the smartest person in the room, they can use their intellect to carry the day….Wells Fargo’s Dick Kovacevich argues that high IQ can actually be an impediment to leadership. “Above the 99th percentile of intelligence, there is an inverse correlation between leadership and intelligence,” he says…Leaders with an exceptionally hight IQ get too intellectually involved and have trouble being tolerant of others.   68-69

Stanford’s Joel Peterson calls feedback “the breakfast of champions.” 77

When leaders accept who they are and release the need to be on someone else’s fast track, they can be comfortable in their own skin. 79-80

One fear all of us have to confront is whether others will accept us if we show our vulnerability. We fear being rejected if we admit our mistakes.  Will others take advantage of our weaknesses? Will they think less of us? As hard as we try to deny them, these questions continually nag when we are feeling most vulnerable.  80

Piper said he never would have opened up like that had he not found himself in the middle of a crisis. “As a result, I’ve learned the power of being vulnerable.  Most leaders’s are afraid to be vulnerable. They think, ‘I’m supposed to be strong and have all the answers.'” 81

Self awareness is only half the challenge. You still have to accept yourself….The key to self-acceptance is to love yourself unconditionally…(which) requires self compassion.     82

Leadership principles are values translated into action.  86

After defining your leadership principles, you need a clear understanding of your ethical boundaries. 86

…you do not know what your true values are until they are tested under pressure.  87

As we search for our True North, it is important to acknowledge how easy it is to get pulled off course.  The pressures to perform, the ingrained fear of failure, and the rewards for success can cause us to deviate from our values.  By knowing our ethical boundaries and testing our values under pressure, we are able to get back on track.  102

Alice Woodwark, McKinsey: “If you’re chasing the rabbit around the course, you’re not running toward anything meaningful.”   103

There are two types of motivations – extrinsic and intrinsic. Extrinsic motivations, such as getting good grades, winning athletic competitions, or making money are measured by the external world….Intrinsic motivations, on the other hand, are derived from your sense of the meaning of your life – your True North.  106

Many leaders turned down higher-paying jobs in early career decisions in order to pursue roles they would enjoy.  110

The key to developing as an authentic leaders is not eschewing your extrinsic motivations but balancing them with intrinsic motivations.  112

But what some people fail to recognize, especially aspiring leaders, is the importance of the two way relationship with their mentors.  Lasting relationships must flow both ways.  122

To have great mentors, Warren Bennis tells young leaders, they have to recruit them.  124

Dillon’s story illustrates the importance of having mentors who challenge rather than just support you.  126

Personal support groups are one of the most powerful ways of gaining wisdom and advice that will help you grow as a leader.  The most effective groups are made up of peers who meet on a regular basis and talk about what is important in their lives.  128

Getting back on track alone is very difficult.  That is when you most need your support team.  131

Life humbles you.  137

Warren Bennis does not like the word balance.  “Balance is an engineering term that means you put the little weights on each side, and if you’re really a good person, you’ll come out equal. We have to be aware that we swing back and forth. It is choices all the time, not balance.”

Ultimately, our life stories become an expression of the choices we make.  138

For some of us, it takes many years to find the purpose of our leadership – and the right place to devote our passions.  155

Joel Peterson believes that many people are cause-driven and don’t start out thinking about being leaders. “They have so much passion for the cause that they naturally become the leader. When they are pulled to something that matters a great deal, leadership followed their passion.”  160

Narayana Murthy:  “You cannot sustain long-term shareholder value unless you create sustainable value for your customers, while assuring fairness to all stakeholders: customers, employees, investors, vendor partners, governments and society.” 167

To bring out the best from teammates, authentic leaders must develop trusting relationships based on mutual respect.  There is no substitute. Like loyalty, respect provides a basis for empowerment, but it must be earned. Here are some of the things leaders do to gain the respect of their colleagues:

• Treating others as equals.
• Being a good listener
• Learning from people
• Sharing stories.

Woody  Allen once remarked, “Eighty percent of success is showing up.” 177

Often, the most empowering response is to challenge people’s ideas, to ask why they are doing something a particular way, and to help them sharpen their ideas through dialogue.  179

Curtis Carlson: “Monday through Friday are about staying even with the competition. Saturday is when you get ahead.” 181

(Marilyn Carlson) Nelson decided to reinvent Carlson as a company that cared for customers by creating the most caring environment for its employees.  183

Once you empower people to lead around a shared purpose, you are well positioned to achieve superior result through your organization.  185

Using your power is directly linked to your style, as you convey power through style.  186

You also need to adapt your leadership style to the capabilities of your teammates and their readiness to accept greater power and responsibility. For example, if your teammates need clear direction they may not be ready to respond to a consensus style. Conversely, creative or independent thinkers will not respond positively to a directive style.  186

If you simply adopt an organization’ normative style or try to emulate someone else’s style, your lack of authenticity will show through.  Under pressure and stress, leaders tend to revert to their least attractive styles – from being highly directive or passive aggressive to completely withdrawn. That is why you should find a leadership style that inauthentic to you and continue to refine it.  191

Why this book:  Recommended by my son, and then selected as an optional add-on book to Lincoln in the Bardo, my reading group’s selection for our bimonthly reading.  Ivan Ilyich is short – less than 100 pages.

Summary in 4 sentences:   The book takes place in Russia in the second half of the 19th century.  After a happy uneventful childhood followed by law school,  Ivan Ilyich was contentedly becoming an important figure in his community as an attorney and then judge when he became ill of mysterious causes. In the second half of this short book, Ivan Ilyich struggles with his illness, slowly gives up hope of recovery, and we experience his frustrations and painful realization that he is truly alone in his suffering as he faces death. In his last weeks and days, he resents the injustice of becoming fatally ill, since he had lived just as he was supposed to, following the well-trodden path to success  – and he finally realizes that so much that had previously been important to him was a sham.

My impressions:  Interesting that our reading group selected this book along with Lincoln in the Bardo, given that both books deal explicitly with death and dying.  Thinking, talking, writing about death is very much about how we live – and this book indeed is not only about how Ivan Ilyich lives his last months, but how he had lived up to that point, before he fully realized that indeed death also applied to him.  The book is about an unreflective man facing the reality of his own mortality – and how finally accepting his mortality changes his values and how he viewed his life.

The book begins with Ivan Ilyich being already dead,  his former colleagues talking about him, visiting his widow, attending the viewing and the funeral.  His “friends” and colleagues view his illness and death from a very self-centered perspective – though Ivan Ilyich’s death may be sad,  they are mostly concerned with how it affects their immediate concerns, the inconvenience of it all, how it may open up some opportunities for them.  Tolstoy is at his best getting at the truth of how people feel and think – the hypocrisy and prevarications in how people live and behave with each other.  This quality of his writing characterized War and Peace and Anna Karenina, the other two books of his that I have read.

After the opening scene, we are introduced to Ivan Ilyich and his life, and we learn about his happy childhood, how he was a good student,  attended law school, and then about  his successful career as an attorney and jurist, and eventually becoming a judge.  We learn of his courtship and  marriage, having children, and then how his marriage stagnates.  He then puts more  energy into his work, and takes satisfaction in his rising stature within his community.   It is a quick overview of a conventional life, lived in accordance with conventional values of the day – not unlike our values today.     As he reaches his 40s, his family life is not particularly satisfying, but his priority is on his career and his reputation in his community, which continue on a positive glide path as a result of Ivan Ilyich having done everything in accordance with the accepted conventions of the day.  Then he becomes ill.

In the second part of the book he confronts his illness – initially it as a mere inconvenience, and he believes he will get past it and get on with his life.  But he doesn’t get better, in fact gets worse, and he as to deal with conflicting medical advice from indifferent doctors, and he begins to become concerned.    From his family and “friends” he perceives feigned concern.   Tolstoy takes us inside the perspectives of his family and friends and we see that their concern is primarily for how Ivan Ilyich’s illness will affect them and their lives.

Most telling is how Ivan Ilyich notices and reacts to the insincerity of attempts to help and comfort him.  He despises those who visit him out of obligation  rather than out of real concern.  He does establish a bond with his son – a young boy who is confused and too young to be self-interested in his fathers death.  And he also bonds with one of his servants who is a friendly and good natured young man who is happy to help him with no apparent concern for what he might get out of it.

But in Ivan Ilyich’s story we see karma at work.  As a judge, he made judgments that determined the fate of those who were brought before him, with little real concern for them as human beings – rather dispensing the state’s justice and enforcing the laws impartially, only with the state’s interests  and his own career in mind. He showed no particular interest in whether “real” justice was being served, nor was he particularly interested in the individual stories and lives of those whose fate he decided. The doctors he visited treated him with a similar aloof indifference to his personal suffering.  Just as he had focused primarily the legal issues when deciding the fate of those brought before him as judge,  his doctors focussed on his illness as an interesting puzzle to solve, a dilemma, a challenge, but with little regard for his personal suffering.

As his suffering increased, he isolated himself more and more, while more people came to see him as he was clearly close to death.   He looked back on his life and wished he’d realized earlier that so much of what he had considered important meant nothing now.  He knows he is about to die and begins detaching from his suffering and his life.   The book concludes with, “He drew in a breath, broke off in the middle of it, stretched himself out, and died.”

The first part of the book reminded me a bit of Sinclair Lewis’s Babbitt, the protagonist of which is also an unreflective man following the formula for conventional success in one’s community.  In Babbitt however, our anti-hero never really realizes why things simply don’t seem to turn out right for him; Ivan Ilyich is forced to confront his own existential crisis – with no time left to make amends.  Funny how I keep stumbling on this theme. I just finished Hemingway’s Snows of Kilimanjaro – a short story in which the protagonist, a Hemingway-esque character, confronts, accepts and then experiences his own death.

The introduction to the Bantam Classic edition I read is an amazing essay by Ronald Blythe on the theme of “death in literature” and how this book fits into Tolstoy’s life and work.  I  recommend waiting until reading Ivan Ilyich the book before reading the introduction – it meant so much more after reading Tolstoy’s novel.

Why this Book: I’ve read many of Colin Wilson books and have been a big fan of his since I was in college. After reading Stealing Fire on ecstasy and the ecstatic experience, I was inspired to read what Colin Wilson had to say about “peak experience.”

Summary in 3 sentences: This book provides numerous case studies to describe and explain “peak experiences” –  what they are, what they indicate about us, and how to engender them.  He says that the peak experience is available to all of us, and drawing on his work with Abraham Maslow, argues that they are fundamental to true happiness and to “self actualization” at the top of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.   The peak experience is a merging of what he calls the worm’s eye view in our day to day “robotic” experience, and the bird’s eye larger perspective, and while peak experiences can happen spontaneously –  most often when we get out of our comfort zones – they can also be engendered with an act of will and focus.

My Impressions:  This book is a great companion to Stealing Fire. Both books explore various approaches and efforts to find ecstasy, or a happiness or fulfillment that is “out-of-our-heads,”  but Wilson brings a more traditional perspective, with references to many earlier philosophical, psychological, and literary efforts to understand happiness and peak experiences.   But like Stealing Fire, Super Consciousness is all over the map and lacks focus.   That said, I got A LOT out of the book.

Super Consciousness  is Colin Wilson’s exploration of the idea of “peak experiences” that he borrows from Abraham Maslow, who he knew well and with whom he collaborated earlier in his life.  The peak experience is a moment of intense appreciation of one’s experience and one’s surroundings. You can learn more about this concept in an article in Wikipedia.

My own impression is that there is a spectrum of peak experiences.  On the low end, they may be a relatively mild ‘Wow!’ experience, in which we momentarily step out of our role as practical doer of deeds and actor in the world, and simply surrender to a sudden  full appreciation of the beauty and wonder of the situation in which we find ourselves.  On the high end of this peak experience spectrum, it may be a satori-like mystical experience infused with qualities described in Stealing Fire  with the acronym STER: Selfless, Timeless, Effortless, and Richness.  While the literature on peak experiences focuses on the later, Wilson’s description seems to include a spectrum: On the more “mundane” end, a sudden infusion of joy, wonder and appreciation; on the other end, the Apostle Paul on the road to Damascus.

Wilson’s key claim is that we can will ourselves to have more peak experiences by recognizing them, acknowledging them, valuing them, and opening the door to them.  He points out that over 50 years ago, when Maslow described peak experiences to his students and asked them to describe their own similar experiences at each of his class sessions, the more they described them to each other, the more often they occurred.  Maslow associated peak experiences with the apex of his hierarchy of needs – self-actualization – and there seems to be a symbiotic relationship between peak experiences and being self-actualized.   They seem to reinforce each other.   Self-actualization is associated with a strong sense of fulfillment coming from living in accordance with one’s personal sense of meaning and purpose. And the peak experience (as I understand Wilson’s interpretation of Maslow) is a guidepost to that sense of harmony with one’s world.  It is an experience that not only shows the way – it may also be the way.

Wilson is an existentialist philosopher and as such, gives the individual ‘full responsibility” for his/her experience.    He argues that we can choose to seek peak experiences , and will them to happen more frequently.   Or we can choose to simply be practical, or morose, or victims of whatever our environment imposes upon us.   He argues that many of the existential philosophers of the 20th century sought and chose to live in a meaningless and uninspired world, dismissing those happy souls who experienced joy and appreciation as naive, and blind to life’s tragedies and senselessness.  In Super Consciousness Wilson detailed (too much so from my perspective) Samuel Becket’s pessimism and joy-denying philosophy, and also argues against Sartre, and Kant, and others who he believed did not recognize or accept the life-affirming possibilities of an optimistic approach to life.

Wilson claims that the experience of intense of joy, and appreciation of the simple things in life is just as valid as the experience of meaninglessness, boredom or nihilism that many in the intelliegentsia have come to regard as a more sophisticated interpretation of our daily experiences.   So why not choose to experience joy rather than boredom, or an ecstatic sense of wonder and one-ness, rather than debilitating pessimism and meaninglessness?

Good question. Why not?

In the forward of Super Consciousness, Wilson states, “I am now 75 and most of my life has been devoted to a search for what might be called ‘the mechanisms of the Peak Experience’ or ‘power consciousness.’   This book might be regarded as a DIY manual on how to achieve it.”  I don’t think the book quite fulfills that promise, though it does open the door and begin the discussion.

So how might we have more Selfless, Timeless, Effortless, and Rich experiences of sudden joy wonder and appreciation?  Wilson is not overly specific, but he points to how such experiences often follow periods of intense concentration on survival and/or avoiding harm or tragedy.  He argues we have to get out of our routine, out of our comfort zones to increase the likelihood of peak experiences.  Building on Maslow’s claim, his argument is that heightened awareness of our capacity for such experiences can be an important part of having them, and we must constantly be aware of our often “robotic” approach to life. And when appropriate, fight it.

Wilson’s claims that we each have a  “robotic”  level of consciousness in which we take care of practicalities, and when in this mode, we go about our lives like a machine – just taking care of the business of life, not experiencing the joy of life.  The robot is indeed necessary, and helps us to identify and deal with threats, simplify our environment, and make ourselves safe and comfortable. But if we let the robot take over our lives, we miss the joy, the newness, the wonder that is part of the fully self-actualized person.  Wilson describes peak experiences as being infused with childlike wonder,  amazement, and surrendering to the fascination of seeing things as if for the first time.  They are like the experience of being in love, when the world seems to glitter.   This is the peak experience, which Maslow and Wilson say is key to living a fully self-actualized life.  The more of these we can have, the better.

Wilson says that in order to control our robot, we must be aware of, understand and even appreciate it.   But if we let the robot take over, we miss beauty and joy – we miss peak experiences. Our robot doesn’t appreciate the beauty of a sunset or the wonder of a child’s first steps, or how amazing it is that somehow things happen as they do.  Wilson says we have to keep the robot on a leash, otherwise practicalities will take over our lives.  In his own case, he says he sometimes even catches himself in his robotic mode  making love to his wife!  Whether we let ourselves get caught in entirely robotic living is up to us.  It is a choice – an act of will.  One way to open the door to peak experiences is to take the robot from the steering wheel, and put him/her in the passenger seat.

Wilson says on a day to day basis, our robot experiences life from a “worm’s eye view,” seeing only that which is in front of us. This he contrasts with the bird’s eye view available to us when we consciously step back and look at the big picture.  Wilson says the peak experience occurs when the worm’s and bird’s eye views suddenly and spontaneously merge – and when this merged full perspective is infused with energy and appreciation.

The peak experience requires energy – psychic energy to fuel the experience of total immersion joy, wonder, and gratitude that are characteristic of the peak experience.  I am reminded of how in his book The Pursuit of Happiness, Bertrand Russel argued that to be happy, we need periods of relative boredom – to let our energy build, to allow us to fully enjoy new experiences.  I think that this insight is particularly valid in todays overstimulated and hyperactive world.  And I also must take heed.

Just like Sam Harris’s Waking Up, and Stealing Fire, Wilson talks about the need to get the thinking mind out of the way, in order to let the peak experience in.   I recently attended a seminar on the Wim Hof method of using the mind to control environmentally imposed stress (heat, cold, other environmental factors.)  Wim Hof also pointed to the necessity of getting our pre-frontal cortex out of the way to let the limbic system – the seat of emotions and intuition – the freedom to allow us to reach our full potential.

It seems to be a common theme.

Super Consciousness is not Wilson’s best work, but rather a compilation of much of his thinking built around Abraham Maslow’s concept of the peak experience.   I doubt if there is anything truly original in this book, but I truly like Wilson’s writing style and approach and I got a lot out of the book. It is an easy and fun read and I believe has a very important message.