Main Recommendation

How to Work with (Almost) Anyone: Five Questions for Building the Best Possible Relationships. By Michael Bungay Stanier

In this book, the author introduces the five questions below as conversation starters to begin building healthy patterns in work relationships from the get-go. The short teaching points in the book are interspersed with the author’s friends and colleagues who share candidly about their best or worst working relationships.

1. The Amplify Question: What’s your best? This helps you name your best qualities.
2. The Steady Question: What are your practices and preferences? Explain your working habits to make it easier for people to work with you.
3. The Good Date Question: What can you learn from successful past relationships? Drawing on lessons from the past enables you increase what works.
4. The Bad Date Question: What can you learn from frustrating past relationships? This helps you to avoid things that don’t work well.
5. The Repair Question: How will you fix it when things go wrong? Time doesn’t repair all wounds, but equally a broken relationship doesn’t have to stay broken. There is wisdom in the wound – learning from the experience.

Books I’ve Read (or Reread) in 2023

How to Work with (Almost) Anyone. By Michael Bungay Stanier

That Hideous Strength. By CS Lewis

The Horse and His Boy. By CS Lewis

Designing Your Life By Bill Burnett and Dave Evans

Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts. by Brene Brown.

Homegoing. By Yaa Gyasi

Launching Men of Iron By Lyman Coleman

The Coddling of the American Mind By Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt

This is What America Looks Like by Ilhan Omar

Of Stillness and Storm by Michele Phoenix.

What book did you read this past year that you would recommend?

Let me know, so I can put it on my list.

Note: I realize that the algorithms that recommend books online are designed in part to keep me engaged by often reinforcing views I already hold. I seek to read as broadly as possible. While I benefited from reading each of the books here, I’m not recommending any single book in its entirety.