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Continuing his explorations into what makes us happy and successful that he began in The Happiness Advantage, Achor argues that although we learn from a very young age that success is the result of our individual efforts, this is actually only our “small potential,” and real achievement or “big potential” is the result not of a star that shines especially brightly, but of star systems, productive communities that influence each other for the better. Achor discusses how to foster such communities—both for individuals and for companies. He argues that every person we’ve considered a lone genius was actually surrounded by a community of achievers that fostered them, and he presents compelling evidence that even a team of modest talent can outshine the most brilliant individual contributors. At just over 200 pages, this book is a pretty breezy read. Still, for as impressed as I was with the lack of fluff in The Happiness Advantage, this one felt bloated in places, and there's some repetition from The Happiness Advantage. The core ideas are interesting, but they probably could have been distilled into a long journal article.

In his first book, Achor argues that although we normally think of happiness arising as a result of success—common wisdom holds that if we just get that promotion, lose a few pounds, reach our goals, then we’ll be happy—the opposite is actually true: success follows happiness. He details seven different principles of positive psychology, recounts various psychological studies that led to these insights, and then connects these principles to how they might translate into success in the workplace. Interesting insights include the idea that people who believe they are lucky actually are better attuned to seeing opportunities than the average person, that having strong social bonds predicts success and ability to cope with stress, that with effort and gratitude we can literally rewire our brains to be more optimistic, and that positivity is a greater predictor of success than skill or intelligence.

This is a great example of the rare pop-psychology book without very much “fluff”. It is up there for me with James Clear's Atomic Habits and Brene Brown's Dare to Lead as books that really have probably changed my whole outlook on life and have certainly changed the way I approach my work.

My only complaint is a small one, that Achor's constant references to being a grad student at Harvard do come across as increasingly insecure after the fourth or fifth mention. Still, this is a relatively small gripe for a book that has probably changed my whole outlook on life.

Brené Brown is a researcher of shame and vulnerability, and while that might seem like an odd fit for a book about leadership in the workplace, Brown brings her usual energy and winsome earnestness to a compelling argument that vulnerability is indeed at the heart of all courageous leadership. Dare to Lead promotes strong leadership through soft hearts, which is, frankly, exactly the leadership book we need in 2020. Topics include how to be vulnerable as a leader and why you should, how to lead difficult conversations and elicit vulnerability from your team to get to the heart of issues, and how to avoid common pitfalls that make people “armor up” and fall into unhealthy patterns.

Like many, I first came to Brown’s work through her TED Talks on shame and vulnerability. If you’re wondering whether you’ll like this book, those talks are fabulous, and will let you preview some of the book's underlying themes. The energy she brings to her talks practically leaps off the page with a written voice that mirrors her lecturing voice almost exactly. Brown is engaging and insightful in a way that feels earnest and open, but never feels cloying or aggressive. She’s not asking you to Lean In; she’s asking you to bring your “whole heart” to the table. And she’s got practical, data-driven reasons why you should.

The book claims to be a quick read, one which could be devoured “cover-to-cover in one flight”. And by the numbers and tone, that should be true. But I confess it took me a considerable amount of time to get through it, largely because some off-handed remark would literally completely change my worldview and I would have to put the book down to reflect on it. For example “resentment is almost always related to a lack of boundaries” was a half-sentence that was not even the main point of that sentence, much less that section, but it was a profound enough point that I had to step away. And these moments happened so frequently that the book was actually pretty slow to digest for me. So while I think this could be a breezy read, I also don’t think that’s the most product way to consume it.

The content itself is a nice balance of theoretical research and actionable takeaways. Brown has done the research, collected the data, and interpreted its results—then gone a step farther into translating those into actionable takeaways. This is Brown’s fifth book, and like most researchers, her work has built on itself cumulatively for years. Though Brown repeats extended sections from her previous books, she does a good job of highlighting how this work builds upon and extends the previous work. It didn’t feel overly repetitive for me, but I also haven’t read the entirety of her catalog.

It’s rare for me to say that a book has changed my life, but this book has shifted my approach—not just to leadership, but to communication as a whole—so fundamentally that it would be remiss of me to undersell its impact. But that said, due to the subject matter, this book rewards introspection and reflection even more than most self-help books, and you get out of it what you put in. Brown asks you to dive into uncomfortable places with yourself and with others, and while the rewards are great, the process is unapologetically brutal. But as she says, courage requires vulnerability, and “who we are is how we lead.”