TGC Newsletter: August 2024

In this monthly blog, I'll share a few things circulating in my mind over the previous weeks. These emails will be short and sweet, providing thought-provoking insights and lessons about creativity, youth, career, leadership development, and more. Thanks for following along in this weird journey of life.

What I'm Reading

This short LinkedIn article by Maksym Kipot discusses undersociality, a new word about misrepresenting social cognition and others' perceptions of us, which can cause us to behave differently. How does this play out in imposter syndrome? When we think others don’t believe our worth or expertise, or we perceive them not to like us, we may be experiencing undersociality.

This all comes down to the story we tell ourselves. We often look for evidence within our lives to validate a story controlled by internal saboteurs or allies. What if you looked for evidence of the opposite? What evidence (or data) would a loved highlight? If you took on your friend’s perspective for one day, how would it shift your energy and thoughts leading up to a difficult conversation or big presentation?

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What I'm Listening To

Hidden Brain’s You 2.0: The Gift of Other People. These 50 minutes give powerful examples of the beauty of connecting with others when we retreat from others in our darkest moments. In it, psychologist Nicholas Epley quotes Bill Nye, The Science Guy, when he said, “Everyone you ever meet will know something you don’t.”

How do you need to behave to be open to learning from others? The answer is authentic and genuine curiosity. No agenda is requested or required. Curiosity creates space to rethink and unlearn to relearn. It reverses assumptions and biases and opens us to new ideas and perspectives. It humbles our egos and feeds our education and growth. It deescalates and builds trust. Ask as if you don’t know. To be curious, you need to listen actively and ask open-ended questions, two elements that take deliberate practice and skill development. 

Over the next month, I challenge you to say as many times as possible, “I don’t know,” or ‘Can you tell me more?”

Bonus challenge: Ask one person a day, “What do you know to be true that you cannot see?”

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What I'm Doing

I am celebrating three quarters done with my Master’s degree and will be entering my last semester in September! I am taking Leading Creative Collaboration with Equity & Empathy and Climate Change and the Arts this fall. I wish me luck, high productivity, and the ability to work quickly so I can find moments to rest. 

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What's Moved Me

Failure

is the information you need

to get where you’re going

From The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin

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What I'm Wiggling To

How can I sit still while listening to the build-up in Ariana Grande’s One Last Time? Adds the song to the Songs I Would Sing At Karaoke note on my phone.

Stay Playful,

Tamar

TGC Newsletter: July 2024

In this monthly blog, I'll share a few things circulating in my mind over the previous weeks. These emails will be short and sweet, providing thought-provoking insights and lessons about creativity, youth, career, leadership development, and more. Thanks for following along in this weird journey of life.

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What I'm Reading

This month, I finished reading Co-Active Leadership: Five Ways to Lead by Karen and Henry Kimsey-House. This book provides a new theory on leadership, debunking the idea that a leader is always at the front of the room. Within this model, there are five types of leadership summarized below. Before you read ahead, I want you to get into the mindset that everyone is a leader in their own way. Everyone has a role to play on a team (whether in an Olympic setting or at an office), in a group of friends, in a family, and within a country. Roles can switch, and individual strengths are utilized.

With this in mind, read about the types of leaders below. When have you played each role? What type of role do you enjoy the most? What do you seek to avoid? How can you enhance your "Leader Within" to make better decisions?

• Leader Within: Co-Active Leader Within accepts themselves fully and claim authority for their life by making the powerful choice to live from the inside out. It is infused with self-acceptance and self-authority.

• Leader Front: Co-Active Leader Front generates an experience of connection and engagement with the people who are following them and articulates a clear sense of direction and purpose. They engage others in a way that is exciting and inspiring.

• Leader Behind: Co-Active Leader Behind assumes positive intent for all parties and seeks to evoke leadership in others by listening, championing, acknowledging, and fostering wholeness through impeccability and integrity. They know they are responsible for their world and don’t need a title to tell them.

• Leader Beside: Co-Active Leader Beside takes responsibility for their world by organizing around a shared intention and supporting each other’s strength to generate a powerful synergy in which the whole is much greater than the sum of the parts. Rather than creating with each other, they create from each other and hold each other accountable. It’s another form of “yes, and” the famous improv golden rule.

• Leader in the Field: Co-Active Leader in the Field expands our sensory awareness so that we can access our instinct, intuition, and imagination and find the courage and commitment to act on what we sense in a way that is innovative and fresh. These leaders focus on awareness of the impact, refining a leader’s ability to sense the moment in a much more nuanced way and helping surface actions that would have the best outcome for all concerned.

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What I'm Listening To

Hidden Brain’s "Making the World Sparkle Again" discusses the tendency to get used to things, both good and bad, and how this can prevent or support joy or harm. In what ways are you used to joy and maybe take it for granted? In what ways are you used to the bad and accept the suffering?

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What I'm Doing

For my birthday in May, I brought 16 family and friends to a Museum of Science fundraiser event, Sparks After Dark, hosted by The Innovators, the Museum’s young professionals group. Because of my ability to bring a large group to the event (Leader in Front), I was gifted the opportunity to become part of The Innovators community! I’m very excited to be welcomed into the science young professionals community and foster the next generation of STEM champions, community builders, and museum enthusiasts! My first meeting is in a few weeks - stay tuned!

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What's Moved Me

Kanter’s Law: Everything looks like a failure in the middle.

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What I'm Wiggling To

With under 200,000 monthly listeners on Spotify, I originally found LYVIA, this emerging artist on TikTok while she sang this beautiful song, Trippin, while in the middle of the street holding a cup of tea. 

Stay Playful,

Tamar

TGC Newsletter: June 2024

In this monthly blog, I'll share a few things circulating in my mind over the previous weeks. These emails will be short and sweet, providing thought-provoking insights and lessons about creativity, youth, career, leadership development, and more. Thanks for following along in this weird journey of life.

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What I'm Reading

NPR and the Myth of Objectivity by Dustin Arand provides an interesting take on bias and the media. Although this article is behind a paywall, one quotation stood out to me:

“Human beings have a very hard time accepting that complex, apparently goal-directed processes can actually be the result of many independent actors making decisions based on short-term considerations,” Arand says.

We make decisions to solve problems for the now within the systems we understand. Maybe this is why violence is still so prevalent. Violence is the easier answer for short-term solutions. It’s one of the most intense and powerful ways to silence people or force them to change: to problem-solve from one perspective. When we understand the complexity of situations, we realize that violence is the weakest and worst solution. This poses the next question: how do we make change within the complex?

*reaches out to mediators and conflict resolution experts*

Redirecting away from violence towards bias, problem-solving, and leadership, my education in life and graduate school courses provides the answer: listen to others. Understand their "why." Be curious and learn the skills, systems, and processes—the “independent actors” and the “short-term” and long-term considerations. Now, whether impacted parties are willing to do this is a different question.

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What I'm Listening To

In honor of Pride Month, we’re listening to an interview of the iconic Billie Jean King by Julia Louis-Dreyfus in Julia’s podcast about wise female trailblazers in their field. You can listen to Julia Gets Wise with Billie Jean King on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Bille Jean talks about the importance of relationships and being intentional about the process. Leadership isn’t a “me,” it’s a “we,” she says. She then provides three pieces of advice when leaving a space of community and comfort out into the unknown.

1. Relationships are everything. Get to know people.

2. Keep learning and keep learning how to learn.

3. Be a problem solver and an innovator in life and everything you do.

What’s one piece of advice you can focus on this next month?

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What I'm Doing

I’m waking up in the middle of the night because I adopted a cat! It's okay because he's a cutie and is adjusting to his new home. He’s a sweet orange tabby nine-year-old named Baxter. I’m learning how to be a cat mama, taking on a new identity and new responsibilities. Here's a picture:

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What's Moved Me

“The first step to happiness is bringing in unhappiness” - Tal Ben-Gavir, a Harvard professor teaching the science of happiness.

Earlier this month, I attended a conference for the New England Chapter of the International Coaching Federation, and it filled my cup. It’s a pleasure and blessing to be surrounded by like-minded coaches steeped in curiosity and holding the spirit of connection.

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What I'm Wiggling To

Although a sad song lyrically, the music of Oh Caroline by The 1975 has got me up and moving. I hope you get the chance to wiggle this week. If you do, let me know. If you want to wiggle with someone, I’d love to be your wiggle buddy in person, via Facetime, Zoom, or phone call. I promise it’s healing—almost better than SSRIs!

Stay Playful,

Tamar