Leaders Read#111

👋 Hello everyone,

Carlos Wallace said, “Leaders don’t wait. They shape their own frontiers. The bigger the challenge, the greater the opportunity.”

Here are a few resources you might have missed:

• Book notes: The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli

• Book notes: The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale

• All 201 Book notes for your enjoyment

• Catch-up: #1 - #110 Leaders Read Newsletters

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📚 Book Summary:

This week's book is "The Elephant In the Room" by Diana McLain Smith.

This book is about repairing working relationships that have gone off track. It opens with the story of Steve Jobs and John Sculley, a partnership that unraveled so completely that it led to Jobs being fired from his own company. The author’s framework is built for situations in which both people are willing to do the work of changing the relationship.

One of my favorite takeaways from the book is this:

"When people wait for the other person in a relationship to change, they're usually in for a long wait. Odds are that the person is also waiting for them. Think of the leader who keeps looking to her second-in-command to take more initiative so that she doesn't have to tell him what to do, while he keeps looking to her to stop controlling things so that he can take more initiative. Each one waits for the other to make the first move."

✅ Actionable advice:

It's easy to see what others miss. But when relationships stall, strong leaders break the cycle. Start by not getting stuck on the "How." At your next team meeting, state a clear outcome — for example, "We need a simpler way to understand how the customer measures value." Then pause. Give your team space to respond. Just listen. In that moment, you're modeling three essential leadership behaviors: setting direction, delegating ownership, and, when ideas miss the mark, you can simply treat it as a coaching opportunity.

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Have a great week!