31 March 2026

Rachel was inspired by David Gate’s words in A Rebellion of Care: Poems and Essays and started noticing more opportunities for quiet rebellion in everyday life.

Over the past year, I’ve been in countless conversations about the pace of change, the polarization of communities, the challenges of ambiguity, and the perils of daily life. While I count myself lucky to be safe and warm and privileged, it’s exhausting. Since staying under the covers seems like a poor strategy, I’ve found myself seeking (and sometimes finding) things that bring solace and direct energy more constructively. Little spots of light that enable resilience and action.

In the introduction of A Rebellion of Care, Gate wrote: “...the most important thing is for us to care for the world, ourselves, and each other. And more, to do so is a radical position... I am interested in radicalizing us into a different kind of life—a life of unrelenting care.” When I first saw a snippet of his work last year (on Instagram, of all places), a poem stopped me in my tracks. I found Gate’s website and subsequently his book has found a home on my desk. (I’ve even traveled with it, and if you know how little I like carrying stuff, you know that’s saying something.)

As much as the individual writings and poems, this notion that the very act of caring amid and in spite of a sometimes mixed-up world is in itself rebellious feels almost liberating. I didn't know that I needed a “permission slip” to rediscover that care is an ethical and often courageous act. At times when things feel “too much,” I appreciate Gate’s reminders of human idiosyncracy, and the reflection that sometimes power resides in nuance rather than proclamation. And that, sometimes, two opposing things can both be true.

from David Gate, A Rebellion of Care, page 187

Despite all those conversations I’m part of, I don’t know that I’ve found or revealed any clear answers. The world might swirl, but I still show up. I still try to listen with curiosity and compassion. I still work to make each day a little bit better. And now, I get the satisfaction of feeling just the slightest bit rebellious while I do it.

17 March 2026

Barbara read David Brooks’ new book, How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen, and appreciated affirmation that her practice of asking questions is the pathway to deeper connections.

David Brooks is a PBS NewsHour contributor, and earlier this year retired after 22 years as an opinion columnist for The New York Times. He describes himself as someone who changed from being a person who didn’t even know he had feelings to one who allowed himself to feel deeply. He explains his journey with fabulous examples and humor that I think will help people learn to experience their own feelings more fully and give them inspiration to ask bigger, better questions.

His junior year in high school he wanted to date a woman. Brooks said, "After doing some intel, I discovered she wanted to go out with another guy. I was shocked. I remember telling myself, 'What is she thinking? I write way better than that guy!' It’s quite possible I had a somewhat constrained view of how social life worked for most people."

Brooks grew up in an intellectual family that was loving but reserved and did not express feelings. He came to realize you can only know a person if you know what they feel as well as what they think. To learn to recognize feelings in others, he first had to recognize them in himself. It was not an easy process. He read books, he interviewed people, he searched for feelings in others and himself even when it made him uncomfortable, and most of all he tried harder to listen more.

As he set about to make changes he said, "I had these novel experiences: 'What are these tinglings in my chest? Oh, they’re feelings!' One day, I’m dancing at a concert: 'Feelings are great!' Another day, I’m sad that my wife is away on a trip: 'Feelings suck!'"

Even so, he continued to learn how to recognize his feelings and gave many examples of questions to ask people to learn how they feel. They do not call for simple yes or no answers. They are big questions, but he said if you ask with a gentle face and no judgment, people will answer. Some examples: "What would you do if you weren’t afraid? If you died tonight, what would you regret not doing? Can you be yourself where you are and still fit in?"

Among the numerous questions he listed, he also included some easier ones that address the positive side of life: "What’s working really well in your life? What are you most self-confident about? What has become clearer to you as you have aged?" If you read some of our favorite books and articles on coaching, you’ll discover these are the kinds of questions professional coaches ask, too.

I also included several sets of self-discovery questions in my book, Turn Your Face: How to Be Heard and Get What You Want Most of the Time. I used them when I was coaching physicians. They helped the physicians to get to know themselves and helped me to get to know the physicians.

In Chapter Three of my book, I list 10 Now Moment questions from my 1982 Master’s Thesis, The Chosen Self Dances in a Writing Class. Our coaches at Allison Partners use these questions when they begin working with a new client.

In addition to asking powerful questions, Brooks also explains that getting to know someone requires a conversation where you truly listen. You sit up, turn your face toward the person, put down or get away from all screens, ask questions that show you’ve heard what they have said so far, and  encourage them to continue their story. The best listening is in-person, but it can be done on the phone or on video if you are truly paying attention as though the other person was in the room with you.

Brooks said, "Over the course of my career as a journalist I...have found that if you respectfully ask people about themselves, they will answer with a candor that takes your breath away. Studs Terkel was a journalist who collected oral histories over his long career in Chicago. He’d ask people big questions and then sit back and let their answers unfold. 'Listen, listen, listen, listen, and if you do, people will talk,' he once observed. 'They always talk. Why? Because no one has ever listened to them before in all their lives. Perhaps they’ve not ever even listened to themselves.'"

The stories I’ve shared so far are my favorites from Part 1 of his book and serve as instruction for how to implement his lessons. But I was even more moved by the stories in Part 2 where Brooks explains that the things he recommends work in normal times, but we are not living in normal times.

He wrote, "Our failure to treat each other well in the small encounters of everyday life metastasized and I believe, led to the horrific social breakdown we see all around us. This is a massive civilizational failure. We need to rediscover ways to teach moral and social skills. This crisis helped motivate me to write this book."

People are lonely and less connected. Loneliness leads to meanness and anger. "Angry people are always in search of others they can be angry at….A person who is perpetually angry….misperceives what the other person said so he can have a pretext to go on the vicious attack."

However, he reiterates that all emotions can be useful. "Unless they are out of control, emotions are supple mental faculties that help you steer through life. Emotions assign value to things. They tell you want you want and don’t want."

Brooks shares so many examples of how to learn how to become more empathetic, kind, and capable of understanding your own and others’ emotions. He recommneded reading "...biographies or complex, character driven novels and plays like Beloved or Macbeth." Search out friends, get them to tell you their stories with positive and negative emotions. Be with them when they are suffering in the way that they need, not the way you would need.

Throughout the book he gives reports on his own personal progress of getting in touch with feelings and seeing them in others. He modeled what he was teaching by telling stories about how he improved, but also how he could backslide. He said, "I go into a dinner party determined to listen deeply, but then I have a glass of wine and start telling stories about myself." His honesty about how he stumbled made it easier for me to forgive myself for past listening mistakes.

Sometimes I worry that my questions might invade someone’s privacy or take us into a difficult topic I’m not ready to talk about. But Brooks reminded me that the risk of asking too many questions is worth taking and as long as I watch to see if the questions are being well received, everything will probably be okay.

3 March 2026

Janie read Getting Along: How to Work with Anyone (Even Difficult People) by Amy Gallo and appreciated Gallo’s no-nonsense recommendations.

We all know that relationships at work matter, but how often do we treat them like a skill to be learned instead of a nuisance to tolerate? In Getting Along: How to Work with Anyone (Even Difficult People), Amy Gallo offers practical suggestions for improving workplace dynamics, whether you’re dealing with passive aggression, office politics, or a different challenge.

One of Gallo’s key points seems obvious, but I think it’s very easy to forget. You can’t control how other people behave, but you can control how you respond. Focusing on my behavior instead of the other person helps me move from frustration and blame into finding a solution. Gallo offers many excellent suggestions for ways to do this. Here are just a few of my favorites.

• Stop trying to fix others and focus on yourself
  Instead of hoping a difficult coworker will change, focus on how you can show up differently. I’ve been amazed at what a difference taking a few minutes to breathe before tackling a difficult conversation can make.
• Remember your point of view isn’t the only one
  We all see things through our own lens. Trying to understand where the other person is coming from can help you find common ground.
• Reframe conflict as an opportunity
  Conflict on its own isn’t the enemy; poorly handled conflict is. When disagreements arise, try to think of them as data about unmet needs or misunderstandings. I’ve found when I make myself focus only on the facts and not how I might feel about a situation, it’s much easier to feel calm and have a productive conversation.

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

Many years ago, I had a colleague who appeared to always do everything at the last minute, including her arrival at the office. This used to drive me crazy. I started to think she just didn’t care, which made me resentful. After a few years working together, I learned she had a medical condition that caused her a lot of pain and made it very difficult for her to get out of bed, particularly in bad weather. Knowing this changed my thinking and helped me let go of my resentment. It also made me a better co-worker because instead of being annoyed, I focused on what I could do to ensure that even if she was running late, it wouldn’t cause any issues.  

Ironically, in the years since then, punctuality has become harder for me, and I’ve become much less annoyed by people that run late because I am one of them. Reading this book helped me see that when I had less of an issue being on time, I was annoyed by others that struggled with it. Now, my life is totally different than it was when I was in that role, and I am late more often than I am on time. I never mean to keep other people waiting, but regardless of my intentions, I still do it. It’s easy to excuse my own lateness and assume that whoever I kept waiting knows that something must have come up that made me late. But I wasn’t willing to do this for my colleague years ago because I was too focused on how I perceived the situation.

Reading this book reminded me how important it is to challenge my own perspective and to focus on what I can do. I’ve started pausing to ask myself, “What’s within my control here?” Asking myself this interrupts my instinct to judge and helps me shift my focus toward curiosity. It doesn’t always come naturally, but when I pause and ask this question, I’ve found that I listen better, I see nuances I would likely have missed, and finding common ground becomes possible instead of conflict seeming inevitable.

17 February 2026

Allison read Why It’s Best to Imagine the Worst by Dr. Tanmeet Sethi and appreciated powerful advice on a better way to listen to someone who is dealing with something painful.

It’s hard to know what to do when we’re confronted with another person’s pain. I think people say, “I can’t imagine what you’re going through,” for many different reasons. Perhaps they are trying to convey their deep sadness on behalf of the other person or maybe they want to demonstrate that they understand that the situation is one of the worse things that can happen.

In her article, Why It’s Best to Imagine the Worst, Dr. Tanmeet Sethi shared her story about receiving a terrible diagnosis for her second son while she was pregnant with her third child. She explained why hearing, “I can’t imagine…” made her feel so much worse. Sethi knew those people were trying to say the right thing or just couldn’t figure out what to say at all. But at that moment, it always felt as though the person was really saying that Sethi’s life was. “…so horrible and otherworldly that it can’t live within her imagination.”

Sethi explained how she has navigated and is still navigating her child’s vicious illness. I appreciated her anger over being told to practice gratitude, her willingness to give it a try because nothing else was working, and her explanation of how gratitude helped her to start coping and to keep coping as her son gets closer to death.

Sethi also has advice for what to say instead of, “I can’t imagine,” and how to respond to people who say, “I can’t imagine” to you. The former is easy to implement… ‘“That sounds so hard.” Or offer the human truth: “I don’t know what to say, but I’m here with you.”’

The latter is much more difficult because you’re the one in pain trying to find the energy to give someone feedback on how their response hurts you. Sethi recommends, ‘“I really wish you would try to imagine my pain… Not because our pain is the same but because imagining it will connect you to me and maybe even more deeply to your own pain.”’ While this led to plenty of awkward moments and took more courage, she said it’s also helped her to get the support she needed from others and opened her to more joy, gratitude, and deeper relationships.

3 February 2026

We spend a surprising amount of our lives guessing what other people really think, often getting it wrong. Geof has been reading Jeff Wetzler’s Ask: Tap Into the Hidden Wisdom of People Around You for Unexpected Breakthroughs In Leadership and Life which suggests when we practice curiosity, we create better conversations.

What People Don’t Tell You (And Why It Matters More Than You Think)

I teach part time at a local university. Each semester, the class is organized into project teams, with each team focusing on solving a complex problem. During a project check-in with a group of students last semester, I walked through my feedback on their project. Students in the group diligently took notes during the conversation, nodding as I walked through the feedback. They thanked me, packed up their bags, and left. The following week, at the start of class, one of the students casually mentioned she had been completely confused by the assignment for weeks and didn’t want to “look dumb” with questions.

It struck me that I had spent 30 minutes with her group, giving feedback on the wrong problem. The students were cautious to ask for feedback earlier because they did not want to appear ignorant. That did not come up once during the initial feedback conversation. The team didn’t tell me the thing I most needed to know as an instructor.

Enter Jeff Wetzler’s Ask, a book that explores why people keep their most important thoughts, feelings, and insights tucked away in what he calls the “left-hand column.” After reading it, I realized how often I miss what’s actually going on beneath the surface. Not because people are intentionally hiding things (or even maliciously), but because the conditions for honesty aren’t always there.

Wetzler’s book is a practical guide to surfacing the invisible half of every conversation by being curious, and asking questions. It’s also a reminder that if we want to understand others we have to create the conditions that make it safe for them to share, and for us to listen. His central argument is simple: If you want to understand people, you have to earn your way into their left-hand column. And that requires curiosity, safety, and a willingness to hear whatever comes next.

The Left-Hand Column: The Stuff We Don’t Say

Wetzler uses a deceptively simple exercise: two columns on a piece of paper. The right-hand column is what we say. Write down the actual dialogue of a difficult conversation in this column. The left-hand column is what we mean. Capture your unspoken thoughts in this column. According to Wetzler, the left-hand column is where the most valuable information is. Everyone has their own two column “script” of a conversation.

People routinely hide their struggles and what they need, their honest opinions, their feedback for us, and their fears and insecurities – the stuff in the left-hand column. Not because they’re being evasive, but because the situation doesn’t feel safe, clear, or worth the risk. The cost of that silence is real: misalignment, poor decisions, unnecessary conflict, and missed opportunities for connection.

Why People Don’t Tell You the Truth

Wetzler outlines four barriers that keep people quiet:

1. They’re worried about the impact of sharing. They don’t want to hurt your feelings, damage the relationship, or get themselves in trouble. This is especially true when an imbalance in power dynamics exist; think boss and employee, parent and child, and in my case teacher and student.

2. They can’t find the right words. The brain thinks at roughly 900 words per minute. We speak at about 125. Most of what people think never makes it out of their mouths. Not because they’re hiding it, but because, as Wetzler says, “the pipe is too narrow.”

3. They don’t have the time or energy. Sometimes people are overwhelmed, burned out, or simply unconvinced you’ll do anything with what they share.

4. Cultural, identity, and style differences get in the way. What feels “honest” to one person can feel “aggressive” to another. What feels “polite” to one person can feel “vague” to someone else.

Curiosity as a Leadership Practice

One of my favorite parts of the book is the Ladder of Understanding. Wetzler introduces a visual metaphor of a ladder, emerging from a pool. The pool represents our “stuff:” the preconceived notions, beliefs, and perceptions of a situation. The rungs of the ladder represent the steps we take in forming our “story” or interpretation of a situation.

We will often select specific “data points” from our stuff (the pool) and quickly climb the ladder from data to interpretation to certainty and “our story.” The assumptions we make at each step of the ladder are further reinforced by our own confirmation biases.

Wetzler argues that “connective curiosity” is the antidote to this race up the ladder. Collective Curiosity is the desire to understand someone else’s experience (the left hand columns), and he offers a set of questions that interrupt our unconscious trip up the ladder:

• What if my story isn’t the only story?
• What might I be missing?
• What might they be up against?
• How might I be contributing to the dynamic?

These questions soften the edges of a conversation and create the mental space for honesty, for ourselves and for the person with whom we are engaging.  

Making It Safe to Tell You Hard Things

Wetzler also introduces the Safety Cycle, a non-linear approach made up of three parts. I think of this as a mental artifact that I can use as I am moving up and down the ladder of understanding.

1. Create Connection. Slow down, choose the right space for a conversation, and ask about their story. This invites sharing both qualitative and quantitative perspectives. Also share a bit of your own story. This creates the conditions for practicing connective curiosity.

2. Open Up. Explain why you’re asking questions. This can include admitting what you don’t know and acknowledging your own blind spots. This helps people understand your intentions behind your connective curiosity, shifting the tone from an “interrogation” to a conversation.

3. Radiate Resilience. Show you can handle the truth and invite disagreement. One of my favorite ideas of the book is the notion that the person you are having a conversation with is “not responsible for your feelings or reaction.” Sometimes we may hear an answer to a question that we don’t like or learn something about how others perceive us that may be different from what we intend. It takes courage to respond candidly. Thank them for that courage by not punishing them for their honesty.

According to Wetzler, when people feel connected, understood, and safe, they share more, especially from the “left-hand column” of the conversation. And when they share more, you learn more.  

A Final Thought

Wetzler’s book reminded me that most of what matters in human relationships lives beneath the surface. If we want to understand others, really understand them, we have to earn our way into their left-hand column.

And that starts with curiosity, humility, and the willingness to hear whatever comes next.

When you ask better questions, people give you better answers. And sometimes, they give you the truth you didn’t even know you needed.

Wetzler is generous with tools and frameworks from the book, sharing them here at his website: Resources — The Ask Approach

20 January 2026

Barbara read The New York Times obituary for Peter Elbow. She never met him, but he was one of her favorite teachers who helped her become a better and happier writer.

I was reminiscing about my favorite writing professor, Peter Elbow, whom I never met, and suddenly found myself wondering— Is he still alive? I discovered he died February 6, 2025, and was so pleased to learn The New York Times wrote his obituary. I am always fascinated by who they decide to write about and appreciated this explanation of the criteria.

Elbow was a scholar, violinist, snow skier, and prolific writer, but his writing life had a start that comforts me. His obituary said, “While he originally intended to become a professor of literature, he suffered a debilitating case of writer’s block almost as soon as he arrived at Harvard in 1959 to study Chaucer in pursuit of a doctorate….”

He had completed his Masters at Oxford so he certainly had academic chops, but at Harvard, he said “I had a terrible time getting my first-semester papers written at all, and they were graded unsatisfactory….I could have stayed if I’d done well the next semester, but after only a few weeks I could see things were getting worse rather than better. I quit before being kicked out.”

I had similar feelings, though not as dramatic, when I was an undergraduate English major at the University of Richmond with a term paper for every class. I never knew why I got an A or a C. I just prayed for Bs. All my professors used to talk about writing multiple drafts. I would stare at them and laugh on the inside. As I typed fast on my portable electric typewriter the night before a paper was due, I’d think—You are lucky to get this draft. There’s no time for multiple ones. I did get enough Bs to graduate well and much to my surprise years later, I missed reading and writing papers.

After auditing a course in the religion department at UNC Charlotte, I realized that going to school made me happier than any other extracurricular activity I had tried after my children were born. I first took Literature of the American South in the fall of 1977. And then I thought I must take a writing class to wrestle this demon to the ground and find out why I never know how a professor will react to what I write. In the spring I took Rhetoric taught by Dr. Sam Watson who would become the best teacher I ever had in an academic setting. Writing Without Teachers by Peter Elbow, which had been published in 1973, was the main text.

After Elbow dropped out of Harvard, he did odd jobs including teaching at MIT, but then he returned to graduate school at Brandeis University for his PhD. He wanted to find out why he had so much difficulty with writing. He said, “I made myself a rule: Every time a paper was due, I had to have a draft of the same length as the paper done a week before…. So then I knew I had a week to play with it.” I have lived that way ever since graduate school, and I didn’t remember that I learned that process from him. However, one quote from his first book, I’ve never forgotten: “Garbage in your head poisons you. Garbage on paper can safely be put in the wastepaper basket.”

Many sources said he revolutionized the teaching of freshman composition when he wrote Writing Without Teachers which emphasized a process call freewriting—write nonstop for ten minutes without worrying about spelling, punctuation, grammar, content, or anything some English teacher told you to worry about. “One of his students told The Times in 1983, ‘The first time I was given a free-writing exercise, I didn’t know what to do with it….There was a feeling that this can’t go on too long. But after the first few times, the exercise began to make sense, and writing became a little bit easier.’”

Freewriting revolutionized my life when I read his book and was required to write nonstop for 10 minutes every day by Dr. Watson. I finally had the answer to how to make my writing not just better but also easier. I no longer dreaded writing or agonized while I was trying to get something meaningful written. I do still feel fuzzy headed and even lethargic when I start to edit, but he taught me the importance of separating the judgment of editing from generating words for early drafts.

It also helped me solve personal and work problems, and to just have a better day. In this post, my daughter Allison explains why and how we encourage clients to freewrite each morning before they check email, read the paper or social media, or engage with anyone other than helping themselves and family members to get ready and out the door.

After I read the NYT obituary, I read the family obituary and watched his funeral service. In the family obit, I learned, “He chose his boarding school (Proctor Academy in New Hampshire) because skiing was compulsory. He chose Williams College in Massachusetts because it had a good ski team – but not so good that he couldn’t get on it.” He played the violin in symphonies wherever he lived, and in his retirement community played regularly for people in Assisted Living. He loved to practice the violin because it meant figuring something out. 

The funeral began with many photos of him skiing and being with his family. He was a Quaker so to honor his tradition, they began the service with five minutes of silence. A lot of people described his special ways of making deep friendships. He had lunch with one friend weekly. With another he had a regular hour call, and they each spoke for a half hour without interruption about whatever was on their minds. I’d always been grateful for what he and Dr. Watson taught me, but after watching the service I felt I knew him intimately.

Twice there are sound problems in the video, but if you decide to watch the service, after the rotation of pictures which are wonderful, scroll through to the end and listen to his children talk about him.

The daughter said he was an optimist believing things can be good no matter what is going on around you, and we don’t have to be stuck in the old ways. He was a rule breaker. He never walked by a Do Not Touch sign without touching the thing.

His son spoke last. He said, “I’m probably going to cry, which I don’t really like to do, but Dad really liked a lot. Most people think there are no simple solutions. Complex problems require complex solutions, but that’s not the way my dad saw the world. No matter what the problem was, the solution was pretty simple. It was— just freewrite more.” I laughed out loud because I completely agree and have followed that advice for over 30 years.

6 January 2026

Janie read The Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional and Personal Life by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander and reflected on what she read and adjustments she wants to make to pave the way for a great year.  

As I reflect on the past year and consider my goals for 2026, I found The Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional and Personal Life by Rosamund Stone Zander and Banjamin Zander to be a helpful resource. This book has long been part of the Allison Partners library (Rachel has even blogged about it), but I’d never picked it up before and decided it was time.

For most of my career, I’ve thought leadership was about outcomes, such as hitting goals, measuring success, and keeping things moving. I’ve never felt like a natural leader and have always been more comfortable in the background supporting others and helping them succeed. The Art of Possibility helped me recognize that leadership isn’t always about being out front, it’s also about how you create space for others to succeed. I thought about the different ways I support our Allison Partners team, our clients, and about how I uphold my volunteer commitments and support others around me. I realized that I am a leader in lots of different ways and I’d like to lean into this more in the coming year. As I focus on getting back into a routine after the holidays, I’m going to try to remember these two takeaways that really stuck with me.  

Focus on contribution, not measurement.
It’s easy for me to focus on deliverables and my (seemingly never-ending) to-do list and not take time before diving into the next thing to reflect and plan. The Art of Possibility pushed me to ask myself one question before diving into my workday. “How can I best contribute today?” Pausing to ask this question and consider the answer helps me be more deliberate about how I spend my time. It also helps me not end each day feeling like I didn’t accomplish anything. This looks different each day, but I’m hoping when I focus on how I can be most useful, my work will feel more meaningful, even on the days when my time is spent differently than how I originally planned.   

Give people an “A” in advance.
Although I don’t directly manage anyone, how I see and interact with the people around me matters. Instead of waiting for someone to earn my trust, I always try to assume positive intent and capability from the start. At Allison Partners, we often call this taking a generous interpretation. Approaching everyone as competent and motivated changes my approach and how I collaborate with others. People respond differently when they feel trusted and supported. 

I don’t know if these shifts will make an impact on my work, but as I look ahead to a very busy first quarter, I will be aiming to take a few minutes each day to focus on the best contributions I can make each day and not just how much I can cross off my to-do list. I will also be trying to always take a generous interpretation, rather than assuming the worst. My hope is that approaching my work this way will not only lead to more overall satisfaction but that it will also yield better results.

23 December 2025

Allison read Hanukkah Pajamakkahs and was reminded that sometimes it can be a good thing to make a great mess.

Rachel and I share a love of picture books. We think the lessons along with the illustrations are just as important for grown-ups as they are for children. We’ve written about more than 20 of them since we started our What We’re Reading Now blog in 2010, and today I’m delighted to share a video of Dara Henry reading her book, Hanukkah Pajamakkahs.

When I need to tap into my creativity or make changes in my life or prepare to have a difficult conversation, I have to remind myself that embracing messiness is almost always part of the process. Whenever the potential messiness scares me, I’m going to think of Ruthie!

9 December 2025

Rachel has been reading and thinking and reading and thinking — a lot — about learning and teaching lately. Inspired and informed by the work of Brené Brown, Carlo Rotella, and others, she's circling around new awareness of how we equip leaders (and ourselves) to harness our human-ness.

Back in August, I was randomly scrolling when an interview clip stopped me in my tracks. Brené Brown was talking about her soon-to-be-released book, Strong Ground: The Lessons of Daring Leadership, The Tenacity of Paradox, and the Wisom of the Human Spirit, and said, "I don't think, in this moment, that we're very good at what makes us human." It resonated in that quiet and still way that truth sometimes does, especially when I thought about the MBA students, business leaders, and community members that I watch navigate their lives and responsibilities.

So I got the book and started reading, and smiled at the sports metaphors (and her narrated inner dialog about them), and thought about what I wanted to do about it.

Fast forward to two weeks ago, when I passed by but then returned to an OpEd piece by Carlo Rotella in the New York Times: "I'm a Professor. A.I. Has Changed My Classroom, but Not for the Worse." (I first scrolled past, rolling my eyes and thinking to myself, "Duh. I'm so tired of people scapegoating A.I. or using it as clickbait." I don't know what changed my mind, but I'm glad.) Rotella teaches English Lit at Boston College, and I found myself nodding along as I read his philosophy of teaching and some principles of building "an A.I.-resistant English course." I saw the best version of myself in his description: "I don't lecture much. Mostly, we engage in conversation, paying attention to one another and to the book we have all read. I don't teach content so much as a way of coming at things — tools and moves we can use to extract meaning from the world around us and make well-supported arguments about what we find."

I don't teach English Lit, but I do teach problem solving and design thinking and other "squishy" topics of leadership, and there are parallels. I encounter people who crave a fixed model or tool or answer wrapped up in a piece of content, only to discover that the complexity and pace and nuance of the world requires instead that we piece things together to make meaning. To me, that's the "human" in a world where A.I. and a search engine can provide nearly any answer imaginable. Rotella suggests that one implication is that we shift a greater portion of our attention to what happens in the rooms and spaces that we gather, and on the exchange of meaning that we can foster.

I'm spending a lot of time these days developing leadership curricula, and the voices of Brown and Rotella have been loud in my mind, urging me to resist some of the temptation for content and clear direction in order to encourage others to notice nuance, consider, and wayfind. I believe that A.I. is neither a passing fad nor the villian of our human story — discovering how we learn and lead with all of our human-ness seems like a worthy undertaking.

P.S. Rotella wrote more about his experience teaching college freshman in What Can I Get Out of This? Teaching and Learning in a Classroom Full of Skeptics. I was laughing out loud by the second page, and making notes in the margins before I left the preface. More to come.

25 November 2025

Barbara read Don't Say Um: How to Communicate Effectively to Live a Better Life by Michael Chad Hoeppner and learned some new public speaking tips.

I used to coach physician executives on effective presentation skills for the American Association for Physician Leadership. They would fly to our office in Tampa where I had a video camera set up, and we would work for three hours. They brought a prepared speech. I would record them and then we watched their presentation together.  After the first time of watching themselves, they would immediately notice what they needed to work on and then I would ask a few more questions to help them to pick some things to change and make recommendations. After four to five times of presenting and watching themselves, they were always better and more comfortable by the end of the session.

If you are serious about improving your presentation skills, practicing on camera is always my first recommendation. However, now I’ll also encourage people to read Don’t Say Um by Michael Chad Hoeppner. His exercises are excellent, and his book is much more affordable than hiring a coach!

Hoeppner said, “This book is solely concerned with delivery—not only because it matters more (which it does), but also because it is the fastest, most innovative, and most memorable way to improve the content, too.”

Hoeppner grabbed my attention when he immediately contradicted the title of his book, “Don’t Say Um” and said not to say “don’t anything” again. He calls the habit of saying what you don't want to do thought suppression and believes that it doesn’t work. Instead, Hoeppner gave physical exercises to get the result you want from your body when you are communicating live in front of a large group, small group, one on one, or virtual.

When I started my career of public speaking in 1987, not everyone had video cameras, but my husband had one at his office. I went there on a Sunday with a prepared speech and practiced. I gave it and watched it over and over each time making corrections to my voice, body, and content.

After three hours of presenting and watching myself, I not only got better, I carried an image in my head of presenting the way I wanted to. I also loved that I was the one giving the feedback to myself instead of someone else. I eventually bought a video camera to have at home. I set it up and practiced every time I had to teach a new program and especially when I started teaching the Allison Partners Resolving Conflict course because that topic has always been more challenging for me than others.

Barbara Linney presenting at the Charlottesville Chamber of Commerce Business Women's Round Table in 2011

Your smartphone makes the whole process easier now that you take a video camera everywhere you go. However, you’ll still need to repeat the process of recording and watching yourself until you achieve a version of your presentation that pleases you. Even though I never liked doing it myself, I also recommend that you ask a few people to watch you and record yourself at the same time. Then you can ask that trusted audience to watch the recording with you and give you feedback. It may sound torturous now, but I think you’ll be pleased with the results. Too often people just practice in front of others without recording themselves. Watching yourself on film until you improve the things that are important to you is what transforms practice sessions into something more effective.

Hoeppner was passionate about what it takes to change and positive you can do it if you practice what he describes. He said, “Oral communication is a physical art. Becoming a better speaker takes muscle prep and practice.”

If you do what his book recommends, you’ll learn how to stand, make eye contact, and breathe and how to avoid “um,” mumbling, monotone, a quivering voice, and many other things. You can teach your body what to do rather than just telling yourself what not to do.

Hoeppner described every muscle exercise in detail and asked you to stop reading and do the exercise. Then he became a bit bossy in the next sentences and asked almost every time—"Did you do it? If not, stop, do it now." At this point, his tone and style started to get on my nerves, but I appreciated the exercises, so I persevered.

Here are a few examples of some of the strange things he’ll ask you to do and then the three exercises that were the most helpful to me.

• Throw a ball against a wall to get more comfortable using hand gestures rather than clutching your hands in front of you.
• Stack Legos or sticky notes on top of each other at the end of each sentence to help you pause at the end of a sentence and avoid a habit that grates on my nerves—upward inflection. “Upspeak is the common term for a very specific habit of inflecting the voice up in pitch at the tail end of sentences and phrases.” He said it makes you sound “like you’re asking for permission.”
• To work on vocal variety, he recommends you make your hand into a fist, hold it up to your mouth, pretend it is a horn sort of like a kazoo and sing a song saying “doo doo doo” pushing the sound all the way to the end of your hand.  Then take your hand away and speak some of your speech content in high and low notes rather than in a monotone. You can watch a video of all the exercises on his website dontsayum.com.

I tried everything he recommended through Chapter 8. Then I was tired of doing the exercises and quit as I read Chapters 9-12, but I perked back up in Chapter 13 on posture.  

He had detailed instructions for posture and standing. Stretch up as tall as you are, relax your Achilles heel, bend your knees slightly, loosen your jaw, let your shoulders relax downward, imagine small sandbags in your hands. When I tried this, I immediately realized I lock my knees when I stand. I’ve tested his technique in a 25-minute post office line and felt much better. I look forward to trying it at my next social event. 

Another of his concepts that was very helpful to me was his cure for vocal fry. I didn’t even know the term. Vocal fry is a gravelly sound in the back of the throat caused by not getting enough air over your vocal cords. Breathing well can fix it. You also need to sit up straight if you are seated.

I’ve attended a Zoom writing group almost every Thursday night from September to May since 2020. We read aloud the pieces we have brought. Recently, I noticed two things: I was having difficulty enunciating and getting my lips to form words fast enough. Since my husband died in 2022, I don’t talk as much as I used to. This has actually been okay with me emotionally, but I realized I was losing my strong speaking skills.

I tried one of Hoepnner’s suggested vocal warmups— "Red leather, yellow leather," and ones I used to do—Peter Piper picked a peck of pickle peppers and Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. With just a little practice, I went back to my normal speech pattern and felt much more comfortable in our next writing group.

My method for coaching people on how to eliminate the “ums” when presenting was to almost memorize your talk, so you are not um-ing as you search for your next word. He made the cure physical. To get rid of filler words such as "um/like/kinda/sorta/y’know," walk your first two fingers across a table or desk only going forward and don’t move a finger or make a sound until you think of the precise word you want. You can watch him explain this exercise by searching for Finger Walking on his website that is available to anyone who buys the book.

Many of his exercises involve improving your breathing. I also think everyone needs a breathing technique to calm themselves before they present and especially if they find themselves getting anxious during their presentation. My daughter Allison explained one of our favorite tools in her five-minute DisruptHR Charlottesville talk last month, Control Your Breath: Unlock Your Power.

At the end of the book, Hoeppner addressed the issue of AI and how everyone will have access to the same well-researched content and good writing. He said, “The communicator who can say the spoon-fed content from the AI earbud convincingly will be perceived as better. The communicator who says the same stuff as everyone else but with superior delivery will look like the original one, even though the content is similar.”

More importantly, I think people would like to feel less anxiety before they present and maybe even like the experience while they are presenting. That may feel like a stretch, but I believe doing Hoeppner’s exercises, practicing deep breathing, and watching yourself on video before your next public speaking event will make for a powerful and enjoyable presentation.