Newsletter Issue 8

Every few weeks we send a newsletter to our subscribers with the new content we have written, new episodes of our podcast, and other interesting links we’ve found on the internet.

Subscribe to our Newsletter here.

---

From The Heartbeat Podcast: Interview with Amanda Lannert, CEO of Jellyvision

As the CEO of Jellyvision, a 400-person software company, Amanda Lannert has won just about every “best CEO” award in Chicago, and is someone I’ve admired for years. In this 12 minute interview, Amanda admits the one lesson she wishes she learned earlier as a leader.

Transcript of the interview here

---

Latest leadership reads

Safe enough to try: An interview with Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh
“We shouldn’t have to be dependent on a benevolent manager or CEO to allow employees to move around within the organization, because that’s a single point of failure.”Published in McKinsey Quarterly

We fired our top talent. Best decision we ever made.
“Your team’s strength is not a function of the talent of individual members. It’s a function of their collaboration, tenacity, and mutual respect.”Written by Jonathan Solórzano-Hamilton

Managing more experienced people
“You don’t have to do everything yourself. You just have to make sure everything gets done.”Written by Julie Zhou

7 Tricky Work Situations, and How to Respond to Them
“You know the moment: a mood-veering, thought-steering, pressure-packed interaction with a colleague, boss, or client where the right thing to say is stuck in a verbal traffic jam between your brain and your mouth.”Written by Alicia Bassuk, Harvard Business Review

How to Become a Powerful Follower…and a Good Leader
“Great followers ‘[channel] ambition into the company, not the self.’”Written by Augusto Giacoman, strategy + business

---

Favorite leadership reads

Why Motivating Others Starts with Using the Right Language
“The leader’s job then is to first make visible to the entire group what everyone thinks to be reality.”Written by David Marquet, 99U

Scale-up Leadership Lessons I’ve Learned Over 9 Years as HubSpot’s CEO
“CEO = Chief Explanation Officer.”Written by Brian Halligan

Defining Leadership Through Failure
“Essentially, the best leadership is not a conglomerate of prescribed attributes, but instead is defined by the avoidance of certain behaviors.”Written by Haley Lee, Haley Lockwood, Julian Baker, Fu Fei, and Kyle Saleeby, NYTimes in Education

The Secrets To Building A Constructive Feedback Culture
“Many managers chicken out and provide only cursory feedback, avoiding the backlash negativity can bring. But this can be just as destructive in the long-term.”Written by Mark Lukens, Fast Company

---

Just for fun

TED Talk: My road trip through the whitest towns in America
A hilarious, earnest talk, where Rich Benjamin shares what he learned as a black man intentionally living in the whitest towns in America.