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Newsletter Issue 25

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 Wayne Sutton, Co-founder + CTO of Change Catalyst

Wayne Sutton is the Co-founder and CTO of Change Catalyst. As a serial entrepreneur and leading voice in diversity and inclusion in tech, he’s been featured on CNN, USA Today, BBC, and the Wall Street Journal. In our frank interview, he talks about self-awareness and depression as a leader.



Transcript of the interview is here.


Latest reads

The leadership journey of Abraham Lincoln
“Understanding this means abandoning the quest for the single definitive answer. Letting go of this quest frees leaders—emotionally and practically—to focus on the many possible approaches and actions needed to make a meaningful difference.”Written by Nancy Koehn, McKinsey Quarterly

A Brutal Performance Review Helped Sweetgreen’s CEO Manage Everything Better
“My executive coach had interviewed 17 people close to me – my wife, my mom, my co-founders, my direct reports and some other employees – and it was time to learn what they said. What do they think are my strengths and weaknesses? What are my blind spots? Where do I need improvement? I wasn’t sure I was ready to hear the answers.”Written by Jonathan Newman, CEO of Sweetgreen

The 5 levels of leadership
“But what makes a boss worth quitting over? Or, on the flip side, worth staying over? To understand what makes a great leader, we looked at data from 75,000 employees and more than 10,000 managers working primarily in the U.S., across industries including retail, hospitality, manufacturing, technology, finance, and health care.”Written by Michael C. Bush, CEO of Great Place to Work

Paula Schneider on Running American Apparel and Fighting Cancer
“Paula Schneider has run two organizations that could hardly be more different. She was chief executive of American Apparel, and is now C.E.O. of Susan G. Komen, the breast cancer foundation.”Written by David Gelles, NYTimes

Workplace Perks: Wasteful Indulgence or Powerful Profit Driver?
“After controlling for several firm- and region-specific variables, including company age, debt level, and the GDP growth rate for the country in which a company is based, the authors found that treating employees well pays off: Firms with a higher employee-friendly culture score tend to see better returns on both assets and equity than do companies with average or low employee-friendly scores.”Written by Matt Palmquist, strategy+business

Favorite reads

Connect, Then Lead
“Leaders who project strength before establishing trust run the risk of eliciting fear, and along with it a host of dysfunctional behaviors. Fear can undermine cognitive potential, creativity, and problem solving, and cause employees to get stuck and even disengage.”Written by Amy J.C. Cuddy, Matthew Kohut, John Neffinger, Harvard Business Review

Are Bean Counters More Selfish?
“Emphasizing a “calculative mindset” encourages people to act more selfishly and less ethically when making decisions.”Based on the research of Long Wang, Chen-Bo Zhong and J. Keith Murnighan, Kellogg Insight

Just for fun

How to Make Friends, According to Science
“A recent study out of the University of Kansas found that it takes about 50 hours of socializing to go from acquaintance to casual friend, an additional 40 hours to become a “real” friend, and a total of 200 hours to become a close friend.”


Written by Claire Lew

CEO of Canopy. My mission in life is to help people become happier at work. Say hi to me on Twitter at @clairejlew.