Useful.  In short, the concept of attachment that started with Bowlby so long ago is useful.  It’s useful for shaping parents’ responsiveness, public policy, and even understanding how adults respond in relationships.  It’s even important to understand what we can do to change our relationships in ways that are more enriching for us and for others.  Attachment in Adulthood: Structure, Dynamics, and Change walks through the world of attachment and the rich research that improves the way we understand and respond to others. Research Before we start, it’s important to note tha ..read more

Getting along with others is the biggest challenge of our human existence.  Sure, there are easy conversations – but there are difficult ones, too.  Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most is a guidebook for walking through the conversations that matter.  It comes as a long line of writings from the Harvard Negotiation Project.  The most popular book to come from this work is Getting to Yes.  Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen also wrote Thanks for the Feedback, which describes how people can learn to accept feedback better.  This work is about how to ..read more

It became a joke.  It’s a simple response that started occurring about ten years ago.  It was “Thanks for the feedback.”  It’s a shortened version of the book title, Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well.  The product team would say this during sessions with the Microsoft MVPs.  As a group, Microsoft MVPs are passionate about Microsoft products.  We used to get some program managers who took feedback well and others who didn’t.  Somewhere along the line, they got the message, “Thank you for the feedback.”  It acknowledge ..read more

Attachment didn’t start with adult relationships.  It started with the study of children and their behaviors.  It started with an attempt to understand why some children would cling to their parents, some would avoid them, and some would explore when their parents returned from a brief absence.  However, since the humble beginnings, attachment theory has become a block of research that reveals The Power of Attachment: How to Create Deep and Lasting Intimate Relationships. “Little t” Traumas One of the challenges that is sometimes encountered is when people reject the idea that t ..read more

We’re inundated with statistics.  We hear them in the news.  Politicians spout numbers that may or may not be based on statistics or even reality.  No matter the source, we need to be able to evaluate and validate the numbers that we’re hearing.  We need to be able to become The Data Detective [using] Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics.  Tim Hartford walks us through ten ways to not just make sense of statistics – but to validate that what’s being said matches what the data and the statistics actually say. Flood the Zone with Shit Before we look at ways to make ..read more

Every organization wants extraordinary results.  That’s what The Leadership Challenge: How to Make Extraordinary Things Happen in Organizations promises.  Built on decades of research, the book lays out a framework for what James Kouzes and Barry Posner found. The Need for Challenge It’s hard to explain how to do something if you aren’t able to articulate what that thing is.  While they don’t go to the detail and rigor of either Rost in Leadership for the Twenty-First Century or Burns in Leadership, they provide a working definition and elevate the need for challenge.  Lead ..read more

I didn’t know it at the time, but what started as a service opportunity for me became the most important learning moment of my life.  I was helping with a twelve-step-based program when I was introduced to a very wise young man.  He taught me about addiction – and about life in ways that I both marvel at and cherish. The man explained to me that substance use wasn’t the problem, it was the solution. Solution “How can something that is so problematic be a solution?” I wondered out loud.  I heard the heart of a man who had experienced deeply troubling pain.  He was debilitate ..read more

It’s a classic, a 1980 classic.  Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by David Burns has come up a few times as a reference over the years.  Some have described it as cognitive behavioral therapy for the masses.  Despite being easy to read, it’s long at 700 pages long.  However, it’s packed with good information that can help people find a way to accept and process their problems. My Problems Are Real At the heart of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is the idea that the drivers for many people are the way they think about their problems. That is that the is problem – not wh ..read more

Suicide is a tragic problem shrouded in myth and mystery.  It’s a topic that no one wants to speak of for fear that it will visit their family or friends.  However, the way to ward it off is to talk about it, learn about it, and discover how pain leads to it.  We’ve launched a new web site, SuicideMyths.org, designed to tackle the most pervasive myths about suicide and to help you learn what you can do. We’re asking for your help in two ways.  First, please provide feedback about what we’ve done well and where we’ve missed the mark.  If you’ve got ideas for how to orga ..read more

It’s not multiple personality disorder (now called “dissociative identity disorder”), but it’s odd when the author of the book refers to the pen name from previous books in the third person.  In Secrets of Suicide, Dr. Ken Tullis reveals that he’s also written books under the pen name of Dr. Kevin Taylor.  He acknowledges that his current book is in “collaboration” with Kevin Taylor.  It’s deeper when you recognize that Ken Tullis was a founder of Suicide Anonymous, a group modeled on Alcoholics Anonymous that seeks to create a space for people who are living with suicidal thoug ..read more