The Newsletters You Loved

This year has been my fourth year of writing strategy, soul, and self, my weekly letter that shares inspiration, tools, and techniques to help us all be better humans, better leaders and live more joyful lives.

A few times this year, I broke with format to explore topics that were recurring consistently in my coaching conversations. Topics that didn’t have a neat answer, that were complex, contradictory, slippery, and nevertheless were shouting for attention.

In January, I returned to Vaclav Havel’s The Power of the Powerless. Havel was a writer and a dissident. He was also post-communist Czechoslovakia’s first president. He is a leader who, for some, is spoken of in the same breath as Nelson Mandela. He wrote The Power of the Powerless in 1978. It was a dark period of brutal oppression. He was jailed. Friends were tortured. Some died. There was little to suggest that communism would crumble. Yet, he wrote this essay. He kept hope alive. Eleven years later, in an address entitled Words on Words, he said “The point is that all events in the real world – whether admirable or monstrous – are always spearheaded in the realm of words”.

With a start like that, it was important to explore How to Keep Hope Alive. In November, heartbroken by the brutality of the attacks in Israel and then despairing at the destruction and deaths in Gaza (that continue unabated, unchecked creating devastation that will last generations), I turned to St. Francis of Assisi’s guidance, “Start by doing what’s necessary; then do what’s possible and suddenly you are doing the impossible”. In December, I wrote about The Ministry for the Future. These weren’t the year’s most popular letters, but they were, I think, important. Those who wrote back to me said that I had managed to capture the conflict that they were feeling. That is the most important metric of all.

Of course, this was the year that South Africa made rugby history, so there is no surprise that Leadership Lessons (from Rassie Erasmus) was the letter that traveled furthest. ?Alongside this, the letter about the co-founder of The Red Carnation Hotel Collection (Red Carnation Hotels) , Leadership Lessons (from Beatrice Tollman), and the one about Gift of the Givers founder, Dr Imtiaz Sooliman climbed up the rankings. ?

As always the newsletters that offered tools and pragmatic advice were welcomed. Make Your Time Count, Effective One-on-One Meetings, and how to communicate more effectively, all resonated. ?

If you would like to subscribe, you can do so here and you can find the full archive here.

I would love to know which ones you enjoyed the most.