Week 2: Be authentic or Be professional?

You must have heard/read/said a lot about being authentic. Several experts too shared their views on this topic and I like to mention a couple of them here, Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic and Adam Grant.

Virtues have a Goldilocks flavor: they can be too hot or too cold. The goal is to develop just the right amount of each one. That’s true for authenticity.

But my favourite one is from an interview with Tim Ferris in which Seth Godin explains how authenticity is highly overrated. Seth says that he doesn't want an authentic surgeon who says, "I don’t really feel like doing knee surgery today," but wishes to have a professional who shows up irrespective of how he/she is feeling.

Simple, yet profound right? I think it is definitely good to be authentic but I feel being professional is much more fundamental before being authentic.

Considering the feedback I received, going forward I am going to try a shorter version of my weekly newsletters. I hope you will like the diversity of topics and also find them valuable.

Topics of the Week

Only the top three topics from the week are being featured below but if you like to read more topics, drop me a message or in the comments.

1. Agile-at-scale

While most people talk about tools and processes when it comes to Agile, shaping the mindsets and behaviours of people are least discussed.

With Learn, Experiment and Scale as three key pillars forming the structure of the agile transformation at Schneider Electric, there are six key takeaways, well documented for the benefit of all.

Read the full article on the BCG website.

2. Eternal debate on Generalists vs. Specialists

There has always been a great debate on whether one should remain a generalist or be a specialist in one's career.

From the latest research at INSEAD, it was found that "the generalists not only performed worse than specialists in faster-paced domains, but that they also performed more poorly than generalists in slower-paced domains."

Read this interesting piece on this ever famous topic, by Micha?l Bikard, Assistant Professor of Strategy at INSEAD.

3. Most interesting thing in tech:

Tech is interesting, no matter who you are and what you do, it impacts all of us. Apart from all the reading, to understand how tech is accelerating change, of late I find the short videos from Nicholas Thompson super interesting.

He shares them under the hashtag #mostinterestingthingintech. Check them if you are interested in tech like I do.

From the Internet

In this section, I share the most interesting things I found on the internet during the week.

It happens to all of us when we receive an email or a message or even a small word uttered by someone, we get offended. But here is a tweet that lifted me up once during the week when I needed it the most.

In a poll conducted by Greg McKeown, 97% of responders said they want to be better listeners. If you want to think a little further on this topic of #listening, check out all the comments on the post and my favourite is from someone named Rick Fox (here it is).

In a recent TIME magazine's interview with Tim Cook when asked if he learnt anything new since he took up the role as the CEO, his response was:

The top thing I’ve learned is that I still have so much more to learn. I learned very quickly to remember that I had two ears and only one mouth, and to listen very carefully to people that I’m surrounding myself with.

What are your favourites from this week's internet? Can you share in the comments?

Giveaways

A couple of weeks back I ran a poll asking for people's go-to source to read business news and I ended up taking The Economic Times prime membership.

With the membership, I can gift a limited number of articles every day/month, so if you are looking to read any premium article from the ET, send me a message/email and I can do the needful!

That brings me to the end of the Week 2 edition.

Do share this newsletter with your friends, family members, colleagues, managers and team members if you think they will benefit by reading this.

Until next Friday, keep?tracing your mastery.

#TraceYourMastery

Received this as a forward? Subscribe to directly receive weekly updates.        

Can I request you to please share in the comments, your views and feedback on this edition of the newsletter?