This article is adapted from Ted's Smart Thinking podcast Episode 391: Pumpkin Spice Reads for Fall: 6 Books for All of Us.
Okay, friends, it’s fall. And fall means many things. Transitions. Traditions. And, if we’re lucky, a little extra time because of the shift in seasons.
Here in Wisconsin, the temperatures are slowly dropping at night. We’ve got cool, crisp evenings and gentle breezes that make the leaves clap in the trees, just to make sure you know it’s time for them to let go. I love, love, love this season. For me, fall is when I finally get to slow down a little bit. And slowing down means I get more time to read.
More time to read means I’ve got more to share with you.
Every time I put together a reading list, I build it around a theme. This time, the theme is you. Your own self-improvement. Learning from your mistakes, growing forward, and making space to reflect. Every book on this list is about you, but really, it’s about how you can use what you learn to serve the people around you.
One of the key behaviors of Buffalo leaders is resilience. When a storm rolls across the plains, the buffalo don’t run away from it. They turn and walk straight into it, because that’s the fastest way through. Resilience is the ability to slip, fall, get back up, and keep moving in the direction you need to go.
Here’s the deal, though. That behavior needs fuel. It needs examples. It needs other people to show us how they went through a specific storm, on a specific route, and found their way out. That’s exactly what these six books do.
The first book I’d hand you is Get Back Up by Dr. Heather Wilson and retired General Dave Goldfein. I first heard the two of them on a podcast, reflecting on their memories of 9/11. Then, almost as an afterthought, they mentioned they had written a book about one of the greatest lessons they’d ever learned about failure. Of course I had to get it.
What I love about their story is that they started their Air Force careers at the same time, became friends, and then went in completely different directions. Dave became a fighter pilot. Heather earned her PhD, worked in Europe during the Cold War, and later served on the National Security Council staff for President George H.W. Bush. Years later, their paths crossed again, with Dave serving as Chief of Staff of the Air Force and Heather as Secretary of the Air Force. Together, they lived through a shared traumatic experience, and out of it, they did some great things.
A few chapters really stood out to me:
This book breaks down the hard decisions these two leaders faced across their careers, the lessons they learned, and how those lessons apply directly to your day to day life.
Book number two is From Mistakes to Meaning by Michael Lynton and Joshua Steiner. It’s a powerful look at why we make mistakes, the hidden ways they haunt us, and how facing them honestly can lead to fuller, more satisfying lives.
The book is packed with engaging stories, and it’s organized in three parts: What Have We Done?, You’re Not Alone, and Onward Through Openness. It’s a quick read, but it’s also the kind of book you can put down after one part, walk away, and let it settle. I like that. It gives me room to reflect on what I just learned.
In part three, the authors offer a set of reflective exercises: one for identifying patterns before a mistake happens, one for examining a mistake while it’s happening, and one for looking at how you reacted afterward. The “while it’s happening” exercise asks you to look at five things:
That fourth one? I circled it. I highlighted it. Heck, I practically set it on fire so I wouldn’t forget it. It lets you learn backward and ask yourself, “Was I in a growth mindset in that moment, or was I trapped in a cycle?”
Mistakes are hard to admit, hard to recognize in the moment, and hard to treat as an opportunity. As leaders, our job is to create conditions where it’s safe to fail, where we fail fast and move forward quickly. We learn from our mistakes, we grow from them, and we use them to help others advance. Because as Buffalo leaders, we only have one direction, and that direction is forward.
Oh, friends. David Epstein is one of my favorite authors. About six years ago, I recommended his book Range on the podcast. If you haven’t read that one, read it first. Then pick up his newest, Inside the Box. If you like Daniel Pink or Malcolm Gladwell, you will love this book. It’s filled with nonstop historical stories that connect right back to our lives and our ability to grow forward.
The big idea is doing more with less, because limits are the key to stimulating creativity, innovation, and collaboration. The book moves through four parts: how boundaries create breakthroughs, what creative constraints are, where and how to focus, and finally collaboration, contentment, and the rules of the game.
I’ve always defined collaboration as making space for other people to step in with their strengths. I think of it as a 70/30 principle. When your strengths are relevant, you give 70% of the energy. When someone else’s strengths fit better, you receive. And it goes both ways, because collaboration is never transactional. We don’t keep receipts.
One passage deep in the book stopped me in my tracks. Epstein points to 2023 research from a team in Brazil and the United States showing that well-intentioned public policies often fail because they’re designed for an ideal citizen who doesn’t exist. That imaginary citizen weighs every cost and benefit perfectly. The real citizen can’t process that much information, let alone run the math.
Why does this matter for you? Because so many of us design our way out of sticky situations as if there will be no constraints, no sidebars, and no unforeseen consequences. Then, when the plan fails, we blame other people, or worse, we give up. This book gives you processes to fall back on when funding shifts, new rules arrive, or the unexpected shows up. Whether you work in a school, health care, law enforcement, or fire service, these micro crises will come. Inside the Box helps you meet them stronger.
All right, Ted. You’ve given us resilience, mistakes, and constraints. What do we do with all of that when we have to work alongside other people? It’s not always easy.
Somebody sent me Begin With We by Kyle McDowell, and it’s another phenomenal read. It helps you build culture by focusing on the we, not the me. Here are the 10 principles:
Because of my CliftonStrengths mindset, I immediately started lining up strengths with the principles. I lead with Strategic Thinking, so analytics, discipline, and consistency are the last things on my mind. That’s why I hand We #10 to my friends who lead with Executing and say, “You’re in charge of this one.” Same with We #7, measuring outcomes over activity. And We #8, challenging each other diplomatically? That one goes to our amazing people people, the folks who lead with Relationship Building.
My favorite is We #5, we own our mistakes. We aren’t judged by our mistakes. We’re judged by how quickly we fix them and whether we repeat them. It pairs perfectly with Inside the Box, because it gives you practical strategies for building the collaborative culture Epstein describes.
I found this one while hiking down a road along Lac La Belle, on the Lake Superior side of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Beautiful day. I was listening to a podcast where Anne Lamott talked about the book she had just written with her partner, Neal Allen.
The timing was perfect, because I had just finished writing my own book, Go to Your Storm. (And yes, I forgot to put my own book on this list. Consider it book number seven. Go get it.)
Here’s why I think principals should buy this book for every language arts and English teacher, and really for anyone teaching writing from about fourth through twelfth grade. Both authors weigh in on each rule, so you get two writers’ perspectives side by side. A few rules I can’t stop thinking about:
That last rule reminded me of a conversation with my daughter a couple of months ago. She loves British television. Think Slow Horses or The Gentlemen. And if you’ve ever watched Downton Abbey, you know how much is inferred. The door just closes, and you’re left thinking. American television tends to show you everything, right there in front of you. Good writing works more like the British approach. People are pretty smart. You don’t have to spell out everything for everybody.
This book gave me permission to write better, and it reminded me of rules many of us lost after childhood, back when we were diagramming sentences on note cards and figuring out where that little semicolon goes. There’s even a chapter encouraging you to use semicolons more often.
We started with resilience. Now let’s end with you: your mindfulness, your reflection, your personal growth.
About 10 years ago, I was in a coffee shop in Sturgeon Bay, up in Door County. I noticed a man in his mid eighties sitting with a pile of books. Of course I can’t keep to myself. I grabbed my decaf chai latte (I was pretty excited they had decaf chai), and as I walked past him, we made eye contact. For me, that’s permission to engage.
I asked what he was doing with all those books. They were poetry collections. He told me that every day, he takes five or six books of poetry from his home library, sits at that coffee shop for one hour, and reads. After each poem, he turns to his journal and writes his own reflections. He had four or five well worn journals, each one labeled. Two labels stuck with me: one said Love, and one said Life.
I asked him which poet I should read. He said Rupi Kaur.
After that day, I started doing what he did. For the past nine or 10 years, I’ve had poetry collections scattered all over the house: in my office, on my desk, downstairs by the TV. When my mind is troubled, when I want clarity, or when I simply want to start my day with reflection, I grab one. Home Body is one of my favorites.
Kaur writes about the emotions we face every single day, and her poems are short enough to carry with you. One asks, in a single line, what you would finally stop obsessing over if you accepted that perfection is impossible. That’s the whole poem. That’s the power of it. Another names the trap of romanticizing the past or worrying about the future, and how that keeps us from living the moments that are actually real. Be present. And another reminds you that no one else is qualified to decide your worth.
Now picture that gentleman in Door County. Which journal does he reach for after that first poem? Love? Life? Where would you reflect on it?
What are you doing, on purpose, to reflect at the beginning, middle, and end of your days? Life is weird and it’s hard. We have to keep investing in ourselves so we can learn, grow, and go forward. And how better to do that than by reading? Grab the audiobook if that’s how you learn best. These books work beautifully in order, and they’ll help you out of order, too. Here’s a quick guide to where to start:
Better yet, don’t read alone. Start a little book club with a colleague or a friend. When you read together, you build something in common: a shared cultural language that helps everyone grow forward.
And please share this post with the English teachers in your life, with anyone working on a more positive mindset, with folks who struggle to learn from their mistakes, and with anyone who could use a little more resilience.
Here’s the thing about direction. Yes, you can go left, but eventually you’ll turn right and go forward again. You can go right, but eventually you’ll turn left and go forward again. You can try to go backward, but there’s nothing there, because life moves forward. Every storm you walk into makes you stronger and makes you a better example for others. And at the end of the day, the greatest thing it does is make you the best version of yourself.
Keep reading. Keep reflecting. Keep growing forward.