I see it every time I ask the question.
"What are you reading?"
The eyes go distant. The smile turns apologetic. The response comes in fragments: "Oh, I started this book about..." followed by silence. Or worse, the defensive pivot to Netflix recommendations, as if streaming habits could somehow substitute for the transformative power of turning pages.
Here's what I've learned after hundreds of these conversations: the gap between who we are as leaders and who we could become often lives in that awkward pause. It lives in the books we meant to read, the insights we never discovered, and the perspectives we never encountered.
But here's the beautiful truth that keeps me coming back to these conversations. Every single one of us, every person who has influence over another human being (which means everyone), stands at the threshold of transformation. And that transformation begins the moment we stop making excuses and start making time.
Last month, I walked into a Barnes & Noble in Chicago, housed in an old bank building where vaults once held money and now hold something far more valuable: ideas that can rebuild you. I found myself drawn to a title that stopped me cold: Aristotle's Guide to Self-Persuasion.
The subtitle promised ancient rhetoric, Taylor Swift, and soul-deep change. I'll be honest. I bought it because I was curious how anyone could connect a Greek philosopher to pop culture and make it work. What I found instead was a roadmap for something we all desperately need: the ability to persuade ourselves that we're capable of more than we think.
The book breaks down into four essential movements: Readiness. Grasp. Action. Solution. But what struck me most was a single concept buried in the middle pages. When things don't go your way, you need to emerge like a phoenix from failure.
Think about that image for a moment. The phoenix doesn't gradually recover. It doesn't slowly heal. It burns completely and rises transformed. That's the kind of self-persuasion we need as leaders. Not the gentle encouragement that maybe tomorrow will be better, but the fierce conviction that we can rise from our own ashes stronger than before.
The text gives you tools, not just concepts. It shows you how Adele deals with failure. It teaches you to use inductive processing, asking yourself: What is it? What caused it? Why is it a trend? These aren't abstract questions. They're the scaffolding for building unshakable confidence.
Arthur C. Brooks writes with the kind of common sense that feels uncommon because so few people practice it. His book The Happiness Files landed on my desk at exactly the right moment, which is to say the moment I needed to hear that success and failure aren't opposites. They're dance partners in the same routine.
Chapter 15 changed how I think about every difficult conversation I'll ever have. It's titled "How to Take and Give Criticism Well," and it should be required reading for anyone who has ever evaluated another human being. Or been evaluated by one. Which covers all of us.
Here's what Brooks says: treat criticism like insider information. Like gossip you're privileged to know. Because that's exactly what good criticism is. Someone cares enough about your future to risk the discomfort of the present moment.
Data doesn't have a heartbeat, so it doesn't deserve an emotional response. Read that again. When someone brings you feedback, they're offering you a gift wrapped in discomfort. Your job isn't to defend. Your job is to unwrap it carefully and decide what to keep.
I think about the parents I spoke with last week, sitting in circles, asking vulnerable questions about raising their children. One parent said, "I don't like reading parenting books because they make me feel guilty." I smiled. Not because guilt is funny, but because defensiveness about past choices robs us of future wisdom.
You've already done the best you could with what you knew. Now you get to learn more so you can do better. Not for the past, but for everyone you'll influence tomorrow.
Let me tell you about the generation that's going to save us all, and why most of us are completely missing their potential.
Generation Z looks at the world and sees it as terrifying, broken, declining, fake, closed-minded, divided, aggressive, dystopic, off the rails, a bloody mess. These aren't my words. These are theirs, collected in a study that should shake every leader, every parent, every person who claims to care about the future.
John Della Volpe's Fight: How Gen Z is Channeling Their Fear and Passion to Save America reads like a wake-up call wrapped in a love letter. The statistics are brutal. Suicide rates among 10 to 24-year-olds increased by 47% between the periods of 2007 to 2009 and 2016 to 2018. That's not a trend. That's a crisis happening in real time while we debate whether this generation is too sensitive or too entitled.
But here's what the book reveals that gives me hope: this generation isn't breaking. They're breaking through. They're advocating for their own well-being in ways no generation before them ever has. They're going to transform work, education, agriculture, and systems we haven't even imagined yet.
Our job isn't to fix them. Our job is to understand them deeply enough to set them up for the success they're already creating.
I believe this with every fiber of my being: Generation Z is the single greatest generation walking this planet right now. And if you disagree, I'll debate you all day long. Not because I'm stubborn, but because empathy requires us to see the world through their eyes before we judge what we see through ours.
Two books sit on my desk right now, dog-eared and highlighted within an inch of their lives. Good Inside by Dr. Becky Kennedy and Raising Mentally Strong Kids by Daniel Amen and Charles Fay. Together, they form something like a complete education in what young people actually need from the adults in their lives.
Kennedy writes with the kind of wisdom that makes you wonder why no one ever told you this before. Her chapters are short, consumable, and targeted. Potty training. First dates. Kids who feel everything so deeply it paralyzes them. She meets you where you are, not where you think you should be.
My favorite insight: some kids feel things more deeply and get activated more quickly than other kids. Their intense sensations last longer. If you've ever loved a deeply feeling child, you know exactly what this means. They take on the emotions of everyone around them. They internalize worries and fears. And then they tell you they're fine when they're anything but.
Kennedy gives you strategies: move from blame to curiosity. Practice containment first. Remember they're good kids having a hard time. Be present and wait it out. These aren't just parenting tips. They're leadership principles for anyone who works with humans.
The companion text, Raising Mentally Strong Kids, builds on this foundation with one of the most powerful reminders I've encountered: multiple studies demonstrate that children who grow up to have the most psychological problems had parents who never set appropriate boundaries.
Read that again. The kids who struggle most aren't the ones whose parents were too strict. They're the ones whose parents were too permissive.
We are not our children's friends. We are their parents. We love them. We care for them. And one day, they'll be our friends. But in the formative years, they need two things: love and structure. Not one or the other. Both. Always both.
This summer, my family spent three days in Washington, D.C. My wife Megan teaches eighth-grade language arts. My son Charlie teaches eighth-grade social studies. My daughter Grace is studying to become a high school history teacher. We're a family of educators who geek out over museums the way some families geek out over theme parks.
We visited the National Museum of the American Indian for the first time, and it broke something open in all of us. We walked through the history of indigenous tribes and peoples, and we were dumbfounded by how much we didn't know.
I'm a history teacher with a history degree who emphasized indigenous studies. And I was still learning things that rewrote my understanding of our country's story.
In the gift shop (because we're book people, and book people always end up in the bookshop), I found Lewis and Clark Through Indian Eyes, edited by Alvin Josephy Jr. I couldn't put it down. I read it start to finish on the trip home, then started over immediately. Not out of confusion, but out of awe.
Here's what I learned: Lewis and Clark thought they were venturing into undiscovered territory. They were searching for a river that connected the Atlantic to the Pacific, which anyone who knows American geography knows doesn't exist. But here's the stunning part. As they traveled west, they kept running into Europeans who had settled peacefully among indigenous tribes. Spanish, English, French, people who'd been living there for years.
The "discovery" narrative we learned in school erases entire civilizations and communities that existed long before any expedition claimed to find them.
When you read history through the eyes of the people who experienced it rather than the people who claimed to discover it, everything shifts. Your perspective expands. Your empathy deepens. Your understanding of truth becomes more nuanced and more honest.
I want to challenge you with something uncomfortable. Make a list right now of the books you've started but never finished. Not to shame yourself. To see the gap between your intentions and your follow-through.
Now make a second list. Write down the names of people you influence. Your team at work. Your children. Your friends who ask for advice. The person who looks to you as an example.
What if the reason they're not growing is because you stopped growing? What if the reason they can't see their potential is because you stopped expanding your own vision of what's possible?
Leaders are readers because reading gives us the language, frameworks, and courage to become the people others need us to be. Every book you finish is a conversation with someone wiser, more experienced, or more courageous than you were when you started.
A friend showed me her text chain last week. Six women who don't live anywhere near each other. They call themselves the Bookworms. Every month, one person picks a book. They set "conclusionary timelines" (deadlines for finishing sections), and every Friday at noon, they unleash a weekend of dialogue about what they're learning.
She told me, "Ted, it's reinvented how I read. I'm not just consuming information anymore. I'm processing it with people who see things I miss and ask questions I never thought to ask."
That's what reading in community does. It transforms solitary learning into collective growth.
You don't need permission to start. You don't need the perfect book club or the ideal reading schedule. You need one book and the decision to finish it.
Pick any title from this list. Start with whichever one makes you most uncomfortable. That's probably the one you need most.
Then do something radical. Tell someone you're reading it. Create accountability. Better yet, invite them to read it with you.
Because here's what I know for certain: the thousand-mile stare I see when I ask "What are you reading?" isn't about being too busy or too tired. It's about being too isolated in our growth. We've convinced ourselves that learning is a solo journey when it's actually a collective revolution.
This week will bring challenges. That's guaranteed. But we get to decide how we face them. We can face them with the same tools and perspectives we had last week. Or we can face them transformed by new insights, deeper empathy, and stronger conviction.
Turn toward the storm. Learn, grow, and go into it with wisdom you didn't have yesterday.
You're something special. The people who look to you for leadership deserve the best version of you. And the best version of you is always just one book away.
Now go read something that scares you a little. That's where transformation lives.