• (Podcast) "How Family Dynamics Play Out at Work"  — The Anxious Achiever, hosted by Morra Aarons-Mele, with guest Kathleen Smith, PhD (Bowen Center faculty):

 

A faculty member at the Bowen Center walks through how over/under-functioning works as a reciprocal system, why it's driven by anxiety rather than character, and how the emotional roles we played in our families of origin show up with uncanny precision in our leadership. Accessible, practical, and discomforting in the right ways.

 

 

• (Graduation Speech) "This Is Water" — David Foster Wallace (Full transcript + audio)

 

Leaders are often the most confident that they have escaped their "default setting." They think their awareness of others is high. They usually have substantial evidence for that belief. Wallace's speech is a 22-minute dismantling of that confidence - not through accusation, but through the quiet, relentless logic of paying attention to what actually happens in a day. Read or listen to it as a question, not an answer: What is the water I'm swimming in right now, and have I named it?

 

 

• (Article) "The Power Paradox" — Dacher Keltner Greater, Good Magazine

 

The longer someone has held authority, the more they should distrust their own read of their impact on others. The question it invites: What have I stopped noticing - about my behavior, my impact, my relationships - that I once would have caught?

 

 

• (Research Paper) The Forest Troop — Sapolsky & Share, original paper:

 

Narrative version: A Primate's Memoir  by Robert Sapolsky (book)

 

The data in Sapolsky's research is difficult to let go of: What is your troop's culture, who built it, and is it the one you would choose? Sapolsky's baboons didn't choose their culture any more than most leadership teams choose theirs. It learned from the behaviors of the most dominant individuals, who then left, but whose norms persisted. The follow-up question, which Sapolsky himself draws out, is even harder: If a baboon troop can transmit a more functional culture across generations through nothing more than behavioral modeling and social proximity — what's your excuse?