MindLinks #1: Challenging Perspectives

A very warm welcome to a new format—one that benefits you and challenges me: MindLinks. Here's what it's all about:

I was an avid reader as a child, devouring book after book, story after story. However, somewhere along the way, I've lost that urge to read things in private—probably because I had to read a lot at work when I still was a journalist.

Today, I purposefully read articles, listen to podcasts, and watch videos to research topics to write about. Therefore, it's not very habitual. To engrain the habit of reading again into my life, I want to challenge myself—with some added external pressure. That's where MindLinks comes into play.

Here's the valuable part for you: In MindLinks, I'll curate five interesting links to content—articles, papers, podcasts, videos, and books—around digitalisation, leadership, and work culture. These are links that I think provide helpful insights, interesting perspectives, and new ideas.

For now, I'll send out the MindLinks bi-weekly on Monday mornings. And while today's premiere is public, the future editions will be exclusively for free members. (Yes, there's also a paid subscription if you feel like supporting my work. But there's no added value yet.)

Alright, that's been a lengthy introduction. I'll keep it shorter in the future, I promise. Let's move on to the inaugural curation with five links that challenged my thinking and perspectives on the topics.

1. Quiet Quitting Is A Fake Trend

It's been the talk of the town for months now: Quiet Quitting. I've previously written about the phenomenon; however, The Atlantic's Derek Thompson argues that it's not actually a thing: "The best explanation for this decline, however, is not a sudden outbreak of TikTok-transmitted laziness. It is that record-high rates of job switching in the service sector have created an inexperience bubble such that many new workers at restaurants, hotels, and so forth aren't fully trained."

2. 4 Myths About In-Person Work, Disspelled

I believe that for some things, meeting in person is more effective than in a video call, creative collaboration, for example. And it's pretty tempting to assume that building a nurturing company culture also benefits from in-person work. But as Heidi Grant and Tal Goldhamer define culture as "shared beliefs, values, norms, and habits that are held and practiced regularly ", culture is something that "we experience all day, every day working at a particular company — it is decidedly not what we experience when we step away from the 'normal' routine for various workshops and keynotes with nice buffet dinners and drinks."

👉 Read also: Don't Confuse 'Being in the Office' With 'Culture'

3. Chaos surfing: from surviving to thriving in chaotic times

Humans naturally try to avoid chaos. But in this article, the author Anne-Laure Le Cunff argues to surf on the edge of chaos: "The edge of chaos is a place for liminal creativity. It allows us to redefine the frontiers of our knowledge, to dance with disruption, and to reinvent ourselves." A refreshing perspective alongside helpful guidance to thrive.

4. Why Feelings of Guilt May Signal Leadership Potential

The typical image of a leader is most likely a sociable, extrovert, and upbeat personality. Indeed, it's not a person who often feels guilty about a bad situation or mistake, right? However, Stanford researchers might disagree: "Guilt-prone people tend to carry a strong sense of responsibility to others, and that responsibility makes other people see them as leaders," says Becky Schaumberg, one of the researchers.

5. Habermas Online

"The goal is not to direct the views of the powerful in institutions toward the public but instead to direct the needs, desires, and goals of citizens to those in power," writes journalism professor Jeff Jarvis in his rebuttal of Jürgen Habermas' long-awaited take on the internet as a public sphere. Although Jarvis disagrees with Habermas, he also states: "I find his effort to understand this new world useful not because I agree but because it focuses my perspective through a different lens." Definitely an interesting read on the public sphere, discourse, and the role of the media.

That's it for today's MindLinks. I hope you found something that sparked your interest—maybe even inspired you to think deeper about a topic.