Book Summary: Listening – Tuning in can transform your relationships and your life

March 20, 2025February 25, 2025 by don.tebbe

You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing and Why It Matters

by Kate Murphy

In a world obsessed with talking, listening has become a lost art. Yet, it remains the cornerstone of connection, understanding, and growth. Kate Murphy’s You’re Not Listening reveals why we struggle to listen, the consequences of this oversight, and the transformative power of fully tuning in to others. Murphy demonstrates how to sharpen your listening skills and harness their potential to enhance relationships, build trust, and thrive in a noisy world. By learning to listen deeply, you’ll cultivate stronger relationships, resolve conflicts more effectively, and discover meaning in conversations that others overlook.

Book Summary: Leader legacies from the inside out.

February 28, 2025December 31, 2024 by don.tebbe

A Leader’s Legacy

by James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner

Leadership isn’t defined by titles or trophies; it’s reflected in the impact you have and the legacy you create. In A Leader’s Legacy, James Kouzes and Barry Posner illustrate how exceptional leaders establish lasting influence through small, intentional actions and consistent daily habits.

The central idea is simple but profound: Legacies aren’t built on one big moment. They result from consistent decisions, meaningful relationships, and the environments that leaders shape every day. This focus on the ordinary reveals the emotional core of leadership—the ways leaders touch lives and create opportunities for others to thrive.

Book Summary: The power of legacy thinking.

November 27, 2024November 19, 2024 by don.tebbe

Your Leadership Legacy: Why Looking Toward the Future Will Make You a Better Leader Today

by Robert Galford and Regina Fazio Maruca

In a world obsessed with quick wins, leaders face immense pressure to focus on immediate objectives and short-term achievements. However, effective leadership is also about the long term and the impact you leave behind—your legacy. Every leader creates a legacy through their influence, whether they’re aware of it or not. It’s not just about numbers or achievements; it’s about the behaviors, ideas, and growth you foster in others.

Book Summary: Three keys to unlock your influence.

March 7, 2023 by don.tebbe

Influencer: The New Science of Leading Change

by Joseph Grenny, Kerry Patterson, David Maxfield, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler

The premise of this book is that leaders are agents of change. Whether they’re heading an organization, leading a social change movement, or parenting, genuine leaders are always trying to create something better and more impactful. And to do that, influence is the most critical tool in the leader’s tool belt.

Developing Nonprofit Leaders

July 11, 2019 by don.tebbe

I’m delighted to be Mary Hiland’s guest on Episode #23 of her podcast, Inspired Nonprofit Leadership. Our topic is nonprofit leadership development. Here are the points that we cover: The three big myths about leadership development. The 70-20-10 model of learning and development and how you can use it. “Owning” your career versus “renting it,” … Read more

Review – Joan Garry’s Guide to Nonprofit Leadership

March 2, 2017 by don.tebbe

When was the last time you read a book on nonprofit leadership – or a book on leadership of any kind, for that matter – that made you laugh out loud, tugged your heartstrings, and compelled you to keep reading? Maybe never, right? That’s about to change if you pick up a copy of Joan Garry’s Guide to Nonprofit Leadership (Because Nonprofits Are Messy).

You’ll be treated to over 200 pages of wisdom, wittily written. Here are my chapter-by-chapter takeaways:

Developing Leaders, Developing Successors

July 22, 2016 by don.tebbe

There are two pervasive myths – false assumptions – that are holding back the development of leaders in the nonprofit sector.

The first myth is that leader development is too complicated and too expensive, which makes it the exclusive domain of the “big guys.” In other words, it’s for those mythic “other” nonprofits. You know, the ones with unlimited resources, lots of staff and plenty of time to do things… Just, not us.

The second myth is that organizations develop leaders. Behind this myth is the idea that leader development is something that the organization provides or does to its people. Unfortunately, this myth is causing many people to postpone leadership development actions that they could be taking today because they’ve bought into the false belief that it’s up to their organization to provide some sort of program or send them to a course that will magically turn them into a leader.

This case study interview dispels both of those myths. We will be talking with Allison Bogdanovic, who is executive director of Virginia Supportive Housing (virginiasupportivehousing.org) in Richmond, Virginia.