851: J. Eric Oliver: How to Know Yourself
About this episode
The episode discusses the importance of self-awareness in leadership and sustainability with guest J. Eric Oliver.
This podcast is about leadership first and foremost, applied to sustainability. Most of the time when people hear or read "sustainability," that concept overrides everything else. They forget or don't notice else, but here, in this podcast it comes second. If you haven't developed the social and emotional skills to lead based on intrinsic motivation, if you try to convince, cajole, coerce, or seek compliance, you'll probably influence people to resist and oppose you and what you're promoting. I see Eric's book, How to Know Your Self (note the two words: "your" and "self") is a book on self awareness based on an interactive course on self awareness. I've never heard an experience leader suggest that lower self awareness helps and I've heard plenty say it does. Since we all pollute and deplete, which hurts people, we know we're violating our values, which tends to evoke emotions we don't like. We hide them from ourselves. We lower our self awareness. We could use tools to increase our self awareness. Eric's book delivers. We talk about how the book came to be, his course, how it differs from regular classes, and what people get out of it. I hope you listen, read the book, use…
People in this episode
Host: Joshua Spodek
Guest: J. Eric Oliver
Topics covered
- leadership
- sustainability
- self-awareness
- emotional skills
- personal development
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: University of Chicago
Books & works: How to Know Your Self
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