2 Pages with MBS

Recommend this show by sharing the link: pod.link/2Pages As it’s book launch day, I picked one of the deep-dive chapters titled How to Amplify What’s Good to share with you, and towards the end you’ll hear from Leadership Strategist, author, and my good friend, Dan Pontefract. Get‌ ‌book‌ ‌links‌ ‌and‌ ‌resources‌ ‌at‌ https://www.mbs.works/2-pages-podcast/   Michael reads from Chapter 21 of his n...

Recommend this show by sharing the link: pod.link/2Pages My new book is on the near, near horizon. It’s called How to Work with (Almost) Anyone, and if you interact with other human beings in your life, this might be a helpful book for you. It goes live on June 27th, and I’ve got some terrific pre-order bonuses, which you can find linked below.  In this episode, you’ll hear about one of the five q...

Recommend this show by sharing the link: pod.link/2Pages My new book is on the near, near horizon. It’s called How to Work with (Almost) Anyone, and if you interact with other human beings in your life, this might be a helpful book for you. It goes live on June 27th, and I’ve got some terrific pre-order bonuses, which you can find linked below.  The audio book is ready to go, as well. So this epis...

Recommend this show by sharing the link: pod.link/2Pages How do you navigate the big decisions in your life? There’s a maxim by Thomas Jefferson you might have heard: “In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.” It’s one of those quotes that I instinctively and immediately agree with, only for it to become slippery and elusive once I sit with it. The sw...

Recommend this show by sharing the link: pod.link/2Pages Once, long ago, I chatted with Brené Brown about the possibility of writing a book together about paradox. With everything she could bring, and not entirely sure what I’d bring other than the idea for the book, I thought we could co-create something fantastic and fascinating between us. My guess is that she considered it for about two second...

Recommend this show by sharing the link: pod.link/2Pages I’m working on building community at the moment, and I’ve noticed I have two types to focus on. The first is a wider net - I know a lot of people a little bit, and I’d like to know some of them more. Inspired by the book The 2-Hour Cocktail Party, I’ve been hosting monthly events where I pull everyone together and ask them all to answer a qu...

Recommend this show by sharing the link: pod.link/2Pages A little over 6 weeks are left until my new book, How To Work With Almost Anyone, comes out, and I’m already selling it persistently online. I’ll tell you why; preordering is a powerful thing. It helps get the flight wheel spinning before release, but it can also remove risk in the creation process. Inviting others to express their support f...

Recommend this show by sharing the link: pod.link/2Pages I’m the most amateur of magicians. I have about ten tricks, all of which I learned in ten minutes or less because I need instant magic and instant gratification. However, I’ve come to realize that there are two types of tricks: one that requires a gimmick to work and one you can perform with whatever’s in front of you. Almost all of my trick...

Today, we're pulling one of our best episodes from the vaults, featuring the brilliant Thibault Manekin. Recommend this show by sharing the link: pod.link/2Pages If you had the chance to listen to my recent interview with Zach First, you heard us talk about how in a time of turbulence, organizations - whether big or small - can be candles in the darkness, and how being a manager means being a barr...

Recommend this show by sharing the link: pod.link/2Pages For one of Marcella’s significant birthdays, we went to the Fogo Island Inn, an extraordinary building on an island off the East Coast of Canada. More than just an extraordinary building, being there is an extraordinary experience - a hotel built into the rock of the island, and into the roots of the community. I’ve stayed at more than my fa...

Recommend this show by sharing the link: pod.link/2Pages Way, way back, when it was raining too hard to go out and kick a ball around, my brother, Nigel, and I had a game we occasionally played - pick-up sticks. If you don’t know this game, imagine about 30 different-coloured bamboo skewers in a pile. You had to remove them, one by one, without shifting the delicately-balanced structure. This is t...

Recommend this show by sharing the link: pod.link/2Pages   The smell of wood smoke, particularly burning eucalyptus wood as I’m sitting around a fire in the Australian bush, always conjures awe. As Dacher Keltner put it in his new book, “Awe is the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your current understanding of the world.” Starting a fire is a delicate thing; you c...

Recommend this show by sharing the link: pod.link/2Pages Growing up, there were a couple of my dad’s high school track trophies on the sideboard in our house. I loved those trophies as a kid - Dad, on the other hand, was pretty indifferent to them, having moved on to other things. Be it physical or not, what trophies do you have? And which ones are you now chasing? How do your past and possible ac...

Recommend this show by sharing the link: pod.link/2Pages One of the most powerful lessons I learnt was from the author Peter Block, who said that a characteristic of someone living an adult life is the willingness to make hard decisions. The same thing is often said about leadership, but I really like that he’s shifted that simple and difficult task to be present at the heart of being human. Block...

Recommend this show by sharing the link: pod.link/2Pages I read recently that there’s a drop in the number of people going to university to study the Arts, particularly Literature, because, “It’s just not practical.” I did both an Undergraduate and a Master’s Degree in Literature, and I know that it’s influenced who I am and how I see the world every day. In my undergraduate years, I learnt throug...

Recommend this show by sharing the link: pod.link/2Pages I’ve been very lucky to work with some of the TED Fellows, a program where young people of promise are given access to the TED world. For three years, I attended a gathering of these extraordinary young people to offer some support, facilitation, and coaching. What became obvious to me over the years was the commonness of brilliance, achieve...

Recommend this show by sharing the link: pod.link/2Pages I had a lucky break when I started working. Having lingered in university for more than a little while, I found myself at 25 without any real idea of what I wanted to do. I applied to many places, and finally got hired at an innovation agency. The real gift of working there was the founders’ aversion to business as usual. For many of us, tho...

Recommend this show by sharing the link: pod.link/2Pages It’s 1985, I’m 17, in my final year of high school, and I’m just having fun. There was very little then that hinted at who I’d become now. Though my favorite class was Literature, I wrote nothing aside from the essays that were due the next day. Once, during a school assembly, a classmate of mine got on stage with his cello. Barely knowing w...

Recommend this show by sharing the link: pod.link/2Pages Our inability to think long-term is encapsulated in a system we barely notice: the way that we write the year. Implicit in the number ‘2023’ is that when we get to 9999, there’s nowhere left to go. We’ve programmed into our lives that we can’t imagine beyond eight thousand or so years into the future, which is nothing in the grand scheme of...

Recommend this show by sharing the link: pod.link/2Pages Who do you think of when I say, ‘designer’? My brain goes into all sorts of nooks and crannies, and one person that comes to mind is you. A designer is someone who solves a problem. We can all probably improve at how and what we design, but have no doubts, you’ve already crossed the thresholds. You are already a designer.  Ayse Birsel’s cent...

Recommend this show by sharing the link: pod.link/2Pages Malcolm Gladwell famously made popular the idea of 10,000 hours of practice for mastery in his book Outliers. This comes with all sorts of caveats, but the concept holds up an interesting mirror. The other day I was asked, ‘How do you start writing books?’ As I attempted to give an answer, I realized that I’d been writing to find my own voic...

Recommend this show by sharing the link: pod.link/2Pages How are you labeled? How have you been labeled by others? And how have you labeled yourself? You listen to this podcast, which means that you're the type of person who thinks about who they are in this world, who they've been and who they're becoming. One of the ways we claim a sense of self is by the labels we give ourselves. What at first...

Recommend this show by sharing the link: pod.link/2Pages A question for you - who do you trust with your work? Whatever project you may be working on, it can’t be down just to you to bring it out into the world. You have to find the right champions; people who will play their necessary parts in creating, refining and sharing whatever it is that you’re building. As an author myself, it took me a wh...

Recommend this show by sharing the link: pod.link/2Pages Two things I love about Whitney Johnson are her relentless drive for self-improvement, and her incredible generosity. As the CEO of WLJ Advisors, she aims to help you grow your people and your business. Whitney is best known for her book Disrupt Yourself, but today she’ll be reading from her first book Dare, Dream, Do: Remarkable Things Happ...

Recommend this show by sharing the link: pod.link/2Pages When I first published The Advice Trap back in 2022, it was accompanied by a bonus course I created called ‘The Year of Living Brilliantly.’ Fifty-two different teachers, each teaching one powerful lesson on video. If you’ve been a participant, you’ll know today’s guest because his episode is one of the most popular. If you haven’t taken the...