Empathy is remembering that everybody has a story. Multiple stories. And remembering to make space to hear someone else’s story before immediately telling your own.

If you are a book lover and tell it to the crowd; if you are a book lover and give a lot of books, sooner or later you end up with plenty of stacks. The stack : to read and selected by myself. The stack : to read and received by others. Two stacks : download a fragment, both on Kindle and Books. That is a lot of books ! Luckily people know my taste, add some serendipity, which makes it becomes a discovery for me.

My colleague and friend Ezra gave me and his team “On Connection” by Kae Tempest. I had to google them but was intrigued by the title. Authenticity is one of my main values and authentic authenticity is definitely one of my top 5 management principles.

Creative connection is the use of creativity to access and feel connection and get yourself and those with you in the moment into a more connected space.

Connection or real connection comes close to authentic authenticity. I love this English word “rapport”. To establish rapport. There is rapport or there isn’t. Well, to create rapport you probably have to read this book.

We are empathetic beings who feel for each other. Our very success as species is rooted in our ability to be aware of each other’s needs, to notice each other’s pain and to experience deeply felt physiological and emotional empathy.

Upon closing a book and before I rate it at Goodreads I ask myself what that book did to me. In most cases this is not about the summary or core idea of the book (although I do make mind maps of books of which I want to memorise the content). In most cases it is about the feeling that sticks. In the case of this Kae Tempest book, it are the quotes that stick. I leave you, Dear Reader of this Blog, with two of their quotes :

I’ve felt connection countless times, but I don’t create it. I don’t know why sometimes I’m connected and other times I’m not. All I know is it’s a collaborative, communal feeling that takes the whole room or none of us. It seems like it comes through me if I can get myself out of the way. But any interference will impede it. Trying to make it happens stops it in its tracks;

And to conclude :

For words to have meaning, they have to be read.