Zachary Kohn’s Post

Amy Edmondson, the first to define and present the value of psychological safety, offers 10 minutes of true wisdom to Columbia graduates (and all of us)! A few quotes that we should live by: -- "Psychological Safety is the permission to tell the truth" -- "Create a learning organization" -- "Make friends with failure" -- "Humility, curiosity, and empathy are the building blocks of Psychological Safety (and what we need to survive our changing world" I'm honored to be trained to bring psychological safety assessment and dialogue to teams and organizations through #thefearlessorganizationscan. Let's talk about how your team can be more creative, connected ... oh, and surpass higher goals! #psychologicalsafety #amyedmondson #teameffectiveness

➡️Don't forget your sense of humor Jerry Seinfeld gave the graduation address at Duke University. His speech, simply amazing, insightful, and of course funny, is worth watching. Here are the messages I identified with the most: 1. Thell with “follow your passions.” It’s enough to find something... and then, do the best you can. 2. Find fascination – it’s good enough. 3. Pay attention to your surroundings and the organization you’re in. Recognize what’s happening BEFORE the “ship is about to sink.” 4. Work your ass off. 5. Fall in love. It’s easy to fall in love with someone; Jerry suggests falling in love with anything you can, your coffee, your shoes. Anything. "I spent my life paying attention to the little things in life," he says. 6. The most important ingredients in life are work, exercise, and relationships. They have an element of torture, but they’re worth it. 7. According to Seinfeld, All the sayings about no one regretting not working more in their life are nonsense. “Work is great. I worked a lot, every day of my life, and enjoyed every minute of it," he says. “The challenge is to find ‘cool’ work that you love being in.” 8. It’s nice that you care about not hurting others' feelings, just as people do in many different ways. 9. However, you should not lose your sense of humor. You’ll need it. Watch the speech. It's really funny and insightful: https://lnkd.in/dXDEtHqY #JerrySeinfeld

For anyone who hasn’t watched Seinfeld’s DUKE commencement speech – DO IT!!! I loved it! 16 minutes of hilarity with Jerry dropping pearls of wisdom left and right. Well worth the few minutes!! Some highlights….. 1.     Find something to do in life and put hard work into it; not everyone can find their “passion” 2.     Follow your curiosity rather than passion 3.     Hard work is never wasted 4.     Fall in love with anything and everything – even the smallest things 5.     Find something that you love the good parts and don’t mind the bad things too much – the torture you’re comfortable with. All good things that are worth it have a small amount of torture 6.     Use your privilege – be proud of what you should be proud of 7.     Work and Love are self justified in the experience regardless of the end point 8.     Work is wonderful and you should do something where you don’t regret spending as much time as you do at work 9.     Humor is essential to surviving life. Life is way too complex to survive it. It’s great to try and avoid offending people but not at the expense of losing any discomfort. Humor is the most powerful and survival essential quality you will ever have or need to navigate through the human experience 10. “I want to have the coolest job” is much more important than “I want to make a lot of money” Don’t think about “having” think about “becoming” – that is where it’s at. https://lnkd.in/dFnzZSwc

It's that wonderful time of the year – graduation commencements! I'd like to share one of the standout speeches from this year by Jerry Seinfeld. This speech is 16 minutes long and consists of 2,607 words (approximately 156 words per minute). It scores a 6.7 on the Gunning Fog Index, making it accessible at a 5th-grade reading level, and averages 9.51 words per sentence. Jerry Seinfeld’s speech follows a straightforward structure: tell the audience what you're about to tell them, tell them, then recap what you just told them. It’s simple, concise, and perfectly balanced with rhythm and cadence.

Highlight on STLI Faculty Fellow for Excellence in Teaching Phil Wagner. In this short video, Phil discusses his STLI Fellowship project focusing on having productive conversations with students on difficult topics:

https://lnkd.in/ebCA9ciC If you are ever to hear a full commencement speech of our current times, given by one who has dedicated his life to all things history, this may the one worth listening to.

In this video from my full interview with The School Of Greatness founder, Lewis Howes, he breaks down what advice he would give the younger version of himself. What advice would you give yourself if you could go back in time?

Jacque Fresco, an American social engineer and futurist, presents an alternative vision for our social system. I randomly came across his lecture, 'What the Future Holds Beyond 2000’, which, as the name suggests, was given in 1999, and was thoroughly impressed by the thought-provoking ideas he shared. Despite the video’s age, I think these concepts remain relevant. If you're interested in human behavior and intelligence, I highly recommend watching this lecture. Fresco offers insightful perspectives on human interactions, provides rational explanations for behavior, and suggests alternative approaches to peaceful coexistence. https://lnkd.in/dwKX_uVT

Discover the main challenges Bisma C. faced in balancing her academic and athletic passions. Hear her story of perseverance and dedication! Watch here: https://lnkd.in/eaa4yafV

Jerry Seinfeld’s speech, at Duke’s 2024 Commencement, included a theme of focussing on hard work, rather than worrying about the results. Reminiscent of the Bhagavad Gita's message: कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन | मा कर्मफलहेतुर्भूर्मा ते सङ्गोऽस्त्वकर्मणि || 47 || karmaṇy-evādhikāras te mā phaleṣhu kadāchana mā karma-phala-hetur bhūr mā te saṅgo ’stvakarmaṇi (BG 2.47): You have a right to perform your prescribed duties, but you are not entitled to the fruits of your actions. Never consider yourself to be the cause of the results of your activities, nor be attached to inaction.' He said: 'Effort always yields a positive value. Even if the outcome of the effort is absolute failure of the desired result. This is a rule of life. Just swing the bat and pray is not a bad approach to a lot of things'. 'Making work easier. This is the problem. So obsessed with getting to the answer, completing the project, producing a result which are all valid things, but not where the richness of the human experience lies. The only two things you ever need to pay attention to in life are work and love. Things that are self justified in the experience and who cares about the result'. 'Stop rushing to what you perceive as some valuable endpoint. Learn to enjoy the expenditure of energy that may or may not be on the correct path. Now, if you have been at this amazing place for four years and still have no idea what you like, what you’re interested in, or what you want to do in life, you are the luckiest ones here'. Full Speech here: https://lnkd.in/emNpagjg #JerrySeinfeld #work #DukeUniversity #achievement #process #results