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Forbes
13 hours ago
- Business
- Forbes
Read One Of These Books On Your Summer Vacation: Become A More Hopeful And Compassionate Leader
Trade out one trashy novel for learning about leadership. Compassionate Leadership is using your head and heart to inspire and influence others, so they can, in turn, inspire and influence others. This approach to leadership has proven to improve ROI, morale, innovation and retention. As a contributor focused on compassionate leadership, I continually scan the media for positive and hopeful stories featuring inspiring leaders. In the current swirl of war, political unrest, violence, and economic uncertainty, it can be difficult to find hope in the news media. Therefore, I have turned to books that focus on solving problems through analysis and innovation, to keep hope alive. I love nonfiction books and years ago, I read a book that spurred me on by Tom Corley, in his book Rich Habits: The Daily Success Habits of Wealthy Individuals (2010), found in his five-year study of 177 self-made millionaires that: I have been striving to read one nonfiction book a month since and I may meet my goal this year, thanks to my efforts to reduce my news consumption. Here are three of the six I have read so far that I highly recommend, for people wanting to become better global citizens and leaders: Book #1 Moral Ambition: Stop Wasting Your Talent and Start Making a Difference By Rutger Bregman (2025): The author is a Dutch Philospher who argues that many bright, capable individuals—especially in fields like finance and consulting, the so-called 'Bermuda Triangle of talent'—are squandering their potential on high‑paying but low‐impact roles. He urges readers to embrace 'moral ambition', a mindset that defines success by societal impact rather than salary or prestige. It may sound boring, but he expertly makes the argument for a new professional path as the answer to many problems using historical references and present-day heroes. He has even created a school to help people transition into careers that make a difference called The School of Morale Ambition, which offers fellowships to professionals ready to work on world problems, such as food scarcity. Book #2: A Different Kind of Power: A Memoir by Jacinda Ardern (2025): Read this raw and raw book, a master class in compassionate leadership. Travel with the author as she tells her life story from her small-town upbringing to global leadership as New Zealand's Prime Minister (2017–2023), all while raising her daughter as the second-ever elected head of government to give birth in office The memoir highlights how empathy and kindness shaped her leadership style and include her experience leading through the worst mass shooting in her country as well as her response to the the COVID‑19 pandemic. It also chronicles the story of what led her to leave public life after dealing with personal and political challenges that left her 'having nothing left in her tank'. For those of you who prefer biographies told through documentary, you can soon watch her story on Apple TV. Book #3:Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things by Adam Grant (2023) In the introduction of his brilliant book, Grant reminds us that 'all talent is equally distributed, but opportunity is not'. I read this book during our government's overzealous DEI reforms, and it gave me hope that we will return to common-sense policies that provide all our citizens with a chance at education and professional equity. He challenges the myth that talent alone determines success. Instead, he argues that growth, character, and opportunity play an even more significant role in realizing our potential. He emphasizes that: The book weaves together stories of unsung achievers, research studies, and insights from psychology and education to demonstrate that the most successful people often started from behind—and achieved success not by raw talent, but by capitalizing on overlooked opportunities. This book reveals how anyone can rise to achieve greater things and offers compassionate leaders a thoughtful roadmap for helping everyone reach their potential. I hope this helps you to escape the grind of the news cycle and find more inspiration through reading. You can find more resources about Compassionate Leadership here.
CNN
14-06-2025
- General
- CNN
He once rebuked billionaires for not paying enough taxes. Now this historian says we need ‘moral ambition' to fight tyranny
It is one of the most inspiring photographs in modern history, one that reveals the worst and best of human nature with a click of a camera shutter. It is a black-and-white image of a crowd of workers at a shipbuilding factory in Nazi Germany. It shows hundreds of them tightly packed in virtual military formation, extending a Nazi salute to Adolf Hitler — all except for one man. He stands in the middle of the throng, coolly defiant, with his arms folded across his chest and a sour look on his face. Historians have debated the identity and fate of the man in the photo, which was taken in 1936. But the Dutch historian Rutger Bregman uses the image in his new book to ask two questions: What innate characteristic enabled that man to resist the fear the Nazi state instilled in so many of its citizens? And what can people today learn from him, and others who are fighting new forms of state-sponsored fear? Bregman says one antidote to that fear is 'moral ambition.' It's his term for people who blend the idealism of an activist with the ruthless pragmatism of an entrepreneur to make the world a better place. In his new book, 'Moral Ambition: Stop Wasting Your Talent and Start Making a Difference,' Bregman uses the example of that German shipyard worker and other ordinary people to critique what he sees as a common failing of people on the left: They fall for the 'illusion of awareness,' a belief that simply exposing people to injustice will inspire them to act. 'Awareness doesn't put food on the table. Awareness won't keep a roof over your head,' writes Bregman, a vegan who has spoken out against animal factory farming. 'With awareness, you don't cool down the planet, you're not finding shelter for those 100 million refugees, and you won't make a bit of difference for the 100 billion animals at factory farms worldwide. Awareness is at best a starting point, while for many activists, it seems to have become the end goal.' Bregman has built a global audience by making others face uncomfortable truths. He shot to prominence following his 2017 TED talk about overcoming poverty by offering a universal basic income. Two years later, he went viral at a 2019 Davos panel discussion for his scathing rebuke of billionaires for not paying their fair share of taxes. ('Taxes, taxes, taxes. All the rest is bullsh** in my opinion,' he said). In a conversation from his home in New York City, Bregman spoke to CNN about why the Black Lives Matter movement failed to generate transformational change, why he gets most of his criticism from the left, and how his parents — Peta, an activist and special needs teacher, and his father, Kees, a minister — inspire his work. His remarks were edited for brevity and clarity. As a young boy, I was already obsessed with the Second World War. The country in which I grew up, the Netherlands, was occupied by the Nazis. I always wondered, what would I have done? There's huge literature around the people who actually did something. I was interested in the psychology of these resistance heroes. I thought that they were more altruistic, or maybe more extroverted, or maybe they have had certain privileges in the sense that sometimes you need resources to do the right thing. But none of that turned out to be true. It turns out that resistance heroes were really a cross-section of the population: rich, poor, young, old, left-wing, right-wing. A group of researchers looked at the evidence and said, hey, wait a minute, there is actually one thing that seems to be going on here. In 96% of all cases, when people were asked to join the resistance, they said yes. And then I had a epiphany. This (the resistance) was actually an idea that was spreading, almost like a pandemic. People were inspiring each other. This also explains why the resistance was a very local phenomenon; it wasn't evenly distributed over the country. People gave each other courage. That's super simple, but I think it's a quite profound lesson for us today. We often imagine that people do good things because they are good people. But it's exactly the other way around. You do good things, and that makes you a good person. You just got to get started or be inspired by others, and that's how you get there. Resistance is incredibly important. My fellow historian, Timothy Snyder, always says that we should not obey in advance, right? We shouldn't, even before the order goes out, start behaving as if we live in an authoritarian system. I was very glad to see Harvard show some courage, especially after the very cowardly behavior of some of the big law firms. Acts of resistance can be highly contagious, just as cowardice can be contagious. As a historian, I'm reminded of other periods in our history. It's often said that we live in a second Gilded Age (a tumultuous period of shocking income inequality and concentration of corporate power in the US). And if I look at the first one in the late 19th century, I see very similar things. I see an incredible amount of immorality and amount of political corruption. I see elites that were utterly detached from the realities of ordinary people's lives. But what gives me hope is that after the Gilded Age came the Progressive Era, with people like Theodore Roosevelt, a Harvard graduate (and a powerful progressive reformer), someone who grew up in a privileged environment. And then so many things happened in such a short period of time that were unthinkable: the (introduction of) income tax, labor and environmental regulations, the shorter work week, the breakup of big monopolies and corporate power. It was quite incredible. I'm not predicting that this will happen or anything like that, but I do think it is time for a countercultural revolution. It should be led by people from the bottom up, but also very much by elites who have a certain sense of noblesse oblige (the belief that people with wealth and power should help the less fortunate). This is really what you see in the progressive period. Take Alva Vanderbilt. She used to be this pretty decadent woman who was married to Cornelius Vanderbilt. She wanted to get into the Four Hundred, the most wealthy and elite families in New York. But then her husband died, and she did the same thing as MacKenzie Scott (the ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. She turned into an activist and became one of the main financiers of the women's rights movement. This (the Progressive era) was very much a revolt among elites who were just utterly fed up with the total decadence, immorality, and also frankly the unseriousness of the people who were in power. I see the exact same thing today. At some point, it's time to get fed up with it and provide an alternative. But that really starts with doing the work yourself. I'm too much of a historian to be a real optimist. I know that things can go downhill very quickly. If you study Germany in the 1930s or the 1920s, you see a society that is one of the most civilized and technologically advanced countries in the world. There was this idiot named Adolf Hitler, but most people didn't take him seriously. We are living through an extraordinary moment. The next five to 10 years are going to be incredibly important for the future of the whole human race. The Industrial Revolution in 1750 was the most important thing that happened in all of human history. We are living through a similar moment. It's easy to see the dystopian possibilities, and I really do not want to dismiss them. But at the same time, some of the utopian possibilities that I sketch out in my first book, 'Utopia for Realists,' which were often dismissed as quite naïve — they become more realistic by the day. Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, says that 50% of entry-level jobs could be gone five years from now (because of AI). We are going to have to rethink so many basic aspects of the social contract. This whole idea that you have to work for your money, that you're not a valuable human person if you don't have a job — we have to get rid of that idea quite soon, because it's going to be very cruel to hang on to that if we keep automating our jobs so quickly. All of this could lead to some wonderful utopian possibilities. We will finally be able to ditch the whole idea that you have to work for a living. Then we will finally be able to figure out what life is all about. Will we get it right? I don't know. Yes, I'm afraid so. I spend a lot of time studying the civil rights movement, and what really strikes me about that movement is just how effective it was in translating awareness into tangible results. They got these huge packages of legislation through Congress that made such a massive, tangible difference in the lives of real people. And then look at Black Lives Matter. It's incredibly impressive on one hand — it was the biggest protest movement in the history of the United States. But then look at the actual results. It's not nothing — some police forces changed a little bit. But compared to the amount of energy around that movement, it's been pretty disappointing. Prev Next This is not true for BLM alone. It's true for many protest movements of the last two decades. And this is probably because in this online era, it's easy to start up the empathy and the anger. We see it in Los Angeles (where people are protesting the Trump administration's sweeping immigration crackdown) right now. You get people out in the streets very quickly. But is there an actual plan, an actual strategy? Changing the world is very difficult. It takes enormous perseverance, and coalition building, which is quite difficult. You have an online environment where people are calling each other out all the time over purity politics. I often find it funny but also depressing that I get the most criticism from my friends on the left. It can be all kinds of things. I'm currently building an organization called the School for Moral Ambition. We are building fellowships for ambitious, talented people to take on some of these very pressing global issues, whether that's animal factory farming or tax avoidance by billionaires. But that stuff needs to be financed. So we work with groups like Patriotic Millionaires, for example — wealthy people who say, hey, tax me more. But for some on the left, it's like, ewww, you're working with rich people. In my book, I talk about the noble loser, those people who like to say, 'I stood on the right side of history. We didn't vote for Kamala (Harris), because Kamala was pro-Israel.' Well, look what that got us. Whether we're talking about people who are currently suffering in Palestine, animals who are suffering or people who are being oppressed — they don't care if you're right. They want you to win. I think so. I've always been very proud of my dad. I remember very well sitting in church, looking at my dad, and thinking he has the coolest job. I looked at my friends, and one's dad was an accountant and another was a marketer. And my dad is a minister, who talked about the biggest questions of life. I don't give the same answers (as him) to all those questions, even though I think we've become closer philosophically and spiritually as I got older. But I've always believed that those are the right questions to ask. We have only one life on this precious planet, and it's very short. No matter how rich we get, we can never buy ourselves more time. A lot of my secular and progressive friends love to dunk on religion, and sometimes for good reasons. But I've always appreciated those parts of religion that force us to reckon with the bigger questions of what life is actually about. My mother is an incredible woman. She is the only one who keeps getting arrested in our family. The other day she was arrested again as a 68-year-old climate activist. For her, it's always been very natural and logical to live in line with your own ideals. A lot of people think certain things, but they don't act on it. Many of my friends on the left care so much about poverty and inequality, and then I'll ask, 'How much do you donate to effective charities?' and very often, the answer is nothing. What I've learned from my mother is that you can just do what you say. She's also never been afraid to use the power of shame. A lot of people say that shaming is toxic, and I tend to disagree. I think there's a reason why we humans are pretty much the only species in the whole animal kingdom with the ability to blush. They thought it was hilarious. Those are the moments when I make my mother proud. John Blake is a CNN senior writer and author of the award-winning memoir, 'More Than I Imagined: What a Black Man Discovered About the White Mother He Never Knew.'
Irish Times
14-06-2025
- Business
- Irish Times
Moral Ambition by Rutger Bregman: An engaging attempt to get us to change the world
Moral Ambition: Stop Wasting Your Talent and Start Making a Difference Author : Rutger Bregman ISBN-13 : 978-1526680600 Publisher : Bloomsbury Guideline Price : £20 Rutger Bregman is one of the most refreshing thinkers to have appeared around the time of the global pandemic, when many of us were seeking new approaches to living after the seismic shock of seeing millions dying. Here was a new voice worth listening to; someone who looked at the rules of engagement honestly, whether he was slapping the barefaced cheeks of those at Davos by raising the subject of tax avoidance, or flummoxing Fox News's Tucker Carlson by calling him out during an interview as a millionaire funded by billionaires. [ A 'really subversive idea': Most people are pretty decent Opens in new window ] Bregman has never philosophised in fear, but rather in positivity, and now he wants us to stop wasting our time in life and use it instead to make lasting changes: to show 'moral ambition' so that we are not only on the right side of history, but make our own contribution, too. The Dutchman sets out that most people spend 80,000 hours of their lives working; time that, in the main, is meaningless if you exclude core services and essential jobs (he references David Graeber here, who conceptualised the idea of pointless, Sisyphean work in his essay Bullshit Jobs). READ MORE [ The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World by David Graeber: Intense flares of thought from a brilliant mind Opens in new window ] 'Moral ambition is the will to make the world a wildly better place,' writes Bregman, 'to devote your working life to the great challenges of our time, whether that's climate change or corruption, gross inequality or the next pandemic. It's a longing to make a difference – and to build a legacy that truly matters.' Bregman won't tell you how to do this. But he does show you ways in which it has been done, by rummaging through history and academia and gathering data and a cast of activists, innovators and entrepreneurs who – with the required moral ambition – achieved tectonic changes in issues such as slavery, racism and rights, medicine and science, and so on. (He admits many of those featured, but not all, shared degrees of privilege.) It's an engaging, valid argument in the main, even if the book's own ambition can at times make it feel unwieldy, and some of the material may be overly familiar to some readers (Ralph Nader, Peter Singer, etc), whereas the moral ambition of someone such as Rosa Parks is a self-evident if necessary inclusion. The author's ambitious optimism for a better tomorrow will see you through to the end though, and he's right about the next moral hurdle that humans must overcome: eating animals and feeling fine about it.
CBC
02-06-2025
- Business
- CBC
Carney's plan to build big things; the case for moral ambition; and what a bear attack story taught an author about life
Mark Carney promised to 'build, baby, build' on the campaign trail. Today, he's meeting with provincial and territorial premiers to discuss his plans to build big projects in this country, including by fast-tracking the processes to get them approved. We'll talk about balancing the rights of Indigenous nations with the new government's proposed plans — and why red tape isn't the only hurdle holding up development. From climate change to poverty or infant mortality, the world is facing a lot of big problems. And the historian Rutger Bregman says you — yes, you — are the exact right person to solve them. Bregman makes the case to Matt Galloway that today's workforce should focus on 'moral ambition' — channeling their entrepreneurial spirits toward social problems, rather than toiling in meaningless jobs. Claire Cameron has been obsessed with bears since hearing about a bear attack while she was working in Ontario's Algonquin Park as a teenager. But when she was diagnosed with cancer, Cameron revisited the details of that attack and the wilderness environment that's shaped much of her life. In a conversation from March, she told Galloway about her new memoir How to Survive a Bear Attack, and what facing death taught her about how to live.
Forbes
26-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Moral Ambition By Rutger Bregman — Review
Greed and selfishness are failing humanity: can 'moral ambition' save the day – and us? Helping hand. getty Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?Tell me, what is it you plan to dowith your one wild and precious life? – The Summer Day by Mary Oliver I have eagerly followed Dutch historian Rutger Bregman's career online ever since I saw a video clip on twitter of him speaking truth to power at the Davos CEO Greedfest Conference. In this video, Mr Bregman admits to the audience that he was bewildered by the economic scolds at Davos who talked about participation, justice, equality and transparency, but 'nobody raises the issue of tax avoidance and the rich not paying their share. It is like going to a firefighters' conference and not talking about water.' After I had been won over by that charming introduction to his moral philosophy, I simply had to know more. I'm most pleased to tell you that, a few years later, I finally managed to get a review copy of his hot-off-the-presses book, Moral Ambition: Stop Wasting Your Talent and Start Making a Difference (Little, Brown and Company, 2025). This impassioned book is incredibly readable – I read it in one go. It uses crisp, energetic prose and interesting examples to argue that it is possible for all of us to live meaningful lives. Additionally, reading the opening credits in this book that quote numerous book reviews already published, I felt like I was in an online book club with some of my favorite famous people, from Trevor Noah and Timothy Snyder to Stephen Fry, and I was determined to read this book that they all were talking about, so I could be part of the conversation, and an active participant in this social movement, too. Mr Bregman opens Moral Ambition by discussing how most people waste their talents on bullshit jobs, when they could instead focus their talents, energy and time on how to live a meaningful life that is useful to society. We learn how our conventional definitions of success harm us, animals and the planet, and Mr Bregman uses numerous examples to demonstrate how we can shift our focus from personal gain to societal benefit. This, in a nutshell, is moral ambition; the willingness to devote one's life to solving the world's biggest problems – globally pressing threats like climate change, pandemics, or the energy crisis. In his book, Mr Bregman describes the four categories of people as he sees them. First are people who are neither ambitious nor idealistic. This category includes those who work at meaningless 'bullshit jobs' and those people who only seek to retire. Second are people who are ambitious, but not idealistic. This group includes consultants, bankers, many tech employees (and I'd suppose, most politicians.) Third are people who are idealistic, but not ambitious. Most protesters and activists fall into this group. Fourth are those incredibly rare people who are both ambitious and idealistic. Mr Bregman moves on to discuss his concept of 'zeroes', 'ones', and 'twos'. Zeroes are those rare people who start things, the trailblazers – or troublemakers, if you prefer. Ones are the people who help the zeros in their crusades. Twos are those who join in and follow after things have gotten started. According to Mr Bregman, regardless of whether you are a zero, a one or a two, the ultimate goal is doing something that's useful for humanity. As an example, he points to how the young law student, Ralph Nader, got his start back in the day, by successfully suing General Motors for making unsafe cars. Nader's actions led to LBJ signing the Highway Safety Act and Traffic Safety Act. Following on that success, Nader then started the 'Radical Nerds', a group of talented and idealistic law students who were recruited by Nader specifically to focus on solving societal problems. Mr Bregman discusses the idea of the 'Noble Loser' – someone with ethical intentions but unable to make a difference. This is often because Noble Losers don't know how to make a difference. According to Mr Bregman, one way to overcome this deficit is to join a group centered around moral ambition, that relies on a cult-like mentality to identify and accomplish their goals. (I disagree with the author here because a cult can so easily go wrong, as we've seen far too often.) Some of Mr Bregman's examples include the Against Malaria Foundation, the Abolition of Slavery movement and even 'ordinary people' hiding Jewish people in their homes during WW2. Using these examples and more, Mr Bregman discusses what is necessary to make a substantially positive social impact. He concludes that it really doesn't take much. For instance, many of those who hid Jews did so simply because they were asked to. And anyone who knows this can have similarly powerful social impacts. In the book's final chapter, Mr Bregman introduces three global challenges (in addition to climate change) that could serve as worthy, solvable threats for those with moral ambition who are seeking to improve society: nuclear war; artificial intelligence and biological warfare. Despite some of my reservations, I think Mr Bregman's argument to think carefully about the impact that your actions and life have on others is critically important. Taking deliberate actions to live a meaningful life, a life that is useful, and impactful, is the most fulfilling way to live your best life. An inspirational guide to finding that path for ourselves, Moral Ambition reminds us that the real measure of success lies not in what we accumulate, but in what we contribute, and it shows how we can build a lasting legacy that truly matters. Highly recommended for absolutely everyone from the ages of 15 to 115, I think this powerful, well-argued book would be an especially thoughtful and transformative graduation gift for your high school or university students. © Copyright by GrrlScientist | hosted by Forbes | Socials: Bluesky | CounterSocial | Gab | LinkedIn | Mastodon Science | Spoutible | SubStack | Threads | Tribel | Tumblr | Twitter
