a love/hate relationship with airport books 🌱

(2 minute read)

Hi! Welcome to Our Best Work Weekly, a newsletter from Healthy Pour where you'll get weekly tips on creating a healthy workplace, becoming a more compassionate leader, and cultivating a regenerative relationship with work. 

Today, I was going to focus on the importance of crisis planning (PLEASE engage in crisis planning for your business!), but honestly, it was a bit heavy and writing it was bumming me out. I’ll save it for when the news cycles aren’t as grim. It can wait. 

Instead, I’ll go lighter and discuss the function of popular books about leadership, psychology, and business. The airport book.

 I don’t like being in the airport a minute longer than I have to be, so I’m that person who is walking through TSA Pre-check while my flight is already boarding. In the rare instances that I have time to kill, I find a bookstore to check out the airport books before I perch myself at a bar with my laptop. It helps me keep my finger on the pulse of what trends and subjects the masses are gravitating towards. These books are like literary slot machines; enticing and shiny, they make us feel like they’ll solve all our problems, and sometimes they’re a bit dangerous.

Put simply, an airport book is one you would find at an airport. The non-fiction airport book often focuses on pop psychology, business, and leadership and are usually quick reads—something you can impulsively select without asking for recommendations that will hold your interest for a few hours. Then you can put it down without finishing but still feeling you’ve got the premise. They’re easy and designed to leave the reader feeling inspired and knowledgeable (whether they actually become knowledgeable is up for debate). Then, they can recommend the book to their peers, citing how life-changing it was, despite only having read just over halfway. “I get the premise,” we say to ourselves. We feel our status elevating. 

They’re the book equivalent of an Instagram reel. 

It may sound like I hate the airport book, and maybe I do, but I also have to remind myself that I started in psychology, business, and leadership academic pursuits through the airport book. While certainly dated and a little cringy now, Sheryl Sandburg’s Lean In was a pivotal read for me in 2013 when considering how we make career choices (now one of my central research topics). Reading Dare to Lead by Brené Brown was a validating bridge from my psychotherapeutic career into my organizational work. It is the same with Amy Edmundson’s The Fearless Organization about psychological safety. Jim Collins’s Good to Great and Built to Last remain some of the most influential books I’ve read about running a business. I will often recommend Think Again by Adam Grant to leaders who are a bit stuck in their ways (if they want to go deeper, Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman is what’s up, but that’s not an airport book…that’s a whole year of your life but worth it!).

It's just…so many of them are so bad. Except for Lean In, all the authors I’ve listed above have doctoral degrees in the subjects they’ve written about. They are the most expert individuals presenting their life’s work in a digestible format readily accessible to the general public. 

But there are dangers there, too. Think about Grit by Angela Duckworth, a book about sustained, high-level, values-driven motivation for long-term goals. I’ve seen it happen time and time again where people (who probably haven’t fully read the book or project their ideas into the pages) use her research to justify grind culture, abuse tolerance, and exploitation. Kim Scott’s Radical Candor is about compassionate honesty and feedback, but it’s often adopted as a reason for cruel and brutal honesty or unfiltered opinion. The subject of Carol Dweck’s extraordinary book, Mindset, has been adopted by the predatory “bro podcast” culture and MLM-style coaching “training” programs. "Just change your mindset, bro!"

And then there are the genuinely worthless books, written by the charlatans who are poorly regurgitating what they’ve learned from other airport books, simply repackaged with their twist. They’re inaccurate, misrepresent the science, and were written so the author (often ghost-written, so author is used loosely here) can raise their speaker fees and continue to perpetuate their nonsense.  

These are often some of the most popular.

“It’s like a Negroni, but with Mezcal. I’m pretty proud of it.” 

All this is to say be mindful about what you’re reading, especially when it comes to psychology, behavior, and utilizing approaches that will ultimately impact the well-being of others. Look for academic credentialing, research, and practical experience. 

But even that’s not a solid way to choose. Ameila Nagoski has a doctorate in conducting (music, not trains) while her co-author sister, Emily, has a PhD in health behavior, and they wrote what’s likely the most frustrating book about burnout I’ve ever read. 

Airport books are not fact-checked. They are not peer reviewed. Anyone can write one on anything.

And there are also incredible books written by people with only lived experience. 

I guess my recommendation is to take everything in an airport book with a grain of salt. One singular book will not give you the entire picture of these nuanced and complex subjects, so if a topic sings to you, find more books about it. Listen to more podcasts. Dig into google scholar! 

This year, I’m on a mission to read as many airport books as I can, so send me your recommendations. I don’t care if they’re good or bad, I want to read them. I want to read what people are reading.

See you next Monday!