Acknowledgments

I always read the acknowledgments section thinking that I will understand something about the person I am about to get to know by reading their book. I always marvel at how many people are being thanked for a job that I imagined as that person sitting alone in a room with a typewriter like Hemingway. But I was very wrong in my visual imagination. The sitting-alone part is only part of the process. Writing a book is a grand, audacious thing, as opposed to just another task, and it takes multiple teams. I find myself not knowing where to start. Therefore, I will just start.

I want to thank my wife and life partner, Ginger Ward, for her unwavering belief in me over the last 27 years. It has been quite a journey and you are both my rock who calms me down and my spark plug who ignites me toward more action when my natural tendency would be to sit and think too long. My father, Ernest Thacker, who saw potential in me at every turn even when it wasn't there. Kay Keenan, who has brought her considerable and varied gifts to the table willingly and jumped in to help at every phase of this process in any way that she could. A team member like Kay is invaluable. Thank you to Elena Rocanelli Veale for her diligence in tracking down a million references and helping me see the work through the eyes of a college student. Thanks to Ken Lizotte and Elena Petricone of Emerson Consulting Group. Ken, your calm demeanor and admonition to keep plugging away made it possible for me to get through the proposal phase and the writing days. Elena, you have a strong voice of your own and a gift for hearing ideas and amplifying the voices of others. Thanks to Carroll Ivy Laurence for taking on the formidable task of educating me about the power of social media. I would like to thank Drew Fennell for her friendship and more specifically for the enthusiastic reading of the early drafts and approaching it with glee as if it were an unfolding drama like a Shonda Rhimes TV show. Thanks to my friend Lisa Goodman, the attorney and equestrian, who branched out and provided the key psychological counsel involved in writing: “You just do it,” and she said it with such authority that I just believed her. I am grateful that Phoebe Atkinson came into my life as a friend and colleague through the Certificate in Positive Psychology program at just the right time. Phoebe, I have never met anyone who was more skillful at encouraging others to find the courage to be a better version of themselves. A special shout-out to the founders of the Certificate in Positive Psychology (CIPP) program: Megan McDonough, Tal Ben-Shahar, and Maria Sirois. The CIPP program really has changed and enlivened this hard-core cynic and you three and your model of teaming inspire us all. Megan, with your mindful bias toward action and theories of adaptive execution, you embody the authentic leadership that is so relevant to today's business challenges. Tal, your passion for psychology and the science of human behavior helped me reconnect to my heartfelt passion for learning that had gone dormant. Maria, your authenticity, fierce vulnerability, and gift for storytelling inspired me to get real and lighten my psychological load as I was staring the big 50 in the face.

Last but certainly not least, thanks to Jeannene Ray and the team at Wiley for taking the risk on an unknown and believing in these ideas. Nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come. This notion of authenticity is an idea whose time has come again, as it is not new but particularly relevant now.