4 essays on the founder's mind last month

^{Hi! Welcome. You being here means more than you know. Knowing it lands with someone like you keeps me going. I'm Lavena Xu-Johnson. I write about psychology for founders. Why? Because scaling a business means scaling ourselves first.}

Happy Wednesday, founders.

We've covered a lot in the past month, from why we deflect in accountability conversations, behavioural change research to ideal holiday length for a productive reset.

If you missed an issue or want a refresher before the next one, here's a recap of the last four.

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We traced motivational interviewing back to a 1982 role-play in Norway that eventually became a decades-long body of research on behavioral change.

The piece breaks down DARN-CAT, the language patterns that predict the potential outcome of a change in habit for someone.

We covered what the research says about getting through to someone once their defences are already up.

A 2020 listening experiment found one particular skill lowers people's defensiveness and opens them to alternative views straight away…

We went back to Anna Freud's 1936 work on defence mechanisms to explain why team members deflect rather than take ownership.

The piece walks through rationalisation, projection, and displacement as the three we see most often in team dynamics…

We dug into the research on the ideal length for a holiday, and why vacation benefits vanish within a week of returning to work in certain work circumstances…

Until next week,
Lavena

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