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The Daily Drive Book Club

📖 The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse by Charlie Mackesy

Episode Summary

Every once in a while, you have to step out of the heavy leadership books and just eat some cake. In this mini episode, Yanet leads us through a children's book handed to her by a CEO mentor during a hospital leadership program — a book that turned out to hold more leadership wisdom than either of us expected. Hand-illustrated and handwritten by the author, it's a story about kindness, optimism, and love. And on the second read, with a leadership lens, the themes started jumping off the page: circle of safety, asking questions instead of having answers, self-compassion, and building trust with people you're not used to trusting.

In This Episode

• Why we do "mini episodes" — keeping it light between the big, heavy books
• The backstory: a CEO mentor who gave Yanet a children's book instead of a business book — and what it taught her about leadership
• The four characters: the boy (the glue), the mole (the cake lover), the fox (quiet trust), and the horse (the optimist)
• Reading it twice — how the leadership themes only emerged on the second pass
• Circle of safety: the fox is freed and welcomed into the group, even after admitting he could've eaten the mole
• "Don't have the answers, ask the questions" — the same theme that surfaced in Multipliers
• Self-compassion and "the greatest illusion is that life should be perfect"
• "The greatest thing I've discovered is that I'm enough" — and why that one hits home
• Keeping it light: "If at first you don't succeed, have some cake"
• Kindness isn't the same as nice — leading with truth AND love, and why one without the other doesn't work
• The adult timeout: emotional maturity and stepping away before you bring baggage to your team
• Working your algorithm — feeding yourself (and putting out) love instead of hate
• Our billboards: "I am enough" and "When in doubt, eat some cake"
• Our Gas Tank rating for the book

Our Rating
⛽ Gas Tank: 4/4 — A full tank from both of us. A children's book that makes you stop, think, and give yourself (and everyone around you) a little grace. And it has cake.

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Get the audiobooks here: [Libro.fm link]

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