WACO, TX / OCT. 17 &mdash; In these polarized, contentious times when national debate so frequently devolves into national division, I&rsquo;m reminded of 1958 alumnus Robert Fulghum&rsquo;s folksy, homespun wisdom on the matter: &ldquo;We could learn a lot from crayons,&rdquo; he wrote, &ldquo;some are sharp, some are pretty, some are dull, while others bright, some have weird names&mdash;but they all have learned to live together in the same box.&rdquo; 
Now, your experiences in the whole wide world might differ, but it&rsquo;s my impression that life takes a toll and no one skates for free. It turns out that striving to live honorably and with integrity in this box, believing in and standing up for what&rsquo;s eternal, fighting the good fight, and daring greatly in any arena can sometimes feel akin to tilting at windmills or boiling oceans. Fortunately, ours is a faith rooted in hope and rendered in love, so no matter one&rsquo;s circumstances or life&rsquo;s taxes, His promises are those of peace; we are never unmoored, never abandoned, never alone. I am reminded of this daily, and especially every autumn&mdash;when I find myself longing for respite from the world at large and eager to return home to my beloved green and gold.
This yearning may sound silly to some, but remember this: There are no little things. Why, just the other day a dear friend of mine named J.B. (a septuagenarian, in fact, who has survived more loss in his lifetime than one might think any person could bear) wrote the most actionable note reminding everyone in his circle to be thankful for and to celebrate life&rsquo;s simplest pleasures: &ldquo;As summer gives way to cooler weather, give thanks for FOOTBALL, FESTIVITIES, and HOLIDAYS... the coming of perspective and relief in so many forms.&rdquo; How fitting, therefore, that in these divided states Baylor Nation should roar back to life, lead the way forward and out, and aim to overcome through unity of spirit.
For the 113th year, we are afforded that beautiful 3-day weekend to &ldquo;renew former associations and friendships, and [to] catch the Baylor spirit again.&rdquo; In a word, to become heartened. As your week winds down, please lift your gaze, will you, and refill your heart and soul at the fount of our unique alma mater. To your every motivation, be they prosaic or profound, this year&rsquo;s Homecoming runs October 20-22 and includes Dinner with the Livingstones, Mass Meeting, Pigskin Revue, Homecoming Court, Friday Night Flashback, 50th Reunion &amp; Golden Grad Diploma Ceremony, Singspiration: Baylor Alumni's Homecoming Worship Service, Extravaganza / Pep Rally / Bonfire, the Homecoming Parade, Baylor Alumni Tailgate, and, of course, the culmination of it all in Saturday&rsquo;s football game against the Kansas Jayhawks.
I look forward to seeing your beaming face back in our happy place. &nbsp;#BaylorHomecoming
&mdash;Blake Leath, &rsquo;92
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Baylor Homecoming 2022

My All-Time Favorite Movies (...so far, for now)

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With Halloween only 102 days away, I've already had two friends ask for horror movie recommendations. Also, I suppose, because NOPE&nbsp;opens wide tonight.
Whatever the impetus, here's my [rather prosaic] list. I'll try and edit it annually, or as moved.
Admittedly, most of these are on here for sentimental reasons, not because they are, say, &lsquo;good&rsquo; or &lsquo;universally acclaimed,' so caveat emptor.&nbsp;
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Anyhoo, here goes: 
1. [An] Alien [or two] 2. [Lotta 1930s-1950s stuff:] Creature from the Black Lagoon, everything with Lugosi and Chaney [Wolfman, Dracula, Frankenstein, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, etc. Poor ol&rsquo; Chaney died in 1930 at the tender age of 47. Swallowed too much fake snow!]
3. [Nearly every] Halloween 4. [Several] Friday the 13ths 5. [Several] Underworlds 6. 1408 7. 28 Days Later 8. Amityville Horror [original] 9. An American Werewolf in London [I love the pub scene and the airplane joke] 10. Antlers&nbsp; 11. As Above, So Below 12. Blair Witch 13. Bram Stoker&rsquo;s Dracula 14. Children of the Corn 15. Creepshow [&lsquo;82] 16. Don&rsquo;t Be Afraid of the Dark 17. Final Destination [the early ones are best] 18. Fright Night [&lsquo;85 &amp; &lsquo;11] 19. Gremlins [and at Christmas, too!] 20. Hocus Pocus 21. Hotel Transylvania [I love these! The opening/lobby scene in the first one is adorable and so high-energy!] 22. I Am Legend [new one forthcoming, I hear!] 23. Insidious [I&rsquo;ve written about this a couple times, but <a href="https://www.leathgroup.com/review/the-conjuring-2">can only find mention of it online here</a>.] 24. It [&rsquo;17 only] 25. It&rsquo;s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown 26. Jacob&rsquo;s Ladder [&lsquo;90] 27. Jeepers Creepers [1 &amp; 2; I hope they make a 3rd installment] 28. Jennifer&rsquo;s Body 29. Krampus [Lauren and I chortle every time: If Peter Jackson had a puppet show!] 30. Legend 31. Legend of Sleepy Hollow [Depp], and Disney&rsquo;s &ldquo;The Adventures of Ichabod Crane&hellip;&rdquo; 32. Lost Boys 33. Love at First Bite [George the-tan-man Hamilton, 1979!] 34. Mandy [so incredibly gonzo!] 35. Manhunter 36. Overlord [I love the first 15 minutes in the airplane; wow! That reminds me: Twilight Zone with John Lithgow had a great airplane gremlin&hellip;] 37. Pan&rsquo;s Labyrinth 38. Paranormal Activity 39. Pet Sematary [latest] 40. Prometheus 41. Pumpkinhead 42. Salem&rsquo;s Lot&nbsp; 43. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark 44. Scream 45. Silver Bullet 46. Stir of Echoes
47. Suspiria ['18], and if you like it, try The Witch, Hereditary, Midsommar, and The Green Knight 48. Texas Chain Saw Massacre [&lsquo;03] 49. The Babadook 50. The Conjuring 51. The Descent 52. The Fly 53. The Good Witch 54. The Haunting [&lsquo;99] 55. The Howling 56. The Hunger 57. The Mothman Prophecies 58. The Night House [great music, BTW] 59. The Others 60. The Relic 61. The Ruins 62. The Sixth Sense 63. The Strangers 64. The Thing [&lsquo;82] 65. The Village 66. The Witch [yikes!] 67. Train to Busan 68. Werewolves Among Us [saw last spring; cute!] 69. When A Stranger Calls [original and latest] 70. Wrong Turn [&lsquo;03] 71. You&rsquo;re Next
&nbsp;
And if I could only recommend ONE each night between 10/5 and 10/31, my go-to bag would probably include: 1. [Anything with] Lugosi/Chaney 2. [Disney&rsquo;s] &ldquo;The Adventures of Ichabod Crane&hellip;&rdquo; 3. [The original] Halloween...TO BE SAVED FOR 10/31, of course! That's when we eat the CHILI! 4. An American Werewolf in London 5. Bram Stoker&rsquo;s Dracula 6. Creepshow 7. Friday the 13th [first] 8. Fright Night [from &lsquo;85] 9. Insidious 10. It ['17] 11. Jeepers Creepers [either one!] 12. Manhunter 13. Pan&rsquo;s Labyrinth 14. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark 15. Scream 16. Stir of Echoes 17. The Babadook 18. The Conjuring 19. The Fly 20. The Haunting [&lsquo;99] 21. The Howling 22. The Mothman Prophecies 23. The Sixth Sense 24. The Witch [yikes!] 25. Wrong Turn [&lsquo;03]
p.s.&nbsp;NOPE&nbsp;is a blast, so I highly recommend it. And I've seen&nbsp;The Black Phone&nbsp;seven times now, so it, too, has my strong seal of approval. That (plus $8.00) might just buy you a coffee, so take my opinion for whatever it's worth.

Favorite Halloween Horror Movies

In honor of inimitable Aussie-auteur Baz Luhrmann's latest 02:39:00 epic opus,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3704428/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Elvis</a>, I remind you of his 1998 sonic collaboration (featuring Anton Monsted, Josh Abrahams, Lee Perry, Mary Schmich, Quindon Tarver, and Rozalla) that resulted in one helluva worldwide earworm-of-a-hit,&nbsp;<a href="https://genius.com/Baz-luhrmann-everybodys-free-to-wear-sunscreen-lyrics">Wear Sunscreen.</a>
At 52, I can confirm that the pragmatic wisdom contained therein is spot-on.
I particularly love this line about advice and those who give it:&nbsp;"Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. ADVICE IS A FORM OF NOSTALGIA: Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts, and recycling it for more than it's worth."
For further reading:
<a href="https://bit.ly/3OU5p8T">About Baz.</a>&nbsp;
<a href="https://bit.ly/3NvS0CR">About song.</a>&nbsp;
<a href="https://bit.ly/2JsfsSa">Lyrics' source.</a>&nbsp;
&nbsp;
Baz is the most commercially successful Australian director of all time (Romeo + Juliet&nbsp;'96,&nbsp;Moulin Rouge!&nbsp;'01,&nbsp;The Great Gatsby&nbsp;'13) and&nbsp;Elvis&nbsp;features Tom Hanks (as Colonel Tom Parker) and stars Austin Butler (whom you may recall portrayed Tex Watson in Quentin Tarantino's 2019&nbsp;Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood&nbsp;starring Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio).
Elvis&nbsp;opened today, along with&nbsp;Where the Crawdads Sing&nbsp;featuring Taylor Swift's latest track,&nbsp;Carolina.
Also opening today is Ethan Hawke's 95th film (and second collaboration with Blumhouse's Scott Derrickson and Robert Cargill since 2012's&nbsp;Sinister),&nbsp;The Black Phone.&nbsp;Here's&nbsp;<a href="https://bit.ly/3OHoWcx">an interesting article</a>&nbsp;describing why Hawke agreed to the film.
Ethan's (and Uma Thurman's) daughter, Maya (who portrays Robin Buckley in juggernaut&nbsp;Stranger Things) are top-o'-mind this week as Dad's movie drops and daughter's series surges toward Vol. 2 in July. Oh to be a Hawke this year, since April's&nbsp;The Northman&nbsp;(helmed by Robert Eggers) was also a work of art.
With&nbsp;Maverick&nbsp;fading behind us and&nbsp;Lightyear&nbsp;having crashed and burned, catch&nbsp;Elvis&nbsp;and&nbsp;The Black Phone&nbsp;before&nbsp;Minions: The Rise of Gru,&nbsp;Thor: Love and Thunder,&nbsp;Blazing Samurai,&nbsp;and Jordan Peele's highly anticipated&nbsp;Nope&nbsp;crash our shores this July.
Movies are back, y'all.

"ELVIS," Baz, and More!

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I bebopped out Tuesday night to see Liam Neeson&rsquo;s latest vengeance thriller,&nbsp;Memory. Standard fare, not unlike the preceding couple dozen movies by Neeson, and that&rsquo;s totally fine by me. No point breaking the mold if the many flicks produced from that mold remain tried, true, fun, and profitable for everyone involved.
For a Tuesday night, the theater was packed. Raucous crowd, several groups of young men ages 18-24 chatting, chittering, challenging one another and talking the usual tough-guy / pre-flick trash. Chalk it up to being in a college town some 26 months after a pandemic hit. Everyone's restless, sowing his oats, and chest-bumping. I get it.
Eventually, folks are seated and hollerin&rsquo; at the screen for the show to start already.
But before Neeson could kick that ass and take those names, and before the trailers began, the theater ran a couple ad vids including one by Dove. You know Dove: It&rsquo;s that &lsquo;beauty bar&rsquo; for women that&rsquo;s marketed as pure, clean, gentle &mdash; photos on their pristine packaging boxes usually include a shadowed drop of white lotion, or rose petals, or lavender something or other. Branding that&rsquo;s as femme as femme can be.
-Preceding Neeson.
-Projecting advertising (originally designed for women and girls) that&rsquo;s instead being consumed here tonight by the AXE BODY WASH target demographic.
However, I gotta say, several beats into this &lsquo;commercial,&rsquo; the room shifted. More &lsquo;message&rsquo; than obnoxious &lsquo;marketing,&rsquo; the four-minute story unfolding on screen surprised me because it really began to land. With everyone. Man by man, teen by teen, dude crew by dude crew, everyone slowly stopped talking and began staring at the screen.
Dove (a Unilever brand) has produced impactful videos for 15 years (as part of their &lsquo;Self-Esteem Education&rsquo; commitment) that have now reached more than 60 million young people.
The particular ad vid that quieted and captivated our crowd was about &lsquo;toxic beauty advice,&rsquo; the sort that dominates many young girls' social media feeds these days, though toxicity &mdash; whatever the message, the means, or target market &mdash; knows no bounds.
I personally have to limit the amount of time I roam social media because I sometimes find that afterward I feel worse about myself, not better. More discouraged and daunted than encouraged and buoyant.
We each apparently need to be doing more, being more, making or taking more, buying more, wearing less or more or different, flaunting more, giving more away, losing more weight, traveling or winning or kicking ass and generally taking more names and then humble-bragging all the more. Yep, these sure seem to be the messages we ALL complain about whenever the topic of social media rolls around in person but, like with any bad habit, it's pretty dang hard to swim beyond the riptide and contribute much differently.&nbsp;
#guilty
&nbsp;
Perhaps a wiser colleague said it best the other day when she remarked to me: &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve yet to end a single day and think to myself, &lsquo;I only wish I&rsquo;d spent more time today on social media!&rsquo;&rdquo;
Granted, there are examples from social media (like the Arab Spring that sprang in 2010) that make me feel quite good about these platforms and everyone having a voice, though there&rsquo;s also an overabundance of vitriol, bullying, unbridled hate and outright evil lurking, stalking, trolling, trashing, and trafficking. As has been said, &ldquo;Social media is Satan&rsquo;s newspaper,&rdquo; and while that&rsquo;s admittedly a broad mischaracterization of something little more than a coded container, what we put into it sometimes makes me wonder whether Twitter and the like will ever become anything more than a technological toilet.
So kudos to Dove for trying.
Toxic beauty advice is but one grain of sand on a horizonless beach, but it&rsquo;s refreshing nevertheless to see meaningful marketing propelled by a social cause-like purpose.
Yes, yes, I know their &lsquo;message&rsquo; IS little more than &lsquo;cleverer marketing,&rsquo; but just like I have no problem with Neeson&rsquo;s predictability, I also have no problem with a beauty bar brand striving to be just a little bit more.
Like beauty, whether Dove is succeeding at turning any tide is in the eye of the beholder.
As for me, I, like you, shall continue to believe that less is more and that true, abiding, peace-bringing contentment is not having all that we want but, rather, wanting only what we have.
Here's to the struggle.
p.s. If this&nbsp;<a href="https://www.facebook.com/DoveUKI/videos/312068364338959" target="_blank" rel="noopener">first Dove clip</a>&nbsp;resonates,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=309876230533476&amp;ref=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here's another</a>.&nbsp;
Learn more about Dove&rsquo;s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.dove.com/us/en/dove-self-esteem-project.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Self-Esteem Project</a>&nbsp;(Mission; 'Confidence Kit' for Parents, Mentors &amp; Guardians; Research; Articles).
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Messaging > Marketing

Are you easily annoyed by distractions in cinemas?
<a href="https://youtu.be/lFAVp6i5dlU" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Check this out</a>; it's adorable!

Movie Disruptors

The Case for Curiosity

Employers, cultures, leaders better bring our A-games, &lsquo;cause after 'The Great Resignation' began The HIDDEN one: &ldquo;While top talent will always have better-paying offers to consider, employees are looking for more than a raise. A lack of career counseling and time spent helping workers chart a clear career-advancement path can prove particularly problematic when it comes to maintaining millennial employee engagement. With a new outlook on their work and a desire to reorient their lives, many workers have found a new boss who gives them autonomy and flexibility: themselves. During the pandemic, fear of redundancy due to shutdowns drove a lot of talented people to start side hustles. Census Bureau data shows that Americans filed paperwork to start 5.4 million businesses in 2021 &mdash; far exceeding the record of 4.4 million set in 2020. While some budding entrepreneurs ultimately quit their day jobs, far more do not. They simply shift time and creative energy away from their salaried positions &mdash; a more under-the-radar sort of brain drain on companies. In a Zapier survey of Americans conducted in December 2020, 34% said they had side hustles, while 24% indicated they were planning to start a side hustle in 2021. A survey from Dollar Sprout, a platform for people looking to start side hustles, asked people who indicated they had a side hustle how much time they spent on them; it found that the average time spent on those second gigs trended upward in 2021 and that the percentage of people surveyed who said they were spending over 15 hours a week on their side hustle had more than doubled from 2020, to 27% from 12%.&rdquo;
<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/hidden-resignation-workers-employees-checking-out-job-side-hustles-2022-1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Read the full article here.</a>

The Hidden Resignation of Burned-Out Employees

Analytics-driven 'nudges' (short, science-backed suggestions) may be one of the more intriguing additions to the managerial canon in the past decade. Deceptively simple, instantaneous, and effective complements to offsites, 'training' classes, coaching, and traditional adult-learning approaches of old, we really saw nudges proliferate and excel in the past couple years because they work so dang well in hybrid workplaces with black holes and long yawns between employee get-togethers.
Humu does a nice job analyzing, articulating, automating, app-ing, and altogether 'animating' the behavioral science upon which nudging is predicated, and I have particular respect for advisors Amy Wrzesniewski and Adam Grant, if only because I'm most familiar with their work&mdash;and much of their advice, predictions, and plans fall firmly in the camp of 'Works'!
One personal hope I have for the coming couple years (as this pandemic shifts into endemic status) is that MUCH of what we've learned from the Great Resignation about disconnection, fatigue, full-on burnout, neuroscience-informed management, diversity-inclusion-equity, employee engagement, corporate culture, communicating-leading-influencing from afar, hybrid leadership, empathy, emotions and feelings, mental health, and all the rest will NOT fade away but, rather, be refined, carried forward, democratized, and consumed in sustainable, tailorable, 'best practice' sorts of ways easily woven into the DNA of organizations regardless their size, style, or stripe. Here's to hoping, right? Of this, I am certain: Drucker would be delighted, as he was&mdash;if nothing else&mdash;a ferociously unapologetic advocate for breaking and abandoning ANY status quo in favor of WHATEVER WORKS BETTER. He was a no-nonsense pragmatist above all, and because 'nudging' works with nary a sweat bead, he'd be fanatical about its base science, its analytics, and finding new and better ways of wedding nudges to every leader's and employee's work-world experience.
Work Rules! by Humu CEO Laszlo Bock, Richard Thaler's Nudge, Lisa Kepinski's Inclusion Nudges, Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow and Noise, Grant's Think Again, and James Clear's Atomic Habits&nbsp;are great nudgy primers, and this&nbsp;<a href="https://www.humu.com/blog/the-5-nudges-that-helped-managers-most-in-2021" target="_blank" rel="noopener">accompanying article</a> provides a glimpse into what nudges worked well for managers in 2021. (Yale School of Management published anticipated/possible nudges for 2022 on Jan 11th, so hunt for that if curious enough.)
Our collective, immediate future is likely to be as AMBIGUOUS &amp; UNCERTAIN as the past couple years were COMPLICATED, so maybe you'll find nudges an easy addition to your leader toolbelt&mdash;things you can do regularly and with minimal effort in the 'here and now,' as concepts like 'next week, month, or quarter' may feel psychological lifetimes away.

The Science of Nudging in Leadership

The Disengaged

I read a constructive post earlier today by Emotional Intelligence thought leader Daniel Goleman and thought perhaps you'd appreciate it as much as I did.
&nbsp;
Positive Outlook: Optimism is a Choice
How many times has a &ldquo;setback&rdquo; led to a positive opportunity?
According to research, 86% of U.S. adults say the coronavirus will lead to important lessons for humanity. These range from practical lessons, such as handwashing; to personal lessons, such as grasping the importance of our family and loved ones; to societal lessons, like the value of social-emotional learning or universal health care.
This ability&mdash;to see the good in an inherently challenging situation&mdash;is the Emotional Intelligence competence called Positive Outlook. One of four self-management competencies in [Goleman&rsquo;s] framework of emotional intelligence, Positive Outlook refers to our ability to see the best in people, situations, and events. When people have Positive Outlook they:
<ul style="list-style-type: circle;">
<li>See the &ldquo;glass half full&rdquo;</li>
<li>Cultivate positive emotions in challenging moments</li>
<li>Pursue their goals no matter what life throws their way</li>
<li>Focus on what&rsquo;s working</li>
<li>See the best in themselves and others</li>
<li>Leverage strengths in order to solve problems and create productive outcomes</li>
</ul>
Positive Outlook is a prerequisite for effective leadership.
On a team level, Positive Outlook leads to higher levels of engagement, lower levels of conflict, and greater overall effectiveness. Part of this has to do with &ldquo;emotional contagion&rdquo;&mdash;when people in power dictate the mood of everyone around them.