Darin R. Molnar, PhD

Dr. Molnar holds BA and MA degrees in anthropology with an emphasis in archaeology. His doctoral work focused on organizational management with a specialization in leadership.

Those two halves explain the book. Anthropology teaches you to watch what a group actually does rather than what it says about itself; organizational management gives you the vocabulary for why the doing goes wrong. Across more than four decades of work — running businesses, leading institutions, teaching, and producing — he became convinced that the most consequential leadership problems in working life remain underdescribed, especially from the perspective of the people who must work beneath them.

That perspective is the whole point of this site. There is no shortage of books telling leaders how to lead. There is much less written for the person who has to get good work out the door anyway.

Why the courses exist

The book ends by wondering aloud whether readers would want somewhere to continue the conversation. Enough of them did. The courses are the answer: the same argument, but with the scripts, templates, and practice a book cannot carry — plus one course written for managers who read the book, recognized themselves, and decided to do something about it.

They are taught by Dr. Molnar directly. There is no faculty, no content team, and no ghostwriter. If something in a lesson is wrong, there is exactly one person to blame, and he reads his own email.

Elsewhere

• Middle Way Management — the framework for compassionate, consciously mindful leadership, and the complete run of essays behind it.
• darinmolnar.com — the rest of the work.
• Reporting to Incompetence on Amazon.

Also

When he is not writing about leadership, Dr. Molnar can usually be found making harpsichords in his home-based woodshop somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. This is relevant only in that instrument building is unforgiving of self-deception, which turns out to be useful training for writing about management.