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Published · transcript-backedAdam Ward: preference
9 Aug 2026 Lenny's Podcast The playbook for building high-talent-density teams | Adam Ward, Head of Talent at Cursor
“I'm a big fan of a book where you can just jump to a chapter and get an answer, and it's not this linear piece you got to work through.”
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Everything needed to verify it.
- Speaker
- Adam Ward
- Attribution
- Verified speaker
- Claim type
- preference
- Recorded
- 9 Aug 2026
- Publisher
- Lenny's Podcast
Transcript context
…All right. What are two or three books that you find yourself recommending most to other people? Yeah, this is super nerdy. So there's two. There's one that I read in undergrad that has stuck with me, and it's Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goldman. And it's the rise of EQ as an important piece of it. And I just feel like emotional intelligence right now more than ever is so important in this AI age. And so it was super transforming to me way back then, and I think is really important now. And the other one I love for founders is just the High Growth Handbook by Eli Gill. I'm a big fan of a book where you can just jump to a chapter and get an answer, and it's not this linear piece you got to work through. And so I think it's such a great reference guide on different problems. And for the most part, building companies, the components are the same. The core principles, even when that came out several years ago, I still think hold true, so I like the High Growth Handbook. A Stripe Press shout out, High Growth Handbook. I imagine you've read Scaling People by Claire Hughes Johnson-…
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