A compassionate vision for prioritizing empathy in business.
Hollingsworth champions the value of empathy in the workplace in this business guide.
In her nonfiction debut, the author (the founder and CEO of Hollingsworth Consulting) reminds her readers that, as a society, we have all lived through one of the most traumatizing events in modern history in the form of the Covid-19 pandemic—and the after-effects haven’t stopped. “We can’t seem to catch our breath,” she writes. “Political unrest, the economy, racism, the mental health crisis, climate catastrophes, school shootings, global conflict: it simply doesn’t stop.” All of this tumult inflicts increased stress on everybody; for this reason, Hollingsworth stresses the importance of her “Human Being First” approach. Per the author, this perspective should be applied to all aspects of the corporate experience. A sales director is reporting low quarterly numbers? Time-off requests are piling up? Communication blunders causing problems? Always remember: “Human Being First.” Discussing how leaders should handle conflict, the author cites what she refers to as the 5P=1N Rule: For every negative comment or interaction with Person X, there should be five positive ones, in order to avoid defining people by their missteps. Underpinning these concepts is Hollingsworth’s vision of compassionate leadership, which is composed of four elements: self-compassion, awareness, empathy, and action (actually doing something “to help mitigate unnecessary suffering amongst those you lead”). Chapters flesh out these elements with numbered and bulleted points based on research supporting the position that companies prioritizing love and human connection in hiring and management out-perform companies based on “baseline HR principles.” The book also includes discussion questions and several pages of endnotes providing further sources.
Readers with any familiarity with the working world may approach the author’s central ideas with a good deal of skepticism; a glance at any day’s business news seems to show that the corporate world is largely governed by petty tyrants obsessed with personal advancement at any cost. On every page of her book, Hollingsworth insists there is a better way: “Courageously vulnerable” leaders can set a very different tone. “Remember,” she tells her readers, “leaders set emotion norms in organizations.” The author’s detailed analyses of various aspects of leadership in times of crisis are all fascinating, particularly when she’s discussing the intricacies of navigating collective trauma. This involves leaders understanding what she calls their “Window of Tolerance”—appreciating how new social data or bad news can push them out of that window, and how attempts to “cultivate attunement” can yield positive results. Hollingsworth is consistently upbeat conveying her belief that trying times require even more sympathetic leadership—she reserves her most negative commentary for leaders who engage in what she adroitly refers to as “maladaptive perfectionism.” “If resilience is the ability to recover swiftly and gracefully from mistakes and difficulties,” she writes, “then maladaptive perfectionism is pretty much the total opposite of resilience.” What ultimately emerges from her clear, compassionate prose is an appeal for business interactions (and by extension all human relations) to proceed from a place of greater collective understanding. One can only hope the notoriously heartless corporate world is paying attention.
A compassionate vision for prioritizing empathy in business.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2024
ISBN: 9798990863316
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Aug. 27, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
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