An insightful and practical leadership guide that requires careful study.
Whether readers are CEOs or parents, leadership can be learned through a model that sparks effective conversations, according to this debut manual.
After decades of focusing on leadership development, Rogers became intrigued by the fact that some executives get powerful results while other gifted personalities fail to influence others. The author maintains that a well-meaning but mistaken rush to authoritarianism or commiseration, especially in today’s polarized atmosphere, creates obstacles to open exchange and innovation. To counter the myths about personality and workplace culture, Rogers, a senior consultant at a global firm, offers this “study about dialogue in life and business.” In a world of increasing change, the author asserts, it becomes impossible for individuals or even groups to comprehend all the factors that come into play in dialogues and decisions. In addition, the natural human inclination is to “listen” in order to criticize, to gather information in order to bolster one’s already formed conclusion, and to speak in order to defend one’s biases. Rogers proposes a dialogical mindset—his t3 model—that leads to a true exchange, resulting in mutual collaboration and new ideas. This is a results-oriented, transformative dialogue involving inner discussions and conversations with others that breaks through the static concepts of teams and personalities and draws on four “voices”: curiosity, empathy, transparency, and authority. The 10 chapters are accompanied by helpful diagrams of various “dialogic space” variants showing roles and relationships, skill maps, sample conversations, self-surveys, and many real-world examples. Useful endnotes and commentary conclude the book. The strength of the manual is not only in Rogers’ fourfold model, but also his profound understanding of human foibles. He effectively warns against the pitfall of applying his system haphazardly or too quickly. Readers, even with the best of intentions, will likely slip back into their preferred “voices,” so the author spends a great deal of time deftly explaining the model, including the difference between telling oneself “I’m listening” and achieving real, active empathy. In addition, an entire chapter skillfully explores breakdowns in dialogue. Rogers emphasizes that there are no quick answers; this valuable model takes a lot of continuous work.
An insightful and practical leadership guide that requires careful study.Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-975987-95-4
Page Count: 264
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2018
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
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If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
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