An insightful, wide-ranging blueprint for building better, more diverse workplaces.
A comprehensive call for greater inclusivity in the business world.
The core concern of Tyner’s book is a concept that will be well known to readers familiar with the American business or academic worlds: DEI—Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. “Needed now more than ever is a type of leadership that is responsive to diverse markets, employees, customers, and thought processes,” Tyner writes. “Inclusive leadership supports this process of engagement and organizational effectiveness.” Tyner, a researcher and scholar, tracks data-employment trends reflected in things like hiring, employee retention, and representation in leadership roles, building a picture of the benefits and challenges involved in creating a more inclusive work culture. In a series of brief, densely researched chapters, the author seeks to help readers become more aware of any implicit biases they may have, spot those biases in others, and work to address and change them (Harvard’s Implicit Association Test is invoked here as one tool among many). Tyner addresses such concepts as cultural taxation (underrepresented groups taking on additional uncompensated work in order to curry favor with their institutions); microaggressions, like backhanded compliments and overt or implied racist behavior (microaggressions, Tyner writes, further alienate those facing discrimination); and other concepts that Tyner asserts can lead to less cooperative and, crucially, less productive organizations. Each chapter concludes with an extensive series of notes and references, but Tyner’s prose throughout is free of dry academic jargon. The result is both a sweepingly comprehensive look at the pitfalls to diversity in the workplace and a passionate call to right these wrongs. At every stage of the book, for every potential problem, Tyner offers practical, clear strategies for change.
An insightful, wide-ranging blueprint for building better, more diverse workplaces.Pub Date: March 29, 2021
ISBN: 9781641058650
Page Count: 122
Publisher: American Bar Association
Review Posted Online: Sept. 2, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.
Memories and life lessons inspired by the author’s mother, who was murdered in 2021.
“Neither my mother nor I knew that her last text to me would be the words ‘Think you’ll be happy,’ ” Avant writes, "but it is fitting that she left me with a mantra for resiliency.” The author, a filmmaker and former U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas, begins her first book on the night she learned her mother, Jacqueline Avant, had been fatally shot during a home invasion. “One of my first thoughts,” she writes, “was, ‘Oh God, please don’t let me hate this man. Give me the strength not to hate him.’ ” Daughter of Clarence Avant, known as the “Black Godfather” due to his work as a pioneering music executive, the author describes growing up “in a house that had a revolving door of famous people,” from Ella Fitzgerald to Muhammad Ali. “I don’t take for granted anything I have achieved in my life as a Black American woman,” writes Avant. “And I recognize my unique upbringing…..I was taught to honor our past and pay forward our fruits.” The book, which is occasionally repetitive, includes tributes to her mother from figures like Oprah Winfrey and Bill Clinton, but the narrative core is the author’s direct, faith-based, unwaveringly positive messages to readers—e.g., “I don’t want to carry the sadness and anger I have toward the man who did this to my mother…so I’m worshiping God amid the worst storm imaginable”; "Success and feeling good are contagious. I’m all about positive contagious vibrations!” Avant frequently quotes Bible verses, and the bulk of the text reflects the spirit of her daily prayer “that everything is in divine order.” Imploring readers to practice proactive behavior, she writes, “We have to always find the blessing, to be the blessing.”
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9780063304413
Page Count: 288
Publisher: HarperOne
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
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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