An accessible and important guidebook for aspiring leaders.
A veteran Black corporate executive imparts business-savvy wisdom in this nonfiction book.
The Black executive, writes retiree Witherspoon, faces the same business realities as anyone else, from weathering boom and bust cycles to climbing hypercompetitive corporate ladders. “Yet,” he notes, “the Black exec knows without a doubt that despite all the many similarities, he still must perform better and persevere longer if he is to reach the height of his ambition.” Blending memoir and self-help, Witherspoon uses examples from his own life—ranging from his education at Tuskegee University, where he received a degree in economics in 1985, to his boardroom experience as a senior vice president at Proctor & Gamble—to provide guidance for aspiring Black business leaders. For instance, he notes that it was in a Black church where he says he honed his self-confidence in public presentations, as the church’s leaders encouraged children to embrace their talents. As in his first book, The Fallacy of Affinity (2010), Witherspoon advocates for cross-culturalism, and much of his wisdom is applicable to any aspiring leader. This book centers on the titular seven myths that often prove fatal to the career goals of young employees, which include fears that those within the organization “are better than you” or that they’ve “lowered the standards for you.” While building up readers' confidence, reminding them that they wouldn’t have been hired if they weren’t the best candidates, the book also cautions against overconfidence, as well—including the myth that “they have your back.” Witherspoon blends inspirational positivity with pragmatism, as when he provides specific examples of how to build internal alliances as a means to protect oneself. Other advice includes when to “invest” in one’s status as “the lone Black exec in the room” to help develop the careers of other Black executives, and when to do work that “is best left invisible.” The author’s personal story of overcoming obstacles and thriving is equally compelling and is accompanied by dozens of photographs from his personal life and career.
An accessible and important guidebook for aspiring leaders.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2023
ISBN: 9798822914018
Page Count: 324
Publisher: Palmetto Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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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