An affable and engaging management guide.
Consultant Treasurer’s latest business book offers concise tips for developing leadership skills.
The author, currently the chief encouragement officer at Giant Leap Consulting, builds on his previous books, including Leaders Open Doors(2014), by describing crucial concepts in two-word phrases. Unlike many other titles in the genre, this one explicitly addresses itself to young and midlevel corporate leaders—those who must guide and motivate employees but aren’t in a position to set the organization’s overall direction or shape its mission. The book is divided into three sections, focused on self-management, leading others, and understanding business concepts. Within each section, chapters (“Model Principles,” “Get Results”) and subsections (“Integrity Matters,” “Detonation Defused”) follow Treasurer’s minimalist two-word formula, with explanations of each concept in straightforward prose. The book explains the importance of being self-aware and disciplined, understanding the common challenges inherent in motivating others, and developing a knowledge of the company and the industry to produce results. Each chapter includes brief anecdotes from leaders with whom Treasurer has worked (such as Sara Blakely, the founder and CEO of Spanx), sharing their insights on how to apply leadership principles to specific situations; for instance, Kimberlee Curley, the vice president of workforce readiness at NTT Data, explains how trying and failing to mimic the behavior of her colleagues taught her the importance of authenticity and also how her colleagues were falling short as leaders. Chapters conclude with questions for readers to ask themselves (“Think Now”) and action items for developing skills and knowledge (“Act Now”).
Treasurer takes a coach’s approach to developing leadership skills—explaining why they matter, offering specific implementations, and assuring readers that they can learn and accomplish everything they need to achieve. The book’s tone is heartfelt without being cloying, and readers will find the narrative voice appealing. The book presents a solid mix of theory and anecdote, offering vivid examples of concepts, discussed in broad terms; for instance, Treasurer uses his own failure to remember the names of his employees’ children as a launching point for a discussion of how to manage employees as people rather than cogs in a corporate machine. The section on developing employees’ skills is particularly well done, drawing clear connections between giving employees the tools and freedom to get work done and having enough time to focus on the work of management: “After working with you, each of your direct reports should be somehow enhanced, better off for having been positively impacted by your leadership.” Although the book’s core message will be familiar to anyone who’s spent time in the business section of a bookstore, it’s well written and well organized, making it a solid addition to one’s shelf; it’s also an effective introduction to newcomers to the topic of building leadership skills. Treasurer’s two-word conceit never feels overdone, offering readers convenient mnemonics without feeling gimmicky. Readers will come away with a clear sense of what leaders need to do to effectively manage themselves and their organizations and a clear path to implementation.
An affable and engaging management guide.Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5230-0317-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
Review Posted Online: Aug. 8, 2022
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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