A wide-ranging and compelling explanation of what it takes to do a nonprofit executive director’s job well.
A comprehensive guide to managing and leading a small nonprofit organization.
The latest book from Hanberg, the director of audience development for KNKX public radio in Tacoma, Washington, is aimed at a small and very well-defined readership: present and prospective executive directors of small-to-middling nonprofits. He sets the tone early, noting that the typical experience of running a nonprofit is one of running desperately from one crisis to the next, trying to put out fires. Hanberg has had two decades of experience dealing with such crises, and he imagines that he’s writing his book for that younger version of himself, just starting out. He begins by defining basic terms: What does an executive director do? How do they interact with what the author sees as the three key elements of all nonprofits: mission, people, and money? Along the way, the author draws a crucial distinction between being an employee and being a leader: “Did you actually work to make something different and better (a leader) or did you sit back and take what was given, even if you thought there could be a better way (an employee)?” Hanberg advises his readers that good executive directors must have a wider vision for a nonprofit, lead with that in mind, and not get caught in day-to-day squabbles on an operational level: “The more you can extricate yourself from the daily operations of your nonprofit,” he writes, “the more the real work of your job can begin.” Sometimes, according to Hanberg, that real work will eventually shape the nonprofit itself. “The nonprofit will start to look like you,” he writes. “Because everyone is taking their cues from you.”
Hanberg is a highly engaging writer, and he shows himself to be adept at shifts in pacing that make for fluid reading—and which are generally rare in leadership-related books. He enlivens the narrative with stories drawn from his own long experience and also with a protracted but useful hypothetical situation involving a nonprofit executive director who faces pretty much every problem and complication that any of Hanberg’s readers are likely to see. On the surface, the book’s ambit seems dauntingly narrow; its broader application comes from the fact that its author never loses sight of the fact that his real subject is leadership in general. He delves into the specifics of nonprofit activities, such as building memberships, establishing new streams of income, and modeling efficient budgets, and he spends a good deal of time discussing boards of directors—often the bane of a typical executive director’s existence. But his primary focus is how to manage the mission, the money, and the people that get the job done: “Even if you have a new staff hungry for a change,” he writes, “it's best to showthem the changes you want to make later, not just vaguely tell them about it on your first introduction.” These leadership principles are broadly applicable and not simply visible in the nonprofit spectrum.
A wide-ranging and compelling explanation of what it takes to do a nonprofit executive director’s job well.Pub Date: Feb. 15, 2021
ISBN: 979-8704833055
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Sept. 17, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
IN THE NEWS
IN THE NEWS
A passionate and accessible guide to humanizing the workplace.
Helbig and Norman present a game plan for making leadership more responsively human.
In this expanded update to The Psychological Safety Playbook: Lead More Powerfully by Being More Human (2023), the authors provide “practical strategies for responding to resistance, sparking change, embodying the change we want to see, and moving forward deliberately,” specifically in a business setting. They suggest ways to encourage what they call “changemakers” through the use of five key “plays” from their playbook: Communicate Courageously, Master the Art of Listening, Manage Your Reactions (“shift from automatic reaction to conscious response to stay better connected to yourself and others”), Embrace Risk and Failure, and Design Inclusive Rituals. The goal is to ensure that organizational cultures promote psychological safety, guided by leaders who “walk the talk” by emphasizing their own humanity at every turn. (“We must be the first to share our own failures with our teams, which will start to make it possible for others to do the same.”) This call for example-setting is sounded throughout the book as Helbig and Norman urge their target audience (leaders and would-be leaders) to go beyond mere instruction and instead embody the qualities they want to see in their subordinates, such as continuous learning, active curiosity, and self-reflection. Each chapter includes a detailed “Recommended Reading” section and text with extensive numbered and bulleted points formatted to make the core concepts more immediately digestible. The authors effectively employ clear and empathetic prose to assure readers that psychological safety is slow to build and quick to break, observing that such safety requires steady attention and delivers outsize payoffs as a result. They refreshingly ground a great deal of the material in psychology and neuroscience, pointing out, for instance, that research has demonstrated that the parasympathetic nervous system responds to honest appreciation, which improves creative thinking. Some wistful readers might consider some of the authors’ suggestions beyond the reach of their own organizations, as when group facilitators are advised to “gently intervene when someone dominates the conversation,” but hope springs eternal.
A passionate and accessible guide to humanizing the workplace.Pub Date: May 19, 2026
ISBN: 9798993550503
Page Count: 170
Publisher: Crazy Idea Press
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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