An arresting and inviting colloquy on the qualities of real leadership.
A pair of executives from different generations explores the concept of leadership.
In their debut nonfiction collaboration, von Seldeneck and Alexander draw on their very different experiences in the world of executive recruitment. In the 1970s, von Seldeneck founded Diversified Search Group (DSG), which Alexander later joined, and the book alternates between exchanges of dialogue between the two and a shared narration of their evolving leadership ideas informed by their pasts. Von Seldeneck got a job as a typist in President John F. Kennedy’s Department of Commerce and lived through the turmoil of the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement; Alexander was on active duty in the United States Army during the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and entered a very different corporate world than that of her co-writer, one in which many glass ceilings for women had already been shattered. “If our stories prove anything,” they write, “it’s that there is no single right way to lead,” and yet the two authors agree on many commonalities of good leadership. “If you don’t leverage your position and power to do the maximum amount of good for the maximum number of people,” they write, “you’re ignoring one of your greatest assets – and a crucial component of true leadership.” Belying the fact that the book is a collaboration, the uniform tone throughout is very convincing. The sense of listening to two friends and colleagues hashing over the lessons of their lives is both vivid and enormously instructive. The give-and-take feels natural: “You used your power position to help me out, and I trusted you right away because of it,” says Alexander. “That’s a win for me, then,” von Seldeneck responds. Their shared leadership principles are wonderfully human: “Leaders shouldn’t be gatekeepers,” they write, “we should be gate openers.” Readers will want much more of this dialogue.
An arresting and inviting colloquy on the qualities of real leadership.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9798891382923
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Amplify Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
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
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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