THE VISIBILITY FACTOR

A detailed look at how to become a better leader through self-understanding.

Executive coach Barber says that she wrote this book in order to show people that anyone can change how they see themselves—and how others see them. The author confesses that she went through many years in the business world feeling “invisible” to management, until she decided to make a change, leave her position at Kraft Heinz in 2015, and become a leadership coach. She devotes her energies, she says, to helping others improve how they see themselves, and show them how to use their new realizations to help them become better leaders. She cites the old saw that “people don't leave companies, they leave managers,” and clarifies it, noting that “a bad manager who creates drama and, in some cases, a hostile work environment is a serious problem.” Unfortunately, she writes, too many leaders feel insecure, and a management style based on this feeling can have deleterious effects on people they manage. Barber smoothly weaves together stories from her own experience and case studies from coaching clients and co-workers she’s known, relating wide variety of scenarios involving workers in various capacities whose self-doubt or lack of clarity kept them in the “shadows,” and lacking the confidence to realize their own power. Her wish in all of this, she states, is “for everyone to see the value they bring and be able to talk about it.” In clear and ringingly optimistic prose, she effectively encourages her readers to throw off self-limiting beliefs that readers will find familiar, such as “I am not qualified to do this,” or “everybody else is good at this, but I am not,” and so on. Other readers may feel that some of this optimism may go too far; there are such things as qualifications, after all, that are based on different levels of skill and expertise. That said, its earnestness is genuine, and many in Barber’s audience will find that such positive feedback is exactly what they need to hear.

An intensely personal guide to better self-esteem and kind but forceful management.