A refreshingly creative examination of how to work well with others.
A metaphorically musical journey through work relationships.
Spero, an organizational consultant with almost 40 years’ experience, advances the idea that harmonious interactions with co-workers can be compared to aspects of musical composition. Work relationships, writes Spero, “become more interesting when we have the skills to vary their tempo, volume, and structure,” even though “we may have no idea why it is so easy to make beautiful music with some people, and why other interactions may sound so out of tune.” This metaphor is carried throughout the book, both in structure (with an “Overture” and six “Stages”) and in content (Stage 1 is “Auditions,” Stage 2 is “First Notes,” and so on). The author also makes liberal use of linguistic flourishes whenever she can, incorporating musical lingo into the book’s many examples and her own wise counsel. To some readers, the heavy reliance on the metaphor may feel gimmicky, but she does make a convincing case that working in harmony with co-workers, and all it implies, is legitimately analogous to performing in an orchestra or singing in a choir. Spero takes a deep dive into work-relationship dynamics, exploring such vital subjects as dealing with different types of personalities, understanding nonverbal cues, making commitments, navigating team clashes, setting boundaries, and distinguishing between compromise and collaboration. The book’s stages are logically organized, with numerous relevant examples rendered in clear, engaging prose. Each stage opens with a fictional scene in which four friends discuss co-worker relationships—a solid technique that integrates nicely with the content. One of the book’s strongest elements is “Rehearsals,” a closing section appended to the end of every stage that offers immersive exercises with which readers may apply the lessons learned. For example, the exercises for Stage 4, “Clashing Chords,” include planning for “how to react to your first speed bump,” answering pointed questions about “a relationship that started out strong but has become increasingly annoying,” and learning how to reckon with “your level of impatience.”
A refreshingly creative examination of how to work well with others.Pub Date: April 21, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-73786-800-2
Page Count: 332
Publisher: Relationshift Publishing, Inc.
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2022
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
PERSPECTIVES
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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