A vigorous, accessible look at team leadership in a modern business environment.
Management consultant Pendakur offers a guide to corporate team building.
The author opens his latest leadership book by warning team and organizational leaders against the complacency of a “business as usual” mindset. In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic and other social disruptions, the employee experience has been radically unsettled, he contends, and “the leadership norms of the previous decades fall short of what employees now need to unlock their peak potential.” In response to such circumstances, managers too often fall back on simply setting timelines and moving around materials without building teamwork connections that can handle broader issues; they focus on tactics, he says, instead of strategy. This picture is complicated by the hybrid nature of many modern workplaces, which can impede what Pendakur refers to as the “productive friction” of a diverse team: “Many organizations have left ‘the office’ behind,” he writes, “without replacing the rituals that were tied to everyone working together in the same physical space.” In a series of fast-paced, illustrated chapters, complete with reflection prompts (such as “Think of a time when you’ve witnessed a competent leader show up with vulnerability. How did you feel at this moment?”), he discusses some of the social psychology that operates in the workplace. Because he’s drawing on his own experience consulting with various companies, his voice is clear and confident throughout. For example, he elaborates on his core concept that diverse teams perform extremely well if they share “psychological safety,” with the economical prose of somebody who’s taught such key ideas as “vulnerability isn’t at war with competence” many times. Team leaders in a range of settings will find challenging ideas in these pages.
A vigorous, accessible look at team leadership in a modern business environment.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2024
ISBN: 9798891383005
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Amplify Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
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
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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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