A passionate, statistics-based argument for women’s equality in the workplace.
Advice for thriving as a woman in the workplace.
In this self-help book, Martin, whose last book was Make It Rain (2018), encourages women to learn about systemic sexism and to push back against gendered challenges in the workplace and in general. Martin, a lawyer, journalist, and entrepreneur, shares her own and friends’ and colleagues’ professional experiences to illustrate the problems women face in professional settings. The book’s first section addresses misconceptions about women’s potential for success, which Martin presents as the lies women have been told (“You Can’t Be a Working Woman and Raise a Family”). The middle chapters explore some of the underlying reasons women contend with setbacks in their careers, from assumptions about how parenthood will influence professionalism to unequal opportunities for mentorship and support, and the final section provides solutions and strategies for getting past obstacles, although it does not get into specifics about how to bring about major systemic changes. Each chapter ends with an “awakening action item,” which gives readers journaling prompts, potential discussion topics, and recommended activities. The system as a whole, Martin argues, is at fault when it comes to institutionalized prejudice and discrimination, and while minor fixes do have limited impacts, a wholesale rethinking of relationships, work, and professionalism is needed.
Martin’s personal narrative, which is about her struggles and successes (“A Black woman with Harvard credentials is still a Black woman,” she notes), is at the book’s core. The author is a strong writer and storyteller, and she does an excellent job of capturing the essences of the women she features here. She also provides a wealth of pithy pull quotes (“You can’t open a door simply by ‘leaning in’ to it”) that will prompt highlighting and underlining. At times, however, the book seems unwilling to trust its readers’ knowledge base (for instance, by suggesting that TV shows like Veep and Madam Secretary are the first places many saw women represented in positions of political power, as though their fictional protagonists are the only women visible in positions of power) and misses opportunities for more substantial analysis. Recommendations for achieving structural change range from individual action items, like developing a personal mission statement and setting achievable goals, to more conceptual activities, like identifying and challenging internalized stereotypes. Although the book calls for large-scale systemic changes, it includes little in the way of specific advice for how to “dismantle and rebuild the system,” making it more a tool for consciousness raising and relationship building than wholesale revolution. Readers will find motivation and validation via both anecdotes and statistics. But those who have already read The Memo (2019), Lead From Outside (2018), or Did That Just Happen?! (2021) may find that the book covers familiar territory. Martin’s greatest strength, however, is in her presentation, and even jaded readers are likely to put the book down feeling that their perceptions of sexism are accurate, the problem is indeed a fixable one, and Martin is in their corner, cheering them on as they try to transform the world.
A passionate, statistics-based argument for women’s equality in the workplace.Pub Date: Sept. 21, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-63735-013-3
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Leaders Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2021
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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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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