A set of research-based rules for building trust in the workplace.
In this debut work, Lee, a senior leader at the Great Place to Work Institute business consultancy, shares his observations about how managers can use trust to create better work environments. This notion is nothing new, but Lee notes that his study of “feedback” from almost 2 million employees in 80 countries has given him a deeper perspective. He found similarities in the ways that employees trusted their bosses, distilled that data, and identified 16 “trust rules” that he says all great managers follow. Lee summarizes these in short, breezy chapters, providing an overview of each rule along with a few relevant examples and suggestions. Individually, the rules, such as “Be Approachable and Easy to Talk To,” “Make Your Expectations Clear,” and “Treat Everyone Fairly,” seem obvious, but taken together, they form a comprehensive checklist, and the author’s practical suggestions are particularly useful. For example, for the rule “Live with Integrity,” Lee enumerates five specific points, including “Be what you want your employees to be” and “Keep a positive and respectful attitude when challenging the status quo.” One chapter asks the important question, “So how can a high-trust manager reconcile the need to achieve results (the reason the organization exists in the first place) with the desire to help employees achieve a reasonable work-life balance?” The author then ably provides the answer by discussing four specific strategies that demonstrate an enlightened, humanistic approach to management. The style in which Lee delivers this material only heightens its usefulness, as he explains each rule in clear, illustrative text. Each rule is reinforced by “Key Points” at the end of each chapter, and each chapter builds upon the previous ones, so that the sum becomes greater than the discrete parts. In closing, Lee offers an engaging 10-step plan for implementing the changes necessary to put these rules into action.
A valuable management playbook that reinforces sound practices.Pub Date: April 6, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9957378-9-1
Page Count: 184
Publisher: The Trust Lab
Review Posted Online: June 13, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Categories: GENERAL BUSINESS | BUSINESS | LEADERSHIP, MANAGEMENT & COMMUNICATION
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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. 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
Categories: BUSINESS | LEADERSHIP, MANAGEMENT & COMMUNICATION | PSYCHOLOGY
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BOOK REVIEW
Noted number cruncher Sperling delivers an economist’s rejoinder to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Former director of the National Economic Council in the administrations of Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, the author has long taken a view of the dismal science that takes economic justice fully into account. Alongside all the metrics and estimates and reckonings of GDP, inflation, and the supply curve, he holds the great goal of economic policy to be the advancement of human dignity, a concept intangible enough to chase the econometricians away. Growth, the sacred mantra of most economic policy, “should never be considered an appropriate ultimate end goal” for it, he counsels. Though 4% is the magic number for annual growth to be considered healthy, it is healthy only if everyone is getting the benefits and not just the ultrawealthy who are making away with the spoils today. Defining dignity, admits Sperling, can be a kind of “I know it when I see it” problem, but it does not exist where people are a paycheck away from homelessness; the fact, however, that people widely share a view of indignity suggests the “intuitive universality” of its opposite. That said, the author identifies three qualifications, one of them the “ability to meaningfully participate in the economy with respect, not domination and humiliation.” Though these latter terms are also essentially unquantifiable, Sperling holds that this respect—lack of abuse, in another phrasing—can be obtained through a tight labor market and monetary and fiscal policy that pushes for full employment. In other words, where management needs to come looking for workers, workers are likely to be better treated than when the opposite holds. In still other words, writes the author, dignity is in part a function of “ ‘take this job and shove it’ power,” which is a power worth fighting for.
A declaration worth hearing out in a time of growing inequality—and indignity.Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-7987-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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