A meaty, thought-provoking approach to empathetic workplace leadership in a changed world.
A debut business book offers a blueprint for leadership in the transformed work environments of the 21st century.
In her work, Stern writes about how developing a more authentic and caring atmosphere as a leader will allow more effective communication in the workplace. “This kind of connection and communication,” she writes, “will create an environment of trust and belonging that will spur engagement, spike curiosity, and engender fraternity among team members.” The key ingredient of this type of leadership, she contends, is the concept of emotional intelligence: getting in touch not only with the feelings of your colleagues and employees, but also with your own. The author, a leadership development trainer, notes that for many people, the first stage of the Covid-19 pandemic brought about a transformation in their workplaces. In addition to the “Great Resignation,” remote and hybrid work solutions became common. Stern maintains that the “superpower” of emotions is the crucial element in dealing with such changes in a way that satisfies everybody involved and increases a company’s competitive edge—because happier, emotionally fulfilled workers are better employees. Conceding that emotions have long been viewed as the enemy of an effective, productive workplace, Stern argues that the exact opposite is the case. “Our emotions are full of wisdom when we pay attention to them and look for the meaning inside them,” she writes. “Feelings can provide incredible insights into our internal psyche and the external world around us.” In a series of research-based chapters complete with stories from clients she’s helped, Stern looks at how better emotional intelligence and awareness of employees’ feelings are shown to increase creativity, fellowship, and even profitability.
Stern is advocating against the predominant traditional trends in business thinking, and she clearly knows it. Many of her more conservative-minded readers with business experience will likely raise their eyebrows at her characterization of a good leader as basically a sympathetic guidance counselor—someone who’s always ready to promptly shut up and listen while prioritizing the “needs” of workers over virtually everything else. When the author writes things like “Great leaders show serenity and understanding, distancing themselves from their own emotional reactions” and “We need to create a psychologically safe place for our teams to express themselves,” many old-school readers will consider such thinking ultimately self-defeating, tantamount to letting the inmates run the asylum. They will fear that scores of 21st-century employees, if told that their desires are paramount in the workplace, will overnight become a bottomless pit of needs. But in explicating the various levels and “competencies” of emotional intelligence, Stern is the first to admit the limitations of the approach. As some of the research she cites notes, “Very high levels of EI can convey adverse outcomes, suggesting a dark side to the construct.” Having high emotional intelligence levels isn’t always a strength, which she effectively conveys in accounts drawing on her own personal experiences. Instead, in these pages, there mainly emerges a strong advocacy of great empathy and of seasoning all the benefits of emotional intelligence with reason and real-world perspective. And her central underlying assertion—that employees who feel seen and appreciated are better workers—is largely indisputable. She’s presenting a concrete way to achieve that.
A meaty, thought-provoking approach to empathetic workplace leadership in a changed world.Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-77327-168-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Figure 1 Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2022
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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