An effective approach that will resonate with aspiring business leaders.
A leadership manual offers readers an unusual twist.
Knaupp takes an innovative and mind-expanding look at leadership, examining concepts that few people ponder or are even aware of. She encourages readers to undertake intense self-explorations. Although readers can’t help but improve by applying her principles and insights, the author insists this is not “a self-help book” but rather “a leadership manual.” The volume features a different mode of leadership, which requires one to get naked (figuratively) in the workplace. Under her system, revealing oneself goes far beyond the standard tenets of transparency. Getting naked means that readers must trust that they are good enough to lead and at the same time strip off their protective armor. The program requires that readers expose their backgrounds, thoughts, and mistakes. That can be scary, but Knaupp removes the intimidation factor by laying herself bare in these pages. She shares both her successes and what she calls her “spectacular” failures. Readers meet the “leader who has built three very successful, six-figure careers, each from the ground up.” They also see a woman who was driven to file for bankruptcy early in her entrepreneurial career. It’s surprising to see the topic of shame addressed in a leadership manual, let alone two chapters delving into it. Another instructive chapter teaches readers how to rewrite their stories, which she poignantly illustrates with an inspiring and detailed passage about how Monica Lewinsky changed the script of her life. The author expands on executive coach Tim Gallwey’s inner game theory, which is based on a simple equation: Performance = Potential – Interference. She shows at length how to identify and eliminate interference, which she explains can be many things, “internal or external, real or imagined.” In a refreshing manner that sets her book apart from many business guides, she delivers her message with compassion but remains no-nonsense (“This is hard work. You’re going to get it wrong before you get it right”). Her advice is simple to embrace and implement, which makes for easy, even delightful reading.
An effective approach that will resonate with aspiring business leaders.Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5445-0748-4
Page Count: 230
Publisher: Lioncrest Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2020
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
IN THE NEWS
IN THE NEWS
Perhaps not magic but appealing nonetheless.
Want to get ahead in business? Consult a dictionary.
By Wharton School professor Berger’s account, much of the art of persuasion lies in the art of choosing the right word. Want to jump ahead of others waiting in line to use a photocopy machine, even if they’re grizzled New Yorkers? Throw a because into the equation (“Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine, because I’m in a rush?”), and you’re likely to get your way. Want someone to do your copying for you? Then change your verbs to nouns: not “Can you help me?” but “Can you be a helper?” As Berger notes, there’s a subtle psychological shift at play when a person becomes not a mere instrument in helping but instead acquires an identity as a helper. It’s the little things, one supposes, and the author offers some interesting strategies that eager readers will want to try out. Instead of alienating a listener with the omniscient should, as in “You should do this,” try could instead: “Well, you could…” induces all concerned “to recognize that there might be other possibilities.” Berger’s counsel that one should use abstractions contradicts his admonition to use concrete language, and it doesn’t help matters to say that each is appropriate to a particular situation, while grammarians will wince at his suggestion that a nerve-calming exercise to “try talking to yourself in the third person (‘You can do it!’)” in fact invokes the second person. Still, there are plenty of useful insights, particularly for students of advertising and public speaking. It’s intriguing to note that appeals to God are less effective in securing a loan than a simple affirmative such as “I pay all bills…on time”), and it’s helpful to keep in mind that “the right words used at the right time can have immense power.”
Perhaps not magic but appealing nonetheless.Pub Date: March 7, 2023
ISBN: 9780063204935
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Harper Business
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
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