A proposal for more empathetic work environments that starts off sharply but later loses its way.
An organizational coach explores how prioritizing inclusion and addressing the effects of trauma can improve one’s workplace.
Cornelius has worked with startups and Fortune 500 companies such as General Motors and Citigroup, focusing on agility methodology, design thinking, and other growth-oriented business practices. He begins by positing that effects of the Covid-19 pandemic provided managers and employees with a valuable pause to “co-create a vision of belonging and…find healing for the trauma experienced throughout our lives.” He believes these two concepts are crucial to how humans solidify their identities and “prerequisites” for effective diversity, equity, and inclusion policies in the workplace. Each concept gets its own book section. In “Belonging,” Cornelius argues that workplaces that foster a sense of belonging allow employees to thrive, backing his view with references to studies and specific tools to gauge employees’ emotions and increase feelings of acceptance. In “Healing,” he discusses how processing trauma and drawing on a foundation of support can help someone heal and flourish. A lengthy epilogue comprises transcripts from Cornelius’ podcast, KnolShare with Dr. Dave. These conversations with counselor Tracy Treacy and coach Nobantu Mpotulo explore such topics as how to use the South African Xhosa concept of Ubuntu to make workplaces less siloed, and how one’s personal identities affect one’s work experience; all three conversants draw on their own experiences as people of color. Cornelius deftly blends hard evidence with instinctive insight; he provides a step-by-step strategy for managers to give workers a sense of belonging, for example, while also sharing personal anecdotes about overcoming hardships. The podcast transcripts further bring the book’s abstractions into the real world via Mpotulo and Treacy’s viewpoints. The fact that these conversations make up roughly three-quarters of the book, however, may be somewhat jarring to readers expecting a conventional management manual. There are also some strange jumps, as when Cornelius relates the story of a high school sports injury and immediately follows it with a section on forgiving perpetrators of trauma.
A proposal for more empathetic work environments that starts off sharply but later loses its way.Pub Date: July 6, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-9963936-7-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: JCWALK Ministries
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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