Provocative but open to the charge of one-sided overcorrection.
Consultant Markova (Wide Open: On Living with Purpose and Passion, 2008, etc.) and co-author McArthur argue that current thinking about leadership methods must change in the coming century.
The authors view the present as a transitional era in which two kinds of cultural paradigms about leadership are in contention. “We have been educated for a time that no longer exists,” they write. “Leaders today are confronted with vastly different challenges than their predecessors, who were taught how to be right but not how to be effective with other people.” Meeting new challenges requires learning how to develop relationship skills, and the authors offer a plan for developing “collaborative intelligence,” or “CQ.” Drawing from other disciplines—e.g. Ned Herrmann's theories of brain dominance and proposal of different “cognitive styles”—they outline an approach that, they argue, will enable individuals and groups to shift their mental states by becoming aware of “languages of thought.” The authors probe beneath the ostensible message to the content of delivery, as indicated by body language, tone of voice, and/or facial expression. Their purpose is to establish an environment conducive to collaboration. Doing this requires self-awareness and criticism. With self-awareness, those who aspire to leadership positions can improve their styles. Markova and McArthur maintain that cognitive activity is knowable and changeable. While the old methods reduce relations between people to those based on economics and contracts, the authors aim to foster “inter-dependence, receptivity, connection, influence and inquiry” as the alternative. For them, this alternative is a way “to accept and evoke change” based on moving from rigid uncertainties to flexible curiosity, without losing virtuous intent. Leaders would no longer need to maintain the appearance of rightness but be able to collaborate productively. The authors present exercises and descriptions to clarify how their methods are put into action.
Provocative but open to the charge of one-sided overcorrection.Pub Date: Aug. 11, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9490-2
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
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
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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