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COLLABORATIVE INTELLIGENCE

THINKING WITH PEOPLE WHO THINK DIFFERENTLY

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

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GOOD ECONOMICS FOR HARD TIMES

Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.

“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.

It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.

Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.

Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0

Page Count: 432

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019

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MASTERY

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

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