While it offers familiar tips, this work gives leaders helpful tools to build strong teams.
A former Fortune 500 executive makes a case for embracing a more humane approach to corporate leadership in this debut book.
More than two decades of experience in the corporate trenches convinced Turbiville, now an executive coach, that strong, people-focused leadership is the key to business success. Drawing on convincing real-world examples from companies such as Costco, Southwest Airlines, the Virgin Group, and Novo Nordisk, he argues that leaders can get the best results for their businesses by putting their employees first. Yet companies often “fail to live by this principle.” As a result, there are too many corporate cultures where there is a lack of trust in leaders and weak employee engagement. To solve this problem, the author encourages executives and managers to adopt what he dubs “the perfect leadership triad,” which is “people-focused, coaching-centered, and performance-driven.” In this clearly written book, he walks readers through each point of the triad, which, when combined, will “create and build high-performing teams” and result in “a great culture.” Unsurprisingly, Turbiville is a fierce advocate of coaching, which he calls “the sine qua non of leadership.” His volume functions as an advertisement for his own coaching business but also provides a wealth of useful information on its own. Both new managers and seasoned executives will find practical tips and strategies they can use to nurture powerful, productive relationships with employees and identify and support future leaders. Each chapter concludes with a list of questions that will help readers assess their own performances as leaders and identify areas where they might need improvement. According to the author, by following his guidance, companies can build a robust, healthy culture that will naturally lead to better business outcomes and lower employee turnover. Some of the advice (such as trusting workers to make their own decisions and giving them opportunities to develop in their careers) is well worn and will be recognizable to anyone who has flipped through other books on corporate leadership. But the overall message of concentrating on employees first is welcome.
While it offers familiar tips, this work gives leaders helpful tools to build strong teams.Pub Date: May 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73465-710-4
Page Count: 193
Publisher: TG Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 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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